She focused her stare. "I think I saw something."
"What?"
"I don’t kn—"
"Ah!"
She fell backward, almost pulling the shower curtain with her. Max caught her just before she completed the fall.
"Baby, what ... what is it?"
She broke free of his arms. "It touched my eye."
"What did?"
"I saw tiny teeth. They were black and chipped. Then a red ... tongue, it had to be a tongue, licked my eye!"
Max ran to his bed and felt underneath for his baseball bat. He then put on shorts and grabbed his phone.
"Stay in the room and lock the door. If I don’t come back, or you hear me scream, call the cops."
"What are you going to do?"
"I’m just checking the closet."
He opened the master bedroom door and tiptoed down the hallway with his aluminum baseball bat gripped in his right hand, and his phone in his left.
~~~~~
He pushed the closet door open with the business end of the baseball bat. The spoiled milk smell was back in the air.
"Anybody there?"
I wouldn’t answer if I was you.
"Hello?"
He slashed the bat in front of him, as if he were clearing brush with a machete.
"Baby, you there?"
"Yes, did you find anything?"
"There’s nothing in here. I see the hole. It looks like some perverted, peephole kind of deal."
"How would you know about that, Max?"
"I’m just saying, it looks off, that’s all. I’m going to check the breaker box to see if one of the switches got tripped. I’ll have to go downstairs in the basement. Remember what I said; call the cops if you don’t hear from me or if I scream."
"Be careful, Max."
With his phone lighting the path a few feet in front of him, he found the wooden banister and walked down the stairs slowly.
Is the basement to the left or right of the kitchen?
Once in the living room he remembered the basement would be to the left of the kitchen, just past the laundry room. He opened the basement door and flipped the light switch above his head.
The power is out, stupid.
The stairs leading into the basement were extremely aged and creaked with every step. Dust and cobwebs covered the entire room. They had only seen the basement once before, and with the lights on it was halfway presentable. They didn’t care for the basement anyway and only planned on using it for storage.
He bumped his right knee into the pointed edge of a broken-down desk. "Damn it!" Shining the light of the phone onto his knee revealed no injury.
Where is that damn box?
He shone the light around the room and saw the gray breaker box in the back right corner. When he reached the box, he noticed a door he hadn’t remembered seeing from the house tour. It was a large double-door, and an old filing cabinet was sitting askew in front of it. At the center of the doors, a termite-ridden block of wood rested against one of the protruding metal door handles.
What is behind there? No, what was kept from getting out of there? I gotta get back to Megan.
Ignoring the door for now, he opened the breaker box and saw the electrical switches flipped to the off position. He snapped them back to the on position, and the room filled with light.
"MAX!"
No!
Max sprinted up the shoddy stairs trying to make it to Megan’s screams. Just before he got to the master bedroom door, the sour and pungent milk stench filled his nostrils once more.
~~~~~
The door flung open from his kick and directly in front of him was a small human-like figure. It smelled rotten, its clothes worn and ripped. Its skin was filthy, and most of its hair was gone, replaced with leaking, pustule sores. Megan stood on the opposite side of the bed screaming.
He didn’t hesitate.
His phone dropped to the ground and with both hands wrapped around the handle of the bat, he took a vicious cut to the back of the thing’s cranium. A horrifying thump followed. It fell forward onto the bed and gradually sloped off onto the floor leaving a trail of dark, red blood and brain matter behind on the sheets.
"Is it dead?" Megan asked.
Max walked to the body and turned it over. The blow had sunk in its head, and its eyes bulged out of their sockets. The barrel of the bat gleamed in red and slimy gook. He started to place the bat on the ground when, the body twitched.
He slammed two more towering blows into its face.
"It is now."
The head came undone, and he looked at Megan.
"Call the cops."
~~~~~
They stood in the front yard when the cops and ambulance arrived.
"It’s upstairs. Take the first door on the left."
"Can you show us?" the officer asked.
Max held Megan close to his chest. "No, we’re not going back inside tonight."
A group of patrolmen and a forensic unit went inside. A detective stayed behind to talk to Max and Megan.
"Like I said, we were in the shower and the power went out. I checked the breaker and heard her scream. When I got to the bedroom, I saw it. It was the nastiest thing I’d ever seen. It scared me, so I hurt it. I hurt it until it stopped moving. I had no other choice, but to do what I did."
"I understand. I’m going to need a formal statement from you two. If my guys give me the go ahead, I can let you rest tonight."
"Okay."
An officer came outside to give the paramedics and coroner the all clear. They walked inside pushing a stretcher.
"Excuse me, folks," the detective said while walking to the side of the porch.
"Sanchez, come here."
"Yes, sir?"
"How’s it looking?"
"It’s bad. The forensics guys said the body looked over a hundred years old. They have to take it to the labs of course. The head was split in two, real nasty-like. There was a ball bat right next to the body covered in shit. I’m assuming that’s the weapon. What did they say?" His eyes glanced toward Max and Megan.
The detective gave him the replay of what Max and Megan told him. The story checked out, and they were free to leave for tonight, but they had to come to the police station tomorrow morning for the official statement.
The stretcher rolled out of the house with a new addition to it. A lumpy black bag lay on top.
"I got us a room at the Holiday Inn, Megan. Let’s get out of here."
She squeezed him tighter.
~~~~~
Three days had passed, before police officially cleared them from the case. The sheriff’s department released an article in the local paper about their self defense in the now dubbed home invasion.
They pulled into the driveway of the home with the incident still beating close to their hearts.
"It’s over now, Megan. Let’s get our stuff in boxes and get to your parent's house. I’m sorry this happened. I wanted it to work out."
"You’re right. It’s okay. We’re safe, and I love you, that’s all that matters, baby."
She gave him a kiss.
"I love you, too."
As they walked inside the house together, it looked different. A strange, dark place.
"I want to show you something, Megan. It’s in the basement. The night when I went down there, I saw a door."
"A door?"
"Yeah, it was actually two doors, let me show you."
"I don’t want to go down there."
"It’s going to be fine. That old thing is dead now. I think the previous owners kept it behind those doors."
"Fine, but let’s make this fast."
Max opened the basement door and turned on the light. "Just down here, and be careful the steps are old."
They walked down the steps, and Max pointed to the double doors.
"That’s it."
It was just how he remembered it on that night. He pushed the old block of wood to the floor and move
d the cabinet out of the way. When he opened the door, it let out a loud, high-pitched screech.
Megan hesitated, and Max put out his hand.
"Come on, baby."
It was dark inside, with no noticeable light switches around. Two wooden tables with straps on each corner were in the middle of the room. To the right of them, another table, with knives, scalpels, ointments, and medications on top.
"What the hell happened here?"
"I don’t know, Max, and honestly, I would like to leave now."
"Okay, give me a second."
Max wandered to the far left corner of the room, to a wooden desk with a picture on top of it.
"Babe, come check this out."
He shined the light from his phone onto the picture. It revealed a handsome man and beautiful wife, with two small children.
"This must be them."
"Yeah, and?"
He pulled the picture out of the frame and observed the back.
In blue ink, it stated: Howard, Betty, and our most precious creations, Luke and Peter – 1937.
Thump!
The old familiar smell of expired milk lingered in the air, and the door slammed shut behind them.
Gary Cecil is an aspiring author who spends his free time writing horror-themed stories with the support of his loving girlfriend, Sarah, and dog, Millie. He is currently working on his first novel. Gary has worked as a 911 Call-Taker, and has held other various jobs. His greatest memory taking 911 calls was when a man, on a backcountry road at one in the morning, called 911 and said, "The baby came out." It was a heart-wrenching experience, which ended in a man becoming a father, and Gary becoming a seasoned 911 Call-Taker.
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Not Forgotten
by Jay Seate; published October 29, 2013
During the Civil War, federal troops came upon a vacated rebel encampment in Virginia. The Rebs had left little behind except for a rather persuasive calling card — a severed head jammed onto the point of a fence post. Three letters — SPY — were scribbled on a scrap of paper and tacked beneath the obscenity. It had reminded one man in the regiment of something he had read in a history book — heads stuck on pikes along London Bridge during rebellious times. To come across such an extreme display of barbarism during this war was rare, but it had made its point to the Union soldiers.
The conflagration had progressed far beyond a nation of innocence, or honor among gentlemen. Gallantry no longer had a place amidst the carnage. In a downpour of anger, it had long since crossed societal rules and boundaries even for war. Dead men were on fields of battle with limbs splayed like broken puppets, left to rot. Following the tempest, the better angels of the nation’s psyche would never completely regain control. In the midst of the thousands of discarded dead, the grisly event concerning the supposed spy would have been forgotten if not for the incident that followed, for it was at that place where Anna Rose came for the head of her husband.
A young lad toting salted pork and biscuits from his mother’s kitchen to soldiers was the first to see the form of a young woman. Beneath the soft light of the cirrus moon she wore a long cloak, and her feet floated inches above the trampled road. The lad could not have guessed what she sought. She silently crossed the army encampment. Battle hardened men became speechless at the sight of the woman wordlessly gliding past the campfires, her face and hands washed to the shade of ivory. Some of the men followed the specter to the spot beyond the camp where her mission became apparent.
The head still rested on the fencepost as no soldier wanted to touch the foul thing. The woman produced a tapestry bag from the dark expanse of her cloak. While the uniformed onlookers watched in disbelief, the woman pulled the head from the post and plopped it into the bag as if it were a large cantaloupe. She did not go back the way she had come, but rather, disappeared into a stand of nearby trees not to be seen again that night or any other.
In a small Pennsylvania town the following day, a neighbor to Anna Rose Freeman came to pay her respects. Legend has it that Anna Rose had been seen staring out one of her windows for days, pining away for her Jonathan. She would occasionally whirl about the veranda as if dancing with him. After the news of her husband’s demise, Anna Rose disappeared, a vigil no longer necessary. The neighbor found the poor soul stretched across her bed as dead as Jonathan. Knowing her beloved husband and she were never to be reunited in a loving embrace, she’d committed suicide with the use of poison. Although her mortal saga ended sadly, Jonathan had returned to his Pennsylvania home from a faraway battlefield in one manner. His decomposing head rested upon the bed next to Anna Rose’s corpse.
~~~~~
This tale had been running through the little town of Coventry for almost a hundred and fifty years before I heard it, but once heard it clung to me like something not easily scraped off. Old-timers were not shy about repeating the tale, embellishing it with each telling. Its impact was huge because I had become the most recent owner of the property on which Jonathan and Anna Rose’s old house once stood. My presence seemed to reenergize the legend. Small towns, I’d found, had a penchant for whatever melodrama and mystery they could extract from life.
Then things began to happen, things that led me to believe Anna Rose’s ghost was more than a fanciful Civil War story. The house I’d purchased was old. There were times when beams and boards would creak and moan without the wind’s encouragement. Not a sign of anything sinister; old floors often creaked and heating pipes groaned, but given the little town’s penchant for tall tales, it all resulted in more food for an active mind.
At night, in the dark, I listened to haunting sounds, not sure whether they were merely the howling of the wind through the tree branches or something more ... the moaning of restless souls perhaps, those unfortunates with unfinished business that keeps their presence anchored to earth. I told myself my observations were nothing more than a nonsensical reaction to stories of Anna Rose and Jonathan’s head and could account for nothing other than to scare the bejesus out of me. But there were also times when an unknown force within the house I now own seemed to take hold. I have found little in life more frightening than when the beams and boards not only creak, but become at odds with their structural integrity.
When it came to Anna Rose, my mind had fallen into a morass of apprehension. Sometimes when we come upon something that is too frightening to handle, we do our best to pretend our eyes are merely playing tricks even if we know better. My first sighting of her was just before twilight near a gate that separates my property from the street. The eerie tales left no doubt in my mind as to who she was. A knot of disquiet twisted inside of me as I observed her from my living room window, still and alone, staring at the house. She stood rigid and motionless, her head titled slightly like a woman lost in thought. I couldn’t distinguish her age other than the fact that she was a relatively young woman, one who had not lived long enough to become old and gray-haired. She stood too far away to discern details, but she wore the same garment at each successive viewing — a dark cloak placed over her shoulders covering all else. And there was something more. She carried a large tapestry bag, large enough to hold...
It was then I knew any rational view of the world must be given up. How many dead might wander the earth searching for resolution before letting go of the world? A visible spirit hovering in this world, delaying eternal rest, required investigation. I took it upon myself to research the true history of my property in the county’s Hall of Records. I found that Jonathan Freeman had indeed been a Union soldier who was probably executed as a spy by Southern troops. An obituary revealed Anna Rose had married Jonathan only a year before her death. His bride was known for her "gift of the spirit," what might be called precognition today. Little more was said or written in existing archives other than the fact that she had indeed committed suicide, convinced her husband would never come home to her. It wasn’t much information, but enough to feel some empathy for her if not pity. I had hoped to find
pictures of the star-crossed Mr. and Mrs. Freeman, but short of that, there was one helpful item amongst the remnants — a photograph of the original house. Traditional for its time, it was a two-story, white-washed clapboard with a long porch and large windows, and bore no similarity to the house I now occupied.
Unfortunately, the picture was without writing or dates, but a man and a woman stood on the porch in posed American Gothic positions common to that of early photography. The man wore a dark suit, while the woman was clad in a white dress and gloves that came above her elbows — a wedding day photo, perhaps? Could it have been the Freeman’s, a man with a new house and a new bride to live in it? The couple were little more than specs as the photographer’s intent was to capture the structure rather than its inhabitants. I asked for a magnifying glass in hopes of identification. It told me only that the twosome was in the prime of life and that the woman could very well have been the long departed Anna Rose. Curiously, I felt like an intruder into the domestic tranquility of the couple and, as silly as it may seem, that my intrusion might even anger Anna Rose. I nervously put the picture back where I had found it and tried to shake the feeling I had stumbled into the Freeman’s private lives at a time before the Civil War was raging, a time before Jonathan left and Anna Rose began her sorrowful vigil.
Not ready to give up my quest, I did more than look through musty small town records. Unable to dispel my curiosity, I sought Anna Rose Freeman’s burial site. The old cemetery rested on the side of a hill too steep to farm. There was a pleasant view of the isolated town below with its many church steeples rising above the elms and the oaks. If Robert E. Lee had chosen to march on Coventry with his boys in butternut, this would have been the high ground from which the Yanks could have formed a skirmish line and made their stand. There were no fences or signs to sequester the graveyard from the outside world. All that remained among a few empty beer cans, coated candy wrappers that would last until the Second Coming, and weeds were a hundred or so old stones to mark locations of final repose. Some were for the sons of Coventry who had left to fight in the Civil War, but most were for ordinary villagers. A few names struck a familiar chord as families often stayed in an area for generations, but whoever tended the graves of these souls must have been long dead. Maybe superstition played a role given Anna’s legend, for I also knew most of the locals had little to do except repeat gossip, even if it was one-hundred and fifty years old.