Authors: Don Sloan
but now the stories aren’t quite so easy to hear, are they, darling?
no, they’re not. We’re nearing the end, aren’t we?
my dear, you talk as though you need some new gossip. How delicious! These stories are getting quite old. The people have almost stopped coming to the shore. Maybe they’re afraid.
do we need the people, darling?
well, without them we’d have nothing to talk about, would we?
there are so many for sale signs in our front yards.
are there? I hadn’t noticed that. Good. New people, new blood.
my dear, you are horrid—
Sarah’s dream that night in Nathan’s bed transported her to an icy windowsill outside a dormer, somewhere along Beach Avenue. It was night and yet the room inside was bright, lit with gaslight from a wall fixture. Along one wall a fire blazed in a small hearth. And along the opposite wall, three children hung by their hands, manacled and stretched thin, their wrists protruding inches above their sleeves. Their heads —two young boys and one young girl—hung lifeless to one side, slumped forward on their pitiful little bodies.
Sarah gasped at what she saw, ignoring the freezing wind that whipped around her body. She still only wore the long sweater and underwear she had slipped on after making love to Nathan. She struggled to open the window, trying to raise it, to see if there was something she might do for these children, when something caught her eye.
Moving from another corner of the room was a crouching man, bird-like in his movements, almost hopping as he turned his head from side to side. He looked straight at Sarah and smiled—a cruel gash in an empty face with white, snake-like skin. He moved his lips and Sarah heard his voice through the closed window.
“Come in, missy—there’s no need to be out there in the cold.”
And suddenly Sarah was inside, lying on a bed, with this vile man standing over her. She tried to scream but no words would come out—not even incoherent shrieks. She moved crablike up the bed until she was flattened against the wall, but the man made no move to attack her. He just kept looking at her and turning his head like a dreadful robin, examining her first with one eye and then the next. He was dressed in a natty black suit, with a starched white shirt and black bow tie, and trousers that were too short for him. Skinny ankles shone out above the tops of old-fashioned low-topped boots. And he held a stout wooden cane in his bony hand.
“Who are you?” Sarah finally managed to say.
The man said nothing, but smiled again, a horrible smile below a pair of very wide-set eyes—more like a snake’s pitiless orbs than those of a man.
“Who are you and why are you doing these things to us?” Sarah was not quite so scared now. She didn’t even know if she was awake or asleep, but she meant to have some answers.
The man continued only to smile, but he reached out his lank arm in the direction of the children hanging on the wall.
“What? You want me to ask them, you miserable bastard?” Sarah shouted.
And the man began to laugh and Sarah began to fade.
“Don’t pull a dissolve on me, you cowardly creep!” Sarah said, trying to jump off the bed to get at the man, but suddenly nothing but white mist surrounded her, swirling up her thighs, cold as death’s own special touch. The room disappeared quickly, and all around her was the wet, cottony mist, as though she had stepped into a snow globe. It was terribly quiet—and then she heard the sound of children laughing.
The sound was jarring and not from very far away. The mists began to clear, as though a machine was sucking it out through special vents in the floorboards of the room. It remained exactly as she had seen it earlier—except now the children were very much alive and playing in front of the fireplace. They took no notice of Sarah, who stood like a statue by the end of one of the twin beds.
“Come on, Billy!” cried the girl. “You’ll never win the game if you cheat!”
“Who says I’m cheating?” Billy retorted. He was the biggest of the three, a boy of about six. All were clad in rough cloth and all were barefoot, despite the weather outside. Up here in the dormer room it was quite cozy, with the fire built up and blazing merrily.
“I’m going down to tell Mum if you don’t stop,” said the youngest boy petulantly.
“All right, then,” Billy agreed. “But the game will take longer. Your turn, Jacob.” And he handed the pair of dice to the younger boy.
There was a soft knock at the door and the children all looked up, surprised.
Sarah put a hand to her mouth in a reflexive motion. The door opened and a curly-haired woman about thirty years of age popped her head through the door.
“Hullo, Mum!” cried the three children in unison. Sarah relaxed as the woman swept into the room, her soft linen skirt and apron brushing the floor as she entered.
“We’ve just been telling Billy not to cheat!”
“Indeed!” cried the young woman, ruffling Billy’s hair. “Now your brother and sister won’t put up with that, and you know it, so straighten up.”
“Will we be up here much longer, Mum?” said the daughter. “It’s stopped snowing outside and we’d rather go out.”
The mother sat down on the twin bed opposite where Sarah stood and sighed heavily. She twisted the end of one curly strand. She said nothing in response to her child’s question.
The children sensed the mother’s anxiety and turned from their play. “Mum? What’s wrong?”
Forcing a smile, the woman stood up briskly and strode to the door. “Everything is fine. Just keep playing for now and I’ll be back to check on you in a bit.” And with that she went through the door. But this time Sarah heard the lock turn. One of the children got up and tried the door.
“It’s locked!” cried Billy. “What the hell is that all about?”
“Billy!” yelled his younger sister. “You know you mustn’t use that kind of language.”
“I don’t care.” He rattled the doorknob, trying to force it open. “What’s she mean, anyway, bringing us to work with her like this and sticking us up here under the rafters to play a game? Something’s not right.”
Sarah cleared her throat and moved closer to them, but they took no notice. She reached out to touch Billy on the sleeve, but her hand went right through his arm as though he—or Sarah—were a ghost. She stepped back and watched silently as the younger children began to whimper.
“We want Mum!” they cried. “Why doesn’t she come and take us home?”
Billy was about to reply when he stopped banging on the door and looked down at the bottom of it. Coils of black smoke were coming through, as though someone had lit a fire just outside on the landing. He stepped back and the coils began to gather instead of dispersing. They rapidly began to rise up and gather in size and bulk. The children shrank back against the hearth, where the fire had died to embers.
Billy stood in front of his siblings and brandished a fire poker. The black shadow grew in form until it was the shape and size of a grown man. Up where the head should be, two red glowing eyes shone out, pitiless and terribly focused. The younger children screamed, but Billy stood his ground.
“Go back to hell, you! And leave us alone!” he said. And then the shadow took him.
Sarah had been standing rooted to the end of the bed, but now she stepped into the path of the beast, between it and the two cowering younger children.
“You’ll have to go through me to get to them,” she said grimly. And she was aware that the shadow saw her. An opening appeared below the eyes in the darkness that might have been a mouth and a rough red tongue lolled out, impossibly long, growing like a snake, until it was more than a foot and a half long. It writhed and danced in front of Sarah, curving up like a coiled serpent. It kept growing and growing until it was more than seven feet long and one of the arms of the beast took it from the mouth and brandished it like a whip, cracking it above Sarah’s head with a loud Pop! that left showers of green and gold sparks. The children cried out and Sarah crouched, but held firm. Then, with a headlong rush, its left arm swept Sarah aside, tumbling her across the bed and onto the floor, where she hit her head and lost consciousness. As she faded out, she heard the terrified screams of the children and, from somewhere very far away, dark laughter.
Thursday morning sunlight crept into the bedroom of Nathan’s house through the heavy panes of glass that looked straight out to the ocean. Nathan was awake, but Sarah was still sleeping, breathing unevenly and fitfully just next to him. His first thought was how lucky he was to have found her, and how remarkably easy it was to be with her. He certainly did not have this kind of episode in mind when he had planned this trip to the shore. Her face was even more beautiful in sleep, he thought, with her lips parted slightly and her long, dark eyelashes closed tightly against the rapidly growing sunlight in the room.
He gently edged his way out of bed and found his clothing still folded over the rocker in one corner of the room. He pulled on his jeans and carried the rest across the hall to another bedroom to get dressed. There was something he wanted to do while Sarah was still sleeping. He finished dressing and, slipping his feet into his heavy woolen socks, he decided against putting his loafers on and went back into the hallway in his stocking feet. Instead of going down the stairs, however, he went up to the third floor and, from there, up the narrow staircase that led to his house’s attic.
He opened the unlocked door, noting for the first time that it seemed to be an awfully solid door to be placed in an attic opening. He felt the heavy oak wood and the broad, rusted iron bands that held it together and wondered why in the world anyone would put such a door into place here. It almost seemed more a prison door than an attic door, but at the time he simply chalked it up to one more oddity about this trip to the shore. He entered the attic and moved directly across to the steamer trunk that held the newspapers.
Opening it, he rummaged through the bundles he and Sarah had read through—was it only a few days ago? It seemed a very long time since they had sat in front of Nathan’s fire, just beginning to get to know each other. One bundle he set aside and undid the string that he had used to re-tie it together. He picked up the newspaper on top and carried it over to the chair beside the window. He noted the date of the issue in the new day’s sunlight that streamed in through the narrow window: May 23, 1925. He opened the paper to the obituaries and read once again the brief details of Arnold and Naomi Presbury’s lives. He scanned the rest of the issue for an article about the circumstances surrounding their deaths, but could find nothing. He thought for a moment, and then went back to the stack of papers, leafing through them until he found one issue dated May 22, 1925. Returning to the window, he began turning the brittle pages until he found what he was looking for in the lower left corner of an inside page. He settled down in the straight-backed chair to read it.
Sarah awakened abruptly. For a moment, she didn’t know where she was, and it frightened her. Then, she glanced about the sun-drenched room and tried to relax. The terrible dream about the children was fading quickly and she snuggled down into the fat comforter. “Nathan?” she said. There was no answer and her heart began to beat faster. “Nathan?” she said, more loudly. “Where are you?”
Nathan’s curly head appeared in the doorway.
“What’s the matter?” he said. He was holding an old newspaper in one hand. Sarah edged out of bed and came across the room toward him.
“This gets creepier and creepier,” she said and shivered as she held Nathan close. “And these dreams are getting more intense. Nathan, I’m not sure what we’re supposed to do.”
“You’d better put some clothes on for starters,” he said. “We’re going down to your house and begin getting some answers.” He escorted her back into the bedroom, where she started getting dressed.
“Can you stand guard by the bathroom before we go?”
He smiled. “In the movies nobody ever has to use the bathroom.”
“Yeah, well, this isn’t the movies.” She grabbed his arm and pushed him into the hallway.
when do you think the Presburys are coming back, darling?
oh, it will be any time now.
don’t you think everyone will be surprised?
my dear, you amuse me. It won’t be just the Presburys, you know.
how wonderful! We can have a real party again.
Nathan took the key from Sarah and unlocked the back door. “What is there to be afraid of?” he asked. “We’ve been transported to other houses, other times, other dimensions. I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to get the hang of this.”
“It’s not funny, Nathan,” Sarah said. “I get the feeling that whoever—or whatever—is doing this, it’s like a cat playing with a mouse. There’s a lot to be afraid of.”
They went into the kitchen, which was just as Sarah had left it the day before. Even the breakfast dishes remained in the sink and unwashed.
“Well, at least they’re not spirits with a need for tidiness. Otherwise they would have cleaned the place up,” Nathan said.
Here in the sunny kitchen, Sarah did not feel any impending gloom or terror. In fact, she felt she could almost forget everything that had happened so far and just pick up where she had left off on Sunday, when her biggest worry was the furnace. They had decided to come back to her house in search of a clue. Nathan had read the scant details in the local newspaper of the Presbury’s murder-suicide and wanted a closer look at the bathroom under the stairs. It was a long shot that any evidence would remain after more than 75 years, but if it was there, one piece of this puzzle might finally be laid into place. Nathan opened the bathroom door and switched on the light over the antique wash basin. He then went directly to the wall behind the toilet and began to examine it with the greatest curiosity.
“What are you looking for, exactly?” Sarah asked. She was still standing in the hallway, with arms folded across her chest.
“I’ll tell you in a minute. Ah! Here we are.” He pushed on a section of the oak paneled wall about four feet tall and a door sprang open. Inside were two shelves with cleaning supplies and rolls of toilet paper.
“Well, Sherlock, you’ve made the discovery of the century. I was wondering where the extra toilet paper was,” Sarah said.
Nathan scratched his head. He fiddled with the shelving, knocked on the wood, and felt around all the edges inside the cabinet. Then, kneeling down and looking to the left underneath the top shelf, he found what he was looking for. An old-fashioned latch-hook was positioned at the very front of the little closet, just under the top shelf. He pulled on the hook and the entire closet swung backward, to the right. Instead of a closet there now yawned an open space about four feet in depth. Decades of dust swept into the tiny bathroom along with a frigid draft. It was as though he had unsealed a tomb.
“How in the world—?” Sarah was dumbstruck. “If anyone in our family ever knew about that, they never mentioned it.”
“I’ll bet your Aunt Moira knew about it. Have you got a flashlight? I don’t think there’s a light switch.” Sarah went into the kitchen to get the big, boxy flashlight that was kept in the cupboard for power outages. She returned and gave it to Nathan, who flashed it into the opening.
This open space was just underneath the back staircase that led to the second floor. In former days, the back staircase had been the servants’ most direct route to the second floor and Nathan had surmised there might be a hidden passage or room underneath it. He shone the powerful beam on the underside of these stairs, where ordinarily there would have been either a closet or a tiny crawl space behind the toilet, with a firm floor. But now, with the little paneled door swung open against the bathroom wall and the faux closet swung out of the way inward to the right, another set of stairs was revealed—a very steep set of stairs, almost ladder-like, that disappeared quickly into a gloomy and very dark space. The air that swept out of the opening was cold and damp, like the air on a foggy November night.
“I’m not going down there, if that’s what you’re thinking of doing,” Sarah said firmly. She remained in the doorway, pulling her jacket tighter against the chill breeze.
“This isn’t the first house with a secret room, you know. These big old places were famous for them, and they were very useful when you wanted to engage in activities that were, shall we say, not likely to be well-thought of. I kept wondering how in the world the murder-suicide of the Presburys could have taken place with no warning or witnesses, in such a public place—and particularly in such a small location as this. I don’t think it was a murder-suicide at all. I think it was a double murder.”
“Who could have done it?” Sarah said, feeling her curiosity nudging her fears out of the way. “I keep dreaming about this shadow—the one we both actually saw—but you’re saying there might be someone real behind all this?”
“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? If we’re able to shed a little light on that, maybe we can make some sense out of the strange things that have been happening to us. I’m convinced there is a connection of some kind.”
“And you think the answer lies down those steps?”
“I’m not sure what to think at this point. But I’m going down there. You don’t have to come with me.”
Sarah hesitated. She could feel something in the cold air that was rushing past her, something that her intuition said was very dangerous. But Nathan was right. It was either seize this one clue and follow it up, no matter where it led, or just pack up and leave the shore. In the end, she knew she could not now leave willingly. Something was struggling with the caution in her mind. It was an emotion she could not quite put her finger on, or even name as her own.
“I’ll come,” she said, and entered the bathroom where, somehow, she had witnessed the Presburys’ deaths more than half a century before.
The steps leading down were rough-hewn timbers, sawn in half and placed at one-and one-half-foot intervals. There was no hand rail and Nathan was forced to turn around and climb down, as you would a ladder, keeping one hand firmly on a step and the other just as firmly on the flashlight. He descended slowly, and Sarah followed. They were quickly plunged into near-total darkness.
“Wherever this winds up, it sure isn’t going to be a section of the cellar that has windows,” Nathan said. “I don’t think we’ll find your furnace over in a corner.”
Sarah said nothing. She had made her way onto the ladder and was backing down just above Nathan’s head. The cold air continued to rush past them, as though it was glad to be escaping the dark confines of the cellar. They descended for several minutes in the narrow passageway, going down, down, down. At one point Sarah reached out to her left and right and was surprised to feel cold earth on both sides. She half-turned on the ladder and saw from the light of Nathan’s flashlight shining back behind them that the passageway was really more like a long chute that must be leading them down beneath the cellar and into some remote subterranean room far beneath her house. She could feel the raw earth at her back as well now, and fought off a wave of claustrophobia. She looked up and saw far away the light coming through the secret doorway into the bathroom.
“Nathan, what if we get to the bottom and find nothing?” she said.
“Then we’ll climb back up and just consider this to be one more part of an odd adventure,” he said. “But I doubt seriously we’ll find nothing.” He stopped climbing and shone the light down beneath his feet. It looked as though the ladder ended in another ten feet or so. He resumed his downward progress and set first one foot and then another on bare earth. “I’m at the bottom. I’m going to shine the light around for a minute. Don’t climb any further yet.” He turned the light first above his head and saw that the ceiling was also earthen, with heavy wooden cross beams. But it was tall enough to let him stand without crouching. He estimated the height of the room, at this point anyway, to be about seven feet. He turned the light away from the ladder and gasped.
“Nathan, what is it?”
He regained his breath and passed a hand across his eyes. “I’m okay,” he said. “Just watch your step as you come down the rest of the way. Can you see all right?” He now shone the light on the steps so Sarah could clearly see them. He stood to one side as she came down the ladder. Then, when her feet were firmly on the soil floor, he turned the light around to illuminate the room. And it was Sarah’s turn to gasp at what she saw.
The room was not small. It was about thirty feet in length and at least that far across. The soil floor became one of white tile that sloped downward gently for about ten feet from the bottom of the ladder, so that the actual room itself was about twelve feet in height. Upright oak beams were placed perpendicular to the floor at regular six-foot intervals along the walls, supporting the ceiling, except in the very middle, where they were angled upward, creating a broad archway on four sides. The ceiling in the middle was at least 14 feet tall and the overall impression was not unlike that of a Parisian catacomb under one of the great cathedrals. But unlike the catacombs, this room showed signs of inhabitance. Decades of dust and neglect covered everything in sight, but Sarah and Nathan could tell at a glance that this room had once been a center of unspeakable activity.
“My God,” Sarah whispered.
“Exactly,” Nathan said. “Or, rather, His archrival.”
On every wall was a stone bench, supported by pillars carved in the shape of demonic figures straight out of the Book of Revelations. Each bench held a silver pitcher and basin fashioned by a silversmith with the most fantastic designs chasing across their surface: flying figures, swooping down on men and women, clutching them in talon-like claws and bearing them away to a future of unquestionable torment. Tapestries hung from the wall beams graphically depicted humans in great anguish and terror. Satanic symbols were on every wall, competing with bookshelves filled to overflowing, the leather bindings on the old volumes split and ripped, as though time itself disapproved of the vicious literature contained in each book. It was as though time was slowly grinding them into pieces. Nathan moved forward slowly, with Sarah right by his side, and shone his light on the titles: Fox’s Incantations, next to a huge volume entitled Demonic Rituals & Their Interpretations, edited by one Daniel Stubbs.