Rickrack House: A Paranormal Suspense Story (Haunted House Raffle Series Book 1)

by Trinity Crow

  Three times.

  A person would rise to the surface three times before drowning. My mother had taught me that when I was a tiny girl and we would walk to the river to go swim. In those sunlight days before . . .

  Three times.

  If I was right, this next time would be her last.

  “Einodian Hekaten, kleizo,” The words were screamed in defiance. Though I did not know the language, I knew a curse when I heard one. Lena's voice rose to a pitch. Then came the sickening crack of skull on stone, and I knew that she had been silenced. The kitchen rang with the death shriek of helpless rabbit and the drums stopped.

  “No, no, no…” My breath came in sharp pants. My heart rattled in desperate bursts. Turning in panic, I ran for the living room and the phone I had stashed in the drawer there. Maybe it wasn't too late. Maybe I could still save her. I fumbled the device out and stared at it, trying frantically to remember the directions Cassie had repeated so patiently to me.

  Side button turns it on.

  My finger shook as I pressed the small raised bar.

  Press the phone symbol.

  Press Nikki's name.

  With shaking hands, I raised the phone to my ear and listened to the ringing sound.

  “Hello? Abby?” Nikki's voice was wary and I was sorry she didn't want to be involved and sorry I was sucking her into this, but Lena was her friend and I was terribly, terribly afraid she was dead.

  “Nikki, I need you to help me. Lena went into the pantry and the doors shut all by themselves and she won't answer me and I can't get the door open! Nikki? Nikki? What do I do?” I babbled, frantically.

  “Hello? Are you there, Abby? “

  “Nikki!” I screamed, my voice cracking. "Can you hear me?”

  There was a faint voice in the background and then I heard Nikki say, “I don't know. There's no answer.”

  A laugh.

  “Yeah, maybe she butt dialed me.”

  The phone made a click and then a low buzzing tone began.

  "Nikki!" I cried hopelessly, a sob breaking free.

  The droning tone disappeared and a low roll of thunder rumbled in my ear, and then, the unmistakable sound of rain.

  I stared at the phone, my mind blank, and then dropped the useless gadget. My feet pounded across the wooden floorboards as I ran for the road, racing for Nikki and any help she could give.

  The grass and flowers blurred as I sped through the fields. My breath whistled in my lungs and part of it, I knew, was the terror that something might rise up from the very ground and somehow stop me. These horrific possibilities chased me as I fled towards the only safety I could think of.

  When I tripped and fell, the scream that burst from my throat rolled across the empty land. For a moment, my terror was so great that I thought I felt the ground open up below me. I scrambled to my knees, the thought of reaching Nikki the single burning force in my brain. I would get there and when I did, Nikki would come back and she would. . .

  I faltered.

  She would what? Do some sort of magic? Burn some herbs and open the door to rescue Lena? Fish her out the well?

  The sound of bone cracking on stone echoed in my head and I cried out.

  Lena is dead, my brain screamed at me. She's dead and you did this.

  My fingers clutched at the soil as I sobbed in fear and grief. I had killed Lena or at least, led her to her death. I had done that. But as I wept, I knew that it was not Lena I wept for but someone else. A quiet woman in a gray dress and light blue shawl. A woman who had dragged me out of New Eden and hidden me in a culvert. Huddled in the dark, wet pipe, drugged and disoriented, I had listened as they beat her. Listened as they smashed her skull on the cement posts beside the gate when she refused to give me away.

  But Lena? She had meant to harm me. She had meant to drug me and inflict some evil upon me. I would not weep for Lena. I would not. The goddess who guarded that house had risen up to defend her domain. She was a dark and vengeful power when angered. And, I thought, with dawning awe, Lena had angered the blue lady when she threatened me.

  I stood up, legs shaking as I stared across the field to Tasmyn's house. I remembered standing here as Nikki tried to warn me, as she had tried to free herself from the danger. Was I going to ask her to put her life back in danger because I had given her a place to stay for two nights? Had she not more than repaid me by ripping down boards and pulling weeds? By rescuing me when panic had pulled me under and by helping me across the roof to safety?

  Now I turned my head the other way and stared back at Rickrack House. Even with the fear making my heart thump erratically in my chest, the house pulled at me. It had become home. It had become safety and even joy. Maybe all I needed was a big iron gate to keep everyone out, to keep them safe from whatever was threatened by those who tried to unraveled its secrets.

  The muscles in my legs quivered and then grew still. I could not drag anyone else into this. I could not risk the chance that Nikki would be harmed or taken. I had made this pact with a dark goddess. And if I had sold my soul, then I intended to claim my reward.

  Chapter 27

  The house was waiting for me as I slowly made my way back. That welcoming feeling was no longer reassuring, not in the way it had been on that first day. I climbed the porch steps, feet dragging. With a heavy heart, I walked into the kitchen and pulled a hammer from the tool box. One way or another, that door was going to open.

  Surprise made my jaw drop as I stared at the dark rectangle of the open door. Beyond the shadowed entrance, a inky pall told me the cold room door was now open as well. Forcing myself to fill my lungs with air, I stepped forward into the black depths. The air was cool and full of moisture as it flowed over me in greeting. Unseen fingers stroked chills down my spine and in spite of the low temperature, sweat began to collect along my brow and under my arms. At some point I realized, I had stopped being afraid for Lena and started worrying that I was going to die next.

  The thought glued my feet to the floor. Lena was dead. . .wasn't she? She could not have walked away. Not after what I had heard. But hope sent its insidious roots into my heart. Maybe even now she was in the garden, making obeisance to the forces who dwelled here.

  With all my heart, I wanted it to be so. I strained for any sound that would tell me someone besides myself was here, but silence pounded like drums against my ears. The urge to leave swept over me, but I knew if I did not look now, I might never come back in this room. My feet made scraping sounds as I dragged them unwillingly into the cool room. The darkness here was complete.

  Why had I not brought a flashlight?

  As if my unspoken thoughts had been heard, a bubble of luminescent cobalt slowly dawned in the depths of the well. The room brightened as the glow lightened to turquoise, dancing across the ceiling and walls. There was no sign of Lena.

  Mouth dry, I approached the edge of the well and peered in. Below the stone edge, the water bubbled and seethed. The goddess light mesmerized me as it shaded into infinite hues of blues. The colors shimmered into arcs which then fractured against the movement of the water. What it meant I did not know. It was enough for now that I was not seeing Lena's face slack in death, hair waving in the current below the water's surface. The image burned in my brain, imagined or not.

  Suddenly and irrevocably, horror struck me at the unnaturalness of what was happening to me. I was not playing house. These beings were not from a child's fairy tale and happy endings were not a guarantee. Slowly, I backed out as I began to shiver from the cold and the fear. Staggering to the back door, I pushed my way out on to the porch. I wanted only to feel the warmth of the sun and the dry, blessedly sane heat of the day after that eerie chamber, that shrine to what ever swam in those depths.

  Before me, the garden stretched redolent in the heat. Plants that had been merely a foot tall now stretched two and three feet high. Where blossoms had been only this morning, swollen, ripe fruit now hung. I rubbed at my eyes frantically.

  Was t
his a vision . . . or witchcraft?

  My head shook frantically in denial at what my eyes insisted I see.

  "No," I whispered brokenly. "This isn't happening."

  But it was.

  The garden, my garden, my refuge, had gorged on nutrients and power funneled from the underground spring. The plants had responded by exploding with wild growth and rampant fertility. And if I plucked one of those tomatoes, hanging ripe and heavy, and bit into it, the minerals and vitamins I consumed would be from the body of Lena Kochilas. The monotonous drone of insects on the sultry air disoriented me as I stood there, swaying in the heat. With a moan of denial, I lurched back into the house.

  I was delirious, I told myself. Lena had come out, and finding me gone, had driven away. That was surely what had happened. I forced myself back through the living room and onto the porch.

  Lena's car was gone.

  Air rushed sweet and cool into my lungs. I was right. She had left of her own will. She had merely driven away.

  I stared at the driveway in unmeasured relief, then slowly, my wide, happy smile began to droop into a clownish mask of horror. The dirt drive lay smooth and innocent under the bright, afternoon sun. The deep ruts and ridges that everyone had complained about were gone, the ground smoothed by a giant and powerful hand. The memory of Felicite being sucked down by a force of immeasurable strength battered at my sanity.

  The same kind of force that could pull a car beneath the ground as if it were quicksand, and then, smooth all traces away.

  ***

  Instinctively, I made for the stairs, retreating to the place I had felt safest even though I now doubted every good feeling I'd ever had here. My feet tangled in something beside the stairs and unthinkingly, I caught the object up as I made my way to my room. When the door closed behind me, I crumpled upon the bed. The heavy cloth bag, woven in a pattern of red vines, fell from my nerveless fingers to the the floor. With a far away feeling of despair, I realized that it must have belonged to Lena.

  I could take no more. My eyes closed without any conscious thought as exhaustion swamped me. I had never realized just how much energy fear drained from you. The wave of weariness that swept over me mercifully pushed it all away as I fell deep into sleep.

  Fog steamed up from the ground and writhed in twisted shapes around my feet. With each step, the white stones clicked. I paced my way around the spiral, made of a vast sinuous column of vertebrate snapping into place as I walked. This remnant of some former Cretaceous period when life on earth was massively scaled and opulent with growth and bounty, coiled across the ground in the familiar concentric circles. A low, continuous sound rolled across the moisture-soaked air, rhythmic and pulsating.

  Drums . . . played by unseen drummers.

  The sound cut across cultures and ages, and spoke of primal beginnings indigenous to all. My hips moved as I swayed forward, pulled by something innate and instinctual. The bones no longer seemed macabre but somehow right.

  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust . . .

  Our bones pulled from that dust. As basic, as primal, as childbirth and death. Ancestors sucking marrow from those bones, using them as weapons, as art, and as tribute to the inescapable knowledge that we, too, would one day be reduced to nothing more than bones whitening in the sun.

  A night bird cried from the trees lost behind the wisps of fog, the sound echoing, high and lost, across the darkness. Another call answered it, deeper and more guttural. The mist pulled away until I was inside a vast circle made of trees. The wicker walls, if they still existed, were blocked from sight by the forest surrounding me.

  I moved along the spiral, turning ever inward, my steps reluctant but implacable. And though the spiral was laid bare to my view, with each turn, I glimpsed something new. Lush plants gave way to tall trees with sparse undergrowth. Giant deer leaped over bushes and disappeared. Bats flew overhead their number blotting out the sky. I circled again, staring wide-eyed as people, dressed in skins and furs, built fire and danced the story of the hunt, giving gratitude for food provided. I watched as their clothes covered more skin and their possessions grew more numerous. The simple campfire became a hut, became a house, became a village, became a town. My feet pounded along the spiral, racing to keep up with the changes sweeping through the world.

  The smoke from the fires became smog from mills and factories. The family became a mass of humanity, staggering from building to building filling their arms with possessions, dropping what they carried as they reached for more. The trees fell from bulldozers and axes. The animals all fled or were slaughtered where they stood. Thunder rolled across the sky, and as I turned the final circle, I saw the world was burning.

  Chapter 28

  The room was bright with light when I woke and for a moment, I thought I had slept the night through. The intensity and angle of the sun, however, made me realized it was only late afternoon. My stomach rumbled, complaining of its empty state, but my thoughts twitched away from the idea of fetching food from that pantry.

  With a sense of dread, I climbed out of bed and looked for Lena's bag. It was now evidence and would have to be destroyed.

  But it was gone.

  I dropped to my knees and searched under the bed, the chair and even inside my bureau drawers. The bag was nowhere to be found. I closed my eyes and tried hard to see its disappearance as a blessing, but nerves crawled beneath my skin as I pictured something moving through the room while I slept, unconscious and vulnerable.

  The sound of a car snapped me back to myself and sent me hurrying down the stairs, stiff muscles protesting. When the familiar silver car turned into the drive, I forced myself to move faster. Cassie and Adam were just stepping out of the grey Acura when I burst on the porch and ran out to them.

  “Hey!" Cassie called out in greeting. “My brother got over himself. We are going shopping. Do you want to come?”

  I found myself agreeing enthusiastically. The world which had once seemed so frightening now seemed a safer place than this house. To be out among people and noise, and escape this slow closing of the walls around me sounded perfect.

  I nodded, smiling in relief. Adam, mistaking my smile for something else, returned it with one of his own, emotion darkening in his eyes.

  “Let me just get my shoes,” I told them breathlessly. My heart was beating painfully fast as I flew into the house snatching up the first pair of shoes I saw. Leaving them alone in the yard for even a moment scared me. My breath whooshed out of me when I saw the Camplings and their car were still above ground.

  "Aren't you going to even shut your door?” Adam said, laughing. He waved a hand at me. "Never mind, I'll get it."

  "No!"

  The word burst out of my mouth, too loud and panicked. Brother and sister froze, staring at me an alarm. I laughed weakly, avoiding their eyes. "I'll get it," I told them. "I, uh, don't want you to see the changes I made until I can give you the tour." I explained lamely.

  Neither of them looked as if they believed me, but nodded anyway. As I turned to go back to the porch, I saw them exchanging glances.

  That was fine, I told myself. Let them think me crazy, just let them not be hurt.

  Door shut, I slid into the backseat of the car, ignoring Cassie's urging that I should take the front seat. My heart rate did not slow down until we had left the drive and passed the fields that Nikki had claimed were beyond the influence of whatever walked the grounds of Rickrack House.

  The trip to town was just what I needed. Spending time with people who had no worries over cost or where their next meal would come from was eye opening. Cassie breezed through the store, exclaiming over curtains and tablecloths. She grew vocal when she could not find the precise shade of turquoise that matched her vision and then squealed in delight when she found candles that did.

  Adam bore all of this good-naturedly, his eyes resting fondly on his younger sister and his smile showing his delight in her happiness. I was proud of him for overcoming his objections in allowing C
assie to choose her own future,

  "I think it's wonderful that you aren't standing in her way," I told him softly. Glancing down at me, his mouth curved into a slow smile that tugged at my heart strings.

  "Well," he said, uncomfortable at my praise. "I don't know about wonderful." He shrugged deprecatingly. "I mean, I thought she wanted to open an art studio for herself. I didn't realize she was just going to refurbish the place and sell it as a business space."

  Cassie looked up, alarmed, from the floor tile she was studying and ran over to catch me by the arm.

  "Abby?" she said, widening her eyes exaggeratedly. "Come and look at these. I need your opinion." She dragged me to the counter and put her head close to mine as if we were consulting. "Don't tell him, Abby," she begged. "Please, don't tell him!"

  I kept my eyes on the tile, wondering what to do. Adam just wanted what was best for his sister. He wasn't really like the men at New Eden that controlled your every movement and your every thought. The feel of him close to me and the way his eyes lit up when he saw me, did I want to risk that by lying to Adam? My throat tightened at the thought, but then again, how could I deny Cassie her chance at happiness?

  "I won't tell," I said softly, knowing it was the right thing to do.

  "Tell what?" Adam spoke just behind me, making me jump.

  Cassie smiled vacantly. "Never you mind," she said, affecting a bright tone. "Just a surprise for you."

  "I think I've had enough surprises," Adam said flatly, his eyes narrowed in distrust. "Maybe you should tell me what is going on." He stared at me, all warmth gone. "I know you think you're being her friend, Abby, but you don't know my sister well enough to know what she's capable of."

  I shivered from the coldness in his voice. Beside me, Cassie's face had gone white.

  "How dare you, Adam?" I could feel her trembling against me. "I made one mistake."