Will wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. There was nothing there, so I figured he had an odd itch.
“’Read til it stops talking about the Blacks,’ she said. She left me with the impression that ‘newcomers’ aren’t supposed to know this old history. She left the book with me anyway and left the room. I was alone with the book.”
“The first headline that jumped out at me was, ‘Cannibal or Misunderstood Millionaire?'. It went like that for pages after pages of text about Archibald Black and his obsession with the dark arts, his other misdeeds, and most of all, the events that led to his death.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. I set down my pen and stretched my fingers. I heard a crack. I was going to be lucky if I could even open my hands tomorrow.
“You okay?” Tor asked.
I nodded. “Cramp.”
After a few minutes, the cramp abated. It had been too long since I’d written like that. I didn’t want it on the computer though. Last thing I needed was to accidentally leak it and ruin Will’s reputation. Not that computer work would really save my hands. Arthritis was arthritis. I was doomed. “Go on,” I said.
Will cleared his throat and took another drink. “Archibald Black didn’t die under normal circumstances. According to the articles, there had been screams coming from the house all afternoon the day he died. Finally, a neighbor phoned the police. They knocked on the door, but no one answered it. After looking around the house, one of the men heard an odd thumping. They broke into the house and found Mr. Black sitting at the kitchen table, ripping the flesh from his six-year-old daughter’s dismembered leg with his teeth. A young deputy, who had just joined the force saw the scene and fired his weapon. His aim was true, hitting Black in the head. Black didn’t drop the leg until he slumped over—dead.”
He stared at me. “I practically ran out of there, Jimmy.”
I tapped my pen on my teeth. “Doesn’t it seem kind of bizarre and hokey that a random librarian would have these things no one else has, like there’s some type of conspiracy?” I asked. If I didn’t ask, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. It sounded too fantastic and too easy to be true. Will said nothing. He stared at the table.
Will seemed just a little too accepting. It was like the Blacks and their history provided him with an outlet for his denial about what was really wrong with Lucy. I hoped that wasn’t the case, but I couldn’t ignore the possibility.
Then it hit me, what did Will do? It didn’t seem like Will was the type of person to live off his wife’s money, but this Will wasn’t the same Will I’d know for years. Where did he have the time to fret and worry about all of this? “What is it you do, Will?”
He looked me in the eye—hard, almost as if he was expecting a fight. “I’m a columnist.”
That surprised me. Journalists were supposed to back up sources, wouldn’t he himself think this whole thing with the librarian was odd and convenient? It made no sense to me, other than the denial. More and more, denial seemed to be more possible than something supernatural going on.
“Don’t feel bad,” Tor said. “I thought it was stupid too. Until I explored the attic better.”
She confused me. “What are you talking about?”
She smiled, but it was a cold smile. “Wanna see?”
She didn’t give me a chance to answer. She jumped up from the table so fast that I had to scramble to catch up to her. She led me down the hallway and into the dining room. The dining room had silk wallpaper with old landscape scenes. It might have been Italy, but I wasn’t sure. The dining room table was massive. It was also mahogany and large enough to seat twelve. At the back side of the dining room there was a door. She opened it, revealing a long set of steep spiral stairs that led upward.
“It’s up there,” she said, pointing at the staircase.
“You’re not coming?” I asked.
She paused. “I’ve already seen as much as I care to.” She turned and left the room.
It felt like a challenge, almost. Was I really brave enough to go up there? Yes. I climbed the stairs. I felt like a chicken almost, but the staircase was almost claustrophobic, spiraling around upwards into the darkness. By the time I reached the top, I was seriously out of breath. “I need to walk more. This is ridiculous.”
At the top of the stairs, there was another door. It was painted black and wasn’t as well cared for as the rest of the house. The paint was cracked and flaking. I expected to have trouble opening it, but it opened easily.
Chapter Eight
Revelations
1950
He stood in the room, his room of power. In here, no one could touch him, feel him, challenge him. In here, he was God.
He opened his hands and spoke the words the demon had told him the last time. Golden fire floated between his fingertips. It smelled hot and sulfuric, but his hands were unharmed, just as the dark one said they would be.
A sound broke his concentration, a child’s laughter. The fire disappeared from between his hands.
Black threw open the door to his special room and walked over to the attic window. He looked down into the yard. There they were, his wife, his daughter. The stupid cow was supposed to keep the spawn quiet when he was in his room working. That was the first rule he’d set down when she asked him for a child.
He opened the window and yelled down to her, “Glenna, are you forgetting something?”
His wife put her hand over her mouth and let the spawn back into the house. It was time he was rougher with her. Through pain, she would know his power, and learn to respect him. They both would learn.
Chapter Nine
Ritual
Present
I walked through the door, expecting a place that was covered in dust, but it wasn’t. In fact, it was amazingly clean. Even the sheets covering old furniture were clean.
I wandered around. The attic itself had an oak floor. The walls were plastered and you could actually have used the attic for other things than storage. Everything was oak up here, and it was surprisingly light. The rest of the house was so dark because of all the mahogany. There were windows on both sides of the attic. It almost felt like a relief to be standing in such a sunlit room.
Then, towards the back of the attic, I noticed a door. This door, like the one leading to the stairs, was painted black. Unlike the door to the stairs, this door looked freshly painted. I thought it was another staircase, but when I opened the door, I was hit by a foul pungent aroma. This room was dark, even though the windows were unshaded. The plaster walls were painted black. The floor was the same oak as the rest of the attic. There was one large bookcase which held a treasure trove of old books and silver goblets. There were wooden wands with crystals attached to the ends with gilded wire and little wooden boxes with the names of herbs and minerals on them—all things that I recognized as having to do with magic. It felt wrong in that room. And while I saw nothing disturbing, the darkness and the cold were enough for me to know things had happened there that just weren’t natural. This wasn’t melodrama. This was real, and it scared the ever loving shit out of me.
When I turned to leave, I spied the mirror Tor had described earlier. It was propped up against some boxes on the floor. She mentioned the glass of the mirror had been painted black. She’d neglected to mention scratches in the paint that looked suspiciously like the scratches from a child’s fingernails.
I was so tired of all the secrets, especially since it seemed like they wanted me to jump through hoops to get the information I needed to help their daughter. I grabbed that mirror, closed the door to that room and made my way back downstairs. I found them waiting for me in the kitchen. When Tor saw me, she screamed.
Will jumped up and grabbed a hold of her. Drama, drama, drama. The damn drama was starting to get to me.
“What?” I asked.
Tor made a strange sound that sounded like a low keen. “I don’t like looking at that—thing,” she said, pointing at the mirror.
I sat down at the table and leaned the mirror against the chair next to me. “Why not?”
I watched Will. He let go of Tor, then he walked over to the table and sat down across from me. “We found the mirror like that after Lucy killed Miss Pretty.” He paused.
Tor began pulling things out of the pantry.
“Did you look at the back of the mirror?” Will asked.
“No.” I shook my head. “It didn’t occur to me.”
Will grabbed the mirror and flipped it around so I could see. There was an old label on the back. The ink had faded to an odd brown color.
Cavtis Tctus PrMdiora
“It’s Latin,” I said.
Will seemed a little more uneasy than before. “Do you know that it means?”
I nodded. “Loosely, it means ‘beware the hidden betrayer.’”
He set the mirror back down on the floor. “On a mirror, what does that mean?”
Tor dragged a few pots out of cabinets and began chopping vegetables.
I turned back to Will. “I don’t know. Not yet. Do you know if the house has been exorcised before?”
Will swallowed hard. “I have no idea.”
Tor coughed. “Can we get that ‘thing’ out of here, please?”
Will grabbed the mirror, got up and took it out of the room.
I didn’t feel a thing for Tor. At first, I’d felt sorry for her because it seemed like she was the sane one and Will was driving her nuts while she cared for a sick child. Now, she seemed like a drama queen, and I didn’t know how much more of her shenanigans I could take. I wasn’t a violent man, but there are just some people that you want to slap. She’d really pissed me off. If she hadn’t wanted me to ask about the damn mirror, she should have just told me about it. Instead, she let me find it. What else was I going to do but ask about it?
I had to put my feelings about Tor aside. There was something buzzing at the back of my head, the properties of mirrors, how the ancients thought your soul could be trapped in a mirror. Something about this house wasn’t right.
###
When Will came back, Tor and I were sitting in silence at the table. She’d gotten whatever she was making simmering on the stove and had sat down at the table. She didn’t say anything to me, so I did the same.
“So, what happened after the cat died?” I asked Will.
He sat down and clasped his hands together. “I knew it wasn’t normal for a kid to kill their pet, not like that. Tor … she didn’t want to think about it.”
Tor’s eyes snapped towards him. “Well, who wants to think their little girl—”
He took her hand. “I wasn’t judging you. I was just telling Jimmy how it happened.”
After a moment, she seemed to calm down. She got up and stirred whatever was n the pot. “Pot pie okay for everyone?”
I looked at the clock. It was a little before eleven. I figured it was going to take awhile before she’d have the pot pie ready. “That’s fine.”
Will took a sip of his soda. “We started with the pediatrician. It was horrible, Lucy fought and screamed. We sent her for tests at the hospital. MRI, CAT scans, anything that would show a reason for her mood changes. The tests turned out normal. That was when we began the parade of psychiatrists. They thought so many things, different psychoses, schizophrenia, they had no idea. I’ve already told you about the last hospital.”
I nodded. “So, what makes you think she’s possessed, really? I mean there are tons of disorders out there that most people don’t know about. All you have to do is watch an episode of Mystery Diagnosis to see that.”
Will sighed. “Jimmy, it’s the things she says. She says things that she couldn’t know. I don’t know how to explain it.”
There was too much to absorb, between my feelings about Tor and all that had happened, it was overwhelming. It was time for me to get away. “Ever think about revisiting the librarian?” I asked.
Will seemed to mull it over. “Well, we can go see if she’s working, if you want.”
I nodded. Yes, that’s exactly what I wanted to do. Not really, but visiting a quack of a librarian was preferable to spending another minute with Tor. So, quack librarian it was.
“I’ll go feed Lucy,” Tor said. “I’ll see you both when you get back.” Tor was already leaving the room before Will even looked at me.
It wasn’t what she said, but the way she said it. She said it with a condescending lilt to her voice that grated on my nerves like a block of hard cheese. “I’ll go get some shoes,” I said.
###
When we got to the library, I was struck by how small it was. It was a simple two story building that looked like it had been designed in the sixties. It was covered in light colored concrete and some sort of tan stone decorative plaster. It was rectangular in shape, but only slightly so. It was a squat and ugly building, but serviceable.
We parked across the street. Will put money in the meter. Then, we crossed the street and went inside. It had that usual library smell—books and heat.
Will stepped up to the desk. He looked around for a moment and motioned to an elderly lady who was doing something with a stack of books at the back. She had an older style bob cut, and her hair was gray. She was stocky, but not fat. Not exactly my standard view of a librarian, but librarians didn’t seem to look as distinguished as they used to. Maybe it was just me.
She looked up. “Mr. Andersen,” she said. “How can I help you?”
He smiled. “I need to look at the papers again. And my friend and I have some questions.”
She looked at Will again and then looked at me. Her eyes narrowed. I was expecting her to throw us out, but she motioned to us and unlocked the glass door behind the circulation desk. Will entered first, I followed, and she locked the door behind us.
“Questions?” she asked. Her spine was rigid. Apparently Will had told a state secret.
Will nodded. “My daughter … she seems to be affected by the house.” He pointed at me. “My friend Jimmy is trying to help us. He used to be a priest.”
Her eyes widened I was kind of used to the reaction. I was built more like a linebacker than a priest.
“You aren’t one of those priests are you?” she asked with a snooty tone in her voice.
I knew what she was referring to. The molestations scandals. “No, Ma’am, I left because of a very mundane reason.” There was no way in Hell I was giving her my life story. It wasn’t any of her business, and where did she get off accusing me like that?
She wanted more, I could tell, but she didn’t press any further.
“I want to see the papers that Will told me about, but I have a question. Do you know if the house was ever exorcised?” I asked.
There was a spark of life in her eyes. She motioned for us to sit down at the table. She sat down across from us. Her demeanor changed. It was almost as if by mentioning the exorcism, she took me seriously and found me worthy of knowing what she knew. She leaned over and spoke so quietly it was hard to hear her.
“They did a lot of things after the murders. Priests, ministers, and all types were brought in. Nothing seemed to help. Until they found a spiritualist.”
Now, I was intrigued. What would a spiritualist do that a priest couldn’t? “Why are these papers here instead of the regular part of the library?”
She sat back in her chair and laughed. “Right after it happened, the people of the time burned everything. They thought it was contagious or something. The papers here are the only ones we know of that are left. I wanted to get them digitized, but the director refused. I think they hope these papers will come up missing one day, but they’ll be here as long as I’m here.”
I nodded.
She smiled. “Now, back to the ‘Black House.’ I’m not saying witchcraft was used or any such thing, but the rumors I heard was that the spiritualist didn’t try to get rid of him like the rest. Instead she trapped him.”
I went cold. Goosebumps appeared on my skin, and I felt a shiver go
up my spine. Mirrors. Silver. The scratched black paint. “Trapped him in what?”
“They never said.”
She pulled out the papers for me to read. Will left the room with the librarian, and I dove into the articles. After a moment, I felt old, almost as if I was dreaming. My vision began to fade…
Chapter Ten
The Style of Pain
1950
Black made his way down the massive wooden steps of the front hall. He checked his appearance in the hall mirror. His suit was impeccable, black, made of fine wool and tailored to him. He straightened his tie and turned around.
“Be quiet for daddy, honey,” he heard his wife whisper. A normal person wouldn’t have been able to hear her, but he had powers normal people did not.
He smiled and walked towards the kitchen. The kitchen was where she belonged, but by tonight, she’d learn what it meant to cross him.
Black paused in the doorway to the kitchen. His wife was fluttering around, trying to please him. Trying to get back in his good graces. If she wasn’t so stupid, she’d realize that if she’d just play by the rules, she wouldn’t have to do anything extra to please him.
He coughed.
She froze. Then, she slowly turned around to face him. She looked frightened, but she didn’t make a sound. He liked that.
“Come take your medicine, Glenna,” he said.
Her lips began to tremble. “What… what about the baby?”
He smiled. “The baby will be waiting for you when you get back.”
She swallowed hard, wiped her hands on her apron, bowed her head and followed him out the door.
###
In the basement was the punishment room. Glenna knew it well. Each time she’d displeased her husband, she’d been brought to this room. Each time after, she hadn’t been able to function for weeks. Each time, the more pain she was in, the happier he seemed.