by H. P. Bayne
The power was still on—small blessings—but the basement had never been well-lit, the fixtures placed too far apart and subject to coatings of dust, which dulled their already meagre light. Dez opened the door to the basement and flipped the switch on the left wall. Darkened stairs illuminated enough to keep a person from missing a step and breaking their neck.
Rallying what was left of his nerves, Dez started for the top step. Ordinarily, Sully took the lead where the biggest threat was paranormal. But he wasn’t in a good state; Dez could tell by looking at him. Sully was trying, but he’d been subjected to too much. In the course of one day, he’d been triggered back to his abusive childhood, forced to watch the moments leading to their father’s murder, and faced down an entity described by one person as a demon—a demon that had apparently seen Sully as an enemy even as a child. Any one of those things would be too much for most people.
All three together, and Sully was still standing. A hand touched his arm, and he swung his head over his shoulder. Sully regarded him with a barely there smile. Dez moved to the side as Sully jutted his chin and edged around him, taking the lead down the basement steps.
Dez smiled at the top of Sully’s head as he followed.
A second light switch was located at the base of the stairs, and Sully flipped that one next, using the flashlight to do so. Sully had mentioned the feel of fingers closing over his on the third floor. As far as Dez was concerned, he wasn’t directly touching another light switch in this house he couldn’t fully see.
Doing little to reveal the wide space around them, the bulbs did illuminate the massive quantity of boxes, furniture, gardening supplies and various junk piles surrounding them. Like the attic, everything in the area was piled around the stairs, as if the people who had moved it were afraid to venture farther. Much of what Dez could make out at first glance appeared to be from the past decade or two. They’d come searching for things significantly pre-dating Lowell and Kindra. Those things would likely be found farther in.
“Great,” Dez muttered. He stepped to Sully’s side and peered down at him. His pallor was obvious. “You okay?”
Sully spared him a glance before returning his gaze to the junk around them. “Bit dizzy.”
“Don’t fall over,” Dez advised. “Lots of stuff to hit your head on.”
Sully didn’t reply, instead pressing forward, deeper into the basement.
Dez followed, eyes fixing on every vaguely shadowed spot. There were many, and he turned his head more often than keeping it straight, until he was slightly dizzy himself.
“If you were a ledger, where would you be?” he muttered.
“Given it’s us looking, probably wouldn’t exist,” Sully said.
Dez managed a quiet chuckle.
The basement was unfinished. Brick had been laid, cement poured and lighting installed. An area off to the right had been kitted out as a wine cellar. But no one had ever put wine on the shelves—at least not in recent years—and the floors and walls remained bare. Everywhere not covered with someone’s junk was awash with grey. Cobwebs littered the corners and dust had settled everywhere else.
Clearly, no one bothered much with the basement when it came to cleaning.
An archway lay ahead. Dez had been down here one time and one time only, many years ago. The visit had been quick and ended almost before it began. He’d never made it past the archway—had no idea what the other side held.
He wasn’t keen to find out.
Sully, still ahead of him, moved slowly but steadily toward the opening, leaving Dez with little choice but to follow.
“Are we sure there’s a point to this?” Dez asked.
“Nope. But we don’t have a lot of other options if we want to lay this to rest.”
Whether a response to the choice of words or something else, an ice-cold breeze swept past Dez, its bite making him jump.
“Where’d that come from? We didn’t leave the door open, right?”
“It’s not the wind.”
That was about all Dez wanted to know.
The space they were in, Dez guessed, made up much of the width of the main floor and part of its length. No one had bothered to drywall this space; a series of heavy wooden support beams stood where walls could be erected. The archway revealed a brick wall close behind, suggesting a hallway. Sully reached it first and played the flashlight down each direction before reaching to the left and pressing a button to turn on the lights. The hall lit up, as dimly as the large room they’d left behind.
Sully peered up at Dez. “We need to go left.”
“Why left?”
Sully shrugged. All the answer Dez was going to get.
He trailed behind Sully as they headed down the hall. They walked some distance before they found a doorway, this one leading into a room on the left. Sully located another light switch inside. The room—brick walls and a partially sunken dirt floor—was completely bare, but Sully nonetheless took several steps inside.
“What is it?” Dez hissed.
Sully didn’t answer. After two more steps, he stopped. No more than a couple of seconds passed before he wobbled.
He reached out a hand as if to grab onto something to stay upright. Dez filled the void, stepping forward and letting Sully prop himself against him.
“Sully, talk to me.”
“I need to get out of this room.”
“So let’s go.”
“I can’t see.”
“What do you mean you can’t see?”
“I mean I can’t see, Dez! Everything’s gone black!”
Dez’s heart thudded against his ribs. The panic in Sully’s last statement was palpable, enough to drive Dez near the edge himself. He forced himself past shock so he could act. He grabbed Sully around the middle and lifted him, setting him down only once they were back in the hallway. Dez pressed him back against the wall, then set his flashlight on the ground so he could hold onto him with both hands. Sully had squeezed his eyes shut as if to persuade himself he was in control of his inexplicable blindness.
“Open your eyes.”
No response.
Dez moved his hands, laying them either side of Sully’s face. “Open your eyes, Sull. Look at me.”
Slowly, the eyes opened. Dez enjoyed a moment of shared relief as Sully exhaled heavily and dropped his forehead against Dez’s chest.
“Goddammit,” Sully muttered. “Thought I’d gone blind.”
“What the hell, man? That’s never happened before, has it?”
Sully shook his head against Dez’s coat before drawing back to focus up at Dez. “No. It hasn’t. But I’ve never been anywhere like that before.”
“Like what? There’s nothing in there.”
“Didn’t you sense anything about it?”
“I was kind of too focused on you to be worried about an empty room.”
Sully turned his head, eyes fixing back in the direction of the room. “I think other people have sensed it. That’s why no one’s gone in there. It’s a vortex.”
“Did you say vortex?”
Sully nodded.
“Sounds made up, man.”
“A gateway then. To the other side.”
Dez narrowed his eyes as he studied him He was considering whether Sully had lost his mind in there along with his sight. “You mean, like what Raiya talked about?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
Dez took a step back and crossed his arms. “O-kay.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“I’m trying to get my head around it. Raiya said you open doorways yourself. You’ve never been impacted by one before. You sure as hell have never gone friggin’ blind.”
“I don’t think it’s that kind of door. I think this one goes somewhere else.”
Dez tried for a smirk but it dropped away before he managed it fully. “You mean to hell, don’t you? You think this is a portal to hell.”
“I don’t know if I believe in hell. But I think it’s
maybe like Raiya said. Spirits get sorted on the other side. Most go to a good place, but not all of them. The thing upstairs, I think it came out of this vortex or whatever. It’s strongest on the upper floors because it’s trying to stay as far away from here as possible.”
“So why the whole blind thing?”
Sully shrugged. “No idea. Maybe it’s just that there are things I’m not meant to see.”
To Dez, the reasoning sounded weak, but who was he to argue? All he knew was he wanted the hell out of this basement. He bent and picked up his flashlight. “We should go.”
“We haven’t found anything useful down here yet.”
Dez grasped Sully’s arm and towed him back down the hall. “While I’ll agree a portal to hell isn’t what I’d call useful, I’d rather not spend any more time trying to find something that is. I’m thinking SUV. Now.”
Sully tugged against him, but the move only made Dez hold on more firmly.
“Dez, stop. Listen to me. We can’t leave this doorway open down here, okay? It’s not safe. Not for us, not for anyone.”
Sully tugged again. While Dez didn’t release him, he stopped to face him.
Sully seized the opportunity to continue. “People are dying here, Dez. Violently. And I think it’s because of whatever’s spilling out of that hole. We need to put the thing upstairs back inside, and I need to figure out how to seal it up. It’s poison. Not just to ghosts but to the living.”
“How exactly are you going to seal it? You got wind of some psychic TNT we can get our hands on or something?”
“No. I don’t know. But I have to try something.”
“Forget it, Sully. No way.”
“Dad died because of that thing.”
The words hit Dez like a douse of cold water. His breath caught in his throat as the image of his father’s body on a hospital gurney flashed into his brain.
The anger flared hot and strong. With nowhere else for it to go, Dez glowered at Sully. “Are you telling me Lowell’s not responsible for what he did?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I think this thing uses people who have already gone bad. Bill Garver was a horrible person. So are Lowell and Kindra. I don’t think it creates evil people, Dez. I think it feeds off them and fuels them to do even worse. Which is why we need to stop it. At some point, someone else is going to move in here, someone with the capacity to do bad things. Sealing this up could save a life.”
Dez stared at Sully for what felt like forever before uttering a long groan. “God, man, sometimes I wish your moral code was closer to a psychopath’s than a saint’s.”
Sully insisted the key to the gateway might lie in the history of one of the families who had lived here. Basement and attic seeming the likeliest places to find remnants of them, which meant Dez was stuck down here for the time being.
At Sully’s insistence, he placed another call to Raiya.
“You found a what?” she said. “A doorway to the dark side? You’re kidding.”
“I wish I was,” Sully said. He was speaking while digging through the contents of a bureau they’d found in a room on the opposite side of the basement hall.
Dez had pulled out a box from the bureau’s bottom drawer and had it open atop a dusty table, the phone next to the box. “Sully thinks the doorway or whatever needs to be sealed up before we leave. I guess I can’t disagree, but neither of us have a single clue how to do it. I mean, how does one of these things even get opened?”
“Well, as I mentioned, psychics can open them. But regular people can too. I mentioned the coven I’d been in where they played around with some dark stuff—the Black Candle. You’ll remember hearing about it.”
Dez would never forget.
“Fellow witches messed around with Ouija boards and spirit writing, attempts to reach the other side. They used spells they found in a Book of Shadows, the origin of which was unclear to me. I advised them against playing with those things. They can be safe in the right hands and with the right protections, but they aren’t for the inexperienced. If someone in that house ever played with those things, it’s certainly possible they’re responsible for opening the door.”
“Uh, Dez?”
Dez peered over to where Sully was turning slowly from the bureau, something long and flat in his hands. He tilted it for Dez to see.
“And we’ve got a Ouija board here,” Dez said for Raiya’s benefit, statement coming through a groan.
“I guess you have your answer,” Raiya said.
Sully replaced the item and approached the phone. “What do I do?”
“I don’t share your gift, so anything I say will be nothing but my best suggestion. But the first thing is to have confidence in yourself. You’re strong enough to do this, Sully. Believe it. You’ll need to centre yourself and focus. Focus on the doorway. See yourself sealing it shut.”
“What about the thing upstairs? Any suggestions on how to get it back inside?”
“I wish I could help more. I think of doorways and entities in the spirit world as being similar to doors and people in our world. Doors are open and shut fairly easily, with a little force needed in some instances. Which is why it’s so easy for non-psychics to open spiritual doorways. But think of spirits like regular people. Maneuvering them through doorways when they don’t want to go, that’s a real challenge. Like people, entities have will, consciousness and power. If they want to stay somewhere, it takes will and power to move them. Now, you have ways of doing it. We all know that. I’m just not sure I want to see you try.”
Sully nodded. “I’m not sure I do either.”
Dez’s box contained a large number of loose greeting cards, stationary supplies and unused fabric—all old stuff, if he was any judge. He pulled the fabric away and found a pile of haphazardly piled letters. Using the flashlight, he scanned the postmark on one.
“Nineteen twenty-seven,” he said. “These letters have to have been here since around the time the house was built.”
Pushing through them, he located a series of photographs. Nothing of family he could see. Rather, they were of individuals—mostly the same individual. A man, dressed in a long, black robe, hair falling to his shoulders, a heavy beard concealing much of his lower face. It was the eyes that drew Dez, though. He’d seen those eyes on a number of criminals he’d tangled with over the years, the ones he’d once heard a lawyer describe as the “five percenters.” Ninety-five percent of people in trouble were regular people who had fallen down in life and struggled to get back up. Five percent would have chosen the life, with or without cause. Those were the people whose souls were dark, who savoured evil the way most people enjoyed a good meal or a new vehicle. Dez had looked into the eyes of the five percenters and seen nothing. No feeling, no life, no soul.
The man in the photo had eyes like that.
Sully appeared at his shoulder. “Who is that?”
Dez dropped the photo back in the box. He had an overwhelming desire to seal it up, place it deep inside the bureau and try to forget he’d ever seen it.
“Who’s who?” came a voice from the phone. Dez had been so caught up in the photo, he’d forgotten she was still there.
“Nothing,” Dez said. “Creepy photo.”
Sully lifted it from the box. “It’s not nothing.” He met Dez’s eye. “I haven’t seen him, so I’ve got nothing to back this up. But I think this is the thing upstairs.”
“I thought you guys said the thing upstairs wasn’t human.”
Sully smiled as he held up the picture. “Does this guy look human to you?” He turned back to the phone. “Do you think it’s possible some people are born without souls?”
“Everyone is born with something, a life force enough to give them what they need to live and breathe. But I think sometimes regular souls don’t step in in time. Sometimes, something dark gets there first.”
“That’s what this is, then,” Sully said. “This man, whoever he is, I think he housed the thing upstairs. When he
died, it was released. Maybe it went through a doorway to the other side, maybe it didn’t. But I think someone at some point opened the door and it found its way back home.” Sully stared at the photo. “Putting this guy back in is going to be a bitch.”
13
In life, his name had been Dunstan Craik.
Sully learned that detail from letters found within the box Dez had been digging through. He and Dez also learned Craik thought of himself as a necromancer.
The house had been built and lived in by a couple from England named Thomas and Beth Montrose. Both in their fifties at the time, they’d grown up in Victorian London while spiritualism was all the rage. The Ouija board had, no doubt, belonged to them. Likely also a couple of packs of Tarot cards and what appeared to be a crystal ball.
“These people were into all sorts of dark stuff,” Dez said.
“It’s only dark in the wrong hands,” Sully said. “Or inexperienced ones.”
Through the letters, Sully was able to put together a pretty good picture of what had happened. The couple had apparently written to friends in their former country, telling them about the experiences they’d had with the other side. Gradually, they began feeling the presence of spirits and eventually documented outright signs of hauntings. That much was evident based on the replies the woman of the house received from a friend or sister back home.
One letter pointed to what might have been the turning point, when the Montroses’ dabbling in spiritualism went from exciting to terrifying.
My dearest Beth,
The things you write of, I confess, terrify me. I know you and Thomas have always professed a certain fascination for the unseen world, but I implore you, please, stop. Spirits do not belong on this side of the veil. The things happening to you in your home are terrible. Please, seek help to rid you of these things—before something terrible happens.
I fear for you and Thomas if you do not.
Then came the letter signifying the alteration of the entire history of the property and the families who had lived here since.