In Creeps The Night

by Natalie Gibson

A noise came from the front porch and I grimaced. Take the rest of the candy, kids, and go away, I thought. Wouldn’t do me any good. But the noise didn’t go away. It turned to knocking, and then to the ring of the doorbell.

  “Go away! Take the candy and go!”

  The doorbell rang again and I cursed. I’d done my part, hadn’t I? I grabbed the bottle and stomped over to the door, yanking it open, ready to read someone the riot act. But the excoriation that was in my mind stayed there.

  “Dad,” said Tinkerbell.

  “We missed you,” said Peter Pan.

  Distantly, I heard the sound of breaking glass, and the smell of whiskey wafted up from the floor. Peter Pan grimaced. “I never did like it when you drank that, Daddy.”

  I rubbed my face with my hand, feeling the tears running hot and wet over my fingers. “So-sorry.” I tried to take a deep breath, but couldn’t.

  “We didn’t mean to leave you alone for so long, Daddy, but we couldn’t get back. Not until tonight.” Tinkerbell paused, then looked up at me. “Can I hug you?”

  “Oh, God.” I fell to my knees and took both of them into my arms. At that moment, I didn’t care if it was the whiskey’s doing, or a trick being played on me by the devil. I’d hold these two until someone stopped me and pay whatever price I had to afterward.

  Tinkerbell whispered in my ear. “God? Well yes. And no. It’s complicated.” She’d been all of five when the accident had happened, but she didn’t sound like a kid anymore. “Will you come with us? We have to go quickly, but we made sure you could come with us. If. If you wanted to.”

  “Please, Daddy?” Peter Pan had been four, and I could feel him trembling.

  I kissed him on the cheek then nodded. “But how?”

  “Does it matter?”

  I thought for a moment then looked out at the street. No. It didn’t matter. Someone else could pick up the candy wrappers in the morning. I took their hands and stood up, stepping out into the rain. I was taking my kids trick-or-treating—or maybe they were taking me. Nothing else mattered.

  I OPENED MY eyes, but I could see nothing. Darkness was all around, and it was very quiet. I closed my eyes, hoping that it was some kind of illusion and there was actually some kind of light wherever I was. I took a deep breath, and opened them.

  Blackness.

  “Hello?” I called out, in the hope that there would be an answer. Only silence surrounded me. Well, that was a lie because there was the sound of dripping water, as if somebody had not closed off a tap properly. I gently began to feel my way around, and noticed that I was not tied up. It was great knowing that I had not been kidnapped and left here for dead. It was strange how comforting that the thought actually was.

  It only left me one question and that was, where was I? Actually it left me another question as well, and that was, how had I got here?

  The thoughts were buzzing around my head, but there were no real answers. Thinking about it, there was absolutely no recollection of arriving, or turning out the lights. The last thing that I remembered was waking up after a dream. That dream had been disturbing enough, so maybe the actual answer was that I was asleep once more.

  Had I dreamt about being shut in somewhere? No, I had been falling after running. It had been the landing that had woken me up in such a panic. What had I been running from? I could not remember, but then maybe it was nothing. Dreams can be like that, vague and incomplete.

  Maybe a pinch would wake me up from this new dream?

  No.

  Only one conclusion, and this was not a dream. I stood up and began to walk around the small room, with my arms stretched out in front of me so I did not walk into a wall. I was only taking small steps, so that I could explore the floor with my feet, so I did not trip. After a few round-trips of the small room, I knew it was empty, and made of brick. The door was wooden, and there was no door handle. How had I even gotten in here?

  Then I found it: the light switch.

  I was temporarily blinded by the light as it flooded the area. I blinked in desperation to clear my vision and look around me. When I looked around I was completely disorientated, because this was my bedroom, complete with furniture. This is definitely not the room that I had been walking around in the dark. That room had been small, empty, and not carpeted. Now I was standing in my nightclothes in a fully furnished room, complete with a cream carpet that cushioned my bare feet.

  My conclusion turned to terror when I realized that there was somebody sitting on the bed looking at me. My eyes widened as I took in the sight of myself gazing back at me with an abject calmness.

  “Wake up!” I commanded myself.

  The other me that was sitting on the bed tilted their head. “But you are awake.”

  “There is no way that I can be,” I replied.

  “Then maybe I should help you. Pain is supposed to be the trigger to wake up a dreamer, so I will supply some.” The calmer version of me stood up and walked toward me carrying a knife.

  I did not stop to try and work out where the knife had come from. Instead I ripped open the door and fled down the corridor. The stairs went around the corner, but I tripped, and instead of turning the corner I fell straight out of the window. As I was hurtling toward the concrete floor of the car park below I was struck by a feeling of déjà vu. This had been my dream.

  Premonition maybe.

  The following is a written account of actual recorded footage from paranormal investigators Becca and Travis McHale from their visit to the site of the Cochran murders. Neither has been seen or heard from since.

  October 11th, 2012

  Harefield, New York

  “YOU ARE GETTING this, right? Please tell me you’re getting this.” Becca leaned over the steering wheel, eyeing the old house with an eager grin.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Travis shifted his professional-grade camcorder out the window as Becca steered their minivan to a stop on the side of the dirt road roughly three miles off the main highway. He kept the lens pointed at the dilapidated house plopped down in the middle of an abandoned field, absorbing everything from the caved in portion of the roof to the painted siding that was flaking and bleached from the sun. There was nothing else around for miles but yellowed grass, rolling hills, and clusters of spindly oak trees. “This place is a dump.”

  “It’s a hundred and fifty years old, what’d you expect?” Becca reminded him, tossing back her blonde ponytail before leaping from the car. She shielded her eyes from the midday sun as she stared at the house. “Hey, look. I think that’s Ken.”

  “He’s not actually living here, right?” Travis asked as he exited the car, spotting a middle-aged man with graying brown hair heading down the overgrown dirt walkway. A red sedan that was likely Ken’s was parked ahead of them on the road.

  “He said on the phone that he bought it earlier this year with the intention of tearing the house down. But something made that impossible.” Becca charged ahead, hand already extended. “Ken?”

  The man named Ken nodded and gave a half-smile, shaking Becca’s hand and then Travis’s in turn. Apprehension creased his brow as he shot a nervous look back at the house.

  “Well, this is it, guys. I hope you can help me.”

  “That’s what we do,” Travis replied, keeping the camera focused on Ken. He captured every flicker of fear on the man’s face, including the ones he was desperately trying to hold back. Ken was well built and looked surprisingly fit considering his age. It made the terror in his eyes all the more compelling.

  “I’ll show you around a bit, but I can’t stay,” Ken began as he led the way to the front porch, the ancient wooden stairs creaking under his weight.

  “Why’s that?” Travis questioned as they reached the front door.

  Ken turned slowly, his gaze flickering from the camera lens and back to Travis’s eyes. “At the risk of sounding insane, I feel like something in this place is trying to…possess me. I can’t explain it.”

  Becca patted him on the arm. “D
on’t worry. We’ll figure this out for you.”

  “I hope so.” Ken opened the door and walked inside, visibly shaking as he navigated over the dust-coated wooden floor cluttered with pieces of broken furniture, beer bottles, shattered plaster, and the occasional shard of glass. “Careful. I started to break down a couple of walls in the living room, but that was as far as I got before...” He trailed off, not seeming to want to finish the statement.

  “So Silas Cochran was killed in one of the back bedrooms? Along with his girlfriend Lucy?” Becca asked as she stared at the graffiti-plastered walls.

  “Yes, in 1921. His other girlfriend Agnes died here in the living room.” Ken stared down at the floor, where satanic markings had been etched into the bloodstained wood. “The bodies of the twelve people they killed were found in the basement.”

  “But a thirteenth victim got away, right?”

  Ken nodded. “Tom Wiley. He broke free, found an axe and killed all three of them before running away. He wasn’t seen again.”

  “Looks like they were into satanic worshipping,” Travis commented.

  “The rumor is they did human sacrifices, yes.” Ken let out a long breath, looking uneasy. “I need to go. Good luck tonight, guys. You’ll need it.”

  “I wanna try the Mel Meter first, see what kinds of readings we can get,” Becca announced as she entered the home later that night, Travis following behind her with his camcorder. Night vision allowed him to see the room in a greenish glow as he focused on his sister.

  Becca held a remote-control-sized device in her hands. When she flipped it on, lights flickered atop the device along with a screen that showed the temperature and electromagnetic field readings. She wandered around the living room, careful not to trip over objects she couldn’t see.

  “Silas, are you here?” she called out. They froze to listen for any sound, but heard nothing. “Agnes, I heard you died in this room. Make a noise if you’re here with us.”

  A soft thump from somewhere in the walls had Becca shooting her brother a hopeful look.

  The lights atop the Mel Meter flashed, the meter’s shrill buzzer-like sound announcing a change in the electromagnetic field. Travis jumped but kept the camera steady and pointed at his sister.

  “Use the Spirit Box,” he suggested. “I’ve got goose bumps and it’s easily ten degrees colder all of a sudden.”

  “Me too.” Becca shoved the Mel Meter into her backpack and lifted out the Spirit Box instead. It was a small device that fired through several radio stations a second, providing white noise for spirits to speak through. When she flipped it on, static white noise blasted into the room and echoed off the walls. “Agnes, can you speak to me? Why did you help Silas kill all those people?”

  “Wasn’t s’posed to die!” a voice quickly warbled through the white noise, shrill and pained.

  “What the—” Travis gasped, only to have Becca hold up her hand to silence him.

  “Who wasn’t supposed to die?” she demanded, staring around the room.

  “Me,” the voice replied.

  “Neither were those twelve people, Agnes, but you still killed them,” Becca shot back.

  There was a long moment of silence before the voice came through again. “Killed the killers!”

  Becca faced Travis with a mortified look. “I think it’s Tom Wiley.”

  The front door suddenly blasted open as if by a forceful gust of wind. They faced it in terror as the voice rang out again. “Outside!”

  A rushing of disembodied footsteps over the wooden floor barreled toward them, causing Travis to nearly drop the camera. They both ran out the front door, propelled by fear.

  “What the hell was that?” Travis shouted, the camera shaking as he ran as far away from the house as he could get. Becca trailed behind him, gasping for air.

  “I think Tom didn’t make it off the property alive, after all. I think he died outside somewhere,” Becca surmised, gazing around the field. She spotted a shadowy figure lurking in the darkness near a cluster of trees several yards away and pointed. “There!”

  They ran over to it, Becca collapsing to her knees in the soft grass and dirt. As if driven by an unseen force, she began to dig with her hands until she uncovered a human skull some eight inches down. With horror, she shuffled away from the hole she’d just dug. “Oh, God.”

  At the sound of footsteps behind them, Travis whirled around. The shadowy figure stood there, vaguely visible in the darkness. Travis lifted his camera and focused on the figure, seeing Ken in the night vision.

  “Ken, what are you doing here?” Travis asked, voice shaking.

  Ken merely stared at the camera, eyes dead and an axe clutched in his hands.

  “Wasn’t s’posed to die,” he muttered. His face contorted with violence as he launched himself at Travis, knocking the camera to the ground.

  Nothing more was captured except the screams.

  WHEN HE LOOKED out of the window and into the garden and saw the demons playing, heard them chanting, he thought that it was just kids playing Halloween dress-up.

  But then one of them, laughing, breathed out fire.

  He took a step back from the window, gasping.

  “Come on,” the people in the garden cried up at him, seeming to speak as one though there were six of them. “Come down and play!”

  How he had been longing to hear those words all night. But none of the other kids wanted to play with him—not just tonight, but ever. On those rare occasions when his parents remembered to get dressed and take him to school, those kids all laughed at him and called him names. Always.

  “We know that!” the voices told him, speaking gently inside his mind now, tones so soft and soothing that he almost drifted off to sleep just listening to them. “That’s why we came to see you. Come out!”

  He wanted to believe them. But he was so completely unaccustomed to acts of kindness from anyone that he could not help but be suspicious.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because we’ve been listening to you all year,” they said. “We’ve been waiting for tonight so we could come and see you.”

  “Really?”

  They shouted back at him in unison: “Yes!”

  There was such joy in the way they replied that he could not help himself.

  And, eyes burning wide with excitement, he ran down to the front door to go out and greet them.

  But he was out of luck.

  Like always.

  The door was locked.

  He looked away from the door, glanced back into the house.

  His parents laid unconscious in the front room, air thick with cheap alcohol and stale sweat all around them. The key would be somewhere upon them, he knew…but did he want to risk them waking up and wondering what he was doing?

  Did he want to risk them waking up at all?

  He slumped back against the door, felt tears burning behind his eyes.

  Just like every other day in his wretched existence.

  Why should Halloween be any different?

  But then the voices came again.

  Whispering inside his head.

  “There’s another way,” they told him.

  And suddenly he saw it.

  What they meant.

  He ran back up the stairs and into his room and across it and through the window without once stopping to think.

  He didn’t need to.

  He knew the demons in the garden would catch him.

  Would break his fall.

  They had told him so.

  He trusted them.

  And he fell.

  “Great trick, boss.”

  The demons stood around the body, looking down at it.

  “Cool stuff with the fire, too.”

  “I know,” the lead demon said. “But let’s get a move on, huh? You know the rules. We only got ‘til midnight, and we still got a bunch more houses to do.”

  With that said, they moved on to the garden of the next lonely and depr
essed child on their list.

  And began to chant.

  IT WAS THE night before Halloween and Ben found himself stood once again in front of his father, fingers crossed behind his back. Yet the look on his father’s face as it emerged from behind the newspaper made Ben’s heart sink.

  “Benjamin, every year you stand here and ask, and every year the answer remains unchanged. In this household we do not celebrate commercial nonsense such as Halloween. Now surely it's your bedtime?” The printed shield went back up, cutting off any hope of further negotiations.

  Ben despondently retreated back upstairs. For as long as he could remember every Halloween was spent peering out into the night from his darkened bedroom—his parents adopted a strict no-lights-on policy to deter would be trick-or-treaters—watching the parade of costumed monsters, superheroes and witches, pumpkin buckets overflowing with treats. A voyeur with his nose pressed against the glass.

  That night Ben dreamt of pumpkins from whose open mouths sweets cascaded like water.

  The next afternoon Ben cycled the long way home, determined to avoid the skeletons, lanterns and cobwebs that had sprung up overnight on every house in his road. School had been hell, the playground buzzing with ghost stories and the plotting of forthcoming mischief. Tormented, Ben had retreated to the monkey bars, glumly hanging upside down, unable to fake excitement any longer.

  Thankfully the bike ride was alleviating his mood somewhat and soon he found himself wending his way past Old Man Taverner’s farm, the fields bustling with rows of corn, stalks waving back and forth in the breeze. A flash of orange, amongst the green and yellow tapestry, caught his attention. Shielding his gaze from the low autumn sun he looked again, his heart jumping as the idea slowly took shape.

  His parents had always been adamant that he couldn’t join in with Halloween; though they had never specifically said that Halloween couldn’t come to him.

  Throwing his bike down and ignoring the faded no-entry sign, Ben carefully clambered over the fence, making his way through the dense cornstalks toward his prize.