House Haunted

by Al Sarrantonio

  Falconi seemed himself again. His gaze was as level as Brennan's, “Yes.” He edged past Brennan, away from the cellar door.

  Brennan took him by the arm. “Stay with me.” Falcon nodded.

  They checked the kitchen, the small pantry, laundry room behind it. In the windowed dryer door Falconi saw a severed head, bobbing languidly from side to side.

  He closed his eyes; when he opened them, the head was gone.

  They moved cautiously through the swinging doors of the kitchen, checking the rooms down the hallway. All were empty. The noise was almost deafening. The walls brightened; veins of red lights bulged out with each crimson beat. The hum deepened to a rumbling roar.

  When they edged out into the living room, Falconi discovered two more corpses just inside the parlor, near the foyer leading to the front door.

  Falconi examined papers on the bodies. “The missing Russians,” he said, raising his voice to be heard. He studied the bullet wound in Viktor Borodin's body, an entrance in the throat out the back of the head. “Gaimes didn't do this. He never used a gun. He never would, according to Minkowski. Too impersonal.” He took out the gun he'd found on the body in the cellar, studied the barrel. “The fellow with the suit on downstairs must be the Pole.”

  Brennan said, “The other one in the cellar must have been the kid from Bermuda. That leaves Ray Garver and Laura Hutchins. West and north. Your man Guinty said the glow was stronger from the west bedroom.”

  “We'll check them both.”

  One step at a time, they mounted the stairs to the second floor. Falconi held his .44 ready in front of him.

  The north bedroom faced them. Brennan stood before the door, examining the cracks in it.

  “Get back,” Falconi said. He stood with both hands on the .44 and pushed the door open.

  Ready to fire, Falconi moved quickly into the room. “Jesus.”

  Brennan followed him in, and gagged at the sight of what was on the bed. He turned to lean on the doorjamb.

  As Falconi joined him he said, “Ray Garver's the only one left.”

  From the west bedroom came a scream, followed immediately by another.

  Falconi and Brennan ran toward the west door. The screams built to a frenzy. Falconi, holding his gun up, motioned Brennan to stand on the opposite side.

  Falconi was turning to kick the door in when it flew open. There was a burst of screeching within. A man in a wheelchair hurtled by them. The chair hit the second floor railing and burst through. The man rose out of the chair in midflight, hands before him like a diver, and plunged to the floor below, hitting hard.

  Falconi was moving to the stairway when Brennan grabbed his arm. Falconi turned to look into the doorway of the north bedroom.

  The figure of a young girl with red hair stood there. She was almost solid, floating just above the floor, her feet nearly touching it.

  Red lines of force from the walls and ceiling were concentrating, flowing and rising up through the floor into her.

  “Soon . . .” she said, her voice a deep, echoing well, at me with the rumbling generator's roar of the house.

  “Go downstairs,” Brennan said to Falconi, “and get that man out of the house.” He set the deionizer down, quickly opened the case and turned it on.

  Falconi's eyes were riveted to Bridget, who floated serenely in the flowing web of red energy.

  “Move!” Brennan said, pushing Falconi until he turned and stumbled down the stairs.

  Brennan turned up the deionizer, and suddenly the flow of energy to Bridget diminished. The serene look on her face vanished and she focused her eyes on Brennan.

  “You can't stop me . . .” the bottomless voice said. “Where is Bridget?” Ted Brennan said.

  “In here. In the tunnel between worlds. She's been here all this time. Soon the fourth will be dead, and then I will enter this world.” The thing, using Bridget's lips, smiled. “This life.”

  “Let me speak with her.”

  “No.” The thing stared malevolently at Brennan. “Soon you'll die. You'll all die.”

  The thing began to moan, a low, rattling, grinding sound. Once again, the red flow of energy began to increase.

  Brennan glanced down at Falconi, who was bent over the prone body of the man in the wheelchair. “Well?”

  Falconi looked up. “He's still alive. I think his neck's broken. If I move him, he might die on me.”

  “If you don't get him out of the house, we're all dead!” Falconi lifted the man gently under the arms and tried to straighten his broken body.

  Brennan adjusted the deionizer; once again, the flow of red fire to Bridget diminished.

  This time, when Bridget's eyes focused on Brennan, the malevolence was gone.

  “Bridget!” Brennan shouted.

  Bridget opened her mouth. “Yes . . .” a tiny, weak voice spoke from a great distance.

  “Bridget,” Ted Brennan said, “you have to fight it!”

  “It has me trapped, in the tunnel . . .”

  Brennan fumbled the music box from pocket. “Listen to this, Bridget.”

  The mouth opened, but no whisper of sound came out. Brennan wound the music box and opened it.

  “Do you know this song, Bridget? Do you remember it?”

  “Yes . . .” Suddenly the voice was stronger. Tears tracked her cheeks. As the melody began, she looked at Brennan and sang in a sweet, sad voice:

  “Why do you weep?

  The bells are not ringing,

  The town is asleep.

  The night at your window

  Is nestled in deep.

  The stars in the heavens

  Are gently singing—

  Why do you weep?”

  “Do you remember it?” Bridget said, beginning to cry.

  A gate opened in Brennan's mind. “My God.” He knew the song, now. He saw the soft, indistinct face looming over him, heard the resigned sadness, the infinite sorrow in the voice.

  He saw the face of his mother.

  It was Bridget.

  “My God. My God.” Brennan fell to his knees. He looked up at her, and she was smiling through her tears. “Mother . . .”

  “Yes,” she said. “When this began, when this horrible thing took me so long ago, I began to call you. It took so long for you to come. So long . . .”

  “My father . . .”

  “His family had money. They took you away from me. My family agreed. It was so easy to listen to the sounds in my head. Before I killed myself, I wrote your father a note asking him to never tell you who I was. I was so ashamed. Your father loved me as much as he loved you, and he followed my wishes. I was so wrong. But I got through to you. I got through . . .”

  Her voice became urgent. “You must get the fourth out, now. . .”

  Brennan turned to see Falconi struggling with the body of Ray Garver. He had carefully dragged it halfway to the front hallway.

  “Falconi!” Brennan shouted, “You've got to get him out!” The red color in the walls deepened, and suddenly the veins of power began to flow again.

  Brennan turned back to see the thing once more in control of Bridget. It stared at him coldly. The bottomless voice spoke. “I won't let her go.”

  It reached down, took the deionizer by its handle and hurtled it the length of the house. The instrument smashed against the railing in front of the east door; raining debris down on Falconi.

  A spark shot from one of the smashed batteries, touching the dry, dusty fabric of a damask chair, which began to bum. “Mother,” Brennan begged, “you have to force it out!” He rewound the music box.

  The thing in his mother's spirit glared at him with pure hatred. “I'll tear the bones from your body.” Her eyes filled with a blood red color. Her voice was like the rasp of a file. “I'll burn you alive,” she said. “I—”

  Suddenly, her face changed to that of an innocent, lost young girl.

  “Mother,” Brennan shouted, “make it leave!”

  “Yes ...”

&n
bsp; “Force it out!”

  “Yes ...”

  She made a gagging noise in her throat. The lines of red force vanished. Her eyes rolled up into her head. Her body ceased floating, touched the floor. She flopped down backward, bucking in an epileptic-like fit.

  “Ahhhhhh, ahhhhh,” she said, trying to push herself up. Bridget's body went limp. Something huge, deep, and black rose slowly out of it, hovering like a cloud.

  “Jesus, I think this guy's dying!” Falconi shouted from below.

  Brennan looked. Falconi had dragged the broken man to the front hallway. He stopped, as Garver went into a series of convulsions, vomiting up blood.

  The damask chair was smoking, tiny flames licking its arm up to its back.

  Brennan screamed down to Falconi, “Get him out, now!”

  “Ahhhhhh, ahhhhh . . .”

  A shrieking, whistling sound came from within the roiling mass, which moved up above his mother's figure to the ceiling. It formed and reformed into a huge, dark dragon's head with a long, red whip-like tongue and blank, empty white eyes. Veins of crimson fire ran and pulsed around its outline. “Ahhhhhhhh, ahhhhhhh .”

  “Move!” Brennan screamed down to Falconi.

  Below the dark cloud, Bridget's body began to disappear. As she became insubstantial, she opened her eyes, looked at Brennan, and smiled peacefully.

  “Son, I'm going, I'm finally going . . .”

  Holding her hand out to him, Bridget vanished. ''No!''

  Gary Gaimes ran out of the door to the attic, straight at Brennan. “She was mine!” He raised the claw hammer, striking Brennan a solid blow on the side of the head.

  Brennan dropped, lifeless, to the floor. Gaimes turned to the stairs and staggered down them, waving the hammer above his head. “I'm invincible!” he shouted. “INVINCIBLE!”

  Falconi stood and fired the .44 into Gaimes, who reached the bottom of the stairs and kept coming.

  “INVINCIBLE!”

  Falconi fired again, hitting Gaimes square in the chest. Gaimes grunted, went down on one knee next to the burning chair, rose again, still holding the hammer. A flame jumped to his shirt, began to burn up the arm. He grinned at Falconi and staggered forward, raising the hammer above his head.

  “I'm invin—”

  Falconi fired four quick shots, and Gaimes collapsed before him, the hammer falling from his twitching hand.

  Flames spread from Gaimes's shirt to the floor, from the burning chair to the nearby tables and rug.

  Near the ceiling at the top of the stairs, the black cloud grew. The rumbling, deep sounds within it intensified.

  Ahhhhhhhhhh, ahhhhhhhh.

  “Shit,” Falconi said. He felt for the pulse in Ray Garver's neck. It was barely evident. He began to drag Garver carefully toward the front door. “Fuck it,” he said, lifting him roughly under the arms and hauling him down the hallway.

  When he looked up at the second floor, the cloud was gone.

  “Damn!”

  He dragged his burden another yard, felt back, and found the front doorknob with his hand. He began to turn it.

  “Falconi. Wait.”

  Falconi looked back into the house. Ted Brennan's form was calmly descending the stairs through growing flames, leaving its dead flesh behind. The side of Brennan's head where the hammer wound had been was whole.

  Falconi said, “Shit,” again. He fumbled for the knob, felt it turn in his hand.

  “Wait,” Ted Brennan repeated. He approached, held his hand out.

  Falconi heard the click of the opening lock

  “Stop.”

  Brennan stood beside him, put his cold hand over Falconi's on the doorknob.

  Falconi turned, looked into Brennan's dead face. Something that was not Brennan stormed in his eyes.

  “I believe you have something of mine,” he said, his mouth releasing putrefaction.

  He bent down and touched the crippled man at Falconi's feet. Ray Garver screamed, his eyes opening, blood pushing from his mouth and nostrils.

  Falconi tried to pull the man from Brennan's grasp.

  Brennan stood. His face was inches from Falconi's own. His grotesque smile quivered. Falconi saw something in Brennan's eyes, a black, roiling thing with the tongue of a snake. And then he was on the roof on East Thirty-third Street in New York City again, looking down at that poor, desperate, quiet woman, and she was pulling herself from her housecoat, pulling herself from his grasp, letting go, letting go...

  Let go, the thing told him. Let go, or the world will be destroyed, and you'll be wrong again.

  Falconi let go of Ray Garver.

  “Falconi!”

  He looked into Brennan's open eyes. The roiling thing was gone, pulling back into the recesses of the pupils. It was the real Ted Brennan facing him.

  “Take him!” Brennan shouted, removing his hands from Ray Garver's dying body.

  Falconi pulled the door open, lifted Ray Garver under the arms, and fell backward, out of the house.

  As they hit the outside air, Ray took a long, moaning whisper of breath and let it out in expiration. “I'm sorry . . .”

  Falconi felt for his pulse. There was none.

  “Jesus,” Falconi muttered, “that was close.”

  Ahhhhh. . .

  Brennan stood in the doorway. In the back of his throat, trapped behind his eyes, something roared in rage.

  ahhhh. . .

  The roar faded to silence.

  Brennan faded gently, seemed to float on air.

  “Listen. . .” Brennan whispered. He looked at a place above Falconi's head. “Destroy the house, and this thing cannot come back. I'll release it at the other end of the tunnel. . .

  He was barely an outline in the air. “A light at the end . . . I'm through! A place. . .” His face suddenly lit with a beatific smile. “The woman in your picture . . . You're forgiven. . . Everyone is forgiven. . .”

  Brennan was almost gone. He steadied his gaze on Falconi. “Tell Beauvaque . . .” His smile was angelic. “Tell him Jeffrey is happy. . .

  Brennan filtered to nothingness.

  There was a hissing roar. The house burst into flame. The red, glowing windows blew outward. Fire licked up the walls, engulfed the roof, roared over the attic.

  Guinty was at Falconi's side, aiding him. “We're calling the fire department, Lieutenant.”

  “Let it burn.” Falconi looked up at the house. There was a strange smile on his face. Idly, he reached into his pocket, took out a book of matches, handed it to Guinty. “If the rain puts the fire out, start it up again.”

  “But, sir, the Russians, someone from their embassy is here, the television cameras are here—”

  Falconi shook off Guinty, began to walk away. “Fuck television. Fuck the Russians. Fuck everybody. I have a message to deliver.”

  The house turned to flames behind him, reached fiery hands to heaven.

  Falconi walked on, blithely ignoring the shouting voices, the rain, the cameras, and looked for a telephone.