Horrors Next Door- Book 1

by Tom Coleman

  What happened at the carnival deeply troubled both of us, especially Agatha. I could sense that she was blaming herself for what had happened, so I persistently tried to convince her that it was nobody’s fault.

  She kept quiet for days, so I decided to do something. I finally confessed to her how I felt about her. Miraculously, it worked. Before the summer was over, I asked her to move in with me. She was living on her own anyway, and so was I, so I felt that it was the right thing to do.

  Once we were living under one roof, I began to learn more things about her that I hadn’t known before. As we grew more romantically comfortable with each other, I started to notice something odd about the way she would occasionally behave.

  Most of the time, she was timid and very reserved, just as how I had always known her. But there were moments when she would get feisty and belligerent for no reason. It was as if she would turn into a different person who was the total opposite of her innate character. As time passed, the sudden shifting of her behavior happened more often, and became more intense. Whenever she would behave this way, strange things would occur around us. For some reason, it always had something to do with fire.

  Just like any other couple, we would sometimes have arguments. During one of our petty fights during a diner, fire suddenly burst from the stoves as Agatha raised her voice at me. It seemed as if the fire was reacting to her emotions. When I was finally able to ask her about the matter, she seemed clueless as to why those things were happening. She could have asked her parents about it, but they had both passed away. I asked her if she still had any relatives around, and she answered me with hesitation. Agatha still had one remaining relative, the only person that could possibly answer our questions – her grandmother.

  Agatha had nothing but bad memories of her grandmother. She described her to me as a hostile and demented individual. She and her mother ran away from her grandmother when she was very young, and she had never seen her since. So we decided to pay her a visit.

  The place where Agatha was born was incredibly remote and hard to reach. The nearest town to the house was almost an hour away, and we had to walk across a dense forest to get there. It was literally in the middle of nowhere. Nobody would think that there was still someone living there.

  The house was very old, and it was hardly taken care of. Some parts of it were burnt, and it was quite surprising that it was still standing. Agatha reluctantly knocked on the door.

  “Come in, the door is open. It has always been” the raspy voice of an old woman was heard.

  We slowly walked inside the house. Aside from the subtle squeaks of what sounded like a rocking chair, it was dead silent. The dust was so thick that the place looked abandoned. We were leaving shoe prints as we walked across a layer of ashes covering the creaky floor. The shelves were laced with spider webs, and the roof was slightly caved in. The house was barely illuminated by the light outside beaming through the holes of the burnt walls. It didn’t look like a person was living in there.

  “I am here, Agatha. Come here. Bring your friend with you.” the old lady called to us from the living room.

  She was able to tell that it was Agatha without even hearing her voice, and she knew that she was with someone.

  As we walked further, the successive squeaks became louder. And there she was, Suzan, Agatha’s only remaining family. I didn’t want to be rude to the first relative of Agatha’s that I was meeting but seeing Suzan’s appearance made me take one step backward. I was caught by surprise. She was wearing layers of gray and faded blue tattered clothes and looked as if she was at least a hundred years old. She rose her head and smiled with her gritty, yellow teeth and spoke,

  “Welcome home, my dear. Your mother took you away from this place, and yet here you are.”

  “How are you doing, grandma?” said Agatha.

  I could tell by her voice that she didn’t want to be here. She couldn’t even look straight at her, as if she was afraid of her own grandmother.

  “It seems you are resisting your true nature, child. How are you with fire?” Suzan asked.

  The question baffled Agatha, and she didn’t respond.

  “Your mother wanted you to live a normal life. She and her foolish ideals have always been a problem for me. It seems she hasn’t told you anything, what with you coming here with that naive look on your face.”

  “I…I don’t understand” Agatha mumbled as she struggled to reply.

  She looked confused, totally clueless about what her grandmother had said. The answer that Suzan gave her next was hard to take in. It didn’t make any sense to me, yet it was still quite unsettling.

  “Our family is unique, my grandchild. We are descendants of people who worshipped an omnipotent and ubiquitous force of the fire. We are mere shells of flesh for this being. Neglect it, and it will take over you. The written history of this modern civilization chose to forget about us, for they feared our kind. An ordinary person could not handle the presence of this force. With just a very brief glance at the true face of the being that lies within us, anyone who would cast their eyes upon it will burn.”

  Suzan turned her head towards me and stared at me with disdain.

  “The men of this world called us witches a long time ago, and feared that we could dominate the lands. For ages, there hasn’t been a single male that was born in our family, yet we could easily overpower the barbarism of these insolent creatures.”

  “He’s my friend. I love him and he loves me.” Agatha defended me assertively.

  Suzan simply smirked at her and replied,

  “Do you not know what happened to your father? Your mother turned him into ashes when she deemed him useless.”

  Everything that her grandmother said was too much for Agatha to take in, even though she must have realized these were the answers to questions that had bothered her for a long time.

  “You have to accept your fate, my dear. We are living temples to the fire. It is the purpose of our existence. It was inconsiderate of your mother to throw her life away so selfishly. She knew that a fire would lose its light once thrown to the opposing element of this world. Unfortunately, we are the last remaining three.”

  Suzan looked at me again and said,

  For that, I should thank you.”

  “I thought that we are the only two left in our family” said Agatha with a confused look on her face.

  Her grandmother replied with an answer that surprised us even further.

  “Agatha, my dear, do you not know? You are bearing a child.”

  Agatha and I headed back home with most of our questions finally answered, but with a heavyweight cast on our shoulders from the revelations we had just heard. However, there was one good thing that came out of this unpleasant trip. We were having our very first child. At that point, we were more happy than worried. Agatha and I were about to start our own family.

  I told Agatha to stay in our apartment as long as she needed to, so she could rest for the sake of the baby. Now that I had an idea of why those weird things had been happening, it was best to avoid upsetting her, especially in her state, in which she was prone to mood swings.

  Everything was turning out well despite the challenges I had to overcome during her pregnancy. I strictly avoided producing fire whenever I was around her, just to make sure that it wouldn’t suddenly burst out of control. We relied on an electric stove and a microwave to heat and cook our food. We avoided going to restaurants as much as we could.

  Agatha was very considerate about our situation. Despite the limits she had to bear with, she seemed quite happy and at peace. We even planned on getting married once things got less complicated.

  Several months later, our child was finally ready to be born. Even though we were both excited about it, Agatha was in pain, and that wasn’t good. Bringing her to the hospital was a very difficult task, and I was terribly nervous the entire time. I tried to make her feel as relaxed as I possibly could, but there really wasn’t much that I coul
d do aside from holding her hand.

  When we finally arrived at the hospital, she was immediately taken to the labor room. I diligently kept on the lookout. I assertively asked the doctors if there was anything nearby in the hospital that was using fire. But even before anybody answered me, Agatha screamed in pain. We heard a sudden explosion inside the building. It was the gas stoves in the hospital’s kitchen. It had begun.

  Most of the people inside were evacuated, while some of the staff remained to tend to the patients who needed immediate attention. Agatha screamed even louder. Our child was crowning. At that point, even the lights flickered and exploded. I had never seen her in so much pain before.

  As she kept on screaming, all the equipment around her went haywire, and the glass windows shattered one by one. The doctors and nurses were frightened. Most of them ran away, forcibly dragging their patients out with them. Even the doctor who was tending to Agatha tried to bolt, but I grabbed his hand and begged him to help us.

  As Agatha’s screams echoed inside the room, the things around us started to ignite. Even though there wasn’t any fire around, the sheets, chairs, even the walls began to catch flame one by one. I realized with horror that she could create the fire herself.

  I tried to do what I could to put out the flames around us as the doctor helped Agatha deliver our child. We had no choice but to bear the wave of heat. I could hear the frantic noises from the other remaining people inside the hospital as they escaped. The fire had already spread throughout the entire building.

  Agatha screamed and pushed as hard as she could. And as she did, the doctor and I were caught in an unexpected explosion that threw us out of the room. I was dazed and couldn’t get back on my feet.

  The next thing I knew, Agatha’s room was engulfed in flames. Somebody dragged the doctor and me out of the building. I refused to leave, but I didn’t have the energy to pull myself away from whoever was saving my life.

  The entire hospital was being swallowed by the fire within just a few minutes of it starting. I was lying on the ground in front of the building. There was nothing I could do. Thick smoke spread above us, dimming the light of the sunny sky.

  This day, supposed to be about the welcoming of our first child, had become a nightmare in real life. I looked around at the number of people wounded and crying. Many of the survivors had severe burns, while others did not make it in time and were claimed by the merciless fire.

  The firefighters and police finally came to aid us. As they approached the burning building, I saw ahead of them the silhouette of a person walking down the hallway, toward the burned-out front doors. It looked as if the fire was under some unseen command. The flames swelled from floor to ceiling, giving way to this person who was unaffected by it.

  The silhouette drew closer, and I finally recognized who it was. It was Agatha, and she was carrying our child with her. I can’t explain how happy I was when I saw her. Unfortunately, people around me didn’t feel the same way.

  “It was her! She caused this fire!” one of the wounded patients yelled.

  “She did! She tried to burn us all!” a nurse seconded.

  “Officers arrest her!” they kept on accusing her.

  One of the officers replied,

  “How can you be sure it was her? Why would she do something like this? How could she start a fire that ended up burning the entire building? This must have been done by more than one person. It didn’t take us five minutes to arrive here. It’s just impossible.”

  The response of the officer should have suppressed the accusations, but the crowd simply became more aggressive.

  “Why are you defending this heartless monster? We saw it with our own eyes. She started the fire!” said a lady with a burnt arm.

  “She’s telling the truth! We were all witnesses to what happened. Isn’t that enough?” another supported the woman’s claim.

  When Agatha finally arrived at the front door, the crowd yelled and pointed their fingers at her. They were getting out of control, and officers started to put their hands on their guns as if they were ready to pull them out.

  “Look! Look at the fire!” someone yelled louder than the others.

  And he was right. With every step that Agatha took, the fire was following her. The flames were surrounding her as embers spread through the air. People moved back in fear as she approached with wild eyes. And then I heard the screaming. Shouts of indignation at Agatha were giving way to screams of horror and pain – people were catching fire.

  One by one, from no visible source, the bystanders were bursting into flames. One minute they were people, the next, columns of flame. People fled in panic, and the firefighters attempted to help those who had suddenly ignited.

  The officers didn’t know how to react to this bizarre situation. They pulled out their guns and pointed them at Agatha.

  “Stay right there! Don’t come any closer or we will open fire!” one of the officers warned.

  As soon as I heard what the officers were about to do, I ran towards Agatha, who seemed out of control. Despite the warning, the fire raged on.

  “Stop this, right now!” an officer yelled.

  As I desperately tried to get close to her, my clothes caught fire, burning through to my skin. I disregarded the pain and kept on going. Despite the chaos around her, Agatha’s face did not show any emotion. I was afraid that she had lost herself.

  And I was right. Her other side was starting to take over, and she was losing her sanity. I hugged her tight as I screamed through the pain of the burns. As I looked at her, a teardrop suddenly fell down her cheek. In a fraction of a second, I could see her face changing. It didn’t look like the face of a human at all; it looked more like a grinning demon. She was trying to hold it in, but she couldn’t much longer.

  “Take care of our child.” was the last thing she said.

  She handed me the baby and shoved me out of the way. She was worried that I would burn to death if I were to see the other being hiding within her, as her grandmother had warned her.

  As soon as I had the baby in my arms, the remaining officers opened fire right away. I bawled my eyes out as the flames started to diminish. I cried and cried before the bloody body of the person I loved, with our only child in my arms. The hellish nightmare was finally over, and Agatha’s life faded with the fire.

  ***

  Nineteen people were burnt to death that day, including some of officers and firefighters. For a while, people spread hushed rumors of a girl who controlled the flames. But the truth was too mythic to last, and all that was remembered was the fire.

  I named our daughter after her mother. Six years have gone by and people have forgotten about the incident. I have my burn scars to remind me of it, and the lovely child who was left behind.

  My daughter, Agatha, is growing up just as beautiful as her mother. She’s got her stunning red hair and her innate shyness. Oddly enough, she is starting to show a curious fascination with fire.

  THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR

  Part 1

  Everyone in town has heard of Mr. Spaulding. People say his house is haunted, and that my family is crazy for living next door to him for the last ten years. It doesn’t bother me though—all I see is a lonely old widower with a penchant for growing roses.

  Every day in the springtime, Mr. Spaulding leaves his house at 5:00 a.m. I know this because the exhaust of his rusty old pickup truck lets out a series of loud popping noises every time he backs it out of the driveway.

  Although no one ever publicly complains, the annoyance of it is written on the faces who peek through curtains, scowling at the smoking clunker meandering down our suburban street.

  Mr. Spaulding always returns home exactly thirty minutes later and does the same routine: He kills the truck’s engine, gets out, walks to the trunk, opens it, picks something up, puts it down, closes the trunk, picks up the unknown item again, then goes around back to his rose garden.

  “It’s weird, Sarah. Don’t you e
ver wonder what the hell he’s doing up that early in the morning? I mean, it’s still dark at 5:30 for Pete’s sake. How can he even see the roses?” my friend, Jessica, said earlier.

  We were sitting in Math class, bored out of our brains while Miss Sinclair wrote a series of Algebra questions on the whiteboard.

  “He probably has a flashlight,” I said with a shrug, despite never actually seeing Mr. Spaulding with one.

  “Well, whatever his story is, the guy gives me the creeps. You’re too nice, you know that? It’ll be the death of you, Sarah!” Jessica grinned.

  I rolled my eyes. She always had a flair for the dramatics.

  “Whatever, Jess. But Mr. Spaulding is just a harmless old man. And I’ll prove it.”

  “Oh yeah? How?”

  “After school, I’m going to take him one of those delicious blueberry pies from ‘Pastry Brothers & Co.’ It’s the neighborly thing to do—after all, his wife did die a few months ago. Poor guy probably only lives on cans of beans and Spam.”

  Jessica waved me off. “Good luck to you, girl, that’s all I’m saying.”

  Five hours later, I’m standing on Mr. Spaulding’s porch and taking a deep breath.

  Why am I so nervous? He’s just a lonely widower, remember?