Her Home (Haunted Places)

by Boris Bacic

  That thought caused shivers to run down her spine. She turned around and glanced at the torch-illuminated living room. Nothing was there from what she could tell. She didn’t even realize that she’d been holding Charlie close this entire time with a hand on his shoulder.

  “Okay, if it’s the only way to get rid of it, let’s do it, then,” Lee said.

  His shoulders tensed up with visible strain.

  “I can’t let you go up there, Lee,” Jill said.

  Lee shot her an annoyed smirk.

  “She’s right,” Cheryl said softly.

  Lee looked at her with the same annoyed look.

  “It’s our family. We are the ones who need to finish it. You need to stay here and protect Charlie,” Jill said.

  Lee laughed in disbelief.

  “They are right,” Fabiola jumped in to support the sisters. “This trickster spirit… I have seen many of them in my life, and most of them were harmless. Some of them were a pain to deal with, but you must understand that trickster spirits aren’t usually this malevolent. They are like naughty boys and girls. But the spirit in this house… it is more powerful. That means that it will not hesitate to kill whoever it deems a threat to get to its new hosts.”

  “And that’s why we need you to stay here with Charlie,” Jill repeated.

  Lee looked hesitant. For a moment, it looked like he was going to disagree, but instead, he caved with a terse nod.

  “Wait,” Fabiola said as she stepped towards the sisters. “Let me give you protection, wi?”

  She put her hands on Cheryl’s and Jill’s shoulders, closed her eyes, and chanted something in Haitian Creole. This lasted for a dozen or so seconds, and then Fabiola kissed her palms and placed them on the sisters’ foreheads.

  “There. You should have at least a little bit of protection now, wi?”

  “Wi,” Jill nodded.

  She briefly glanced at Cheryl and started towards the living room with a slow-paced walk, her phone’s light pointed in front of herself. She wanted to look back at Charlie, too, but she was on the brink of tears and couldn’t allow herself to break down.

  Not now.

  “Charlie, you stay close to me, okay, buddy?” she heard Lee say from behind.

  “Mom, where are you going?” Charlie asked in a confused tone.

  That made tears well up in Jill’s eyes. He had no idea what was going on, and it would probably take a while for him to understand. And what if Jill tragically died tonight? Would Charlie spend years wondering what happened to his Mom, all the while wondering why he was the only one among his friends who had only one parent? Would he hate Jill because of that?

  Jill turned around and faked a smile. Charlie’s sheepish gaze was transfixed on her, which caused her heart to ache even more. He broke away from Lee and took a step towards her.

  “Where are you going, Mom?” he asked with wide eyes just as Lee stepped forward to stop him from running off.

  “Mommy will be back in a few minutes, Charlie. Okay?”

  “I wanna go with you.”

  Jill knelt down in front of him and wrapped her arms around him tightly. She felt a bitter-sweet feeling as she held her son. She didn’t want to think of this as a goodbye, even though at the back of her mind, there was a possibility of that actually being the case. She never wanted to let go of Charlie.

  “I love you so much, baby,” she said as she firmly closed her eyes and felt the tears flowing down her cheeks.

  Charlie hugged her back, which strangely comforted her for a moment. Jill sniffled and wiped her tears away, hiding the fact that she was crying, before pulling away from the hug.

  “You listen to Dad, okay? And don’t run off. I’ll be back in a bit,” she had to work really hard to keep her composure and not break down.

  “Okay,” Charlie said as he tentatively took a step back under Lee’s guidance.

  Jill stood up and hugged Lee as well. He gently rubbed her back.

  “You come back to us safely, okay?” he said with a commanding voice.

  He handed the flashlight to her and took the phone from her hand.

  “You’ll need this more than we will,” he smiled.

  She wanted to argue with that, but Lee was right. Cheryl and Jill would have to scour the entire house to find the doll, and something like a phone’s torch would only make the task harder.

  Jill turned towards the living room and motioned with her head for Cheryl to follow her. Cheryl nodded and smiled reassuringly. For some reason, that confident facial expression made Jill feel better.

  She sniffled one last time, and with a battle-ready frown on her face, stepped towards the living room.

  Chapter 40

  Cheryl was close behind Jill as they stood in the front of the living room. It was pitch black, and even with Lee’s flashlight, it was difficult to see. The area where the beam was focused was illuminated immensely, but everything outside of that was black. Cheryl half-expected a horrid face to jump out in front of the beam, making both her and Jill scream in terror.

  Jill scanned the living room slowly with the flashlight, the beam violently trembling in her hands. Cheryl felt her legs get weak when she thought she saw the creature crouching behind the couch. Her eyes adjusted to the scene quickly before she realized it was just the shadow of nearby objects.

  “There’s no one in here,” Jill whispered.

  As if in response, five steps came from upstairs, starting just above Cheryl and Jill, and advancing further down the corridor. Cheryl froze in place. She suddenly didn’t want to budge from here. Being here on the first floor, surrounded by darkness was scary, yes, but at least they had Lee, Fabiola, and Charlie nearby.

  Up there, on the second floor, everything seemed to be much darker and narrower. And there were no exits close by.

  Jill broke into a confident gait across the living room, and that, in turn, gave Cheryl the confidence to start moving again. She stuck close to her sister, ready to push her out of the way at the first sign of danger. Once they reached the doorway leading to the foyer, Jill prudently peeked inside, vigorously shining the light around at every potential hiding spot for the dark spirit.

  “It looks safe!” Jill whispered as she took a tentative step towards the foyer.

  Cheryl was at her heels, trembling like a leaf in the wind. She looked back towards the living room. It was entirely black, not a single object visible, not even an outline. Cheryl imagined how easy it would be for the trickster spirit to just stand in the room and stare at them, and they would never even suspect a thing.

  She imagined the tall, skinny figure peeking out from the dark and immediately averted her gaze back in front to avoid allowing the panic to overwhelm her. A rattling noise came from in front of her, causing her to freeze in terror.

  “Locked,” Jill said as she let go of the front door’s knob.

  Cheryl was once again enveloped by tentative relief at the realization that the rattling sound was Jill fiddling with the door.

  “Geez, you almost gave me a heart attack,” Cheryl said as she stuck close to Jill’s side.

  Jill giggled. It was a somewhat nervous, but genuine giggle, and that forced a smile out of Cheryl. She suddenly wondered how they got into this situation. Two estranged sisters who haven’t spoken in years, fighting side by side against evil Vodou anomalies. It made her feel proud.

  “Where is the doll?” Cheryl asked as Jill made the first step up the stairs.

  The question was more directed to herself rather than Jill. She realized all of a sudden that she couldn’t feel the doll’s presence like she did when she first woke up.

  “The spirit took it!” Jill slowly shook her head. “I guess we find the spirit, and we’ll find the doll, no?”

  “Okay, makes sense.”

  Jill nodded and continued leading the way, step by step. She was in front of Cheryl, with her hand sliding against the wall, the flashlight pointed at the top of the stairs. Cheryl kept her hand tight on th
e railing, her eyes fixated above her. She almost missed a step a few times, despite knowing every inch of the house by heart.

  More clattering sounds came from upstairs, causing both Jill and Cheryl to stop in their steps. It sounded close, maybe just around the corner. There was nothing but silence after that. After just a few seconds, the sound of something shattering reverberated on the second floor.

  It wasn’t just unnerving hearing the sounds of items being smashed. It was the fact that it was unpredictable, with the silence that preceded between being full of palpable tension. And there was, of course, the fact that Cheryl expected something to jump out at them any moment.

  After what felt like an eternity waiting near the top of the stairs, Cheryl decided to take the initiative. She took a step forward and then another until they came more fluidly. She tried not to step in front of the light and block it because the moment she did, blackness crept in, blinding Cheryl entirely. She assumed that her eyes would have gotten used to the dark by now, but the transition from staring at a bright flashlight to a fully dark area continually messed it up.

  When she was at the second to last step, Cheryl looked back at Jill and silently outstretched her arm, motioning her to hand over the flashlight. Jill complied without a word. They almost dropped the flashlight, thanks to the the violent trembling coming from both of them.

  Cheryl gripped the flashlight with both hands as she peeked around the corner and shone the light down the corridor. The place was a mess. The chest of drawers was knocked over, and the empty vase that once stood atop it was broken in countless pieces, scattered all over the floor. The flower pot that was on the windowsill at the far end of the corridor was on the floor, knocked over, with the wilted plant and dirt spread everywhere—it looked like it had been chucked across the hallway.

  “See anything?” Jill asked haltingly.

  Cheryl continued shining the flashlight to various spots of the corridor. Just to be on the safe side, she tipped it up and illuminated the ceiling, as well.

  “Nothing,” she finally said, still not fully convinced that she was right.

  She climbed the final step to the second floor and stood motionless, wondering what to do next. Now that they were here, Cheryl wondered how the heck they were going to find the doll. It could be anywhere. In the best-case scenario, it would just be sitting somewhere, but that spot could be any place in the house—behind the couch, hidden in a wardrobe, on the ceiling fan above their reach…

  And in the worst-case scenario, the trickster spirit had it, and would use it to lure Jill and Cheryl into a trap.

  “Something tells me the doll is in my room,” Jill said as she stopped next to Cheryl.

  “What if it isn’t?”

  “Then we’ll continue to look for it in other places,” Jill shrugged.

  Cheryl glanced over at her for a moment to see if she was joking. She wasn’t.

  That was the Jill she knew. Of the two of them, Jill was the more persistent one. If something didn’t work out, she’d chip away at it until it did. Cheryl was the one who easily gave up. Unless someone told her specifically that she couldn’t do something. Then she would find a way to do it just to spite them.

  Seeing Jill’s courage, Cheryl felt somewhat embarrassed and decided to swallow her fear. She stepped forward, still making sure not to make too much noise. The carpet here muffled their footsteps, so if the spirit hadn’t somehow sensed them already—and Cheryl believed it did—then they might have been able to sneak up on it.

  As they neared the open office, Cheryl slowed down. She was mustering the courage to peer inside. The room was already scary enough as it was, but if Cheryl looked inside and saw something else creepy in there, for example, a tall, dark figure…

  She had to mentally brace herself for that.

  She tried not to stop as she got closer to the door, but she couldn’t help it. She needed a moment to prepare. Even though Jill didn’t say anything, Cheryl felt like she was being rushed by Jill, standing so close, right behind her.

  Before she could allow herself to think any further, Cheryl took the last step to bring her in front of the entrance and pointed the light inside. It trembled even more violently than a moment ago.

  The room was empty. Cheryl darted the light in various directions, inspecting every inch of the room, hoping to god that she wouldn’t run into something decidedly ungodly. The room was such a mess that nearly any object could easily be mistaken for a monster.

  After scanning it three times over with the flashlight and even stepping close enough to check around the corners, she was content enough to tell Jill that there was nothing there. An invisible weight fell off her shoulders just for a moment until she realized she would need to inspect the rest of the roo—

  When she turned around to face down the corridor, a dark figure stood mere inches from her face.

  Cheryl screamed and dropped the flashlight before clasping her mouth with her hands. Jill quickly bent down and picked up the flashlight, pointing it at Mom’s face.

  “Mom! What are you doing?!” Cheryl whispered, her voice no more than a whimper.

  Mom stood in one spot and stared at Cheryl. No, not at Cheryl. Just staring blankly in front of herself. Cheryl even looked behind herself to see what she was looking at, but there was nothing there.

  The look of a zombie, Cheryl thought to herself with sadness creeping up on her, but not strong enough to overtake the anxiety and fear.

  “Mom!” Cheryl called out again.

  Even when Jill pointed the flashlight directly in her face, their mother didn’t react—not even a flinch. The beam of the light cast ominous shadows across her face, making her look ten years older—and she already looked much older than her age.

  “We can’t worry about her now. Let’s come back for her later,” Jill said.

  “We can’t just leave her here,” Cheryl protested.

  “The spirit is no longer interested in her, right? We’ll grab the doll, destroy it, and once we’re done, we’ll take care of her. Okay?”

  Cheryl knew that it sounded much easier in theory and that Jill was just trying to convince her to set her priorities straight, but she had no other choice right now. She couldn’t tug Mom by the hand wherever they went around the house. Not to mention she could put them even more at risk. No, Mom would need to stay here for now.

  “Fine,” Cheryl finally shrugged.

  “Wait, look,” Jill said.

  “What?”

  “Her hand.”

  Cheryl hung her head down and looked at Mom’s hand. There was nothing remarkable about it. She thought that Jill might have been referring to a severe injury or something until she looked at her other hand.

  Clutched in it was Lola.

  The doll’s eyes tantalizingly stared up at Cheryl, daring her to get closer. Cheryl looked up at Mom’s face once more. She suddenly felt something that she never felt towards Mom ever before.

  Fear.

  She was afraid that trying to take the doll away from her was going to result in Mom going crazy and attacking her. Somehow, she came to terms with the fact that the person in front of her was no longer her mother, but simply an empty shell of the person she used to be.

  “We have to get the doll away from her,” Jill voiced Cheryl’s thoughts.

  “I know, just gimme a sec,” Cheryl raised a palm towards Jill. “Mom? Can you hear me?”

  Mom kept staring in front of herself with a blank look in her eyes. Cheryl just then realized she hadn’t seen her blinking once since she woke up from her coma.

  “I’m gonna take the doll, okay, Mom? I’m gonna take Lola, alright?”

  To her amazement, Mom started speaking. Cheryl’s hopes skyrocketed, and then dipped back down as soon as she realized that it was the same mumbling from before. Realizing that her mother was present only physically and not mentally, she slowly reached towards the doll in her hand.

  Jill illuminated Mom’s hand for Cheryl to get a bet
ter view. Cheryl saw just how much her own fingers trembled, and the more she tried steadying them, the more violently they shook. She decided to stop trying and just grabbed Lola by one stumpy limb.

  As soon as her hand touched the doll, Mom’s mumbling turned into a booming voice so loud that Cheryl’s hands jerked as if struck by an electrical current.

  “PAPA LEGBA, GRANT ME PROTECTION AGAINST THE EVIL IN MY HOUSE!” she shrieked and grabbed Cheryl by the wrist.

  Cheryl screamed.

  There was a commotion—Mom screaming the same words at the top of her lungs over and over, Jill’s flashlight bobbing up and down, intermittently illuminating and plunging Cheryl’s vision into darkness, panicked and incoherent words coming from Jill.

  Cheryl was overcome with a sense of vertigo, and before she knew it, she lost her footing, and her back collided with the floor, knocking the wind out of her. She raised her head just in time to see a flashlight-illuminated hallway and Mom running off into her room and the door shutting—on its own.

  “Cheryl! Are you okay?!” Jill was kneeling at her side as Cheryl remained on the floor in a recumbent position.

  “Fine. I’m fi—”

  Before she could finish that sentence, she caught something with her peripheral vision. It was fast, and entirely black, and the only reason Cheryl was able to see it was because a part of it stepped into the light—just for a split second.

  It collided with Jill and sent her flying backward into the darkness. The flashlight flew from her hand and clattered to the floor before remaining there, its normally-potent beam snuffed by the wall it pointed at.

  “Jill!” Cheryl shouted as she scrambled to reach for the flashlight.

  Before she could even move a step, though, she felt something grabbing her by the ankle. She screamed and felt herself being dragged across the floor. Her shirt rose, and she felt her lower back getting scraped up by the rough fabric of the carpet, but she felt no pain….nothing except the everlasting fear and adrenaline that took the reins of her body.