Southern House

by Mark Deloy

  I asked Lisa if she’d seen what I did, but she hadn’t.

  Jensen came up from the basement and switched off his light.

  “Did you find out whose coffins those were?” he asked.

  “I found one that had a brass engraved plate on it. It was engraved with the monogram ‘JFW’ 1945.”

  “JFW?” I repeated.

  “If it was a monogram, the last name is in the middle,” Lisa advised.

  “James Franks. One of the kids Shift took in the forties.”

  “So that means…” I trailed off, feeling sick again.

  “Shift dug their bodies up after they died,” Jensen finished. “And there are many more than we know about. Maybe this isn’t just happening here. Maybe this house and the portal moves all over the state, or the country. Some of those coffins on the bottom row had crumbled back into dust. But why take the bodies?”

  “Because those kids are his, and always will be,” Lisa declared. She looked like she was in a trance; her eyes were wide and starting to fill with tears. “They travel with him.”

  I opened my mouth to come up with a different explanation, but I realized I didn’t have one. I knew Lisa was right.

  “What did you see?” Jensen asked her.

  “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  We walked over to the wall where I saw the foot pop out and I put my hand on it—or tried to. My hand fell into open space. The wall was an illusion.

  “What the hell!” Jensen exclaimed, then tried it, too, with the same result.

  Then Beth materialized right out of the wall and ran past us, her hands were still behind her back. She stumbled and fell just inside the main room. Jensen went over, grabbed her and stood her back up.

  She struggled against his grip, but he told her to calm down and she did.

  “Why are you running?” he asked her.

  “I was trying to get upstairs, but I can’t climb with my hands like this,” she complained ignoring his question.

  “Upstairs?” Lisa asked.

  We walked back over to the wall and I put my hand through it again.

  “See, nothing there.”

  “That’s amazing,” Lisa said.

  “I guess I’ll go first,” Jensen volunteered and walked ahead, pulling Beth. They disappeared completely. Then Jensen’s hand came back out and waved at us. “I can see you from this side. It’s like way glass.”

  Lisa and I walked forward, holding our hands out in front of us as if we were walking into a pitch-black room. As soon as our heads penetrated the barrier, it was like the wall didn’t exist and this was just another part of the dining room. Ahead of us was a splintered wooden ladder that led upstairs. Above us, through a three- foot- wide opening, swirling colored lights shined down like a disco ball.

  “Whoa,” was all I could say.

  “Do you think it’s the vortex?” Jensen wondered aloud, moving toward the ladder and looking up.

  “Yes, yes, yes it is! We need to go up,” Beth said. She was jumping up and down like a little kid at a birthday party.

  “Calm down, Hazel,” Jensen said and that made me laugh. I needed to laugh right then.

  Beth did calm down, but pouted as if she was five again.

  “I’m going to uncuff you and you’re going to lead the way,” Jensen told her, and, immediately, the excited kid was back. She was all smiles.

  Jensen took the cuffs off and Beth started to climb into the brightly-lit opening. Jensen followed her with Lisa behind him and me in the rear.

  By the time I pulled myself up through the hole in the second floor, Beth, Jensen and Lisa were all staring at what was in front of us as if they were hypnotized.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Jensen said.

  Below us, covering most of the floor, like a large area rug, was a swirling, spiraling design which kept changing, zooming in on an area and then widening out again. It looked just like the chaos theory Mandelbrot designs that I’d seen videos of in college.

  “Now what?” Lisa asked.

  “I have no ide—No!” Jensen screamed.

  Beth stepped forward and into the design. There was a slight ripple where her foot met the vortex and then she was gone. It swallowed her completely. Jensen rushed forward, but I grabbed his uniform shirt, pulling him back.

  “Oh my God!” Lisa exclaimed. “I can see her. Look in the black part of the design.”

  We did, and I could see her for a split second, then she was gone again. I had to wait for another paisley blob to spin around, and then, there she was again. She seemed to be in a room lined with curtains, or something hanging from the walls. She was looking at them, pushing them aside, then looking at another, like a woman searching through a crowded closet for an outfit. She looked behind her and searched even more franticly, pulling whatever she was searching through aside and looking at another. Finally, she came to one, held it up and I could see her smile before the swirl shifted again and she was gone. The design changed, and zoomed out, making me dizzy. I struggled to find another large black opening so I could see what she was doing. Finally, one moved into view and I could see her again. She looked like she was stepping into whatever she had pulled from the wall as if was a pair of coveralls, but, then, the coveralls were gone as if they had been absorbed into her.

  She looked over her shoulder and I heard her scream. She ran back towards us and raised her hand. The floor shifted again and she was gone once again, too.

  Lisa and Jensen must have seen the same thing I did, because they were moving around the outside of the shifting vortex, trying to get another good view inside. Finally the design swirled to black again and I saw Beth’s hand pop up like a drowning swimmer from a pool, but it was too far away. It dipped back down below the surface and then came up again, closer. I reached out and brushed her fingertips once before it went back down. Then her whole arm and part of her shoulder resurfaced near Lisa. I ran over to help her as she began to pull Beth through. She was either impossibly heavy, or the vortex was trying to suck her back down. I leaned back and pulled on her elbow. Jensen pulled on Lisa, who had her by the hand.

  “On three,” I said.

  “One!” I began, but she began to slip back into the vortex.

  “We’re losing her!” Lisa cried out.

  “Screw it, pull!” I screamed.

  We all pulled and Beth’s head surfaced, then her other arm and her chest, then she slid out like a baby being born, screaming and crying. We all fell in a heap near the opening in the floor.

  “Are you okay?” Lisa asked her. “What did you just do?”

  “My soul. I got my soul and stepped back into it.”

  I noticed her voice had changed from a manic, shrill tone to one of a calm, sane person.

  “We need to-” Lisa started. I thought she was going to say we needed to get the rest of the souls, but Beth interrupted her.

  “There’s no time. We have to leave, now!”

  “What’s wrong?” Jensen asked, taking her by the shoulders.

  “He’s coming!” she screamed at him.

  37

  The whole house started to shake. Ripples formed into rings emanating out from the center of the vortex. The Mandelbrot design stopped swirling all at once and disappeared, turning the whole floor black, like some scum-covered, rotten, long-dead pond.

  “We need to leave,” I said urgently. “Now!”

  As we turned away from the vortex, it became perfectly calm, even as the house was still shaking. There was a huge grinding sound and I imagined that awful basement being ripped from the ground, shaking off rocks and dirt, the coffins inside jumbling around. Then all at once, the shaking stopped. There was a sudden feeling of movement under our feet. It was like being in a funhouse and having the floor suddenly shift under you. I tried to steady myself, even as my three companions had already been thrown to their knees.

  I looked out the window. Trees were flying past us. There was a strange whirring sound coming fr
om everywhere at once. The whole house was moving sideways through the forest. Large trees slapped the outside like branches hitting the sides of your car on an overgrown country road.

  “Let’s go,” Jensen said, moving toward the hole in the floor and the ladder. “Hick, Come on!”

  I managed to half fall, half dive over to the hole in the floor. Jensen had already gotten Beth and Lisa down the ladder and he was poised to go down himself.

  “Go!” I shouted. “I’m right behind you!”

  I saw his head disappear and looked back at the vortex. The surface was no longer a scummy-looking black pool. It now looked like a glossy black mirror. I saw the center of it first bow out, then break apart. Mr. Shift rose from the shiny surface like a god coming to reclaim his world.

  I was frozen in place, staring. His ever-changing face was no longer white or black, but was now a crimson color. Black bubbles rose from his neck, grew larger and then swirled into many different shapes. It reminded me of a lava lamp at first, then a Rorschach inkblot test— black ink on a blood red background.

  I broke through my temporary paralysis and pulled myself down the hole, head first, and managed to keep hold of the lip of the opening then flip myself through. Surprisingly, I landed on my feet, but still stumbled a few steps. Beth, Lisa and Jensen were already headed for the front door. I looked out a window and was happy to see the house had stopped moving. I could see several stationary trees just outside the dining room window.

  We crashed through the doorway, one after the other, and kept running. I looked back once, but I didn’t see Mr. Shift. We started to head back toward Jensen’s car at the edge of the woods, but nothing looked familiar. I didn’t see the cliff side, or even the clearing the house had been sitting in. The dead wolves were gone and the trees were much thicker here, coming all the way up to the house’s sides and front door. I tried to orient myself and find my bearings.

  “Hey, wait.” I gasped, out of breath. “We’re going in the wrong direction. The house moved while we were inside. It’s not in the same spot anymore.”

  We all stopped.

  I was looking past Lisa, trying to figure out which way to run when I saw her face change into a horrific expression. She was looking past me. I turned around and saw Mr. Shift floating through the trees about five inches above the ground. His face had changed again. It was all white, but he had no other features except a huge mouth of pointed teeth. It was opening and closing like a shark as he moved toward us. He looked like he was wearing a long flowing black robe with some kind of shimmering body suit beneath that reminded me of sharkskin. Maybe that was what he was, an inter-dimensional ‘Jaws’.

  Jensen turned and fired several times. I saw some flashes of light on his dark cloak, but that was the only indication he’d been hit.

  “Oh, Jesus!” Jensen turned to us, shouting,. “Run!”

  We scattered in different directions. I ran to my right, Jensen and Beth ran left and Lisa turned to run one way, but saw there was a hill in front of her and instead ran after me. I slowed a bit so she could catch up. I didn’t see who Mr. Shift followed... us, or Jensen and Beth.

  “What the fuck was that?” she implored as we ran. “Is that him?”

  “Yes,” I said, but I was so out of breath, that was all I could manage.

  We kept running and eventually crashed out into one of the fields. I could see Jensen’s patrol car about a hundred yards away. The house had moved to the woods near the second field. I had a moment of vertigo, thinking about it.

  We saw Jensen and Beth come through the woods closer to the car. It looked as if they had chosen a wiser route than we had. They leaned against the car for a few seconds, obviously as out of breath as we were.

  Jensen waved at us, and I was glad he was safe.

  I saw movement in the trees to the left of them. It was Shift. I could see him, but Jensen and Beth had not. I tried to call out to Jensen, to warn him the monster was close, but I was too late. Shift burst from the underbrush, bent down and enclosed Jensen’s upraised hand in his mouth. Jensen looked up in shock as Shift moved his head back in a jerking motion like a pit-bull. Jensen’s hand came loose with a popping sound as the bones broke.

  It took just a second to start bleeding, but it seemed like a minute, at least. We stood there frozen. It was already done. His hand was gone, disappeared into whatever black hell Mr. Shift called a gut.

  I saw Jensen look up at it and that was when the stump, where his hand used to be, started squirting blood all over him. He lowered his hand slowly and looked at it. Then he gripped his wrist tightly and tucked it into his chest. He slumped down against the car that way, gripping his arm and staring at the blood and bone and cartilage as if he couldn’t believe it was gone.

  Shift moved around to the other side of the car where Beth was. I could hear her start to scream, and she fell to the ground. Shift was on her like a predator taking its afternoon meal. Blood and bits of flesh flew up from the other side of the car. I saw an arm spin in the air like a boomerang and land on the trunk of Jensen’s car with a dull, meaty thud. That was when I moved, once again shaken from my paralysis and was amazed I was running toward this scene and not away from it.

  Lisa was screaming and I think I was too. When we reached Jensen, I managed to get my belt off and cinch it tightly around his arm, at the bicep. I could no longer hear Beth screaming, but the car rocked and thumped as Mr. Shift tore her apart. Then I heard slurping, and meaty ripping, which could only be Shift taking her as his afternoon meal.

  As quietly as I could, I eased opened the passenger side door and we lifted and then shoved Jensen in. I had to crawl over him to get into the driver’s seat and I tried not to bump his bad arm. Lisa crawled in, half on top of her cousin. I didn’t wait for her to close her door before starting the car, slamming it in drive and stomping the accelerator.

  At first, nothing happened… we didn’t move an inch. The tires were spinning in the mud and wet grass, which was what probably saved us. I looked in the rearview mirror. The mud flew up at Mr. Shift distracting and, perhaps temporarily blinding, him. He roared. I could see his gaping, razor-toothed, blood-and-mud-covered maw. The sound he made was like a train, or what I imagined a tornado would sound like up close. He slammed his fists into the trunk and the car rocked on its springs. I took my foot off the accelerator and then tried it again, slower this time. The car finally started to move. I slowly increased pressure on the gas pedal and we were moving across the field, bumping over the small ruts and raised areas.

  I looked in my rear view mirror again, but Mr. Shift was still standing where he had been, his mouth open, still roaring like a lion. Beneath him was a pile of red meat and white bone that had once been Beth Winslow.

  She’d gotten her soul back, if only for a short time, and it had cost her the only other thing she had left… her life.

  38

  We bounced across the field, passed the house, and slid sideways out onto the road. I thought about stopping to pick up Girl—who was still inside the house, probably barking furiously—but I knew I had to get Jensen to the hospital as soon as possible. I tried to calm myself down and slow my heart, which was slamming in my chest, neck and head. I felt like I had to vomit, but knew I couldn’t stop. I slowed the car just a little so we wouldn’t end up in a ditch.

  Lisa was trying to get Jensen’s bleeding to stop, but wasn’t having much luck. He was going in and out of consciousness. I got onto the main road, stomped on the accelerator, then hit the lights and sirens. The big V-8 roared to life and we were flying now. I glanced over to see how Jensen was doing. He had passed out again, but now Lisa had used Jensen’s collapsible baton to twist my belt like a tourniquet and had finally stopped most of the bleeding. The front seat was covered in Jensen’s blood. I didn’t think anyone could lose that much blood and survive. I could feel it sticky on my hands as I gripped the steering wheel.

  We pulled into the Emergency Room drop- off zone at Saint Thomas Hospita
l. Luckily, some of the nurses saw the blue lights and came rushing out with a wheel chair. They hauled Jensen out as gently as they could and slid him into the chair. A doctor, who had come out with them, started to wheel him inside. Jensen was conscious again, but just barely. His eyes were glassy and he was very pale.

  “Hick,” he managed. “Where am I? Hurts. What happened? Is Lisa okay?”

  “You’re at the hospital and you’ve lost a lot of blood. Lisa’s here, too. Don’t try to talk, save your energy. You’re gonna be fine, just hang on.”

  It was all I could say before the doctor started barking what sounded to me like the right orders.

  Lisa reached out and gripped his one remaining hand just before they wheeled him away to be treated.

  Lisa was crying and I guided her over to the waiting area.

  “He’ll be fine. You did a great job stopping the bleeding.” I reassured her.

  “Thanks, I hope so, but he lost his hand, Hick!” she sobbed “God, this is crazy!. And Beth, did you see what that thing did to her?”

  “Yeah, I saw,” I said. “We should never have taken her there.”

  Lisa just cried harder. I put my hand on her back and she leaned into me as I wrapped my arm around her.

  “If he’s not okay, it’ll be my fault,” she said tearfully. “All my fault.”

  “It’s his fault,” I said. “Shift’s.”

  “I suppose,” she allowed.

  After a few minutes a doctor came out to talk to us.

  “I’m Doctor Phillips. You’re here for the sheriff, right?”

  “Yes,” we both said.

  “He’s lost a lot of blood, but we have some here that’s his type. Officers are required to store some in case of emergencies. We’re giving him two units now and we’ve stabilized him. His pressure is a bit low, but his pulse is good. You got him here just in time. What happened to him?”

  I tried to think of something, anything, but came up with nothing.

  “We don’t know,” Lisa said, saving me. “We were in the woods looking for some more clues in the abduction cases and got separated. We heard him call out and found him like that.”