House of Darkness House of Light (29 page)

It was gone. Proving to be a powerful prayer, no matter how quiet or brief, Carolyn saved herself with a faithful request of her Savior. Having had the presence of mind to invoke the presence of God in such a moment of crisis, murmuring words possessing potency enough to cause an intervention on her behalf, “God help
me” vanquished the evil spirit, the menacing manifestation imposing itself upon her at dawn. During those stark moments spent awaiting her own pitiful demise, Carolyn could do nothing but hold her breath, clench her fists and pray for salvation; a plea for tender mercies.

She cannot recall how long she remained locked in position. Roger began to moan, trying to move beneath her. Relief startled her back to life with him. As she slid off his body, Roger rolled toward the edge on his side of the bed and went instantly, deeply asleep. The disgusting smell began to dissipate. A mind-numbing cold suddenly escaped her sense of it. She’d found the room emptied of tortured souls, save her own. What Carolyn witnessed had a hold on her still. Knowing then she would never recover and could never forget what happened to her just before dawn on a spring morning, grateful to God for rescue and respite, she touched Roger’s chest to be certain he was
really
breathing. It took time for her mind to correlate the fact; he was actually still alive. This had been the most harrowing experience of her life, to date. The woman could barely move, as if all of her energy, the life-force of her being had been drained. Weak; as if all of her muscles atrophied while languishing, twisted and contorted up against the headboard, awaiting a horrible end.

Though the worst of it was gone, a distinctly foul odor remained embedded in her sinuses; she could not evade a nauseating stench. It lingered internally. The cold went with the apparition, yet Carolyn could not escape its grasp. To her core, she was frozen stiff. A persistent sensation of bloody chunks of ice adrift in her veins caused the shaken soul to quake. Stumbling into the parlor, dragging a blanket along, she struggled to wrap inside it. Disoriented, unsure of her surroundings, she needed rest; the loveseat caught her frame as it fell. Head spinning, limbs quivering…chatter in her mind could not be silenced; rivaled only by the sound of her chattering teeth.

There was no time to waste. NO time to think. She
had
to write this down, draw it; record what she’d seen. It was a compelling imperative; critical she have something scribed for her husband, something to prove her claim. In the aftermath of this ordeal, Carolyn realized she had been to the precipice. By the grace of God, she survived. No question in her mind. Carolyn
did
believe her eyes. Over time, she would grapple with various concepts regarding the haunting in her house but the reality of it would never come into question. A compulsion to provide evidence for her husband resulted in Carolyn standing too quickly. Crumbling like stale cookies, she tumbled onto the loveseat; too soon to walk on scared-stiff legs. The urgency of it was motivation enough to carry her wobbling frame to the desk. Retrieving a pencil and the notebook usually reserved for grocery lists and lines of poetry, Carolyn scribbled and scrawled words as they’d come into mind:
a
hornet’s nest cobwebs vermin
Huddled up on the sofa, she continued:
no eyes
no mouth sprigs of hair no
facial features gray ancient corpse
It pained her, every word of it. Fingers crippled with the cold; her handwriting was practically illegible. Carolyn was struggling to write, fighting to describe the grotesque, mutilated apparition; increasingly difficult as she went along, not because the imagery eluded her. Quite the contrary, visualization permanently penetrated her consciousness, it infiltrated her memory; details as vivid as the instant in which they occurred. There would be no escaping the imagery…not in this lifetime. The difficulty came in feeling forced to relive it; revisiting moments during which Carolyn believed she would surely perish from this Earth.

Pressing on, the process made her queasy, like having a hot plate of rancid food thrust before her, something she was being forced to consume but could not digest: a recipe for disaster. This sensation magnified as minutes passed, like staring into the white-hot core of a fresh, gaping wound: it was raw. Intense. Bloody hell. The adjectives chosen paled in comparison to the event, appearing foreign and inadequate as a description of her too-close encounter. She tried to steady her grip. Out-of-body…watching her own hand…writing:

Vile evil decomposing flesh repulsive stench decay putrid odor - need to vomit - want to scream oppressive diabolical not of this world - what is this thing? Bureau gone! Roger dead! Hovering over me breathing into me studying me head cocked neck broken - fighting to breathe can see the mist

Carolyn’s heart convulsing, it raced with her fingertips while she scratched words onto the page:
a green brown jersey dress plain long w/ pockets on both sides of bodice/ arms but no hands dress went to the floor but no feet floating above threatening / intimidating wants to kiss me wants to kill me wants me dead this thing killed Roger demonic cold can’t move can’t speak jaw locked desperation grief fear no evil not a head / an orb a beehive not rounded/oval snapped sideways hanging off sunken hollow shoulders over a high collar vermin crawling a mass cobwebs alive with death despicable to take me away from my children
saw his body gasped
turned back
again to see the
bitch from hell gone! No nightmare - this was real! God help me.
Furiously
etching the words sideways across lined notebook paper, the pencil tore at it as she wrote, until its point snapped. Her breathing labored, delicate features dripping with perspiration, chronicling this event had been another ordeal all its own; recounting the moments so painfully clear in her memory.

As dawn light seeped into a dim, dusky parlor, no warmth accompanied it. Quivering, Carolyn laid the notebook aside then went over to the wood box. Though legs stabilized her mind remained flooded with images too gruesome to recall. She had no choice. There was no evading or avoiding this intrusion. Glancing nervously around, it suddenly occurred to her; the apparition might return. Thought of it unleashed another violent surge of adrenaline; ravaging fear raging throughout her body. Hands trembling, Carolyn loaded the wood onto the grate then tried to strike a match. Looking back behind she saw the antique banjo clock, the timepiece Roger had moved to the parlor, claiming the walls were too uneven for it to work properly anywhere else in the house. It had stopped. No chimes. No familiar tick ~ tock. Startled, she peered at her wristwatch. The time was fast-approaching 6:30 a.m. Their vintage clock had stopped at precisely 5:15 a.m. Carolyn did the math concluding the timepiece ceased when the apparition first arrived. It had been working fine when they went to bed and had fallen silent since. The same peaceful chimes that sung her to sleep this fateful night went quiet at dawn. Was it a clue, an indication of a presence powerful enough to suspend time itself? Time itself would tell.

A tenuous tranquility had been irrevocably shattered; nothing would ever be the same. Coffee. She needed coffee. As quietly as possible, she made her way into the kitchen. While a strong brew began sputtering along in its pot, a cauldron of caffeine, she sat alone at the table, head in hands. Something was missing: Cigarettes. Where had she left them? On the desk. Returning to the parlor, her approach was halted by a dreadful sight. Andrea was staring at the open tablet she’d left behind on the desk, beside a broken pencil and her pack of cigarettes. No! Carolyn’s heart sank, instantly doubling the weight of her body where she stood, settling into her feet.

Naturally curious, Andrea stared at her mother with a peculiar expression, one difficult to interpret from a distance; strangely sedate, even serene. She then fixed her gaze on the scrawled images and scribbled words scarring the pages of a notebook as they had her mother’s mind. The otherwise innocuous spiral bound tablet contained all the sordid details of that terrifying incident, an unholy encounter Carolyn had
never
intended to share with her children. Surveying its contents, examining rough sketches, it was too late to stop her. Andrea had passed beyond mortal recognition on the pathway to epiphany.

“Mom, I
know
her. I dreamed this; it woke me up. She wants to hurt you.”

“I’m fine, honey. Let me have this, please.” Carolyn rushed to her side.

“What is this? Was it a bad dream? I had a nightmare, too. You were there. She was, too…hanging over you. It woke me up but then I couldn’t move. You were screaming and I couldn’t come to help…but I could hear you.”

Feeding the beast at first light, Carolyn felt pure hatred rising up from her soul; sheer contempt for whatever it was which had touched her life and was now threatening her eldest as well. It would not stand. Consumed with anger and frustration, exuding a negative energy almost as palpable as the fear, the woman was furious. At this instant she wanted to rattle the rafters of a house possessed, to scream out loud:
“
LEAVE MY KIDS ALONE!
”
Carolyn knew she’d have to disguise her emotions in those critical moments so to rationally address Andrea’s experience without divulging too much of her own.

Her mind was riddled, tormented by the thought that somehow, some way, one of her girls was exposed to this heinous creature from beyond the grave. Desperate to achieve balance, to establish some semblance of control before engaging in discussion with the youngster who’d surely see through anything other than the truth, Carolyn began breathing deeply. Mother’s intuition told her what Andrea experienced was not a dream at all. This entity approached her at the same time! Centering herself, in spite of a presumed inability to do so, Carolyn reached over and removed the tablet from her daughter’s hands; taken from a youngster who had already seen too much.

“Let me have that.” Andrea relinquished the notebook without question. It belonged to her mother. Carolyn placed it back inside the desk drawer then invited her eldest to join her in the kitchen. Over coffee and hot chocolate the ladies conversed about an encounter they had shared on some cerebral level, attempting to make sense of it all. Carolyn could not lie to her about this. She didn’t know how to tell a lie, especially to one of her children; it was foreign to her nature and would have certainly been revealed on her face, should she even try. Instead, the twelve-year-old, capable of grasping complex concepts, described her intrepid journey through the darkness of a dream in disturbing detail. Carolyn did not consider it responsible to converse in kind, unwilling to frighten her child further. Rather, she simply listened to Andrea processing the event aloud. Withholding her sordid details may have qualified as a sin of omission though Carolyn did not consider it such; not a lie: more of a secret. Keeping her own counsel, a shaken woman had reason to withhold. In lieu of divulging her
nightmare
, Carolyn speculated about the nature of “dreams” and what, if anything, it meant. Calm and collected; blunt in her assessment:

“I have no idea what happened…to you or to me. Sometimes when people are really close, connected to each other, they think the same thoughts or feel the same emotions at the same time. It’s as though we share a mind. It makes sense because you’re a part of me. Maybe that explains it.”

“Mom, were you scared, too? I was scared
for
you!”

“Yes, Annie. I was frightened by it, too.” Any other response would have been unacceptable…and unbelievable.

“I see things sometimes…I hear sounds…spooky things happen here.”

“What have you seen?” Carolyn’s probing eyes searched her weary face.

“I see shadows in my bedroom, even when the moon is small, in the dark.” Andrea spoke in whispers; telling secrets. “Sometimes I hear voices before I go to sleep. I can’t understand what they’re saying to me. I don’t like to be in the bathroom alone. It feels like I’m being watched; like I’m being looked at while…you know. It’s embarrassing! Stuff moves around on my desk while I’m doing my homework…and you
know
what happened to our chalkboard! Mom…you can tell me the truth. Do we have ghosts?”

Carolyn became increasingly alarmed with each passing statement uttered, culminating in a revelation punctuated by the shocking question. She did not want to answer it, especially for her children, or even for herself. Asking yet another question in reply; “How do you know about ghosts?”

“I told Margie about some things I have seen and she says we have ghosts.” Innocence in her voice belied the knowledge she had attained in life thus far; the perceptive youngster was too open, too willing to share her thoughts. An anxious mother knew it was best to avoid discussing the topic with others but it was too late to forewarn her eldest; the damage done. She was too young to be jaded by the skepticism of adulthood. Andrea harbored no preconceived notions and was unaware of the stigma attached to supernatural phenomenon. Children are supremely receptive beings, frequently observant, accepting of the world as they find it, including the netherworld. Far more often than their adult counterparts, children
do
believe their eyes. They should.

“There are many people who don’t believe in ghosts.”

“Why not? The priest at church talks about God and the Holy Ghost as the greatest spirit of all. At least all Catholics believe in ghosts, don’t they?”

“Annie, I don’t know how to answer your questions. It’s really a matter of personal faith. I’m afraid it is more complicated than what the priest said.”

“Okay, mom; I’m really tired, anyway. I need to go lay down again.”

“Go rest. When you get up we will have a nice breakfast together, all of us. Honey, I think it would be best not to mention anything about this to your sisters. It would only scare them…no need.”

“All right.” Embracing her mother, Carolyn escorted the girl to the bottom of her stairwell. There they encountered the wide-eyed, tear-streaked face of another child running downstairs, frantic to find her mother.