by Thomas Cater
“You look like death warmed over,” he said. “What happened?”
“I think I qualify now as one of the initiated.”
“You can’t say you weren’t warned,” he replied. I wasn’t in any shape to argue. “Are you all right? Are you going to make it? Do you want to go to the hospital?”
“I think there is something wrong with my neck,” I said. “It might be broken.”
“You wouldn’t be walking around if your neck was broken,” he replied. I was not reassured. “Unless…” I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never did. He stared at me with a stricken look in his eyes.
“I’m trembling; I feel like I’ve been flash frozen.”
Jerking the car into gear, he roared off. He was silent for a moment, but his curiosity was too great.
“Tell me what happened,” he said.
“You wouldn’t believe me.”
“I’ll try,” he said, convincingly enough.
“You’ve been telling me all along the house is haunted. Well, I’m here to assure you, it’s true. I believe you.”
“Yes, but I was hoping I was wrong,” he said. “Coming from you, and looking like you do, it doesn’t leave much room for doubt.”
I eased back into the seat. “I’ve got news for you. There is something in that house. I’ve seen it and I’ve felt it, but I don’t know what it is. And it means to do someone harm.”
He continued to stare and I continued to gaze out the window at the dark structures plastered against the side of the hills, the dwelling places of Elanville’s gentry.
Chapter Eleven
I spent Sunday morning recuperating. By noon, my wounds were negligible. I could not find a single relevant scratch or bruise. In fact, I’d escaped in good shape. Not only was my body feeling better, but my mind was clearer. I wanted to believe the Internal damage was limited to ego; psychosomatic, defensive, created by fear of what I thought might have happened. My head however still throbbed from what I wanted to believe were mostly psychosomatic pains.
. I could still not resaolve, however why a feral spirit was wandering around the grounds of an estate when it should be resting peacefully in its grave? I couldn’t get a grip on the problem because I could not bring myself to believe it, despite the night before..
Someone rapped on the van door. I shouted for whoever it was to come in. Virgil stepped in and introduced his companion as Father Michael Rooney, the overweight pastor of the local Catholic Church. He was a pleasant looking Irishman with a red ragged face and hair the color of old pewter. All priests exude the fragrance of sanctimony, which is erroneously mistaken as pleasing to the senses. Why was I so suddenly susceptible to scents? We shook hands. I sensed something of the inquisitor in his smile. He crammed himself into the narrow space behind the breakfast table and launched into a friendly inquiry.
“Virgil tells me you’re involved in some strange proceedings at the Ryder house.”
I nodded submissively, embarrassed that I’d been thrust into his arena without the proper credentials.
“I’ve never been one to point a finger or to say something is not right, but that house is … dangerous,” I said, avoiding the word evil less it conjure up undue speculation on my own presence.
He nodded his head as if he knew exactly what I meant, but chose not to believe it, unless of course, I produced the proper Vatican license.
“Do you know anything about the house?” I asked, a little too imploringly.
He proceeded to waggle his head like a Hindu and compress his colorless lips. “No, I don’t know a thing about it, but I’ve heard stories. Tell me something,” He said in a thick Irish brogue, “Are you a practicing Catholic?”
I did not wish to offend my guest, but I could not see what difference that would make.
“Not that it matters,” he said, reading my mind, “but I would like to know for my own satisfaction.”
I said I was ‘still practicing’ but looked forward to the day I ‘turned pro.’ “Now I spend my time giving the Church hell for the way she neglected my spiritual development.”
It gave him pleasure to know that I was Catholic, alienated perhaps, but not beyond redemption. I read in his smile that this was only one of many aberrations I would experience before I found my way back to the truth.
He grinned and rubbed his hands together. I could feel the heat those sanctified digits were generating.
“Let’s get back to the problem. What did you see or feel at the house that led you to believe it’s haunted?” he asked.
My lifetime loathing for sacerdotal functionaries was beginning to rise up in me again. This inquiry smacked too much of confession or inquisition. I told him what had occurred. Despite the imaginative quality of it all, pleasure leaped from his eyes.
“You look remarkably fit for one who went through such an ordeal.”
I was glad I hadn’t told him that I also saw creatures taking shape within the wallpaper.
“Did you struggle?”
“You’re damned right,” I said. “Do you think I should have allowed that thing to kill me?”
He wanted to know what sort of ‘thing’ it was. I couldn’t tell him, but I had a good look at it while it was hiding in the stains on the wall. He also wanted to know if I read horror stories, books on fantasy or sword and sorcery, if I dabbled in the occult, practiced white or black magic, or ever attended seminars on Edgar Cayce or Carl Jung.
“What are you talking about?” I shouted defensively. “It wasn’t my imagination. Look at this bruise,” I said, rolling up a sleeve, but there were no bruises. “Look at this cut,” I said, tracking down a minuscule scratch on my wrist, which only made me feel more ridiculous.
He glanced quickly, dismissing them before I could feel too much embarrassment.
“Virgil said you were in the house for several hours.”
“Several, yes, three to be exact, I think three, yes, three,” I babbled.
“Were you conscious all the time?”
I was not sure. I would have liked to think I was conscious, while everything was going on, but I couldn’t be certain.
“Maybe only for about an hour, or maybe forty-five minutes, I’m not sure.”
“Would it be inappropriate to suggest that you may very well have encountered an object, perhaps a rafter in the roof bumped your head and dreamed this rather peculiar fantasy?”
I was sad and silent. He was thinking for me, calling my experience an obsession, as if I had willed it, made it happen. Even if I had, why would I do it? I’d forgotten how easily priests could move back and forth across that threshold of the sacred and profane, as if there were no spectacular leaps of reason to be made, only accidental slips.
“Anything is possible,” I conceded, “but I was in pain, Father. I felt the damned thing, and whatever it was, it wanted me dead. Look at these marks on my neck.” I pushed the collar back, but aside from a little chafing, there were no marks.
I felt like a goose sticking its neck out for the butcher’s ax. I could see him sizing it up, looking for the weakest point to lop it off. My experiences in the house were possibly only premonitions of things to come.
“People have been known to injure themselves accidentally on purpose,” he said, “unaware of the fact that they are following the dictates of their unconscious. I’ve seen it happen in my own parish.”
I tried to assure him that until two days ago, I was the most intractable atheist he could have ever had the misfortune to encounter, which only seemed to substantiate his argument.
“I wouldn’t have given you two cents for all the saints and holy ghosts in the entire spiritual world,” I said, “but now, I don’t know. I don’t know what to make of it.”
“There are occasions when proud men, too proud to undertake the humbling steps necessary to regain their faith, will subject themselves to forms of mental anguish in order to be excused, to be pardoned and taken back into the arms of the redeemer and the holy
mother Church,” he said. “These brave men make up ridiculous stories about spiritual encounters, other worldly visitors, aliens, most of which, I can assure you, are totally imaginary.”
Thoughts of returning to the Church were far from my mind. I was trying to fathom the meaning of a paranormal event and he was assuring me that my soul was not in danger of anything but missing salvation. I tried to convince him that I was not experiencing a mental dipsas; I knew there was something out there and whatever it was, it was committing a more heinous sin against God and nature than any I could ever imagine.
For a moment, I thought he was praying.
“In forty years with the Church I have heard hundreds of stories about spirits inhabiting houses and people. It is on occasion, known as possession. But in my entire life I have never observed one genuine case.”
I asked how long he had been living in this county. He said he lived in the neighboring county and only came over once a week to say Mass. I looked to Virgil for some support, but I could see that he did not wish to put his credibility on the line. I asked the priest if he knew anything about the Ryders.
“I’ve heard stories,” he said, “but you can rest assured that is all they are, filthy little stories; and you certainly can’t expect me to believe them. I’m a priest!”
There was much in the way of irony in that remote possibility. Why should a man, who believed that the dead would might someday rise up and walk around, believe that it might occur in his lifetime? Why should someone who believed in holy spirits not believe in unholy spirits?
“Father, I don’t want to sound like a fool, but doesn’t it stand to reason that if evidence from the other side is good, it can only strengthen the Church’s position on an afterlife, instead of endangering it?”
He shook his head. “We have things firmly in hand,” he said, “and we don’t want to lose control. It would not be to our advantage to have every story of aberrations and visitations from the other side widely accepted. You see, we are in charge. We are supposed to supervise what happens in the afterlife. The one thing we can be sure of -- when we bury someone -- is that we will not be hearing from him or her again, at least in the immediate future.
“Now you are trying to tell me that some ‘thing’ has taken it upon itself to re-enter -- without Vatican approval or permission -- the sovereign territory of the living. I can assure you, Mr. Case, this is not how disciplined spirits behave, at least not Catholic spirits. If someone other than ‘He’ has found a way to bring them back, then we are all in trouble, big trouble. So you see, no matter how tenaciously you may wish to cling to this concept or belief, every fiber of my being rises up to denounce as false everything you claim to be true.”
I asked if he would like to go back into the house with me. I could use the company of such a pragmatist. He shook his head.
“Absolutely not: I couldn’t possibly lend that much credence to your story.”
I was miffed. I was hoping to encounter a little compassion along the way, someone with some knowledge or experience of what was happening, who might be able to advise, or at least make a recommendation. An idea suddenly occurred.
“Father, you say you’ve heard stories about spirits and ghosts. Have you ever heard of a way to confront them? I don’t mean fight or oppose, but neutralize them. There must be some means of defending one’s self against dangerous spirits.”
He continued to stare at me as if I were brain damaged and then an equally amusing thought occurred to him.
“A suit of clothes worn by a murdered man…”
“What?” I replied.
“A suit of clothes worn by a murdered man, and something else,” he said.
“What are you saying?”
“You asked if there was some way to protect one’s self from a dangerous spirit and I’m telling you. I don’t know where I heard it, but my advice says to ‘wear a suit of clothes worn by a murdered man.’ There is something else, too, but I can’t remember.”
He thought about it, mumbled something about common prayer being easier, and then his eyes brightened: “an old slouch hat!”
I was confused and I think it showed. A suit of clothes and an old slouch hat worn by a murdered man? I raised an eyebrow, but Virgil seemed to think there was something to it. I was looking for something a little more tangible, such as a magic sword or amulet. An old hat didn’t sound too effective.
The priest was frowning and tapping his teeth with a thumbnail.
“There’s more,” he said. “That isn’t all. You’ve got to do more, but I’m not sure…” His eyes brightened again. “A fistful of fresh dug grave dirt; a sprig of thorn apple and a pinch of nightshade. I can’t remember the rest, something about a ghost of a chance.”
It sounded more like a recipe for a mud pie.
“Why would that work?” I asked.
The priest shrugged. “Who knows? Why does anything work? Why do people say or believe the things they do? It is because somewhere in our past there is a precedent. There is no logical explanation that’s just the way things are.”
“That’s absurd,” I said.
“So is your story about a ghost in the Ryder house,” he said, and then added, “there’s always one last resort; you could try dousing the ghosts with holy water.”
I wanted to assert my claims again but remained silent. He may have made a point. Several seconds passed before the priest clapped his hands to his knees and stood.
“Well, gentlemen, it has been a short but interesting conversation. I do hope we will meet again.”
He offered his beefy hand. I took it feeling some reluctance, but glad to have had my fears and suspicions sanitized by a man reputedly alienated to secularism.
I thanked him for his advice. He smiled, trapped Virgil’s hand in his and held it firmly.
“I’ll see you next week,” he said.
Virgil nodded, liberated his fingers, and we both watched the priest bundle his way out the narrow van door. I returned to the table and pillaged the cupboard for a snack-pack of Oreo cookies.
“A suit of clothes worn by a murdered man; have you ever heard of such nonsense? I’ll bet he just made that up,” I said.
Virgil wagged his head back and forth confounded by the possibilities.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe…”
“Do you know where we might be able to find a suit like that?” I asked, careful not to encourage too much digression.
He made a sour face. “We could call Good Will, or the Salvation Army, see if they picked up any old murdered men’s suits lately.”
I nodded my approval. “You got a cell phone?”
He got a number from call assistance and dialed. When a voice answered, Virgil gave me the phone.
“Hi,” I said. “You don’t by any chance have any old murdered man suits lying around there do you?”
The line was silent for a few seconds and then a reply.
“What size?”
I was stunned, surprised and stumped “I’ll take any size you got,”
“You want any special color?”
“No, no special color, whatever you got will do fine.”
“Let me take a look,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
I couldn’t believe my luck. I covered the mouthpiece. “He’s looking,” I whispered to Virgil, but the look in his eyes led me to believe I’d been played. I meekly surrendered the phone and he hung it up. I took a deep breath.
“Has anyone been murdered in the area recently?” I asked.
He did not answer quickly. His mind was engaged in thought, but I did observe a faint glimmer of hope.
“There was a murder in Morgantown a few months ago,” he said. “It was in all the papers. A young woman killed her husband for one hundred thousand in Insurance. She tried to make it look like a convenience store robbery.”
Cheap, I thought, but double indemnity would kick it up to $200 thousand, and the amount wouldn’t tip off the insurance
snoops.
“How far is Morgantown?” I asked.
“Not far, about 70 miles,” he said.
A trip was easily within the range of possibilities. It sounds too good to be true. I didn’t want to go back into the house without some kind of protection, even if I was imbued with the nest fragrance. I suggested we drive up the first thing tomorrow.
Virgil was doing things inside his mouth with his tongue, which made me uncomfortable. He said he hadn’t made any plans and was also curious to know how one acquired the clothing of a murdered man. He reached into his pocket, removed a small plastic bag and set it on the table.
“What’s this?” I asked, opening the bag.
“Dry cat food,” he replied. “It’s for your wife’s estranged cat.”
Chapter Twelve
In the morning, armed with coffee and donuts, we drove to Morgantown. Along the way, Virgil recalled revious news accounts of Harry Newcomb’s unfortunate demise. He had married a university student, his third wife. In her spare time, she had entertained a series of student lovers. After less than one year of marriage, Harry Newcomb, the owner of a video and porn shop, went to meet his maker in a poorly contrived robbery and murder. The police arrested the girl and her lover the same night in their apartment where they were celebrating with stolen money spread over the kitchen table. The murder weapon, an antique .38 Colt revolver, was also sitting on the table. According to recent editions of the paper, the two suspects were free on bail pending trial.
“With a little luck,” Virgil said, “we might just catch her at home.”
It was a gruesome thought, negotiating for the purchase of a suit worn by a murdered man with the victim’s wife. It brought back painful memories of my own hapless marriage.
Three hours later we pulled into the first Morgantown service station and checked the phone book for Harry Newcomb’s address. Virgil, a graduate of WVU, knew the approximate location. We had no trouble finding it, a lonely little house on a dead-end street. It was small, red brick home, with a separate two-car garage and a variety of plant life dying of dehydration on the front porch. There were two cars parked in the drive, but the house was dark. Newspapers were collecting on the porch alongside a cardboard box full of empty canning jars covered with a dusty film. Dry brittle leaves from trees gathered in remote corners on the porch.