Southern House

by Mark Deloy

  I wished I had brought my phone so I could take some pictures, but the thought never occurred to me since I had no service. I looked behind me for Girl, not worrying now about the house disappearing, but she was nowhere in sight. She had either stayed where she was, or went back home.

  Did Papa Hickory know about this place? And if so, why hadn’t he told me about it? I was sure he had to know. He’d explored every inch of his land. And who had built the structure, and how long ago? There had to be a record somewhere of its existence. There were just too many questions for my brain to process right now.

  Something caught my eye through one of the windows. The air inside was shimmering, like blacktop does on a hot day. Only this was a shimmering spiral. I was hypnotized by it for a full minute, but then it was gone and there was only the interior darkness again.

  I slowly walked up to the house. There was no yard to speak of. It looked as if someone had just set the house down right in the middle of the trees. The ground was littered with the same rocks, moss, dirt and leaves as the rest of the area all around. The smell of mildew and water- soaked wood was growing stronger. It was thick and ripe, like a rotten melon. I gagged a little, but kept on walking. I knew this was probably just some old forgotten relic, but something felt wrong with it. The air felt somehow heavier the closer I came to it and the shadows seemed to congregate, as if drawn to the structure.

  I took a deep breath and told myself not to be childish as I moved closer. I reached out and touched the cracked wooden siding. It was dry and splintery, but felt like any other old building. Then I leaned into one of the ground floor windows and looked inside. It was pretty much what I expected.

  Floorboards were askew and pulled up in some places, leaving black gaps like rotten teeth. There didn’t seem to be any wallpaper on the walls, nor were they painted. Everything was bare wood, as if someone had just built the house and not planned to decorate it at all. There were no pictures hanging on any of the walls and no furniture anywhere. For that matter, there were no interior doors, either and I didn’t see any stairs, or a way to get to the second floor.

  Something brushed my leg, making me jump and nearly piss myself. I pulled my head out of the window and started to grab my gun, but saw it was just Girl.

  “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

  She just tilted her head and looked at me.

  “Never mind. Did you decide to stop being a ‘fraidy cat?”

  Again there was no response.

  I walked over to the front door and tried the doorknob. It was ice cold. I stepped back for a second, then tried it again, this time finding it to be slightly warm. I tried to turn it and at first there was resistance, then there was a slight click and it turned easily. Of course the door gave a haunted house creak as it opened. Girl refused to follow me in.

  “Suit yourself,” I said. “Just stand guard, then.”

  The interior was dim, so I pulled my small flashlight out of my pants pocket and switched it on, illuminating the main room. My initial assessment was correct. There were no decorations whatsoever, as if the builder had stopped after the initial structure was built, or perhaps it used to have more decorative aspects and was stripped down to bareness for some reason. I was also correct about the lack of stairs. I wandered through the entire first floor, avoiding the missing planks on the floor. I walked through what appeared to be the dining room and into the kitchen and found no way to reach the second floor, nor did it appear to have ever had them. The ceiling was perfectly intact, except for some crumbling plaster and exposed boards.

  I did, however, find a heavy wooden door in the kitchen I surmised led to a basement, but it was locked. I pulled on it for a few minutes, but it wouldn’t budge. I’d have to come back with a crowbar if I wanted to get into the basement. But I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to.

  The floorboards in the kitchen creaked under my weight, and I wondered if I’d be able to get back out if it collapsed and sent me crashing into the cellar. I added a rope to my mental list of things to bring back later. I also wondered if I could rig up some sort of grappling hook to get up into the second floor. I guess I could drive a ladder down to the edge of the woods and haul it the rest of the way, but that seemed like a lot of work.

  I started to go back the way I had come and rounded the corner to the dining room. Standing in the doorway was a dark figure. It was eight or nine feet tall, his head scraped the ceiling. He was dressed in a ragged and dusty black jacket and black pants. His face had no features. It was just a shimmering blur, like the spiral I’d seen in the window before. I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t run or even move. I was frozen with absolute terror. I felt gooseflesh break out all over my body and I opened my mouth to scream, but only a slight squeak came out. I began to whimper, and then cry. I had no control over my body. The figure reached out to me and its bald head elongated and stretched slightly, then formed faces of people who were now dead, both friends and family members. I saw Daley Owen, a kid I knew in the fourth grade who died in a car accident. I saw my father, who had died of a heart attack a few years ago. Finally, I saw my grandmother’s face. It looked strange mounted on an eight-foot tall body, but it was only there for a split second. It was there just long enough for me to recognize her.

  I blinked and the apparition was gone. Just like that… whatever I had just seen vanished completely. One second it was there, and the next it was just gone. I took a deep, shuttering breath and let it out, then began to sob uncontrollably. I sank to the floor and tried to calm myself, struggling not to vomit. It was absolute and overwhelming terror that I had just felt. I knew whatever I had seen was not supposed to exist in the natural world, but it had been here. I was seeing something, which was not supposed to be, but had been right in front of me. I thought I had seen my first ghost and all the years of skepticism about the supernatural vanished.

  I was finally able to rise up on shaking legs and I lunged toward the door. Never was I so happy to be out in the sunlight. Girl had apparently sensed nothing. She was lying nearby under an oak tree. I ran to her, and then ran out of there as fast as my legs would go, panting heavily, my heart hammering in my chest. I’m sure she probably thought I was crazy, but I didn’t care, I wanted to get out of the area as quickly as I could. I wanted to be away from the dark figure, away from the house and away from the woods. At that moment, I wanted to even be away from this place and move back to upstate New York. I didn’t care about the inheritance, the land or the money. I was about twenty yards away and I looked back. Now the house was gone. I looked to the left and the right of where I thought it had been and there was nothing but trees. It was gone as if it had never been there.

  I was more than relieved to come crashing out of the forest and into the clearing. I could see my grandparent’s house across the fields. I think I set a new record for crossing the three fields that day, and even Girl was panting when we got back. I went in the house, slammed the door and locked both the door and the deadbolt. I took a long shower and spent the rest of the afternoon trying to forget what I had just experienced.

  13

  That night I couldn’t get to sleep. I skipped the revival meeting earlier and didn’t even go out to say hi to Jim. I just wanted to be alone with my thoughts. After the last cars had dispersed, I kept looking out my upstairs bedroom window towards the woods and the house. Had I seen a ghost? It had to be. I hadn’t ever formed an opinion about spirits, or haints as my granny had called them. She would tell stories of the house she grew up in as a girl in South Carolina. The way she’d tell it, the place was infested with them, as if they were roaches. I reserved the right to be skeptical, until of course I actually saw one. If, in fact, that was what I had seen. What if it came here? I turned that question around in my head over and over. It wasn’t as if the guns would take care of it like a regular intruder. In fact, the thought of shooting the tall figure hadn’t even entered my mind. I was too busy trying not to piss myself. Some gunslinger I was
.

  I wanted to continue my walks. They were helping with the withdrawals and I was getting some exercise as a bonus. But I wasn’t sure I could convince myself to go back to where I’d seen the house. I didn’t consider myself to be someone who was easily shaken, but obviously, whatever was in that house had scared the shit out of me. I resolved to skip my walk tomorrow, then try and find a different path, perhaps just past the second field where the church tent was now set up. I looked out the window again. I could see the tent, like a dark monolith against the darker woods. The heavy canvas fluttered in the north wind and I imagined I could hear the canvas flapping.

  I saw a small light blink on in the tent. It looked no brighter than a candle and it was moving slowly inside the front entrance, which Jim had left open to keep it cool. The light moved from one side of the tent to the other. It was too dim to make out if anyone was holding it or not, but someone had to be, by the way it was moving. It certainly wasn’t a giant lightning bug. The way it was gliding from one end to the other it looked like someone holding a lantern inspecting the inside of the tent. I stared, placing my forehead against the screen, smelling the cooling summer night air. That was when I saw the figure come out the front of the tent. I was right about the lantern, and the figure was too tall to be a man. It had to be that same thing I’d seen in the house. It hunched over to get out the front entrance of the tent, which must have at least ten feet of clearance.

  The great, gangly creature held the lantern out in front of it like Charon navigating the river Styx to Hades. I felt my skin break out in gooseflesh. Why would a ghost need a lantern? Whatever I was seeing could not, should not exist. It was some sort of humanoid creature, and it was living in a house in the forest on my land. Who do you call in a situation like that? The police? Some paranormal group? I had no idea. I knew I couldn’t tell anyone without it getting out and the whole town thinking I was a nutcase. As I was attempting to gather my thoughts, the creature simply disappeared. No more light, no more figure—he was gone, just as he had vanished in the house. Now I started thinking he had not disappeared at all, but simply extinguished his lantern and was slowly moving across the field toward the house to come and claim me. This would make up for not getting his long-fingered hands on me that afternoon. He was coming for me… right now, I was sure of it.

  Girl started to bark and growl downstairs. I grabbed the Ruger off the nightstand and slowly made my way down the stairs. I didn’t want to go...I wanted to jump into bed, pull the covers over my head and pretend I was five again. Everyone knows, if the covers are over your head, the monsters couldn’t get you.

  But I was an adult and there was something trying to get into my house. Then my ‘he-man, John Wayne, Western civilization’ upbringing began to take over and I felt my heart speed up. I aimed to kill this thing. If it was solid, then I could kill it… or at least I hoped I could.

  Girl started to calm down a little when she saw me coming down the stairs. She just stood facing the back door with a low growl in her throat. She looked fierce, and with her teeth bared and hackles raised, incredibly vicious.

  A shadow passed by the kitchen window. I raised the gun, but it was gone as quickly as it had appeared. I never actually saw what had cast it. I just saw the outside light blocked by something for a split second out of the corner of my eye. Girl stopped growling and sat down on the kitchen floor, then howled. It was near ear splitting, echoing in the tiled kitchen.

  “Shh, Girl,” I said. “Good girl. Now shhh. It’s ok. I think it’s gone.”

  I peeked out the kitchen window, which faced the fields and saw nothing. Maybe it was a trick to make me think it was gone, so I’d go outside and check. I opened the backdoor anyway. The Ruger was gripped tightly in my hand. I could feel my palm sweat on the handgrips. I thought about thumbing back the hammer, but I had begun to shake and I didn’t want to drop the gun and blow my foot off.

  I looked out the door. Girl had sidled up beside me and looked out, too. She whined softly, but didn’t growl, which I took as a good sign. I was about to shut the door again, when I saw something on the patio. It was a small lump that hadn’t been there earlier. I grabbed the flashlight from the counter where I’d left it when I went to bed and turned it on.

  Laying on my patio, in a small pool of blood, was what looked like a dead rabbit. Then I noticed something else. The wall under the kitchen window appeared to have been spattered with the rabbit’s blood. It was as if it had taken the rabbit and shaken it like a Catholic priest shakes holy water. My visitor had marked the house as if cursing it, and possibly me. Whatever the markings meant, I didn’t like them. I was tempted to clean it off tonight before it dried, but the thought of going around the side of the house in the dark to get the hose and then standing there using it with my back to the fields didn’t appeal to me right then. Instead, I shut the door and went back inside. It could wait for daylight.

  If I couldn’t sleep before, now I was convinced I’d never sleep again. What the hell did this thing want? Why was it here? Was it pissed I’d moved into the house? Had it bothered my grandmother before she died? Was it what had caused her stroke? It was too late for so many questions. I turned on the television and adjusted the rabbit ears to pick up the local PBS station. There was a documentary on of all things, desert hares. The announcer was saying they were fast animals that could outrun nearly any predator.

  “Unless that predator was a ten-foot-tall boogyman,” I said to the TV and laughed. The laugh was an eerie sound at one A.M. I turned on the light next to the overstuffed easy chair I’d inherited. The light made me feel a little better, but not much. I think I finally dozed off as the sun was starting to rise through the eastern trees.

  14

  The next morning I dragged myself up from the easy chair around ten. My head felt heavy and foggy, my eyes burned from the light coming in through the living room window. I figured I’d gotten around four hours of crappy sleep. It would have to do. The cravings for my pills were still there like a heavy weight on my chest.

  There was no way I was going back into those woods, at least not today. I went out the back door with a bucket of soapy water and a large cleaning brush. It took me about a half an hour to get the blood off the siding. There were still pink stains in some places if you looked closely, but it was better than it had been.

  I decided to go into town and treat myself to that Blue Ray player and a stack of movies I’d promised myself, but hadn’t got around to buying yet. I headed for the truck and Girl jumped in the back, tail wagging and her tongue hanging out in a comical grin. I was glad she showed no ill effects from last night. She seemed like her usual happy doggie self. I scratched her behind one ear, then got in and headed to town.

  Centerville is a town in Hickman County, Tennessee. The population is around 4,000 and is the county seat of the county. It was settled in 1823 and had more springs and natural waterfalls than any other area in Tennessee. Some of those springs were used for recreation in the eighteenth century, especially the sulfur springs, which were marketed and used as health resorts in the area. It was also known as a hotspot for paranormal activity from the late eighteen hundreds to the turn of the century. Mystics and gypsies flocked to the area believing so much water enhanced the spiritual nature of the area. Granny told me stories of the caravans of gypsies that roamed through the area when she was a girl. Her mother had told her they would come in the night and take her away if she wasn’t good. I wondered now if all those paranormal nut jobs might have been onto something.

  We pulled into the Wal-Mart parking lot, which was surprisingly full for a Thursday morning. I tied Girl to the bed with a long rope, patted her on the head and told her to stay and I’d be back soon. I didn’t think she’d leave the truck, but I didn’t want to take any chances since I’d be in there for a while.

  Since this was a Super Wal-Mart, I decided to stock up on food for the next couple of weeks. I got a shopping cart, or a “buggy” as they call them in the
South, and started shopping. I went over to electronics first and picked out a very nice Sony Blue-Ray player. It had all the bells. I could even get Netflix on it if I ever got the Internet hooked up. Then I picked out roughly thirty movies. It was strange to not have a spending limit. My whole life I’d had to watch my money. I wasn’t poor, but I could never just spend money without thinking about it. I got nearly every movie I’d wanted to see at the theater over the last two years and had never gotten around to. Mostly guy stuff. The Equalizer with Denzel, Expendables Three, Guardians of the Galaxy, American Sniper, and then I picked out some of my favorite movies to re-watch.

  When I was done in electronics, I went over to the sporting goods department to look around. I wasn’t used to a Wal-Mart, which stocked so much of a selection of guns and ammo. I didn’t need any more guns, but I picked up a few more boxes of .45 ammo and paid at the counter. Then I spied a million candlepower spotlight and had the clerk throw that in, too. It was rechargeable and had a pistol grip with a trigger that locked in the on position. I spotted a pair of slick high-powered binoculars as well, but decided I’d spent enough. Old habits die hard, it seemed.