A New World

by Brendan O'Neill

  A New World,

  As remembered by Jacob Martin

  The haunting

  It started so long ago, that I can’t really say how many years have gone by. I know it started sometime after we moved into our new home. Our new antique home that was lost in the deepest and darkest Virginia forest. Northridge Place, as the creepy old manor was called, had been around since long before the Civil War.

  My sister was 14 then and I was 15. Our mom wasn’t much past 30. She’d finally hit it big as a writer and she needed someplace where she could get away and write without distraction. And a big house in the Virginia back woods seemed like the perfect place. Obviously, my sister and I weren’t happy about being ripped away from all our friends. And finding out we were moving out where there weren’t other kids sure as hell didn’t win us over. But we didn’t have a choice. Our mom was obsessed with the writer’s “reclusive” lifestyle.

  The house was huge and well furnished, though the furnishing were as old and creaky as the rest of the place. The whole place smelled of damp, musty old wood and the dust was thick enough to grow plants on the banisters. The grounds were wild, young trees in the yard and high grass everywhere else. Combine the state of our new home with two troublemaking kids and mom quickly realized she’d overreached her reclusive dreams.

  So the first people we saw was a parade of potential groundskeepers, nannies, and maids. Mom spent almost a month trying to find the right three for her. Not for us. Or, at least, not for me. I remember one nanny, very pretty with a very full chest. I begged my mom to hire her. But she ended up hiring a pudgy woman in her early forties. I wanted one that looked like a beauty queen. I got one that looked like a mule. A fat mule. A fat mule named Sarah.

  The new maid ended up being a tiny little Latina who almost never spoke. My sister Kinsey first thought it was because her English was broken. I first thought she had an impediment. Turns out the woman just didn’t like talking. She was capable, but for her, speech should come as often as Christmas. Either way, the new groundskeeper was her father, a tall and rail-thin bearded man. All I really remember of him in those days was his constant smile. Carlo I think. Carlo and Maria.

  Right after hiring the new staff, Mom would disappear for hours. She’d given rules and guidelines to everyone. Grounds-keeping and maintenance priorities for Carlo, cleaning and meals list for Maria. A parcel of instructions for Sarah. Nothing for us. So, in the beginning, Kinsey and I did what every kid does in a new environment: explore.

  We started outside. Kinsey and I were fresh out of school and the outdoors were an itch we needed to scratch. The house was surrounded by beautiful elms, climbing ivy, and smooth boulders that pushed out of the moss covered ground. It was like the Garden of Eden.

  One of our favorite places was a small glade we discovered about a quarter mile out the back. It was hidden from the house behind a thicket and had a small stream running along its far edge. Wisteria lined the forested side of the stream bank and Phlox dotted the glade interior. Spring blooms lent their brilliant colors and sweet fragrances to our little paradise.

  At its center, standing like a king of the tiny glade, was a huge old black cherry tree. Climbing up the trunk of the black cherry was a Virginia creeper, a vine that would, in autumn, hang on its king like a glorious crimson cloak. We called the cherry the “King” and glade the “Kingdom”. Kinsey and I would spend hours there, her reading and me fishing. Not that I ever caught anything other than minnows or crawdads.

  It must have been about our third week when Kinsey noticed a new aspect of interest in the Kingdom. Just before dusk, she realized the three largest moss covered mounds formed an equilateral triangle. When we scrapped the moss away we found them to be a collection of unusual stones, exactly 22.5 feet of space between each. Each stone rested at the edge of the Kingdom, in the shape of off centered pyramids. The triangle was perfectly aligned, its point facing west. The stream babbled gently along the triangles eastern border. In the exact center of the triangle stood the king tall and proud as if surrounded by his praetorian guard. Later, we would spend hours in The Kingdom trying to figure out what the stones were.

  Kinsey would sit at the base of the King and claim the stones were placed there by an ancient culture. One that predated even the Native Americans she claimed. Someday, she’d say, she’d receive a degree in archaeology and come back and make the discovery of the century. She’d revive their empire and become their new queen. Kinsey was always something of a twisted bird. She also claimed I would be her chief eunuch.

  I, on the other hand, always said the stones were put there by aliens. Some sort of coded markers disguised to look like regular rocks. I’d sit on the opposite base of the King and say that if we ever dug down we might find an underground base or transporter pad. She’d laugh at me and say I was an idiot. I’d just tell her that when the aliens do come and rescue us, we’d use her for target practice.

  We limited our indoor excursions entirely to the start of dusk. We weren’t allowed out after dark, and there wasn’t much else to do. It took a month to get the TV connected and, as we soon learned in those days, a satellite dish in the forest meant horrible reception. It was out more often than it worked. So, haunting the house became our after-dark entertainment.

  Our mom wanted us to stay out of certain rooms. She was adamant. In a 38 room house that needed constant cleaning and repairs from age, asking Carlo and Maria to try to maintain the whole house and grounds would have been unfair. Our mom made a massive list of rooms that were off limits.

  Of course, at that age, we didn’t care. Kinsey and I snuck into every room of the house, favoring those we were forbidden to enter. The forbidden rooms had sheets on the furniture and dust everywhere. Our favorite room had a billiard table at its center. The wall opposite the entryway was set with two huge granite fireplaces on each end and an even larger bay window in the center. To our right was a grandiose staircase with sectional mirrors mounted on its base. It led up the wall to an alcove above the entryway where, one could sit in any number of lavish armchairs or couches and drink from crystal decanters. Only the decanters were empty now.

  The entire left wall was a bookshelf that stretched from end to end, except for a large recess in the center of that wall. Inside the recess was a huge form under a sheet. It was like a ghost from the old movies and stories. We were so excited looking up at that form, but it was an excitement tinged with fear. We grabbed the sheet and pulled slowly. The white sheet creeped toward us like a miniscule avalanche. Inch by inch, with wisps of dust floating away like smoke in the air, the sheet slid toward us. Finally it fell free. Muted screeches broke from both our mouths.

  A massive stuffed black bear, standing erect and caught in mid snarl, towered over us. We exploded in laughter poking at our would-be assailant. Charged with energy, we searched the rest of the room. The books were mostly unremarkable to me, but Kinsey was always more a reader than I. She collected an armful of books almost immediately. I wanted to play with the pool table, but it would have made too much noise. Instead I usually spent my time on the alcove pretending like some rich guy looking out over the paupers. That room became our indoor escape. Kinsey called it the “Protectorate”.

  About four weeks after we moved in, and while Kinsey was sick in bed, I went to the Protectorate. It was night and a thunder storm killed our TV signal just as Christen Press was kicking against the Australian goaltender. I screamed in frustration and spent a minute stomping around and griping at the TV. Soon enough I realized the signal wasn’t coming back and I grudgingly decided to visit the Protectorate. After a week of exploring the house, and that room in particular, I wasn’t sure what else I could find there. But I didn’t have many options.

  The books bored me a
nd, as bored and frustrated as I was, I almost tried the billiards. But sound from the pool table was likely to draw attention. Although the Protectorate was deep in the almost unused north section of Northridge Place, I didn’t want to take the chance someone would hear me. So I sat in a plush old armchair made of polished mahogany and red velvet, watching the thunderstorm outside. Rain was falling so heavily that it seemed a waterfall was pouring over the Protectorate’s bay window. Lightning would flash, followed by a sonic clap so powerful that it shook the whole house. During one of those thunder claps, I heard a weird reverberation from somewhere near the base of the stairs.

  I searched down each step, looking for the heart of that sound. Step by step, I looked for that strange vibrating heartbeat. Thunder followed a distant lightning strike, but too far away for a reverberation to shake the house.

  Then, lightning struck just outside. Thunder shook the house so violently that the power went out. Darkness falling heavily over me, I felt my way back to the alcove. I remembered a candlestick there with a readied candle in it. Acquiring it was easy. Lighting it was far more difficult. But as any fifteen year old boy, I was stubborn to the point of relentlessness. I finally found the book of matches I hid on the lower floor, but it took several bolts of lightning to find my way to their hiding place.

  The candlestick lit, I made my way down to the ground floor. I wanted to find that strange sound that haunted my every thought. I wanted it so bad there was an ache deep in my chest. The universe seemed to sense my readiness and responded with a lightning strike just outside the house. I felt the shockwave into my teeth as the thunder struck in unison with the lightning.

  I also heard the vibration. Initially, it was drowned out by the violence of the thunder, but the reverberation lasted just a split second longer. Just long enough for me to narrow down the direction. Another flash followed by another explosive thunderclap made the mirrors under the stairway vibrate. One in particular gave that reverberating sound.

  In the dim candle light, I ran my hand around its edges. More thunderclaps made it vibrate against the solid stairway, far more than the other mirrors. I didn’t find any hidden catches so I began to press on various points of the mirror. Over and over, in every square inch, I pressed and pushed. Nothing happened. Until I pressed on the upper and lower quarters of the left side. There was the tiniest click and the pane of glass opened like a door.

  It’s amazing how a tiny flickering light can cast such imposing and terrifying shadows. On the wall, an arm chair becomes a crouched beast, ready to pounce. A grandiose coatrack next to the door transformed into a monstrous skeletal beast with giant fangs. And the hidden corridor before me was a black path to hell with demons waiting in its shadows, ready to tear out my soul.

  I’ve never been the kind to scare easily but, that night, I was terrified. No matter how many times I looked over my shoulder it still felt like there was a demon right behind me. Ready to rip out my spine. And looking into that deep oblivion made me shake so hard the candle threatened to fall out of my hand.

  My mouth was dry as I tried to shake off the sensation. After all, it’s just a dumpy old house. If I didn’t want to stay there, why would anything… supernatural? I told myself it made sense. I told myself it was all in my head. I coughed at the sudden dryness that ripped at my throat.

  Focusing my willpower, I tried to push the fear out of my mind. I was just successful enough to keep running from the room screaming. But there was no way I was going into the dark passage that night. I closed the mirrored door, leaving the image of a terrified Jacob to stare back at me. My skin was pale and eyes were wide. The fear on my own face was far sharper than I’d ever imagined it could be.

  Another flash out of the windows caught my attention and its explosion of thunder was deafening. I could feel in into my teeth. By the time I was looking outside, the window was dark again. But I felt a compulsion, a draw to that window.

  My heart was racing as I slowly, ever so slowly, inched toward that huge bay window. My candle was feeble in its attempt to illuminate the immense room, and each heavy panicked breath made it flicker. I was forced to move it further from me, allowing the shadows to tighten more around my shuddering body.

  Even with the candle, it was dark in the room and even darker in the outside storm. As I approached, I only saw my own stupid reflection in the window, lit by that meager candle. Nothing outside. Not at first.

  The closer I got, the more I thought I saw something. I’m wasn’t sure what. All I could tell was that it was small. There was too much of me reflecting in that window to see much else. I tried to ignore the fear in my own reflection on the window before me as I approached.

  The night was so black; I couldn’t really tell what’s out there. Rain on the glass didn’t help. I told myself that maybe I didn’t actually see anything. Maybe it was just my imagination. Maybe I should just go join everyone else in the house.

  I’d pretty much convinced myself. I was just about to turn when lightning struck. I saw it clearly. A young woman’s face, pale with her mouth frozen open in a scream. Her voice was drowned out by the thunder that shattered the window, sending glass pouring into the room and enough wind to snuff out my candle. My world spiraled into a far deeper darkness than my dead candle could ever achieve.

  The Intruder

  I never told anyone about the girl outside. A fifteen year old kid sees a ghost woman in a Virginia backwoods thunderstorm? No one’s going to believe that. Everybody would think it’s too many horror movies or roll-playing games. I was as sure then as I am now.

  Except Kinsey. I had to tell someone and was pretty sure my sister would believe me. I hoped she’d believe me.

  When I woke on the floor the next day, I went straight to Kinsey. But she didn’t believe me. Even once I showed her the secret passages I could see the doubt in her face. That caused something of a rift between us, but only until we learned our mom was going to have us homeschooled. With no chance of ever meeting other kids, my sister and I became that which no teen siblings should ever have to be: friends.

  To kill time, we started exploring the hidden passages in the house. What started as a trepidation filled excursion into the dark recesses of a creepy house, became our most exciting discovery yet. Our new home was honeycombed with passages, and cobwebs heavy with dust proved no barrier to us. In two weeks we found tunnels that led to 23 of the 38 rooms in the house. A sliding wall led to the kitchen, a bit of wall panel opened into my room. The full length mirror in Maria’s, Carlo’s, and Sarah’s rooms were both doors and two way mirrors. The fireplace in the den slid to the side and an entire section of shelves in the library opened to the passages. While I could get into the tunnels through the back of a waist high cabinet in my room, Kinsey had to access them from a hidden door covered by a tapestry in the hall outside her room.

  The best part of the tunnels were the two hidden passages to the outdoors. One came up out of a false stump next to the tool shed near the far right of the house. It was like the emergency escape used by the allies in that old show Hogan’s Heroes. The tunnel ended in a ladder that led to a hollow stump with a false top. Man sized boulders and even larger shrubs discouraged groundskeepers from attempting to clear the area.

  The other came up in the floor of the storage area in our rundown old stables. Old timbers sagged and rusted nails threatened to shred our skin the few times we chanced that entry. Half the stable roof had fallen in and the rest of the building didn’t look like it would last much longer. It only took a glance to decide not to use that entry.

  Eventually, with no more appearances from the ghost, she became more a myth than anything else. We even got so bold as to start searching the woods for her. But that didn’t last long. Denial for me and disbelief for Kinsey were far easier than an unwanted struggle for proof. She became a distant memory as we moved on with our lives.

  Mom hired an old fat guy as the tutor who breathed so hard that he sounded like he was snoring while a
wake. He managed to suck all the fun out of studying for Kinsey. He’d give her a hoard of assignments in all different fields of study, far too much for anyone to be able to finish in one day. The next day he’d march into the house huffing, his cheap suits always wrinkled like he’d slept in them, and interrogated Kinsey about her studies. The bastard bothered her more than me, probably because she had so much more potential. I never thought it was possible to find anything that made me hate studying any more than I already did. He proved me wrong.

  After exploring the house and the local woods, we had to find other things to keep us occupied. Kinsey lost herself in her studies, braving the tutor when she could and hiding away with her books when she couldn’t. I, on the other hand, went the normal guy rout of video games as often as I could. Although I did discover I had a knack for cooking and outdoors.

  Our time together became more and more rare. When we did spend time together, we usually focused on the self-defense training we’d received from World Martial Arts before moving to this isolated hell. And we became extremely good at it. We might have been missing a few of the more advanced elements, but Master Loney had taught us a great foundation before we left and practicing on each other honed what we already had.

  That training served me well when I turned 18. It drove my mom nuts when I joined the joined the army, and I have to admit that I felt a little justice in that. Just my luck, I was injured in basic training and left but I didn’t tell her about that. She would have expected me to come back home. Instead I followed my own path which lead me to a job in law enforcement in DuPont, Washington.

  I would have felt bad about leaving Kinsey if I didn’t know she already had her own plans. Kinsey not only graduated early, but found a full scholarship to a university. As smart as she was she probably could have made it to Harvard or Oxford if she’d wanted to. But, for some reason, she picked someplace I’d never heard of. Someplace in Ohio I think. We were both out of that house in three months.