Her Home (Haunted Places)

by Boris Bacic

  She saw Mom being drawn closer to the figure without actually moving, and trying frantically to break away, but not being able to do so, despite the terror that enveloped her. She saw Erika touching her shoulder just as the figure lunged at her. She screamed and flailed like a lunatic, with a voice and body that weren’t her own, even after the cave returned back to normal.

  She saw herself coming back home and pretending to be okay, ignoring the towering black figure that continuously stood in the back of the room. And it was always there ever after, whether Mom stayed in the home, or went to work, or put Cheryl and Jill to sleep—the figure even peeked out from Cheryl’s closet!

  She watched her mom piling up books on various types of magic and religions, extensively focusing on Vodou, including the performance of rituals. She saw the figure fading at said rituals, only to return when their protection expired. She saw Mom progressively losing her mind, spending more and more time in the office. At one point, it was so cluttered with ritualistic objects that it became unrecognizable.

  She saw her mistreating Jill, and she felt the heartache of it that Mom felt. She saw her putting Jill’s doll, Lola, in the middle of a hand-drawn vèvè on the floor and chanting unfamiliar words.

  She saw years pass, and Mom’s health deteriorate more every year. She saw Dad taking Jill and leaving her, and Mom going crazy over it, telling Dad that he didn’t understand what he was doing, and that he was ruining everything.

  She saw Cheryl leaving for college and Annette pretending to be okay. She saw her drawing on Barbara’s picture, and for some reason, she knew that she was trying to pass on this curse to the woman—unsuccessfully. She watched her running from the black figure in the house and into her bedroom. She heard her chanting more words while feverishly clutching Lola. She saw her dropping the doll and pulling a pen and paper from a drawer. She saw her jotting down IM SORRY FOR TREATING YOU THE WAY I DID on the back of the paper.

  She saw her turning around and seeing the black figure standing right there, in her face. She saw the figure lunging forward with a caterwaul. She felt its icy touch all over herself and saw Mom falling sideways on the floor, with the paper sliding under the bed.

  The flashbacks ended, and as Cheryl slipped out of consciousness, she could only conjure one thought.

  The fucking doll.

  Chapter 36

  “Alright, let’s go see Aunt Cherry,” Lee said as he parked in the driveway of Annette’s house.

  It was dark outside already, and most of the lights in the house were on. Jill had been silent for most of the ride home. Charlie was naturally talkative, reflecting on how he slid down the zip-line, and how he couldn’t wait to tell his buddies about it. Lee noticed the worry on Jill’s face, so he took over the conversation and kept Charlie occupied until they arrived

  “Hey, she’ll be okay,” Lee said as he killed the engine and put a hand on Jill’s thigh.

  Jill nodded with a smile. The truth was, she felt sick. The thought of coming home and seeing her sister dead sent daggers through her heart. She wanted to jump out of the car and dash towards the house right then, but she couldn’t do it—not in front of Charlie. She didn’t want to worry him.

  “Can I go inside with you?” Charlie asked.

  Absolutely not, Jill wanted to say, but Lee interrupted her.

  “You and I can wait in the living room. Right, Jill?” he looked at Jill for confirmation.

  “Sure. Your Aunt and I will be downstairs as soon as she’s ready,” Jill forced a smile at Charlie.

  They stepped out of the car. Jill was in front of Charlie and Lee, and with each step she took, she felt a knot of dread forming in her stomach.

  “Fabiola?” she called out expectantly as soon as she opened the front door.

  There was no response, and the knot in Jill’s stomach tightened further.

  “Fabiola?!” she called out again, and she heard her voice cracking from the fear that had been building up inside her and threatening to seep out.

  “Come on, Charlie, let’s go to the living room,” Lee said as he ushered Charlie towards the door.

  As Jill started up the stairs, she heard an effeminate voice from upstairs.

  “Jill! Up here!” It was Fabiola.

  Jill raced up the stairs. She briefly heard Lee telling Charlie to go sit on the couch, but she was too panicked to worry about that right now.

  “Where are you?!” she called out, once she was on the second floor.

  “In here!” Fabiola’s voice came from the office.

  Jill rushed towards the office and peered inside, her heart thumping so loudly that she thought she was going to have a heart attack. There, she saw Fabiola kneeling in front of a supine Cheryl, laying right in the middle of the vèvè.

  “Cheryl!” Jill screamed, too panicked to worry about alarming Charlie.

  Fabiola looked at Jill and smiled. Even through that panic, Jill somehow found that reassuring. It meant that everything was okay.

  “She made it,” Fabiola said with a grin.

  Jill saw Cheryl’s face. She was pale, her eyes were closed, and her lips looked dry.

  “What’s wrong with her?” she asked with a crack in her voice.

  “She is sleeping. The invocation of Ezili Freda has exhausted her. But she is okay.”

  “Are you sure? Maybe we should call a hospital. What if she’s got—”

  “Jill,” Fabiola stood up and put her hands on Jill’s shoulders. “Your sister is fine.”

  Jill looked down at Cheryl once more. Her face looked peaceful, and her chest steadily rose and fell in inhales and exhales. Seeing that calmed Jill down a little bit. She sighed, not even realizing that she had been holding her breath the entire time. She wanted to cry out from relief, but instead expressed her emotions by hugging Fabiola.

  The mambo patted her on the back and said something in Haitian Creole. Although Jill didn’t understand the words, they soothed her. Lee walked in and asked what was going on, and if Cheryl was okay. Jill would have answered him, but she couldn’t speak right then. Just then, another question popped up in Jill’s mind. She pulled back from Fabiola and asked.

  “What about our mom?!”

  Fabiola’s smile drooped off her face, and she swallowed.

  “Come with me,” she motioned towards the door.

  ***

  When Jill entered the bedroom, she couldn’t believe her eyes and ears. The beeping of the machine was gone. It felt so surreal to enter the room and not hear that incessant sound.

  Annette was awake and sitting up in bed, with her back pressed up against the hardboard. She looked haggard, almost corpse-like, her skin pale, the bags under her eyes heavy. She was staring in front of herself and mumbling something, but Jill couldn’t discern the words.

  “Mom?” she called out.

  Her mother gave no indication whatsoever that she had heard Jill. She continued staring straight ahead and mumbling under her breath. Her eyes were bloodshot from a lack of blinking.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Jill asked Fabiola.

  Fabiola inhaled deeply.

  Jill immediately knew that what she was about to hear was not good news.

  “I’m afraid your mother’s mind has been destroyed by the trickster spirit. She has spent too long being hunted by it, and then her soul was imprisoned by it. Whatever little sanity your mother had left is now gone. I’m sorry.”

  “What about the trickster spirit?”

  “Chased away. Trickster spirits never stay when there’s a loa in the house.”

  Jill stared at the person that was once her mother. Some of the words between the sentences were recognizable, specifically ‘Papa Legba’ and ‘Vodou’.

  This broken shell of a person was not Annette. As much as she wanted to stay angry at her—and as much as she wanted to be happy to see that she had woken up—Jill couldn’t muster the capacity to feel anything more than pity.

  “Did Cheryl already see her like this?�
� Jill asked.

  “No. Well, probably yes, but in the crossroads.”

  “She’s going to be heartbroken…” Jill said to herself.

  What were they going to do with Mom now? They couldn’t take care of her like this. She was catatonic. She would need twenty-four-hour care from professionals. Was waking her up really the better thing to do? A millisecond of a thought went through Jill’s mind about ending her mother’s suffering somehow. She would never do it, of course, because she wasn’t a murderer, but if it were her instead, she would definitely prefer that her family pull the plug on her.

  “Jill?” a male voice came from the door.

  It was Lee. He was speaking softly, probably noticing the silence that permeated the room. Jill looked at him briefly. He entered the room and asked what was wrong with Annette. Fabiola filled him in with a few brusque words and then he went back to the office and carried Cheryl out of the room. By the time Jill and Fabiola exited the room, Lee was standing in the hallway alone.

  “I carried Cheryl to her room. I think we should call an ambulance to check up on her. She could be suffering from something serious.”

  “Don’t worry, cheri, I do this all the time. This is a normal process. Cheryl is fine. In fact, she should wake up any minute now.”

  Now that the panic and adrenaline were gone, Jill started to think more rationally.

  “Lee, you left Charlie downstairs?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  She suddenly felt another mini wave of panic blossoming inside her. He shouldn’t be down there alone, not with the threat of that trickster spirit still around.

  “I need to go check up on him,” she said and started towards the door.

  “I’m sure he’s fine. It’s only been a minute,” Lee assured her.

  Jill still had to see if Charlie was okay. She descended the stairs, entered the living room, and—

  “Charlie?!” she called out. “Charlie!”

  Charlie wasn’t in the room.

  Chapter 37

  Charlie sensed that something was wrong. He could tell from his parents’ apprehensiveness. His Mom was like that only once before, when Charlie fell out of a tree and hit his head. He was okay, but his Mom was so worried that she had rushed him to the hospital to make sure everything was okay. He walked out of the hospital with a smile on his face.

  Now that they were at Grandma’s house, he saw the same worried look on Mom’s face, even though nothing visibly bad had happened. Was Aunt Cheryl in trouble? Or maybe Grandma?

  Those thoughts kept racing through his head as he sat alone on the couch in the living room. Soon though, he started to get bored. He glanced around the room for anything entertaining. There was a big, box-shaped TV in front of him. Charlie had never seen such a TV. It was much smaller than the one they had at home, and it looked heavy.

  He glanced under the TV to see if there were any video gaming consoles attached to it, but there were none. He thought about how sad a house looked with just a TV and no video games.

  As he finished that thought, he heard the muffled patter of footsteps upstairs. It sounded like someone was running. What were they doing up there? Was someone playing? He wanted to play, too. He was tempted to go upstairs, but the only thing keeping him here was the fact that Dad told him to stay.

  What if he just took a peek? He could always return downstairs.

  With that determination, Charlie hopped off the couch and started towards the door. A sound behind caused him to stop and turn around. Charlie wasn’t sure what kind of sound it was, but it immediately piqued his interest. It sounded like it came from the room in the back.

  Curious, he followed it, wondering who could be in there. Upon walking through the threshold, he realized that the backroom was actually a kitchen. When Charlie looked around, he realized that the room was empty. His eyes fell on the fridge, and he suddenly felt hungry. He decided to go upstairs anyway to ask one of the adults to make him something to eat.

  He turned around to leave when he heard that same sound from before again, this time much more clearly. It sounded like hissing. Charlie turned around, now a little bit on edge. He went over to the door left of the entrance to the kitchen and opened it. At first, he was greeted by nothing but darkness. But then he saw a switch on the wall on his left. He flipped it, and the ceiling light illuminated the stairs leading down to another door.

  The hissing came again, and this time it was clear that it was coming from the basement. Charlie hated basements. There was always something scary in the dark down there. He didn’t have a basement at home, luckily. This time, as he listened to the occasional hissing here, he didn’t feel scared. If anything, he was curious. What could be making that sound?

  He walked down the stairs, carefully taking each step since the stairs were too high for him, and he was still small. He opened the bottom door widely, letting the weak light inside the basement. As long as he stayed in the light, he would be safe.

  The hissing resounded once more. No, it wasn’t hissing. It sounded like someone saying ‘Pssst!’, like his friends did when they wanted to tell him a secret. It was coming from a nearby door. Charlie looked around. The meager light wasn’t enough to illuminate the entire room, but he could still see the dust-covered shelves, and various objects covered with sheets, and an old pool table in the middle of the room.

  “Pssst! Over here!” a petulant voice—no longer a hiss—said from somewhere in the basement.

  “Who’s there?” Charlie asked.

  “I’m in here!” the boyish voice said.

  “Where?”

  “Here!”

  Charlie felt his heart beginning to race, which was weird, because that only happened after playing, especially running. He also suddenly felt cold, even though it was really hot just a moment ago.

  “I’m gonna go get my Mom and Dad,” he said and turned to face the exit.

  “No, wait!” the invisible boy in the room said. “I want to show you something!”

  “Show me what?” Charlie faced the basement once more.

  “Come here and I’ll show you!”

  Charlie looked around, but still to no avail. Nothing in the basement was moving. The voice sounded like it was coming somewhere around the pool table area. Charlie took a few tentative steps forward, looking around the basement for any children hiding and getting ready to jump out in front of him.

  Maybe the boy who was hiding here wanted to give Charlie a good scare. He stopped right in front of the pool table and pivoted left and right.

  “I can’t see you!” he said.

  “Here,” the boy said softly this time—and it came from right under Charlie.

  Charlie bent down and looked under the pool table and gasped.

  There he was. There was really an actual boy under there.

  He was pale and thin, with big, black eyes and long, unkempt hair; or at least it looked like that in the darkness of the basement. His clothes were as ordinary as Charlie’s, but it’s the look of seriousness on his face that Carlie noticed first. He looked sad, troubled, maybe? The entire time, the thought of finding a boy squatting in the basement under an old pool table seemed weird to Charlie, but it was only at the back of his mind.

  “Who are you?” Charlie asked.

  “Just a boy. I live here,” the boy whispered reticently.

  “You’ve been living with my grandma?”

  “Yes. For more than twenty years,” he said.

  “What? That’s not true. You’re not even twenty years old!” Charlie said.

  “Shhh. Keep your voice down,” the boy said with audible anger in his voice this time. “We don’t want them to hear us.”

  “Who? You mean my Mom and Dad?”

  “Yes.”

  Charlie looked behind himself, expecting to see an adult hovering above him. No one was there, much to his relief. He turned to face the kid under the table.

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “Yes.”
r />   The calmness of his voice scared Charlie.

  “Why?” Charlie asked.

  “Because I took this doll from your mom,” he said.

  He proceeded to whip out an ugly doll from the darkness and present it to Charlie. The doll looked like it had been made at home, and Charlie didn’t understand why anyone would want to keep such an ugly toy.

  “Can you please give it back to her in my name?” the boy asked.

  “Why don’t you just give it back to her yourself and say you’re sorry?” Charlie asked.

  “I can’t. She’s really angry with me. I need you to do it. Okay?”

  Charlie hesitated. He could do it, but then another thought occurred to him. What if Mom then blamed Charlie for stealing the doll? He wanted to help this boy, but he didn’t want to get in trouble for something he didn’t do.

  He had learned his lesson when Cindy ate a cookie Charlie’s mom made, awhile back, and he took the blame. Cindy didn’t even thank him and just bragged about how she managed to get out of that sticky predicament without getting in trouble.

  “Take the doll,” the boy said in a timorous tone as he outstretched the hand with the doll towards Charlie.

  “Come with me,” Charlie shook his head. “We can give her the doll together.”

  “No!” the boy shouted so loudly that it caused Charlie to recoil. “I’m sorry. It’s just that your mom scares me. And I need to run back home.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Very close. Please, take the doll.”

  “I don’t want to. My mom will think that I took it.”

  “No, she won’t. You can tell her that you found it. And then you’ll be a hero for saving her childhood toy,” the boy grinned.

  He was still holding the doll in the air, waiting for Charlie to accept it. Charlie glanced down at the doll once more. Maybe he could take it. Just bring it to Mom, and explain to her that he found it. She would be grateful to him, right?

  A shriek from the upstairs caused Charlie to turn his head towards the sound.