The Proctor Hall Horror

by Bill Thompson

  “That’s brazen,” Landry commented as her drink arrived, and they clinked glasses in a toast to living in the same town after long-distance dating all these years.

  “Like I said, he’s full of himself. Anyway, I decided since they came all that way, I’d let them go inside. Oh, they noticed your camera equipment. That got everyone excited.”

  “Yeah, since we’re going back sometime this week, I told the crew to leave it.”

  “One of them is a shy girl who’s a clairvoyant. Something in an upstairs bedroom spooked the hell out of her.”

  Landry said, “We’ll look into that bedroom. I’ll ask Henri if he knows anything. Wonder if it might be Noah Proctor’s.”

  She shrugged off a shiver. “I saw Noah. Or an apparition. Sitting on the stairs, looking at me. It scared me, and I think I dropped the keys. I can’t find them now.”

  “I’ll get them when Henri and I go back up. No big deal; we’ve had no trouble since we posted the no-trespassing sign.”

  His phone rang. He looked at the screen, smiled and answered. “Speak of the devil. Cate had an interesting experience at Proctor Hall this morning. I’ll tell you about it when we get together.” He paused a moment, raised his eyebrows, and looked at Cate, who nodded. “We’re at Muriel’s. Come join us for lunch.”

  Henri arrived, hugged Cate, greeted Landry, and took a seat. He ordered a glass of Châteauneuf-du-Pape and listened as Cate described her escapade at Proctor Hall earlier that day.

  The psychic girl interested him, but his questions were about Noah Proctor. Was it him or an apparition? He wanted to know how Noah looked — his appearance, clothing and the like.

  “I only saw him for a moment,” she said. “He looked…well, normal, I guess you’d say. His eyes scared me, like he was burning a hole into mine.”

  “How old did he appear to be? If he’s alive, he’d be around fifty now.”

  She shook her head. “The person I saw was a teenager. Loose-fitting shirt and pants. Sad. In just those few seconds I sensed a deep sadness.”

  “You saw his spirit, but I wonder if Noah’s still alive.”

  She worked for Henri, and she apologized for allowing the students inside. No harm done this time, he said, adding that it couldn’t happen again. Something in the house worried him.

  “Proctor Hall is unique. It’s unlike any I’ve come across in my thirty-plus years investigating the paranormal. There are dark forces at work. I sensed them the other day, and they’re malevolent beyond imagination. The house has secrets that someone intends to keep hidden away. People assume the Noah Proctor story is all there is to know about the place, but I’m certain other things — evil things — lurk in there. They might predate the massacre, but perhaps they arose because of it.”

  Cate sat speechless and surprised at her lack of judgment. She’d opened the house to four young strangers and gone inside herself. According to Henri, the place ranked high among supernatural venues. She felt nothing unusual, but April did. And then there was Noah sitting there on his stair, watching her.

  “I can’t say it was Noah,” she said. “I’ve never even seen a picture. Perhaps it was someone else, such as another trespasser. What’s your take, Henri?”

  “The person on the stairs was Noah.”

  “How can you be certain?”

  Henri said, “Because the other day when Landry, Julien and I were at the house, I saw him too. In the same place, wearing the same clothing. The person you saw was Noah in 1963 at the time of the massacre.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Andy had no predetermined plan for his nocturnal visit to Proctor Hall. He wanted to show Marisol and the others that he should be team leader. If there was anything to the spooky stories about Proctor Hall, he’d find out. If not, he’d debunk the mystery. Either way, he’d save the day and take the credit. He’d be done by daybreak and report his findings at the team meeting tomorrow morning.

  Crickets and cicadas buzzed in the live oak trees as he scaled the gate and walked down the lane. A half-moon hung in the cloudless sky, providing plenty of light for his trek to the house.

  He paused as it came into view. Is that a light moving across the upstairs windows? When he looked again, he saw nothing, and he blamed it on the moon’s reflection.

  He’d planned to break a window, but he found a key ring the lady must have dropped on the porch. As he stepped inside, he heard a deep, resonant sound — a bassoon-like hum as if a motor was purring along somewhere deep in the house.

  He knew the staircase lay just a few steps away, but the shadows hid the steps where Noah once sat. He directed the flashlight on his phone around the entryway, and as his beam passed the stairs, he noticed something there. When he looked again, the stairs were empty.

  Might as well start where the shit hit the fan. He used the light to navigate the inky blackness of the hall past the hall tree that toppled the last time, and walked into the sitting room.

  The first thing he noticed was the fetid, offensive air, evoking memories of a smell he couldn’t quite recall. He played the light around the room and found everything just as before. He ran his fingers over the wood mantel where the Proctor heads had been. Something behind him rustled softly. He jerked around, but the narrow beam of light revealed nothing.

  There in the shadows, moving back and forth in the doorway! Is that something?

  On edge and wary now, Andy swept the beam too fast once again. He passed over something — a figure, but perhaps just a lamp standing in a corner. He cried out as a shadow moved across his beam of light, but he decided it had been the moonlight. Now something was behind him, over there by the mantel. His heart beating hard, he turned.

  Nothing. Nothing except a heavy sigh, long and despondent, from the hallway behind him. Or perhaps from that corner. He jerked the light here and there and felt something strange in his hand. The light revealed he’d cut himself, and there was a lot of blood. Strange that he felt no pain.

  There came another sound and another hazy movement in the dark. The room filled with things he sensed but couldn’t see. Something touched his arm while another brushed the nape of his neck. And that smell, a hundred times stronger now — repulsive and overpowering.

  He remembered the stench from an autumn day long ago. Hunting deer with his father. They’d come upon a bloated cow the coyotes had killed. The rotten, nasty stench of a corpse.

  Andy ran toward the door as he struggled to breathe. He sucked in huge gasps, his head began to spin, and he hyperventilated. When he lost consciousness, he fell onto that same couch where the Proctor bodies once sat in a row.

  He opened his eyes and looked at his watch. It was a little past one; he hadn’t been out for long. He recalled the repugnant smell and fainting, but the odor and the blood on his hand were gone.

  Am I dreaming?

  Searching for his phone, his fingers ran across soft fabric. He recalled fainting on the couch, but this was someplace else. He found the phone next to him, switched on the flashlight, and looked around. Filmy gauze was everywhere, as if he lay in a cage with walls of wispy cloth, lying on something plush and comfortable.

  Am I still in Proctor Hall?

  He touched the material with his left hand and pulled it aside. Now he understood where and what, but not how.

  I’m in a bedroom — in a four-poster bed with the netting people used in the old days to keep out mosquitoes. But how did I get here? I passed out in the parlor.

  Oh, hell! I’m in her room — the Proctor girl — the room that scared April so much the other day. I have to get out of here!

  Andy pushed up with both arms to extricate himself from the feathery mattress. The awful smell returned, and he realized something lay next to him in the plush bed. He turned the flashlight on.

  A body lay inches away from him. A girl, by the looks of the clothes, and so close he could touch it, but he had no desire to do that.

  Like that cow he and his dad found, she’d been dead a lon
g time.

  He thought his head would explode. He struggled to breathe as the room spun crazily. Then something snapped, and he began to laugh. A tinny cackle at first, then louder and louder until his maniacal howls resounded inside the netting and throughout the old house. Hahahahaha, he shrieked over and over until his throat turned raspy and dry.

  As he stood, he saw a lot more blood, this time on the pillow where she would rest her head.

  If she’d had one.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Andy didn’t show up for the Wednesday team meeting, and no one had spoken with him. Marisol texted and waited a few minutes before starting.

  The meeting ended with no word from Andy, which was unlike him. He wasn’t Mirasol’s favorite person — far from it — but she was concerned. She called this time, got voicemail, and asked him to check in.

  At the same time Marisol’s team met, Landry drove to Thibodaux. Henri and Channel Nine’s head photographer Phil Vandegriff rode with him. Today they intended to shoot video in every room of Proctor Hall.

  When they pulled up to the gate, they found a black pickup blocking the road. Landry honked a few times, but no one came. He parked behind it, unlocked the gate, and they walked to the house.

  Landry found Cate’s key ring with the house key inserted in the lock. They stepped inside, and Landry put a finger to his lips. Someone was upstairs — maybe more than one. They heard indistinct words, laughter and dry coughs. As they ascended the stairway, the sounds became clearer.

  They reached the top of the stairs and walked into the hall. “Who’s there?” Henri shouted, and the noise stopped. Four bedroom doors stood open.

  “Who’s here?” Landry said.

  “Here. We’re in here.” More hoarse coughs followed.

  They ran to a bedroom at the end of the hall and found a young man sitting on the floor. Next to him was an old Victorian four-poster bed shrouded in opaque netting. Landry figured the boy was in his early twenties; from the way his eyes bulged and he laughed, Landry thought he was in shock.

  “Who are you?” Henri asked.

  The boy’s reply came as a throaty growl, “That’s not as important as finding out who’s in there.” He pointed to the bed and flashed a crazed smile.

  Landry jerked the gauze back and found a plush down mattress and oversized pillows. “There’s nobody in here.”

  Andy stopped laughing. “That’s odd. A girl with no head lay there earlier this morning.”

  “Who are you?”

  He furrowed his brow, seemingly stumped by the innocuous question. He thought for a moment and said, “I don’t know. I was Andy Arnaud when I came, but things seem completely different now. Could I be someone else?”

  On a hunch, Landry called Julien Girard, who confirmed Andy was a member of the team investigating Proctor Hall. When Landry described the scene, Julien asked to speak with the boy.

  “He’s babbling nonsense and laughing uncontrollably. There’s no use trying to talk to him. Tell me this — what color is Andy’s hair?”

  Wondering why he asked such a strange question, Julien said Andy had a full head of black hair. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because it isn’t black anymore. Now it’s as white as snow. Something traumatic happened to him — something monumental enough to change him physically as well as mentally. I hope we can find out what.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Harry Kanter had a problem, and that problem had a name.

  Landry Drake.

  “Why me?” he wondered as his boss tossed a file on his desk and said his friend the ghost hunter was in the middle of a new case.

  “I keep telling you he’s not my friend,” Kanter said, but the major shook his head. Nobody else on the state police force knew Landry, so the case was his.

  “You know who David Arnaud is, right?”

  He recognized the name. Anyone who watched TV knew it, because David Arnaud owned car dealerships all over south Louisiana. You couldn’t watch a football game or a sitcom or the news without getting invited to buy a car from Dealin’ Dave Arnaud.

  “Something weird happened to Arnaud’s kid inside an old house near Thibodaux. They found him babbling crazy shit about a dead body, his hair turned white within seconds — stuff that makes no sense.”

  “What’s the crime?”

  “Beats me. I can’t see where he committed a crime. If the kid broke in, then it could be trespassing. Regardless, we’re checking it out. I got a call from the top telling me to send somebody down there ASAP.”

  “The top? What the hell are you talking about? The governor’s office?”

  His boss nodded. “Dealin’ Dave has some influential friends.”

  “How does Landry play into this?”

  “Your friend the ghost hunter? He’s the one who found Dave’s son Andy stark raving mad inside Proctor Hall.”

  Harry didn’t call Landry his friend because that word didn’t describe their relationship. Landry was a colleague, someone Harry enjoyed working with. His first case involving the paranormal investigator had been at an abandoned insane asylum in Iberia Parish. Landry had called on him several times since then, and each case was more fascinating than the last.

  He checked out a sedan and drove with a young patrolman to Thibodaux. Per protocol, they stopped first at the sheriff’s office as a courtesy notice. The sheriff didn’t understand why they came at first. His deputy had been at the house for hours. Some kid had a problem at Proctor Hall, but there was no crime to investigate. When he heard the request came from the governor’s office, he was even more confused.

  “Nothing happened out there. I figure he got high on something,” the sheriff said. “Hallucinating, talking about seeing dead bodies, all that stuff. He’ll be fine when he comes down. What’s the big deal?”

  “You got me,” Harry admitted. “We’ll stop by the house and look around. Send someone along if you wish. Either way, I’ll stop by here before we head back to Baton Rouge.” The sheriff said he’d notify the deputy on the scene and await Harry’s report.

  “We meet again,” Harry said as he met Landry in the downstairs hallway. Landry brought him up to speed, and they agreed there was nothing to investigate.

  “Where’s the boy now?”

  “His mother picked him up an hour ago. I guess she took him home.”

  “What do you make of his hair turning white?”

  “People claim it can happen. It’s called Marie Antoinette syndrome because it’s reputed to have happened to her on the night before her execution. If I hadn’t seen it myself, I would never have believed it could happen, but there’s no doubt about it. His mother went to pieces when she saw him.”

  Harry asked about the boy’s story of a headless girl in the bed, and Landry gave him an abbreviated version of the Massacre at Proctor Hall. “Andy was studying the murders as part of a class at Tulane,” he added. “Consider this idea. It’s nothing but a theory, because we won’t learn the truth unless Andy tells us. I think he hallucinated about Noah’s dead sister to such an extent that the scene became real in his mind. He played a role in an event so horrifying that his mind short-circuited.”

  The sheriff’s assessment had been on target, and it jived with Landry’s. It looked like the boy got high at a haunted house he’d visited before, and had visions that screwed up his mind. He didn’t believe the white hair story. Could be the kid bleached it before he came. Or something else happened. People’s hair just didn’t turn colors because they had a little fright.

  While the young patrolman drove them back to Baton Rouge, Harry called Andy Arnaud’s mother as a courtesy. A psychiatrist friend of the family was at the house with Andy. The family shrink, Harry mused as he gave the lady his number and asked her to stay in touch. Back at headquarters, he reported to his boss, who called the state house. Crisis averted, everyone accounted for, and the fastest ending to an encounter with Landry Drake in history.

  Or so it appeared.

 
CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Henri’s story about finding Andy worried Julien. For years he’d sent students off on end-of-term projects, and until now nothing had gone wrong. This time, because of his selfish personal desires, he’d steered this team into danger — Proctor Hall.

  Understanding what might happen, he’d allowed them to go anyway. With full knowledge of the dark things there, he’d still encouraged them to take this project. His motive was to see if the team was clever enough to uncover the secrets inside, but this time his game backfired. Thank God the kid was alive. Unimaginable things might have happened at any moment; the consequences would have been disastrous for Julien.