Harvest

by Steve Merrifield

  That crayon creature had haunted Rachel ever since with the possibilities it could represent. Sickeningly Rachel realised she had unknowingly prepared a trap for a monster – using Amy as bait.

  “There are monsters,” Rachel said grimly, her thoughts gripping her throat with the long fingers of the creature within the drawing. “Bullies, murderers, rapists; everywhere. When they die,” she paused trying to shake free of the beast and the dark thoughts it used to consume her. “Sometimes they stay monsters.”

  “You mean ‘evil’ ghosts.”

  “Without starting on the subject of the nature of evil; yes you get bad ghosts. I don’t think I am going out on a limb when I say that everybody has good and bad aspects of their personality. That can remain the same in spirit. In the same way that a picture can fade over time leaving only trace images, in spirit form a predominant emotion or aspect of character will be all that remains of a person’s essence. I saw the spirit of a murderer once. I couldn’t possibly tell you who the victim was or where it had happened, but I saw the act through him and all I could feel was his hate and loathing in that moment, that’s all that was left of him. You understand when I see a spirit it’s not always like seeing you, or another living person.”

  “You mean you can partly see through them?”

  “It’s more than that,” she took a deep drag of air with the difficulty of explaining. “They can look solid like you or I, or they can seem faded, blurry – like a memory where detail seems evasive. More than that though; you don’t just see them, you feel them, even to the point of experiencing their memories and thoughts. Sometimes, if they speak, it’s almost as if your ears have been bypassed and they are speaking in to you. Your head fills with words and you know; you just know what they are thinking or saying. You can feel the intense love they have for those they have left behind, or sadness that they have had to leave. Or because they are cut off from their loved ones they can feel loneliness. They can use your emotions to paint a picture of how they feel so you often experience their feelings.”

  “And with the killer?”

  “I experienced his primal feelings as I said. But, he hated people being in ‘his’ house. He was shouting and screaming at the top of his voice, and flashes of his crime would cut in and out of my consciousness, when I eventually saw him he was pacing in all different directions like a caged animal and he was all blurred and smudged and parts of him moved and shuddered at unnatural speeds. To feel his bile and hate for life was sickening. I hated that,” Rachel’s words lingered on her lips like a bad taste as she drifted into uncomfortable memories

  “Nasty. So would you say that most of them are the lonely benign kind?” She said, sounding hopeful.

  Rachel laughed. “Yes, don’t worry. Some spirits just can’t leave the living they have left behind. Of course, only a very few people seem to be able to see ghosts, so the spirit has to watch their families living their lives completely oblivious to them. Their friends or relatives eventually leave, or die and the spirit is left behind: alone. Then new people move in.”

  Kelly grimaced. “Then the trouble starts…”

  “Occasionally. Yes. Some spirits seem to get anchored to certain places or rooms, they carry on as they had, not seeming to know they are dead. As if they see the house as it was when they lived there; they carry on unaware of us, using doors and moving furniture that might not be there anymore.”

  “How can they interact with things that aren’t there anymore?”

  “Maybe the spirits memory of the past shapes their spiritual world. If the spirits are aware of us and our world they might not be able to understand what’s happened or why their house has changed or why there are people and different belongings in their house. Imagine how disorientating or frightening that might be?”

  “Hence the disturbance?”

  “They tend to be mischievous more than anything; spiteful at the worst. I hardly think hiding ornaments or moving furniture around is evil intent. Maybe spirits don’t have enough potency or energy to engage with the world of the living to have any serious impact on us. But it isn’t usually the action of a spirit that’s frightening; it’s the fear of things that upset our general consensus of understanding.” Rachel cupped the hot drink to her lips before carrying on her hushed explanations.

  “But ghosts are souls, right?”

  “That’s an interpretation. Souls, psychic imprints, nonsense, hallucinations, residue of biological energy, depending upon whether you ask a person of religious faith, a new-ager, a sceptic, psychologist or an open-minded scientist – their philosophy for understanding the world will govern their interpretation of their experience. Whatever ghosts are countless people have had experiences they can’t explain, there are photographs and films that have captured strange apparitions and phenomenon so there is a wealth of evidence to support the existence of things happening that we can’t currently understand or explain.”

  “Yeah, but it can’t be conclusive evidence or opinions and the willingness to believe would have changed.”

  “Would they? As I said opinion is dictated by the philosophy that you ascribe to. Science dominates now, which is a good thing in my opinion; more good has come out of science than has ever come out of religion. However, it’s when science tries to explain everything from our current level of understanding that I have an issue; if something defies science’s current level of understanding then its possibility is dismissed or denied. Scientific arrogance.”

  “So you think there might be a scientific explanation for ghosts?”

  “Quite. It’s just that science hasn’t reached a level where such phenomenon can be studied or understood. It’s like a medieval alchemist, or whatever their equivalent of a scientist might have been, trying to understand electricity. They might think it magic or witchcraft.”

  Kelly shrugged. “How do you explain ghosts then?”

  “I like to keep an open mind. It will make it easier for me to accept any explanations when this phenomenon is finally understood. Not that I think that will happen in my lifetime, or yours. The theory that I like and that I like to think is most probable, (because it fits what we already know of human biology and chemistry) is that ghosts are a residue of the energy that we all have inside us.”

  “So ghosts are like radiation?”

  Rachel turned her mouth down at the corners in an impression of sadness. “Yes, not very romantic is it. Our energies, biological, chemical and psychic make us who we are in the spirit world, giving us our appearance, memory and personality in the spirit world. And just like when they were living, the spirits like to be somewhere familiar and around the people they love, so their energy might be focussed on homes or workplaces and around the people they have left behind, or like the living they might find it difficult to let go of the past and are haunted by the experiences they had in life, and they replay those events over and over as we do now in our heads. This energy might linger for a long time or it might dissipate over time.”

  Kelly had a look of concentration her face like that of a child that had just been captivated by a bed-time story. “Dissipate? And where do you think that energy go?” She said with a renewed scepticism edging her voice, as if her mind had suddenly realised she was going along with it and switched into denial.

  “I hope for them that they go wherever their faith sends them.” Rachel shrugged. “Then we get onto the biggy don’t we… Afterlife! If there is one I will come back and tell you about that when or if I get there.”

  They both laughed and turned to the soft light from the monitors that flickered ahead of them. They had two views of every room in the Chambers flat, except the parents’ bedroom and the bathroom. One monitor showed normal view, while the other showed the green screen of infrared.

  Rachel operated the zoom on Amy. Her sleeping face filled the screen as the close up settled on her, and they watched her as she lazily brushed hair away from her eyes in her sleep.

  “She’s a cutie
…” Rachel whispered broodily.

  “I know. She looks so peaceful.”

  “Peaceful dreams.”

  “I hope they are.”

  Rachel caught her forlorn gaze at the monitor. “You don’t have children?” she skirted cautiously.

  Kelly smiled grimly. “No, afraid not.”

  “Not met the right man yet?”

  “Hmmm. Thought I had. I was wrong.”

  Rachel sympathetically patted Kelly’s hand that supported her upright where she sat. “There’s a Mr Right out there for everyone.”

  “So what about you?” she deflected, her voice sounded choked. “Kids?”

  “Once, yes…” Rachel answered, shifting her eyes from the sleeping girl to the surface of her drink. “That was a long time ago.”

  Kelly didn’t probe further. “How about Mr Right, then?”

  Rachel’s spirit lifted slightly and a dry smile drew across her lips. “Okay; blow my reassuring advice out of the water!” She took a deep breath, thick with sadness. “Mr Right, turned into Mr Wrong and he left.”

  “Bastard. Leaving you with a kid.”

  “Don’t judge him. It turned out that neither of us could give each other what we wanted. We saw each other from time to time but the situation gradually made meeting up awkward,” Rachel spoke kindly, remembering how Malcolm had found himself the family that Rachel had been unable to provide, and Rachel had found Helen.

  “Sounds sad.”

  Rachel nodded. “Oh, I think we both have a sad story to tell. You don’t see your Mr Wrong anymore?”

  She shook her head. “He wouldn’t know me now. I have changed a lot since then.”

  “As long as you haven’t changed so much and become Mrs Wrong for any Mr Right that comes along…”

  Kelly looked away and Rachel saw that she had hit a nerve, but Rachel was instantly distracted by the monitor: “Do you see that?” Staring at the screen she reached out with her drink for where she hoped the table was, not daring to take her eyes from the image. “The lamp has just come on in the lounge…” Rachel whispered pointing to the lamp that burned like a flare on the green screen, overexposing an area of the light sensitive infrared feed. “There you go; first possible sign of activity. Classic sign!” she stated excitedly and with a measure of triumph.

  Rachel turned her attention to Amy’s bedroom monitors, seeing the pitch-black normal feed, she turned to the revealing infrared screens that replaced the darkness with a grainy green image. She used the joystick to move the camera out from the close up on Amy to view the rest of the room. Then she operated the camera in the lounge and made it pan 360 degrees. There was no one in the lounge to have turned on the lamp.

  Amy was still asleep, and the door from the lounge into the master bedroom was still shut. There didn’t seem to be anyone else on the monitors, nor any movement or shadow – nothing to explain the lamp now being on. The family slept on unaware of the strange activity. The hairs on her neck prickled.

  Kelly caught Rachel’s operating arm and jerked the camera’s attention back to Amy who was now sitting up in bed scanning the darkness, her iris’s glowing like floating bright white orbs in the hazy green infrared image. Eyes wide and burning with fear.

  A soft voice crackled shakily through the tinny speakers. “Mr Sparky’s coming!” It was a voice choked with terror, a level of fear Rachel never thought she would hear from a child: The fear of death.

  There was a sound of susurration from the speakers that built into a roar of a thousand tormented infants. The noise broke down into a lancing squeal of static feedback. Amy reacted to the noise in her room by swinging her legs over the side of the bed and diving out from under the covers seconds before a bright light overexposed the green infrared screen with its intensity. The normal feed monitor showed a burst of bright green light glaring out of the darkness of the room, briefly blotting out the view on the screen.

  Chapter Twelve

  Craig struggled in the depths of sleep. A noise disturbed him, disrupted his slumber. He became aware of the lack of dreams, the emptiness of his unconscious world as he balanced on the brink of waking. The blackness that surrounded him shifted in the wake of an undefined shape that snaked past him. A shape that, as he focussed on it, became a hazy green ribbon of diffused light, an entropic pattern barely distinguished from the void around him. It stayed ahead of his search, writhing slowly, haunting him from the edge of his perception. Sleep tugged at him as he swam after the shape, pulling him into a descent towards a deeper rest, one he knew would claim him for hours. It was as if the light was trying to lead him to that state; luring him back to sleep. He pulled away and for a moment he was sure it screamed with a multitude of infantile voices, but the voices faltered and merged and became one monotonous sound; the high-pitched whining noise that had first infringed on his physical senses. The ghostly green tendril faded and his eyes fluttered open and his dream world collapsed. In that brief moment of transition into the waking world an anonymous spike of anger lashed out from within his dream world in frustration that Craig had woken.

  The motion sensors sounded the high-pitched wail that had pulled Craig from sleep, he opened and closed his eyes in exaggerated blinks and lay motionless for a few seconds. He watched David smacking away the taste of sleep from his lips and roughly shoving his glasses on as he lurched forward to the bank of monitors and controls. Craig followed as he tuned into the rising anxiety within the room.

  The camera view in Amy’s room panned automatically to face the disturbance and movement. The noise built to a howl over the speakers, the voices Craig recognised from his sleep. At the zenith of the blaze of light the sound was abruptly stopped. As quick as it appeared the light was gone and the infra red view was restored, showing the grainy green image of the beds blankets and pillows tumbling back onto the bed as if swept up and dropped by an unseen force. Amy scrambled hurriedly across the floor sobbing and whining.

  Craig dived down beside Kelly at the monitor while David blearily began examining the equipment, switching off the sharp noise of the bedroom motion detector with trembling hands.

  “Where are the parents? What are they doing?” Kelly raced urgently.

  The lounge sound sensor registered a noise and directed the camera, focussing in on the source of the sound. The parent’s bedroom door filled the screen as the creaking of stressed wood crackled and groaned through the speaker.

  The hall motion detector wailed, activated by Amy’s flight from her room. The camera attempted to track her but she overtook its slowly panning lens, clipping the camera in her haste, causing the picture to flicker and shudder as the camera staggered on its tripod.

  The lounge motion detector sprang into life, grating the air in a shrill monotone before Amy’s arrival could trigger it. The camera panned toward the ceiling in search of the stirring in the air that had activated it. David cursed trying to keep up with the multiple reactions of his equipment and quickly silenced the sounds of the hallway and lounge motion detectors that jarred their nerves, clearly struggling to keep up with the action unfolding on the monitors.

  On one of the green infrared screens Amy rounded the corner into the lounge, looking about her warily as the unearthly sound started again. The image rolled and broke up as Amy crashed into the camera and it fell roughly onto its side. The picture restored itself, offering a ground level view of the room before the camera adjusted and used the motion sensor to focus back on the disturbance in the room. Amy stood in full view, still framed by the lens, her hair wild around her face in an impossible gale. Thuds from the parent’s room sounded like distant thunder as Brian and Claire called desperately for Amy and hammered at the door that refused them access to their screaming daughter. The camera jerked, caught between the commands of its sound and motion sensors.

  A flash of bright light blanched the infrared camera’s transmission and Craig’s eyes flicked to the monitor with the normal view. Amy recoiled from the brilliant light, stepping clo
ser to the lens of the camera that rested on the floor behind her, her lower legs and ankles filling the screen. The light receded as suddenly as it had appeared and Amy’s feet jerked up out of sight with it. Amy’s scream joined the cries that haunted the influx of rushing air and then all sound ended with the dying light, as if the camera had entered into the eerily calm eye of a storm.

  “Where’s she gone? – Where’s she gone!” Kelly gasped hysterically.

  Each of them glanced from monitor to monitor, before desperately returning to the picture of the lounge. Amy didn’t appear in any of the views. With the absence of any movement the cameras stare was drawn to the parent’s bedroom door by the sound of Claire and Brian pounding frantically on the wood and calling with increasing desperation and futility for their daughter.

  In the basement the black hole glowed with a dim throbbing green. The dull but energetic light cast the thick chips and carved teeth around the mouth of the hole in soft light and shadow, giving the impression of movement that made it appear the hole was gnawing at the blackness within.

  The mound of rancid meat and flesh within began to move slug-like across the ground. Slither by slither, strip by strip, it crawled in its decay, carried by the writhing bodies of the maggot’s as they burrowed into the meat in gluttonous feasting.

  The carcasses and waste crossed the uneven scorched ground and rubble towards the skeletal remains of the undertaker, Albert Taylor. The ragged white and dark meats reached his bones, crawling and weaving, wrapping his exposed skeleton, sliding up the shafts of his legs, filling the cracks of his finger joints, spreading in to cover his wrists, and knees. A tide of flesh moving relentlessly inward, knitting together through his ribs and curling around the spine like some grotesque crawling ivy. Tendrils of decomposing flesh took hold of the entire skeleton.

  It watched from the corner of the room feeling stronger from its weeks of feeding, but not yet sated – not yet ready… It allowed part of its consciousness to divide and brake away in a crude shape of light that rushed forward to the ragged blob of congealed fats and festering meats that clung to the skull, and channelled that part of itself into the empty eye sockets.