Southern House

by Mark Deloy

  “Be careful,” I warned. “Those things can be as sharp as a knife if they catch your leg just right.” I recalled a warning Papa Hickory had given me about the very same thing, once, a long time ago.

  We came to the waterfall just as the rain started coming down even heavier. Thunder crashed, making us all jump. Beth laughed a little and looked around at us. She was probably enjoying being outside after being cooped up for the last fifty years or so, although her laugh was slightly disturbing at the moment. It was the first sound she had made since leaving the home.

  “So where is it?” Jensen asked. I couldn’t tell if he was asking me or Beth.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “Last time the house was right over there.” I indicated behind me.

  “Look!,” Lisa cried out. She was pointing deeper into the forest. There was a drop-off with a small valley below. Just visible over the edge was the very tip of the house’s roofline.

  “How did you see that?” I asked.

  “I just looked for something that wasn’t natural,” she shrugged.

  “I’ll be damned,” Jensen swore. “It does exist.”

  We walked over to the edge of the small cliff. Below us, in a flat valley, was the house. It looked just as it had before, only now, it was in another, completely different, spot. It was strange to be looking at a house from this angle. Our eyesight was directly level with the top of the roof Lisa had spotted. The rest of the house was below us. I could actually see into the second floor windows. Everything inside looked dark and dank.

  “I never made it to the uppermost floor,” I offered “Or the attic. I couldn’t ever find a way up.”

  I knelt to be better able to see in through the windows. There seemed to be large, decorative Persian rugs covering the floors. The designs were intricate and reminded me of huge Mandelbrot sets. Then, as I was looking at them, the circular shapes grew, then shrunk, and then changed again—elongating—before disappearing, coming back spiraled, constantly forming new shapes.

  “Did you see that?” I asked no one in particular.

  “Yes,” all three said at once. It was the first time Beth had said anything since we got her out of Willow Bend. She was smiling and her large, rotten teeth were ghastly. Her eyes were bright and aware, and snot was coming from one nostril. She nonchalantly wiped it away.

  “Allergies,” she commented, without looking at me.

  “Do you think that’s the vortex?” Lisa asked.

  “I don’t know. Jim’s journal said it was hanging in the air about three feet off the ground. That could be part of it, though.”

  “How could this be here?” Jensen wondered out loud. “We searched all over this place.”

  “I don’t know,” Lisa replied, “but it’s here.”

  The cliff dropped off about thirty feet in front of us. It was covered in jagged rocks, but it looked like it would be easy enough for us to climb down. Beth, however, would have a hell of a time doing it in handcuffs, even with Jensen’s help

  “If she’s going with us,” I indicated in Beth’s direction, “ you’re going to have to uncuff her.”

  “Yeah, I was just thinking that,” Jensen responded. “I wonder if there’s another way down.”

  “Maybe. Do you want to go check?”

  “Yeah. Can you get down this way, or do you want to come with us?” Jensen asked, looking mostly at Lisa

  I looked at Lisa and she looked down the side and then nodded.

  “We’re going to go down this way,” I said. “We’ll meet you down there. If you can’t find a way just uncuff her, and send her down first and we’ll keep an eye on her as she comes down.”

  Beth looked fearful as she looked down at the sharp rocks. I was glad it had stopped raining. This would be slick if it was soaking wet.

  Jensen nodded, then he and Beth headed along the edge to find an easier way down. I could tell Jensen didn’t want to take any chances with Beth. She seemed harmless, but I remembered the doctor’s scar from her handiwork.

  “I think we’re going to find another way down,” Jensen called back to us.

  Lisa and I climbed down the cliff face. It wasn’t very steep and there were small dirt paths meandering down to the valley. We just had to hold onto the rocks in a few places where it narrowed. We got to the bottom in five minutes.

  The clearing the house sat in was wide and flat, with no trees or rocks. I couldn’t remember if this valley had even been here when I was taking my walks. It was scary to think that a whole geographical area might have been changed because of the house and what was in it. I pictured the ground opening up and shifting, then leveling out to make way for this wooden monstrosity and the monster within.

  We looked up at the house. It was just as gray and lifeless as it had been before. The smell of rot and ruin still permeated its hulking form as if the mold and mildew had seeped into the wood’s pores and grew there, changing the cellular structure of the wood.

  I smelled something else, though. The scent was thick and cloying. It was an animal smell for sure. I looked around, but saw nothing move around us. The forest was still and soundless.

  “What are you looking for?” Lisa asked.

  “I don’t know. Do you smell that?”

  “Yeah, it smells like a wet dog.”

  I heard a low rumbling sound to my left and at first thought it was thunder. Then I realized it wasn’t coming from overhead. It was coming from around the side of the house.

  “What is that?” Lisa asked, her eyes wide. She raised the pistol and leveled it. I did the same with mine.

  “I have no idea, but it’s getting louder,” I responded.

  I saw their shadows first. Although there was no sun out, they cast shadows anyway. As the blackness slid across the ground, the small plants the darkness slid over, shriveled and died before our eyes. The growling sound grew even louder, only now it seemed to be coming from inside my own head. The three creatures’ snarling mouths came into view first, filled with what looked like hundreds of jagged, yellow teeth. Their mouths were foaming and globs of the white, foamy flotsam saliva dropped to the ground, hissing on contact with the dried leaves. All three beasts now had their dark, dead eyes locked onto us.

  The rest of their huge, gnarly, but powerful- looking bodies came into view and I recognized the creatures. Wolves, enormous and black, their fur coarse-looking and matted, probably with the blood of their prey. I’d seen a fleeting glimpse of one on my first walk. This had to be what Dale and his bloodhound had encountered while looking for the kids. Now we were face to face with them and they were not hallucinations.

  For a minute, I forgot I even had a gun. I was completely frozen in place. Then Lisa fired her gun jerking me out of my paralysis. I cocked the hammer back on the .357, aimed and fired. I knew I hit the wolf on the left, in the chest, but he didn’t even flinch. The beasts still advanced slowly, snarling and snapping.

  Lisa fired three more times. One of the rounds hit the middle wolf in the foot and he yelped, but then just shook his foot, snarled even louder and stared at us with dead eyes. I kept firing and then realized I was out of rounds. I’d fired off all six in a few seconds. Lisa was still firing and I saw her drop her first magazine and slam another one home. She was screaming and I could barely hear it above the sound of the wolves snarling. It was a monstrous sound and I’d never heard anything even close to its ferocity.

  Then I heard a shot come from the other side of the house. It had to be Jensen firing at them from behind. One of the wolves turned to face him and the other two kept advancing on us. I’d managed to flip out the small door on the Ruger and use the ejector rod to eject three empty shell casings. Then I slid three rounds, one at a time, into the holes, which seemed way too small for the cartridges. I flipped the door shut again, pulled the hammer back and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened, and I realized I’d only put three rounds in the gun and I was firing on empty chambers. I quickly repeated that two more times and then found
a live round on the third time. The round struck the wolf on the right in one eye. He dropped without making a sound.

  “Aim for the eyes!” I screamed. “They have a soft spot!”

  Either Lisa didn’t hear me, or her aim was off. She fired her last round and I saw it hit the huge animal’s beefy shoulder, then heard it ricochet through the trees.

  I had two more rounds and I hoped Jensen had heard what I screamed about hitting them in the eyes. I heard Jensen’s wolf yelp loudly and I fired again. The round took off the animal’s ear. It didn’t seem to feel it. I knew I had one shot left. I wasn’t going to have time to reload. The animal was five yards from us. I saw Lisa try to back pedal, but she tripped over her own feet and went down. I aimed as carefully as my shaking hands would let me and fired just as the wolf sprang at me. I knew I’d missed. I didn’t take the wolf’s movement into account.

  Then it was on me, snarling and snapping again. I could feel its paws, impossibly heavy on my shoulders. I saw a droplet of foam from its muzzle fall on my arm and felt the flesh sizzle away the flesh. But there was no time to worry about that now. I knew I was about to die.

  I heard five loud pops behind me and the wolf slumped down on top of me, its weight nearly crushing me. I tried to push it off, with no luck, then sensed more hands pushing at it. Finally, the beast’s weight slowly rolled off of me and I could breathe again.

  Jensen moved quickly and ran around the animal, getting in front of it. He’d put his last five rounds into the creature’s head. I could see only one had penetrated its thick skull. The other four had just taken off the fur and skin.

  “What the fuck were those things?!” Jensen yelled.

  “I think they are the house’s security system. They must be animals that came through the portal from Shift’s world, or some other one.”

  “Let me look at your arm,” Lisa insisted.

  The wound was about the size of a half dollar. It was still sizzling like bacon on a skillet where the foam had landed, but I no longer felt the pain. I don’t know if that was because the wolf’s acidic saliva had fried all my nerve endings, or because I had a gallon of adrenaline coursing through my system. Either way, I was grateful. Lisa dumped some water from her bottle on it and it stopped sizzling. There was a nasty looking concave wound there now. The flesh looked charred around the edges and dark red in the center. I winced when Lisa touched around one edge, expecting it to hurt, but it didn’t. My arm was mostly numb.

  “We need to get you to a hospital,” Lisa declared.

  “I’m fine,” I assured her, knowing I sounded like an action hero who kept going despite a gunshot or other heinous wound. I had the urge to tell her it was just a flesh wound.

  “Where’s Beth?” Lisa asked, looking around.

  “Look!” Jensen was pointing at the house. The door was open now.

  “She must have gone in while we were fighting the wolves,” I surmised. “Let’s go.”

  Jensen slammed a new magazine into his Glock. Lisa was out of ammo, but I still had plenty for the Ruger. After I loaded six fresh rounds out of my pocket, they helped me up and we cautiously approached the house.

  Jensen went in first, using his left hand to push the door open even further while he raised his gun. I was behind him, but kept the Ruger lowered slightly so I wasn’t pointing it at Jensen’s back. I took a deep breath and stepped over the threshold.

  36

  Thunder crashed outside and I could hear the rain start to hammer the roof. The house was just as I’d remembered it. There were no furnishings, or any carpeting on the ground floor. I remembered there was no way to get up to the second floor that I had seen. No stairs, a ladder, or even a trap door. We’d seen the shifting chaos pattern in a room on the second floor. Now we just had to find a way up there.

  The place still smelled of mildew and rot, like a full dumpster that has sat for days in the hot sun. The air was so thick and heavy; it was like I could taste it. I started to gag, then instead took a deep breath, trying to acclimate myself to the stench.

  “Ugh, that smell!” Lisa made a face.

  “Yeah, pretty awful,” I agreed.

  “Beth!” Jensen whispered harshly. “Where are you?”

  There was no answer, so we started looking around, our guns at the ready. We moved from room to room. I kept expecting to see Mr. Shift appear around every corner, but the place seemed deserted.

  “Who lived here?” Jensen asked.

  “No one, I don’t think. It was just a way for Shift to mark where the vortex would be if he had to go out to snatch kids. It’s like a covering for it, so he doesn’t lose it. It goes where the portal goes. At least that’s how Jim described it in the journal.”

  “So where’s the portal?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “It has to be that thing moving on the floors in one of the rooms upstairs. But I don’t know how to get up there.”

  “It has to have stairs somewhere,” Lisa said. “Didn’t you say you thought there was a basement?”

  “Yeah, there’s a door in the kitchen, but we want to go up, not down.”

  “Maybe it does go up. Did you open it?”

  “No, it was locked.”

  “Let’s go check it out.” Jensen was already moving.

  We walked into the small room at the front of the house. The only reason I thought it was a kitchen was because of its placement. There were no counters or a sink, it just had the feel of a kitchen in size and where it was located, just as the dining room looked like it was where a dining room was supposed to be, central to the ground floor.

  The door was still there, in the corner of the room. It looked heavy and thick. There were no visible hinges, doorknob or locks.

  Jensen pulled off his backpack, unzipped it and pulled out a two-foot-long, flat metal bar with a chisel at the end.

  “Breaching bar,” he explained. “Thought it might come in handy.”

  There was a small space between the door and the jam and Jensen was able to get the chisel end of bar into the gap. He pressed on the bar and there was a creaking sound, followed by the wood popping and groaning. Finally, the jam splintered and the invisible locking mechanism gave way. The door flew open and banged on the wall.

  “We’re in,” Jensen grimly proclaimed.

  “Yeah, but do we want to be?” I muttered, looking into the darkness. “And we know Beth isn’t down there.”

  “There are stairs,” Jensen pointed out. “And they go down, not up. We’ll find Beth later. We should check this out.”

  “Are you serious?” Lisa asked. “Don’t you guys watch horror movies? You never go into the basement. You can count me out. I’m not going down there.”

  “We can’t leave you up here alone.” I protested. “Speaking of horror movies, whenever the teenagers split up, something bad happens.”

  Lisa sighed and rolled her eyes.

  “I’m serious. You don’t have to come all the way down, just stay on the stairs where we can keep an eye on you.”

  “Fine,” she huffed, crossing her arms.

  Jensen turned on his Maglite and led the way. I wondered how this place could have a basement when it kept moving, then realized how absurd that thought was; here I was pondering the intricacies of a moving house.

  The stairs were mostly rotted, so we kept to the outside of the treads. The wood felt spongy beneath my foot. If it gave way, I’d probably have a broken ankle. Then I thought of something worse occurred to me. If my foot went through the stair, a dead, white hand would probably grab my foot and pull the rest of me down. I shuddered. Jensen’s flashlight illuminated spider webs just a little above our heads. Bulbous yellow and black arachnids skittered along them. I thought they were probably blind from being in the darkness so long. Jensen moved his light down the stairs and I saw one huge spider web covering the area where the stairs twisted right into the basement itself. There was no spider that I could see, but a desiccated, long- dead rat hung suspended, all wrap
ped in webbing.

  “You ok?” Lisa whispered. “Having second thoughts?”

  “Of course,” I whispered back and grinned, despite my revulsion.

  Jensen put up a hand to both quiet us and stop us.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Look,” he pointed and shined the light into the open basement.

  The open space of the basement—which spanned the length of the house was nearly filled with small coffins. They were stacked four high, almost to the ceiling. There was only about a foot of space between the stacks. Most of them were covered with dried dirt and muck. Some looked a few years old, while others were just crumbling wood and a rectangular-shaped framework.

  Then the smell hit me. I was surprised I couldn’t smell anything but dirt and more mildew at the top of the stairs, because when we rounded the corner of the stairs, the smell of death and decay hit me like a hammer. I pushed past Lisa and ran back up the stairs. I barely made it to the top before vomiting all over the kitchen floor.

  “You ok?” Lisa called out from below.

  “Yeah, I think so, but I’m not sure I can go back down there.”

  “I told you,” Lisa insisted, from the stairwell. . “There’s never anything good in the basement.”

  “We’ll be right up,” Jensen. “I’m going to see if there is anything on these coffins to identify them.”

  Lisa came up a few stairs and sat, holding her hand over her mouth.

  “I have no idea how he can be down there,” she commented.

  “Me neither,” I said, trying not to think about it and swallowing hard.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  I saw movement out of the corner of my eye in the dining room. What I was seeing made no sense… it was a foot sticking out of the wall, then it was gone and I heard a loud thump coming from that direction.

  “What was that?” Jensen called up from below. “You two all right?”

  “Yeah. We’re fine,” I answered, keeping my eye on the spot where I saw the foot. “But you’d better come back up here.”