The Red Light (6 page)

“
Mommy,” Mary said as she
walked in the door.

“
Oh my God,” Sarah jumped
and pushed the chair backwards, she was so into what she had read
that Mary startled her. “What do you need sweetie?”

“
I’m hungry, can we eat
soon?”

“
Yes of course, let’s go
and make something now,” Sarah said.

Sarah and Mary went downstairs, on
their way to the kitchen Sarah told Teddy to come down in a little
while because she was going to have dinner ready soon. Mary stood
on a chair helping her make dinner; she was tearing up the lettuce
for a salad, while Sarah cooked hamburger for Hamburger Helper, and
Mike was asleep on the couch.

When dinner was ready Sarah went into
the living room and shook Mike’s shoulder, “Mike, wake up, dinner
is ready.”

“
Okay, I’m coming,” he
said sluggishly.

“
Teddy, come down and
eat,” Sarah yelled upstairs.

“
Okay mom, I’ll be right
down,” he yelled back to her.

A few minutes later everyone was at
the table, everyone loved Hamburger Helper so it was gone pretty
quickly, and Mary was proud of the salad she prepared, Sarah and
Mike ate almost all of it.

The children finished their meals and
Sarah asked them to help her clean the table before they went
upstairs to play in their rooms, Mike went back to the couch and
was watching a movie on the television when Sarah finished she went
to the living room and sat down beside him.

“
I seen a man get torn
apart then burnt to dust in the backyard today,” Sarah said calmly,
Mike was looking at her like she had lost her mind.

“
Don’t give me that look I
know what I saw, and I have proof of what happened, right up there
in your aunt’s diary, she told every bit of the history of this
house, how your Great Great Great Uncle Silas murdered children and
killed some of the slaves in the basement here.”

“
Look, I may have heard
something about that when I was a kid,” Mike said before being
interrupted by Sarah.

“
You knew about this and
didn’t tell me?” Sarah had a look of disbelief.

“
I didn’t think it was
true, you know how people tell kids scary stories to mess with
them.”

“
Don’t look at me like I’m
crazy, I am so pissed and you better hope this isn’t happening to
the children, I swear I’ll…”

“
You’ll what?” Mike
said.

“
I’ll leave, and take the
kids somewhere safer than this damn place.” Sarah stormed out of
the room and went upstairs.

Chapter 10

Sarah sat in the writing room working
on her book and after a while she fell asleep with her head lying
on the desk. She looked up to see someone standing in front of her
desk, it was a young woman with long blonde curls hanging down to
her shoulders, she was wearing a colonial style pink dress that
would have been beautiful if it weren’t for the blood covering the
entire front, and she had a long slit across her throat that was
wide open and dripping blood just as if it had been cut
recently.

“
You have to get your
children out of this house,” the ghostly figure pleaded.

“
This is our home now, we
aren’t the ones that need to get out,” Sarah replied in nervous
fear.

“
He will kill you and your
children don’t you understand?” The woman slammed her hands down on
the desk but it made no sound, as she leaned forward almost face to
face with Sarah.

“
Who will hurt me and my
children?”

“
He’ll do more than hurt
you, y’all will be trapped here forever like the rest of us,” the
ghost woman said and was looking behind her and her expression
changed to fear. “He’s coming I have to go, you hear me now, leave
this place before you all die.”

“
Wait! Who’s coming?”
Sarah asked, and as suddenly as she appeared, she was
gone.

Sarah sat at the desk stunned and
trying to figure out exactly what was going on, trying to piece
everything together when she felt the cold air on the back of her
neck, she spun the desk chair around and seen a rather portly man
standing behind her.

He was tall and quite
massive; she sat there as he stood staring down at her, with blank
black lifeless eyes, then it hit her, it was the man that she seen
dragged in the back yard and killed,
oh my
God it’s the killer
she thought as the
white light fixture in the middle of the ceiling slowly turned red
and gave a red tint throughout the room, she looked up at the light
and seen it was filling with blood.

“
Well, look at what I
found,” he said laughing, his smile was huge and showed all of his
mostly rotten teeth, his face was partially painted white with red
makeup around his eyes and mouth, and he had a blue
nose.

“
Who… who are you?” Sarah
stuttered.

“
You know who I am, it’s
good ole Uncle Silas,” he said getting closer to her breathing on
her face, his breathe was so terrible that she gagged and turned
away.

“
Don’t you touch me,”
Sarah said running around to the other side of the desk.

“
Or what? Oh I know,
you’re gonna kill me if I touch you,” he said laughing and then
switched to a whisper, “Well, guess what I’m already dead.” He
reached to his forehead and began pulling on his face; worms and
bugs were falling from under the skin and crawling across the desk,
he kept peeling away until there was nothing left but his skull, he
was laughing so loudly that she was sure someone would hear, but no
one came. She felt something dripping on her shoulder, she looked
up again at the light and the blood was spilling over and running
down the sides of the bulb; then she fainted.

Sarah woke up on the floor in front of
the desk a while later, it was dark outside and she was shaking
from the cold. She quickly got up and left the room, closing the
door behind her; she stood there for a minute and was hoping that
it was all just a dream, a bad dream but still just a
dream.

She found Mike and the kids asleep on
the couch in the living room, the fire was about out and she was so
glad the furnace was repaired. Sarah picked up Mary and woke up
Teddy to go to bed; she tucked them both under their covers and
went back downstairs. Mike was still asleep on the couch, she shook
awake, and they both went to bed.

The next morning Sarah went through
the usual routine, woke the kids and made sure they got dressed,
had breakfast, and got on the bus; she noticed a newspaper lying at
the end of the lane. “Finally, they started delivering the paper;
we had paid a week ago.”

Sarah went inside and sat
at the kitchen table reading the paper and drinking coffee, she
seen an ad in the help wanted,
local food
bank needs volunteers to help with distributing
foods
, she has wanted to get out of the
house and this will be perfect, she can help people and still have
time to write on her book in the evenings.

She went down town looking for the
church where the food bank was located, it took her a while but she
finally found it and went inside. After filling out all the
necessary paperwork and talking to the director of the food bank
she was told to come back tomorrow and one of the women will show
her what to do. Sarah was so excited and wanted to share the news
with Mike and went to his office. It was looking a lot better, the
painting was finished and the office furniture was placed nicely
around the rooms. As she made her way to his office a woman turned
the corner and almost ran into her.

“
Oh, I’m sorry may I help
you?” The woman said startled.

“
It’s ok; yes could you
tell me where I can find my husband, Mike; Mr.
Heathrow?”

“
Yes, he is gone with
Danny.”

“
Danny?” Sarah
asked.

“
Danny is the painter, he
has been meeting with him for lunch almost every day for a week
now, Danny is introducing him to people around town since he
doesn’t know anyone,” the woman explained. “By the way, my name is
Tammi,” she said holding out her hand.

“
Nice to meet you Tammi,”
Sarah said shaking her hand, “would you let Mike know that I
stopped by when he returns please?”

“
Yes, of course,” Tammi
said with a smile and walked Sarah to the door. “Nice to meet you
Mrs. Heathrow, have a great day.”

When Sarah came home, she wanted to
write more but was too afraid to go upstairs to that room after
what happened the night before. She got a notepad and sat on the
couch writing, sometime after ten pages she fell asleep.

Chapter 11

Sarah woke up to the sound of the
front door slamming; she jumped up and turned to see the children
walking through the living room. The kids went to her and gave her
a hug before going up to their rooms to play. Sarah was planning
out what they would have for dinner when she seen Mike pull up the
driveway, he parked and came inside sitting down at the
table.

“
Tammi said you stopped by
the office today, I tried to call your cell but it just went to
voice mail,” Mike explained.

“
You know service sucks
out here in the sticks,” Sarah said smiling. “I was stopping by to
tell you that I found something to do a few days a
week.”

“
Oh, really, what are you
doing?”

“
I saw in the paper that
they needed volunteers at a food bank to help pass out food for
people in need.”

“
That’s great,” Mike said
and had a look on his face like he was thinking hard about
something.

“
I heard you have been
meeting some new people around town, through some painter
guy.”

“
Yeah, Danny, if I’m going
to be a lawyer here it’ll be good to know some of the people, we
should get out and make some friends anyway,” Mike said.

“
True, we should, maybe
I’ll make some new friends down at the food bank
tomorrow.”

“
Tomorrow?” Mike asked and
sounded surprised.

“
Yes, tomorrow morning,
they are going to start teaching me what to do; I guess they really
do need help badly.”

“
What time will you be
home?”

“
Oh, around three thirty,
early enough to be home when the kids get off the bus,
why?”

“
No reason, I just was
wondering where to find you if I needed you for some reason,” he
said with a smile.

Sarah was cooking steaks with baked
potatoes while Mike was going through the papers inside his
briefcase.

“
What are those papers?”
Sarah asked.

“
Oh just some possible
cases I have been looking through,” Mike answered.

“
Great, I hope you get
some business soon, because our bank account is taking a beating,”
Sarah said and waited to see how he would react.

“
Don’t worry I have a lot
of clients lined up, everything will be alright I promise,” he said
with a reassuring smile. “How are things going with your book?”
Mike said changing the subject.

“
Oh, it’s going good I
have a few chapters finished, it will be a while before I have it
completed,” she said as she set the table for dinner.

The family had dinner and spent the
evening watching TV, when they went to bed, Sarah lay awake for a
long while staring at the ceiling thinking about the ghosts she had
seen since living in the house, and this terrible Uncle Silas
clown, was it real or did she dream it, she finally went asleep but
had nightmares most of the night.

The next morning was the same as every
morning except that there was a dusting of snow on the ground, they
were used to lots of snow in Chicago but living out here with the
trees and open fields, and it was a beautiful sight. Sarah showed
up at the food bank early and had to wait for thirty minutes for
someone to arrive and unlock the doors, it was a woman in her
sixties, short and thin, and her hair was gray, Sarah walked up to
her.

“
Excuse me,” Sarah said to
the woman, “are you Susan?”

“
Hello dear, yes I am
Susan, you must be Sarah they said that I would have help today,”
Susan said as they both went inside the door at the back of the
church.

“
Yes I’m Sarah; it’s nice
to meet you, Susan.”

Sarah went inside with
Susan and turned on the lights; they went to the basement and
opened the doors where the food is stored. Susan showed her around
the old church and it was huge and beautiful, Sarah was impressed
with how many rooms it held and how much they did for the
community. She spent several hours there with Susan passing out
food to people, she felt good about helping and was surprised at
how many came in need of food. Just riding through town you would
never think that anyone would need it, but like her mother always
told her,
you only know what you know
about others
.

Sarah made it home before the kid’s
bus ran, as she pulled up to the house she was surprised to see
Mike’s vehicle parked out front. She went in and expected to see
him on the couch or at the table where he always looked at his
papers from work, but he was nowhere to be seen. The house was
silent. Sarah went to the restroom first then she would go look for
Mike, while in there she heard the sound of footsteps running up
the basement stairs, then the basement door slammed.