“Well, there's one reason, at the very least.” August hung a sharp left and started past the local mall. A few miles beyond they'd find the empty fields at the foot of Beacon Hill. “The cops can't see ghosts. As far as they're concerned, they're looking for a troubled girl. We know better, though—we know what she really is.”
“Yeah, which is all the more reason to—”
“We're in this to help her, right? Authority figures like doctors and cops haven't exactly been pulling their weight thus far; Ophelia needs something they can't provide. She needs you, your gift, to see... whatever it is that's inside her.” He let off the accelerator and rolled his window down a few inches. “It's just one teenaged girl. I think we can handle this.”
Despite these reassurances, Sadie was more than a little skeptical. Referring to Ophelia as a mere teenager was in itself unwise; she'd proven much more than that, which was the whole reason Sadie had gotten involved in this mess at all. Further, to hear the girl tell it, the whole trouble had begun in this remote, abandoned house. This little rescue mission of theirs was tantamount to following a diseased person to the very place they'd picked up their infection. It felt reckless.
Leaving the mall in the rearview, passing a car lot, a fast food joint, the fields at the foot of the hill soon entered into view. There were no indicators in place to christen this particular spot “Beacon Hill”; to the best of Sadie's knowledge it was an unofficial designation, perhaps the name of the street that had once run thereabouts, in the days when multiple houses had populated the rolling hilltop. In the way of parking, the closest solution was a sprawling stretch of weed-heavy gravel where a gas station had once stood, a quarter of a mile from the base of the hill. August wheeled the car into this stretch and cut the engine.
Sadie stepped out into the warm sunlight, stretched, and looked across the field to the gradual uphill slope whose crown was the large, stony abode. At this distance, it looked nondescript and harmless enough; she'd probably driven past this spot a few times over the years and glimpsed the shadowed hulk on the knoll in her periphery, thinking nothing of it. As it had become a destination now, her present appraisal of the far-off building was much changed, however. Standing beside the hood of August's Honda, she stared at the pale accumulation of stonework and got the impression that—even in the bright light of late morning—the shadows of the property had about them an air of permanence. Some houses were built in such a way as to make use of the natural light; to admit it, to harness it for the comfort of its occupants. Not so this house. By all appearances, even at this range, the construction of this lofty abode had sought first and foremost what one might deem the preservation of darkness, or the renunciation of light. However one might choose to put it, the effect was the same.
August locked up and started for the hill, hands in his pockets. “So, I take it you've never been here before, huh?”
“No.” Sadie followed behind, trampling a number of dandelions.
“That makes two of us. Wonder if it'll live up to the rumors.”
Sadie might've taken the bait, might've asked, “Which rumors?” and together they might've cobbled together a working mythology for the house based on the tidbits they'd both picked up over the course of their residency in Montpelier. Instead, she divided her gaze between the house and the grass beneath her feet, thankful that the house remained—for the moment—some ways off.
Even from this distance, the house rather attracted the eye. It may have been Sadie's own tastes—she found herself drawn to the grandiosity of its architecture—that kept her glancing up at it as they wandered near. Houses of this age and kind were a rare thing indeed in staid Montpelier; even the oldest remaining city buildings were unadorned and vaguely brutalist in effect. Had the circumstances been different; had the two of them been coming here solely to reflect on the building's style, rather than to stage a reckless search, then perhaps her guts would not have been churning as they began their ascent of the shaggy hill.
Beacon Hill grew messier, more unkempt the further they climbed. Lush grasses—of heights and varieties not known elsewhere in town—sprang up in wild masses, and at their tallest appeared almost knee-high. Mixed in with the knotted turf was at least of a generation's worth of windblown draff; garbage discarded by picnickers, toppled fencing and the occasional brick. The nearest boundary of the property was in clearer view now. The stones of what had once been a retaining wall, sapped of color and left porous—nigh scoriac—by decades of exposure, jutted out of the ground like decayed molars.
August quit his yapping as they drew nearer. His usual loquaciousness had been stunted by the sight of the thing and he looked up at it with barely-veiled terror now, despite his earlier bravado. Its alienage and extent were profoundly humbling from up-close. “I've never seen anything like it,” was how he summed it up while trudging through the grass. “Except in movies, maybe.”
They stood almost toe-to-toe now with the titan of Beacon Hill. Its numerous windows, ringed in weathered stonework, possessed all the darkness of caverns cut into a slab of mountain and at a glance there could be no telling what dwelt within. Some forty yards ahead there yawned a wide door through which they could enter, but for the moment neither party showed much interest in doing so. They lingered near the tottering retaining wall, eyed the remnants of a crumbling terrace, but presently went no further.
Breaking the silence before it got the better of him, August looked up at the house and whistled. “They don't make 'em like this anymore. How old do you think it is? I'll bet it was built in the early 1900's. Hell, maybe the late 1800's, even.” He raked at his beard as he spoke, compulsively, and then took his keys out of his pocket. On the same ring was a chunky black flashlight roughly the dimensions of a D battery, and he tested the cluster of LEDs within by a click of the button on the rear. It flashed to life, but even this didn't seem to inspire much confidence in him. “Always come prepared,” he chuckled, waving the thing in his hand. And then, seeming to look anywhere but at the house itself, he fell silent once again.
In the ensuing quiet Sadie strived to listen for sounds of life; voices, footsteps, any audible noise issuing from within those darkened halls. But none came. A fine summer wind rolled past the hill and brought with it—beyond a frisson of unease—a vegetal rustling that spanned the entirety of the grassy acreage. Said wind seemed briefly to probe the house's many open doors and windows, only to withdraw apace and in so doing produce a low, hollow piping, as if in warning of what lay within.
Sadie cleared her throat, and the moment the wind died down she raised her voice in a shout. “Ophelia! Ophelia! Are you here?” She took a step forward and called out once more, hands coned round her mouth. “Ophelia! Ophelia!”
August joined in too. “Ophelia? Ophelia? Are you inside?”
Another gale swept past, and still no answer came.
“Maybe she's not inside after all,” muttered August, unable to mask the hopefulness of his tone. “We might have come here for nothing. I mean, it was worth a shot, right?”
“It's possible she can't hear us,” answered Sadie, her lips sagging grimly. “Or she could be hurt.” She studied the upper story windows, took in their unbelievable blackness one at a time to see whether their calls had summoned anyone thence. Another statement to the effect of “We have no choice but to go in and search” had been poised to leave her lips when something entered into view. Her attentions highjacked, the words were left unvoiced.
An upper story window to the left of the yawning entry door was the one that'd caught her eye, for in it there were now framed the unmistakable contours of a human face. A countenance of singular paleness—and seeming wholly detached from any discernible bulk—surfaced from the abounding gloom like that of some deep-dwelling marine creature drawn to the surface for a breath of air. At such a distance as Sadie now stood from the window, some twenty feet or more high, she could make out only that this oval-faced occupant was looking out across the field, likely lured by their cries.
Sadie raised a finger to point out the porcelain face, but found she couldn't speak.
“What is it?” August followed the trajectory set forth by her trembling finger, but even as he studied the window she intended—as well as those adjacent—he saw nothing in them. Wiping at his eyes, he took a few steps forward and asked, “Do you see something?”
Anyone with a pair of working eyes should have been able to see this. “T-There,” she stammered vacantly. “The window...” Sadie watched as the face seemed to strain a little outward, as if in concerted study—and then, just as suddenly, to retreat into the depths. But before it disappeared completely from view, the motion of a wan little hand could be seen, and before it, too, had been consumed by the darkness, the meaning of the gesture had become clear. The person in the window had been beckoning to her.
“Huh,” said August, pacing this way and that. He stared on tiptoe, blocked the sun from his eyes, but no matter what he did he missed seeing the figure in the window . “I don't see anything.”
It was little wonder he couldn't see it. “I... I don't think it's the kind of thing that you're going to be able to see,” she admitted, shoulders tense.
He gave her a curious look, like he wasn't sure what she meant, but while polishing the lenses of his glasses on his shirt, he clicked his tongue. “Oh. You mean it's a ghost thing, huh?”
“It was waving,” continued Sadie.
“What did they look like?”
Sadie did her best to describe it, watching the window for any return of the beckoning figure, but the more she tried to put words to what she'd seen, the more inadequate her descriptions seemed. “Imagine a human face cut out of paper, a mask, but with nothing behind it,” was how she finally decided to put it.
“Could it have been Ophelia?” asked August, running his hand against a weathered brick.
“I don't know.”
He clicked his tiny flashlight on and off a few times. “Well, there's one way to find out, eh?” He nodded at the entrance. “You ready?” The way he had wrapped his quivering fist around the little flashlight, the way his gaze couldn't help but jump around at the slightest breeze, made it clear he wasn't looking forward to exploring the house in the least, but he pressed his face into the bravest possible expression under the circumstances and cleared his throat repeatedly to maintain a certain vocal depth. “Let's just run in there real quick. No need to linger. Just have to make sure she's not here, right?”
Sadie was more than a little reticent. Sure, it was possible that the figure in the window had been Ophelia; darkness and distance both could obscure the features of even a familiar face. But what if it hadn't been the girl? What if it had been something more sinister, waving her in to her doom? It was this possibility that kept her moored to the crumbling retaining wall.
And there was, if she was being honest, still another reason she couldn't find it in herself to go in—something that had dawned on her only gradually, but which was at that very moment too stark a thing to ignore. The house possessed a kind of combativeness, a hostility that would surely act upon anyone foolish enough to wander inside. To what facet of the house this impression was owed was not immediately apparent—it might have lain in the ruined stonework, in the sagging chimney stacks or in the heaps of weatherbeaten shingles cast pell-mell across the knotted lawn—but that it was oppressive and repellant could not be denied.
Even taking all of this into account, Sadie found herself making a shaky advance toward the house. This is exactly the kind of thing you came to face, right? Remember what August said: You can't keep running away from this. You have to face it. Especially this time, when a girl's safety is at risk. If you turn back now, you're turning back on Ophelia, on Rosie and on yourself. She kept close to August, who began his own jittery stride for the house, and together they began wordlessly for the wide, black entryway.
14
There existed in this house a darkness so dense and perfect that in entering it one couldn't help but fear becoming coated in it. August crossed the threshold first, nose twitching as he breathed in the scent of accumulated antiquities, and Sadie was close behind, one hand pressed to the weathered stone arch of the entryway. The LEDs in the flashlight, however bright in other circumstances, could only rasp at the darkness found here—could only punch minute holes in the black fabric, thus adding to the impression of a tar-like and tangible air. It was clear that if they meant to advance at all with such a weak light, they would be forced to do so very slowly.
The whine of centuried wood sounded at their heels—the only noise to be heard from inside the tremendous building, and a very jarring one at that. In its years of abandonment the reign of silence had been well-cemented here, and as the creak of the floors subsided and the duo fell still, the rule of quiet was imposed with still greater harshness. It is said that silence can deafen; till she'd entered the ruin on Beacon Hill and sampled its sepulchral quiet for herself, Sadie had never grasped the meaning of the idiom.
The air was still—chokingly so—yet seemed pregnant with an animate portentousness. Only moments ago, she recalled with a shudder, she had glimpsed a face in an upper story window. Where was that face now and to what ends was its owner scheming in this miserable place? For all Sadie knew, the glimpsed figure stood three paces ahead, or presently leered from some yet-undiscovered corner. The very notion that something should choose to exist in a setting such as this troubled her profoundly. A cold fear, as of being well out of one's depth, began to rack her; the fear, perhaps, of the minnow leaving the shallows for darker, uncharted waters. She watched August soundlessly wave the light, cognizant that he might just reveal the Kraken with the next flip of his wrist.
They ventured deeper in; not, perhaps, of their own volition, but drawn thence by the gravity of some unseen force lurking somewhere in the blackness. Some paces into this first room—a foyer? A large hall? The weakness of their flashlight made it difficult to scope out its exact dimensions with any certainty—and already the daylight ringing the entryway struck her as powdery and distant. Their shoes clopped against the timeworn boards, and the air they encountered further in was over-seasoned with notes of grime and decay. They paused at hearing something scamper in the distance, perhaps a large rat or other animal, but no chasing of the noise with the light could reveal its source.
August sniffed loudly, placed his forearm up against his nose. “This place has been empty a long, long time,” he whispered. “I'll bet it's been like a hundred years since anyone last lived here.” He cast the light upward in a survey of the ceiling and found—either for its great height or the weakness of the LEDs—that he couldn't see it. “It's like a castle.”
Sadie shuffled on without a word, keeping close to his side. Traipsing through this fibrous darkness into the unknown set her heart aflutter; at turns her own clumsy footfalls were drowned out by the toil of her pulse. When August arrived at the edge of a web-encrusted wall and pivoted slightly to his right, she dared a look around a new corner and spied what appeared to be a long hallway, the ceiling punctured at sporadic intervals and threads of intrusive sunlight worming their way through the openings, shining like diamond dust. The sight of the daylight brought her comfort enough to use her voice. “Should we go down there and shout for her? Do you think she'll answer us if we call out?”
August chewed on his lower lip for a time. “You saw someone in the upstairs window, right? I reckon someone's going to respond, but... it may not be the girl.”
Raw fear set her guts churning. She returned to the memory of that vague, porcelain-like face, glimpsed only minutes ago. “Well,” she continued with a shiver, “let's hurry up, then.” She waited for August to start down the shadow-clotted hall and then followed, her itchy eyes tracking the bob of the flashlight beam.
Thus channelled into the house's deeper reaches, the pair descended into vigilant silence. Coupled with the weak glow of the sun that sometimes leaked into the passage through breaks in the roof, the
y found they could make out its dimensions with more thoroughness than hitherto possible; a thing that might have lent them no small comfort had conditions been different. But the state of the passage they presently occupied was monstrous in its decay, and the recklessness of their errand was brought into sharp relief.
The ancient plaster walls puckered where the elements had been unkind, and the measured step of both inhabitants incited them to quiver in places not unlike wrinkled skin. Crevasses long-packed with spider's silk and mold shimmered in the whitish light as they passed, as did the clicking black legs of the things that made their home there. Baseboards were in many places lifted completely from the walls; sure-footed pests dashed through the narrow channels behind with an ominous rustling. The ceiling, in its more heavily damaged sections, buckled beneath the weight of the upper story; a survey of the second floor seemed unlikely, then.
August paused to look into one of the cracks, massaging the back of his neck. “That light is coming from the upstairs windows, it looks like. But the damage in some spots is heavy. I don't think we'll be able to get up there.”
That suited Sadie just fine. They'd barely begun their tour of the house but she was good and ready to call it quits. “If we really think she's up there, we'll call for help. The fire department or something can get her down.” She frowned, giving a weak shake of the head. “But, you know, I'm not sure I actually saw anyone. It could have been my eyes playing tricks on me.”
He let out a long sigh and held the light out a little further, pointing out a fork in the hall. “Or, you know, it's possible you saw a ghost. Either way, no big deal, right?” He tried chuckling, as if to lighten the mood, but the echo of his laughter clashed violently against the atmosphere of the place and he fell once more into silence.
The hallway continued straight ahead, leading to a more sunlit portion of the house, and also branched to their immediate right, down another lengthy hall—this one also featuring some few slivers of daylight fed into the house by the windows and defects of the rooms down its length. Without deliberation, both frightened creatures naturally chose the best-lit path and continued in their set direction, covering some tens of feet before arriving at a stairwell. The warped wooden steps led into the upper story, and from some ruptured window or roof defect there came traces of the warm sunlight.
The Haunting of Beacon Hill Page 11