The Revenant: A Horror in Dodsville

by Brian L. Blank

  “I know that,” I said, trying not to sound too ignorant on the subject. Although, my mind was thinking back if I had ever read anything about anyone being hurt by a ghost. I had not, but that didn’t seem to put my mind at ease. “I mean, will our cameras get him on film?”

  “Sure they will,” Reed commented, pulling slightly ahead of me now. “You’ve seen all those pictures of ghosts in the book we found at the library last year, remember?”

  “Yea, “ I said, feeling a little bit stupid again. But, then, Reed often had that affect on me.

  We reached the Country Bar and Grill and continued past it. There were five or six cars in the parking lot. A thought of comfort pushed its way past the fear in my mind: Wickerman’s Place was only a five-minute haul on bike from here. In other words, only five minutes back to people--and sanity.

  Wickerman’s came into view a few minutes later. The moon above was three quarters full, giving off enough illumination to cast a light on everything around us. Of course, that wasn’t all that much, our being out in the country. A hay field was to our left and a forest was to our right in front of the house. A corn field stretched over a hill on the other side, the leaves on the stalks reflecting moonlight up to the horizon.

  The house itself was two stories high and almost an exact square, except for the roof. The years of broiling sun, freezing winters, and pounding rains had taken their toll on the exterior. Only flakes of white paint, albeit yellowed from time, clung to its sides, like leaves in autumn clinging on to their last few minutes of existence. Not a single window on the entire house was intact. That, of course, was almost a required requisite of any abandoned house. It was a child’s sacred duty to see to that. I had even contributed to the breaking of the front picture window when I was only seven years old. And I regretted it soon afterwards. The nightmares followed on the heels of the transgression. And the dreams were always the same--Mr. Wickerman himself coming after me. Sometimes I was trapped in this house after dark, or other times he was coming into my own home--his sole purpose to teach me a lesson I would not soon forget. Accordingly, I had never broken a window, on purpose, again.

  We stopped and parked our bikes at the foot of the driveway, just off the road and in some high grass. We turned them around first and faced them in the direction of the way back to the tavern. That was another of Reed’s survival tactics--it would save us precious seconds if we, for any reason, needed to haul ass out of there.

  The lawn in front of the house was a quagmire; weeds of many denominations, heights, and shapes infested the yard. A sidewalk leading from the halfway point of the driveway to the front door was barely visible. Weeds poured from every crack and crevice. The driveway, on the contrary, was still fairly visible. Of course, the weeds had infested it also, but the original gravel could easily be recognized underneath.

  I grabbed the canvas bag from my bike baskets and divvied up its contents. A car approached us from the east, but Reed and I easily hid ourselves in the high grasses next to the road to avoid detection. No need to risk raising suspicion. I breathed a little easier, though, knowing we were not completely isolated from civilization out here.

  The year had been a particularly bad one for the mosquito condition, and the area around Wickerman’s was not an exception. Both Reed and I had sprayed with repellent before leaving his garage, but somehow that was never enough defense against these bothersome parasites. I constantly slapped at the back of my neck and arms. Crickets sang their constant nocturnal cry for rain, same as they would any place else in the upper Midwest. A bullfrog bellowed solemnly from a nearby pond.

  After the car had passed us far enough so they couldn’t see us behind them, Reed and I crawled out of the weeds and onto the driveway. I felt something crawling on my arm and quickly shined my flashlight on the exposed skin.

  “Shit,” I muttered, more disgusted than alarmed. A dozen or so wood ticks crept slowly along my forearm, searching for a good spot to dig in and feast. More crawled along my legs and shirt. I must have hit a narrow patch of them, as Reed couldn’t find any on himself.

  Reed helped me pick off what ticks we could find infesting my clothes and exposed flesh. Even though we did a thorough job, I could still feel imaginary wood ticks crawling on my skin. I would always relent and check, and never find any.

  We hooked our walkie-talkies to our belt loops. In the past we had never even once had to use them, and hoped we never would; but we knew it was better safe than sorry. We had heard about the old rope adage--if you took the rope along with you, you would never need to use it; but the one time you left it behind, your life would depend on having the rope. We felt pretty much the same about our walkie-talkies. They would range for over a mile, so we didn’t have to worry about not being able to keep in contact with each other. The cameras fitted around our necks, and I carried the tape recorder in one hand. We checked our flashlights one more time and started for the front door.

  Reed led the way down the warped sidewalk and stopped at the front entrance. “Locked,” he said in a whisper, as he tried the knob. And it hadn’t been locked the last time we were here. I turned on my flashlight and illuminated a large Master Lock, the kind from the commercial when the rifleman shoots a bullet through it and it remains intact.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  Reed frowned in thought for a minute. “The window,” he replied, and nodded toward the one just to the left of the front entrance. It was broken, like all the rest, so all we would need to do was to break off the pointed remains of the glass and climb aboard.

  We jumped off the porch--and almost right into a large

  NO TRESPASSING!

  sign.

  “This wasn't here last time, either,” I said, still whispering.

  Reed didn’t reply, only sighed, raised his right leg and kicked the sign over.

  “What did you go and do that for?” I asked, slightly annoyed. I didn’t like vandalism. Moreover, the thought of the old nightmares about this place had me more than a bit uncomfortable.

  Reed shrugged in the moonlight. “It bugged me,” he replied nonchalantly, and started for the window. “Come on.”

  The bottom sash of the window came to about the level of our chins. Reed, using the butt of his flashlight, knocked off the remaining jagged edges of glass. “Get me a boost,” he instructed as he tucked his flashlight into his back pocket and stuck out his left foot.

  I grabbed onto his shoe and pushed up. He practically flew over the edge and into the house. I heard a muffled grunt as he hit the floor inside. A few seconds later his head reappeared in the window, and he smiled at me mischievously as he reached out with a hand.

  “Come on,” he said. “Hurry it up. We’re losing valuable time.”

  We grabbed onto one another’s wrist, and Reed helped pull me up until my waist rested on the sill. From that point I pushed myself up and over, landing squarely on my back on the wooden floor inside. I got up and brushed myself off.

  We immediately took our flashlights out of our back pockets and put them to use. Light would help against the scariness of the place.

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  Reed shined his flashlight on his watch. “Quarter to midnight,” he replied. “Better get the tape recorder set up.”

  Reed had read in one of his books that the time between midnight and one in the morning was the best time for ghosts and other supernatural beings to be out and about. The Witching Hour, it had said.

  “Where?” I asked, picking the recorder up off the floor.

  “Best place would be upstairs in the hallway,” Reed replied after a moment’s thought. “That’s where old Wickerman wasted his family and hanged himself.”

  I shined my flashlight around the room we were in. Shadows grew and shrunk as the light approached objects and passed them. An old wood-burning stove rested on its cast-iron legs in the far corner away from where we stood. A dinette chair lay on its back in the middle of the floor, as though someone got
out of it too quickly and tipped it over.

  Like, I thought with a shudder, when hearing a couple of boys sneaking in through the front window. I shook my head vehemently to cast away the images forming behind my eyes.

  A single doorway led out of the room. The light from my flashlight was just strong enough to show an outline of a staircase leading up at the back of the adjoining room.

  “This way,” I said, in an attempt to hide the fear building inside me.

  Reed had been busy stamping on the floor boards, making sure we wouldn’t fall through and tumble to the cellar below.

  “Stairs are over there,” I added, pointing my flashlight into the next room.

  The time we were here before neither one of us could muster enough courage to make the slight trek up to the second floor. Now, however, we had more experience and had enough mettle--or we were just plain more foolish.

  Not that I wasn’t frightened, of course. Because I was. My heart beat so hard my entire body shook along with it. After all, it was only normal to be afraid when breaking into a reputed haunted house at midnight. My heart proved this implied fact by jackhammering in my chest. I also had a small headache. But, then, these were the conditions I always faced when on a ghost hunt.

  Walking slowly and softly, we entered the adjoining room, illuminating every crevice and corner the entire way right up to the staircase. Shadows jumped all around us, giving movement to inanimate objects--lifting them to life for a brief moment before they settled back into their nonexistence. We stopped when we reached the first step and shined our lights up the stairs. We were unable to see anything on the second floor. For both of us, our breathing became more erratic, almost asthmatic.

  Another car drove by on the highway outside. Shadows immediately jumped to life, elongating to two and then three times their antecedent’s size before zapping out completely as soon as the car passed the house.

  “Let’s go,” Reed said, whispering again. He jumped hard on the first step. The step groaned briefly, but held. “Safe as can be,” Reed said, aloud this time.

  Nevertheless, we made quite sure each step was as solid as the previous one as we ascended the stairs. Side by side we climbed, almost like an older brother leading his younger brother across a busy intersection.

  Upstairs, a creak sounded, as though a squeaky door opened a full inch and stopped.

  “Did you hear that?” I asked in a whisper as we both halted in our tracks.

  “Just the wind,” Reed replied at length. “You know how much old houses creak. Especially at night when everything’s quiet.”

  The jackhammer in my chest only picked up speed anyway.

  The hallway on the second floor came into view, and we both hit it simultaneously with our flashlights. Except for a small box about half the distance down it next to a door, the hallway was barren--other than dust. There were five doors--three on the right and two on the left.

  Reed proceeded down the hallway to the box, and I, reluctantly, followed. The box held some old magazines of Popular Mechanics and True Stories. They dated back to the early sixties.

  “Set the tape recorder on top of the magazines,” Reed instructed, in a commanding whisper, and I was only too willing to follow. He could be the boss in these situations, and carry the brunt of the responsibility that went along with the title.

  I placed the recorder in the box and balanced the microphone on a corner sticking out into the hallway, and pressed the two buttons necessary for it to record. The quiet hum of its motor began immediately.

  “One minute to midnight,” Reed said, almost too casually for the occasion. He sure did keep a cool head--most of the time.

  I shined my flashlight both ways down the hallway, making sure nothing was creeping up on us. The darkness around us could have hid almost anything. My heart had slowed its pace from a few minutes ago, but it still pounded heavily in my chest. Enough to make me rock a bit. Only the sounds of crickets could be heard coming in from the broken window at the end of the hall.

  “Where do--” I began, but was cut off abruptly. The creaking door sounded again, magnified by the complete silence of the night. It seemed to come from the room at the very end of the hall.

  The lights from both our flashlights hit that door at the same time. Another

  NO TRESPASSING!

  sign glared back at us from the center of the door, reminding us again that what we were doing was illegal.

  “Come on,” Reed instructed, whispering hoarsely now that a little bit of the fears had struck him, too.

  “Why don’t we wait a bit and check that one last,” I whispered in reply. “We have plenty of time before our hour’s up.”

  Reed looked blankly back at me, as though he couldn’t believe that such a stupid idea had come from my mouth, and he reflected in silence a moment. “Good thinking,” he replied at length, without expression.

  He, then, turned to the door to our immediate right, grabbed the rusty, round doorknob, and hesitated. “You ready with the camera?” he asked sullenly.

  “Of course,” I replied, but checked to make sure it was wound to the next frame anyway.

  Although Reed opened the door as slowly as he could, without taking the entire evening, it creaked the entire way, the sound magnifying in the quietness of the dark.

  Well, I thought, that pretty much gives away the fact that we’re here. But I didn’t say it aloud. Maybe that was for the best, anyway. Now whatever was behind door number three had plenty of time to crawl back in its hole. Wherever that was.

  The room behind this first door was obviously a bathroom. A faded white porcelain sink lay on the floor right next to the entrance. And a rusted toilet leaned against the broken frosted window at the far end of the room.

  Reed faced me, shrugged, and closed the door. It, again, creaked the entire way. Reed cringed from the noise.

  We then proceeded back to a door we had passed on our way to the box. I opened this one, pretending I could be as brave as Reed in these situations. The door creaked as expected, but I jerked it open quickly, and the creaking ceased immediately. I had my weight leaning on my heels, in case I needed to make a fast getaway.

  The room was empty. A breeze entered a broken window on the far side away from us, causing the tattered drapes around the window to flutter out into the room. The breeze died down, and the drapes fell back against the wall. We turned on our flashlights and shined them around the room. The drapes fluttered in again, and this time a closet door on our right creaked slightly. The door was open only about an inch, and as we shined our flashlights on it, it closed slightly. With another groan.

  “There’s our mysterious creak,” Reed commented as he stepped up to the closet door and cranked it open without forethought.

  I remained behind near the exit. I wanted to tell him that the creak we had heard before definitely came from the room at the end of the hall.

  “Nothing in here but some old spider webs,” Reed said, closing the closet door and walking, a little more quickly than his normal pace, back to me.

  As we were about to open the door directly across the hallway, the original creak made its presence known again; though a little louder this time, as if it wanted to make sure we knew where it came from.

  “That was not the closet door,” Reed whispered excitedly. “That was a footstep.” He grabbed my shoulder with his free hand. “And it did come from that last room. Come on.”

  I was going to say that ghosts didn’t make footstep noises, but withheld again. I was simply becoming too frightened to speak.

  Reed led the way down the hall, flashlight leading him, and I reluctantly followed. The jackhammer in my chest had picked up its original high speed from back on the staircase. My brain was telling me to haul ass in the opposite direction I was headed and out of the house. Conversely, my heart wanted to see what was in that room--and my heart was obviously stronger, as I kept up my pace behind Reed.

  As we reached the door in question, Re
ed turned off his flashlight, and motioned silently for me to do the same. I did, though not really knowing why.

  “When I open the door,” Reed instructed in a low whisper, so low, in fact, I had to lean toward him to hear, “you get ready to take a picture.”

  In the darkness I nodded. I, slowly, jammed my flashlight into my back pocket, grabbed the camera from around my neck, and gripped it firmly in both hands.

  My eyes adjusted to the level of darkness in the hall; some moonlight entered through the window next to us, allowing us to see. Reed turned the doorknob without making a sound. I could see him grit his teeth and tense his body, and, without hesitation, he flung open the door.

  I raised my camera and got ready to shoot, though I was shaking so badly any picture I would have taken would have been only a blur. My eyes quickly scanned for any ghosts.

  But there was nothing.

  “Go in,” Reed said, standing motionless next to me. “I’ll keep watch on your rear end.”

  I let my camera rest against my chest again, pulled the flashlight out of my pocket, and turned it on. I lighted every corner before taking two steps into the room. Blackened mildew and dusty cobwebs filled each upper corner. There was one closet in the room, its door slightly ajar. A body length mirror hung on the wall next to the closet.

  I sighed, breathing for the first time since Reed first grabbed hold of the doorknob outside in the hall, and said, “There is nothing in here.”

  Reed’s flashlight lit up behind me. “You positive?” He walked up next to me and stopped. The light from his flashlight traveled casually around the room, past the mirror, stopping on the closet door for a second, and then jerking back to the mirror. “What the . . .”

  “What do you see?” I asked, stepping a little bit farther behind him.

  “The mirror,” Reed replied in a strangely abstract voice.

  “I don’t see any--” And then it struck me. Light from our flashlights didn’t reflect back out into the room. The mirror, instead, seemed to absorb it.