by JT Ellison
How could I have missed seeing him?
As I watched, paralyzed, he pulled against the chains, writhing as fresh, bloody stripes appeared on his torso.
He was being whipped. By something I couldn’t see.
I stumbled back, colliding with an old dressmaker’s dummy that tumbled down onto me. I pushed it away, barely stifling my own scream, scrabbling on hands and knees toward the trapdoor, less concerned with what awaited me below than with what I was seeing now.
And then I wasn’t seeing anything, because he was gone. I never saw him wink out or fade. He was just… gone.
The trapdoor was thrown back and I nearly tumbled through it. Strong hands caught me, fixed around me, and dragged me down the stairs to the second-floor hallway. SueAnne was there, eyeing me with concern. “Let’s get out of here.”
I didn’t put up much fight as they dragged me down the hall and the stairs, back to the room on the ground floor I’d escaped from. The man shoved me back into the chair and fished more zip ties out of his pocket, but I held up my hands in what I hoped was a placating manner. “Please, you don’t have to tie me. I won’t fight you. I promise.”
SueAnne asked, “What did you see up there?”
“A man chained, covered in blood… he looked like he was screaming, although I couldn’t hear anything... and then he just vanished.”
A look passed between the two of them, but it was a look I couldn’t understand—relief. The man seemed to have forgotten about the zip ties. The woman spoke up. “Good. That was just a residual.”
“A what?”
“A residual. A ghost. But residual means it’s like a recording—it just goes through the same thing over and over. Usually with residuals they repeat one of their last actions before they died, in the place where they died.”
“Why is it good that I saw that?”
“Because the residuals can’t hurt you. But the intelligent ones can. Those—” she gestured at the strange necklaces I still wore, “—keep you safe.”
Oooohhkaaay… I got it now. These people were nuts. Whether they’d been whack before they came here or squatting in a two-hundred-year-old mansion falling apart around them had driven them insane didn’t much matter to me then. What did matter was knowing that they were looneytunes. I had to get out of here before they decided to sacrifice me to their Goat God Belial or whatever it was that crazies did with their captives.
I looked back at the man, whose scowl made me think maybe he wasn’t nuts but went along with her craziness for whatever reason—love, money, family obligation, who knew.
The woman pulled up another chair closer to me and sat down, eyeing me. “I’m gonna tell you what’s really going on here—”
The man growled and stepped forward. “SueAnne, you sure that’s such a good idea?”
She appraised me, and I saw compassion there. She might be nuts, but there was also something decent in her. “I think Dustin here deserves to know.”
He groaned and turned away, but didn’t stop her.
“First of all,” she said, “my name is SueAnne Coates, and that big ol’ bear over there is my husband, Jeff. My maiden name, though, was Ducommun. The woman you talked to about this house—MaryEllen—is my sister.”
Was this just more craziness, or could it be true? I’d never actually met or seen MaryEllen Loewe, but I knew her maiden name had to be Ducommun, and SueAnne was probably about the same age. I said, “And MaryEllen owns the house—”
SueAnne cut me off. “No, she doesn’t. When our daddy died ten years ago, he left it to both of us. I’m just as much an owner as she is. She has no right to be trying to do things with this house that she hasn’t asked me about.”
“So why would she?”
“Because she wants to sell it.”
“And you don’t?”
SueAnne looked around, both wistful and a little angry. “If I could leave here, I would in a heartbeat. It’s not a matter of what I want. It’s what I have to do.”
“Which is what?”
She took a deep breath and said, “Keep the things in this house from getting loose in the world.”
“What ‘things’?”
SueAnne rose and paced as she answered, occasionally glancing anxiously into the room’s high corners. “This house was built in 1820 by Jean-Paul Ducommun, a wealthy French landowner who had to flee his native country when he was implicated in the rape and murder of a young servant girl. He came here with his wife, Claudette, who many thought had also been involved in the murder. They built this house, planted the surrounding land, amassed slaves, and soon became even richer.
“They didn’t lose their reputation, though. Folks in these parts whispered about parties that went on for days, where both animals and children were offered as sacrifice to gods no one should ever worship. Eventually even Claudette disappeared. Neighbors claimed they’d heard her screaming in the fields one night, but no trace of her was ever found.”
SueAnne crossed the room, which was an odd mix of antique furniture in varying stages of decay and more modern living necessities like propane lanterns and a television. The floors were much-polished hardwood, their aged gleam making me wonder if they could have been in use since the house was built. The walls had faded from their original red to the color of a purplish bruise; near a brick fireplace, filled with fresh wood, sat contemporary pots and pans. SueAnne gestured to a large portrait that hung over the fireplace mantel; it showed a man with pale skin, black hair and beard, and piercing green eyes. He wore a nineteenth-century coat and stood next to a tall horse that was so vividly hued it was almost crimson.
“That’s Jean-Paul,” SueAnne said as she looked up at the painting, “with the only thing he really cared about: his beloved horse, Hellfire. The mare’s name derived from her distinctive color. When that horse died, Jean-Paul went into such a fury that he whipped three of his slaves to death.”
“Nice guy,” I muttered.
SueAnne turned away from the portrait to look at me again. “Do you know the story of Madame LaLaurie in New Orleans?”
I remembered the name from a television show I’d done some location work for. “She mutilated and killed some people working for her, right?”
SueAnne nodded. “They drove her out of New Orleans when they found an attic full of tortured slaves. She eventually made her way back to France, but first she came here. My ancestors welcomed her as a kindred spirit, but when they found her in the attic one day with their slaves, they got pissed off at the fact that she’d taken their property without asking… not, mind you, at what she’d done with that ‘property.’”
“So what I saw in the attic…”
“One of Madame LaLaurie’s victims. A residual spirit, reliving his death over and over.”
Now, as I’ve already mentioned, I’m a city boy, an urban sophisticate, lacking only the beard to be a trendy hipster. I’m a skeptic by nature, as happy to play with a Ouija board at a party as the next guy, but never really believing in ghosts or spirits or life after death. But I had seen something in that attic that I couldn’t explain, and more than that, I’d also felt something—a fear so intense that even the circumstances couldn’t completely account for it.
Until I had a better explanation—and because I still thought she had too many bats in her belfry—I decided not to question her beliefs.
“There are other things, though,” SueAnne went on, “in this house that are worse. Much worse—intelligent spirits that will try to fuck with us. The main one is Jean-Paul Ducommun, the evil man who built this house. He died here of syphilis in 1840, and haunts it to this day.”
“So why do you stay here?”
“This is my heritage. Do you think I like knowing how my many-times-great-granddaddy made his fortune and lived his life? No.” She gestured at the tattoos on her arms, the talismans around her neck. “I learned about these things so I could protect myself, and Jeff. We stay here now to protect the rest of the world from Jean-Pau
l. Do you know about elementals?”
I shook my head.
“They’re the big bads of the ghost world. Some folks think they’re like nature spirits gone bad, but I know they’re the ghosts of evil people who are no longer confined to a place. My sister wants to make money from this house, but she doesn’t want to deal with how dangerous that is, because Jean-Paul could possess someone who comes in here unawares, and if he escapes into the outside world he could become an elemental. And I don’t want that on my conscience. What Jean-Paul did when he was alive is already too much.”
She paused, then, her face twisting in emotion. I was waiting for her to continue when a deafening boom sounded from overhead.
I jumped about a mile. The only time I’d ever heard anything like that had been when I was on location for an action movie that involved blowing up a building. Then it came again—boom!—and again. Three times, so overpowering every time that it was hard to believe the building itself wasn’t collapsing.
SueAnne didn’t move a muscle, didn’t even flinch. After the third sound, she said, “That would be Jean-Paul.”
“The ghost?” I asked.
“We’re the only three living people in this house, so yes—the ghost.”
She may have bought in to that nonsense, but I didn’t. I not only thought there was someone else in the house—someone who had played some sort of trick on me in the attic—but I was starting to wonder if the freaky necklaces they’d put on me were somehow drugging me, making me see and feel and hear things that weren’t really there.
I had to get out.
“Look,” I said, rising to my feet but sitting back down when I saw the husband get twitchy, “why don’t you just let me go on my way? I give you my word that I won’t say anything to anyone, I’ll tell your sister that this place doesn’t work as a film location, and you’ll never hear from me again. I mean, how long had you planned on keeping me here?”
A look passed between SueAnne and Jeff, and I realized they hadn’t really thought about what they’d do with me.
“Why should we believe you?” Jeff asked.
“Because if I try to tell the local police about you, you can tell them I was trespassing and you were just defending your property.”
Jeff squinted. I’d scored points. I tried to press my advantage. “Y’know, did it ever occur to you that maybe your sister was hoping you’d knock me out and hold me here, that maybe she thinks she can finally sell the house out from under you if you’re both in jail? In fact, maybe she’s already called the cops and they’re on the way here right now.”
Jeff groaned. “Oh fuck…”
SueAnne looked at him, anxious. “Jeff, you don’t think…?”
He nodded at me. “He could goddamn well be right, SueAnne. That sounds just like something your sister might pull.”
“So what do we do?”
He turned and started to pace. “I don’t know… I don’t know…” He stopped, turned, and shouted at me, “Stay there!”
I held up my hands in surrender.
Jeff strode out. SueAnne ran after him. “Jeff, wait—!”
They went to some other part of the house and slammed a door. I heard them arguing, but I couldn’t make out the exact words.
I should’ve run then, but there was a little problem: I had neither keys nor phone. I wasn’t sure how far I’d get on foot; Jeff was a big guy in good shape.
I was about to try it anyway when I heard a door crash open and SueAnne called out, “Jeff, no—!”
Jeff strode into the room where I waited and pointed a hunting rifle at me. “Sorry, man, but this is the only way to be sure.”
SueAnne ran up to him and yanked on one arm. He threw her backwards. She collided with the wall, slid to the floor half-conscious.
In that moment, I charged. If the son of a bitch was going to shoot me anyway, I might as well try something. We were maybe thirty feet apart and he was still off-balance from dealing with his wife.
The rifle went off. Something thudded into me. There was a flash of pain and I nearly lost my footing, but staggered on.
He was about to fire again. I jumped the last few feet. We collided chest to chest, the impact driving him back. He hit the ground hard, but I rode the fall, reaching for the rifle. I got it in both hands, but he had it, too, and we wrestled that way for a few seconds, me on top of him. Then I managed to drive the butt of the gun down into his chest. He made an oof sound and relaxed his hold. I wrenched the rifle free and smacked the side of his head with it. He went limp, his head falling to one side.
They were both out. I patted him down with shaking hands, found my keys and phone in one of his pockets. I stood, my feet nearly going out from under me—something slick was on the floor.
It was blood. My blood.
I reached up to my left arm and found it was covered in warm, sticky stuff. I knew I might not have long, that I had to find my car and get out of there before they either came to or I bled out.
I stashed my phone in a pocket and, with the rifle in one hand and the precious keys in the other, I started out of the room. I stopped halfway, however, remembering the necklaces they’d made me wear—the ones that I thought might be drugging me. I tore them off and tossed them to the side, then kept going.
I reached the front door, turned the knob, ready to sprint to my rented car and freedom—
The knob wouldn’t turn.
I panicked, trying hard, scanning furiously for something to unlock—a dead bolt, a key, a latch, but there was nothing. The knob refused to budge.
Suddenly I was shivering; the temperature had plummeted. I felt a presence behind me. I turned, expecting SueAnne or Jeff, but instead what was behind me wasn’t human. It was a tall, roughly man-shaped shadow, black, wavering like something glimpsed at a distance through heat waves. It exuded power and intent, and something else…
Evil.
It didn’t so much reach out for me as grow, expand, until it surrounded me.
I screamed as I felt the first icy touch.
I’m jingling the keys as I step through the door and out into the world. I move quickly, anxious to make my escape. It takes a few seconds to orient myself; I stagger slightly.
Then I see the vehicle and move towards it. I’ll have to trust to instinct when it comes to operating it.
I wish I could ride out of here on Hellfire.
But all that really matters is that I’m finally free of that damnable house. The world is waiting. My host is from someplace called Los Angeles. I’ve never heard of it, but I think it sounds like a city where I’d fit right in.
It’s time to make this world mine.
Sleeping Angels
David Bell
“What are you doing?” Daniel asked.
“It’s my phone,” Emily said.
“But why are you putting it on that little tripod?” he asked. “Why is it out at all?”
Daniel became self-conscious about his appearance. He knew he hadn’t shaved for two days, knew his bathrobe was dirty and stained, knew his thinning hair stood up in little wisps. She hadn’t said anything about a phone.
“It’s a camera, too,” she said. She was Emily Francis, and he’d expected her to come over that day, and she did. Right on time. They were supposed to talk, but if she’d told him about the phone and the tripod, he must have forgotten. That happened more and more now that he was past seventy. “See?” She pressed a button, and the phone made a nearly inaudible beeping noise. “We’re filming now.”
“Filming?” Daniel reached up and pulled the two sides of his robe closer together, hoping to cover up the dingy T-shirt underneath. What was worse on camera? A dirty robe or a T-shirt that used to be white but was now gray? “You didn’t say—”
“I think I did, Daniel.”
“Look, I’m going to—”
He started out of his seat, reaching for the phone on the tripod. But when he did, Emily held her hand out, blocking him.
“
Uh-uh-uh,” Emily said. “How do you expect this interview to have any impact unless we film it? How else can people rediscover your work?”
“You said an interview. I thought you meant print, something you’d write down. You know, for a magazine or a newspaper.”
“Who reads that stuff anymore?” Emily asked. She was young, mid-twenties, small-boned, almost fragile looking. Slightly pale cheeks, freckles like a child. But when she spoke, her voice was confident, full of steel. “People need to see you, Daniel. They need to hear you.”
“Can I at least change my clothes?” he asked.
“No, this is good. They need to see the real you. The way you live now.”
Daniel settled back into his chair. He’d trusted her this far, hitched his wagon to her star. And if he really wanted people to rediscover his books, to know who he was again…
“Shall we move on?” Emily asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “Let the record show it’s Monday, April twenty-fourth. So, for the sake of our viewers, state your name.”
“Daniel Stone.”
“Age?”
“Seventy-two.”
“Occupation?”
“You know all this.”
“It’s for the audience. The people watching.”
Daniel sighed. “I’m retired. Mostly.”
“What did you do before that?” Emily asked.
“I was a writer. A novelist.” Daniel heard the pride in his own voice. Yes, it had been a while, but he still felt proud of his work. “I published eight novels many years ago. Some of them did pretty well.”
“You made a lot of money?”
“Some.”
Emily looked around the room. They were seated at a small kitchen table. The space was cramped, the house unassuming from the outside. Three bedrooms, two baths. A small yard in a middle-class neighborhood.
“Enough to live… well, it’s not very glamorous, is it?” Emily asked.