But what did happen?
What did those freaks do to her?
As her eyes focused on the world around her, she realized her brain was now starting to think more clearly, trying to focus on the wretched events of the night before. She noticed the carpet in front of her. What had started out as a dark blob in the middle of a bright blob was now coming into being as an identifiable object. Her white carpet was covered with a pool of blood.
She had vomited a puddle of dark—almost black, blood. It was filled with chunks of some sort of substance that did not look like food. It looked like the remnants of some sort of tumor, cancerous and black. It reminded her of something ancient and evil. Had she been possessed by something?
What the hell had happened to her?
Janie managed to get herself into the bathroom and into the shower. Before stepping into the shower she was taken aback by the frightening sight of herself in the mirror. Her mouth was covered in dried blood. It had spilled all over her chin and down her neck. There were splatters that had sprayed her cheeks and even her eyes.
She stumbled backward and had to clutch the wall to keep herself from falling down. Tears began to pour out of her eyes and Janie found herself feeling very alone and very afraid.
Her first instincts were to contact the authorities, but then Hal would know what she had done.
Janie and her fiancé Hal Peterson had been together for almost five years. A few months before, Janie had discovered that she was pregnant. She had been thrilled even though the timing was awful for the both of them. Hal had just been laid off from his job at the factory and Janie was in-between jobs at the moment. Luckily she was able to nanny part time for the Herald family, but money was becoming an issue. They had even decided to postpone the wedding just until things came together financially for them.
So a baby was not in the cards. However, the look on Hal’s face when she told him was priceless. She had never seen him so happy and excited. He was beaming with pride and he could not wait to tell everyone that they knew all about the great news. They had never really talked about having kids any time soon, although they both wanted a family one day. It was more of a five year plan, but they were determined to make it work. She was so excited to become a mother and start her new life with Hal.
Then tragedy struck. She had been riding with her best friend Angie on their way to a concert in the city, when they had been hit by a drunk driver. Both she and Angie were injured, but they pulled through it OK. However, during the crash Janie broke a few ribs and she took a big hit in the stomach when the seat belt ripped into her. There had been internal bleeding and her status was questionable for a few minutes.
The doctors did everything they could, but the accident caused her to miscarry and she lost the baby. There was nothing in the world that could have ever prepared her for the loss of her child. She felt as if a part of her body and soul had been permanently ripped from her. Hal had been devastated. The sight of her big, strapping, two hundred and twenty pound fiancé bawling on the floor like a little girl would never leave her. He was completely broken and she didn’t know if anything would ever fix him.
They had tried to have another child, but the doctor had more bad news for them. The accident and the following miscarriage had damaged Janie’s womb. She would never be able to carry another child.
They were crushed beyond belief. Hal had barely spoken for over a week and he woke up in the middle of the night almost every night. After the third night Janie had followed him downstairs without him knowing. He sat down in his den, opened up a bottle of whiskey and began drinking and sobbing until he passed out. This had become a nightly occurrence which had resulted in Hal missing enough days of work at his new job that he was fired. That only served to send him into a deeper depression and he stopped coming to bed with her altogether. Still, he never let her see him in that condition. He told her about the insomnia, but he did not take a drink of the whiskey until after she had retired for the night. She didn’t ask about the reason they had to buy whiskey almost every day. He would just go out for a bit, not saying exactly where he was going, and come back with a bottle enclosed in a brown paper bag.
She felt so lost without him. He never wanted to do anything and he had barely enough energy or desire to apply for the occasional job. She had talked to her sister and her cousin about all of this, but they were fresh out of ideas. Although, she didn’t really want their help. She wanted to be able to fix this thing on her own somehow. She knew that her relationship with Hal was basically over, never mind getting married. Hal had sold her engagement ring to buy more booze, pretending that they needed it for groceries. Janie felt so lost and just did not know what to do.
Then a friend of hers had heard about The Miracle Man crusades. They said that the man was legit and there was well documented proof that he had a gift and had cured many people of their ailments.
But had he ever given someone a child? Was that even possible? She went online and did some research and the testimonials were overwhelming. Then she watched some of the YouTube videos and the way the man was able to communicate with the audience and the healing that seemed to be happening right before her very eyes was inspiring. She wasn’t sure if she believed it, but she had no choice but to pursue every outlet. She had to try at least. If it didn’t work then it was OK, but what if it did? It could save them.
That was the worst mistake she had ever made.
She felt much better after the shower, as if some awful sickness had just been cleansed off of her body. She was reluctant to go into the bedroom and see the awful mess that was now permeating the carpet, but she had to clean it up before Hal came home. He had told her that he was going to go job hunting and he even had an interview at the end of the day, but she knew that he would spend most of the day at the bar getting drunk and probably skip out on the interview altogether, if there even was one.
She grabbed the cleaning supplies and soaked up as much of the disgusting blood-like sludge out of the carpet as she could. Then she spent another half hour repeatedly going over it with the carpet steam cleaner. It was turning out to be the best thing she had ever bought. She had only used it a few times, but it had worked so well on the wine that her friend Katie spilled at the Christmas party last year that she had high hopes for it today. If not, then she was going to have to explain something to Hal. He would probably freak out if she told him how she had vomited a puddle of blood and then he would force her to go to the doctor.
She actually thought that might be a good idea, but doctors would want to ask a bunch of questions and she didn’t have good answers to those questions. But they might not be able to find any real cause for it, because she was actually starting to feel fine. Her mind had become alert again and she was starting to remember everything that there was to remember from the night before.
That was the problem; they didn’t want her to have much to remember. She knew that she had been drugged with something and had spent much of the ritual in an unconscious state. It was almost like being dead and she had no idea how she got home. Taking a momentary break from pushing the heavy carpet steamer she looked out the window and saw her car sitting in the driveway all safe and sound.
How the hell had she gotten back home? Did she drive? In that zombie like coma state she had been in was she able to drive herself home? Or did one of them do it? She wondered if her neighbors had seen anything. Did she even arrive home before Hal? Had he wondered where she was? He was probably passed out in his den. He had taken to passing out when he had been out at the bars all day drinking. He would come home smelling like Listerine and body spray, as if that could hide the smell of his alcoholism.
The carpet cleaner did the trick pretty well. All that was left was a slight discoloration that was actually hard to see and might even fade away completely with time. She didn’t think that Hal would notice. With his drinking he had not noticed much except for the bottle lately, otherwise he was a total clean freak.
She walked into the hallway with some trepidation and her pulse racing, thudding loudly in her temples. It was probably nothing, she tried to tell herself. It was probably some asshole trying to sell her something stupid or it was some weirdo religious group that was trying to get her to join them or to donate to them. She hadn’t seen anyone like that around for a while, but they did stop by off and on.
The knocking came again. Thump! Thump! Thump!
It was an unsettling pattern of threes. Thump! Thump! Thump!
She tried to calm her nerves taking long deep breaths, but it wasn’t really having much of an effect. Her palms were sweaty and beads of sweat began to trickle down from her forehead.
She reached the door listening to the last of the group of banging knocks. Whoever it was had picked the wrong day and they were being overly persistent. Janie was starting to get royally pissed off.
She jerked the door open expecting to open a tongue lashing on the moron who would not leave her alone at eight o’clock in the morning. She was usually awake by five am for her morning jog before the Arizona heat became too much to bear, but of course she had been lying in a supernaturally induced coma at the time.
There was no one there.
She opened the door to another gorgeous sunny Arizona day. The temperature was already in the high nineties and a rush of heat flew into the house from the open door, exacerbating the sweat that was already pouring off of her body.
But there was no one there.
Janie stepped outside of her home cautiously, expecting to be mugged - she was in a safe part of town, but it could happen anywhere - and looked around. There was no one to be found. There were no cars or vans. No one was even walking along the sidewalks, which was unusual. Typically this time of day the joggers were finishing up their morning run, but as the summer months closed in that became earlier and earlier.
Who had just been knocking on her door? She hadn’t imagined it. It couldn’t have been the wind and there were no trees close to her house. She suddenly felt an eerie feeling washing over her. It was like being wrapped in a blanket that had been in the freezer for several hours. She started to shiver despite the heat and the sweat that was pouring off of her now.
The dragon of thirst was upon her and she was suddenly craving a big drink of water. She went back inside of her house as fast as she could. She didn’t have the faintest idea what had just been pounding on her door, but if it could do a disappearing act like that then she damned sure did not want to be around to meet the thing.
She stopped just inside the door of her house. She sensed that she was no longer alone. Had someone snuck in behind her somehow? How could that have happened? There was no one there. But someone had been pounding on the door. Tears began to sting her eyes as panic gripped her tightly. What was going on? Was she losing her mind? What the hell had been done to her? She needed help, but she had no idea where to turn to.
She became aware that the door behind her was still open. The heat emanating from outside was like a warm breath on the back of her neck. It felt like half of her body was in a sauna.
She spun to shut the door, but the door slammed shut in front of her by itself.
How the hell did that happen? Was that the wind? Had she bumped it by mistake when she spun around? The questions flooded her mind in an instant and she knew that the answer was something far more sinister and wicked. The thought was deeply suppressed by her mind and she had to dig to find what she was thinking to bring it to the forefront of her mind, but even then it resisted. It resisted because it wanted to protect her from what she was thinking. If she knew what she was really thinking and acknowledged it then she would have had a total meltdown. There was no way she could handle that right now. She refused to look at that thought. She refused to handle that.
Her feet suddenly left the ground.
She was hovering in midair, her legs kicking at least three feet off the floor. She tried to scream but the terror had taken the air from her lungs and all that she could manage was a strange whining sound that sounded like a choking cat. Something was gripping her by the side of the head. There was intense pressure on both sides of her face as if this unseen force was trying to crush her skull. The pain was unbearable and she though she felt her skin rip open and a trickle of blood began to pour out of the wounds. She tried to struggle but it was no use.
Then she heard the laughing. The evil cackling that sounded like the same demonic voice multiplied twenty times. It echoed throughout the house like it was coming across some sort of surround sound system. It was so loud. It vibrated in her chest with every boom of the laughter, taunting her, teasing her, and inflicting its mastery over her.
She tried again and again to scream for help, but her voice was paralyzed and she couldn’t breathe. She thought that she might pass out if this went on much longer. Her eyes were starting to get sleepy and her body was feeling numb.
But sleep was not going to happen.
Her body was suddenly launched across the room at break neck speed towards the wall. She tried to flail her arms as if there was something in the middle of the air that she could hold onto to stop her ascent, but it was all a futile attempt. She saw the wall a split second before her face plowed into it.
The pain was agonizing. Her entire head felt as if it had been ripped off, and her skin was sliding off her skull. She expected her body to fall down and hit the floor, but instead her face met the wall again. And again. And again.
She lost count of how many times the wall punched her in the face as this unseen force continued to smash her head first into the plaster. She was not aware of how she was still conscious. Her entire head felt so numb that the last two strikes hardly even hurt, but the pain of the first few were still agonizing. Each blast was taking a few seconds to hurt as if it were waiting in-line between each wave of agony.
Finally she was thrown several feet the other way across the room, where she landed with a sickening thud on the floor. She didn’t move. She couldn’t move. Her whole body was wrecked with pain. The agony from her face had moved into her neck and trickled its way down her spine and into her hips and thighs. Her whole body hurt and the world was spinning between the narrow slits of her eyelids that remained open. Nausea swirled around her stomach moving between her abdomen and her head like some sickening teeter-totter.
She wasn’t sure how long she had lain there. At one point she thought she had blacked out, but there was a dark haze of pain and nausea that she was aware of the whole time, so she wasn’t sure. When she finally felt the pain had subsided enough for her to move she had managed to struggle to her feet and limp into the bathroom.
She expected to find her whole face caved in and a mess of blood and skin to be mangled together. The mirror reflected no damage whatsoever. She looked the same as if nothing had happened to her. There was no blood; no bruises. There was no tissue damage of any sort. She looked completely normal.
Her nausea was lessening with every step she seemed to take and her body slowly stopped hurting. Within ten minutes of getting off the floor she felt fine. She wasn’t sure what was worse; the fact that she was fine after being brutally attacked, or if she had been horribly injured by the attack.
What had done it? She had not been dreaming. She was not crazy. There was something dark in her home. Something had followed her, like a… curse? Was that what had happened? Had The Miracle Man and his demented follower cursed her somehow?
She felt very lost and very alone. She had no idea what to do. But she had to talk to somebody. She had to tell someone what had happened. But who? Anyone she talked to would be concerned that sh
e was having some sort of a breakdown and they would urge her to get psychiatric help. But Janie knew that she was not crazy. She knew that there was something here that had attacked her. She had vomited that bloody mess when she woke up. She had somehow been taken back to her home with no recollection of how she got there. This was really happening.
She had to tell someone.
Chapter Two
Hal Peterson waited until his fiancé Janie went to bed and walked to the den to begin his nightly drinking. He looked forward to this time of day and he found himself counting the minutes of the boring conversation and the idiotic sitcoms of quality time spent with his little woman until he could open up a bottle of whiskey in his own house feeling guilt-free.
He never used to drink much, only on rare occasions or to celebrate something. But with the world of hell he had been through recently, he felt that he needed the bottle more and more each day. It was the only thing that numbed the pain and he was aware of the fact that he was abusing the stuff. But he didn’t care. It was either abuse the alcohol or go completely insane. The stuff was the oldest medicine in existence for a reason. It had been around since long before Biblical times. That said something about its longevity. If it were really bad and served no good purpose then people would have stopped drinking it many centuries ago. That had not happened.
He popped the top on the brand new large bottle that he had bought on his way home from the bar. He poured a large amount of it into his whiskey glass and sat down in front of his TV. He liked having his own TV in the den. The den was his one sanctuary away from the modern world that he had come to loathe.
He loved his fiancé and really was looking forward to getting married one day, but the search for a job had not gone well. If it wasn’t for his grandmother giving him this house and his dad paying most of the bills the past few months then he would have been living by himself in a dump somewhere. He definitely would not have been living here in a nice house with his fiancé.
Thriller: Horror: Conceived (Mystery Suspense Thrillers) (Haunted Paranormal Short Story) Page 5
