by Jack Kilborn
His voice was all messed up, like Jebediah’s in the library, and so shocking it snapped Mal out of his catatonia and he lurched toward the locked door. Key and flashlight in the same hand, he was trembling too madly to fit it into the keyhole.
“Maaaaaaal…”
The voice was so close Mal didn’t want to turn around, fearing that Colton was right behind him. He focused on opening the door, trying to block out everything else, putting 100% of his concentration into fitting the damn key into—
Colton hit Mal in the side of the neck with something, so hard Mal saw motes of light. Then there was a ripping sound, and a spike of pain like lemon juice on a paper cut, right across Mal’s right shoulder blade.
The saw.
Mal pushed himself backward, knocking Colton away, reaching up and feeling the jagged cut in his neck.
He tried to saw my head off.
His hand now slick with blood, Mal jammed the keychain light in his teeth and went back to playing bullseye with the key.
“Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal…”
By some miracle, Mal got it in the keyhole. He twisted it, first one way, then the other, and when the bolt snicked free Mal yanked open the door and saw…
Stairs. Leading up.
He took them two at a time, breathing through his teeth as they clamped down on the flashlight, going up sixteen steps and then reaching…
A dead end.
There was no door. No room. No hallway. Just a wooden barricade.
“Maaaaaaaaaaaaaal…”
Below him, Mal heard feet begin to clomp up the steps.
Why have a stairway leading nowhere? What was the point? It made no sense.
He put his shoulder into it, pressing hard. Felt a slight bit of give.
Could this be some secret passage?
Mal held the keylight, looking for seams along the wall. On the right side, he found some old, rusty hinges.
Mal pushed again. No go.
“Maaaaaaaaaal…..”
Colton was closer, already halfway up the stairs.
Mal ran his hands along the seam, looking for a switch, a release, a button. Anything that would open this sucker up.
“Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal…”
Colton was practically on top of him. Mal’s heart was hammering so hard he could hear the lub-dub in his eardrum. A wooden splinter jammed under his fingernail, and he dropped the flashlight. Mal opened his mouth to scream in pain and frustration when his fingers brushed against a latch.
“MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL!”
Colton’s saw touched Mal’s leg just as the passageway swung outward. Mal fell forward, pulling away, then kicking the secret door closed. He looked around, pulling the glow stick from his pants, and realized he’d gotten to the guest room hallway. But it looked different in the dark, and he wasn’t sure which room was his.
The secret passage began to shake, and Mal got to his feet and ducked into the nearest bedroom. He quietly closed the door behind him, then took a minute to catch his breath. His neck throbbed, and he found a mirror on the wall and took a look.
In the green glow light, his blood appeared black. Mal probed the wound, wincing. It hurt, but wasn’t deep. Stitches probably weren’t required, but if he lived through this it would no doubt leave a jagged scar.
Squinting at his finger, he used his teeth to yank out a three inch splinter under his nail. He spat it out, and began to search the room.
The suitcase next to the bed wasn’t his, and he didn’t see any purses lying around. He checked the bureau drawers, and then the desk.
Nothing.
Mal crept to the door and put his ear to it. Then he opened it a crack, peering out. The coast seemed clear, and he quickly exited the room and entered the adjacent one.
Not his suitcase, but there was a purse on the desk. And inside…
Moni’s syringe. He pulled the purse strap over his head and shoulder.
Okay, that’s half the mission. Now to get my gun.
He remembered his room was next to Moni’s, so all he had to do was sneak into it and—
The doorknob began to turn before Mal could touch it. He quickly stuck the light stick back in his jeans and looked around for a place to hide.
The bed.
Quickly dropping to all fours, Mal scooted under it just as the door opened.
“Maaaaaaaaal… I… want… your… other… hand…”
Sara
Sara took off her sweater and tied a knot in the sleeves, trying to make a sling for Frank’s arm. He’d been groaning since Mal left, biting his wallet, his eyes welling with tears. Fishing around in her purse, Sara found a pack of tissue. She gently wiped his eyes, and then mopped some of the sweat off of his forehead.
Frank let the wallet fall from his lips, and stared hard at her.
“I’ve… been hope hope hoping…” he said, the pain straining his voice.
“Hoping for what, Frank?”
“To see see see…”
“To see?”
“You… with your… shirt off.”
He grinned, and Sara laughed. She didn’t even remember what bra she had on until she looked. It was frilly, pink, Fredrick’s of Hollywood. Somehow she’d had the foresight to wear her only good bra. If he’d seen some of her others, he probably wouldn’t have been as impressed.
“When we get out of here,” she whispered. “Maybe I’ll even let you see me without the bra.”
“I’d like that. Sara?”
“Yes, Frank?”
“I think think think my arm is broken.”
“It’s just a bad sprain,” Sara said. “Mal is going to get you something for the pain. He’ll be back soon.”
“I’m scared, Sara.”
“So am I, Frank.”
She kissed his damp forehead, then opened her purse and stared at her last two tiny bottles of Southern Comfort.
Sara needed a drink. Badly. In fact, Sara may have never needed a drink more than she did right then. Her hopes for getting her son back had been torn from her. Seeing the first decent man she’d met in—well—forever—suffer like this was heartbreaking. And the very real possibility that she was going to die soon, and die horribly, made her adrenaline spike so hard her head hurt.
She pulled out the first bottle, twisting off the cap with practiced precision, and tilted it—
—into Frank’s mouth.
He drank, then coughed. “Thanks.”
“Got one more coming.”
She opened the second, and he gulped it down.
“Got any any any orange juice?”
“Other purse.”
She moved her thigh under his head as a pillow, and blotted away more sweat.
She didn’t regret giving Frank the last of her booze.
In fact, in a strange sort of way, she felt liberated by it.
Sara looked over at Deb, who was sitting against the wall with her head in her hands, her fake legs spread out in front of her, looking strangely like skis. She seemed off in her own world. Sara then looked at Pang, and saw he had some new gizmo in his hand.
Pang glanced up at her. “I’d like to try an EVP recording.”
“What is that?” Sara asked.
“Electronic Voice Phenomenon. I ask a question, and record the response. The human ear isn’t as sensitive as a microphone. So answers could get picked up by the recorder that we wouldn’t otherwise hear. Then we can hear them in playback, with the sound boosted up.”
“Why do you want to do this?”
“Because maybe we can find out what these spirits want. I’ve investigated a lot of supposedly haunted houses. They’ve always had rational explanations or have been inconclusive. What’s happening here, now—it’s unprecedented. If we can prove that there is another plane of existence, and if we can get some answers from those who inhabit that plane, it will be the greatest scientific discovery of the century.”
Sara thought it was a bad idea. “Deb?”
Deb didn’t reply,
apparently remaining a prisoner of her thoughts.
“Frank, what do you think?”
His eyelids fluttered. “I think it’s a break, not a sprain. Sprains don’t bend the wrong way.”
“Look,” Pang said, “you don’t have to do anything. Just stay quiet. This isn’t just for bad spirits. There may be some good ones around that can help us. But we won’t get that help, unless we ask for it.”
Sara sighed. She was used to life spiraling out of control despite anything she did. If Pang wanted to do this, Sara didn’t see how she’d be able to stop him.
Pang stood, holding up a silver gadget with a red blinking light on it. Keeping it at arm’s length from his face he said, “Are there any spirits here?”
Sara didn’t hear a response, but she supposed that was the point. After ten seconds, Pang sat down and pressed a button. A moment later his recorded voice was heard, louder than he’d originally spoken.
“Are there any spirits here?”
They all listened to the white noise that followed. No ghosts responded to Pang’s question.
Pang pressed another button and asked again, “Are there any spirits here?”
Sara found herself concentrating on the silence. The underground tunnel they were in had a slight echo to it, and the single bare bulb hanging from the wooden brace overhead didn’t illuminate more than a few meters into the darkness.
Pang stopped the recording and hit play again.
“Are there any spirits here?”
He turned up the volume, until the recording became almost a hiss. Then he pressed stop.
“Did you guys hear that?” Pang said, the excitement in his voice apparent.
Sara shook her head.
“At the end. It sounded like whispering.”
Pang played it again, the volume even higher. There was a faint murmuring sound, but Sara wouldn’t have called it a voice.
“Someone said yes on the recording. Did anyone else hear it?”
“Apophenia,” Frank said.
“What’s that, bro?”
“Your mind is seeking a pattern in randomness. Like seeing Jesus’s face in in in burned toast. You want to hear a voice, so you think you hear a voice.”
“You still saying spirits don’t exist? So what broke your arm, bro? Was that your mind seeking a pattern when that bleeding ghost dropped from the ceiling?”
“That,” Frank said, “is harder to dispute. But your EVP recording is nonsense.”
“Whatever, bro.” Pang pressed the record button once more. “Are there any spirits here?”
The silence ticked past.
Pang played it back.
“Are there any spirits here?”
Sara listened hard, to see if the faint murmur returned. Then the recorder let out an ear-splitting screech and wailed:
“I’M COMING DOWN THE STAIRS!”
Everyone turned to look as Jebediah Butler, dripping blood, stepped off the dark staircase and into the dim light.
Fran
Fran set down the magazine in mid-sentence and glanced over at her sleeping men.
Duncan, fifteen years old, but still young enough that there were traces in his face of the little boy he once was. And Josh, caring, strong, as close to a soul mate as could ever exist.
She closed her eyes and thought about Butler House. Having survived Safe Haven, Fran could imagine all too well what was going on right now in South Carolina. There would be blood. And death. And unimaginable horror. They would need help.
Looking at her family, Fran knew there were things worth fighting, and dying, for.
For the hundredth time she questioned whether they were doing the right thing.
And for the hundredth time, she didn’t know the answer.
Tom
Seeing Ol’ Jasper in the hall ahead, Tom did a reversal and ran back the way he came, passing Sturgis as he stuck his head out of the satanic chapel. Without his flashlight, Tom was at the mercy of his glow stick, which didn’t illuminate more than a few steps ahead of him. He bumped into a wall when the hall turned a corner, kept sprinting, and wound up in front of some double doors.
Tom tugged one open and saw he was in a large, open room. Tile floors. Ornate, crystal chandeliers. A row of chairs against one wall. A stage.
It was a ball room.
He drew his gun, keeping his knife in his left hand, and began to make his way across the dance floor. It was dark, quiet, eerie, and Tom was shaking so badly he felt he might fall over. He’d never been so frightened, and his mind kept flitting between the horror of what was happening and the horror of what he’d already gone through. He kept replaying the same terrifying scenes, over and over, and wanted to find someplace safe to hide and never come out again.
But people were counting on him. Good people. And fear be damned, Tom wasn’t in the business of letting people down. Even if he was going to die of fright in the process.
Tom reached a doorway, cleared it, spinning as something lunged at him in the darkness.
He fired, his Sig kicking, and then jumped to the side as a black object hurtled past him. Keeping a bead, he stared as it jerked to a stop and swung from the ceiling.
A body bag.
But he quickly realized something was strange. Bodies had weight as well as mass, but this swung like it couldn’t have weighed more than a few kilograms.
Tom reached for it carefully, and squeezed.
Fake. A prop, like they had in haunted houses around Halloween, where you paid ten bucks to have some teen in a mask jump out and say boo!
What was the point of that?
He followed the track on the ceiling—a metal rail that the body bag had been hanging from—and came to a breakfront.
Tom braced himself for something to pop out, and his expectations were met when a rubber zombie pushed through the cabinet doors, making a pneumatic hissing sound. Another phony prop, probably triggered by a motion sensor, like the body bag had been.
Though in a state of hyper-alertness, some rational thoughts still managed to gain traction in Tom’s fear-addled brain. He felt like he was missing some key element. They’d all been summoned here, offered money to be part of an experiment. Forenzi, though certainly odd, seemed sincere enough. He’d told them the goal was to scare them, and he’d made good on his promise.
But had Forenzi’s promise involved these silly Halloween gags? Was that his plan? And had something gone terribly wrong?
Tom was fighting for his life against an unknown enemy that apparently couldn’t be harmed. He had shot two of his attackers, and also slashed Sturgis across the chest. But that didn’t even slow them down.
Was there something supernatural going on? And if so, how did these dime-store attempts at scares mesh with what was happening elsewhere in Butler House?
Had the fake haunted house somehow become real?
He kept moving, and came upon a large, black crate in the center of the floor.
No, not a crate. A coffin. And not a real one. This was another Halloween prop, made of plywood. Tom approached, knowing exactly what was going to happen. The lid would open, and some fake monster—maybe a vampire or a mummy—was going to pop out.
Tom got within a meter of it, gun pointed forward, anticipating the obvious.
As predicted, the lid opened.
As predicted, a monster sat up in the coffin.
It wasn’t a vampire or mummy. It was some bizarre, bloody mannequin with a gas mask on. There were many gashes on its bare chest, glistening with stage blood.
“Hee hee,” went the prop.
Tom kept his Sig on it, then slowly walked past. It was creepier than the zombie in the breakfront, and the body bag on a conveyor track, but Tom was going to save his adrenaline for real threats, not fake ones.
“Hee hee hee.”
Movement, in front of Tom. He held fire as another body bag swung past on a pulley track. He watched it swing past the empty coffin, and disappear into the darkness.
Tom pressed forward, and then his fear spiked. He spun again, staring at the coffin.
The gas masked prop was gone.
Tom looked side to side, sweeping with his Sig. That prop apparently wasn’t a prop. Tom remembered Forenzi’s dinner speech and realized it was—
“Hee hee hee hee.”
The Giggler.
Now where the hell did it go?
Tom turned in a slow circle, ready to shoot anything that moved. He was so focused on what was around him that he wasn’t paying attention to where he was walking, and suddenly he lost his footing and stepped into a hole, falling onto his ass.
He tried to pull his leg free, and his calf screamed at him. Tom holstered his gun and reached into the hole in the floor.
Spikes. Digging into his skin.
“Hee hee hee hee.”
The Giggler walked out of the dark, into view. He was rubbing a large, bloody meat cleaver against his chest.
Tom drew his Sig and emptied his clip into the demon.
Nothing happened. The Giggler stood there, staring, swaying back and forth.
“Tom…”
Tom checked his other side, and saw a pink glow in the distance.
Moni. She had a pink light stick.
“Moni! Run!”
The pink light got closer.
“No, Moni! Get away! You need to get out of here!”
Moni slowly came into view. But it wasn’t Moni.
It was Aabir, holding Moni’s glow sick. Her eyes were completely black. She opened her mouth and roaches dropped out of it.
“Hee hee hee.”
The Giggler had halved the distance between them. Tom realized he wasn’t simply rubbing the meat cleaver against his bare skin. He was actually cutting himself, blood streaming out of the wounds he was making.
Tom blinked. His vision was getting blurry. His thoughts, fuzzy.
Drugged. Something in the spikes.
He stared back at Aabir. She was kneeling next to him. Tom held up his knife, pointed it at her, but he’d begun to see double.
He slashed at her, trying to keep her away, but everything started to fade.
Her hand shot out and she grabbed his wrist, easily prying the knife away.
Tom’s eyes closed, but he forced them open.
Can’t pass out. Not now…
Blackout.