Six long boring months was what Whitley was facing as she entered her newly rented house. She had been released straight from the courthouse to serve her time on house arrest. Thanks to a boyfriend’s failure to let her in on his extracurricular activities, she was now broke! a felon, sentenced to house arrest, shamed, and without friends or familial support. Chad had not made her privy to his long time dealings in the drug business.
Call her a blind idiot but the truth is; she had no idea he was a king pin until her family home was raided at 5 a.m. three months ago by the vice squad. That was the day her world fell apart, the day her life took a twist that would eventually put her on a path of horror and bone chilling terror.
Her actual move in day had been two days prior. So today all she had to do was unlock the door and begin her six months of home supervision. This was something she surely was not looking forward to. The new place was old and run down with an unsettling quality it. After losing her family home she had to take the little money she had left to find a rental. The only affordable place she could find was 333 Oak Street, the recently deceased Old Widow Banes home.
Widow Banes was fabled to be the town witch, the evil old lady who scared the neighborhood children and chased them away with brooms and stones. As a child Whitley had grown up hearing all the haunted and spooky tales of the Banes house, and the widow on Oak Street. Mr. Banes had mysteriously disappeared long ago without a trace or lead, as had many others or so it was rumored.
Many people thought Old Widow Banes had had a gnarled and wicked hand in the disappearances. Over the years no formal investigation was ever launched. It was said that the lack of any solid evidence was the reason Widow Banes had never been charged. Odd, and mysterious happenings were rumored to involve the widow however, nothing could ever be concretely proven. It still remains to be seen as to whether the town police were just plain old scared of the house with its decrepit & creepy inhabitant, or whether there was truly a lack of evidence. With the widow dead the answers to those questions have seemingly gone to the grave with her.
With a poignant sense of foreboding, Whitley turned the key in the lock and stepped into the antiquated entry of what was to be her home for the next six months. The air was deathly still, and it held an eerily uncanny presence that made her feel as if she wasn’t alone. With a deep breath she shook off the feeling and took in all her boxes. Her sparse collection of furniture was sitting in disarray throughout the foyer and adjoining parlor. Between clearing away all the dust, cobwebs, and unpacking. Her work was cut out for her.
Dusty and tired she was nearing the end of unpacking. Now she had to gear up for the daunting task of clearing away the grime and cobwebs throughout the old house. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted an old decorative box. She hadn’t noticed it there when she delivered her boxes and belongings a couple days prior. The box was very ornate, with what looked like words in an alphabet she had never seen before. There was a latch in the shape of a talon. Whose could it have been? How could it have possible gotten there? To her knowledge no one had entered the house besides herself and Old Widow Bane’s granddaughter since the day she had signed the lease and dropped off her belongings.
Whitley was unable to resist the urge to pick it up for a closer look…she was undeniably drawn to it. As she neared the box she felt the hair on her arms and neck raise. She shook it off as a chill from the breeze flowing in the open windows. As she lifted the box and walked to the window for a better look her heart began to flutter. Again, she felt that she was not the alone in the room. Her head seemed to buzz with an indiscernible noise, her hands began to shake, yet she couldn’t put the box down. It seemed as if the box itself were beckoning her to look closer, to touch it, to discover its unseen contents. The impulse to open it was strong and forceful. Whitley tried to open it and discovered that the latch was locked. She tried to force it open but the latch was strong and didn’t give. The more she tried to pop it open the more persistent the urge to open the box became, the more the room around her began to fade into a blur. The buzz in her ears became louder. Her hands were unable to lay the box down. As the minutes ticked by, the box vibrated and pulsed with an increasing intensity until finally she forced her hands to loosen their grip. The box fell, or did it float? to the floor with a soft thud. Shortly behind the box, Whitley fell unconscious to the floor.
Pressing a cold rag against her forehead and trying to clear her head at the kitchen sink, Whitley attempted to piece together what had happened to a chunk of her time. She remembered finishing up unpacking and spotting the decorative box, she remembered walking over and picking it up. After that her memory failed her. Not even one bit of memory comes back to her outside of waking up in a heap on the floor with an intense headache. She felt clammy and had a very intense feeling that something significant had happened. As hard as she pushed her mind to recollect the events of the missing time she just couldn’t remember anything. Shaking violently, she pushed herself away from the counter and wearily walked up the back steps to her bedroom.
Along with the increasingly painful headache she felt exhausted and was struggling to stay awake even as she walked up the steps and down the hall towards her bedroom. Fully dressed, confused and tired she fell onto her bed. She was out like a light within seconds.
In the morning Whitley awoke with a strange feeling…she could’ve sworn that she was being roughly shaken by icy cold hands gripped tightly on both of her arms. There had even been a foul breath upon her face. When she opened her eyes she was alone in her room. Maybe, she thought, it was a nightmare. As she tried pulling herself together, the events of the previous day came rushing back to her; the sense of foreboding as she unlocked the front door, unpacking her belongings, finding the box, the irresistible urge to get into the box, the blank space before she awoke on the floor in the foyer, the headache and the sudden exhaustion she experienced. Unable to shake off the foreboding feeling, she decided to wash it away with a long hot shower. Grabbing her robe from the back of the door she went into the bathroom to start the shower water and brush her teeth.
The hot water felt good on her skin and she began to feel more at ease as she washed away the previous day’s events. She began to feel as if maybe it was all just imagined or, maybe from the stress and worry she had been going through over the past few months. She giggled at herself about it when suddenly the shower curtain was jerked to the side. A screeching like none she had ever heard painfully pierced her ears. She threw her hands over her ears just as the water temperature went arctic cold. Her ears were throbbing from the high pitched screech, the water getting colder by the second. She tried to step from the shower, to run from the room however; her feet were cemented to the bottom of the tub. She couldn’t move from under the bone chilling water spray. Her body was going numb. Her skin was turning blue from the coldness and she felt pricks of icy pain all over her body. The pain was building as she grew colder and colder.
‘My God,’ she thought, ‘I am going to die right here in this ice cold shower!’
Although the screeching still felt like it was ripping apart her eardrums Whitley removed her hands from over her ears and tried to swivel the shower head away from her body. Her frozen hands were unable to do what she needed them to do. As suddenly as it all had started, it just simply stopped. The water went back to normal, her feet loosened from the bottom of the tub and, the terrible screeching came to an abrupt stop. Shaking and frightened, she turned off the shower. She quickly stepped from the tub, and grabbed her robe while rushing from the bathroom.
In her bedroom she dressed as fast as she could, snatched her purse from the dresser and flew down the steps. At the bottom of the steps she cupped her car keys from the telephone table and with no thought to her house arrest stipulations made for the front door not really knowing where she was going or caring. She just wanted to get away from the house as soon as she could. She jumped into her car, shoved the ke
ys into the ignition, and threw the car into reverse. Once she was out of the driveway, she drove with no aim, no destination, she just drove.
Twenty minutes later she found herself in the parking lot of the local diner. A cup of coffee and a decent meal just might hit the spot and calm her jangling nerves. First, and foremost, she had to call her monitoring officer for house arrest to let him know she was out of the house. If they called the home phone and got no answer she would surely be in trouble. In a state of panic, she had forgotten to call before rushing from the house. Her monitoring officer cleared her for the time out.
‘Thank God they give me time out every week,’ Whitley thought, ‘Otherwise I would be on my way to jail!’
Walking into the diner she felt comforted by the normalcy, the noise, and the crowd of breakfast goers. As she walked to the hostess stand there was a sudden change of energy in the air. Every person in the diner seemed to stop in the middle of their conversations and activities to stare at her. The air in the room went stale. The silence was complete and unsettling. The hostess cleared her throat, asking her if she would be dining alone. Nodding her head, Whitley looked around the room full of people. Thankfully, they had gone back to whatever they were doing before she had walked in. Though the stares and silence had stopped she could still feel the change in the atmosphere.
Seated at a table by the window, her back to the majority of tables around her, which in her opinion was a good thing. She couldn’t figure out for the life of her, why her presence had caused such dead silence and, the outright rude stares of every person in the place. She was absolutely sure she had not imagined it, thankfully the moment had passed.
An older waitress stepped up to her table and asked if she would like to start with a cup of coffee. The lady seemed edgy. Whitley ordered a coffee and juice. She decided that when the waitress returned she would ask what in the world about her called this kind of attention. The waitress beat her to the punch and as she put the drinks on the table she blurted out a question that surprised Whitley.
“Are you that lady that rented the crazy Old Widow Banes house?”, and rapidly, behind that question, she fired another, “Why in the world would you rent that decrepit old haunted place after everything they say happened there?”
Whitley answered, that yes she was the person that lived there now. The ladies extremely plucked and drawn on eyebrows shot skyward. She clucked her tongue as she pulled out her order pad.
“Well Doll, it’s your funeral. Us folks just don’t have souls brave enough or balls big enough to spend a night in it, let alone live in it. Especially considering all its history and such. What can I get you to eat?”
Her funeral, Whitley thought, what in the world did the lady mean by that? She ordered her food and asked the lady if she was referring to the rumors about Widow Bane. She was told that it was more than just that; it was the history of the place, the disappearances, the strange goings on around the corner lot property, the sightings of strange things. Also, we cannot forget the people that no one had ever seen before coming and going into the house at strange times of the night.
When she later asked if the lady knew more details she was abruptly told that it wasn’t a subject that the town-folk really cared to spend too much of their time on. It marred the quaint little towns image in their minds and they would rather just forget it. The only advice the waitress gave her was that she could visit the Old Towne Library. Maybe she could possibly dig up some information from the archives.
In the dusty archives of the library Whitley found much more than she ever anticipated, her heart was beating much harder than normal; her mind feverishly racing. In the old and yellowed stacks of newspaper, with articles about the house and the Banes family’s strange history, she found a single ancient looking interior sketch of her home. What took her breath away, had her shaking, was that the sketch showed a room she knew nothing about. A hidden room!
When Widow Banes’ granddaughter had walked her through the house, before she signed the lease, she had not been shown this room. Could it still be there, she mused? The sketch clearly showed a room under the grandly sprawling front parlor staircase. A small room but, a room nonetheless. Whitley looked over her shoulder and, seeing that she was not being watched, quickly rolled the sketch up and shoved it into her purse. Not understanding why she felt she had to steal the sketch, she grabbed the stack of newspaper stories and quickly deposited them on the counter. Then she impatiently waited for the librarian to notice her.
The librarian was an older woman, probably in her late seventies and still holding fast to her faculties. Whitley waited for the old lady to go through the stack, but as soon as the librarian realized what Whitley had been researching, she paused, curiously arching a gray eyebrow. Whitley couldn’t decide if she imagined the curious look or if it had really happened; what was it with everyone and their odd reactions to her connection to the house? The librarian cleared her throat and asked her if she was the Banes house new tenant.
“Yes, I am”, she replied, “Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
The librarian cleared her throat again replying in a stern voice, “Because, young lady, no one in their right mind would move into such a horrid place.” “
“Well, I did, and truthfully I am beginning to regret it!”
With a cluck of her tongue and, a vehement shake of her head, the librarian wished her luck. Whitley rushed from the library wanting to escape the piercing stare of the woman as quickly as she could. Once she was in her car she laid her head on the steering wheel, trying to calm herself enough to drive away from the library, and the encounter with the librarian.
A few minutes later she was pulled out of the parking lot, dreading her destination, she turned the car toward home. Her head was reeling. Although she felt apprehension, she was still anxious to get to the bottom of whatever the hell was going on. Whatever it was, she felt sure the answer to it all could be found in that hidden room; all she had to do was find a way into it.
Turning the car at the corner, the house loomed into her line of vision, her heart began to race. Her pulse quickened with an uncontrollable sense of doom. She drew the car to a stop in the middle of the street, staring up at the antebellum, weathered, and haunting house. Whatever lay ahead, she was determined to figure out what the hell was happening to her, what was this mystery surrounding the house? Pushing on the gas pedal, she eased the car the last few yards down the street and pulled into the tree lined driveway. With a deep breath, and bracing herself, she stepped out of the car. She slowly made her way to the front door.
What was pulling at her? Whatever it was, she was going to find out, she was going to open that door, and look it in the face.
‘Hopefully’, she thought, ‘I will come out of this with my life and sanity intact.’
Shutting the door behind her, Whitley steeled herself against the onslaught of panic overwhelming her and quickly made the required call to her monitoring officer to tell him she was back in the house.
A short time later she was focusing on the grand staircase, trying to imagine where an entry to the hidden room may be. Suddenly she heard her name being whispered in her ear, ‘Whitley.’ Icy chills ran down her spine and every hair on her body stood on end. She stepped farther into the foyer. That’s when her eyes fell upon the antique box, it was as if the box had whispered her name, had called her to it. With no will of her own, she moved closer to the box. Under an unbeatable force she felt herself moving toward the beguiling box. She was being drawn to it; she was unable to resist the urge to pick it up. As she lifted the box, she heard the whispering in her ears again. Her vision began to blur. Oh no! Not again, she thought frantically, please no! She felt a chilling cold grip on her body. It felt as though hands of bone were squeezing her throat. Her eyes began to bulge, she gasped for air with desperation. She tried with all her strength to pull away from the death grip on her neck. To her despair, it was to no avail. The e
dges of her vision were getting blurrier, and she felt herself falling into an abyss of darkness. A place she felt she would never return. She could feel blood vessels breaking in her eyes as they bulged out of the sockets. Right before she blacked out and fell to the floor she saw a spectral vision of a skeletal old woman with decomposing flesh and bone showing through the skin around her face. The apparition rushed toward her with lightning speed. It went right through her, spreading ice over her entire body. As she hit the floor with a thud, everything went black.
Whitley felt sluggish, and completely confused, as she stirred awake on the floor where she had fallen. She had no idea how long she had lain there. All she could remember, clearly, was being choked, the vision of the old rotting lady, and how it had rushed toward her right before she went unconscious. She struggled to her feet, and stumbled over to the mirror to inspect her neck. She gasped loudly at what she saw in the reflection. Her neck had deep bloody marks and bruises on it. Someone...something, with very sharp fingernails had tried to strangle her. As crazy as it sounded, ghost hands had tried to choke the life out of her. Her eyes were shot through with blood red broken vessels. She began to shake uncontrollably. Her heart was beating so rapidly her chest hurt. She couldn’t believe that this was real, she had felt the pressure on her neck, but there had been nothing there, nothing she could remember seeing. She leaned in for a closer look at the wounds. As she did so, she saw the reflection of the same rotting fleshed old woman again... standing right behind her. With a scream of terror, she spun around to face the vision of madness, only to find herself alone in the room. She rushed to the door between the foyer and the parlor to see if she could see the old woman in the other room. As she walked quickly forward, her foot kicked the box across the room making it topple over. It was in that moment Whitley realized that the previously locked box was now open. When it had tumbled, end over end, it had dropped its contents onto the foyer floor.
A single silver toned, old fashioned key was lying in a beam of sunshine coming through the doorway windows. It gleamed maliciously in the sunlight, making her forget, for a moment, the scratches on her neck and the vision of the ghost woman that had frightened her so intensely. She walked toward it, in a stunned trance, knowing this was the key that would open the door to the secret room; if she could only find it.
With the key in hand, she turned circles in the foyer. She looked for anything that could be a door in disguise. She couldn’t see anything that could possibly be a hidden entrance. An entry to the room she knew existed under, or behind, the sprawling staircase. This would have to be an intense inspection, if she had any hope of ever finding her way inside the room.
Whitley decided to crawl around the foyer, searching the baseboards for clues. She started at the right side of the front door. With a deep determination to get to the bottom of this haunting, and increasingly violent, paranormal event in her life she started her quest. She grabbed a flashlight out of a drawer, and in its beam, she diligently poked and prodded with no results. Her frustration increased. Thirty minutes into her search, she smacked the top of her head on the leg of the table that stood under the mirror, the one in which she had seen the vision of the old woman the second time. She sat back on her knees to rub the top of her head and wipe the sweat from her brow. The marks on her neck were starting to burn and her long hair kept getting stuck on them. Removing the rubber band that she always wore on her wrist, she began to tie her hair up in a ponytail. As she leaned her head back to twist the hair through, her eyes fell on a line down the wall and next to the table. It ran from the floor, right next to the leg of the table, to the top of the mirror and then turned sharply to run straight across its frame. Whitley jumped up with a gasp. There was a keen feeling in her gut that she was onto something. Sure old houses settle; the foundations and walls crack but, she thought, those cracks never make perfectly straight lines, nor do they make right angles.
‘This is it! I have found the door. I know I have! Finally, I can get to the bottom of this before I get killed in this damned old house.’
Standing up, Whitley stepped to the other side of the table. Just as she thought, there was a straight seam running down the other side of the mirror down to the floor. She ran her hands along the seam, pushing every inch or so, hoping to spring a hidden latch or lock. She went over the entire seam, both sides and the top. On the second time around, she noticed a gap at the bottom. It was under the table, where the base board was supposed to meet the floor. The seam, and the gap at the bottom, formed a perfect rectangle around the table and mirror; the shape of a doorway! She prodded under the table, in hopes that she would find a handle or a knob of some sort. She knew this was it, she felt it in her heart. Her frustration increased. She knew she was close, but couldn’t figure out the last little piece of this puzzle.
With a cry of exasperation, she stood up, without looking into the mirror for fear of seeing the gory vision again. She leaned heavily on the table, her mind spinning circles. Suddenly, she felt the table slide slightly backwards, which should have been impossible. Then she heard a small click. Stepping back, she watched as the section of wall within the rectangle, mirror and table included, pushed slightly backward. She grasped the edge of the table and to her amazement the table did not come away from the wall. Instead it remained attached. She pulled on the section, cut out by the seam, revealing what she knew was the entrance to the hidden room. The same room she had seen in the sketches from the library.
Behind the secret door was a space in the wall, between the foyer and adjoining room, wide enough for a full grown person. Hesitantly, Whitley stepped inside the wall. The passage went left toward the stairwell. Beyond three feet she couldn’t see a thing; it was as dark as pitch. Backing out of the passage, she grabbed the disregarded flashlight. Clicking on the beam of light she aimed it down the passage. To her surprise there was a very narrow door at the end. She felt a sense of accomplishment, while simultaneously she began to fear for her life. This was going to lead her to answers explaining the terrifying and violent things happening in this menacing old house! It could also lead to her death or harm!
Taking a deep breath, and saying a prayer, to whatever God may hear her, she shuffled toward the narrow door. Reaching it, she put her hand on the knob. Turning it, panic overrode her, raw fear surged through her veins, and an unexplainable putrid wind blew through the passageway. She turned to look behind her, just in time to see the door leading back the foyer slam shut, effectively sealing her off from the rest of the house. She was now stuck in between the haunted walls of the creepy old house with no choice but to go forward. The unexplained wind stopped. All she could hear was the pounding of her own heart and her quick shallow breathing. With nothing to do but open the door, she steeled herself. The door squeaked eerily as she pushed it. She stepped forward and found herself in what looked to be an ancient church. There were pews on either side of a center aisle that led to a pedestal. A big altar sat upon it.
Shining the flashlight around, she noticed tapestries hung on the walls. They had pictures of demons in acts of brutality against human beings. Some of the tapestries showed human sacrifices, while others showed masses of humans and demons in the midst of orgies and violence. Her blood grew cold. Disgust, and fear bubbled through her. She began to taste bile at the back of her throat.
‘My God,’ she thought, what is this place?’
Without really wanting to, she walked down the aisle toward the altar at the front of the evil church. There was an upside down cross and a horned animal skull hanging behind the altar. She knew, with a desperate certainty, that she was in a very bad place; the energy here was evil to the core, dark and sinister. Her flashlight beam fell upon the altar slab, and she noticed, to her horror, that she was looking at bloodstains. Something, or somebody, had been sacrificed here while people sat in the pews and watched! With a sense of impending danger, she spun around to run back to the secret door. She hoped to find a way out and escape this chambe
r of horrors. Before she could run she was hit hard from behind; her vision went black as she crashed to the floor.
Whitley felt a searing pain shoot through the back of her head as she opened her eyes. Her vision took a second, or so, to clear up. She felt another presence in the room with her. There was a rustling sound to her right, someone was shuffling around and, she could make out voices around her. Her vision, was still a bit blurry, as she tried to sit up. She found that she couldn’t move her arms and legs; she was tied down at her wrists and ankles. She blinked her eyes rapidly, trying to clear her vision. Gingerly, she lifted her head looking toward where the sounds were coming from.
What she saw made her gasp. It brought to her the realization that she was in deep trouble. Two people in black robes and hoods stood with their backs turned. They were fervently talking in low tones. She couldn’t make out what they were saying. She turned her head the other way, toward the pews, and let out a scream.
In the pews there was an audience that she knew had not been there when she entered the church earlier. The audience - made up of row after row of demonic looking skeletons that had remnants of rotting flesh and hair on them, was terrifying. The old lady skeleton, that had been haunting her, sat rigidly in the front row. Some even had tattered rags of clothing still attached to them. It was like the time that had passed since their death had not been enough to completely tear away the last vestiges of their former lives.
Turning back to the two robed people, she realized her screams had brought them to her side, they were right on top of her! She caught a glimpse of one of the faces under the hood, and to her astonishment, she recognized Old Widow Banes’ granddaughter. This realization hit her in the gut with the force of a mule kick.
‘What the hell, what the hell? she thought. This cannot be!’
“What are you doing?” she pleaded with the woman, “Why are you doing this to me?”
Her pleas were met with a slap, and a sharp pain in her arm, the other robed figure had plunged a needle into her arm. A heavily sedated feeling overcame her as she tried to struggle her legs and arms free. It was no use, whatever they had drugged her with was too strong. She couldn’t fight it, she couldn’t win. They were going to kill her.
As her lids began to grow heavier she looked again at the morbid scene sitting in the pews. Whitley didn’t know if it was the drug or if it was really happening. The skeletons were moving. Some were leaning forward, staring at her with intense scrutiny. Others were standing, and some were whispering to one another. Whispered conversations that she knew she was the center of.
Old widow Banes granddaughter loomed into her vision again. Whitley noticed she held a double edged knife. It was shining in the candlelight. Slowly the knife was lowered toward her forehead; the wickedly sharp knife was all she could see. She felt the tip slide into her skin as something was carved above her brow. Blood ran down her face, and into her eyes, as she screamed. Her tears mixing with the blood as it flowed off of her jawline and onto the altar beneath her head. In a surreal state, she watched as the scene began to slowly fade into blackness.
She felt her clothes being roughly cut away from her body as the macabre audience in the pews laughed maniacally at her fear and desperation. Their skeletal feet stomping the floor in a horrific frenzy.
As she looked up to the ceiling, ready to meet her higher power face to face, she felt more cuts being made on her body. She felt the warmth of her blood as it flowed from the wounds. The iron like smell of it nauseated her. It seemed to be feeding the demon skeletons. Their flesh began to grow back onto their bones. They were all on their feet now, maniacally cheering for more blood… more of her suffering. The Skeletons were stomping their feet even harder as their bodies regenerated. They became more human as she became more afraid and less alive. The noise of it was pounding in her head; it was so loud she could feel it in her body. She shut her eyes, in hope that death would come to her quickly. The jeering of the audience, and the chants of the evil robed humans surrounded her in a crescendo of horror. Whitley faded into unconsciousness. The scene around her grew more wickedly horrific as she let go…
Six Months later
Whitley pulled the ‘For Rent’ sign off of the mailbox and turned back toward the haunted antebellum house. As she reached the porch the new tenants pulled into the driveway; their eager smiles could be seen through the windshield. He was a professor of history; she was an expecting mother.
They got out of the vehicle and, arm and arm, walked toward the house, their happy anticipation palpable. “Hello and welcome”, Whitley said, as the couple stepped onto the rustic wrap around porch. “Your new home awaits you,” she said, as ghost fingers touched her shoulder and, a whisper filled her ear.
“We are satisfied with this sacrifice.”
As the couple went back to the car to grab their bags Whitley hid the ornate box amongst their belongings that had arrived the day before. Turning toward the antique mirror, that hid the secret door, the apparition of the old Widow Banes stood behind her in the reflection, an evil and morbid smile upon its face. Brushing her bangs over the fading scar on her forehead an ancient symbol for Satan, Whitley manically smiled back.
The Wicked End.
Hello Dear
Stewart Bint
Ghostly Writes Anthology 2016 Page 19