OK, so I'm a little late in getting this one out, but there is a special bonus: This week's guest author is a personal favorite of mine! Greg is one of my very favorite teachers ever. Why? He taught me why literature matters, why it is important that we write, and that we share that writing. He helped make literature come alive for me, and he did it by putting Shakespeare on stage. Now in his retirement, he writes and directs plays for community theatre in my home town, travels with his lovely wife (who also taught English in the same school (They were quite an amazing duo, I might add). I am honored to share two pieces of his writing: The first is last week's theme of the Haunted Highway. He sent it to me, but it never arrived, so I am going to take him at his word that he turned it in on time - I'm sure that I missed an assignment date at some point in one of his classes, so I guess turn about is fair play! The second is the theme for this week, The Haunted House. Greg, thank you for your contributions to this world through education, and your continued contributions through your writing.
So, on to the submissions!!!
Going Too fast on the Barlow Road
by Greg Ellstrom
I wish that my car had broken down that night.
I wish I had run out of gas.
I would even have taken the chance of driving off the road into a tree.
Anything to have avoided seeing what I saw down that little lane that ran off the
right side of State Route 47. That little road which I felt sure was a shortcut between the
towns of Castle Rock and Jerusalem’s Lot. Even now, almost a year later, I don’t know
what drove me to take that shortcut.
I was coming home from a two-day job just north of Boston. It was Friday night
of Columbus Day weekend, and I was in a hurry to get home to Annie and the kids. So
when I came upon this little road to the right, although I didn’t remember having noticed
it before, I just felt that it was the way I was supposed to go. I turned onto it and headed
into the coming darkness, my high beams cutting the way through the tendrils of mist
that suddenly appeared floating above the cracked blacktop.
The road, I thought, was really desolate. Understatement! I had gone about a
mile or two before I realized that I hadn’t passed a single house. The mist was
thickening, becoming a sort of “creepy fog.” That was when I should have turned
around and gone straight back to 47. I didn’t. Instead, I accelerated.
That was almost my undoing. I rounded a bend and started down into a hollow,
when my lights reflected off the twisted metal and chrome of a car wreck not fifty yards
away. I stood on my brakes, and they caught and screamed to a halt a few feet short of
smashing into the wreck. Christ, I nearly wet my pants. I sat upright, squeezing the hell
out of the wheel, my heart pounding.
But, I stopped being concerned about myself when I saw her in the throw of my
high beams. A young woman was caught under the twisted body of a ruined sports car.
Night black hair framed her face that was dappled with blood. Her eyes were closed.
Her arms were reaching out, but her fingers weren’t finding anything. I was sure she
was dead.
Some adrenalin kicked in, I guess, and I jumped from the car and ran the few
steps to where she was trapped. I knelt down and put my fingers to her neck. I couldn’t
find a pulse, but I’m never quite sure of where you are supposed to put your fingers
when searching for a heartbeat. She was ridiculously cold. I would say “ice cold,” but
that is too frickin’ trite, and she wasn’t ice cold, anyway. She was something else cold!
Something altogether different and wrong. . . then her eyes popped open!
“Shit!” I screamed and really peed my pants a little. “You’re alive!”
She was blinking rapidly, and her right hand shot to her face to block the bright
light. I took her left hand. It seemed like the comforting thing to do.
“Matthew?” She said. “Matty?”
“No. . .No,” I said. I had to say it twice because the little word stuck in my throat
the first time. “I’m Todd. I just. . . came upon your accident.” Came upon! God, that
sounded dumb. I pulled my cellphone from my pocket.
She spoke in a sing-songy voice. “Going too fast on the Barlow Road.” Her eyes
continued blinking.
I had to get help, but I my phone had none of those blasted bars. “Shit! No
reception!”
Her eyes stopped bouncing in their sockets, and she looked at me, and I saw
fear in those dark orbs. “What’s your name?” I asked.
“Kate.” Her voice was husky and weak.
“There’s no cell reception, Kate. I’ll have to go for help. “
I started to rise, but her hand, surprisingly strong, clamped around mine. “Don’t
leave,” she said. “Please.”
“Kate, I have to. You’re hurt. . .badly.”
“Call, Matthew,” she said.
“My phone won’t work.”
“Give me your phone.” Her dark eyes stared into mine. I gave her the phone.
She took it with her right hand and punched in a number with the thumb nail. Her nails
were painted deep scarlet. She tucked the phone under her hair and listened.
In a moment, she smiled. Her teeth were very white. She said, “Hi, darling. It’s me.”
She listened then said, “I’m in trouble down the Barlow Road. Driving too fast,” she
said. “Come, please.” She listened. “Thank you, Matthew.” She clicked off the phone
and handed it to me. “Thank you, Todd,” she said. “Matthew’s coming. You can leave.”
“Your wreck has blocked the road.” Another dumb thing to say.
“Go back the way you came.”
“I can’t leave you.”
“If you don’t, you might wish you had,” she smiled. Her face which had been
pale was now livid. She had to be minutes from death. I couldn’t leave her, could I?
I opted for nobility and went to the car to get a bottle of water and switch off the
headlights. When I got back, I offered her a drink, but she shook her head and locked
her lips. Sitting there in near darkness with a bottle in my hand, I decided to take out
my very clean handkerchief and wash the spots of blood from her face. It seemed like a
nice thing to do for a dying woman. I dampened the cloth and dabbed at a splash
across her forehead. My finger began to burn, and I pulled my hand away. I looked at
the handkerchief. There was a hole in the fabric where I had wiped away the blood. At
that moment, I should have hauled ass out of there. . .but I didn’t. I sat frozen like some
kind of stupid lawn ornament in the middle of a Hieronymus Bosch painting. When I
looked back at Kate, she was smiling. In her hand she held a shard of glass from a
shattered headlamp. “Todd,” she said, “slice open the palm of your hand.”
“What?” I began, but she stared at me and smiled.
“Do what I ask?”
So I did. I took the glass and sliced my palm from pinkie to wrist. It hurt like hell.
Kate grabbed my hand and pulled me and it to her. She started to suck on my palm.
My palm stopped hurting. It felt good. It felt even better the longer she sucked my
blood. She looked better, too. Color was coming back to her cheeks.
I don’t know for how long she stole my blood. Maybe two minutes. Then she
pushed me away and said, “I don’t want to use you all up. That would make Matty very,
very angry.”
I was weak. She looked strong. She felt strong, too, because she put her hands
to her sides and tried to do a pushup with the car on top of her. It actually rose a few
inches, but she had to quit and let herself slowly back down to the ground. “We’ll wait
for Matthew,” she smiled. I thought she had lipstick on her teeth, and then I realized it
was my blood. Realizing that, really sucked! Poor choice of words. I tied my burned
handkerchief around my palm wound.
In the distance, the roar of a powerful engine coming from the direction in which I
had been traveling filled the hollow. A truck with a row of spotlights across the roof of
the cab came over the edge of the hollow and roared slowly to a stop. It was a big,
frickin’ black truck! A Ram with a Hemi!
“He’s here,” Kate purred.
He, Matthew, got out, and he seemed to me to be nearly as big as his truck and
nearly as black. He walked toward us, a tower of a man, easily six and a half feet tall,
with shoulders wide as a pool table, and an afro the size of a chrysanthemum at the end
of October. He crossed to us and smiled. HIs smile was as white and bright as Kate’s.
“Hello, baby,” he said. “What I tell you about driving too fast down the Barlow Road.”
“Thank goodness, Todd came along. If no one had come before sunup.. . .the
joke would be on me.”
Matthew looked at me with a smile devoid of warmth. “Thanks, Todd. Now
here’s what you are going to do. When I lift the car off of Kate, you are going to pull her
out from under it. Got it?”
“Yes.” My voice was nearly as weak as my body felt.
“Take hold her arms now.”
Kate raised her arms, and I grabbled them by the sickly cold wrists. The big man
from the Ram bent at the knees, put his hands under the edge, and lifted the car off the
woman as easy as you might lift the lid of a hope chest. Strange simile! Hope was
something of which I was rapidly running out. “Pull her out!” he ordered, and I did, and
what I saw made me abandon all hope. First, I saw the a pool of blood that seemed big
enough for a couple of bodies. It had been hidden under the car. Then, I saw that a
three foot piece of metal from somewhere on the frame had been driven directly through
Kate’s chest right where here heart should be. Six inches of the metallic spear
protruded from her back. She had been skewered straight through the heart and was
grinning.
As I contemplated this ghastly anomaly, Matthew dropped the husk of the car. It
crashed loudly, and my head snapped away from the horror I had seen. I wanted to cry,
but Matthew roared with laughter. “Holy shit, baby. Glad we didn’t get you the car with
the real wood trim. You’d a been a goner.”
Kate with the gaping hole in her chest laughed giddily at that, and I knew what I
had known for awhile but which my brain refused to accept. . .this was vampire humor I
was hearing. The undead! Nosferatu! Blood suckers! Yupper, that’s who I was
hanging out with. But me having heard that joke. . .maybe the joke would be on them.
They were no longer paying me any mind. Matthew knelt down by his lady, rolled
up the sleeve of the skin tight t-shirt he wore. And drew his fingernail across his wrist. I
saw then that his nails weren’t nails, they were green, twisting claws. Black blood
spurted from the wound, and he put his wrist to Kate’s mouth. “Drink some, baby,” he
said. “You’ll be your old dead self, soon.”
So Matthew offered his wrist, Kate sucked his blood, and I walked back as quietly
as I could to the rear of my SUV, more than ever thankful that I had chosen surveying as
a profession. I was also grateful that the morning before I had been worried about
being short on stakes to mark the plots I was to survey, so I had gone down into my
basement and taken two old inch and a half by four foot dowels, trimmed them to sharp
points and tossed them into the back of the Jeep in case I needed them. Thank God, I
hadn’t needed them.
I was as swift and as silent as my drained body could be fetching those stakes.
When I got back to my new friends, Matt had just taken his hand away from Kate’s
mouth, was starting to turn back to me, and said, “Now I’m thirsty, Toddy!” That was
when I jammed one stake into his back with all the might I could summon. I picked just
the spot, because the stake went through his chest, not encountering any bone, and
exited through his heart and seven or eight inches out of the front. The surprised wail
that came from Matthew’s mouth was terrifying, I guess, though he was dead almost
immediately. He tumbled down onto his lady friend and the stake that was through his
chest went through her stomach. She gulped, her eyes bulging, and some black blood
came out of her mouth. “Holy shit!” she sort of whispered. “Todd, you killed Matthew!”
“Yep,” I nodded and watched as Matthew officially passed away. He didn’t turn
into a pile of dust like in some of the monster movie. Instead, he shriveled up like a big
African-American raisin. When he was done shriveling, he was about half his original
size.
Instead of giving Kate a chance to enthrall me or something, I took the other
dowel and jammed it through her heart. The life went out of her eyes, and, for a second
she looked sad, then for even less than a second, she looked happy. Then she
shriveled up!
This was no time for messing around or doing things in a half ass way. I got the
can of gas I keep in the rear of my car and doused the two vampire prunes with it. Then
I tossed a lit pack of matches on them and watched them go up. They and the stakes
burned really brightly.
I got in my Jeep, did a nice K turn, and raced down the Barlow Road, never
stopping until I reached Route 47. Then I drove like hell home. When I got in my
house, I hugged my wife as if I hadn’t seen her in a year.
When we stopped embracing, she said, “you smell a little like gasoline.”
“I had to burn up a couple vampires!”
She grinned. “Silly boy!”
Then I showed her my sliced and burned right hand. . .which made her frown.
Three days later, we moved. If I was ever to get a full night’s sleep again, we
had to move out of the Lot. Annie never much cared for it there anyway. She was a city
girl. The kids were too young to be anything but excited. In daylight, we went south on
Route 47 on our way to wherever our new home would be. Nowhere along 47 between
the Rock and the Lot,, was the Barlow Road to be found. And I looked really carefully,
But way out in one of the fields where the Barlow Road should have been, I could see a
narrow wisp of smoke climbing straight up into the windless sky. Were a wrecked sports
car and a couple of blood suckers still smoldering out there? I imagine so.
(With, as many scary stories deserve, a tip of the hat to Stephen King.)
“House For Sale. . .With Goblins”
by Greg Ellstrom
The house was tumbledown, almost paintless. The lawn was over grown and
had a “For Sale” sign stuck in it. The sign was probably straight when the realtor first
jammed it into the sandy soil, but now it was leaning to the right and thinking about
falling over. The two upstairs windows facing front looked like dead eyes, and the
covered porch below them with the spindled rail looked like a mouth with too many
teeth. The house sneered out toward the road daring anyone to buy it.
In what had been her grandmother’s room on the second story. Carrie sat on the
floor with a pile of books in front of her. Her 10 year-old Lizzie was digging through
drawers and boxes. Suddenly, a drawer crashed to the floor. The contents were strewn
all around it.
“Lizzie, I told you to be careful!” Carrie snapped
“I didn’t do it on purpose, Mommy,” Lizzie snapped right back. “There’s nothing
fun in here anyway! I’m going downstairs.”
“Behave yourself, when your. . .” Carrie began, but Lizzie had already stomped
out the door and was clumping down the stairs. Carrie sighed. Certainly, this child was
their cross to bear. She heard her continuing to clomp across the living room floor
below. The clomping was followed by a crash and a tinkle of broken glass. Carrie knew
that the old floor lamp by her grandma’s chair had been knocked down in Lizzie’s rage.
She wanted to scream. Then she heard Lizzie clomping across to the front door and
the door slam as she went outside. Carrie drew in a long breath. Blessed silence, she
thought, and went back to looking through the pile of ancient volumes.
Outside, Lizzie surveyed the property and dubbed it boring! She was angelic in
appearance, this eight year old child. Curly blonde hair framed a sweet face with pink
cheeks and turned up nose. Standing on the lawn with her hands jammed into her
overalls pockets, she could have posed for a Norman Rockwell cover if that artist hadn’t
been dead forty years. Her blue eyes spotted something of interest in an out-of-control
beauty bush growing by the side of the house. Sure enough, when she crossed to it,
she saw that it was a bird’s nest, too high for her to reach but easy to get if you shook
the bush hard enough. She did, and the nest fell to the ground, three blue robin’s eggs
tumbled out of it into the grass. This made Lizzie smile. She picked them up and
looked at them nestled in her little hand. They were warm. Mama Robin must have
recently been sitting on them. Joyfully, Lizzie threw each of the eggs as hard as she
could to explode against the wall of the garage. Then she walked over to see what she
had done. Each egg had contained a baby bird nearly ready to hatch. She smiled.
This was the most fun she’d had since they came to this lame old place.
Back upstairs, Carrie was smiling over the book she had discovered. It was a
collection of poetry for children, and the poem that drew her attention was one by
James Whitcomb Riley titled “Little Orphant Annie.” It was about a serving girl who told
children terrible tales about goblins. The author had begun with the words,
With all Faith and Affection To all the little children-- The happy ones; and sad ones/ the
sober and the silent ones;/ the boisterous and glad ones;/ The good ones -- Yes, the
good ones, too; and all the lovely bad ones.
Carrie’s cell buzzed. She looked at it, and saw it was her husband. Clicking it
on, she said, “Hey, babe. . .Yep. We are here. . .we’re good.” Then she frowned.
“Actually, not good. Lizzie is being just awful. This sweet, elderly real estate lady let us
into the house, and Lizzie was just obnoxious.” She listened a moment. “Another child
psychologist. Who gave you the name? . . .John Drake. Well his kids are screwed up!
Maybe we should give this one a try. Let’s not talk about Lizzie now. I want to read part
of this poem to you. I’m thinking of reading it to Lizzie, hopefully it’ll scare the shit out of
her like it scared the shit out of me when I was her age.” Carrie giggled and began to
read.“
“An' one time a little girl 'ud allus laugh an' grin,/An' make fun of ever' one, an' all
her blood-an'-kin;/An' wunst, when they was "company," an' ole folks wuz there,/She
mocked 'em an' shocked 'em, an' said she didn't care!”
Now downstairs, Lizzie was going through more drawers. She discovered a box
of kitchen matches in the back of one and thought what a wonderful fire they would
make. She tried to light one, and the sulfur peeled off. She tried another and the stick
snapped. The matched had sucked up years of dampness and wouldn’t work. Lizzie
screamed in anger and stomped the matchbox into the floor.
Upstairs, Carrie heard the scream and cringed. Then read on, “An' thist as she
kicked her heels, an' turn't to run an' hide,/They wuz two great big Black Things a-
standin' by her side.”
There was a little room off the kitchen on the first floor. It was what was once
called a butler’s pantry. Lizzie fumed in the kitchen, then heard a whispering noise
coming from the pantry. Just what was this, she wondered, and slowly made her way
into the dark little room which just happened to be located directly below the bedroom
where her mother sat reading poetry. It took a moment for Lizzie’s eyes to adjust to the
darkness. She saw tall shelves on both sides and two dark shapes looming in front of
the shelves. In a second, the two dark things with the cold, cold hands grabbed her
arms.
As if on cue, Carrie read, “An' they snatched her through the ceilin' 'fore she
knowed what she's about/An' the Gobble-uns 'll git you/ Ef you Don't Watch Out!” The
last word of the verse was followed by Lizzie’s scream. That was directly followed by a
roar of wood and plaster as the floorboards a few feet from Carrie exploded upward and
something dark rocketed by. In less than a second, the ceiling and roof above
exploded. Carrie looked up. Dust and debris fell on her, and she looked away, unable
to believe what she had seen. She looked again. In the exposed roof above her was a
hole, sort of a cartoon-like hole, in the exact shape of a little girl. She thought she heard
a little girl scream somewhere high in the dark clouds. Then Carrie started to scream
and scream and scream some more.
And now, my own Haunted house story. As previously mentioned, we head back to Wellbury, PA....
No. 318 Monroe Street, Wellbury, PA – The Moore House
Ed
Jacobson eased the station wagon to a stop in front of the classic brick
Victorian home. It was nestled nicely on
the property, a little way away from the road – a safe enough distance to allow
the kids to play in the yard and his wife, Helen, to tend to the flowers she
would inevitably plant there. Maybe they
would get a dog. He didn’t know, but he
remained hopeful. It had been a long
time since he had a dog. This place
seemed destined for one.
“We’re
here, everyone! Welcome home!”
Helen
was busy looking out the passenger-side window at the other houses on the
street, while the kids, Tammy and David, were asleep in the back seat.
“Wake
up, kids!” said an excited Ed. “This is
our new home base!”
The
trip was long, moving from the east end of the state to here, the little
nowhere town of Wellbury. But, the local
coal plant needed a new chief engineer, and Ed Jacobson drew the short
straw. None of them wanted to leave the
Easton area, but the company made it worth Ed’s efforts to move everyone, and
when this house came up on the realtor’s list, Ed’s heart skipped a beat.
“Ed –
it’s huge!” she said, looking up at the third floor. “How can we afford this?”
“Honey,
it’s ok. It didn’t cost what you think
it might.”
She
looked skeptical. “What’s wrong with
it?”
Ed
reached into the back of the car and pulled out his briefcase. “I have the inspection report right
here. Everything checks out just fine,
and there’s a warranty on the house as well.
Anything major goes wrong – right down to a chip of paint that flakes
off, and we can find something else, no hassle.”
He
needed this to be right for his family.
School would start in about three weeks, and he needed to make certain
this would work. He spared no expense in
getting all the documentation, asking all the right questions – anything he
could think of to make sure this became the positive experience they all needed
it to be. Wellbury was known for having
an excellent public school program. The
college was nearby, the plant wasn’t too far of a commute, and he was making
enough that Helen wouldn’t have to work if she didn’t want to. The house being so cheap helped immensely. If they were going to have to live way out
here in the middle of nowhere, Ed decided they were at least going to be
comfortable, and maybe make a hefty profit.
Tammy
and David were already running through to the backyard, laughing as they
explored their new surroundings.
It
couldn’t be better. Ed Jacobson was on
top of the world. It was the last time
he would ever have that feeling.
“Ed,
are you sure we can afford this?” asked Helen.
“Back home, a place like this goes for three or four hundred thousand.”
Ed smiled at his wife. “Here, it goes for seventy-five!” he said.
“What’s
wrong with it that it goes for so cheap?”
“The
realtor said the owners were anxious to sell.
She said they inherited it and just wanted to be rid of the
property. She didn’t say why.”
“It’s
beautiful,” she said, “it’s just –“
“Just
what?”
“I just
can’t believe this is ours!”
Ed
swooped down to pick her up. He hadn’t
done that in years, since the night they were first married, and it
showed. His steps stuttered a little
before he found his footing and carried Helen across the threshold of the door,
closing it behind him.
It was
2:18 AM, and Ed was wide awake. He heard
something, or at least he though he did.
But, what was that noise? It was
cold. He could see his breath in the
air. Something felt – off.
He
looked over at Helen, still sleeping peacefully in the bed next to him. He could see her breath as she exhaled. He got out of bed and put on his slippers,
padding out into the hallway. The kids’
rooms were on the right as he made his way down the hall.
“Daddy?”
He
nearly jumped out of his skin as he heard the young voice behind him.
“Not
just now, Pumpkin,” he said. “I think we
may have a raccoon or something in the house.
You go back to bed now.”
He
turned to look at Tammy, next to him.
Only Tammy wasn’t there. Standing
next to him was a little boy, the like of which Ed had never seen before. He couldn’t have been five or six years old,
and dressed in a pair of shorts a button-down shirt.
“Who
are you?” he said.
“Stevie,” said the boy.
“Stevie,” asked Ed, “what are you doing here? Where is your home? Your parents?”
Stevie
shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t know.”
“What
do you mean you don’t know?” How did you
get here?”
“I just
woke up here.”
Ed got
down on one knee in front of the boy.
“Stevie, you had to come from somewhere.
Now, where do you live?”
Stevie shrugged
his shoulders again. “With the boys,” he
said.
“What
boys, Stevie?”
“All
the others like me.”
“Stevie
are you in foster care? Do you live with
someone who isn’t your mom or dad?”
The boy
nodded.
“OK,
great. Who do you live with Stevie?”
Stevie
lifted a finger and pointed it straight at Ed.
“With you, Daddy,” he said.
“Stevie, I’m not your daddy. I’m
not your guardian.”
Ed
sighed deeply.
“OK,
come with me, we’ll go make a phone call.”
He
padded down the hallway and down the stairs and back to the kitchen, with
Stevie holding tightly onto his hand the entire way. Ed reached the phone and picked it up to
call. There was no dial tone. He clicked the receiver a few times.
“The
phone doesn’t work,” said Stevie.
“I can
see – wait a minute. Stevie, how did you
know the phone didn’t work?”
“The
Big Man turned it off, Daddy.”
“I’m
not – “ Ed let it trail off. “Who’s the
Big Man, Stevie?”
“He
keeps us here. He keeps us all here.”
“How
many does he keep?”
Stevie
shook his head. “I can’t count that
high.”
Ed was
perplexed. The child made no sense, but
clearly, he was disturbed.
“Stevie,
what do you think about taking a ride down to the police station with me, and
you can tell the police what you told me?”
Stevie
shook his head.
“Well,
you can’t stay here, Stevie. Let me go
get my keys.”
Halfway
up the stairs, Ed stopped. There was
something else – someone else – in the house.
He looked back down at the boy.
Stevie
was nervous. He looked around,
frantically, before finally looking up the stairs at Ed.
“It’s
too late. The Big Man has you now too,
Daddy.”
“What
do you mean, Stevie?”
A loud
THUD sounded. It shook the entire house,
and Ed had to hold onto the railing.
“I’m
sorry, Daddy,” said Stevie. “I tried to
get here faster.”
THUD. It was louder, closer.
“Stevie
– is that the Big Man?”
“Yes,
Daddy.”
THUD.
“I can’t
stay, Daddy. If he finds out I was here –
“
Ed
watched as Stevie ran down the hall and disappeared into the kitchen. He did not hear the door open or shut. Ed raced up the steps to Helen and the
kids. He got to the top of the steps and
raced down the hallway.
THUD.
All the
doors were open, Helen, nowhere to be found.
Tammy wasn’t in her room, and David was missing, too.
THUD.
It was
getting closer still, and each time it sounded, Ed could barely think. He ran back down the stairs to the door, and just
as he was about to touch the handle, the doorbell rang.
He
paused, his hand just inches from the knob.
The doorbell
rang again.
Carefully,
Ed opened the door.
Outside
on the porch, stood a rather small man.
He was slender, body, and dressed in a white doctor’s coat atop his impeccable
suit. His hair was dark, but neat as a
pin. He wore thin wire-framed glasses
that sat on the edge of his slightly-too-large-for-his-face nose, and he had a
pencil moustache adorning his upper lip.
A stethoscope hung around his neck.
“Hello?”
asked Ed.
“Hello.”
“Can I
help you?”
“Oh,
there is no help for me. That time is long
past. And I’m afraid there is also no
help for you.”
At
once, the man’s demeanor switched, and a sneer spread wickedly across his this
lips as he eyed Ed.
“You
see, the boys call me the Big Man. You
must understand. I was once a doctor,
many years ago, and this was my house and my practice. I helped those in – unfortunate circumstances.”
“What –
what does that have to do with me? Where
is my family?”
“They
are still snug in their beds, but you – well, you aren’t. You heard the boys calling you. I can’t allow you to get away. You belong to me, now.”
“What
do you mean? I belong to no one but my
wife!”
“On
this side of the veil, you are mine!” shouted the Big Man. “I control access
across it to the other side, and I alone!”
He pushed
Ed aside and walked into the house.
“This
place – this house – is mine. I built
it, and I know every nook and cranny. You will never escape. It is pointless to
even try.”
“Stevie
did it.”
He
regretted saying it as the words left his mouth. The boy was frightened enough.
“Every
new family living here is tested. Stevie
was allowed to test you. You either
passed or failed – depending upon your point of view. It matters not. You will learn the rules here, and maybe one
day, I will allow you to test someone else.”
The Big
Man strolled casually back to the door an outside.
“Welcome
to my hell.”
The
morning came. Helen awoke to find her
husband gone. There was no evidence of
him leaving. His wallet and keys were
still there. The car was still in its
spot in the driveway. Ed was simply
gone.
As always,
Thanks for reading,
Me.
