by JL Bryan
Jacob walked in a slow circle around the living room, nodding to himself as he took in the vaulted space, the grand staircase, the row of archways across both the first and second floor, giving cutaway views of the hallways on both levels.
He glanced at the door near the foot of the stairs, which led to Alicia’s room.
“We’re avoiding that room,” Stacey said. “Unless you feel, you know, drawn there or something.”
“So far, it’s the same general darkness of the whole neighborhood,” he said. “Imagine a black cloud, or a fog of evil that’s settled over these houses and just sits there like L.A. smog.”
“The Smog of Evil,” Stacey said in a deep, highly dramatized voice. “Next week on SyFy.”
“Exactly.” Jacob wandered into the kitchen, both of us following him, but he just gave it a glance and a shrug before moving on.
An interesting thing about kitchens: while ghosts are most drawn to the dark, deserted areas of the house, typically the attic or basement—or closets, in the case of our current boogeyman—the kitchen, in my experience, tends to be the least haunted area. Maybe it’s the fact that kitchens are well-lit, but they’re also the center of activity for the living, the emotional energy constantly churned and refreshed. They’re the heart of the home, and I think something about that keeps the restless spirits at bay, hiding in the shadows. There are plenty of exceptions, of course.
We followed Jacob to the other end of the first-floor hall, where there was a door on every side, all of them closed. He glanced at the door to Alicia’s master bathroom, then looked a bit longer at the door to the shared hallway, but finally opened the one under the stairs. He held out his hands and took a deep breath as he looked down the dim, dead-end stairs cluttered with cardboard storage boxes.
“It likes to come up through here,” he said. “This doorway. It’s obsessed with doorways. Where do these stairs lead?”
“Nowhere. Bricked up,” I said. “They used to go to the basement.”
“It comes up here regularly, doesn’t it? This is like a well-worn trail. It usually keeps to itself. It watches. It’s here a lot more than anyone realizes.”
“Comforting thought,” Stacey said.
“This is your problem ghost, isn’t it?” Jacob walked down the first couple of steps, trailing his fingers on the walls. “Nasty thing.”
“What can you tell me about it?” I asked.
“It’s malevolent. And secretive, always hiding...I see it wearing masks all the time, hiding itself.”
“Can you tell me who it is? Anything about its identity? Was it a person?”
“If it was, it’s been a long time,” he said. “It’s twisted into something else over the years. I guess we have to go down to the basement.” He said it reluctantly, like he’d stepped on a rusty nail and was resigning himself to going for a tetanus shot.
“We’ll do that when we’re done upstairs,” I said. “The basement isn’t connected to this apartment.”
“Let’s go upstairs, then.” Jacob closed the door.
As he ascended the main stairs, he traced his fingers along the railing for a little bit, then scowled at them as if they’d come away with some kind of sticky residue. He didn’t say anything about it.
He was drawn right to the closet in Kalil’s room.
“This is another door,” Jacob said, opening the closet door.
“I knew we called in a psychic for a reason,” Stacey said.
“A doorway that it uses to step into our world,” Jacob said. “It can kind of take over certain doors, and certain small spaces, and use them as a crossing-point. It’s powerful. And it likes to terrorize living people. It...drinks fear like a bat sucking blood. The fear makes it stronger, but also corrupts it. The stronger it grows, the more evil it becomes. If it ever was human, I’m not sure it even remembers that. It’s hard for me to get into its mind at all.”
He had similar observations in Mia’s room. “It loves to scare this girl. She’s the youngest, and she has the most potent and concentrated fear of any of them.”
“What are its intentions toward her?” I asked.
“Feeding,” Jacob said. “Feeding and feeding until she’s just an empty husk.”
“How do we stop it?” Stacey asked.
“I’m not sure, but I don’t think asking it nicely will work,” Jacob replied.
We walked out in the hallway again, where he approached the decorative archway of the door to nowhere. He swung it open.
“Interesting design here,” he said. “This is another one of the possessed doors—it’s like the thing can manipulate doors all over the house. It comes...wait.” He blinked and held up a finger as if to quiet me, though I hadn’t actually been talking. He turned his head just a little, listening to something I couldn’t hear.
“It’s cute when he does that,” Stacey whispered to me. “Like a puppy hearing its name.”
“There’s something else here,” Jacob said. “He paces up and down this hall. Watching.”
“Watching what?” I asked.
“He’s worried about the family here, the woman and the kids,” Jacob said. “He’s a protective presence. Well, he wants to be, but he’s not that strong. He knows he’s supposed to move on, and all the natural forces are trying to move him on from this world, but he fights them. It’s like pulling against gravity. He won’t leave until they’re safe.”
“Who is he?”
“He’s showing me his face. And a cross. A little gold cross hanging from his neck.” Jacob pointed to his own collarbone.
“What’s his name?” I asked.
Jacob gave a rueful little smile and shook his head. “I’m better with faces than names. Sorry. That’s why he’s here, anyway. He doesn’t have a lot of power, and he’s not native to this spot. He’s doing what he can, trying to keep the thing in the basement away from those kids, but he’s much less powerful than it is.”
I glanced at Stacey, expecting her to make a B-movie joke about The Thing in the Basement, but she was listening quietly and intently.
“What else?” I asked.
“He’s trying to be an angelic presence and failing,” Jacob said. “That’s how he sees it, in those terms. He wants to be the strong protector, but he’s stuck as more of a passive observer. He’s struggling to do more. To be more.” Jacob paused.
“He’s here now?” I asked.
“He doesn’t leave if he can help it. Sometimes he fades and feels the pull of the other side trying to draw him away. It takes constant focus for him to stay here at all. He’s fading more and more now, and that panics him because the job isn’t done, the family’s still in danger and he has to leave soon.”
“What can he tell us about the thing from the basement?” I asked.
“It was already here when he arrived. He came here because of it, because of the danger.” Jacob paused for a long time, more than a minute. Floorboards creaked overhead. It was probably just Michael or Melissa, going about their lives above us. “He’s telling me how it always disguises itself, wearing masks to scare people. How it’s feeding on all the kids in the house.”
“Can he give us any advice for stopping it?” I asked.
“He doesn’t even know what it is. He’s seen what it does, though. He says it likes to get you when you’re alone. He’s scared for the living people in this house, but especially the family in this apartment.” Jacob frowned. “He’s fading. Like there’s a tide pulling him away into the distance.” He looked at me. “I don’t think that guy’s going to be much help.”
“Doesn’t sound like a threat, either,” I said. “I’ll take the good news with the bad. Though he might be trying to deceive us.”
“Always possible,” Jacob said. “Everyone lies eventually.”
“Aw, I should embroider that on a pillow,” Stacey said, following him back downstairs.
We’d finished showing Jacob the apartment, but the ghost-infested basement still waited for us below.
I was not eager to go near that old well again, but clearly he was sensing some information about it, and I needed whatever he could find.
I just hoped that reaching his psychic powers into the horrible darkness of the old well, which had bewitched both Michael and myself, wouldn’t be like throwing a lit match into a lake of gasoline, causing some kind of paranormal eruption of evil spirits. I was not remotely in the mood for something like that.
Chapter Thirteen
Jacob stepped onto the first stair into the basement and hesitated. Stacey reached around him to flip the light switch, and the hanging fluorescents buzzed to life.
“I obviously don’t have to tell you this is the worst part of the house,” Jacob said. “You’ve got it wired up like a TV studio.”
“So much for not giving the psychic advance information,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter.” Jacob continued down the stairs, pausing on the last one. This put me in the unfortunate position of pausing a couple of steps behind him, where something could snatch my ankles through the gaps. I shined my flashlight down between the stairs while I waited, but saw nothing except rusty junk, mostly the guts of an old washing machine that looked like it had been stripped for parts.
“Okay, Jacob,” Stacey said after a while. “This is me poking you to get moving.”
“Sorry. This place is...full.” Jacob grimaced as he left the final stair for the brick floor.
“Which means?” Stacey asked.
“There’s a lot of, I don’t know, broken ghosts. Fractures, lost chunks of souls. They’re clumped together. Imagine, as you’re walking through here, that it’s flooded with dark water, like a swamp, and there are body parts floating everywhere. They’re mostly submerged. Here and there, you see them twitching, a finger curling, an eyeball in half a face turning to watch you pass. That’s what I see.”
“Gross,” Stacey said, while we followed him toward the laundry machines. “I’m going to imagine unicorns floating in cotton candy instead.”
“Dismembered unicorns,” Jacob said. “Their hoof-stumps kicking, turning the cotton candy dark with blood...”
“That’s almost worse. Why would you say that?” Stacey asked.
“Your suggestion made me see it that way for half a second,” Jacob replied.
“Oh, weird. So if I said—”
“Don’t, it’s distracting,” he told her. He turned to face the door in the rock wall, the one that led to the furnace and the well and whatever evil chthonic force dwelled below the house. I thought it was clearly the boogeyman’s lair, but something told me it might be more than that.
“Stacey.” I raised my flashlight, signaling her to raise hers. We approached the door, and I motioned for Jacob to wait while I opened it. There was a good chance something nasty and powerful lurked just on the other side, waiting to shapeshift into whatever we feared and kill us all.
So we entered cautiously.
Our ultra-bright tactical flashlights pushed back the shadows but didn’t exactly cut through them or chase them away. The small red flame glowed in the belly of the old beast of a furnace, like a single angry, badly misplaced eye.
Jacob reluctantly entered the room with us.
I heard a sound that hadn’t been there the last time, like crashing ocean waves as heard from within an underground cave, sloshing and echoing.
“I already feel sick,” Jacob said. “Like drop dead, burn my corpse so it doesn’t infect the village sick.” His skin looked like bleached chalk.
“Should we get out of here?” Stacey stood close to him, embracing him with one arm. “You okay?”
“We should get what we came for first,” I said, and Stacey scowled at me. I felt bad saying it, but everyone upstairs was depending on us.
“She’s right.” Jacob cleared his throat and walked toward the slab of plywood covering the well. Stacey kept close by him, and I tracked along on the other side. A psychic medium like Jacob is a much more interesting target to supernatural types than a couple of regular girls like us. “What’s under there?”
“That’s exactly what I need you to tell me.” I squatted beside the covered well. The slow, liquid sound was louder the closer I got to it.
I grabbed one edge of the plywood and slid it back, exposing the cold darkness below. The sloshing sound echoed from somewhere deep within, like the heartbeat of some massive primordial creature dwelling far below the earth.
Now Stacey was pale white, too, looking into the old well. I reached over and nudged her arm.
“Don’t look inside it,” I told her. “Keep your eyes on Jacob.”
She nodded, looking rattled, but did as I said.
Jacob leaned forward just a little, but wisely kept a few feet between himself and the hole.
“Oh, no,” he said. “That’s...awful. Don’t show me that.”
“What do you see?” I asked.
“Not that!” He closed his eyes and covered his ears, as if protecting himself from some deafening shockwave.
When I’d been here just a little earlier, Michael had been drawn toward the well, mesmerized by the darkness, stepping slowly toward it as though in a trance.
Now, Jacob slid toward it as though dragged by an invisible chain, the soles of his shoes skimming right over the bricks. The liquid noises inside the well grew louder, making me imagine a slobbering, ravenous wolf.
Stacey and I jumped forward, seizing him by the arms. The unseen force pulled at him with incredible strength, and we had to fight to keep him from falling inside. The pull stopped after a few more seconds.
Jacob’s eyes opened, staring down into the well with a thousand-miles-away look. His jaw was slack.
“Hey, Jacob?” I said.
No response.
“Wake up!” Stacey snapped her fingers in front of his eyes, but he was catatonic on his feet, as if his mind were lost somewhere in the darkness below.
He started to lean forward again, and we tightened our grips on him. Stacey shouted his name again.
“Kiss him,” I told Stacey.
“Seriously?”
“Worked for Sleeping Beauty, didn’t it?” That didn’t really seem relevant, but it was the best idea I could think of in half a second.
“Um...if you say so.” Stacey rose up on her toes and turned his blank face toward him. She hesitated, then gave him a good, hard kiss on the mouth, which lasted a few seconds longer than strictly necessary.
The invisible force pulling him forward stopped all at once, as did the strange ocean-crashing sound from deep inside the well.
Jacob turned and gazed at Stacey, blinking.
“What just happened?” he asked.
“Which thing, exactly, are you asking about?” She gave him a coy little smile, and she was actually blushing, which was pretty abnormal for her. Not for me, though. I’m always blushing like an idiot, especially when I trip over things or say something awkward in a conversation...which is itself way too common. I’m not great at small talk. I’d rather pick one interesting topic and stick with it for a while.
“We need to get out of here.” Jacob glanced at the well again. He was back with us mentally, but he was still sickly pale, the darkness of the place bothering him at a deep physical level.
I knelt to push the wooden slab back over the dark hole, but Jacob hurried and beat me to it. Then he took Stacey’s arm and waved for me to follow as he hustled her out of there. If it ever happened that he could only save one of us from, let’s say, drowning or being trapped in a burning building, it was clear who he would pick. I couldn’t blame him, though. I wasn’t the one who’d just placed myself over a small gateway to Hell to save him with a reverse Prince Charming kiss.
I didn’t risk looking into the well again, but kept my back to it as I followed them out of the furnace room and shut the door tightly behind me. Stacey and Jacob were embracing, both of them shaking. The laundry room itself wasn’t a pleasant spot—the dark shadows seemed to drape everything like heavy
curtains, and there was the oddly cold air and the undeniable feeling of being watched by things you couldn’t see.
“What can you tell us, Jacob?” I asked him.
Jacob turned his head to look at me, still clasping Stacey close in his arms. There’s nothing more romantic than sharing a brief encounter with nameless underground horrors, apparently.
“First I saw...” He took a deep breath. “Some of the people from the plane crash. The most mangled bodies. That’s how some of them appeared to me when I awoke in that airliner wreckage; they were ripped to shreds but still walking around, too dazed and shocked to realize they were dead.
“When I looked into that old well, the first thing I saw was those people, climbing up the walls, looking at me. Coming to get me, furious that I’d survived when so many of them died. They wanted to drag me down with them.”
“It wasn’t really them,” Stacey said. “This thing just feeds on your fears. It can look inside you and find what scares you.”
“Stacey,” I said.
“I know, feeding the psychic. Sorry.” Stacey didn’t look that sorry. She wanted to comfort him more than she wanted to follow our investigative protocol.
“Is that the same well you mentioned outside?” I asked Jacob. “Where the man carried the bodies of his niece and nephew after he killed them?”
“That’s the well, but those two bodies are the least of it.” Jacob looked around the room, narrowing his eyes, listening. “I can see them all more clearly now. These are the remnants of the dead over the years...that girl and boy are probably in here somewhere, if I could search long enough. But there are older dead. Much older than I usually find. They’re so ancient that they don’t even present themselves with faces or bodies anymore, or speak with voices, but I can feel them...” Jacob stepped away from Stacey and closed his eyes. “People who died thousands of years ago. Just ghosts of ghosts now, but still here.”
“Why are they here?” I asked.
“This spot has been known as evil ground for a long, long time. The place of bad water, they called it. But people would forget, or new people would move in, and someone would discover or dig out the water. It would taste sweet at first, but then it went bad. Some very twisted, evil things have happened here, a lot of them so long ago that the specific memories have faded, but the atmosphere still remains...”
