I felt a tickling along my side as she entered me, and something akin to the feeling of extreme pleasure that one imagines animals feel in rutting – not the happiness or joy of human intercourse, but something altogether more instinctive, a driving force of nature within bestial necessity. I felt shame at the way my flesh seemed to open like the mouth of a river to this current of heat – And I felt the stinging warmth of the yellowjackets as she swam through my blood – It was a rush of barbed sensation.
She had, in essence, slipped me on like a glove.
I began shivering. A chill took over my body. I felt an absolute hatred from her, not the love I had expected, but anger, and fury. She was jealous that I had lived my life in the world. My own mother held jealousy for what I had been able to become. I had practically invited her into my body. Had practically wished her to be this close to me, as close as the dead can get to the living. Now that I felt her within me, her heart beating against mine, I didn’t feel the reunion of love and caring that I had wished. Instead, I felt the stings of the yellowjackets. Her love was venom. She began spitting obscenities at Pocket, railing at him for what he had done, she said, to the boy she had loved, screeching like an owl in some kind of pain, and with each cry that arose from my throat, I felt the icy stings followed by the heat of fury. She had truly been mad. Whether she was mad from birth, or whether my grandfather had driven her mad, or whether the house itself was a madness that had seeped into her – it didn’t matter now. Evil was evil, and she was part of it. She was the child and the woman and the teenaged girl and the creatures of shadow that she had brought into her abode as playmates for her incarceration.
That was all she wanted.
More spirits.
More souls to feed her furnace.
I felt her mind within my own, battling my memories, biting down on the succulent fruit of my brain as she spread her virus through all that I could remember. I experienced her life as if at the moment of her death in that tower room. I saw the child and the personalities within her, and the walls that had grown up around her, the rooms that her father had built and hidden her within.
At first, they were pure replicas of the other rooms in Harrow, but soon he had brought in the relics and had made rituals, had even sacrificed to ancient gods, all in order to keep her safe but within this labyrinth.
And then, I saw him.
My father. A boy who had just reached manhood, perhaps a few years older than Matilde, his dark hair long and wild, and his manner as unkempt as the dusky clothes he wore. I saw their love, their springtime love, their love so full of passion and hope, and how he came to her from the crypt, and brought her into daylight, where they made love; and where her shame increased when it was discovered that she was with child. My father was a man I had never formally met, but I had seen from a distance when I had been a boy. He had watched me carefully, I knew. He had never spoken to me, and now we would probably never meet.
The legend was that he had run off.
The story was that he was part Mahanowack Indian.
Perhaps my grandfather had even killed him, or had him killed, or paid him to leave. Perhaps the house had taken him.
The first caretaker of Harrow, Oliver Palliser, who, like me had another name: Hawk with Two-Souls.
They had been both young and in love, and even that bit of sunlight had been taken from her. And I witnessed – within her virulent memory – my own birth. I watched her fury and jealousy when I was passed to the parents who raised me, and I heard my second mother promise that “Esteban” would be my name.
Even that had not appeased my true mother, and she let out a keening wail. I felt my bones ache and grind as if they would, at any moment, break through my skin and tear away from muscle and tendon. I managed to shout – between her curses – “Get her out of me! She’s killing me! Shoot me, Pocket!”
9
I couldn’t see Pocket at all – my eyes seemed to be covered over with blood. Darkness clouded my vision further. I was trying to get her out of my body. I wanted this awful creature away from me.
She began laughing – or I began laughing – I knew not which – and she fought against Pocket with both arms – my arms! – and I tried with all my might to draw back, to let Pocket go, but she was scratching at him.
Her claws raked across his throat. I felt bits of his skin beneath my fingernails.
My mind could not get my body to stop its attack. I felt more helpless than ever before in my life. To be controlled my someone else, to be manipulated by a being that could not be fought, and yet, I knew, must be fought at all costs...
All costs.
She was a demon.
She was the Devil.
My body had become a wildcat’s, tearing at prey.
10
When it was over, I picked up the fallen torch.
She had left me, satisfied in some blood game I could not comprehend.
I felt as if I’d been beaten with a club, and wondered if I would ever leave this place alive. More frighteningly, I felt the pleasure, as if I had just been satisfied from some lustful embrace.
I could not bear to look at Pocket’s fallen body. I could not bear to look at what had become of his face. I just knew: Maggie could not be here. She had to get away.
I realized that she had kept screaming – that it had not let up, but had become a subliminal sound, as of running water or the cries of birds.
My mother’s spirit had blocked it when she had possessed me.
Maggie’s screams had become a hoarse bleating. She was weakening. I had to find her. I had to find her. If I died so that she might live, that was all right. If I could even save her soul from this madness, it would be enough. If we must die, I prayed, knowing that there had to be a merciful and just God even in the bowels of Harrow. If we must die, allow us peace. Allow us escape. Allow us heaven.
Anything that befell me would be all right, so long as Maggie escaped the Hell within Harrow.
11
I felt like a trapped animal, and heard the whispering of voices all around me.
I rushed chamber to chamber, hoping to follow the sound of Maggie’s cries.
They were weakening, and I prayed again and again to find her and save her before the others could get her. Before my mother would have me do to her what she did to Pocket.
That was my greatest terror now – that my mother would invade my being and wreak further havoc and murder upon Maggie. I knew my mother’s jealousy now. I knew her damning love.
I could not let this touch Maggie, who was an innocent. Maggie, whom I loved. Maggie – the woman I would not let this house touch. Not let Matilde Gravesend hold in her bloody embrace.
12
I followed Maggie’s screams, which had trickled to a croaking shout, back to the great tomb of Egypt.
I carried my torch along the walls, through the chamber, overturning the Anubis figures, looking in each wall recess for the trap in which she’d been caught. And then, dread flowed within my body as if my blood had turned to ice.
When I worked up the courage, I turned, and looked at the great mummy case, with its carved ancient Queen on its surface. Maggie had been put inside the sarcophagus.
She was meant to be buried alive there.
13
I leaned the torch against the great statue near the sarcophagus, and pulled at the lid. It was sealed shut, but I heard her within. “Help me, oh god, someone,” she gasped, her voice all but snuffed.
“I’m here Maggie. I’m here,” I said, my fingers raw and bleeding as I fought the edge of the lid, trying to pry it open.
I glanced about for some tool, but there was nothing that I could use as a lever. I remembered the obsidian dagger in one of the rooms down the path.
“I need to get something to help,” I said.
“No, please, don’t leave me,” Maggie pleaded from within.
“I have to. I’ll be back. You’ll see,” but even as I said this, tears streamed
down my face as I looked upon the carved figure, imagining Maggie beneath.
“They’re inside here. They’re already inside here. Crawling on me. Please. Ethan. Don’t, Ethan, don’t, please,” she said. Her voice finally faded, as I wept, as I debated in my head, as I scratched at the lid of the sarcophagus, trying desperately to release her.
I grabbed the torch back up and ran down the corridor, passing through the catacombs, to the further room.
The dagger was there. I picked it up, and turned back to the corridor I’d just left.
I’d get her out, I knew.
We’d get out of this place, and go out into the world again.
It was only a few more seconds to run back down in the shadows.
A few more seconds.
I ran as fast as I could, stumbling along the way, passing Pocket’s body, passing the feeling of my mother, there, watching me, reaching out to grab me with her fury.
But I had escaped her. I knew I had. She could not have me, and she was not going to keep us in that place. “We don’t belong here!” I shouted. “You were in love once! You know! My father loved you! You loved him! It was wrong to imprison you here! It was wrong to take me away from you! But you don’t need us! Let us go, mother!” I shouted with a belief in the insanity around me, and I felt her linger nearby.
She would leave us alone. I knew she would. She must. She was my mother. She was the spirit of my mother. She had been human once. She had loved. She must understand...
But when I arrived back in that chamber, I had already lost.
14
The mummy case was open.
Matilde lay back within it, her skin pale, her body shivering. Shiny beetles crawled along her arms, and yellowjackets swarmed along her fiery hair. Her eyes had turned up into their sockets so that only the whites of her eyes showed.
My mother was inside her.
“She will always be with us,” my mother said, forcing Maggie’s lips open like a perverse puppeteer. Her voice was halting, and she stumbled through the words as if Maggie was still there, somewhere, fighting against her. “Your love. Your love. Gone. Esteban. Stay with. With me. Wait with me.” Her voice was like the scraping of a rake against stone.
15
Too late for Maggie, I thought.
She’s with them. For all I knew, she had been dead from the moment the house had taken her.
For all I knew, I was already damned to Hell with them. Maggie was part of the nightmare, and part of Matilde, and part of Harrow.
And then my mother’s voice came from her beautiful lips, and the languages poured from her – foreign tongues I had never before heard – and then the words, the nastiest words I had ever imagined, the words that invoke the ugliness of human existence, the words that, like a spell of evil, curse all who hear them.
They were about lust and appetite and the predatory beast of sex, and the voice was like a little girl’s, and it was all I could do to not shout for her to stop.
I approached her, kneeling down beside the sarcophagus, and pressed my hand over her mouth to shut her up.
16
I wanted to release her from this torment, you see. I wanted her to escape the house that had drawn her down into its bowels. It was my fault. It was all my fault for even allowing her in the house.
Allowing her to be taken by the house and the spirits inside it, the shadows that could not be stopped, the darkness that spread like diseased roots beneath Harrow.
A demon was inside her now – a spirit of darkness possessed her, and that is why I put my hand gently at first over her mouth and nostrils, to stop it, to send – if I had to – the devil himself – back to Hell and away from the soul of Maggie Barrow, my sweet Maggie Barrow, who I could not watch suffer so.
To release her.
The demon within her struggled for a time, and its talons flailed out at me, trying to draw my hands from her face, but I kept them locked over her nose and mouth and wept as the beast struggled and beat ferociously against me –
And still I held fast.
But even with my hand over her mouth, her voice came through, and she was sucking at the palm of my hand, trying to draw me into her mouth.
My mother was using my own flesh against me.
My hand began to blister with icy breath.
I didn’t know what to do.
She had killed Maggie, and now she was going to keep her imprisoned in this evil place.
I had to do something to get my mother out of her body. To get that evil away from Maggie.
To keep Maggie safe.
Somehow.
To make it right.
To make the ungodly leave the temple of her body. I reached for the dagger with my free hand. I brought it up to her heart.
The yellowjackets had begun to swarm there, along her breast.
They crawled up the dark knife to my fingers and hand and wrist. I pressed down into her heart, to release the diabolical spirit of Matilde Gravesend from this innocent body.
And free Maggie’s soul.
You understand? To free her soul. Just as she went limp, I saw a brilliant flash of light as if there were lightning inside the chamber. The strange thing – after all these years I feel comfortable mentioning this – in that sudden white light, I thought I saw all others, not just my mother as a child, as a girl, as young woman, but also others, more than the spiritualists that had died, but others, shadows of many others, and I wondered what my grandfather had invoked within these stones. What demons had he raised up?
Their shadows, burned against the far wall, standing together, watching me. And then the torch lit darkness returned, as if a flickering veil had been drawn over everything. It had happened in seconds, that vision of shadows. But I will never forget it.
Eternity happens in seconds, I thought then.
I think this still. Eternity happens in moments like flashes of lightning.
I felt my mother with her yellowjacket embrace blanket me in a humming warmth. I was sure that I would die.
17
But I did not. I must’ve remained there, holding Maggie’s body, for hours.
I went mad, I would gather, at least from what I was later told. I went mad, but even in that mindless disorientation, I had managed to crawl through the grasping shadows. I found my way into other rooms, each more forbidding than the last, and I saw monuments to the ancient world, and the shadows that danced even within the dark corridors. I stumbled across stone and rock, and saw statues of ancient gods and goddesses, and the armor of soldiers, and finally, I reached a thin stretch between two walls and found myself feeling for other entryways.
Finally, I was in the house within the house, the thin passageways between walls drawing me upward. Harrow had gone quiet, as if I had, indeed, defeated the spirits of the dead. I saw a mirror that looked out, like a window, onto the bedroom that was once both my nursery, and Matilde’s.
The mirror was just large enough for me to squeeze through; I broke it with my fists, and crawled into the room that I had once slept in as a child.
The room where her childhood spirit had slept beside me.
Epilogue
After Harrow
As you can see, I told you the story of my life at Harrow as if I were watching myself, and perhaps I told the truth, and perhaps I did not. You will never know, will you? I am, as I told you, nearly 100 years old, and my mind is intact.
That is more a curse than you can imagine, for I can remember it all clearly, my 29th year, that one October that changed destiny for me.
I brought Harrow into the light of day in autumn, in the year 1926.
I called Pocket’s assistant in the village, who then brought in authorities from other areas to investigate the murders on the estate.
Naturally, I was the first suspect. But I told them about the house, you see.
They understood.
They began to understand about the threshold of the infinite. How the ghost had destroyed both Pocke
t and Maggie. And how I had to release her soul from that pit so that she might not remain with them in that awful clamoring darkness.
And Maggie?
Yes, Harrow had gotten into her. But that had been her flesh. I released her soul from that prison.
She was found within what could only be described in the Poughkeepsie newspaper as a “cave full of stolen artifacts beneath the house.”
I tell you, the house itself, you see, has a will, endowed by the magic my grandfather practiced, the ancient and obscure arts that invoked spirits and deities long forgotten.
Many of the authorities seemed to understand this, but they kept it out of the papers.
But the term “Nightmare House” was attached to Harrow in nearly every newspaper along the Hudson River.
I was imprisoned for a period of time, despite my innocence, and taken eventually to the asylum at Northcastle, the very place that my grandfather had not wanted my mother to end up.
Alf, who had reverted to infantile behavior after Harrow, was sent to live with his aunt in Providence; when he was in his teens he ran away, although no one knew where he had gone.
But even in the madhouse, I knew where Alf would show up. I knew he needed to be near his mother.
During the time of my stay at the asylum, during which I underwent the humiliations of various treatments with electricity and radio waves, I was visited by men and women who had known my grandfather, and had known Harrow.
Among these visitors were the notorious, such as Aleister Crowley and Lizbeth Borden, as well as the folk who had happened across the Harrow’s path at various times.
Even my ex-wife, Madeleine came to see me one day.
She was as beautiful as ever, and she said something to me that I think I will never forget.
Harrow: Three Novels (Nightmare House, Mischief, The Infinite) Page 15