Authors: Thomas Cater
Even stranger than her presence was the fact that when
I tried to scream, there was no sound. Her fingers tightened around my hand. Long
and hairy, they were gilt with brightly painted nails. She was as strong as a man
and crushed my fingers together. I could swear I heard bones crumbling beneath
the skin. I tried repeatedly to speak, but I could not find the words, while her
hand refused to release me.
I finally broke the circle by pulling my other hand
free. When I did, the figure on my right became Janie again. I snatched my hand
from hers in a second and examined my fingers. The knuckles were red and
bruised where they had been ground together. I hoped they were not broken. Janie
looked at her hand and grinned.
“Did you see that?” I shouted.
“See what?” George replied.
“Did you see what happened to Janie?”
He shook his head.
“What happened?”
I rubbed my fingers and looked at Janie again.
“She turned into some kind of terrifying animal.”
“Animal?” George asked.
“Yes, an animal; a strange and scary animal. I mean,
she was wearing clothes, an evening gown and jewelry. She wasn’t just an
animal; she had some human characteristics, too.”
George propped his chin on his fist and stared at
Janie.
“I’m listening,” he said, with some fascination.
“There was something about her face,” I said. “It was
thin. She had huge orange eyes and she could smile. Animals aren’t supposed to
be able to smile, but she could smile.”
I folded my hands together and pressed my thumbs
against my temples.
“I can’t remember anything else.”
“Maybe we should try again, but this time we’ll keep
our eyes on Janie.”
“No! I don’t want to go through that again. Whatever
it was, it told us or showed us all it wanted to. I don’t want to look at her
again.”
“But it wasn’t Elinore,” George said.
I shook my head. “It couldn’t have been. Elinore isn’t
an animal.”
“Bob, did you see anything?” George asked.
Bob shook his head.
“Janie?” Janie strained her neck like a chicken
standing in the rain trying to figure out where the voice that had just called
her name
was
coming from.
“Eulah, did you notice anything different?”
She was trembling so violently -- trying to light a
cigarette -- which it was impossible for her to speak clearly.
“I can’t remember,” she murmured softly.
I leaned back in the chair away from the table and
looked the whole crew over. There was something about Janie’s bone structure
and jaw line that reminded me of the strange illusion occupying her body. It
was a curious revelation, but one I did not want to encourage. I thought about
my second trip to the attic, when something had weighed upon my back. It was light
at first, but growing heavier with each step until I reached the top step when it
jumped and ran away. Could it have been the same animal? Could that animal have
been the same one we had removed from the shallow grave? Why was I tormenting
myself with these questions? Did my survival depend on it and how was I
supposed to know? I was from out of town, a tourist. If I stayed in this house any
longer, I wouldn’t know what I was doing, or where I was going.
George’s wards were slowly ambulating. It was all I
could do to keep them from wandering off and falling up or down the stairs.
“George, I think it’s time we get your people back to
the hotel.”
He nodded his head and clapped his hands several times.
He had a way with them. It reminded me of a trained seal act. He clapped his
hands and they rolled over and performed another stunt.
“
All right,
kids, let’s go home and call it a night,” George said.
“
Are we
through?” Eulah woofed.
“Party’s over,” George said.
“I had a wonderful time,” said Janie.
“Me, too,” said Bob.
“Is it over?” Eulah asked again.
George gathered them up like small children and guided
them out the front door. It had grown darker and the air was full of sounds and
new scents. I didn’t dare look back at the house. I was afraid those orange
eyes would be glaring at me through a window. I wanted to run back to the van,
but with Janie and Bob in tow, I knew that would not work. In fact, I knew it
would be impossible.
I tripped on a vine and looked down quickly enough to
see it slither away beneath a bush. I felt a chill travel up my spine. It tried
to strangle a piece of my brain that was turning itself inside out. My medulla
oblongata, the nest where all those instincts liked to hang out, was tingling. My
feet were also getting tangled up with strange things I couldn’t see.
“I didn’t have this kind of trouble getting in here,”
I shouted without thinking what kind of anxiety I was causing my séance colleagues.
“What?” George answered anxiously.
I was about to recommend he get a hearing aid, but I
was having too much trouble with my feet.
“My feet!” I shouted, “I keep tripping over things!”
I tripped again, this time falling to the ground.
Something grabbed me by the throat. It was almost as if a hand had come right
out of the earth and began to squeeze.
“Aaaarrggghh!” I screamed and jumped to my feet
carrying whatever it was with me. Half way up it released its grip and fell
back down into the darkness of the weeds and vines.
George ran to my side. “What’s wrong?”
“
Something
grabbed me and tried to drag me down into the ground. It was pulling me out of
my shoes.”
I felt it grab my ankles again.
“Jesus, George, It’s got me again!” I shouted.
George held my arms and I fell all over him.
“What’s got you?” He asked.
“It’s got me,” I screamed, “by the feet!”
It was too dark to see, but I could feel my feet sinking
deeper into the ground. It was as if I were standing in quicksand. I could also
feel claws or teeth biting into my ankles.
“Oh, shit, George, it’s got me for sure now. It’s all
over.”
His hand slid down my leg. I could feel his fingers
around my ankles, groping for my feet beneath the brush.
“You’re all right,” he said. “Nothing’s got you. Take
it easy, you’re going to upset the group.”
With his hand on my ankle, I could raise my foot,
which I did with speed. Then I started to run through the trees and toward the
van.
“I’m sorry, George” I shouted back. “It’s every man
and woman for himself.”
I did not run far before I collided with a tree. I hit
it with so much force I bounced and fell to the ground.
I do not know how long I was unconscious. The front
yard of the Ryder estate must have been a primeval swamp or a tar pit at one
time, a place that bushwhacked animals and humans. The voices came like a
landslide, rumbling, tumbling and rising out of the loamy darkness deep within
the earth, enough to drive a person mad if he listened to them all. That damned
wall that reached to the center of the earth, and someone had kept building on
it, generation after generation, keeping those spirits imprisoned and bound to
that parcel of unholy ground to wait for a redemption and resurrection that would
never come.
No matter how hard I listened, or tried to listen to
each one of their voices, or how hard I tried to sympathize, I could not hear
one clear distinct voice. There were too many of them, too many…until suddenly
the voices stopped. I opened my eyes and George was holding my head in his
arms.
“Are you all right?” He asked. “That was quite a shot
you took from that tree.”
“George, is that you?”
He smiled and nodded. I could not help thinking how
seedy he looked. I reminded myself that George had forsaken money. He was interested
only in saving humankind from the clutches of Satan. The spirits too were
interested only in living in my derelict home and not interested in anything
else, or so I thought.
“George, put me down,” I said. “I want you to hear
something. Put me down and then come down here with me. Put your ear to the
ground and tell me what you hear.”
We both put an ear to the ground and the sounds were
there. The voices were crying and screaming for help, dozens of voices. The
pain and the sorrow, the anguish was heart breaking, and it brought tears to my
eyes.
“Jesus!” George screamed. “If I didn’t hear it, I
wouldn’t believe it.”
We listened, but the sound was too terrible. We were
in tears when we lifted our faces from the earth and looked at each other.
“It’s terrible,” he said. “What are we going to do?”
My body was trembling. “I don’t know, George; I’m not
a religious person, remember? I am an atheist, a non-believer. I don’t believe
any of this.”
“Not believe? How can you not believe? Put your ear to
the ground again.”
I declined. “I can’t. I hear it, but I don’t know what
to do.”
George folded his hands and started weeping and
praying, which didn’t seem to accomplish much in the way of changing things.
“My God, this place must be Purgatory!” He said.
He started rocking, weaving, and praying aloud. I
touched his arm.
“George, not now; I don’t think it is prayers these
people need. I think it’s something else, something from our side that can help
them out, but I don’t know what it is.”
Eulah, Janie, and Bob were wandering harmlessly
through the trees. I no longer felt fear or apprehension for them, or for
myself.
“Come on, let’s get these people back to the hotel.”
It took all the strength I could muster to get off the
ground. Something had sapped the strength from me, nearly dried me up. I
staggered back to the van. On the way, I grabbed Bob and Eulah by their bony
elbows and steered them along.
The land and the earth beneath my feet felt different from
before. Once, it had been terrifying and full of the unexpected. Now it felt
old and familiar, as if its secrets were exposed.
Now I also felt more powerless than before. It had to
do with the wall. If only it could be breached. I firmly believed all those
trapped spirits would be free to return to wherever they were destined to
return to, if we could break through the wall.
The idea came to me while I was warming up the van. I
turned on the lights. The wall stuck out like a target right there in front of
me. All I would need to do is accelerate and I could probably drive the huge RV
right through it. I gunned the engine. It was in good shape. I eased it into
low gear and revved the engine again. The motor roared.
“All set?” I asked. There was no response. “George?”
“Yes,” he replied.
“Hang on to our passengers. I’m going to make a pass
at the wall.”
“You’re going to pass what?” He said anxiously.
I revved up the engine and let the clutch out as fast
as the transmission would tolerate without snapping the drive shaft. The van lurched
forward, picked up speed and before I could get it out of low gear, it smashed
into the wall; it flooded to an abrupt stop.
“Everybody all right?” I asked.
Janie was on the floor. Eulah and Bob were tangled up
in each other’s scrawny arms and legs. George was trying to pick himself up
from under the dashboard.
“That was the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do,”
he said.
I turned the motor and lights on again and peered out
over the front. The wall was still standing. The van had a crumpled front end
and the bumper was twisted and lying on the ground. I backed the van away from
the wall and looked for stone fragments.
“You’re lucky this thing still runs,” George said.
I checked, but couldn’t see a single niche or scratch
in the wall. The motor’s timing, I noticed, was off; a fan belt whined and
something was pinging noisily.
“Something is wrong,” I said.
George said it sounded like the water pump.
“No, I mean, something is wrong…out there.”
Everyone looked out the window. The trees were
motionless; everything seemed to be deliberately waiting…for something…
“I think this is the answer,” I said as I backed the
van up and prepared for a second run.
“No, don’t,” George said. “Let’s think about it.
Tomorrow we’ll come back and see if we accomplished anything. It’s too dark to see
clearly now. Besides, we have to get these people back to town. We can’t let
anything happen to them.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I turned the van around and drove back to the Phoenix
Hotel. There was a little steam coming from under the van when I parked. The
damage didn’t look as bad as it sounded. I locked it up and helped George conduct
his people into the hotel.