Rachel was making coffee when she saw something in the trees again. This time she did not want to sound crazy and so before calling Steven she looked for herself. But again, there was nothing. “Who is there?” she yelled opening the window, making sure that she stays out of the reach of any murderer lurking outside the house.
“Its me, Bob!” Bob replied coming out of the trees.
Rachel could see a real human being named Bob standing in front of her.
“I live in that cabin, your husband met me last evening with your dog. How is he?” Bob asked.
“He is fine, sleeping. Shall I wake him up?” Rachel said staring blankly at Bob.
“I meant your dog. How is he?” Bob could see how she was looking at him.
“Ohh, I am sorry!” she said feeling awkward, “He is fine too. Just trying to adjust to this new place.” Rachel realized how she was being rude to her neighbour, “Would you like to come in? I am making breakfast.”
“Oh no thank you.” Bob said, “I have already eaten.”
“The maybe later.” Rachel replied with a smile which Bob reciprocated.
“Yes, later. Good bye!” he moved back to his cabin. Rachel could see that her husband was right and realized that she got scared for nothing last night.
Steven woke up and came into the kitchen, “Hey guess what. I met Bob.” Rachel told Steven who chuckled picking up his mug of coffee, “Told ya.” he said with a winning smile.
“Good! Better get ready, we need to go shopping groceries and supplies. This place needs a lot of stuff.” Steven nodded drinking his coffee.
—————
The couple returned in the evening with their car seaming out of stuff they bought. Already eaten outside, Rachel knew she didnt have to cook and so was feeling lazy.
“Come one, we can get this stuff in the morning.” she said impatiently coming out of the car. Steven locked the car behind him and stretched his back, “What is your hurry?”
“Well, I just want to get naked in the bed with you and have some fun.” Rachel replied with a naughty smile. Steven did not want to waste any moment, “Lets go in then.”
Inside, Russo welcomed them with jumping over them and wagging his tail. After showing him their affection the couple got into their bedroom. As promised, Rachel started taking her clothes off, but Steven remembered something.
“I will be back after peeing.” he said kissing Rachel and ran into the bathroom.
To make things fast and easy, Rachel started taking her clothes off. This way she wanted to surprise Steven after he would come back from the bathroom.
“I am waiting!” she yelled at the bathroom door, “Come quick. Its cold.”
“Coming!” Steven yelled back when Rachel heard Russo whimpering from behind.
“Not now Russo!” Rachel did not want to be disturbed in the wild fantasies she was having in her head. But the whimpers kept coming.
“Russo, NO!” Rachel yelled as she felt cold paws on her back. She knew Russo had a habit of sneaking into the bed.
“Aaaahhhh!” Rachel screamed with fright as she saw the shadow of a man standing behind her. It was on the bed and was touching her naked body. This is when Rachel realized that the whimpers were not of Russo’s but of this shadow that tried to touch her again.
“RAYMOND!” Rachel screamed with all the air in her lungs. Raymond came in slamming the bathroom door and the shadow vanished into thin air, “What?” he yelled.
Rachel tried to move but her body failed and so did her tongue. Steven could see his wife’s skin turning pale. Quickly, he ran to the bed and covered her freezing skin with the blanket, “Rach.. what happened?” he forced her rigid face to look into her eyes.
“There .. there was a man!” Rachel got hold of her tongue.
“Where?” Steven looked out of the window, thinking of the obvious place to look for a stranger in a locked house.
“Here.” Rachel pointed at the spot on their bed where she saw the spirit. Steven was bowled over. He did not know how to react or what to say. The only thing he did was hold his wife tightly in his arms. That night, Rachel could barely sleep and so did he. Both of them kept awake, with the lights on, looking around.
Things turned to a sharp turn of weird since that night. Russo refused to get out and Rachel kept seeing the shadow of a man who always tried to feel her. Steven’s dog and wife were going crazy, making him losing his mind. One afternoon when both Russo and Rachel were sleeping, Steven did what he was thinking of doing for a long time. He went to talk to Bob.
“Bob, tell me .. is there any ghost or anything in that house?” he asked as soon as Bob came out of his cabin. The old man stared blankly at Steven’s face.
“No.” was his brief answer to Steven’s question.
“Are you sure? Cause my wife and dog are going mad!” Steven said.
“I have been living here for over 50 years. Trust me, there is nothing here.” Bob saw Steven was quite worried and so tried to calm him down.
Steven found Bob staring at him as if expecting another question. An awkward silent air remained between two of them. Steven then decided to go back instead of having this staring contest with an old man.
“Alright!” Steven replied and turned back to his house.
Bob saw Steven walk back to his house.
—————
Another scream of Rachel filled the house. Steven woke up next to her from his short sleep. — “Where?” Steven asked Rachel asking where she saw this shadow this time.
“There.” Rachel pointed at the door sticking to her husband. Steven tried to look but found nothing that could be called odd by the door or in the room. He also saw Russo who was lying without any problem, “Dogs can see ghosts, right” Steven asked Rachel forgetting that she was so scared already.
Rachel gave Steven an ultimatum, “Steve, either get this fixed or we are leaving this place.” Steven did not know how to fix it, but he know how to look for a person to fix this. On the internet he found the address to the local church and called the number in the directory. Father Mark Collins picked up the call and Steven explained everything to him. In a polite tone, Father Collins promised to come and look at their house. The conversation ended with an appointment being fixed for Father Collins to come to the Williamson Estate.
In the evening an white family wagon drove through the estate and stopped outside the house. Steven and Rachel came out to receive Father Collins while Russo decided to stay in. “Thank you for coming Father!” Steven said shaking his hand.
Father Collins had a concerned face as he looked around, “I feel a strong presence here. A vengeful spirit.” he said confidently.
“Already?” Steven wanted to say. For some reason Father Collins immediate declaration of a vengeful paranormal entity felt like a sham to him. He was sure he would ask for some donation for his church next.
“I can perform a purification ritual here. You will be safe after that without any trouble.” Father Collins looked at Steven with love and kindness.
“And how much would that cost us?” Steven asked. hesitatingly.
Father Collins got offended but got hold of his emotions, “I dont do this for money or any personal gain, my child. This is the work of the lord that I do to make this world a better place.”
“So no money! Okay!” Steven thought in his head, “I am sorry Father I didnt mean it that way.” he said to father.
“So show me, this place where you saw that spirit.” Father Collins looked at the trees.
Steven and Rachel quickly walked to the door and held it open for Father Collins to come in. They were quite eager for him to come inside and take a look. But as Father Collins took one step towards the house from his car, the whole house started shaking with a loud rumbling sound. Father Collins quickly took out a cross and some holy water from his pocket. Ready to fight Satan itself, Father Collins stayed in his place.
Steven and Rachel felt as if the sky was falling on their roof, the rumbling rolled from one place to another and continued till the edge of the house’s roof where the main door was. Father Collins looked into the sky and his eyes almost popped out of their sockets. He saw something that made him fixed in his spot.
With a gurgling sound, the house’s chimney fell over the father in one piece, crushing every bone in his body.
“SHIT!” Rachel yelled as she hid her face in Steven’s shirt. The blood splattered all over the wall of the house and Father Collin’s car that remained parked, untouched by the Chimney, few inches away from it.
Steven could not help but look at the Chimney and the blood. Father Collins was gone. Both figuratively and literally.
“I am getting out of this house!” Rachel said packing her bags while Steven remained seated. The police had finished scraping Father Collins outside their main door a day ago. and the blood stains were still there.
“Where will we go?” Steven asked, “And how are you not sure that this
thing
will not follow us wherever we will go?”
Rachel knew Steven was right. There was no guarantee of safety just by leaving this house, “But what are we going to do?”
“First, we need to find out what this thing is.” Steven said.
Working on the computer, Steven was printing webpages and images that he could find relating to this house and estate. Soon he had several pages enough to make a scrapbook. He collected all those and showed them to Rachel who was standing behind him.
“Look, here is what I found on the internet.” Steven said showing all the material to Rachel, “this estate belonged to the Williamson family. The last member of that family was Henry Williamson who lived here all alone.”
Steven showed Rachel a picture of Henry Williamson — a young fashionable man in his early forties, standing before the house with his dog, “he was quite a pervert and ladies liked to stay away from him. That explains why he keeps coming after you — if its him.”
Steven then showed some articles about Williamson family from various newspapers, gossip magazines and websites, “they say that one day Henry went away leaving no clue to his whereabouts. He was never seen or heard again. The family then abandoned this house.”
“How do they know he went somewhere and was not killed or abducted?” Rachel asked.
“They say that Henry Williamson was ousted by his family and had no family fortune or assets other than this house. And the guy had no enemies, just some pissed off ladies. But since the day he went missing, there was no sign of struggle in the house. Everything was spick and span.” Steven read several lines from different articles.
Rachel took the picture of Henry in her hands and it send shivers down her spine when she realized that the man in the picture had an uncanny resemblance to the shadow that haunted her, “Great! So I have a rich, ousted pervert ghost after me!” Rachel said throwing the picture away in frustration.
“There must be something that could help us.” Steven was going through all the material when Rachel remembered something. She quickly got up and picked the picture. Looking at it her eyes widened and she shook Steven, grabbing him by his collar, “Steven! Look!”
Rachel shoved the picture before Steven’s eyes. He had looked at it a hundred times on the computer screen, “What? I know how he looks!”
“No! Look in the corner!” Rachel pointed on one corner among the trees.
Steven carefully looked at the spot where Rachel pointed and there he saw something that shocked him out of his wits.
It was a young Bob staring into the camera from the trees and in the blurry background stood Bob’s cabin.
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Second Chance Susan S Romance
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The Candles of the Demon Princess Annmarie S
NOT DEAD
I used to think of that as a good thing. I remember, whenever I was having a bad day, or if I was just in a bad mood, I used to close my eyes and remind myself that it could be worse. I used to remind myself that I wasn’t dead.
Back then I believed that death was the worst thing that could happen to a person. I actually believed that.
Now I say the same words, every morning when I wake up. I am not dead. And I weep.
Or maybe I don’t. I guess it depends on how you define the word. If weeping is an action of the soul, a deep and bitter howling of the mind, if weeping is an emotional pit, then I weep. If weeping is the actual physical process of crying and wailing, then I don’t.
I can’t
“Good Morning, Mr. Niraj.”
It’s the nurse with the freckles, Amelia. She’s my favorite, she talks to me while she works. The only other person who talks to me anymore is an old preacher who comes by about once a month and reads a chapter out of the Bible before moving on to the next room.
Amelia opens the curtains letting the morning sun in, then gets to work. She checks me over for any changes, switches out bags here and there, all the while telling me about her date with her boyfriend the night before.
I try to focus on her words, immerse myself in the moment. I know what comes next, and the only peace I can give myself is in blocking that knowledge from my mind, pushing it away.
Or at least try to.
Eventually she picks up my chart and looks at it, shaking her head.
“Still with the samples. I swear, Mr. Niraj, as long as we’ve been doing this, the doctor probably has more of you bagged up in his lab than in this room.”
It isn’t the first time she’s told that joke, but I’d laugh if I could. It’s probably true. Every morning for the last four years the nurses have been taking samples from me. Hair, saliva, urine, blood, skin. From what Amelia’s told me, and from what I’ve overheard, there are five other patients who have the same treatment as me. All from the same doctor. It’s an odd treatment, according to everyone who works here, but he’s an odd man. A genius, they say, but an odd man.
So they follow his instructions. After all, why would a doctor give his patient a treatment he didn’t need?
They even say he’s had some success. I don’t know how that can be, but sometimes I dream . . . .
After she collects the samples, the treatment begins. In my head I’m shouting. Screaming. Jumping off the bed and racing towards the door.
In the real world, I lay flat on my back, staring at the ceiling as she rubs an alcohol swab over the inside of my arm, and prepares the first injection.
It feels like someone started a fire beneath my skin. The liquid spreads through my body, and I feel every second of it. The world becomes hazy and the pain is so intense that for a while I can’t feel anything else. I can’t see, or hear, or smell, or taste. The entire world is burning, and for a brief moment I believe, as I do every morning, that this time they went to far, and I’m finally dead.
It isn’t until the second injection that I know I’m wrong. The second injection feels, for lack of a better word, heavy. My muscles cramp under the strain and my limbs ache, like they’re being dragged down, through the bed, through the floor, down into the sewers. For the first few seconds the experience is only mildly unpleasant, like lying under a pillow while a fat man sits on top.
Then the medicine reaches my organs.
My heart is the first to be effected. Suddenly I can feel it, beating in my chest. But each beat sends out a tremor, and the blows become more and more painful, like my heart is trying to beat its way down through my back and out of me. I am surprised that I am not bouncing off the bed.
Next I feel it in my lungs. Amelia doesn’t seem to notice any change in me, but I feel as though I am being smothered. I know that air is entering my lungs, but I gain no relief from it.
The world seems to spin above me. I pray for oblivion, but nobody answers me.
Then the drug reaches my stomach and bowels, causing them to cramp uncontrollably.
When the pain recedes enough for me to see the world again, Amelia is gone, and I feel a sense of overwhelming relief.
Until I realize that I can taste chalk.
They put the pills back into my routine.
I try to shudder, but am no more capable of that than jumping out the window and flying to safety.
The best definition of success that I ever heard was from a girl I dated back in my school days. She used to say that success was when you made enough money doing what you enjoyed doing, to live the way you enjoyed living.
By that definition, I was a success by the time I was twenty. It just happened that the way I enjoyed living only required me to have a running van and enough food to get by on, and what I enjoyed doing amounted to playing the guitar a few hours a day on a street corner for change. I also bought and sold some weed, when I could afford to, and didn’t end up smoking it all, myself.
I told myself I wasn’t going to do that forever, that I’d eventually get a band, start picking up gigs, or maybe find some rich girl to shack up with somewhere. Honestly, though, even then I didn’t think those were likely, I just didn’t see any point to aspiring to the life my parents had lived. Nine to five jobs, thankless bosses, all so I could have kids who I’d never get to see.
So I aspired to the unlikely and didn’t care much if it ever happened.
Even a blind squirrel occasionally grabs a nut, and one day I did run into a bit of good fortune. A guy I shared some weed with told me about a bar just outside of town that had an open mic night, and let the bands that kept the crowds happy have a few free beers while they were performing.
It was a short enough drive that the beers covered the gas, and the girls that came in were mostly from a nearby college, which made them young enough to still be into broke musicians.
It was my own, personal nirvana.
Until the night of the accident.
“Play that ‘July Sunrise’ song.” The bartender, a cute brunette with big boobs pushed another beer across the counter to me.
I’d been trying to get into her pants for months, but she was impervious to my charms. Or maybe she was just into girls. She flirted with anyone who hit on her, but I never saw her go home with anyone.
As I climbed back onto the stage, it occurred to me to wonder if she really liked my music, or if she was just sending me up so I’d stop hitting on her. Not that it mattered, every time she put me on stage, I had a fresh beer in my hand, and that was all it took to keep me happy.
I strummed idly for a few seconds, took a drink of my beer, and started up the song.
“Streets waver in the heat, and I’m sweating out the beat, another long and painful day in July. Praying for some wind, or some shade I can hide in, but all I feel is a burning in reply.”
The bar was almost empty. Not counting me and the bartender there were all of three people in a place that usually fit a hundred. It was spring break and most of the kids were gone, but since open mic doesn’t cost management anything but a few drinks, they kept it on the schedule.
I didn’t much care about the how and why of it. What little money I’d had that morning was still in my pocket, and my head was buzzing like a mason jar full of flies.
I finished up ‘July Sunrise’ and moved into, ‘Ode to a Girl I Barely Remember’ giving the bartender a sly wink.
A few lines in, the door opened and two men walked in.
They weren’t regulars, and they weren’t college students. As drunk as I was, they still seemed out of place.
For starters, they were too old for the bar. At twenty seven, I was usually one of the oldest people in the room. These two were in their forties, at least. Both were bald. Not balding, and not with close cut hair. They were completely bald. They were both dressed in button down shirts, and slacks. But the thing that made them stand out the most was the way they moved. Well, not how they moved, but how they moved together.
Sometimes when I’m playing in front of a large enough group, when the music is loud enough, and I’m on my game, sometimes I’ll see people moving in rhythm. It isn’t dancing, exactly, they walk, or they take a drink of their beer, or they talk, but they do it in rhythm with my music, unwittingly they take my music and embrace it, let it guide, not what they do, but how they do it.
It was like that with the two men who came in, except that they weren’t moving in my time. It was like they were both listening to something that I couldn’t hear, and every step, every motion, was in time with that beat. I wouldn’t have noticed it if one of them had come in alone, but with both of them in the room, I couldn’t help but see it.
They moved slowly towards the front counter, pausing as they approached the other patrons, their noses flaring, then moving on.
At the counter the brunette smiled and asked them what they wanted. One of the men answered, the other leaned forward, his nose flaring briefly.
The girl’s smile faded, though I wasn’t sure if it was something that was said, or the sniffing that bothered her. After a few seconds she nodded politely and poured each man a beer.
I had planned to keep going for a few another song or two, since I still had half of my drink left, but from the girl’s expression I thought she might appreciate a knight in shining armor coming to her rescue.
I hopped off the stage, almost twisting my ankle when I landed, and headed for the bar.
“Hey, beautiful, don’t suppose I can get this topped off?” I said, ignoring the two bald men as completely as I could manage.
They didn’t return the favor. Instead one of them leaned in, inhaling deeply, but instead of leaning back, as he had with everyone else, he leaned closer and sniffed again.
I glowered at the man, but he took no notice of my aggravation, instead, turning his attention to his companion, and smiling.
The friend turned his attention to me and grinned.
“That was a great piece you were just playing. Let me buy you a drink.”
I’ve never been the kind to turn down a free drink, no matter where it’s coming from. After that drink, the bald man bought me another. We talked. We talked about where I was from, and how I lived, and how many friends I had. We talked about my family, and my blood type. Every few questions we would pause, just long enough for them to buy me another round, and then there were more questions.
The night became a blur. I do remember that the bald men left before I did. And I remember that, try as I might, I couldn’t talk the bartender into letting me spend the night with her. I also know that at some point in the night I decided that I wasn’t too drunk to drive. The exact order of the events and how much time separated them I can only guess at, but there is one memory that stands out, one very distinct image that is ingrained in my mind for all eternity.
I remember headlights coming towards me, fast. And behind those headlights, just barely visible, I remember seeing what appeared to be the top of two bald heads inside of whatever was about to hit me.
And then I woke up. In the hospital. I was alone. I was paralyzed.
Not dead yet. That’s what I told myself
I wasn’t dead, and as long as I wasn’t dead, there was hope. As long as I wasn’t dead there were things to look forward to. As long as I wasn’t dead, I could know that things weren’t as bad as they could be. Because I could be dead.
Nurses came and went, checking on me. I tried to signal them, tried to get their attention by blinking, or twitching a finger, or sheer force of will. All to no end.
Then I met the doctor. He moved oddly, I thought. It was like he was trying too hard. It was like he had only recently gotten his body, like he was thinking about each motion, mimicking what he’d seen, not simply moving, the way people do. And he was bald. Completely bald. Like the men I’d met at the bar.
Then he touched me. I hadn’t thought about it when the nurses were taking their samples and measurements, the fact that I could still feel, but I thought about it when he touched me. I thought about it because he felt so wrong. His skin was too stiff, not like skin, but a glove made to look like skin.
As he took his measurements his eyes caught mine, and in an instant I knew. I knew that he knew. He wasn’t looking into the eyes of someone he thought was a vegetable, he was looking into the eyes of a human being. He was looking into the eyes of a desperate, miserable man, and he was pleased.
He was enjoying my suffering. He hated me. Truly hated me.
If I could have moved I would have torn away from his touch, I would have run from the room.
But I couldn’t.
The next day the injections started. Such pain. I’d never known that kind of pain. I’d been beaten before, I’d been in accidents and come down with diseases that made me pray for death. I’d suffered before that day, or at least I thought I had. The injections were more than I could handle, more than I could think about.
I went mad. I know I did. The world twisted around me, the meaning of everything changed. I left my body, or at least convinced myself that I had. Floating through the world, tethered to my body by a thread.