“I am not sure I can handle this anymore. I love you, but all of this is just too much,” I said, fighting back tears.
“What are you doing? What . . . are . . . you . . . doing?” She was sobbing now.
The moment of truth. Do I walk out that door to a life of sanity? Or do I try to pick up the pieces here and make this work? I looked at her. Tears were running down her face. She looked awful. Was she in there somewhere? Was she hiding from me? “Where is the woman I married?” I asked.
“I’m here. I am just a little confused right now, but I am here,” she said.
I walked over to her and I put my arm around her. There we stood in the light of the hallway, a family trying to stay together. We were holding on for dear life––me, my wife, and my baby.
I guess that is when I really started to ignore her mental illness. There were times when she could not handle things, when she would beat herself in the head, and I would see her literally pull out her own hair. Looking back now, I knew she was slipping away, but I had no idea how to handle it. Sometimes I would tell myself it was just her overacting to get a reaction. I do feel guilty for that now, because I do know now she was not acting. However, she hid this illness from me from the beginning, so the blame does not lie entirely in my corner.
In the years that followed, I would get phone calls at work with her crying and sobbing for me to come home. What do you do with that? I was doing everything I knew how, just to keep our heads above water, trying to keep us all together. There were times when she would turn off the alarm and I would wake up late for work, with her begging me not to go. All of it comes back to me now. And I see it for what it was. I was trying to do my best in the eye of a storm I could not control. I did not know my wife was losing her mind. I did not know she had begun planning to hurt us. I simply did not know.
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Chapter 11
April 2006
Tommy lay face down in the grass in the morning dew. His breathing was shallow. He was naked to the waist, with his shirt tucked into his belt, the way it always was. His left hand was relaxed, as if he was sleeping, but his right hand was clutching the blades of grass, holding on as if he could fall from the side of this planet and go floating off into space.
The morning dew sparkled on his blue-gray skin, almost as if he were covered in glitter—glitter from a rave that would never happen, a party that would pass him by. Tommy was dying. He already was suffering from exposure and hypothermia. The coma had taken him in the early hours of the morning, right about three. Tommy lay face down in the backyard of a stranger’s house, dying. He was dying of a heroin overdose, and he was only two yards away from the Screaming House.
Tommy was not a stranger to the Screaming House, and we can only imagine that in his stupor he was headed to the front porch to sleep. The current residents would have been surprised to step out on the front porch to find him, but they were never given the chance. During those dark years, Tommy would always sleep on the porch of the Screaming House when he had nowhere to go. He was one of Helen’s misfits, whom she loved and mothered. She was always able to see past the wrong in a kid, and see the goodness within them. Tommy was no different, where she was concerned. There were many nights and many mornings when we would step out onto the porch to find him there, curled up on one of the chairs or stretched out upon the swing. He was almost a fixture there, like any other of us. There was Tommy, sleeping on the porch again. None of us thought anything of it. We never judged him or questioned him. I think deep down we all knew this was, for that moment in time, his only place to go. With all of the craziness during the haunting, this scared kid found solace on that porch when he needed it.
You have to wonder just how bad his life really must have been. I always liked him. But I always knew never to feel sorry for him, either. The last thing you want, when you are in a horrible position, is someone to come along and feel sorry for you. I knew that because I had lived it. I understood he was like all of us––just struggling to get through it all. Helen understood this, too. Helen understood Tommy.
Did I know he had once spent time in jail? Yes, of course I did. But I also knew he was an extremely talented artist. We all make mistakes in our lives, and this 21-year-old kid was not any different from any of us. I wasn’t going to make judgments on his past. He didn’t spend time in jail for murder, if that is what you are thinking. I knew his crime was very minimal. I once knew what it was, but I don’t want to say now, because the details have slipped over the passing of time. However, I do remember it was small in comparison to most crimes.
The point is, the boy paid his price for it. Once you are marked at such a young age, it is very hard to find a way to start over. It is even harder to start over in a small town like Union with a record. Dreams? Sure, the kid had his share of dreams, like anyone else, but he also had a close, watchful eye on him wherever he went. It is hard to see how your dreams are going to come true when you live in a small town, convicted of a felony, with barely a place to live. I could see the pain in the boy’s eyes, because I saw the same pain in my eyes every day when I looked into the mirror. Pain is pain, no matter what causes it or whatever way you want to cut it. We were very different in so many ways, but in some ways, we were very much alike. We both knew the pain life could throw at you. We both understood struggle. Tommy had a record, and I had baggage.
The Screaming House had its influence on Tommy, the same way it affected everyone else who was exposed to it for any length of time. The day Helen was planning on killing Charlie, Tommy helped Helen look for the clip for the rifle. When she could not find it, he was the one who suggested a serrated knife would do more damage on flesh than a regular household butcher knife. What I have always found most disturbing is he asked Helen if he could go with her to watch her kill Charlie. That was very unlike Tommy. Not only was it unlike him, but it was strange because he had always liked Charlie, and Charlie had always liked him. I remember Helen talking about that day, talking about how everyone in the house was so calm, and how no one tried to talk her out of doing it. She would tell me it was like everyone was under some type of spell. No one was acting the way they normally would. Tommy was one of those acting out of character that day. He was the most helpful, even to the point of wanting to go along. He was her right-hand man. He was behaving as her accessory, helping her premeditate how to commit the murder.
Thank God Charlie got away from Helen that day before Helen could cut off his manhood, because that is where she was holding the knife on him. Tommy was the one who helped her plan it. A houseful of teenagers, and no one tried to stop her. Every single one of them was acting out of character. I remember going to get Helen out of the house, and how the kids were acting on that day. They looked at me as if they wanted to kill me. The scariest part was that all of them had black eyes. Black eyes, just like I had seen with Helen. I have no doubt the house had its influence upon Tommy, the way it had on everyone else, and that bothers me even more now. The kids were all acting as if they were under a spell. Not one of them was acting right by that time, during the haunting. Not one of them has lived a good life afterward, either. Very few of them are still living today. Taken out of this world in horrible ways. Their deaths have been tragic, at the very least, and downright horrific at the most. Tommy was no different.
“Steven! Tommy is in the hospital. He’s in a coma.” Helen was on the other end of the phone line, delivering the news. She was crying as she was telling me what was happening. I couldn’t believe what she was telling me, but at the same time there was a part of me that half expected the news to come, and I felt guilty for it. I wanted to see good things happen for Tommy. I wanted to see a happy ending for him, but at the moment he was in ICU, the result of bad heroin, and they were not sure he was going to make it. If he did, he was going to be brain-damaged for the rest of his life.
I hung up the phone, and I had to sit down and take it all i
n. A life wasted. Then the sheer loneliness of his last lucid moments hit me, and I had to wonder just how aware he was, lying there face down in the grass in the middle of the night, with no one to help him. Was he aware of his circumstance? Was he aware he was in trouble? Did he try to call out? Did he try to scream? The tears began to roll down my face as I considered the possibilities. Tommy was left alone with his final thoughts, found face down in the dirt. We all deserve better than that. He deserved better than that. The questions about the heroin found their way into my thoughts. Don’t get me wrong, I can understand the need for escape. Hell, our society is built upon escapism. We spend millions of dollars each year just for the sole purpose for the need of escape. What I don’t get is the death dance. What I mean by the death dance is the tempting of the odds, playing that sad old game of Russian roulette with your life. Heroin serves exactly that purpose, the self-destructive’s version of Russian roulette. One bad round into a vein and that’s it.
Tommy had every reason, and if you ask me, every right for the need of a little escapism. Let’s face it, life up to this point had not exactly been a night at the opera. Hard to keep a positive fucking attitude with the way things had been going for him. I have to wonder if he was feeling more than a little self-destructive. But why would Tommy let someone stick a needle into his arm and fill his veins with an unknown substance, not sure exactly what it was going to do to him? Sure, you might be told it’s safe, but the truth of the matter is you really never know, and who can you really trust? Obviously on this night, Tommy trusted the wrong person.
Five days later Tommy died. They pulled the plug and the tubes because there was no brain activity and no hope for him. Whatever talent he had for art went with him, and no one but a few people close to him will ever know how talented this young boy was and what we all have lost. No one will ever know of his sense of humor, his huge heart, and his ability to give to others. The indignation of a young one’s death is the way it steals from us all of the untold gifts of a possible future unrealized and untold.
I knew Tommy and I knew of these untold gifts and the person that he was, but you never will. Up to this point, those of you who may have heard of him, know him as the young man found face-down on the grass, who died of a bad heroin injection. No one wants to be remembered like that, or needs to be. He was much more than that. We live. We make mistakes. We have our triumphs, sadness, talents, and those we have touched in this life. We teach others about life more than we learn. Tommy, I learned from you. I felt as if I had lost a friend. Helen and Charlie felt as if they had lost a son.
There was an investigation into Tommy’s death. At times, it felt as if not enough was being done, because who was concerned with a misfit felon of a young man, who died of a drug overdose? A few years passed, and more young people began ending up in the hospital and the county morgue from a type of bad heroin being passed around. Finally, an arrest was made and justice was served, but not in Tommy’s name.
To this day, there are reports of people driving by the Screaming House and seeing Tommy sitting on the front porch, emotionless, staring off into space. I have personally seen him a few times. I have to wonder if he returned there to the porch because that is where he was headed on the night of his death. If that is the case, he finally made it home. My other thoughts are more sinister and disturbing in nature, and I don’t like talking about them. In those thoughts, I wonder if the Screaming House captured his soul and now he is caught there, without the ability to move on. I would like to think it is the first case and not the second. But then again, with that fucking place, you can never be sure.
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Chapter 12
Early May 2006
“Steven, you have to get over here, now!” It was early in the morning when I got the phone call from Charlie. He was frantic on the other end of the line. The only thing he would tell me was that Helen was not acting like herself and I needed to get over to their apartment now to help him. I had a pretty good idea what I was in for, even before I hung up the phone. I could hear the fear in Charlie’s voice. I knew the sound of that fear. I had heard it before. The sound of his voice told me I might not be dealing with Helen at all this morning, it told me the monster might be loose.
I hurried and got dressed. On the way out the door, I grabbed my wallet, making sure I had a few blessed medals from Father Paul placed firmly inside one of the inside pockets. I reached the front door and turned around to go back inside. I reached into one of the kitchen cabinets to pull out a jar of holy water to bless myself. After now convincing myself I was ready, I once again headed for the door and the car. I drove to the apartment carefully, paying very close attention to everything around me. I knew if my fears were correct, It was capable of trying to stop me from reaching Helen and Charlie. I had been down that road before, and today I wasn’t going to take any chances.
A chill went through my body as I remembered some of the incidents that tried to stop me before. Just then, a large trash truck seemingly came out of nowhere. I slammed on my brakes and put my fist to my horn. I was right to be very careful. The driver flipped me his middle finger and I was stunned, because he was the one who almost hit me. You have to understand the unreasonableness of it all, and that the actions of all those around you may be influenced at any given time. Was it possible the driver of the truck was being overtaken by some mysterious evil force, controlling his actions and his mood? Was I put on the road to potential disaster without me knowing it, even before I stepped from my house or into my car? Then, of course, there is always the everyday possibility that the guy was just an asshole, and there was nothing more to it than that. Even in my post-haunting world, I still had the ability to see an asshole as just being an asshole.
I pulled into the parking lot, ran up the steps to Helen’s apartment, and knocked on the door. Charlie answered it with a frightened look on his face. At that moment, I knew Helen had tried to kill him again. I was not even through the front door, and I could see Helen sitting on the couch with her head down where I couldn’t see her face. The first thing I heard was her voice. The voice I knew all too well. A voice that wasn’t Helen’s at all. The monster was out, and it was ready to play.
“What the fuck is he doing here?” she asked as she lifted her head. I got a clear look at her black eyes. The shark eyes I was all too familiar with. I started to back out of the door again without even thinking. It was complete reflex, and I had to stop myself from running.
“Charlie called me. He called me to help,” I said, not really knowing what else to say at the moment. I knew I was stalling for time, trying to figure out my next move, knowing she was already three steps ahead of me.
“The bastard took her medicine away from her,” she grinned, with that low, smoke-filled laugh. I knew Charlie, and I had no doubt what It was telling me was true. The one thing I couldn’t understand, is why Charlie didn’t get that the only thing keeping him alive was the medication. As long as It could be subdued with medication, there would be no problems. However, once the medication was taken away, the monster would become unleashed and allowed to roam. It was easy to understand. But Charlie resented the money it took for the medicine. He hated it. He would rather spend his money on booze and women than on keeping his wife healthy and this thing under control enough for it to be safely and properly handled.
“Charlie, get the doctor on the phone,” I said to him. He jumped to it, ready to do anything at this point because he knew he had fucked with the system. I turned my attention once again toward Helen, and I could see a moment of clarity coming over her. Whatever this was had always been transient with her. The longer it went untreated, the longer it would stay around. However, she had been under treatment for quite a few months at this point, so it was having trouble staying with her consistently.
“Steven, I thought I was dreaming. I woke up, standing over Charlie with scissors in my hand. They were telling me to kill him,
and I was going to do it just so they would stop showing me such horrible things and leave me alone.” She started crying at this point. It was a good thing Charlie woke up just when those scissors were getting ready to come down into his chest, because she would have killed him without a second thought. That was the last coherent word I heard from Helen that day. The rest of the day, she was slipping back and forth from delirium to the monster. The drive to the hospital made me extremely nervous because I never knew if It was going to decide to fight us on the highway, and I was more than relieved once we got her there.
The routine was the same. She spent three days in the hospital and was stabilized. After returning home, it was an immediate visit to the priest. Medical, psychological, and then spiritual, I still follow these rules when dealing with my cases today. It was always successful with Helen, and it has always been successful with all of my cases. I know there are many questions going through your mind. To answer everything right now would be to give everything away. There is more to come.
Shortly after this incident, Helen found out only by accident that Charlie had moved his girlfriend into the same apartment complex they were living in. Not the same building, but the building next to it. Of course, Charlie denied it and said he was not seeing her, and then it turned into he used to see her. Of course, Helen would catch him secretly talking to her and all hell would break loose. However, even then, Charlie would insist they were just friends and nothing was going on. It was always just Helen’s imagination. Now, you have to stop and consider just how bright of a man Charlie March really was. His wife, at this point, had tried to kill him twice. The first time, she tried to cut off his penis with a knife. The Catholic Church had determined that she was possessed by a demon. The psychiatric community could not explain what was going on with her and believed it was the result of her living through a haunting. The medical community had seen things happen to her they could not explain. She was currently taking medication to keep what they believed was a demonic entity subdued––or something along those lines. Now, would you do something deliberately to piss this woman off ? In my opinion, Charlie March, at this point, deserved the stupid husband award. Not only that, Charlie kept trying to take away the only thing keeping him alive, her medicine. Seems to me like this man had a death wish.
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