The Collected Horrors of Tim Wellman (12 page)

"It's not like that," Theodora said. "It's not a
physical door holding them back, it's a spiritual door."

"What movie did you get that from?" Susan
said.

Junie opened the door. "Come on, let's get this
over with before Theo collapses under all that weight on her back."
She led the way, flipping on the light switch as she started down
the old wooden steps. "Kinda rickety, guys, wait till I'm at the
bottom before you follow me down." She put her feet on the hard
dirt floor of the cellar and walked around a small stone wall that
formed part of a separate room designed just for canned goods and
potatoes over a hundred years ago when the house was new and people
needed such rooms.

"Is it safe?" Susan said. She started down the
steps. "Junie?" There was no answer. She stopped and Theodora
bumped into her. "Shit!"

"Sorry," she said. Just get down the steps
before we fall through."

"Junie?" Susan said again. "Where you at,
girl?"

"Jun?" Theodora said.

Suddenly Junie jumped out from behind the stone
wall. "Boo!" Susan jerked back, knocking Theodora onto her
butt.

"You bastard!" Susan yelled. "Scared the fuck
out of me!"

To make things worse, Junie was wearing a huge
old white hat, draped in white silks and holding plastic flowers in
the band that had turned black, with a see-thru veil covering her
face and shoulders. "Is it
possible
for a girl to be a
bastard?"

Theodora had made her way past Susan and was
standing in front of Junie, pointing the EMF detector at her.
"Human."

"I always thought so," Junie said. She pulled
the hat off and tossed it onto a bench lining the wall. It made a
noisy landing, disturbing several old yard tools, empty cans, and
boxes of junk.

Theodora was walking around, pointing the
electronic device at anything that looked the least bit suspicious.
The needle didn't move.

"Just what are we supposed to be looking for?"
Susan said.

"Theo's sanity," Junie said.

"We're looking for anything that doesn't
belong," Theodora said. "Anything weird."

Both teens pointed at Theodora. "Found it!"

Suddenly something caught Junie's eye and she
walked across the floor and picked up an antique toy sheep. "Wow,
this is silly looking. Looks old, though. Might have been grandma's
from way back."

"It's cute," Susan said. "In a creeped-out sorta
way. Diggin' that wooly afro on its head. What's that shit all over
your hand?!"

Junie quickly tossed the sheep back onto the
bench top. Her hand was covered with some sort of dark, thick
liquid that must have come out of the toy. "Yuck! It's like oil or
something!"

Theodora was already pointing her device at
Junie's hand. She then reached back in her pack and pulled out a
big magnifying lens and looked at it more closely.
"Interesting."

"Find me an old rag! Ooh shit, icky!"

Susan grabbed the old hat. "Here."

Theodora had taken her pack off and had produced
a small vial and a cotton swab. As her big sister was wiping the
stuff off her hand, she took a swipe and dropped the end into the
vial and jiggled it a bit. She held it up to one of the naked light
bulbs hanging from the low ceiling and the other two girls took a
look, too.

"Can you tell what it is?" Susan said.

"It's hard to say," Theodora said.

Both girls thought for a moment. "You really
have no idea what you're doing, do you?"

"Come on, weird kid, don't let all this stuff
you bought from an ad in a comic book go to waste!" Susan said.
"Just make a wild guess."

"Blood," she said.

"No!" Junie said.

Susan took a closer look at the bench where the
toy had sat for so long. She rubbed the tip of her finger over the
area, looked closely at it, smelled it. "Ahh!"

"What?" Junie said.

Susan held her finger out so the others could
see it. "I got a splinter!"

"Tonight on '
Investigating The
Paranormal
', three girls find nothing but stupid-assed jokes,"
Junie said. "Yuck, my fingers are still all sticky."

Theodora started jerking her head back and
forth, as if she were having a fit or something had taken control
of her.

"Theo!"

Susan grabbed her shoulders and shook her. "Hey
runt, you okay?"

"Fine! Fine, stop shaking me!" Theodora said. "I
was just making my headlight move back and forth on the wall."

"You little... you scared the hell out of me!"
Junie said.

Theodora pointed to the wall. "No, watch." She
started moving her head back and forth again. "Do you see that?
There's like a door frame there in the wall."

The two teens looked as Theodora continued
flicking the light over the area.

"Oh, I see it," Susan said.

"It must have been an old root cellar or
something that got sealed up later," Junie said. "But dad told me
once that his granddad had built the benches and stuff down here,
like a hundred years ago, so it was sealed up before then."

"Well maybe it's the doorway we're looking for,"
Theodora said. "The hundred years' seal is fading."

"Hundred year's seal?" she said.

"I'll loan you the DVD," Theodora said.

Susan walked over to the area and stood at one
end of the workbench that was blocking the wall. "Come on, Junie,
get the other end. Let's lift this out of the way so we can get a
better look."

Junie shook her head, but lifted the other end
anyway, and they moved the bench away from the wall. Theodora was
right about the doorway, or at least the stone-worked door
facing
. The doorway itself had been bricked over and was now
old and crumbling. There was nothing obviously suspicious about it,
though.

"This is nearly falling over," Susan said, as
she pushed against several bricks. "I can almost push through
it."

Theodora hit a brick with her little hammer and
it literally crumbled to dust and they could all smell a musty odor
as the closed room beyond the door breathed for the first time in
ten decades. "Get something bigger," she said.

"Hey, mom and dad will kill us for tearing a
hole in the wall," Junie said.

"Fuck that, man, it's starting to get good,"
Susan said as she picked up a big sledgehammer and with a great
deal of struggle, managed to swing it under-handed into the base of
the brick structure. She made a big hole, and then they all stepped
back. One-by-one, the bricks started to move, and then suddenly
they all crumbled into a heap. "Woo!"

They looked through the doorway. "Theo, move
your head so the light shines in there," Junie said.

"It's empty," Susan said. "Poo!"

"What were you expecting, hell's giftshop?"
Junie said. "I told you there was nothing weird about any of
this."

Theodora tilted her head down to get a look at
the floor. Unlike the floor they were standing on, it was made of
wood inside the doorway. "What is that?"

Both girls looked closer at the spot Theodora's
light had illuminated. "Metal? Something metal?" Susan said.
"Gold?!"

"Looks like an old window latch or something,"
Junie said.

"Let's go in and look around," Theodora
said.

"No, it's too dark in there and there may be
rats and spiders," Junie said.

Theodora opened a flap on her backpack and
pulled out two flashlights. She handed them to the girls and then
hoisted the pack back onto her back. "Completely prepared."

"You going first, weird kid?" Susan said.

Junie flicked on her light and pointed through
the opening. "I'll go first, but you guys watch where you step, the
floor is probably rotten." She stepped over the pile of bricks and
bounced a couple of times on the floor. It seemed solid enough.
"OK, come on in."

After a quick look around at the walls and
ceiling, it was obvious the room was completely empty. "Musta
cleared it out when they sealed it up," Susan said. "Oh well, we
gave it a shot. Let's go back out there and steal some way-cool
retro outfits!"

Theodora stopped her light on the latch, again.
"It's attached."

"What?" Junie said.

"It's a handle," she said. "There's a door in
the floor."

"Well, let's see where it goes!" Susan said. She
reached down but Theodora grabbed her shoulder.

"No!" she said. "This is the third barrier...
the cellar door, the door we just knocked down, and now this
one."

"So?"

"It's like the holy trinity or something,
right?" Junie said.

Theodora nodded. "Demons love to mock the bible.
Like when those ghost hunting guys on TV get scratched, there are
always three welts."

"Oh, what a complete load of bullshit," Susan
said. "OK, if we're not going to open it, let's go."

"I didn't say we
weren't
going to open
it," Theodora said. "But, we have to prepare first." She slid her
backpack off again, and then rummaged through until she pulled out
a bible. She thumbed through, with her head tilted down, until she
found the passage she was looking for. "
And I saw another angel
ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God: and he
cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to
hurt the earth and the sea, saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the
sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in
their foreheads.
"

Suddenly, there was a loud thump, then the
entire door started shaking and rattling as if something large and
powerful were trying to get out but was still restrained in some
way.

All three girls jumped back and screamed at the
same time. It was even more than Theodora had expected and she
froze on the spot.

"Screw opening it! Run!" Junie said and
literally picked up Theodora by the waist and carried her out of
the room with Susan close behind.

"Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!"

As they approached the steps leading out of the
cellar, the entire structure began to wobble, and then collapsed in
front of them, leaving them no way out.

Junie sat Theodora down and knelt down in front
of her. "Is it safe? Are we safe? Did that thing trap us down
here?!"

Theodora looked scared. Very scared. "We're
safe. The... the steps just fell apart because the ground was
shaking."

"Are you sure!" Susan yelled. "'Cause I don't
feel so fucking safe right now!"

"I'm
not
sure," she said. "I'm just a
little kid!"

The door inside the room rattled again and all
three girls screamed again.

"I don't want to die!" Susan said. For the first
time she was really upset and was crying. And Junie also had tears
streaming down her cheeks.

There would have been something that sealed the
doorway a hundred years ago," Theodora said as she paced back and
forth. "In the movies, there's something that always stops demons
from getting out, something holy that the original demon hunters
leave behind."

"Blood?" Junie said. "Isn't it blood, or..." She
ran across the floor and picked up the sheep. "The blood of the
lamb!"

Theodora's eyes lit up. "That's it!" she grabbed
the toy and paused for a moment, and then ran back into the
room.

"Theo!"

Theodora quickly swung the toy and the liquid
splashed out onto the old latched door and a horrible, demonic moan
shook the floor. Junie had caught up with her and was standing
right behind her. "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Ghost, I command thee to remain sealed for a hundred years more!"
the little girl shouted, her voice cracking, but strong. It went
quiet except for a barely noticeable scratching sound from under
the door, but when Theodora sat the bible down on it, the
scratching stopped and the only sound was her and her sister's
heavy breaths.

"Is that it?" Junie said.

"I think so," Theodora said. "But, we have to
reseal the other door with the lamb's blood, too. She grabbed her
backpack and they walked out of the small empty room together.

Susan had been standing by the door to the room,
not mustering the courage to go back in with the others, but
decidedly not a total coward. "So?"

Theodora motioned for the teens to stand back,
and then she swung the lamb again, forming a cross in blood on the
floor in front of the fallen doorway. She waited for a moment, and
then shrugged. "I guess that's it."

Then suddenly the old bricks started reforming
themselves, rapidly rebuilding the door. The girls could only
watch, their mouths open, more in awe than disbelief, now.

"Hey!" A loud voice yelled from behind them and
they all jumped and screamed. It was Junie and Theodora's father,
looking down from the cellar door. "What the hell happened?"

"We, uh, we came down to find something and the
steps fell apart!" Junie said.

"That's it!" Susan said. "That's exactly what
happened! And nothing more!"

"Except for the demon locked up down here,"
Theodora said.

Junie slapped her on the back of the head.
"Shush!"

"Are you hurt?" he said.

"No dad, we're fine," Junie said. "We just can't
get out."

"OK, hold on, I'll go get the aluminum ladder
from the barn," he said. "Damned stupid kids, you could have been
killed! Anyway, I guess with no steps to get down there anymore,
it'll keep you kids out from now on."

"I don't think we'll ever come back down here!"
Susan said. "Not even for free clothes!"

"I think it's okay now for at least a hundred
years," Theodora said. She walked back to the bench and sat the toy
down where they had originally found it. "Anyone want a cheesy
cracker or a candy bar?"

Thursday's
Child

There had been nothing on the news about the
disappearance of a child. Heather Combs sat down on the edge of the
bed in the cheap motel and thumbed through the local morning news
shows with the remote. She was expecting the child's parents to
make... what was it called... an emotional appeal, followed by the
police profilers nailing her right down to her breast size and
color of her panties. But no, there was nothing about the
kidnapping at all. Surely the girl's parents would know by now and
would have reported it to the police. The house would most
certainly be full of blundering cops spitting bits of donuts
everywhere and the heavy, dreadful cloud of knowing a child was
missing spoiling the mood for everyone. But it was as if it hadn't
happened. Heather looked over at the child, sound asleep on the
bed. It had happened. It was her first kidnapping and according to
every television show she had ever seen, everything followed the
familiar script except the silence by the press. She saw the kid in
the new subdivision playing in her big yard in front of her huge
house, waited until dark, then broke in and grabbed her. Simple as
that, really, she hadn't thought about it much, a plan,
consequences. She just got pissed off at her mother, started
driving around, and ended up committing a capital crime. After a
ten minute drive in her old car, they ended up in the motel room,
slept all night, and now no one seemed to care.