The Spook House (The Spook Series Book 1)

by Paul Emil

  She smiled. “We go to the library.”

  “What? You’ve got to be kidding me!”

  “No,” Ashira said. “I’m not.”

  She started walking down the hall. I stayed were I was. As I watched her move away, she said, “Are you coming?”

  After one second, I said, “Yes!” and hurried after her. I didn’t want to be left alone in here again. Ironically, I felt safer with Satan at my side.

  We arrived back at the room. I listened at the door, expecting to hear something moving.

  “You know,” I told Ashira, “There’s something in there, I think.”

  “Oh there is,” Ashira said excitedly. “But it’s not what you think. It’s your salvation!”

  “My salvation?” I said skeptically.

  “Inside there is the proof that you’re not crazy. And you need that, don’t you?”

  I was quiet and said, “Yes, I do.” I felt like adding, “Don’t we all?”

  “Well then,” she said, “You’ll get it inside. Salvation, for your mind, body, and soul.”

  “My soul?”

  “Sorry,” she laughed. “I just couldn’t help throwing that in there. ‘Save your soul.’ God’s big PR plan.” She gave a lopsided smile and a look of mild amusement and disdain.

  My brain was too fried to think. She could see that.

  “Alright,” she said. “Sorry. Bad joke. Let’s keep it simple. If you want to get out of here and find out the secret of this place, then get in there.”

  “The secret?”

  “Let me make this simpler. If you want to live, get in there.”

  I reach for the door handle. I wrapped my hand around it and paused.

  “Don’t worry,” Ashira said. “It’s OK. I’ll be with you. I’ll protect you.”

  I wasn’t so far gone that I didn’t see the irony in the Devil promising to keep me safe, but I was done thinking. I almost felt like I was sleepwalking. The experience had a dreamlike, unreal quality. I felt as if I were in darkened theater, watching the drama happen to somebody else, yet I was emotionally invested in it. I really cared about the outcome. Maybe this was the only way I could mentally survive – by disconnecting.

  In a zombie-like trance, I turned the lever-like handle of the door, and pushed it open.

  –––––

  There was a fresh layer of fog hovering over the floor in the room. The mist was higher now, almost up to my waist. Weird eddies and currents swirled around in it, stirred by mysterious drafts and unseen forces. Ashira stepped inside. The gloom engulfed her legs.

  I said, “I don’t want to go in there.”

  “Of course you don’t,” Ashira said, “but this is where you can see it.”

  “See what?”

  “It!” she answered, cryptically. I didn’t like the sound of that, but I gripped my gun and entered to see what “it” was.

  Ashira drifted to the middle of the room. Her presence didn’t stir up the mist like mine did. When she stopped, so did I. I scanned the room. I didn’t detect any black thing in the corners or clinging to the walls or ceiling.

  The mist settled as I stood still.

  “Ashira, I …”

  “Shhh!”

  I froze and waited. After a few seconds, she said, “There!”

  “Where?” I said, ready to point my gun in that direction.

  “Wait for it,” she whispered. I looked in the direction she was looking.

  “There!”

  Something stirred the surface of the fog like an invisible shark fin cutting through water. I shouldered my gun.

  My glands spewed sweat and my anus was sputtering.

  “There’s something in here!” I cried. It was coming at me. I started firing blindly at the floor.

  I fired a burst and waited, hoping I had hit it. The mist swirled and slowly settled back into place. My first thought was, Did I hit it? Is it dead?

  But I knew that was a foolish question. Of course it wasn’t dead. Some screaming horror would pop up the moment I lowered my guard. My hands were shaking so badly I felt like invisible forces were trying to wrestle the rifle from my fingers.

  Ashira, sounding disappointed but not surprised that I didn’t trust her, said, “OK, let’s try again. Here is comes. And this time, hold your fire.”

  The same unseen force parted the surface of the mist. I held my fire this time. Several seconds later, I feel a slight breeze on my face.

  My brain, while barely functioning, still had enough logic circuits firing to detect that I had just felt a draft.

  “It’s … it’s a puff of air,” my mouth said.

  Ashira sounded pleased, saying, “And?”

  “And … there are no windows in here.”

  “So where’s the air coming from?”

  Ashira talked like a teacher encouraging a child to arrive at the answer himself instead of just giving it to him.

  “Ventilation ducts?”

  “Do you see any ventilation ducts in here?” I didn’t. My brain kept working.

  “I don’t know. Holes in wall? A secret passage?”

  Ashira smiled, now that I was getting creative. I was getting closer.

  “Is that it? A secret passage?”

  The fire of hope that burned within me went out hours ago, and I was surviving on the glowing coals now, trying to make the most of the warmth before that too disappeared and left me cold. But a small ember just popped, igniting a tiny flame.

  Air flow might mean a secret passage, and ultimately, a way out.

  Ashira gave me a hint. “What is special about this room?”

  I racked my brain like an addict ransacking a room looking for something. No windows? Only one way in and out? Then I said, “The fog.”

  “That’s right,” Ashira said, pleased.

  “It’s like, a fog machine, or something like that,” I said.

  “Or something like that,” Ashira echoed.

  The blurry images in my mind finally became clearer like a photo in being developed in a darkroom. I waited for the next blast of air. It subtle, but when it came, I saw it.

  “There it is!” I said triumphantly. I looked at Ashira. She was smiling. I thought I saw her give a nod of approval, but it might have just been my imagination.

  I pointed my gun at the “source” of the air stream. “If there’s anybody behind the wall, you better come out now, because I’m going to light it up!”

  I waited for two seconds. There was no reply.

  “OK. Have it your way,” I said. I shot up the wall. The gunfire was deafening, as always, but somewhere in my volley, I heard the distinct clamor of bullets hitting metal, and I saw sparks fly off of the wall. If I had blinked I would have missed them.

  I stopped firing. I went to the wall and ran my fingers over the ancient, peeling paint. My fingers found an unnaturally straight crack and followed it around. I was excited. I had found the door.

  The door, however, turned out to be smaller than I thought. It was like the door to a hidden safe, not an exit.

  Angry that my plans had been smashed once again by this house, I slung my rifle over my shoulder and slipped out my knife. I tapped on the hidden metal door.

  I found a keyhole where I expected one to be. The door was locked. I tried to pry the door open. It held, but the metal seemed thin and shook loosely in its frame, like that of a high school locker. In other words, I wasn’t going to let this cheap, stubborn piece of crap stop me from my discovery. The burning ember glowed.

  I started banging on the door with the butt of the rifle. I hacked at it with my knife. I yelled with rage. At some point, the door gave up and came loose. Then I ripped it open.

  I was looking at a board of circuit breakers. There were two rows of switches for electricity to the house. The panel looked clean and modern. My eyes immediately went to four metal capsules inserted side-by-side into the board. They looked like CO2 tanks used to propel paintballs out of paintball guns.

  I p
opped one of the objects out of the board with my knife and heard a small hiss of air that was quickly sealed off. The tube was smooth and about the same size as a roll of quarters. One end of it was rounded off. The other tapered down to a valve similar to that of a tire. The air tank itself was wrapped in a detailed label as if it were prescription medication. A skull and bones dominated the label, along with the biohazard symbol and “DOD” for Department of Defense.

  “This is it,” I said, to myself as well as to Ashira. “This is where they blow it in.”

  Ashira clapped slowly. I could have been annoyed, but I wasn’t.

  “So now you have proof,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “Proof is good. But how does that help me now?”

  Ashira smiled wickedly. “Well,” she said, “Now comes the fun part.”

  –––––

  Ashira laid out her plan. It was nasty. It was both disgusting and satisfying at the same time. I followed her instructions and I staggered out of the room. The hall seemed to pitch from side-to-side, as if I were on a ship on a storm-tossed sea.

  “It’s not real,” I said, quoting the mantra Ashira told me to repeat until I got out of the house.

  I stumbled down the hallway. It was leaning severely, as if I were on a sinking ship. I looked down it, viewing it at the dramatic, canted angle used to in every horror movie to show things were askew and that something bad was about to happen.

  “Not real,” I said, as I weaved down the hall a like a drunk.

  “It’s the drugs,” I told myself. “I’ve been breathing this shit in. I just got a big dose in that room.”

  I eventually made it to the foyer and the front door. All of the bodies were still there.

  As Ashira had instructed, I laid my gun down on the ground. Then I tried the front door. It was still locked. Bastards. They still weren’t letting me out. Well, the show was over. I sat down on the floor with my back leaning against the front door. I was exhausted. I had no idea what time it was. My digital watch was dead. I casually gazed around. There was movement in the darkness down the hall. I ignored it. There was a figure standing at the balcony above the foyer, looking down at me. The female form was unmistakable. I perked up a little, thinking it was Ashira, but even in the darkness, I could tell it wasn’t. At school, I could identify girls, even if they were far away, by body shape alone. It wasn’t her.

  “Drugs,” I said to myself. “Drugs.”

  I closed my eyes and slid down the door. Ashira told me not to react to anything. She said I should try to go to sleep there. She said the bosses would only open the door when they thought I was no longer a threat. That made sense, but her instructions were hard to follow, especially when I thought I just heard the top step creak, as if someone were coming down the stairs. I squeezed my eyes shut until tears came out. Then the next step down creaked. I hugged my knees like a frightened child.

  “There’s nothing there,” I told myself like a little boy in a bedroom at night who’s afraid to look at the closet.

  I wanted to open my eyes, grab my gun, and shoot everything in sight, but Ashira had told me to put my weapons down and not to react to anything if I wanted to live. I hoped she was right.

  Another step creaked as the thing on the staircase descended, slowly coming closer.

  “Drugs,” I whispered to myself, and when that magic word failed to calm me, I cried, “God help me.”

  26

  My memories of what happened next are blurry. I must have fallen asleep or passed out, because I vaguely remember “waking up” when the door I lying against unsealed and cracked open. The harsh white light from the flood lamps surrounding the pen spilled in, chasing away the shadows. Things in the house that were closing in on me fled back into the dark recesses from which they had come.

  My eyes, having been in the dark for so long, were blinded by the light. I felt strong hands in rubber gloves grab me and lift me up. My legs gave out. I heard the rustling, squeaking sounds of rubber and plastic. I was surrounded by men in HazMat suits. They dragged me out of the house.

  I must have passed out again, because I woke up groggy on a hard bed with no memory of how I got there. I was out of uniform. I was in nothing but my underwear and a hospital smock. I tried to sit up. A strap across my chest restrained me. I tried to move my arms, but they were also in restraints.

  “Oh God no,” I groaned. I was back in the hospital. Actually, maybe I had never left. That must be it. I’m insane.

  “God help me,” I moaned.

  “God’s not going to help you,” Ashira said darkly. “Trust me.”

  She was standing beside the bed, looking down on me.

  “Ashira! Are you … the house … was it …?”

  “It was real.”

  “Where am I?”

  “Back at the base,” she said. “In detox.”

  “The house is real,” I said, still not fully believing it. “I don’t … I don’t get it. It’s so evil. How can God let this go on? Why doesn’t He do something about it?”

  Ashira laughed. “You remember the Battle of the Ants?”

  Again, I was alarmed at how Ashira had access to my innermost thoughts and memories.

  When I was about 12, Dad took me to his job at the quarry – an open strip mine outside of town. He left me in the office trailer while he went to a meeting. There, I had the privilege of seeing a war – ants vs. termites – going on under a desk. I swear, I could have watched that all day.

  The girl in the office said, “I was going to spray them, but I decided since they’re killing each other, I’ll just wait until the war’s over, and then I’ll only have one species to deal with.”

  The ants won. I regretted missing out on a lot of the action, but I was satisfied that I had seen the end a few days later.

  I remember thinking about how cool it was that I had seen the Battle of the Ants. It was amazing anyone had been there to witness it at all. I had felt like God, watching the drama that could otherwise seem so insignificant. But it wasn’t insignificant to the termites and the ants. For them, it was life and death.

  That gave me some perspective. As a mere mortal, in my relationship to the divine, God was the human, and I was the ant.

  –––––

  “So you see,” Ashira said, as if reading my mind, “That’s what it’s like to be God. He looks down on you. Human beings are the bugs.”

  Seeing the distaste on my face, she continued, “You could have intervened. You could have picked a side and changed the outcome easily. Or you could have had the building fumigated and wiped them all out. But you didn’t. Why not?”

  “Well,” I answered, “it really wasn’t my business. I was just watching.”

  “Exactly!” Ashira said. I thought I saw something flicker in her in her eyes as she smiled.

  “They amused you. You let them fight it out because you wanted to see what would happen. They weren’t bothering you, so you didn’t care. You watched passively. Just like God.”

  Those words made my skin crawl. They instinctively felt wrong. I said, “God does care.”

  “No, He doesn’t,” Ashira said sternly.

  I stood my ground. “Yes, He does,” I said firmly. “God cares.”

  “NO, HE DOES NOT!” Ashira shouted. “I know Him. God can’t relate to life on Earth. He doesn’t have a body. He can never be imprisoned or confined. He will never get sick or feel his body get weak and frail. He is immortal. He will never be afraid for His life. He doesn’t have to worry about any of that.”

  I looked at Ashira and said, “Neither do you.”

  She looked at me sharply. I said, “I think God feels emotions. He can be happy or sad. In the Bible, half the time He’s angry.”

  “Angry when He doesn’t get what He wants,” Ashira spat.

  “That means He cares,” I said. Ashira looked at me darkly.

  “I think God wants what is best for humanity,” I said.

  A look of d
isdain appeared on Ashira’s face. Her eyes turned black. Not just the pupils, but the entire eyes. I thought I saw something squirm just beneath the skin of her face, ready to split the thin disguise. She suddenly seemed impossibly tall. I recoiled instinctively.

  She took a deep breath, exhaled, and returned to normal. She said, “Look, Jacob. I like you. I really do. But this conversation is over. Don’t piss me off.”

  I didn’t want to piss her off.

  “Look. You’re out of the house but you’re still in danger. But I didn’t abandon you. I’m here by your side, aren’t I?”

  It was true. I nodded.

  “I got you out alive, but we’re not done yet. It’s almost time to carry out our plan. Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” I said confidently. “Are you going to help me?”

  “It’s all up to you now.”

  “But … You’ll be there in the end, when it happens, right?”

  Ashira’s mood brightened. She smiled wickedly. Something flared in her eyes and she said, “Oh, Jacob. I wouldn’t miss it.”

  27

  I honestly don’t know how long I was in detox. I kept going in and out of consciousness. I lost all sense of time.

  Based on how the medics dressed, I could tell the perceived threat I posed had decreased. The first guys who saw me were in HazMat suits. Later, the second set of nurses lost the suits but wore latex gloves and cup-like surgical masks over their noses and mouths. Finally, the last ones came dressed in their regular uniforms. Each time they attended to me, they were escorted by MPs.

  Around that time, Command ordered me to give a verbal report into a recording device. Not knowing what to say, I deliberately gave short answers. I basically said that the team got separated, got disoriented, and panicked. It was an insufficient summary, but I wasn’t lying. Several days and multiple tests later, I was ordered to take a shower and put on the clothes provided. I did so. The clothes were standard boot camp gear: gray sweats and boots. Apparently, I was not going back into uniform.

  After I cleaned myself up, the guard cuffed me and escorted me to a private room for debriefing. I had been expecting this. As we approached the secure door, I thought, Here we go.