Christmas Eve on Haunted Hill (7 page)

As Simone edged closer back to full
consciousness, she imagined she heard voices calling to her from far away.  In
her head, they were the voices of her parents, calling out to her and her
siblings to come downstairs on Christmas morning and open their presents.  But
that was silly.  She wasn’t a little kid anymore.  Also, as her eyes began to
flutter, she perceived a different quality in what she was hearing, a sort of
brute belligerence very unlike her parents.

          Her eyes opened to
blackness.

          At first awareness of
where she was and what had happened eluded her.  All she knew was she was flat
on her back in a lightless space.  The floor beneath her was hard and uneven. 
Wood, probably.  Then she grimaced and cried out weakly as a lance of pain went
straight through her head.  She raised a shaky hand to touch the side of her
head and her fingers came away wet.

         
Oh, no
.

          She put her hand to her
mouth and tasted what was on her fingertips.

         
Blood
.

          An alarming amount of it,
actually.  She had fallen and hit her head hard enough to get knocked cold for
an indeterminate time.  It might have been minutes or hours, she had no idea. 
Raising her voice, she cried out softly for help.  She didn’t know where she
was or who might be nearby, but there had to be someone around who could help
her.

          In a moment, an answer
came from somewhere else in the darkness in the form of a girlish giggle.

          And then a low, grating
voice:  “
Welcome back to hell, cunt
.”

          It all came back to her
in the next instant.

          That was Karen. 
Something was wrong with her.  Very, very wrong.  She was either playing a very
cruel trick or she was possessed by something, an evil spirit or demon.  Other
memories suggested the latter was more likely.  An image of Terry’s head leaving
his body and tumbling down the hallway made her gasp and sit bolt upright,
heedless of the fresh jolt of pain this caused.

          She sensed movement in
the dark.

          The thing possessing
Karen’s body was coming toward her.  She tried scuttling away from it, but her
back met something unyielding, perhaps the side of a bed or whatever it was she’d
hit in her fall.  Before she could attempt to get to her feet and get around
it, she felt Karen’s hands on her.  They slid up her legs and reached inside
her jacket to grope her breasts.

          Simone yelped and swatted
the hands away.

          “Get away from me!”

          More of that girlish
giggling.  In a moment, Karen’s cold hands were on her again.  Simone pushed
her away, surged to her feet, and directed a kick at Karen’s approximate
location.  Rather than connecting with soft flesh, her foot was seized in a
lock-solid grip.  Simone shrieked and tried to jerk her foot free, but there
was no give to that grip at all.

          She tried reasoning with
her adversary.  “Karen, I know you’re in there somewhere.  Please fight against
whatever’s got you and let go of me.”

          There was a brief
silence.

          And then the hands
gripping her foot yanked hard on it.  Simone fell to the floor, landing hard on
her ass.  The impact sent another jolt of pain shooting through her back and
had an amplifying effect on the still-throbbing ache in her head.  But she
couldn’t allow herself to be incapacitated by the pain.  It could mean the
difference between life and death.  Though Simone still couldn’t see
her—couldn’t see anything—she sensed Karen was on her feet now.

          The other girl started
dragging her across the floor.  Simone didn’t know what Karen had in mind, but
she was sure whatever it was wasn’t anything beneficial to her well-being. 
That ghoul in the Santa suit was still around somewhere.  Maybe she was being
taken to him.  In desperation, Simone slapped at the uneven floor planks, her
gloved fingers digging for purchase, but they just kept sliding over the wood.

          She had been dragged at
least several feet by the time she reached out with her left arm and felt her
fingers grasping the contours of what felt like a human face.  So there was yet
another person in here with her, someone prone and unmoving on the floor.  This
could only be Spence or Bradley.  Her palm went to the unseen person’s mouth. 
The glove covering her skin made it impossible to tell for sure, but whoever it
was didn’t seem to be breathing.  Given the position of the possible corpse
relative to where she thought the door was, it was likely what she’d tripped over
after running into the room.  Her hand came away from the disconcertingly still
features of the face as she was dragged another several inches closer to the
door.

          “Karen, please stop,” she
said, her voice cracking slightly on the last word.  “Where are you taking me?”

          Another giggle.

          “To see daddy.  You’ve
been a bad girl and he needs to punish you.  Just like he punished me.”

          Simone supposed “daddy”
was the wasted-looking ghoul in the Santa suit.  An anguished whimper escaped
her trembling lips.  “Please don’t.”

          The thing controlling
Karen’s body made a tsk-tsk sound deep in its throat.  “You shouldn’t snivel
so.  It’ll just make daddy even more upset.  You need to stop your crying and
take your medicine like a big girl.”

          Simone tried rolling hard
to one side in an effort to loosen the creature’s grip on her.  That didn’t
happen, but she was able to grab onto the leg of the unmoving body next to
her.  The creature tightened its grip on her ankles and heaved with all its
might, pulling her another couple feet along the floor.  Simone’s hand slid
farther down the leg, failing to find purchase until her fingers closed around
its ankle.  She held on as tightly as she could and was rewarded with a grunt
of frustration from the thing controlling Karen.

          “
Let go of the dead
meat, bitch
,” the creature said, reverting to the low, grating tone it’d
used earlier after having switched briefly to Karen’s normal speaking voice.  “
Daddy
doesn’t like it when his children try to get out of getting what they’ve got
coming
.”

          Instead of letting go,
Simone rolled hard to her left again and hooked her other arm around the leg
she now knew belonged to Spence.  She could tell by the way the cuff of the
jeans leg was stuffed inside the thick winter boot.  Bradley had been wearing
similar boots, but not with the jeans tucked inside them like that.  She felt a
sharp pang of loss at knowing her boyfriend was dead.  The hurt went deeper
than she would have expected, overriding and rendering irrelevant the
aggravation he’d caused her earlier.  She thought of how much his mother had
loved her only son—way more than Simone ever had, she knew—and imagined the
look on the sweet old lady’s face when she found out he was dead.

          It made her angry.

          But that anger was
forgotten in the next instant as the thing possessing Karen screeched at her, a
shrill, high-pitched sound that was more insectoid than human.  It was
unsettlingly similar to the grating whine made by cicadas in the height of
summer.  It was like needles repeatedly being driven into her eardrums.  It
filled the room and temporarily obliterated awareness of anything else.

          And then it stopped. 
“Fine,” the creature said, again switching back to Karen’s regular voice.  “If
you won’t come to daddy, daddy can come to you.”

          It relinquished its hold
on her ankles and padded softly away.  A moment later, Simone heard a click as
the door lock was turned.  This was followed by a creaking of hinges as the
door was pulled open.  Still cognizant of the inadvisability of complacency—a
probable death sentence—Simone let go of her dead boyfriend’s leg and scrambled
to her feet.

          Breathing heavily and
facing in the general direction of the door, she stood there a moment and
wondered how she might defend herself.  She was still backed into a corner with
nowhere to go except back out into the hallway, which was no real option at all,
not with what was waiting for her out there.  The boards on the windows meant
she couldn’t get out that way.  She could maybe crawl under the bed, but that
would just be delaying the inevitable.  No, she had to stand here and somehow
fight back against these demons or whatever they were.  But the how of that was
still eluding her.  These things were manifestations of some primal evil
force.  They were stronger than her, no question.  She had no hope of defeating
them, but getting past them…yeah, maybe she could do that.

          But it was going to take
a lot of luck and more than a little courage.  More than that, she needed some
kind of defensive weapon.  Something she could use to fend them off long enough
to slip by them and run out of the house.  But what she might use was another
big question mark.  Not being able to see a goddamn thing in this perfect
blackness wasn’t helping matters any.

          Then she thought of
something.

          She dropped to her knees
and felt around on the floor until she found Spence’s body again.  Patting his
jeans, she found his phone in his right hip pocket.  She dug it out, swiped at
the screen, and almost cried out in joy when it lit up.  The feeling faded when
she saw the massive puncture wound in the middle of his chest.  Even in the
meager light provided by the screen, it looked hideous.  Her eyes watered as a
whimper rose up inside her.

          Then she heard voices out
in the hallway.  And footsteps, coming closer.

         
No time for grief
. 
Not now
.

          She tapped in Spence’s
security code and swiped at the screen again, pulling up expanded menu options. 
The flashlight icon appeared.  She tapped it and a bright light projected from
the bulb at the back of the phone.  Muttering a silent prayer of thanks to
poor, dead Terry for reminding her about the flashlight utility, she got to her
feet and aimed the light at the open doorway.

          It was empty for a
moment.

          And then the thing in the
decaying Santa suit appeared in that open space, its rotten lips twisting in a
gruesome mockery of a smile.  The big axe was still clutched in its hands, the
blade wet with the blood of her dead friends.  She hadn’t seen Bradley yet, but
she assumed he was also no longer among the living.

         
It’s just me
, she
thought. 
I’m the only one left
.

          Except, no, that wasn’t
quite true.  Karen was still alive, it seemed, or at least her body was.  Maybe
her consciousness was still locked away somewhere in there, maybe not, but
Simone had no idea how to free her from that prison and it wasn’t exactly her
top priority here, which was saving her own ass.

          The Santa-ghoul took a
single step into the room.

          Karen entered behind him
and moved off to the left in an apparent flanking maneuver.  The thing
inhabiting her body made her mouth stretch wider than it ever normally would,
causing the flesh at the corners to split open and leak blood.  And now it
shook its head and spoke in that low, grating way again.  “
Daddy’s not happy
with you.  He says he would have gone easier on you if you’d come to him
willingly.  But now he’s gonna chop you into a thousand tiny little pieces
.”

          The Santa-ghoul chuckled
and took another step into the room.

          Karen edged closer, too.

          Simone backed away,
taking care to avoid bumping up against the bed.  She remained determined to
fight, but the essential problem remained the same—there was nowhere to go and
she had no way to defend herself.

          Then, in the midst of her
deepening terror, she became aware of those boisterous voices ringing out from
somewhere outside of the house.  These were the same voices she’d heard upon
her return to consciousness.  She had no idea who those people were, but
summoning them might be her last hope.

          She backed up another few
steps.

          Then she opened her mouth
wide, sucked in a big breath, and screamed with every ounce of lung power she
had.

When several minutes passed with no
response to their shouted directives to vacate the premises from anyone inside
the house, Luke realized they would need to enter the house and perhaps bodily
remove the trespassers.  Not being in the best shape after several years of
letting himself go, he didn’t relish the idea of a physical confrontation. 
Greg was also no longer quite in his physical prime, though his rate of decline
wasn't quite so advanced.  Some of these kids might be big jock types in no
mood to be pushed around by a couple of drunken old guys in their mid-thirties.

          Greg scowled when Luke
voiced this concern.  “Oh, don’t be such a pussy.  You’re not so old.”

          Luke grunted.  “I feel
old.”

          “But you’re not.  You’ve
just been lost in the wilderness for a long time.  It’s fucked up your
perspective.”

          Luke shook his head.  “I
feel older than I am, like twice my actual age sometimes.”

          “You’ve let yourself go a
bit.  It’s what happens when a man gives up, which you obviously did a long
time ago.  But, buddy, I’ve got good news for you.  There’s this thing called
exercise.  You might want to try it.  It’ll make a new man of you.”

          Now Luke was the one
scowling.  “Are you auditioning to be my fucking life coach or something? 
Jesus Christ.”

          Greg shrugged.  “Maybe
you need one.”

          “And you’re just the man
for the job.”

          “You see anyone else
volunteering?”

          Luke sighed.  “Fuck it,
whatever.”  He took a wobbly step toward the house.  “Let’s flush those little
snots out of there and get this over with.  It’s fucking cold out here.  You
may not have noticed.”

          Greg gripped him by an
elbow.  “Now hold on a sec.  You’re not entirely without a point.  We should
think this over a bit.  You’ve got the drunk man sway going on, which is not
normally conducive to a successful bout of fisticuffs.”

          Luke heaved an exasperated
breath.  “Man, make up your damn mind.  First you’re all gung-ho about going in
there and kicking some ass, now you think it’s a bad idea.”

          Greg laughed.  “You
misunderstand my point.  I’m saying we go in and do what we gotta do.  I’m also
saying we should fortify ourselves with another beer first.”

          Luke squinted at him,
allowing a silent moment to pass.

          “So…the problem, in your
view, is that I’m too drunk.  And the solution is that I should have more
beer.”

          Greg’s expression turned mock-solemn
as he nodded.  “That’s about the size of it.”

          “That doesn’t make a bit
of fucking sense.”

          “Yeah?  So?”

          “Good point.”

          They made their way back
over to the jeep, trudging through the deepening snow.  Luke opened the
passenger side door, reached in to take two cans of Bud from the carton, and
passed one to Greg.  They popped the tabs on the cans and chugged down some
brew, which was still frosty cold thanks to the frigid conditions.  Those beers
went down fast.  Both men agreed having one more was probably for the best. 
They were halfway through those beers when they decided to resume their
campaign of intimidation through drunken shouting.  It hadn’t worked before,
but maybe the second time would be the charm.

          The piercing scream came
from somewhere inside the house after they’d been back at it for barely more
than a minute.  Luke’s second can of Bud slipped from his fingers and sank into
the snow at his feet.

          The men exchanged a look.

          Luke said, “That doesn’t
sound good.”

          Greg didn’t say
anything.  All the humor had drained from his face.  He tossed his beer to the
ground and pulled open the Wrangler’s passenger door.  After pushing the seat
forward, he leaned into the back and fumbled around for a moment before
reemerging with an old-fashioned long tire iron, an aluminum baseball bat with
a taped handle and a fat barrel, and a big Maglite flashlight.

          He held out the
implements and said, “Choice of weapon?”

          “Couldn’t we just call
the police?”

          Another piercing scream
emerged from the house.

          “Don’t think there’ll be
time for that.”

          Luke had to concede the
point.  He sized up the choices in front of him.  The tire iron looked solid
enough, but the bat was bigger and had a longer reach.  On the other hand, that
long reach might hamper its effectiveness in tight quarters.  Also, the tire
iron had a sharp end intended for prying off hubcaps.  As a weapon, it could
function as a blunt instrument of bone-crushing doom or it could put a pretty
nasty hole in an opponent.

          He took the tire iron.

          Greg frowned.  “Damn.”

          “Hey, you gave me a
choice.  Take the tire iron if you want it.”

          Greg waved this off and
started toward the house, flicking the Maglite on as he went.  He had the
flashlight in his left hand and the bat in his right.  He ascended the porch,
the barrel of the bat propped over his shoulder.  He moved with urgency and
Luke hurried to catch up, unhesitatingly following his old friend through the
open front door.  They went through the foyer and then through the wide archway
to the left into the living room.

          Luke was rocked by an
onslaught of long-suppressed memories and feelings as the Maglite’s powerful
beam swept over the living room.  Some of the best times of his life had been
spent right here in this room, many of them sitting on that old couch with
siblings while they watched movies on the big TV or opened Christmas presents. 
But there was no getting around the fact that it was also the site of the worst
things that had ever happened in his life.  On the way out the door that night,
he’d seen his little sister’s severed head sitting on that couch.

          But that was the past.

          The screams were
ongoing.  There were loud crashes coming from somewhere upstairs.  Someone here
definitely sounded like they were in mortal danger.  A young girl or woman,
judging from the timbre of those screams.  He couldn’t allow himself to be rendered
incapable of action by memories of his own tragic past, not while someone in
the here and now needed his help.

          They reached the
staircase.

          Greg started up the stairs. 
They creaked loudly beneath his tread.  There were some splintering sounds. 
This didn’t exactly inspire confidence in the stability of the place.  A
crippling accident was not out of the question.  But this was what you did when
someone who sounded like they were seconds away from being murdered needed your
help.  You plunged into the teeth of the threat anyway, because how else could
you live with yourself afterward?  Sure, it was the sort of job usually best
left to professional first responders, but tonight they were the only cavalry
around.

          Luke was three steps up
when he heard the creak behind him.  He turned about on the stairs and yelped
in fright as he glimpsed a shadowy form advancing on him.  The Maglite was
pointed in the other direction—up the stairs rather than down—so he wasn’t able
to discern much about this new presence until it was almost right up on him. 
What he could make out was thanks instead to the dim bit of ambient light
filtering in from the open front door.

          “Greg!”

          Greg stopped climbing the
stairs.  “Something wrong?”

          “Point that fucking light
down here, please.”

          He heard Greg shuffle
about several steps above him.  Seconds later, the redirected beam from the
Maglite lit up the face of a young man.  He had the fresh features of a teenager—someone
who was likely either a junior or senior in high school—but his physical
stature was more imposing than was typical for someone his age.  He looked like
an athlete, possibly a football player.

          The steps creaked again
as Greg started back down.  Somewhere upstairs the girl was still screaming. 
There were more crashes and thumps.  The girl needed their help now.  She was
running out of time.  Luke wanted to tell Greg to leave this situation to him
and go to her aid, but he was unable to push the words out of his mouth.

          The teenager came up
another step.

          Only one empty step
remained between them.

          Luke’s grip tightened
around the base of the tire iron.  This was partly because he wanted to have a
sure hold on the heavy implement in case he needed to wield it quickly, but it
was also to still the trembling in his hand caused by his mounting fear.  It
wasn’t the boy’s brawny build he found intimidating.  Even a very strong person
could be felled pretty quickly by a whack upside the head with a solid hunk of
metal.  What really bothered him here was twofold—the blood spatters on his
face and clothes and his flat, hollow-eyed expression, which made him look like
a soulless shell of a thing instead of an actual human being.

          “Stay back, kid.  I don’t
want to have to hurt you.”

          The flat expression
shifted slightly, a corner of the boy’s mouth turning up in a sneer.  “
Daddy
has a message for you
.”

          The words were uttered in
a voice that barely sounded human.  It was low and insinuating, the way Luke imagined
a snake might sound if it could talk.

          Greg’s voice came from
above him:  “What did he say?”

          Luke didn’t respond.  He
was too transfixed by that cold, empty stare.

          “
Daddy’s so pleased
you’ve come home, Luke
,” the boy said in that same sibilant tone.  “
And
he says to tell you that this time you won’t be getting away
.”

          Greg’s voice came again. 
Luke still couldn’t make his tongue work.  He did, however, lift a foot with
the intent of moving up a step in order to put some more distance between
himself and this clearly deranged young man.  Even as this impression of the
boy flitted through his head, he knew it wasn’t quite accurate.  There was
something other than a mental imbalance at work here.  Something unnatural.  It
was a crazy thought, but how else to explain the deeply odd behavior and the apparent
fact that the boy—someone he’d never met—knew his name.  And, perhaps most
disturbing of all, there was that “daddy” reference.  He thought back to the
ghost stories he’d heard at Sal’s Place.

          Maybe they’d been true,
after all.  Maybe his childhood home really was haunted.

          Maybe—

          The hiss emanating from
the boy’s slack mouth became an enraged roar as he lunged at Luke with his arms
outspread.  What Luke did then was pure instinct.  He flipped the hand gripping
the tire iron down, positioning it so that the sharp end was pointing at the
onrushing assailant.  The boy had too much momentum to stop or make an evasive
maneuver.

          He impaled himself on the
sharp end of the tire iron.

          The enraged roar became a
shriek of agony.

          “Shit.  Holy fucking
shit.”

          Greg again.

          But now Luke finally
found his voice.  “Get upstairs before it’s too late.  I’ll be right behind
you.”

          Greg wasted no time
debating the issue and dashed up the stairs. 

          The boy had several inches
of steel lodged inside him, just up under his ribcage.  His wails of agony
continued and then there were tears coursing down his quivering face.  His
features had lost that cold, inhuman aspect, the thing that had been inside him
having fled.  But it didn’t matter anymore.  Though he was still breathing, he
was dead already, the actual expiration being a foregone conclusion at this
point.

          Luke felt bad about it. 
He hadn’t meant to kill the boy.  But there was no time for guilt now.  He
needed to go to his friend’s side and help him fight back against whatever was
happening here.

          “Sorry, kid.”

          He braced a hand on the
boy’s chest and gave him a shove.  The boy tumbled backward, the sharp end of
the tire iron coming out of his chest with a wet plop.  Luke was already racing
up the stairs by the time the body hit the floor below with a heavy crash.

          Then he was in the
upstairs hallway.  The door to his old bedroom was just ahead on his right.  It
was standing open.  But the sounds of struggle were issuing from the end of the
hallway, in the large master bedroom where his parents had once shared a bed. 
He caught a glimpse of Greg disappearing through the door there with his
Maglite and baseball bat.

          Luke hurried to catch up.

          Once he reached the end
of the hallway, he dashed through the door and came to an abrupt stop just
inside the room.  The Maglite was on the floor.  Luke guessed Greg had dropped
it to more effectively wield the bat.  The flashlight’s beam was helpfully
pointed at the foot of the bed, illuminating the large old steamer trunk that
sat in front of it.  Nothing he saw in that first moment did anything to dispel
the confusion gripping him.