“You know you’re just encouraging Emily. And now Kayleigh is starting to freak out, too. There are logical explanations for all of this.”
The silence that followed was as tense and meaning-filled as the conversation.
She screamed. There was nothing else to do. Nothing changed but nothing was the same. So she screamed. She screamed a lot.
Voices downstairs. New ones, too. She went down the stairs, following the voices.
“…and so they can will themselves into being. That’s why it only started last year and nothing for the decades before that.”
A woman’s voice, soft but firm. Sounding wise.
“How is that possible? A ghost can ‘will itself into being’? I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude. I know you all deal with this all the time, but it sounds crazy!” A man’s voice. The one she had heard around the house, the father.
“Sometimes, when the will to live is strong, perhaps because they died before their time or because their life ended abruptly, they can will themselves to return from wherever it is they went when they died.” Another man’s voice. This one unknown. “Unfinished business, even just the need to resolve an unhappy memory can result in someone desiring to come back so much that they do. We don’t understand the mechanism of this, but it happens often enough.”
She turned the corner and stood in the kitchen doorway, watching them around the table. There were the mother and father and the two girls. On the opposite side of the table were a man and a woman.
The man was older, in his forties, the woman a little younger. He was all in black, the woman wore purple and dark green and black, too. They sat side by side. The looked at each other, then at the family. Did they know about the man in the ravine? Could they help warn the family about the man who murdered her?
“Did you know a girl died in the house in 1974?”
The man and woman looked at each other. “No, we didn’t.”
“California state law only requires you disclose deaths in the last three years when you buy the property. When did you buy this house?”
“Six years ago, right before Emily was born.”
“OK, so the death was thirty-four years before that, so of course you didn’t know.”
“But why is this happening now? Is it the fortieth anniversary or something?”
Wait. She died in 1974? And it is now a long time after that? She looked around the kitchen. Went to the calendar next to the refrigerator. 2014? How could it be 2014? She died and then she woke up what felt like just a few days ago? How could four decades have passed?
“Was she murdered?” asked the older girl.
“Kayleigh!” barked her mother. “What a question!” The mother looked to her younger daughter to see her reaction but the little one (Emily?) had none. Emily just looked at the couple sitting across the table.
“It’s alright,” said the man dressed in black, smiling. He addressed the older girl. “No, young lady. She had cancer. Apparently she fought hard and beat it when she was about your age, but it came back and she died when she was nineteen.”
“That’s old,” intoned Emily.
“To you,” said her father smiling. He looked up at the man, “That’s young. And sad.”
No, she thought. They have it wrong. I was murdered. By the man in the ravine. They need to be warned.
“She was an only child,” said the woman, “and her parents moved from this house after she passed. I would imagine they were heartbroken after all they had gone through.”
The little girl asked, “What was her name?”
“Susan. She died in this house.”
No! She had been killed in the ravine. That was why she was back.
Wait. Her name was Susan? Susan was her name? It sounded right, but maybe not.
She covered her ears and shut her eyes and began to hum to stop the voices.
The little girl looked over at her and her eyes widened in fear. “She’s here!”
They all looked over at her, but she knew only Emily saw her. The new man and woman looked at each other. The woman shook her head, ‘no.”
“That’s not likely. Tanner here is a sensitive. She knows when restless spirits are present,” the new man told the family, but they all continued to look in her direction.
The little girl began to squirm. “Mommy, it’s the girl from my room, I want to go. I want to go, mommy!”
The new woman stood up, closed her eyes and began speaking. “Susan? Susan, are you here? We’re here to help, Susan.”
She went back up the stairs, all the way up to the attic.
The voices continued for a while. She ignored them.
She sat in the window, looking at the ravine.
She wasn’t murdered? She had died from cancer.
The man in the ravine.
The man.
Her father.
Her father killed her?
No. No.
Her father holding her. He father carrying her frail body outside. Her father’s body shuddering as he wept, she felt every quake. He tried to hide it from her, smiling at her so she would not be scared. But still, she was pressed against him. She felt him…
Cancer. Long treatments. Pain. Needles. Her mother’s ashen face. Bad news. Sad news. So tired. Can’t keep food down. Hair falls out. She doesn’t recognize the skeleton in the mirror. Can’t leave her room. In bed all the time. So tired.
She felt the sunshine on her face. And she was there. In the ravine. Under the trees, with the sun falling on her face. Her father had carried her out here. She knew it was time and did not want to die in bed, in the room, in the room of so much pain and hurt and sleep. She wanted to feel the sunshine on her face one last time and asked her father, her father carried her out, he picked her up and he shuddered as he carried her down the stairs and he carried her outside and her mother had gone to get some medication and was not there and her father begged her hold on because mommy would be home soon and mommy would want to say goodbye too and they sat in the sun and she smiled and was both afraid and not afraid anymore and slipped away…
She was no longer afraid. She knew who She was. She knew why She was here. But now She is the one causing fear. The girls. Emily and Kayleigh. They are afraid. She knows what it is to be afraid at that age. To know death is nearby at that age. She does not want to be that.
She is in the ravine again now. Sunshine. Under the trees. Not here to avenge or bring justice. Just here to see one last time and say goodbye.
She never said goodbye to her mother. She never thanked her father for his final gift.
She thinks of her father and smiles again. His tear-filled face smiling down at her as she drifts away in the sunshine. “Thank you, daddy. Thank you,” she thinks to herself and smiles.
“Don’t be sad, mommy. You were the best mother ever,” she thinks. “Goodbye. Your Suzie will see you both soon.” She does not know if the last part is true, but it gives her comfort to think it. She knows who she is.
If she willed herself back into being, she wonders if she can will herself away again.
She looks at the house one last time. She smiles and closes her eyes. She feels herself begin to drift in the sunshine.
Drifting away in the warm sunshine.
Her father’s smiling face in the warm sunshine, tears glistening like liquid prisms in the sunlight.
dark…
dark…
I…
dark.
THE END
PRECIPICE OF INSANITY by Frank A. Schury
The sun was warm on his face and the sound of a woodpecker working diligently nearby filled his ears. He was unsuccessful at his first attempt to open his eyes; his eyelids were heavy (were they taped shut?) and opening them didn’t seem to be worth the effort. Yet the bird’s activity was unusually manic, so he sat up and decided to take a look.
Daggers pierced his retinas, lodging themselves into the frontal lobe of his brain. Massaging his temples caused some of them
to detach, reducing screaming agony to a more tolerable ache. His hands also felt heavy, more than usual, and he began to wonder if he’d done something crazy the night before.
What the hell happened?
When the pain in his head downscaled to an ache, he stood up and breathed deeply, taking inventory of his body. Tingling impulses travelled through his limbs and set up shop in his joints. Fatigue was a wet overcoat, suppressing any movement. Did he drink last night? Drugs? The same haze that caused his disorientation, also made organized thought difficult.
He was an observer as two feet took small steps carrying him out of the room and into the hallway. The bird and the world it lived in would have to wait. Right now he needed water, cold water, to bring him out of his stupor. He made it to the bathroom door, which executed a spin before standing upright again. When he reached for the doorknob, it broke off in his hands. He looked down and then his eyes tightly. The image did not change when he opened them again.
His name is Tommy Meathooks Manning, a nickname suitable for a person who could palm a basketball at the age of seven. He was proud of this label as it demanded a level of respect. The bullies in the playground never wanted those hands on them, so he was left alone. However, it was never easy finding winter gloves or a dress shirt that he could fit his hands into and through. His hands were always big, real big, but not the size they were now. These could be categorized as a deformity. The palms were thick, calloused, and at least 12 inches across, the fingers long and sinewy. He flipped them over, studying them as if they were an alien life form.
Whatever happened to him last night caused some physical afflictions that a few aspirins wouldn’t chase away. Mentally, he felt normal with the exception of some disorientation and memory loss of the day before. Hell, he’d partied before and had worse hangovers- but malformed hands
Tightness in his stomach warned him of an impending doom. The silence in the house was also disconcerting. It was Sunday morning, this he somehow knew, yet his mother wasn’t in the kitchen battling his father over different sections of the newspaper.
Where were they?
A muffled sound emanated from the closed door in the empty kitchen opposite the bathroom. Walking toward it, he noted the stove was cool to the touch and the coffeemaker dark and silent. This time when he turned the knob, he did so with only his pinky. The appendage circled around the knob and overlapped itself. The door opened with a groan. The sound became louder as he descended the stairs into the cool embrace of the cellar that smelled of old oil and rubber. At the bottom, immediately to the right, was his father’s work area, seldom used and often forgotten. Handy, his father wasn’t.
Yet, there he was hunched over the bench, beads of sweat across the back of his neck with a large, growing stain on the collar. His blue cardigan complimented the sharply creased tan slacks that he wore. “Sunday Duds” is what he called them. His father always had unique ways of describing ordinary things.
Slowly his father’s hand rose above the shoulder and then came down with a heavy thud as the hammer head connected with something less solid. There was a wet, squishing sound when it was yanked away.
He was afraid but quietly stepped closer. The knot in his stomach worsened and alarms blared. His heart quickened and every cell in his body was on alert, chasing the remnants of drowsiness away.
He was close when his father turned around to face him.
Damp, grey hair was plastered to his face and his glasses were askew. He’d suffered from cataracts from an early age, and often joked about being blind without his “Coke Bottles. “In fact, the pair was normal sized, but his father liked to kid about them, more than likely to trivialize his insecurities of having to wear them all the time.
These were clown glasses, oversized, red framed, with thick lenses. The eyes behind them were crossed, and would have seemed comical if not for the tint of madness there. Tommy followed the descent of the hammer until it landed on someone’s head. It was in a vice; brain matter had spilled down the side of the face and a tongue licked vigorously at the goo. The one remaining eye regarded him.
“Nice day out Tommy but don’t forget a jacket.” Bubbles formed on his mother’s lips from spit mixed with blood and a darker liquid. She’d been hog-tied with electrical wiring.
His father turned back to the work at hand, preparing to deal another blow. “Have a good one, son.” By now, the tool was an extension of his arm, covered in a mixture of skull fragments and tissue.
When Tommy backed away, his heel caught the edge of a paint can and he stumbled. Only when he felt the first step behind him did he turn and bound up the stairs. It was difficult to breath and his legs felt like lead, but his only thought was to get out of the house. By the time he reached the porch, he was panting and the pain in his head had regained its intensity. A construction worker was operating a jackhammer, which didn’t help. He reached into his jean pockets but his cell phone was not there and there was no way that he was going back into the house to get it. Instead, he would call the cops by using the worker’s phone.
It was only after stepping on a hard rock that he realized he did not have shoes on. With a trembling hand, he rubbed the bottom of his foot where red dots had soaked thought the white cotton of the sock. He wore only a tee shirt but did not feel cold. The noise became louder as he limped around the corner off Willow onto Buck Street. There was no construction site, no workers shouting obscenities over loud equipment. The only soul was a woman wearing a ruffled brown coat trying to open her trunk.
Odd, how shock can distort things.
He stepped closer, his hands balled up into giant fists. The woman turned out not to be a woman at all and the coat were feathers.
The woodpecker stood at least four feet tall and had cut halfway through the rear bumper of a Buick. It paused to look at him, with eyes dark as coal, before slamming its beak into the crumpled chrome. Behind it lie an oak blocking the sidewalk, its thick trunk severed in half.
A chuckle escaped, the first sign of hysteria breaking the surface. He struggled to control his fraying nerves, as he walked and then jogged back onto his street. There was no sign of a pursuit but adrenaline coursing through his body kept him moving at a rapid pace. If he was dreaming, then he was surely wrapped in bed covers, drenched in sweat right now. Yet, he’d never experienced a dream so real, so vivid, and sensations so sharp. His head was now clear. He could feel the breeze and the rays of the sun; the scent of Ms. Williams’ lilac bushes filled his nostrils. Such a dream seemed well beyond his limited imagination.
He followed that scent absently making his way up a walkway that was bordered on each side by green grass and flower beds. His neighbor was long in the tooth and didn’t hear well, so he ignored the doorbell and knocked. The sound reverberated through the home, causing the front picture window to shatter. The door hinges pulled off the frame and the wood spilt. He muttered in disgust, dropping his oversized hands at his side. With the window gone, he could see clearly into the living room. It was old lady style; a flower-patterned chair faced a turn-dial, cabinet television. Plastic flowers in a clay vase sat atop a white fringed doily. He yelled out her name, very loud, several times but the home remained silent other than the creak of what was left of the door hanging from the frame. Panic was replaced by the equally uncomfortable feeling of isolation.
He was about to leave when something drew his attention to the corner of the porch. It was a wraparound style, and Ms. Williams would often sit out on it, watching her pies cool. She was quite the dedicated baker, and the pies weren’t bad with the exception of the occasional egg shell and fruit pit.
There they were lined up, sitting in pans on ledges. For a brief instance, there was the reassuring touch of normalcy. That is until he noticed the last pie that sat away from the others on a coffee table. This one had the circumference and depth of a tire. It began to rise and fall, a breathing creature encased in crust and pan.
In-out. In-out.
It infl
ated well beyond the table and split down the center, a volcano of red that resembled cherries but something more, spilling out from the openings. He started to giggle as fingers worked their way up through the thickness of the contents. A face followed, cherries placed where the eyes should have been. An arm was unnaturally contorted behind Ms. Williams’ head.
Just a dream… just a dream… just like watching a movie, a comedy. Enjoy the film.
But the professor part of his brain could not convince the fight or flight caveman of the reassurance. Dream or not, he was experiencing this and therefore it was a reality. Who was to say the normal life he remembered wasn’t the dream?
Deal with the Now, was the caveman’s cry. It sounded like good advice, especially with his twisted, cherry filled neighbor crawling toward him.
He began to run, and then stopped abruptly in the middle of his lawn. He had no plan. Thus far, there was mayhem at every turn, no doubt the product of his own insanity. What would happen if he gave in, let himself get ripped apart? Would he wake up with a smile and a boner?
The Now, the caveman whispered.
He looked up at the house where he’d learned to walk, celebrated holidays and birthdays with his family, and woke up to his first hangover. Now it seemed cold even in the sun, the front windows were frowning eyes. As he watched, it began to hum and then flicker. It seemed more a hologram than solid as it melted into its foundation. There was no grinding of brick or cracking of plaster. Merely, it dissolved, until it was no more than a tiled roof sitting atop a concrete slab. This took a matter of seconds.
Like the witch from the Wizard of Oz. That turned out to be a dream, didn’t it?
For the first time, he was convinced that what he was seeing was the product of alcohol numbing his receptors and disrupting his REM sleep cycle. He made a note to cut down on the drinking if not quitting altogether. It was with this thought in mind that he was struck by something solid and there were colors in small bursts as he floated away.
9 Tales Told in the Dark 10 Page 10