Eric nodded, but he wasn’t quite satisfied with it. It was not exactly the answer he expected, but judging by her temperament, he didn’t believe he would get a much better explanation even if he begged or pleaded.
“I am bound to this place,” she said. “It is my resting place until he goes away.” She covered her mouth with both hands as quickly as possible as if she had done something terribly wrong. And she had (at least in her own eyes). This was exactly why she hadn’t wanted to engage in conversation with Eric. She knew she would eventually make a mistake and let some secretive piece of information slip. She had had a knack for doing so when she was living and because of it earned the nickname of the snitch by her brothers and sisters. She was crazy to have believed things would change drastically just because she was d— Well, it wasn’t important. In any case, she truly believed if she did indeed make the mistake that it wouldn’t have occurred this soon.
“What do you mean?” Eric blurted out. He knew the answer to this already; well partially knew. He had narrowed it down to two conspicuous suspects.
Jeff Cahill popped into his mind first. Rich and wealthy Jeff Cahill in his finely tailored Italian suit, hair parted to one side, a cocky and arrogant grin (or shit eating grin as Mr. Richardson would have categorized it) spread across his face, his pearly, and perfectly aligned, whites gleaming. But Eric dismissed it. Just as quickly and as abruptly as it had come, it left again. He had someone better.
A second image, much more vivid and surreal danced through his head. The Cahill’s living room appeared, behind the television, the shiny item on the floor that grabbed his attention in the first place. The DVD. The unbeknown child. It had to be him. But what was his name again?
Richard? Robert? Randy?
Raymond? Was that it? Raymond? Yes. That was definitely correct. It had to be.
“Ray—” Eric started to say aloud.
“Don’t say it,” Isabella interrupted. “Don’t you dare speak his name.”
Eric obliged, but his mind raced so frantically with so many need-to-know questions that he just began blurting them out before forgetting them; bombarding Isabella and running them so close together that she didn’t have time to answer a single one. “Who is he? What is he to you? What does he have to do with any of this? What about your father?”
Isabella stared at him blankly, waiting for his nagging droning to cease. When it didn’t, she pulled another one of the magician’s capabilities from her bucket of tricks. With the flick of a wrist, she sent the flames of all three candles soaring up to the knees of Eric’s coveralls.
His mouth stopped moving and his brain quit functioning for only a moment when he felt the heat running up his legs, but didn’t dare scream or whimper.
Isabella touched a finger gently to her lips. “Shut up!” she wanted to scream but feared being heard. “Shh,” she said softly instead.
Eric nodded.
“Can I speak now?”
He nodded once more.
She snapped the index and middle fingers on her right hand together, and the flames died back down.
“Number one,” she began, “he is...no, that’s not right. He was my brother,” she corrected herself. “I refuse to say his name, but I’m assuming you already know it.
“Number two…what he has to do with all of this is very complicated.
“And number three, my father is here. He’s downstairs right now. Now any other rudimentary questions you wish to ask?”
“Yes,” Eric announced in a dazed state. Rudimentary, he thought. I can’t even spell that, let along know what it means. His head ached, and the fact he could not comprehend rudimentary proved moot because he did indeed have more questions for her and intended to ask them no matter what.
He started with “Why are you helping me?” Not that he minded her aiding him. He actually welcomed it, and he needed answers only she could provide. He needed some information she wasn’t coming off of easily to set his mind at rest; that, and he was desperately trying to get a gauge on her and perhaps sense whatever ran through this warped little mind of hers, but she was well guarded. “You have nothing left here. Why do you stay, Isabella?”
Eric noticed as her eyes immediately welled up, but she did not cry. She was incapable of crying. Even without boo-hooing into her hands—the same hands that now shielded her pale and listless face—like most children at or around her age, as they are so apt to do, she had a way of making him feel her pain and shame and sympathize for her nonetheless. He thought, at first, it was some kind of spiritual happening, some kind of power brought on by her deathly state and transported to him, (telepathically probably) but that was ridiculous. Wasn’t it? In any case, he realized his mistake in his wording all his own, and he knew (and accepted) it had been one of the other ghosts lurking in this house; it probably would not have been taken as harshly as she did. After all, ghost or no ghost, she had only been five years old at the time of her demise. At that age, it was appropriate to overreact to things. Hell, it was expected. However, Eric deemed it pointless to try to correct himself now. He could only apologize and hope—better yet, pray—she could find it in her heart to forgive him. That was, of course, if she even had a heart. He wasn’t sure anymore.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered regretfully.
“It’s perfectly fine,” Isabella replied sweetly. A sense of relief and even more regret came over him. “I know what you meant...and while I truthfully have nothing left here and no reason to stay here,” she paused briefly, the words obviously taking a lot out of her, “I am bound to this place, Eric, as I told you before. Until he comes to terms and moves on, I cannot leave.
“As far me helping you, I’m not really sure on my reasoning. I suppose I didn’t want to see another trapped soul wandering these hallways. And you seem nice. You don’t deserve this.”
This sent a cold chill rampaging up Eric’s spine. Cold but good.
“It seemed like the right thing to do, I suppose.” She shrugged. “I only wish I could have done more. I wasn’t sure if you would hang on or not.”
“Me either.” he agrees with a faint smile. He felt a little better and because of that, he despised what came next. While he hated to ask her any more difficult questions, he just could not help himself. Talking to Isabella, a true damned soul, was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and he wasn’t about to squander this amazing opportunity by pussyfooting around in an attempt to spare her feelings; feelings he had no clue whether or not she possessed.
“So why didn’t you do more?” he asked. A certain killer instinct made itself known in both his eyes and voice. “I’m positive you could have pulled me up...easily.”
“I’m forbidden,” she replied, refusing to reconnect with Eric’s gaze. “It’s complicated.”
“I think I have the time and the right to know, Isabella.” He reached out to grab her hand and caress it in an attempt to comfort her. When his hand only passed through hers, and in that instant when his hand turned perplexingly cold (he supposed it to be what frostbite felt like), he jerked back, unaware of her eyes.
Her eyes had turned the darkest shade of black and stared through him in the most discerning manner.
“Who has forbidden you?”
“I am forbidden to touch any other worldly form that isn’t bound with me. Well, actually forbidden is an understatement.” She noticed Eric’s face grow long, and his eyes filled with even more confusion and bewilderment. “Put simply, anything not in this house or on this property at the time of my de-...my pas-...my incident, I cannot touch.” This would’ve normally been the time when a bitter taste for revenge rose on her lips, but she was incapable of that as well. “You passed through me while you were stumbling, Eric. I tried. You have to believe that I tried to stop you.”
“I do,” he said. He wanted it to be the truth, but it was more of just a false front to soothe her.
“The table was the only thing close that I could think of that might have helped you.”
/>
“By the way...I never properly thanked you. So thanks.”
“No need,” she answered, glancing to the opening at the top of the staircase that should have housed a door but for one reason or another didn’t. Her eyes filled with something, an emotion Eric could not quite grasp. “Now, Eric, you have to listen to me very carefully. Understood?”
Eric nodded and peered deeply into her eyes. He was all ears at this point as they say and seemed entranced by those blackened bulbs replacing her eyes.
Isabella leaned even closer as she spoke her next words calmly and quietly. “My brother is not someone you wish to fool around with. He’s different from you and me, but alike in so many ways. Flesh and blood atop darkness; the same darkness that propelled me only much stronger, more vicious and malevolent. He isn’t bound like the rest of us, but he has some sort of power over us. He can control us; manipulate and corrupt us into making us do whatever he desires, as long as it doesn’t interfere with that in which we are not bound to.”
“Sooo?”
“In other words, he can’t make us harm you or your friend, or any other human for that matter.
“As long as he is here, you all are powerless against him. Avoid him at all costs, Eric. Please.”
Eric nodded.
“Please, Eric. You must heed my warnings. You must get your friend and go. Leave here. Forget whatever you have seen or heard and never return.”
“But John left. We—”
“He’s still here.”
“—had an argument.”
“He’s still here,” Isabella repeated, sounding almost panic-stricken. “Believe me. He came back for you.”
“Where is John?”
“Downstairs somewhere. But you have to LEAVE now, Eric. Find him. Make haste, and for your own sake, be quiet.”
Eric nodded. “As soon as I find John, I’m—we’re—gone.”
“And one more thing, Eric.”
“Anything.”
“Please…whatever you do…don’t say his name. He has a strange way of hearing his name being called, even in passing and even if whispered.”
Eric nodded once more, but before he could speak, he heard a distant shout. Not of pain, distress, discomfort, or anything pertaining to that but rather intuition. It sounded like someone calling out to (me) someone; probably not himself, but still—
“John?” he whispered as Isabella passed her hand over the candles. The flames sizzled out as if someone has poured a cup of water in the glass jar surrounding it, and the puddles of wax inside the glass jars hardened immediately as if they had never been burning at all.
Is it possible that what he was hearing was, in fact, John calling out to him? It was a definite possibility, but he could not help but to question its livelihood.
“Quickly,” she uttered. “You must hide.” She rose from the storage container doubling as her seat and blew out the remaining candles casually burning on the end table. She blew them out from where she stood, halfway across the room. She held her arms straight out (much like a small boy pretending to be an airplane and trying to fly) and began hovering a few inches above the ground at first, before then floating upwards, up towards the roof. She disappeared through the roof like a puff of smoke from the top of a chimney.
Eric ducked behind a tall stack of boxes, perched upon the top of a light blue storage container, in the darkest corner of the room (the same corner Isabella hid in and watched Eric from not so long ago). As he did so, the yells grow louder and closer. Louder and louder. Closer and closer. Eric heard the words more clearly now, and although the proprietor of the voice was still unknown to him, he deciphered the words.
“Eric?” the voice beckoned. “Eeeeriiiiic?”
But who was it? John? Maybe. He wanted to believe so badly it was indeed John, but it just didn’t sound like his best friend of all those years. Him? Possibly. Eric knew he wasn’t exactly normal and believed anything was possible at this point. On top of the yells came footsteps. Footsteps at the bottom of the staircase leading up to the third story of the manor where he hid (a sitting duck) cowering in fear. The yelling halted as the footsteps reached what Eric assumed to be the halfway point of the staircase. All that remains was the eerie creaking of the 2x4s beneath the light patter of footsteps of someone attempting to be stealthy.
It can’t be John. John doesn’t know how to be quiet or understand the finer points of stealth. He is too destructive. It has to be Ra-...him.
And on this thought, Eric peered out from beyond his plastic and cardboard fortress just as a seemingly tall, dark figure appeared through the opening at the top of the staircase. Maybe it was tall. It was too dark to tell the actual height of the figure and far too dark to determine if the bulk surrounding it was its actual girth or just a shadow being thrown from the faintest of light. The figure lingered in the opening, not moving or speaking, just staring blankly through the darkness.
Eric raised his right arm in a flash to cover his mouth and stifle his heavy breathing and the wheezing of his nose, and in the process of doing so, he bumped it against an unevenly stacked box. It rocked back and forth unsteadily, stilling only when the three boxes stacked atop it wet toppling to the floor with muffled thuds; each one either busting upon impact or the flaps of the lids flying open, all spilling their miscellaneous contents.
The stifling hand was not quite enough to conceal the yelp Eric let out when the boxes crashed. The stranger heard it and peered into Eric’s direction, seeming to stare directly at him.
CHAPTER 18
The door behind John was indeed unlocked, and he wasted no time scrambling through it. The hallway remained dark and that was good; comforting. He had an urge to scurry back to the fountain and see if the duffle bags were still there (a little insurance policy to ensure Eric was still here before he went off in search of him), but he decided against it. He somehow sensed Eric’s presence still lingering, and for some ungodly reason, he trusted Jeff Cahill’s words.
He sprinted up the staircase to the second floor landing and paused briefly at the top. Something was weird. A vibe. He then remembered why.
This was it. The second floor, where all the bedrooms were located. Where seven of the eight grisly murders were committed. And there it was again. He lumped Jeff Cahill’s deaths in with the murders, subconsciously, not even realizing he had did it until it was too late. He feared he would be kicking himself for believing it later, but for now, it was all he had to go on.
He found himself strolling involuntarily up the hallway and stopping abruptly in front of an end table with a mirror hanging above it; coincidentally, it was the same one Eric had encountered.
However, he didn’t stop because of the broken banister or the shattered mirror or the busted table or the hole in the wall (because none of that was no longer how Eric had left it; it had been amended). He stopped because of the voices.
The voices floated down from above somewhere (the third floor, he imagined). Voices seeming to belong to a boy—Eric, maybe, but he could not be sure—and a girl (unknown). They were muffled, and maybe whispering, but he could not be sure of anything unless—
*****
John needed a closer listen to the voices. He absolutely despised the idea but feared there was no other way.
Fuck the bedrooms. And he meant it. He’d never had an urge to search those stupid fucking rooms anyways...until now. And why now? That he could not be quite sure of but imagined it had something to do with this house. Something appeared to be drawing him to those rooms, wanting to divert him away from the voices.
But it didn’t matter.
What mattered (and it was all that mattered in John’s eyes) was finding Eric and getting the hell out of here as soon as possible; the quicker the better.
He started by fighting his most basic and primal urges, which were to stay quiet. He shouted and yelled to Eric, after figuring it would be better if the people upstairs (he prayed Eric was one of them) knew he was coming. He fea
red if he snuck up and potentially startled them that they couldn’t be held accountable for their reactions. He feared even more what those reactions may be.
John shouted out to Eric in ten second intervals inconsequentially. He grew louder with each shout. He mounted the staircase leading up to the third floor still yelling.
By the time he reached the midway point, the voices had stopped, and a faint shine of light that had been glowing at the top had died down as well. He grew more and more nervous, and so, in turn, he stopped yelling as well. He took his time ascending the second half, and no matter what he tried or how hard he tried to do it, he could not get the damn boards beneath his feet to stop creaking.
CREAK with every step.
There was the scuffling of someone’s feet up there by the time he reached the second to the last step.
CREAK!
One step away now, and the scuffling stopped.
CREAK!
John stood atop the stairs gaping into the darkness of an attic (maybe). There were boxes upon boxes. He could not see anyone, though. He supposed he could shine the flashlight around, but no. He wasn’t quite sure why, but he felt he could not do it.
THUMP!
What was that?
John had no clue, but it sounded like someone—or something—had hit one of the boxes. Before he delved any further than this in his deduction, a statue of boxes toppled over, spilling out when they hit the floor. He heard a squeal (definitely a human being) eek out. He glanced in the direction of where it originated, but it was just too dark. He could not see a damn thing. That was until something flinched.
John only stared.
*****
John spoke: “Eric?” It was nothing more than a soft whisper. He definitely wasn’t alone anymore but was unsure of who his company might be. After his encounter with Jeff Cahill, it could literally be anyone or anything.
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