"This is when things got weird. His wife and daughter went missing, but Royale didn't skip a beat. He kept buying, kept his coal breakers running, acted like nothing was wrong. There wasn't a single shred of evidence as to where his wife and daughter had gone, but he didn't seem to care. He organized several search parties, having his workers comb the mountain and the property surrounding his house, but his family was nowhere to be found. He didn't help in the searches, he just gave orders and conducted business from the porch of the house. A few of the townsfolk started thinking there was more to the story, and so they staged their own investigation, waiting until Royale was out of the house so they could search his property secretly.
"Five guys went up to the place - two of Royale's foremen, and three miners - with the intent of breaking in and searching the house, but before they could enter, they heard strange noises out back, where Royale had put up a second building. There were no windows, and the door had been triple-locked. Before they could break down the door, one of the men dropped to the ground, clawing at his eyes, screaming about 'seeing the demon on its throne.' Royale showed up out of nowhere and started picking the guys off one-by-one with a rifle. He killed three of them, but one of his foremen ran into the woods and made his way into town."
"Hey, I'd say the guy was justified," Romeo interrupted. "If people are creeping around on my property, I have the right to protect what's mine."
"Forget all that," Beth said. "What was the guy talking about a demon on its throne?"
Lisa lit a cigarette and shook her head. "What the story doesn't mention is that these guys were probably shit-ass drunk on moonshine."
"Ahh, the good old days," Dink laughed.
"So, the guy reaches town a few minutes later," Stacy continued, "and he goes to one of the local taverns, ranting and raving like a madman. He pounds a few shots and tells everyone what had happened, riles them up, gets them to form a lynch mob and make old man Royale pay for what he'd done. They gathered at the center of town, more than two dozen guys, most armed and ready for the kill. When they got to his house, there's no sign of him. They ransack the place, looking for his wife and daughter, expecting to find them dead, but after searching for an hour, they find nothing. So, they turned their eyes to the locked shed, breaking down the door, guns ready, but when they get inside, there's no one there.
"Royale was gone."
"That's a frightening tale," Geoff mocked, "but what does that have to do with this house?"
"I wasn't done, jerk."
"Yeah jerk," Trina yelled, "let her finish her story." After two wine coolers, Trina was already slurring her speech and getting antsy for a fight. Geoff shook his head and looked away.
"The guys doused the house in kerosene," Stacy continued, "and let the motherfucker burn."
"Burn motherfucker, burn motherfucker, burn," Dink shouted, singing the lyrics to Five Finger Death Punch.
"While most of the guys were taking care of the house, the remaining few started work on the shed. There was blood on the floor, along with the shredded dress of a small child. They were convinced this was where Royale had killed them, maybe as part of some Satanic ritual or something. One of them started babbling about another world right beyond the wall. They thought he'd lost his mind, but the longer they stayed, the more they felt something was wrong. One of them described it as a 'shimmering circle of darkness.' They saw shapes moving in the swirling mist, and later described it as 'staring into the abyss.' No one took them seriously. They torched the shed and went back to town, and that was the last of John Royale in Elmview.
"Fast forward a few years, and Elmview has moved on. His property was overgrown, and the house was nothing more than a pile of ash on the hillside. Rumors began that Royale had set up shop a few miles from town. Right here. The folks in Elmview knew about it, but they steered clear. They wanted to put that dark part of their history in the past and leave it there. It didn't stop curiosity-seekers from coming out here to see if the stories were true."
"Well? Are they true? Is this that maniac's house?" Lisa asked.
"There are stories," Stacy said, "of people coming out here and waiting for Royale to show up, but they never saw him again. There were reports of all sorts of creepy shit going on: animal carcasses piled in the woods, strange chanting in the basement, weird lights and noises. They figured it had to be Royale up to his old games, but he was out of their hair, so they didn't push the issue. People were still coming out here as late as the 1960's, sons and grandsons hoping to catch a glimpse of the crazy old man in league with the devil, but he was never seen again."
"The 1960's," Roger said. "If the guy was still alive, he would have been over a hundred by then."
Stacy shrugged. "I'm only telling you what the stories say."
"You found all of that on the internet?" Beth asked. "Why isn't this a bigger deal?"
"Elmview wanted it buried. They didn't need tales of a good old-fashioned witch hunt in their history books. Some of these people seemed to think that Royale was communing with demons, that he'd opened a portal to another dimension in the hopes of gaining the power to solidify his standing. Of course those are only tall tales, but it's still pretty wild."
"Especially considering what happened later," Romeo said. "Talk about coincidence."
"There's one more piece to the story," Stacy said conspiratorially. "The people who found this place said that it was an exact replica of the house Royale had built in Elmview. Some have said that Royale found a way to bring the house from somewhere else, a mirror reality where everything was almost the same as here."
"Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?" Geoff asked. "The old man opened a portal and brought a house from another world. Not everything you read on Facebook is true, you know?"
"I didn't say I believed it," Stacy argued. "I'm just telling you what I read."
Dink looked up at the house as the shadows deepened and the sky grew dark. He shuddered and rubbed his hands together in front of the fire. He suddenly had a chill he couldn't shake even though it was still seventy degrees. The idea of this house being sent from another world, Express Mail by some unnamed devil, made his skin crawl.
"Why the hell didn't you tell us any of this before we got here?" Beth asked.
"Would you still have come if I did?" Stacy said.
"Not a chance," Beth laughed nervously. "That's the craziest thing I've ever heard."
"See, this is the nonsense that keeps Dexter Maitland in business. Find an abandoned property, concoct some cockamamie story about demons, and make it something it's not so people come out here looking for answers."
"You're out here," Trina mumbled. "What does that say about you?"
"Why don't you have another drink, Trina?"
Romeo shot him a warning glance.
"What? Come on Romeo, seriously. Why do you even deal with this shit?"
"Be careful, Geoff. I'm not playing."
"Hey, it's your nightmare." Geoff stood and stretched. "I'm taking a leak."
Trina fell backward off the log and into the dirt where she howled with laughter.
"My God, put her to bed," Beth said.
"Would you just chill out?" Romeo growled. "It's no secret you've never liked her, but can't we just get along for one night?"
"We'll get along just fine when she's tucked into her sleeping bag," Lisa replied.
"Tuck it in your ass!" Trina shouted, still laughing and rolling in the dirt.
"Always the lady," Stacy mumbled.
"Come on honey," Romeo said, grabbing Trina's hands and attempting to pull her to her feet. "Let's get you to bed."
"I want to hear more stories," she whined. "I'm fine. I'm not drunk. I'm sober as a judge."
"You're not fine, and you need to go to bed. I'll get you settled. Come on."
Romeo led Trina to the tent, glancing at them angrily over his shoulder.
Geoff watched them from a copse of dead bushes as he emptied his bladder. He loved Romeo; the
y'd been friends since they were kids, but once Trina came into the picture, things changed. He knew his friend was smarter than this. How had she gotten her claws so deep into him that he allowed her to walk all over him and strain his other friendships? Geoff finished up and stared into the forest as the changing light played tricks with his eyes. Just briefly, he thought he saw something moving through the trees; a fat shadow that stayed low to the ground and shambled through the bushes like a stray dog. He blinked to clear his eyes, and it was gone.
Stacy's story had gotten to him, no matter how much he tried to pretend otherwise. He shook his head and went back to the fire. It had gotten much quieter without Trina's drunken outbursts. Geoff heard them in their tent talking quietly, but didn't stand around to eavesdrop. At this point, he couldn't care less what they were saying. When he and Romeo had a chance to be alone, Geoff planned to tell him exactly how he saw things, and if Romeo couldn't accept that, it was his problem.
"Never a dull moment, huh?" he asked as he sat next to the fire.
"Just the usual," Lisa sighed. "I wish he didn't bring her."
Everyone nodded in unison as if banging their heads to a silent drumbeat.
"Let's get this party back on track," Geoff smiled. "Who wants a beer?"
***
The hours passed and the sky grew black, dotted with millions of cold, shiny points of light. Romeo had returned once he made sure Trina was safely asleep in her bedroll, apologizing for his and Trina's behavior, but refusing to discuss it any further. The night continued without incident as they talked about innocuous nonsense, from television, to music, to the days of their youth. They almost forgot about the house that was now completely covered in a shroud of darkness.
"All in all, I'd say it was a good day," Geoff said, slurring. "We explored the house, smoked a ton of weed, drank a ton of beers, got chased by Mother's Nature's minions. What more can you ask for?"
"Do you believe any of that stuff?" Beth asked. She was sprawled on her back, staring at the starry sky and trying to keep her eyes open.
"What?" Stacy asked. "About the house? About Royale?"
"Well, yeah. I mean it's a bit far-fetched, but do you think there's any truth to any of it?"
"Royale was real; there's plenty of information about him before he moved to Elmview. Nothing quite as crazy as what I'd read, but he was real, his wife and kid were real, the townspeople burning the house down were real. Anything apart from that is speculation and stories passed down over the last century."
"I think it's people making connections where there are none," Geoff said. He finished another beer and grabbed a replacement. The party was almost over. He was out of weed and there were only two lukewarm cans of beer floating in the bottom of the cooler. It was nearly one in the morning; if they had any chance of getting out of here early, they needed to pack it in soon.
"What do you mean?" Roger asked.
"After all that weird stuff went down in Elmview, the stories were rampant. I think bored kids started making stuff up and it just grew. You tie that together with the Royale lore and you get yourself a crazy legend to pass on to your friends. All great stories are created that way."
"What do you think is in the basement?" Beth asked.
"The basement?"
"Yeah. The door was locked. I'm just wondering why. What do you think is down there?"
"Spiders," Stacy said. "Spiders and rats and cobwebs."
"Old man Royale stirring his cauldron and opening doors to other worlds," Dink laughed.
"I guess we'll never know," Lisa said. "I'm not going back in there to find out."
"We should probably get to bed," Romeo said. "Morning is going to come early and I don't want to feel like complete shit."
"What about Elmview?" Stacy asked.
"What about it?"
"I want to know more about what happened there."
"I'm sure a lot of people do," Geoff said, "but there aren't any answers. I told you everything I know. The news stations called it a gas leak. Said people were seeing things, hallucinating. Someone lights a match and BOOM! No more Elmview."
"That doesn't make any sense," she said. "I can understand the gas leak, but why did they empty the entire town? Why couldn't they have fixed the problem, rebuilt, got back to business as usual?"
"Like I said, I told you what I know. Digging any further makes my head hurt. Bad things happen and there doesn't have to be a reason for them. There are hundreds of ghost towns in this country; Elmview is just one of them, plain and simple."
"Okay kids," Romeo said as he stood. "On that note, I'm getting my ass to bed. It's been fun, but I'm not getting any younger."
One by one they stood and crawled into their tents: Romeo and Trina in one, Geoff and Stacy in the middle, Dink and Beth in the third. Lisa and Roger nestled into their sleeping bags under the clear night sky and began snoring immediately.
Inside the house, a strong fetid wind blew down empty halls and made the glass shudder in rotting window frames. The family of raccoons peeked their heads from the bedroom closet as their fur began to smolder; they screamed as their flesh melted into the floor. In the dining room, a large crack opened in the plaster, growing in length from floor to ceiling as black, undulating fingers of smoke poked and prodded at the humid air.
The room vibrated as something growled deep within the bones of the empty house. The cellar door creaked open, and the hall was filled with darkness deeper than black. The inky pool slipped forward and stopped, surveying its surroundings, feeling the nearby heat of sleeping bodies. It'd been over thirty years since it had last stepped out of its cold prison; failure stuck in its craw, and it would not allow the chance to slip away again.
The sky clouded over as the shape slipped through the cracks in the floor with a chuckle.
The first snowflakes drifted from the sky as July became December; the gears of time ground to a halt as rusting machines tore themselves apart.
Chapter 4
"Guys, wake up," Roger shouted, beating on the front of Dink's tent. "You have to see this, hurry up."
"It's still dark," Dink moaned. "Go to bed and leave me alone."
"No, seriously, get your ass up. Now!"
Dink sat up and shivered as Beth rolled over and yawned. "It's not morning yet, what does he want?"
"I dunno," he mumbled. "Damn, it got cold." He listened as Romeo and Trina stirred in the next tent. If this was some kind of joke, Dink was prepared to slap the taste out of Roger's mouth. He leaned forward and unzipped the tent, poking his head into the gloom. "What the hell do you... wait, what? Is that fucking snow?"
"Yes, it's snow. Now do you see why I woke you up?"
Roger and Lisa stood in front of the tent, shivering and exhaling clouds of white vapor. Lisa's hair was matted with clumps of melting snow.
"I bet you wish you would have brought a tent," Dink chuckled nervously. "What the hell is going on? It's July."
"You're very observant," Lisa hissed through chattering teeth.
"What's happening?" Romeo asked as he crawled from his tent. "Oh, Christ. It's snowing! How the hell?"
"Welcome to the party," Roger said. "Now you know as much as we do."
Dink exited the tent and stood next to Roger and Lisa. Beth peeked her head through the tent flaps but said nothing as she pulled the sleeping bag tighter around her. Everything was covered in several inches of snow; it clung to the trees, covered the ground, piled on top of the tents, and mired their vehicles in fresh powder.
"I don't understand," Dink said. "How is this possible?"
"It's not," Lisa shouted. "We have to get out of here. This is crazy."
"Geoff, Stacy, get up," Roger said as he unzipped their tent. "You're not going to believe... hey! Where the fuck are they?"
"What?" Romeo said. "They're not in there?"
"Their bags are empty."
"That can't be. Where would they have gone?"
"The fucking moon! How the hell do I know? Th
ey're just not here."
"Maybe they went in the house," Lisa said.
Beth stood and jumped out into the snow, still wrapped in her sleeping bag. She looked around the camp, squinting into the dark. "There aren't any footprints," she said. "And they wouldn't have just gotten up and left us here without saying something."
Trina was the last to step out into the unnatural winter wonderland. She hugged herself and hopped from one foot to the other to keep warm. "I bet it's Geoff and Lisa playing a prank on us," she said.
"What is wrong with you?" Beth asked. "A prank? Do you think in the last few hours they learned how to control the weather you fucking genius?"
"Okay, okay, let's all calm down for a minute," Romeo said. "Get your sleeping bags and we'll go back to the truck. At least I can run the heater and give us a chance to figure this out."
Everyone nodded. At least it was a plan.
They gathered what they could from the tents. Roger and Lisa took Geoff and Stacy's sleeping bags as theirs were buried under several inches of snow. The fire pit was cold and dead as if months had passed rather than just a few hours.
"It has to be just a freak storm or something," Romeo mumbled.
"Oh, sure," Roger said. "I've seen a lot of strange weather in Pennsylvania, but I've never heard of it snowing in July."
"If this is just a freak storm, I'm Mother Teresa," Beth replied.
After a few minutes of hastily gathering what they could carry, they formed a line and walked to the edge of the tree line where the SUVs were parked. All six of them packed into Romeo's truck, crowded in between sleeping bags. Romeo fished his keys out of his pocket and jammed one into the ignition. After a few seconds of tired grinding, the engine caught and sputtered to life as relieved sighs filled the passenger compartment. A few minutes later, the inside of the truck grew warm and tensions eased.
The Traveler (The Great Rift Book 2) Page 5