He peered up into the mirror once more and realized the awkward feeling was spot-on.
Eric Richardson wasn’t alone, and he was, in fact, being watched. Proof stared perplexingly back at him from the mirror. Eric Richardson, the pale-faced boyish reflection of himself that had startled him only moments ago, was no longer alone.
A little girl, her beautiful, long blonde hair draped over the shoulders to each side of her dress, seemingly no more than five years old—
(five years old exactly)
—stared back at him as well.
He had been scared before, but never quite like this. Instinct screamed at him to run, but he could not. He was petrified and frozen in place. He thought of the Old Henry, and although he knew it would not inflict any damage whatsoever, he imagined it might scare her off...if he had it. He had misplaced it.
So what now, Eric? a voice inside his head spoke up.
He was not sure. He wanted so badly to speak, to say...what exactly? He wasn’t quite sure of that either, and it did not matter right now because any and all coherent vocabulary had managed to escape him.
The little girl, her menacing scowl now morphed into a sinister smile, reached out with two steady hands. Perhaps to grasp Eric around the neck and choke every ounce of life from his trembling body. Perhaps to merely just grasp his shoulders in a friendly, don't-be-scared-I-come-in-peace type gesture.
In either case, Eric did not wait around to find out.
He attempted to spin around gracefully and planned to use his speed and elusiveness to scurry past her and down the stairs, but it didn’t pan out that way. His left foot slid atop a piece of paper he had inadvertently knocked out of the drawer, although he could not recall doing it. The paper glided effortlessly across the hardwood floor. He tried to maintain his balance, but as the paper continued to carry his left leg away and forced him into an unwanted split position, he gave in.
Knowing he could not stop the paper from gliding and that he would undoubtedly take a catastrophic spill if he removed his foot altogether, he lifted his right foot off the floor instead. He hoped stepping forward into the slide might stop it abruptly. It probably would have worked if not for the current string of bad luck he was encountering and the fact his right foot landed atop a separate piece of loose-leaf paper. Both feet now slid, pushing him rapidly and unwillingly towards the banister.
“Isabella?" he called out, hoping he had chosen the right name and at the same time, thinking that it did not matter either way.
The girl—Isabella, or so he hoped—stood directly in front of the banister, much further away than he had originally thought while looking in the mirror. She lowered her arms, aiming at his shoulders and appeared as though she planned to stop him.
As he neared, Eric noticed an ominous glow surrounding her body—a certain aura. It was a glow he recognized; a glow he had seen several times before in horror movies; a glow that up until now he had always believed to be bullshit; a glow that always lined the bodies of damned souls trapped here and condemned to an eternity of wandering the Earth. A ghost.
As he approached her outstretched arms, he prayed she could stop him and actually believed it because he had always heard how strong spirits were. But the hands passed straight through him. For a moment, he and the little girl—Isabella, or whatever her name was—were one.
He had no time to dwell on it now or the malicious feeling he sensed while passing through her since the banister rapidly approached. He did the only plausible thing he could come up with in the spur of the moment. He leapt up, briefly removing both feet from the scraps of paper.
The spontaneous act started out perfectly but the finale went awry. His left leg—his weaker leg in every aspect—touched down first, crumbling beneath the weight from the rest of his 130-pound body. He fell onto his side and rolled towards the banister, scratching and clawing, trying anything and everything to stop himself or even slow up a bit. But the hardwood floor was slick and unforgiving.
Eric crashed into and burst through the wood pylons holding up the banister. Reluctantly, just before he began his descent to the first floor, he was wise enough to grab one of the wooden pieces that remained intact throughout the crash. It creaked and bowed beneath his weight, but it held. Thank God, it held. How long it might hold was a mystery, but he imagined it wouldn’t be long before it, too, snapped.
His left ankle throbbed morosely from falling on it; both of his sides—one which broke his initial fall and the other which took the extent of the damage of bursting through the railing—ached and cramped. He struggled to breathe normally. He felt splinters poking, prodding, and jabbing in all over his body.
But none of that mattered.
He needed help.
“Isabella?” he called out again, no longer caring whether he had the right name or not. But from what he could tell, which was not much from where he hung, she was gone.
Shit! He desperately needed help and—
“John?” he shouted at the top of his lungs.
No answer; not that he had truly expected one since his list of potential lifesavers were slim to none, but what—
All at once, more panic crashed down atop him at the realization he was truly alone. Alone and dangling above nothing from the second story landing. And for the first time, he felt like this might have been a mistake. Why hadn’t he just listened to John and left when he had the chance? Better yet, why had he came here in the first place?
But all of this paled in comparison to the realization that his fingers were slipping and he didn’t have much time.
*****
John sprinted gallantly into what he thought to be the dimly-lit eerie manor, expecting to see Eric still sitting atop the base of the fountain, too chickenshit to actually go it alone.
But he was wrong.
He could not believe it. He had never felt worse than nor as nauseous as he did in that moment.
John fell to his knees, crying hysterically, just wanting...to go; go home; go anywhere other than here; just find Eric and get the fuck out of here and back to reality.
He was on the verge of losing all hope when the clinking and clattering of pots and pans knocking together arose from the direction of the kitchen.
“Eric?” he whispered, but when he opened his eyes, his mind changed again.
The house, for the first time since the boys arrived, was brightly lit; partially because of the six succeeding lights running up and down the hallway, but mostly because of the sunlight shining in from outside. The sunlight poured in from windows high above across from the second story landing and windows at the tops of the doors and through every crack and crevice possible.
Confusion mounted. He had hoped it was just some part of a lucid daydream, but now that he was inside and the sunlight still shone brightly, and at almost eleven p.m., he...he—
Innocent laughter came rustling from the living room, accompanied by the booming of the speakers.
“Eric?”
He had been watching it before, John thought.
The pots and pans clanked noisily together again in the opposite direction. John could not decide between the two. The kitchen? The living room?
Which should he choose?
Just as he leaned towards reexamining the kitchen, he heard the steel door swoosh open and creak back shut on its rusty hinges. He heard the wooden door at the end of the hall slam open as it crashed into the wall behind it. A staff member—a surprisingly large man—wearing a white and stained apron with a corresponding white chef’s hat, appeared. He clutched a silver tray with some type of food and drink. The man walked casually but purposefully, quickly but carefully. The chef—although he looked like a man John would not trust to prepare his own food, chef was the only thing John could imagine this man to be—made his way towards the living room.
John followed, trying to be stealthy but finding it extremely difficult to do so in the empty hallway with nothing to hide behind. However, he remained light-foo
ted, tiptoeing behind the chef. As the chef entered the living room, John ducked in behind him and crouched down next to the fireplace.
He watched exuberantly and in awe at what happened next.
*****
“John?” Eric yelled out. He could feel his fingers slipping a little more and his weight dropping a bit every time he breathed and with every passing second. “I need some help,” he murmured, trying not to cry.
“Isabella?” he called to her again in the most rational tone he could muster given the situation, trying to and hopefully not sounding frustrated or frightened...or both. She did not reappear, or answer his call for that matter.
He now believed that he indeed had the wrong name and that was the sole reason for her not answering or reappearing; that it wasn’t Isabella at all, but rather—
“Dammit!”
He drew a blank and could not for the life of himself—and ironically enough, his life may depend on remembering it—remember the other one’s name. Fear! It must be fear blocking his memory, especially since not so long ago—although it seemed like an eternity ago—he recalled and recited all of the children’s names when finding the DVD with Raymond printed on it and again while recapping the story of the incident to John.
“Oh shit!” he babbles discouragingly, no longer able to fight back the tears.
He cried huge crocodile tears as his own father would have called them. Sobbed like a heartbroken toddler getting in trouble for the first time.
As any smidgen of hope he managed to hold on to thus far rapidly vanished, a small sliver of new hope shone through.
Footsteps!
John? Maybe. Hopefully.
Eric quickly dismissed this thought. Unfortunately, he knew all too well that subtlety was not John’s area of expertise. John would not have been able to keep a low profile trundling up the stairs. He would have no doubt been ripping and romping through the house and up the stairs like a child on Christmas morning trying to wake his/her parents up. John would have screamed in terror, or panicked, (most likely both), at the sight of Eric dangling from the landing on the brink of death. He would have answered Eric’s shouts.
Eric peered upwards, his vision mostly obscured by the planks of hardwood, but saw—
*****
The chef made his way around the front of the couch and held the tray out in front of two suspecting onlookers.
“Thanks, Charles,” the man on the couch said without looking away from the television.
“You are always welcome, sir,” the chef—Charles—replied graciously.
“What is it, Daddy?” a small, redheaded boy sitting on the opposite end of the couch from the man spoke up.
“That’s chicken spaghetti, Raymond.”
“Raymond?” John whispered. Eric had not mentioned anyone by that name, had he? No. Most certainly not. John wasn’t sure of much tonight, but he was positive there was no Raymond Cahill.
The man on the couch whipped violently around, taking his gaze away from the television for the first time and fixating it upon the fireplace, where John knelt.
Did he hear me? It was highly unlikely, but with the way things were going tonight, it was not exactly impossible. Does he see me, though? This was a strong possibility. Either way, it was too late. If he tried crouching down any further behind the stone of the fireplace the man would most certainly see him move.
Apparently he doesn’t see me, John thought as he watched the man he recognized to be Jeff Cahill turn back around just in time to see the red-headed boy turn his nose up at the sight and smell of the chicken spaghetti.
Jeff Cahill laughed heartily and said, “It’s really good, son. Just try it.”
Raymond nodded with a smile; his eyes filled with an exuberance only a son—a daddy’s baby—could show his own father.
“Is that all, sir?” Charles asked in a patient tone as Raymond took a small nibble of the spaghetti and appeared—at least from where John crouched—to like it.
“Yes, sir,” Jeff Cahill announced. There was no sarcasm in his tone whatsoever, only respect; the utmost respect that normally the servants showed the family and their employers, not the other way around.
Jeff Cahill saying “sir” so casually and respectfully to his chef was odd, but what ran through John’s mind next was simply terrifying. A man with so much respect and politeness such as Jeff Cahill could not possibly have murdered his entirely family; could he? Could someone else have done it?
John watched on in astonishment as Charles exited the living room, walking past him for the second time and still not noticing him.
“Charles?” Jeff called out just as Charles zoomed through the doorway. “One more thing.”
John could see and recognized the hint of disgust on the Charles’s face as he pivoted around and responded, “Anything, sir.”
“Let’s not tell the missus about this,” Jeff replied. The implication of it being a demand was not present in Jeff’s tone. “You know how she freaks out when we eat in here.”
“Tell her what, sir?”
“You’re the man, Charles,” Jeff said with a smug grin as he prepared himself to devour the chicken spaghetti and iced sweet tea.
*****
Eric saw Isabella—or whatever her name was—as plain as day.
“Oh, thank God!” Eric exclaimed, fearing God had nothing to do with her being here. “Can you please pull me up?”
The little girl only stood there, watching him solemnly, staring at him with the blankest expression of incomprehension that Eric had ever witnessed.
“Please, Isabella.” The tears flowed more freely now. “You gotta help me,” he panted. “I’m slipping. I don’t know how much longer—”
His words tapered off as he watched Isabella turn away with a smile. “No!” he cried. But she was starting to walk away. “Please, God! No! You can’t just leave me here to die like this!”
But she was already gone.
*****
Just as Jeff Cahill settled the couch back into its reclining position, plate of spaghetti in hand, and drifted listlessly back into whatever sports program ran on the television, Raymond leaned forward as well; his plate of spaghetti also in hand. John could not quite determine the reasoning for Raymond leaning up. It was difficult for him to see the boy from where he knelt.
The chicken spaghetti (juicy just as Jeff Cahill liked and preferred it) began sliding outward to the rim of Raymond’s plate. Jeff was too preoccupied with the sporting endeavor to notice and possibly prevent the accident that was about to happen.
Raymond shifted his weight backwards in an attempt to recline his part of the couch back as well—like father, like son—but as he shifted, the spaghetti shifted as well and spilled out on to the middle cushion of the imported couch between where he and his father sit.
Jeff remained completely oblivious of what happened next to him. That was until Raymond made a last ditch effort to salvage the bad and worsening situation and save himself an ass whooping (probably a bad one).
Raymond leaned forward to wipe away the juice that had spilled with his napkin, knowing his father would never notice the spot, not in a million years, but his mother...his mother would definitely notice. He would simply say, “I dunno”, if his mother asked about it and deny any allegations that may come his way later.
But as he wiped, the plate toppled forward, crashing to the floor. The juice splattered everywhere: on himself, his father, the couch and the floor, and even a stray glob found its way onto the television.
“Goddammit!” Jeff yelled, stern and vile. “Can’t you do anything right?”
Raymond cringed.
John watched on in an awe-stricken gaze, captivated by how quickly the situation had escalated; by how such harsh obscenities could escape Jeff Cahill’s lips (the man that only moments ago John deduced to be a good and upstanding guy and incapable of harming his family); by how much Jeff’s overall demeanor had changed. Jeff’s expression was completely different.
To John, Jeff Cahill’s body language suggested something bad was about to happen; that Raymond needed to abandon ship, run away, just get the fuck out of there any way possible.
But Raymond did not move.
“How stupid can you possibly be?” Jeff continued. “I mean...how?”
“I-I-I don’t—”
“Shut up!” Jeff screamed. “Just shut the hell up!” He raised his right arm into the air, open-fisted.
Raymond flinched, falling backwards against the armrest of the couch, knowing he would not be able to avoid the inevitable.
The end table next to the couch shook forcefully as Raymond barreled into the armrest. The glass of iced tea—not on a coaster, of course, because children at that age were incapable of using coasters—rocked back and forth. Rocked so viciously that some of the tea sloshed out over the rim and spilled onto the table. Rocked so viciously it eventually toppled over, spilling out all of its contents just before it rolled to and over the edge of the table and crashed to the floor, shattering into numerous microscopic pieces.
“Goddammit, boy!” Jeff screamed, muffling the shattering of the glass. “You’re fucking useless!”
“Please don’t,” Raymond pleaded as if he knew what came next.
But it was too late.
By this time, the seemingly innocent Jeff Cahill turned violent, grabbing Raymond around both biceps and jerking him up from the couch.
*****
“This was a mistake,” Eric repeated. It became his mantra as he continued to repeat it. “This was a mistake.” Then, throwing in an obscenity or two as if trying to convince himself coming here actually was a mistake, “This was a fucking mistake.”
The biceps in both of his arms tightened, shooting pains all the way up both of his shoulder blades and then subsiding. His forearms throbbed. His entire lower body numbed without any stability below him.
Death—sweet, sweet release as he viewed it—lurked, creeping vicariously behind him, or rather beneath him, waiting to catch him when he fell. Or perhaps it wasn’t death at all. After all, this fall probably would not kill him. Wound him, yes; cripple him at worst, but death...death seemed like a mild exaggeration at this point, brought on by a loss of hope.
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