The Seance in Apartment 10

by Ambrose Ibsen

  The pounding, though, never waned.

  The thing in the mirror changed before my eyes, donning a large, gaping mouth and eyes of unbelievable width. I backed away, struck the wall to my back, and scrambled out of the bathroom, nearly falling to the floor.

  From the main room, I heard the sound of a door slamming, and of a lock being forcibly bolted.

  The door to the studio was shut, and in the murk it looked as though the handle itself was gone. Feeling woozy, I staggered towards the entrance, beating on the door with my achy fist and searching for a knob where none existed. Try as I might, I couldn't get the door to budge; the very same door I'd forced open not minutes prior. The wounds I'd left in the frame, in the molding, had been smoothed over somehow.

  The pounding in the bathroom suddenly ceased, and when it did so I turned, holding my breath. The sounds of a woman sobbing soon replaced it, and from the passage between the kitchen and main room I saw a shuddering form in black garb approaching.

  It was Evelyn. Her face was pale and her eyes were red with tears. The flesh around her neck was bruised severely where the noose had cut into her. Falling onto her knees at the center of the room, she looked over to me, reaching out a single, shaking hand in the almost non-existent light. Despite the early hour, the apartment was dark as night, and even the air in the space seemed unnaturally still. The longer I stood there against the door, chest tightening, the more I suspected that the air was being let out of the room altogether.

  Evelyn shook her head. “I tried... I tried to keep you out,” she blurted, raking her face with her fingers. “I tried to keep you away from here.”

  It'd been Evelyn, then, who'd locked the door to the studio. Cat had been correct; Evelyn's spirit had been trying all this time to warn me away.

  But I hadn't listened.

  I was standing in the lion's den, had wandered in willingly.

  Evelyn continued sobbing until a loud rustling noise sounded from the direction of the bathroom. Both the wailing specter and I turned to look as something emerged from around the bend.

  Clutching her arms tightly, Evelyn gasped and then faded into the darkness. “It's here.”

  19

  A bone-white hand touched the wall as the figure rounded the corner. That hand gave way to a tall, naked, slender form. Cocking its head to the side to an unnatural degree, a flurry of brown hair shifted over the figure's familiar face.

  “What's Melanie Mouse up to today?” asked my mother.

  Or, rather, the thing which now masqueraded as my mother.

  As it emerged from the bathroom, walking with a jerky, uneven gait, I knew at once that the figure wasn't my mother, but that it was only wearing an unconvincing disguise. I glimpsed her face, and not unlike my own reflection in the mirror, this version of my mother was all wrong. None of the important details were right; the nose was too long, the mouth too grinning and wide. And the eyes... they were large and dark like coal briquettes. Shambling into the main room, one hand outstretched in my direction, the figure kept on delivering canned lines like a doll whose string was being pulled. “How is my Melanie Mouse today?” Her mouth wasn't even moving. It was hanging wide open, host only to a yawning darkness.

  I backed against the door, my hands clawing around in the darkness for the knob. It still wasn't there. I knew I was hallucinating, that none of this could possibly be real, and yet I was helpless to stop it. Are you dreaming? I thought, fighting back tears. Or is this real? The closer the figure got, the more certain I felt that I was skirting some fine line between consciousness and fantasy.

  “Come here, sweetie,” said the figure, its skin loosening and sinking like melting wax. “Let's read the book together.” Her long nose began to fold in on itself, hooking dramatically to the right, while the eyes and mouth continued to droop open further, revealing only more of the boundless open space behind. Her body was twitching and emaciated; white putty cast pell-mell over a skeletal frame. One breast sagged further and further down her chest, stretching till it reached her waist and threatening to slough off altogether. “Come here, darling.”

  I pounded on the door, edging away from the advancing figure in the darkness. “G-get away from me,” I said. “I know what you are. I know... I know what you really are.”

  The figure lost its balance and fell onto its hands and knees. Then, from the floor, it began to dash towards me like an animal.

  I ran, striking the wall on the opposite corner of the room so hard that I nearly lost my balance. Within the darkness, I sensed the writhing mass, and in my wake the blinds fluttered, bringing a bit more light into the room. The pasty figure stood up, taking on a frightening impression of Cat's face. Stark naked and offering up a bloated, paper mache smile, she crept towards me. “Everything is fine, Tori. You'll be safe and sound. What are you worried about? I've played with this board a hundred times.”

  I dove past the figure's reaching paws and raced into the kitchen, knocking the wind out of myself as I crashed into the counter. Stumbling to my right, I fell onto the bathroom floor, and clumsily navigating the space in the dark, I slid, my back against the tub, and kicked the door shut. When it was closed all the way, I buried my heels against it to keep the figure from getting inside and wept. Outside I could hear the slow, shambling steps of the thing as it approached the bathroom.

  The door rattled against my heels and a poor impression of my father's voice sounded from outside, in the kitchen. “You should come stay with me for the summer, Victoria. This apartment is no good.” Alien hands struck the outside of the door repeatedly.

  “Leave me alone!” I shrieked. “Get away!”

  I dug my heels in and propped myself up against the linoleum, my head banging the side of the bathtub. It was pitch black in the bathroom; there wasn't even a hint of light coming from underneath the door. Gritting my teeth and choking back sobs, I centered my thoughts on keeping the door shut and tried to think of some way to escape. Maybe I could still break the mirror. I looked upward, in the general direction of the medicine cabinet, and wondered if smashing it would make the thing outside the door go away.

  Minutes passed. I heard Julia and Annie implore me to open the door, fielded countless door-rattling blows. My legs were shaking, tired, as I defended against the onslaught. The door didn't give, and eventually the hits tapered off. I relaxed a bit, regained my breath, and carefully got up off of the ground. Keeping the door shut with both hands, I gained my feet and reached out towards the mirror. When my fingertips met the cool glass I recoiled violently.

  Then, with everything I was worth, I started punching at it. I balled my right fist and, heedless of pain, socked the mirror again and again, screaming out as I did so. My skin grew tight and raw as I laid into it, the medicine cabinet creaking with each and every strike.

  But it wasn't breaking.

  No matter how hard I hit it, I couldn't shatter it.

  I widened my stance, hoping to punch with more leverage, but nearly lost my balance as I stepped onto something.

  Something that hadn't been there only moments ago.

  I froze. The thing beneath my foot was solid, bulky. I tapped it with my foot and it slid easily across the linoleum.

  When the lights flashed on a moment later, hurting my eyes like a glimpse at the sun, I realized what it was.

  The cabinet beneath the sink was sitting open, and from inside it a book had tumbled out onto the floor. The book was the one I'd been looking for; the one I'd seen Evelyn with during my nightmares. Keeping my back to the door and wiping at my teary eyes, I slumped down and touched it. The countless tiny impressions in the cover made the hairs on my arm stand on end as I ran my fingers over them.

  Outside the door, there was silence. Emboldened by this, I took hold of the book, propping it up between my knees and cracking the heavy cover.

  The paper was thick and reeked of dust. As I turned the first, blank page, I wondered what this book could possibly contain. Was there anything in it I coul
d use to make this spirit leave me alone? To send it back to where it came from?

  Turning to what appeared to be the title page, my heart sank. This book, it seemed, was in a foreign language, something I couldn't make out. The text on this page was centered, hand-written, and read simply, Carte de Umbra Lungi.

  I tried sounding out the line under my breath numerous times, but couldn't for the life of me understand what it meant.

  Frightened and impatient, I began flipping through the book, hoping that it might contain something in English, or otherwise provide a clue that I could use to send this entity out of the apartment. If this is some kind of witch's spellbook, then there has to be something in here that I can--

  I dropped the book onto the floor with a thud.

  The text throughout appeared to be the same handwritten, foreign script, however there were illustrations, too, and those were something I could understand perfectly well.

  I kicked the book towards the tub, and it struck the basin loudly.

  The open page stared back at me, featuring a grisly illustration. It was a drawing of a woman whose throat had been slit. The gash on her throat surged with blood, which was collected in what looked like a chalice.

  I stared at it a long while, chilled to the very core at the sight of such barbarity. Though it was a fairly simple drawing—and a very old one, at that—it possessed also a terrifying realism. The roughly-drawn figures on the page were imbued with an almost photographic realness that was most visible in certain of the more macabre details. The trickling of the blood was rendered in kinetic fashion, and both the pain and despair in the victim's eyes were transmitted without doubt despite the work's simplicity.

  I pulled my eyes away from it and reached out to turn the page. The book was filled with terrible things, it was true, however if this was the source of the evil that now stalked around the apartment, the text Evelyn had used in summoning it, then I had to give it a look. On the off chance that she'd left a note behind in English, or had bookmarked a particular section that would help me put an end to this ordeal, I had to flip through it.

  As I did so, I had to fight back the urge to scream.

  Thankfully, I don't remember much of what I saw. There were more drawings peppered throughout the thing, all of them in the spirit of the first, and I took them in with absolute dread. It was towards the middle of the accursed text that I stumbled upon something I took for a page-marker. It protruded from the book nearly a full inch, and as I leaned down to have a closer look, I realized it looked like human hair. A tuft of greying black hair was sticking out from between two pages. Maybe Evelyn used a lock of her hair to keep her place? I reckoned, flipping quickly towards the bookmarked section.

  Arriving at the marked page I found nothing on the paper. No cryptic text, no grisly art. Only more hair. Regarding it with disgust, I peered down at the long length of hair that had been sandwiched between these two dust-soaked pages, and which had actually been incorporated into the binding of the book. Some hardcover books use a piece of ribbon, but this one used a shock of greying hair. It was coarse, awful to the touch, and almost gave the impression that it grew directly from the ancient stitching.

  Then, from the seam between the two blank pages, I sensed movement. It was minor at first; if I hadn't been looking at it closely I might've thought the pages had simply been stirred in a draft. But as I ran my finger between the two pages in question, the hair meeting my fingertips, I felt something shifting to meet my touch from the other side.

  Something was pressing upward, as if to crawl out from between the stitches.

  I dropped the book, the overwhelming heat in the apartment suddenly dawning on me. I'd holed myself up in the bathroom, and the longer I sat there the less I felt like I could get enough air in my lungs. Sweat dripped from my brow and into my eyes, making them sting. My shirt was stuck to me, could have been wrung out for the sweat that burdened it.

  The book lurched. I hadn't touched it; something else had moved it. Or, perhaps, it was moving itself. I watched the pages stir and crumple along the hand-sewn stitching.

  Then, from between the pages, there emerged something.

  A long, wriggling finger.

  The digit wormed its way out of the book's spine, tearing the pages very slightly on their innermost edge. From these small tears there spilled small rivulets of blood, which rolled down the center stitching and dripped out onto the linoleum. The finger squirmed like a worm trying to escape the ground during a heavy rain, and its frantic movements managed to create a larger opening from whence there came something else.

  A droning groan.

  Voice low, pained and wavering, the groan seeped out from between the pages of the book as another finger—this one featuring a raw, fleshy stub where a fingernail had once been—emerged from the binding. I'd heard the vocalization before, and I'd seen these bone-white fingers, too.

  Evelyn.

  I hit the door with my back, made the whole thing rattle, and fancied I heard something outside it reacting to the commotion.

  The noise droned on and on, breathy and labored, its guttural character never dwindling. A third finger burst out into the open and a small torrent of blood came dribbling out of the book as though it were a wounded animal.

  I think I was crying. Whether it was the sweat in my eyes or a deluge of tears that made it difficult to see I can't be certain. It all happened so fast, and my mind was pushed to such limits by adrenaline that the sights playing out in the bathroom scarcely registered. My heart felt on the verge of giving out, and though I backed up against the door, cradled my sweaty limbs, I couldn't build any distance from the terrible book.

  The seam between the pages parted further, admitting what I took to be a mouth. Pale, cracked lips flickered into view; a tongue, a flash of ivory teeth. Through the sanguine crack in the book's stitching, the droning came in even stronger, flooding the entire bathroom till it reverberated off of the walls and built to a hypnotizing crescendo.

  I covered my ears to block it out, but not before I heard Evelyn speak. Amidst the droning I heard her voice, reduced to a dry whisper. She was speaking to me, I had no doubt, and it sounded like she scarcely had the strength to hold on. This emergence from the book, from some other world housed deep within it, was taking all of her might. The droning, I realized, wasn't coming from Evelyn; rather, it was borne from other, unseen lips. Down below, wherever Evelyn was, there was something pulling her deeper down, tugging at her, preventing her full escape. She'd managed only to approach the seam, to stick out a few of her fingers, but would not be allowed to go any further.

  “Get out,” whispered Evelyn. “Get out and... never... never come back.”

  I screamed then. I screamed more loudly than I'd ever done in my entire life. The book before me slammed shut like a bear trap, sending a thin spray of blood about the walls and floor. I felt it on my cheek as I fought to stand.

  Dizzy with fear, hardly able to remain upright, my ears still ringing for the monstrous droning, I yanked open the bathroom door and barreled headlong into the dark apartment, not caring about what dwelt there. Perhaps the spirit would catch me; maybe I'd die. Maybe, like Cat had suggested, it would climb into me.

  But I didn't care.

  I was an animal then and could heed only a single impulse. Flight.

  I rushed into the main room, glimpsing the sun-framed window ahead. The room was still murky, but I knew the layout well enough to head for the door. From behind me, in the kitchen, there arose a sudden rustling, as of limbs skittering over linoleum. I didn't dare look back, instead focusing on trying to get the door open.

  The knob had returned, but no matter how hard I twisted it, I couldn't get it to turn. I yanked on it, struck it with my bruised fists, but couldn't get it to budge in the least.

  I could feel eyes at my back. From the shadows I was being watched closely, but I still didn't dare turn around, lest I glimpse what form the entity had taken. With no other option, I ran
to the window, taking firm hold of the blinds and tearing them off of the wall. In that moment, a weak film of sunlight poured into the room, slowly, like syrup, and I felt the first glimmer of hope. I summoned up all my strength and gave the window a pull, prepared to kick the screen out of its frame and clamber out onto the fire escape.

  But the window wouldn't budge. The glass was hot to the touch for its baking in the sun, and as I dug my fingers into the latches, trying to separate them, I couldn't get it to move in the least. It was like the window was a fixed piece, like it'd been cemented shut. From my rear the rustling continued; the sensation of being watched never subsided.

  Whatever this thing was, this dark spirit, it wasn't afraid of the daylight.

  Screaming again, filled with primal fear, I beat upon the window with both hands, trying to break the warm glass. My knuckles were split, leaving little red smudges upon the pane, and when I tried to work the latch loose once again, I managed only to split one of my fingernails lengthwise. I was too frightened to notice however, and my body simply ignored the pain.

  There was something behind me, getting very close now. The skin on the back of my neck became electric as I felt a stranger's breath brush past me.

  I was determined to get out of the apartment or die trying. What happened next I can't recall with one hundred percent clarity. I think that I must have kicked the window to pieces; the deep lacerations along my leg seem to corroborate that. I remember crawling out of the window, somewhat; remember the feeling of hot glass sinking into my bare legs, the way the rusted metal framework of the fire escape singed my hands and knees like a hotplate as I burst outside.

  The thing I most distinctly remember, crawling down the fire escape, a hysterical mess, was my arriving at the bottom and rolling over to find someone standing in the window to apartment 11. White, pasty skin like melting wax, a hand outstretched into the sunlight as if to beckon me.