by Aiden James
The temperature along the upstairs landing seemed much colder than earlier, as if someone had left several windows wide open. Yet, when David and Tyler checked, every window remained shut. Tyler followed his dad’s s lead into the guestroom. The deep chill that pervaded everywhere else upstairs gave way to warmth rivaling the living room’s coziness downstairs. David turned on the light and they stepped inside.
“Well, at least it’ll be nice for Auntie Ruth in here, huh, Dad?” said Tyler, placing the suitcase and coat bag he carried at the foot of the bed.
David set the suitcase he carried next to the other luggage. The room decorated in a mixture of antiques and modern pieces, the mahogany four-post canopy bed was the centerpiece.
“Yeah…so it seems,” David agreed, forcing another smile once he noticed the uncomfortable look on Tyler’s face. “We’ll get the gas folks out here after Christmas to check the lines, since the heater still seems a little out of whack.”
He stepped out of the room and over to the hall thermostat in an effort to further sell the notion. Tyler didn’t buy it.
“Like that’s going to make a frigging difference,” he whispered, the sarcastic comment out of his dad’s earshot. “Do you want me to catch the light on the way out?”
His voice carried a slight edge as he walked over to the doorway where David waited.
“Nah, I’ll get it, son.”
He motioned for Tyler to head back downstairs. He glanced around the room before shutting off the overhead light and closing the door behind him. As he moved to the stairs where his son waited, he thought he heard a low chuckle coming from inside the guestroom. He paused to listen.
“What is it, Dad?” asked Tyler. He looked anxious to get the hell away from there.
David wondered if, like Christopher, his oldest son had seen any recent apparitions he decided to keep silent about. Just then, a loud burst of laughter erupted downstairs, as Ruth and Miriam shared a mirthful moment in the kitchen.
“Probably nothing,” he assured him, his cheeks sore from an even bigger smile forgery. “Let’s go get some cocoa before it’s all gone.”
“Sounds good.” Tyler grinned, seeming a little more relieved. Still, he nearly ran downstairs, refusing to look anywhere but straight ahead.
David almost did the same thing, but the temptation to take one last look got the better of him. Just before he turned off the hallway lights he thought he saw something. It could’ve been extra jumpiness fed by his previous experiences and what Christopher said earlier.
A dark shape hovered outside the guestroom’s doorway.
“Dad, are you coming?” Tyler called up to him from the base of the stairs.
David glanced again at the guestroom’s doorway, but it sat empty.
“I’ll be right there, son.” He moved confidently down the stairs, and this time he didn’t look back. Not even when the floorboards creaked on the landing behind him and the small hairs on the back of his neck sprung to life.
Chapter Six
The light scratching and shuffling noises resumed. This time, Tony Williams, the night security guard assigned to keep watch at Langston Hall, stood up from his desk near the storage building’s entrance and moved down the dusty wooden walkway toward the basement stairwell at the back end of the main floor.
The first two times he heard the noises, he called out to see if anyone was inside the building with him. Despite the remote possibility he might’ve overlooked someone hiding in the shadows, a closer look wasn’t really necessary. At least not yet. He’d just completed the first required tour of the evening that consisted of a thorough examination of each door and window lock on all three floors of the former dormitory, and then a quick trip to the bottom of the basement stairwell to make sure the thick steel door down there remained secure. A good hard tug on the handle to ensure the door stayed locked tight was the easiest part of the assignment, or so he’d been told the day before by his boss, Vernon Mathis.
“Hello?” he called out harshly, hoping the irritation in his voice was enough to get whatever, or whoever, made the noise to take notice. “This building is ‘off-limits’ per the Dean’s office, if anybody’s in here!”
After waiting for a response other than the continual scratching that emanated from the stairwell, big, bad, Tony “The Tank” Williams was on the way…on the way to deliver an ass-kicking to the mo-fo cutting into his study time—be it some small furry critter or some bored prankster from a nearby coed dorm.
For a moment he thought about the terror he used to deliver to opposing SEC quarterbacks on Saturday afternoons—the kind that got him featured on ESPN’s Sportscenter twice in his sophomore year playing ball for the University of Tennessee. Things were looking up back then—way up. He even considered the possibility of turning pro early, say, right after his junior year. But then he tore his Achilles the last weekend at Vanderbilt that fall as the Vols’ starting weak-side linebacker, and ‘the rest’, as they say, was ‘history’ for poor Tony. No more fame, no big dollars, and no easy pussy.
“Hello-o-oh!!” He repeated again, this time even more forceful as he neared the back of the building.
The annoying noises ceased when he reached the edge of the stairs. He turned on his flashlight and pointed it down the darkened stairwell toward its murky bottom. No sign of anyone or anything moving about, and no place to hide. Perplexed, he shook his head and looked around him, pointing the flashlight down the hallway toward the main entrance. A fluorescent glow from a long line of grime-covered overhead lamps illuminated the main floor.
He moved back to where the guard station sat, which consisted of a small card table and metal folding chair, barely adequate despite their temporary purpose. The chair set right next to the front door and a large window that Vernon told him was original to the building when completed in 1918. As with any old building, it got real cold sitting there. Real damned cold, especially late at night.
It sure as hell wasn’t the McClung Museum, which stood less than a hundred yards from here. The McClung was his normal gig every weekend and two week nights, eight o’clock to midnight. Right now, Matt Edmonds, the newbie who just joined the campus police, kept watch at the museum, along with whatever Knoxville police officer had been assigned to help out tonight. Probably sharing their opinions about the Vols’ upcoming bowl game over steaming coffee at the ‘real’ guard station, near one of two 10-foot Christmas trees decorating the front lobby of the museum. And, damn it if it wasn’t warm inside, too—unlike this frigging icebox, this old drafty building that no longer had an address plate since slated for demolition next summer.
Langston Hall was one of the University of Tennessee’s oldest colonial-styled red brick buildings that once served as a woman’s dormitory until the mid-1970s. It now housed hundreds of boxes filled with transcripts and other documents, such as outdated student records and even older report cards from years long since past. Now just a storage place for such mundane items, the building hadn’t seen a guard staff keeping a 24-7 vigil over the place in more than two decades.
But less than a week after Thanksgiving, Tony got the news from his boss, Vernon, the retired Knoxville police captain who now handled the security staffing for UT’s largest campus, that he and five other guards had been reassigned indefinitely to this less-than-desirable post. For the past three weekends John Campbell handled the evening shift on his own. But now he spent his eight hour shift divided between this post and a second ‘hot spot’ on the other side of campus. Starting last night, John manned the desk from 4 pm to 8 pm; Tony took over from eight to midnight; and then, Johnnie Mercer—another ex-Vols football star—relieved him at midnight. Tony could count on Johnnie to run three to four minutes late, since he’d always been like that when the pair worked connecting shifts at the museum.
This was supposed to be Tony’s only weekend filling in here for John, since Vernon promised it would be a brief assignment until Matt got fully up to speed. But since Tony didn’t have
any classes until January, Vernon took the liberty to schedule him for this same gig right on through Christmas. Then Matt should be ready to take over by the following weekend.
He better damn well be ready...and WAY before that!
It looked like New Years might be Tony’s only opportunity for a break from this dreary assignment during the holidays. That is, if he didn’t somehow come down with something serious like strep throat or walking pneumonia in time for Christmas Day. He might not be able to avoid working Christmas Eve, but damn straight he wasn’t working Christmas Day. Momma was coming down to Knoxville with his Aunt Jolene from Louisville, Kentucky, and he sure as hell didn’t want to be freezing his ass in here while they were in town.
He sat back down in his chair and pulled his poli-sci preliminary assignment for January in front of him, glancing at his wristwatch. 9:37 p.m. For a moment, he thought about his roommate’s cute steady girl, Gina Banks. Gina was fine…so very fine, man. So why Tyrone, instead of him? Tony was bigger, better built, had a dazzling smile, and was a hell of a lot more charming than his best friend who migrated south with him from Louisville after they graduated from high school. Besides, the former ‘Tank-man’ was packaged large where it counted, and had the stamina to keep a woman like her more than satisfied…. Yet, so far, she easily sidestepped his advances.
He released a deep sigh and cracked open the textbook sitting before him, determined to forget about her for now and lose himself in the book’s opening discourse about the fading merits of America’s two-party political machine. Suddenly, it started up again…the frigging scratching and shuffling noises coming from the basement stairwell.
A little more subtle this time, at first he tried to ignore them. Maybe it was just a pack of small rodents, or one big ugly mother rat. Hell, a pesky vermin small enough to escape his detection made sense. After checking twice already, he wasn’t getting up again. Not without a damned good reason.
But Tony couldn’t stop thinking about the noises. It didn’t matter if there was anything there or not, as simply his duty to protect what lay hidden behind the locked door downstairs. After all, it was the whole damn reason he and his other guard buddies were now forced to spend their evenings in this condemned, god-forsaken hell-hole that should’ve been torn down years ago. Something about a few crates filled with skeletons and relics recently uncovered from some ‘secret place’ up in the Smoky Mountains. Along with one other item brought in this morning, according to Vernon.
He snickered to himself as he considered this. Who gives a shit about some old bones and the shredded remains of clothing and rusted-out armor worn by some white folks from nearly 400 years ago? For all he knew, they could’ve been ancestors to the slavers who kept his family in bondage for the better part of two centuries.
Fuck em’ all if that’s the case!
The scratching and shuffling noises suddenly grew louder. Something really wanted his attention…or did the source of the noises somehow just move closer? Unprepared for the next sounds, taut gooseflesh arose upon his arms, neck, and shoulders. The old wooden banister inside the stairwell creaked, and it did so as if someone had just secured a strong enough grip to pull him or herself upward. But that wasn’t the only thing that made his skin crawl. Heavy footfalls slowly navigated the stairs.
“Who the hell’s down there??!” he demanded, a slight whine creeping into his tough-guy persona, threatening to erase it.
Though a little frightened, he couldn’t resist the urge to have another look down inside the darkened stairwell. He stood up again, pushing the folding chair back noisily as possible against the wooden floor, and then using his 250 pound frame to make his own approaching footsteps sound as heavy as the footfalls moving up the stairway to meet him. To up the ante further, he smacked the steel handle of his flashlight against his palm in a steady, methodical rhythm that was a helluva lot slower than his racing heartbeat.
The tactic seemed to work. The noises in the stairwell completely stopped. But in the heightened stillness, he heard something else...breathing. Deep and steady, it reminded him of Tyrone when he fell asleep on the couch watching television in the wee hours of the morning in their shared apartment. Only in this instance, he had a pretty good idea that whatever made the breathing sound wasn’t sleeping. It merely waited on him.
Tony whispered a quick prayer and continued down the hallway toward the stairs, hoping that when he shined his flashlight again into the dimness he’d find a harmless four-legged critter scurrying for cover. But the breathing down in the stairwell grew even deeper—as if whatever waited there eagerly anticipated the night watchman’s approach.
Tony flicked his flashlight on and hurried over to the stairwell. The flashlight’s beam revealed the same barren cement stairs and worn wooden banister from earlier. But the breathing had ceased. The noises must’ve been an auditory hallucination after all. He smiled nervously, prepared to turn around and head back to the desk. That’s when he saw them.
Two shadows didn’t disappear when the harsh white glare from his flashlight passed over them. Both were human-like shapes, similar to what one might see under the noontime sun when a person’s darker twin can mimic every move. Only this dark pair had their own agenda, swiftly moving up the stairs. The shadows separated from each other, lengthening grotesquely and moving toward him on either side as if intending to prevent his escape. He now noticed dark feathers poking out through each figure’s flowing dark hair, and each one carried crimson streaked coup sticks and knives.
“Ah, hell, no!” he shouted. He swung his flashlight at the phantom figures, connecting with nothing but incredible coldness that passed through his hand and wrist. In desperate panic, he threw the flashlight at the closest phantom.
Later on, all he readily recalled from the ordeal was the flashlight passing through it, along with the sound of the glass lens shattering against the wall closest to the stairwell and the steel casing tumbling down the stairs.
The fact he somehow made it out of the building, running on wobbly legs and a bum ankle, was something he wouldn’t recall again until well after New Years. But then he’d never forget the encroaching blackness that stretched across the walls and ceiling while he stumbled toward the main entrance. Reflected within the door’s lead glass window, his eyes looked like two bulging cue balls ready to be launched from his handsome ebony face.
He wouldn’t recall much else from that evening until long after New Years. But the fragmented images would spawn enough nightmares to force the by-then former watchman to curtail his education at the University of Tennessee. The less painful images were of him running and screaming through the densely treed lot that separated Langston Hall from the rest of the buildings on Circle Way. The race futile, the flitting wraiths dove repeated at him from his peripheral while a terrible whistling noise pursued him from the treetops.
Johnnie Mercer and Matt Edmonds found Tony three hours later, bloodied and curled-up in a fetal position near the curb of the museum’s main parking lot. All the while he babbled, incoherent, pleading for some unseen attacker to leave him the hell alone.
Chapter Seven
The morning sunshine looked promising to Ruth Gaurni’er as she gazed out the guestroom’s window. The snow-covered landscape under a clear blue sky didn’t look like a hindrance for her Sunday afternoon shopping plans as it had the night before. The view from her upstairs room splendid, most of the surrounding trees glistened from snow that slowly melted. Dripping ice cycles hung from the branches of a nearby maple, as well as the kids’ swing set in the backyard. And to top it off, a small throng of winter-hardy birds called out merrily to one another from the higher branches of the surrounding pines and a rather majestic oak standing in the rear of the property. Their songs lifted her heart.
Nattily attired in tan slacks and a white sweater, she stepped over to the long mahogany antique dresser against the wall opposite the window to finish the final makeup touches around her eyes. Using the mirror attached to t
he rear of the dresser, she soon was ready to join her nephew’s family downstairs. But before she left the room, she took a moment to lift her carry-on bag from beside the bed and set it on the dresser, carefully removing the jewelry box.
Once relieved of their protective wrappings, the precious diamonds and sapphires seemed to glow brighter than yesterday in the soft natural sunlight invading the room through the window. Satisfied, she rewrapped the gems and closed the box, placing it inside the top middle drawer of the dresser since it lay empty. She also added the trust papers she brought for David to sign, sliding all of the items to the very back of the drawer before closing it.
Ready to join everyone downstairs, she prepared to exit the room. A sudden whisper startled her, enough to where she almost dropped her purse and the eye glasses carried loosely in the palm of her hand. Ruth peered warily over her shoulder, but didn’t discern anything had changed since her last look around the room.
The murmur was low pitched, similar to another she thought she heard last night when briefly awakened. She dismissed it as a gust of wind somehow seeping into her room through a minute crack between the window and its frame. That would also account for how cold it got last night.
The room cozy when she awoke, nearly an hour ago, it now grew chilly again as she stood there. She forced herself to ignore it. Straightening her sweater, she opened the door and stepped out into the hallway, where it was much warmer.
She decided to leave the door open; hoping the heat from the landing crept into the guestroom in her absence. Joyful laughter resounded from the dining room below. Christopher and Jillian could scarcely contain their excitement with only one day to go before Christmas Eve.
It’s so wonderful to be a part of this!
That’s all she would allow into her awareness, paying no attention to the light rustling noises coming from the guestroom as she walked downstairs.