Short Story: House of the Waxing Moon Part I

1:  Ron’s Sighting

    Ron McCellan was at the fence of his house, trimming the hedges that were neatly lined up against the wooden fence.  He glanced only once at the house next door, numbered 1066, which stood vacant and dominant for the past thirty years.  With the sun silhouetting the house, it appeared to him as a dark mass looming in front of him.
    Whispers began to pour into his ears.  It was a phenomenon he experienced since he first arrived here in Oregon, and he assumed that it was merely the wind howling against the rocky cliff beside the house.  However, as he listened closely to the speaking wind, he could almost articulate specific words and phrases within the flowing gibberish.
    Glancing once again at the overshadowed house, his eyes perceived something camouflaged in the shadows.  He squinted hard at the black shape in the shadows, trying to identify what was lurking around the house.  Being a former cop, his first thought was that some kid was pulling a prank, or someone was prowling.  As he looked into the shadows, his eyes spotted a larger, more definite shape; there was no terrestrial explanation for it.
    The black shape that lurked in the shadow lunged forward and passed right through Ron’s body, followed by a strong jet of air.  The sudden draft made him shudder, and his spine seemed to turn into ice.  He was left standing with the chill in his body; it crawled up to his brain and paralyzed him with a profound fear.
    Most terrifying was the final shape he saw as it lunged at him.  He saw fangs.

2:  The Rieds

     On a muggy day in June, the Ried family arrived at the house labeled 1066.  First, the family car pulled up, and they stepped out of it.  There was Sean Ried, the father, with short black hair, green eyes, and quite a heavy build.  He was unemployed; searching for a permanent occupation for three years, he hoped that he would find a career opportunity in the town of Glowhill.  From the passenger side of the car came Anya Ried, the mother, who had long brown hair, blue eyes, and a sleek, slender body.  She herself tended to hold smaller jobs to further support the poor family, though now she wished to remain a simple, humble housewife.  Then, from the back seat, came out Patrick Ried, their teenage son, with blonde hair and brown eyes.  Even though he was quiet, didn’t work, and stayed at home most of the time, he secretly longed for some adventure.
    The trio stepped out from the car and stood there for a moment, looking at their new house.
    It was relatively modern in style, even though it was over thirty years old.  It was water-front property in southern Oregon, resting on a cliff’s edge and facing the Pacific Ocean.  There were square windows all around the house, and a round window on the front door with a strange ornate design sandblasted on it.  The design on the door seemed to stare at the family like a menacing face.  The front yard included well-trimmed grass and a large oak tree, blooming with leaves.  The back yard, however, was small and it had fencing along its perimeter.  Beyond the fence was a vast panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean, and there was a nearby beach a hundred feet below.  The rooms inside were quite large, but vacant with shadows criss-crossing each other.  Despite the house’s emptiness, it was well maintained, and the Ried family got it for a great deal.
    “Well, here’s our new house,” Sean said.
    “Holy crow!” Patrick exclaimed, “It’s huge!”
    “It’s very impressive,” Anya concurred, “But I wonder why the real estate gave you such a good deal on it.  This house could go for maybe half a million!”
    “Thank God it didn’t,” Sean replied, “Then I’d be paying for it for the rest of my life!”
    Shortly thereafter, the moving van arrived and unloaded the Ried family’s possessions.  There were only a few large boxes for the three family members, and they only had a few pieces of furniture.  As the movers proceeded to relocate the items into the house, the family opened the front door; they were surprised to find that the house came furnished.
    “Look at that!” Sean beamed, “There’s furniture in here!”
    “Maybe the past residents forgot it all,” Pat said.
    “I thought you said that this house was completely empty,” Anya argued.
    “That’s what they told me,” Sean pondered, “But I can see that they told me wrong.”
    The family went ahead to explore the house.  They found that, while the house came with furniture, there were no other decorations.  There were no pictures, portraits, posters, trinkets littering the tables, and there weren’t even tablecloths.  The house was bare except for the few articles of wooden furniture remaining, which were featureless and made of black mahogany.
    After exploring the large house, the family convened in the living room, with the large windows viewing the deck and the Pacific.  Sean asked, “So what do you think?”
    “It’s awesome!” Pat exclaimed.
    “Yes, it’s wonderful!” Anya said, “It just needs some decoration.”
    “Good! I hope to live here for an incredible long time,” Sean said.
    Eventually, the movers transported all the family’s belongings to the house, and left.  The Rieds spent the rest of the day unpacking the few boxes they had and relocating the furniture to their liking.
    As Anya helped with the unpacking, she couldn’t deny that something about the house gave her goose bumps.

3:  Nightly Encounter

    Late that night, the Ried family went to bed.  Long and dark hours passed, and Patrick awoke dead in the middle of the night, sweating from a bizarre nightmare he had.  He dreamt that he was falling down from the sky, miles in the atmosphere through the cloudy and expansive twilight.  He fell for an incredibly long time until he fell right on top of a rock, embedded with glowing rubies.  The rock impaled his chest and it went straight through from out his back.  But even after Pat fell on the stone, he was still alive and he was screaming from immense pain.  Then blood gushed out from his wound, and it trickled down the rock and all over the eerie landscape.  The bleeding and the screaming just wouldn’t stop, and the crimson fluid extended and flooded outwards beyond the horizon.  The Earth became so flooded with blood that the rising crescent moon and the stars all turned red, reflecting the crimson mess that plagued this odd dream.
    After a while of sitting upright in bed, recalling the anomalous nightmare, he rose from his bed and proceeded to use the bathroom.  He traveled blindly down the darkened hallway outside of his room to a door on the right, where he relieved himself. 
Afterwards, he came out and walked down the dark hallway.  As he laid his first step outside the bathroom door, the dark hallway seemed to grow darker and darker, until it was pitch black.  Initially, Patrick ignored the sudden change, assuming that it was an effect of his eyes readjusting to the darkness in contrast to the light inside the bathroom.  Within the darkness down the hallway, he could almost identify a shape forming.  It was some form of entity, black as the night, but lighter than the pitch-blackness in the hallway.  The strange shape molded itself from out of nowhere until it finally assumed a more recognizable shape.  It was now like a giant mouth.  Now this was something he could not explain.
    Within the darkness before him was a large set of jawbones of a saber-toothed tiger.  Patrick almost discarded it as a figment of his own imagination, but his heart raced and he was frozen in place.  The sounds of his own heart rapidly beating and his heavy breathing dominated the darkness, but he could have sworn that he heard another sound.  He could vaguely hear the sound of whispers.  He desperately tried to listen and comprehend the shadowy whispering, but he could not make it out.  It was too much like gibberish, as if thousands of voices were compressed into one sound.
    As Pat stood there, wondering fearfully about these strange occurrences, the set of fangs that was floating there the whole time began to pulse with a dim unearthly purple light, briefly illuminating the hallway.  Even with the light, however, the fangs still appeared darker than all darkness.
    Without warning, the maw lunged at Patrick, clamping the black fangs around his cold, sweating body.  He tried to scream, but no noise escaped his mouth as the fangs impaled his shivering body.  Spikes of coldness were sent down his back all the way to his feet.
    After a short moment of being in the mouth of the entity, he managed to break free of his paralysis, and he sprinted back into the bathroom.  There, he remained until he saw the pulsing purple light float past the gap under the bathroom door, and everything was pitch black again.  Then, he took the opportunity to quickly and silently dash down the hallway back to his own bedroom.   He stayed up for most of the night, still scared from this paranormal encounter.  It was an inexplicable event, but Patrick was sure of one thing:  the entity that attacked him was demonically evil, and something inside him wanted to destroy it.  Actually, something inside felt that he must destroy it.

*

    The next morning, Patrick awoke from a mere three hours of sleep, since he stayed awake for most of the night, still frightened from his bizarre encounter.  He could still recall the strange purple lights, the cold dark fangs that pierced his body, and the way his heart was beating so fast that he knew that it wasn’t a dream.  As he joined with his family at breakfast, it was the one thing he kept to himself.  He felt that his parents, especially his skeptical father, would ridicule and disbelieve him.
    As Patrick muttered a good morning, he fetched a box of cereal they’ve kept from their travels, and started to devour a bowl full of it.  Then Sean inquired, “So what do you think of the house, now that you’ve slept in it?”
    “Honestly,” Anya replied, “It’s kind of spooky.”
    “What?”
    “Last night, I woke up from an odd nightmare and I could have sworn that I heard voice.  I was worried about prowlers, but it sounded like thousands of whispering voices.”
    “That’s weird,” Sean said. “It must be the wind outside.  It does get windy here on the coast, and it must have been making odd noises as it blew over the house.”
    “Even then, I looked around and everything was pitch black, even though the curtains were wide open.”
    “There must not have been enough moonlight to illuminate the room,” Sean dismissed.
    Anya countered, “No, it was a full moon last night.  But either way, it had me a bit frightened.”
    “Well, it’s an older house and nobody’s lived here for thirty years.  It just needs to be broken-in and repaired a little bit.  What do you think, son?”
    “Sure dad,” Patrick replied briefly after a mouthful of cereal.
    “In that case,” Sean suggested, “we’ll sit here and see if anything happens.  If there’s nothing for a month, we will stay.  Though I really don’t see what the big deal is about these strange noises.”
    Anya warned, “Sean, we must consider the fact that there’s something wrong with this house, and that’s why we got it for so cheap.”
    “I have thought of that, but I checked the records of this house, and there’s nothing to suggest that there were any incidents in the past.  We should be fine.
    This remark calmed both Anya and Patrick, but they both still couldn’t deny the ominous and baffling sense of fear emanating from the house.  Anya predicted that even Sean would find it foreboding.
    A few moments later, Sean exited the kitchen.  When he was out of sight, Anya leaned to her son, and asked, “Did you hear anything last night?”
    “No,” Patrick lied, still wanting to keep his encounter a secret.  He was certain that even his mother would be skeptical.
    “Do you at least think that this house is a bit scary?” Anya asked.
    Patrick admitted, “A little.”
    Considering the evidence for a moment, Anya pondered whether the sounds last night were all her imagination, or an audio effect of the wind.  Deep down, she knew better than to admit to those theories.

4:  Ron McCellan

    Sean went out to buy groceries and Patrick retired to his room to read and listen to music, leaving Anya alone.  With nothing much else to do, she decided to examine the front yard.  There, she scrutinized the large oak tree and the grass.  They both seemed fine, so she proceeded to the back yard.  In the back, the grass was trim and the fencing was intact, and she didn’t see any need for yard work.  To make the place look more lively and colorful, she decided to plant flowers.
    Before she wanted to commence that project, she went to the fence and looked out at the view of the ocean.  Leaning on the fence, she relaxed herself and placidly regarded the blue Pacific stretching to the horizon.
    A voice startled her, “Don’t fall over, ma’am.”
    Anya whirled around and she found herself facing an old man next door, peering over the wooden fence.  He must have been sixty years old, with short gray hair and bright blue eyes.  Light wrinkles have invaded his skin about his face, but he still looked handsome.
    “I’ll be careful, sir,” Anya reassured the neighbor.
    She walked over to the fence adjoining the back yard to the neighbor’s back yard.  The old man extended an arm over the fence, and he said, “Hi, I’m Ron McCellan, your new neighbor.”
    “I’m Anya Ried, pleased to meet you,” Anya said, shaking Ron’s hand.
    Retracting his arm, Ron said, “I’ve been here all my life, and you must be the first people to life at this house for over ten years now.”
    “Ten,” Anya inquired, “I thought this house was abandoned for thirty years.”
    Ron gave a laugh, and he said, “Those real estate people don’t know everything! Ten years ago, several street kids broke into this house and stayed for a night or so.  I almost didn’t notice them until I saw them leave the house, in quite a hurry.”
    Anya asked, “Did you call the police?”
    “The old man laughed again, “The police? I was in the police back then! So I started to call for backup and I went to fetch my gun, but as I jumped out of the house to get them, they were all gone.  Then I had troopers search the house and the whole district for them, but there was no sign of them anywhere.  Now, these kids left the house in such a hurry, and we’ve searched the house for evidence, but it was clean and empty, as if there was nobody there.  That’s really unusual for squatters.”
    “That is odd.”
    “Yes, I’ve checked it inside and out.  But there was nothing! I got to tell you, though, that the house scared the Hell out of me then.”
    “Why?”
    “Well.  As I was walking around the house, I could have sworn that I heard some whispering.  But it was like a crowd or something.  That was really eerie.  In fact, I heard the same sound from the house just the other day.  Both times, I just couldn’t make sense of it.”
    “Can you tell me anything about the previous residents?”
    “Well,” Ron recalled, “Thirty years ago, this huge family moved in.  They must have had five children.  They were only there for three months, but one night, something strange must have happened.”
    “What happened exactly?”
    “As the months wore on, they all kept to themselves within the house.  One night, they all disappeared, just like those kids I told you about.  When their mail was piling high, we busted in and we found nobody inside.  Even their belongings were gone, but all of the furniture was still around.  It was inexplicable.”
    Anya could now feel the fear rising through.  Would we disappear like those earlier owners?
    As if sensing her thoughts, Ron dismissed, “Well, those were strange occurrences, but there must be a rational explanation for them.  I really don’t think it’s anything to worry about.”
    “I don’t doubt it,” Anya lied, “Thanks for the information.”
    “You’re welcome.”
    Then Anya departed from the fence back to the yard.  She went back into the house, where her husband was coming home with groceries.

5:  Black Ink

     Days passed without incident.  The Ried family grew accustomed to the new house, and they even grew used to the strange and creepy atmosphere it seemed to generate.
But their opinion changed when a new phantasm appeared.
     On a warm, sunny day in July, Sean was busy looking in the newspaper for possible job opportunities in the living room when he heard the whispers.  The jumble of words combined in a single inarticulate sentence floated into his ears, causing him to raise an eyebrow in intrigue.  He looked around, but he found nobody or anything making the noise.  He shrugged and returned to the classified section.
     Sean gasped, however, when he noticed that the ink in the newspaper started to melt away and trickle onto the table.  He dropped the paper on the table in a state of confusion.  On the table, the paper bled and gushed ink out of its fibers and it formed a puddle on the table.  Sean gazed at the pool of running ink for a moment, transfixed in astonishment.
     Then, Anya entered the room to offer Sean a Mountain Dew.  She too noticed the ink oozing on the table; gasping in fright, she almost dropped the soda.  Bubbling like a hot spring, the puddle of ink increased in size, growing bigger and bigger.  Soon enough, all of the ink from the paper was all gathered in a mysterious black pool, swirling with seemingly-endless darkness.
     At that time, Patrick emerged from his room to see what the commotion was, and he also saw the strange dark pool on the table.  The liquid remained still, swirling with all shades of black.  To Sean, it looked like a small black hole forming right in front of him.
From the vortex, more ink started to bubble up.  It flowed to the ends of the table, where it spilled over the edge and onto the carpet.  When this happened, all of the sunshine that filled the room before vanished, as if it was repelled by the blackness.  The Rieds stood and watched the darkness falling around them, feeling dread.
     Suddenly a column of black ink surged up from the vortex, roaring like a waterfall.  The explosion of darkness rose to the ceiling the way oil would spew from the ground.  The dark fluid heaved in the air, and it all came splashing down, covering everything in eerie darkness, and even splashing on the watching family.
     Anya shrieked as the liquid darkness splashed onto her, but Patrick and Sean were both too terrified to even move.
     As the fluid rushed to the ceiling, Patrick could make out the vague shape of fangs within the column.  It made him shudder.
     Then, the column of black fluid receded back into the vortex.  All of the black liquid that stained the room dissipated into the shadows, as sunlight returned.
     “Well,” Sean said, “That was most certainly strange.”
     “My God Sean!” Anya shouted, “What the hell was that?”
     Sean replied bluntly, “I have no damned idea!”
     “Maybe it’s a ghost,” Patrick suggested.
     “No!” Sean argued immediately, “This is not a haunted house! It can’t be!”
     Anya inquired, “Then what is it? What is going on here?”
     “I don’t know! But it can’t be a ghost! We’ve lived here for a few weeks now, and we’ve already decided to remain here.  Since then, there were no specters like that, and I refuse to believe that a black ghost thing would pop up now and drive us out.  For all we know, it could be a…hologram…a shared hallucination…or something else logical!”
     “Is that how you explain something like that?” Anya insisted. “A hologram? From where?”
     “Look, we’ll be on the look out for any more weird stuff for the next few months, and if there are any more ‘ghosts’, then we’ll move out and live like bums! How would you like that?”
     Anya answered, “It’s better than nothing!” She and Patrick parted ways.
     Sean went back to the living room table to retrieve his newspaper with the hopes that the ink has been fully restored.  To his utter astonishment, the newspaper was completely blank.

6:  Dr. Jennifer O’Rye

    By this time, Anya and Patrick were both convinced that the house was haunted.  It was Sean, who remained reluctant to believe in such apparitions.  Only a couple of days passed before another paranormal event was seen.
    It was a cloudy day, with gray haze casting dull darkness over the small town of Glowhill.  At this time, Anya was in the kitchen, washing dishes.  As she was scrubbing a plate, she noticed something moving in the corner of her eye.  She looked over, gasped, and allowed the plate to fall on the floor with a loud bang.
A small steak knife was hovering in the air.  It floated at Anya’s eye level, like a menacing bumblebee ready to sting and inject lethal venom.  She tried to call out for Sean, but her throat was dry, and in her fear she couldn’t form the words.  She became worried that if she made any sound, the knife would fly ahead and stab her in the heart, or worse, her head.
    Entering the kitchen for a quick drink, Patrick also froze when he saw the floating knife.
    With spontaneous verve, the knife hurled itself across the kitchen to the wooden cabinet across the room.  It made a cold draft in its wake, as it spun and sliced the air.  It struck the wooden cabinet with a loud whack, and remained visible for a long moment.  Afterwards, the knife melted into the cabinet door and disappeared.
    “Now your father can’t tell me this place is not haunted!” Anya said.
    Shortly after the sighting, Anya and Patrick got Sean over to the kitchen and they described the situation to him.  He was still skeptical.
    He closely inspected the cabinet door to which the floating knife was flung.  Despite his searches, he could not find any cuts or nicks in the wood, nor did he find the knife inside the cabinet.
    “Apparently, there is nothing here to indicate the presence of a floating knife,” Sean stated.
    “But both of us saw it!” Anya insisted.
    “Yeah right.”
    Regardless of his skeptical beliefs, Sean saw something floating in the air behind Patrick and Anya.  He pointed and asked, “What is that?”
    Pat and Anya both turned around to face the floating object.  Sean now saw that it was a hovering butcher knife, floating silently but filled with deadly intention.
    Without warning, the butcher knife flew across the room past Anya and Pat right at Sean’s head.  Sean uttered a cry as the knife passed through his head.  He suddenly imagined that his head was split open, with brains and blood leaking onto the kitchen floor.  He probed his head cautiously, and was grateful to find it intact.
    “What the Hell was that?” Sean asked profoundly.
    “You tell us,” Anya said, “we saw nothing.”
    “What?”
    “Dad, there was nothing there,” Patrick confessed. “But I did feel a cool draft.”
    Sean argued, “But I saw it! It was a floating knife, just like you said, only it flew right through my head!”
    “It is strange then that you are not beheaded,” Anya noted.
    “I know,” Sean said, “I can’t explain it, but I saw it coming straight at me and it almost felt real, but it’s not!”
    Anya asked, “So what are you going to do?”
    Sean thought it over for a moment, before admitting, “This place really is haunted.  I admit it now.  Unfortunately, it’s far too late to report this to the realtors, the deal’s already closed.  I don’t want to sell this house just yet anyways.  These specters may go away in a few months.  But, umm, we can call on some expert advice.  I think we should call in a paranormal investigator.”

*

    Days later, there was a person at the door.  Sean immediately came to answer it, and he encountered a woman standing there.  She was of medium build with blue eyes and full brown curly hair, and she wore a business suit with a skirt that came down to her knees.
    This woman declared, “Mr. Ried? I’m Dr. Jennifer O’Rye, the paranormal investigator you called for.”
    “Dr. O’Rye,” Sean greeted, “It’s a real pleasure to meet you.  Please come in.”
    Sean escorted her to the living room, where he introduced her to the rest of the family.  He explained to the investigator about the strange occurrences the family encountered.  Patrick, however, remained silent about his encounter in the dark hallway; he still doubted that anybody else would believe his story.
    After all of the accounts were discussed over a cup of tea, Jennifer said, “These have got to be the strangest accounts I have ever heard.  Most hauntings are less eccentric and violent.”
    “It happened exactly as we explained,” Sean defended.
    “I know, and I don’t doubt that there’s something peculiar about this house.  I’ve only been here for a few moments, and I can already feel something about it.”
    “You can feel it?” Anya asked.
    Jennifer nodded, “Generally, phenomenon like the poltergeists you mentioned can be better explained as electromagnetic disturbances or an effect of psychokenesis.”
    “Could you repeat that in English?” Sean requested.
    “Well, the phenomenon you encountered may be remains of previous emotional problems with the previous residents.  If a person was violently killed, he may leave behind a specter of himself with the hatred and sorrow that aroused from that murder.”
    “That cannot be the case here,” Sean argued, “I went through the records with the realtors, and there are no murder stories or anything to suggest violence.  This house has a clean history.”
    “The house may,” Jennifer explained, “But the general area may not.  I’ll have to check on records about the land, before the house was built.  To be honest, though, I don’t tend to believe in the psychokenesis theory myself, which states that ghosts and poltergeists are hallucinations and false electromagnetic visions from emotional experiences.  I tend to believe that quite a few of the hauntings experienced are actual spirits from beyond the grave.”
    “Do you think that may be happening here?” Anya asked.
    Jennifer answered, “I don’t know.  Be patient; I’ve just arrived.  I’d like to start gathering data, though, right now.  I can set up some infrared cameras tonight and see if we can detect any anomalies.  Have you taken any pictures of the house yet?”
    Sean replied, “No, we don’t have a camera.  We wanted to wait until we got a computer, so we can get a digital camera.”
    “In that case, we’ll need a camera.  Some ghosts can easily be seen in photographs and video tapes.”
    “Surely you can’t do all this observation by yourself.”
    “No, I can’t.  I’ve got a small freelance team of investigators with me.  They’ll be here if we really need them.”
    Patrick asked, “Won’t all these people drive the ghosts away?”
    “It may happen, but there’s still a chance that we’ll be lucky.”
    “So, where should we start?” Sean questioned.
    “You all don’t have to do much of anything, we have it all under control,” Jennifer assured, “but if you do experience any more paranormal activities, please tell me about it.”
    “All right.”
    “In the meantime, I would like to take some preliminary pictures and readings of the house with some standard equipment, to see if they’ll pick anything up automatically.”
    With that, Jennifer quickly went to her car outside, and she retrieved a couple of devices from its trunk.  Returning to the house, she went to the living room to address the family.
    Looking at the items in the investigator’s hands, Anya asked, “What’s all that?”
    “I have here a small Polaroid self-developing camera, and a temperature gauge.”
    “What’s the purpose of it all?” Sean asked.
    Jennifer explained, “The camera can sometimes catch anomalies that normally evade human vision.  The temperature gauge can detect cold spots, which usually indicates the presence of entities.”
When the family had no more questions to ask, Jennifer proceeded around the house, taking pictures of the rooms and taking temperature readings as she walked along.
    Later on, she reported back to the living room with several small pictures and a sheet of paper with the temperature readings of each room.
    “Well, the temperature readings vary a whole lot,” she explained, “but the coldest area seems to the basement, which is odd since there are heating vents down there.”
    “Oh, we have a basement?” Patrick inquired.
    Sean replied, “Yes we do, we must have forgotten all about it since we moved in.  We never explored it yet.”
    “Well, I don’t know if these temperature readings are supernatural or normal, but these pictures are most interesting,” Jennifer said.
    The photographs were all plagued by bright anomalies.  The living room picture was completely dark except for a single bright spot with multicolored streaks of light emerging from it.  The darkness was strange because the living room was well lit.  Pictures of the bedrooms showed more translucent streaks of colored light.  Shots of the hallways revealed an entity with what appeared to be triangular eyes and the fangs of a saber-toothed tiger – this photograph made Patrick shiver when he remembered his own encounter with that same being. 
     Then, Jennifer showed a picture of the basement, which contained the strangest apparitions of them all.  The basement floor appeared to be flooded with glowing red fluids, like magma, and a translucent shape streaked from the wall to the other side of the picture.  Upon close inspection, one could see many faces in the streak of light.
    “These shapes seem to indicate a traffic flow throughout the house,” Jennifer hypothesized. “Your basement may be a spiritual vortex.”
    Sean muttered sardonically, “Great, our house is a highway for ghosts.”
    “Should we move out?” Anya asked.
    Jennifer said, “No, your newfound presence here has already attracted some of these entities.  Moving around may cause them to move with you.”
    “Then what should we do?”
    “Just sit tight until the rest of our investigation team arrives.”
    Sean asked, “Will this cost much?”
    “Not at all,” Jennifer explained, “Many people find supernatural specialists to be excessively expensive these days, but we try to make it considerably cheaper for our clients.”

7:  The Crew

    The next day, Jennifer came back to the Ried house with three other people and two hard plastic cases of equipment.
    First, Jennifer introduced the three people to the Ried family, starting with a large bald man named Henry Smith, who held much interest in the paranormal and in food.
    Then there was Frank Sienfeld, who was a lot thinner than Henry, with green eyes and short brown hair and a goatee.  He also had much interest in the paranormal, but he also takes a passion for government issues and conspiracies.
    Last was a lady named Mandy Fielding, who was no more than eighteen, with blonde hair, tied in a ponytail, and dark blue eyes.  She ran away from home a few years ago to escape oppression from an abusive father, and despite her incomplete education, she was one of the most rational members of the team.
    The crew entered the house and they deposited their gear on the floor in the living room.  They started to set it up as a temporary high-tech workstation.  They planted several small infrared cameras throughout the house at selected points, and they were connected to a laptop computer.  Also, an electromagnetic meter installed in the kitchen, and a laser tracking system was placed in the basement to detect electric movement.  Anya watched the installation of the equipment, and when it was all done, she was satisfied that the gear did not decrease the interior value of the house.
    After the house was wired with tracking devices, Jennifer went out to the town’s local library to research the house’s distant history, leaving the crew behind to monitor the house.
    Henry was munching on a bag of Dorito chips as Frank was discussing how the Apollo moon missions were faked.  Patrick was standing nearby, watching them work and converse continuously at the laptop computer.
    From out of nowhere, Patrick was startled by a feminine voice, “Hey, what’s up?”
    Patrick turned and found Mandy standing nearby.  Patrick answered nervously, “Nothing much.”
    “Doesn’t it suck to live in a haunted house?” Mandy asked frankly.
    “Yeah.  But wouldn’t it suck more to travel around the country visiting them all?”
    “Kind of, but after a while, you get used to it all.  It’s all just a bunch of harmless electrons or something, so I’ve learned to accept the strange and unusual as hard data.  The money’s also good.”
    “What an interesting job.”
    “So, in the short time you’ve been here, what was the scariest thing you’ve ever saw?”
    Patrick immediately thought of the fanged specter in the hallway that one night.  He could still recall how the huge spikes of teeth engulfed his body, sending ripples of numbing cold through his body.
    Feeling uncomfortable with sharing that story with a total stranger, Patrick was unsure about telling his story to a complete stranger.  Looking at Mandy, he considered his options.  She was close to his age, and she claimed that she was used to strange and unusual events.  He felt that she could accept the account with more respect than the adults.
    “I think, of all the places I’ve been to, this house is the only place where I’m afraid of the dark,” Patrick expressed.
    “The dark?”
    “You never know what lurks around in the dark.”
    “Yeah, the fear of the unknown,” Mandy stated, “But, you know, everything is just like daytime, but without the light.”
    Feeling more comfortable, Patrick then told his story.  He did his best to describe the frightening saber-toothed entity he saw in the hallway.  He went on to express his fear that, even for something paranormal, this house was excessively strange.
    The conversation was abruptly interrupted by a noise.  It was the whispers, compressed voices that floated around the house.
    “That strange noise,” Mandy remarked, “did you hear it? It sounds like whispering.”
    “Oh yeah,” Pat explained, “We’ve been hearing that since we moved in.  Creepy, isn’t it?”
    “It’s creepy as creepy can be.” She turned to Frank and Henry, and she asked, “Did you hear it?”
    “I heard something,” Frank admitted, “but I thought it was just the wind outside.”
    Henry reported gruffly with chips in his mouth, “I heard nothing.”
    “Whatever it was,” Mandy concluded, “it couldn’t have been the wind because there is no wind outside.”
    “I wonder if the cameras picked it up,” Frank pondered.  On the computer, he had the cameras replay the video segment from only seconds ago.  He increased the volume on the laptop, and he found to his disappointment that the cameras picked up no such noises.
    “Nothing.  How odd,” Frank stated.
    “I still can’t hear it,” Henry complained.
    “Then stop eating those damned Dorito chips! Nobody can hear anything when you’re munching and chomping and crunching!”
    Henry moaned as he dropped the bag of chips on the floor beside him.
    “No matter, the cameras picked up nothing…”
    “Look there,” Mandy pointed to the monitor.
    On the video playback, the basement, painted red with the infrared filters, showed orange streams of invisible light extruding from the walls, with stretched faces visible in the light.  This segment lasted for ten seconds, before the streaks of light dissipated.
    “What is that?” Henry asked.
    Frank concluded, “It’s just like that picture Jennifer rook.  It looks like a stream of ghosts.  They all appear to be coming out of the basement wall.”
    “Maybe we should have a look down there,” Mandy suggested.
    Everybody agreed to the proposal, and Frank grabbed a camcorder with an infrared filter as he followed Mandy, Pat, and Henry to the basement.
    Down in the cold, dank, dusty basement, there was a very light draft, but it was so slight that nobody thought to relate it to the poltergeists that haunted the house.  Frank looked at the small screen on the camcorder, showing the basement filled with red spectrums.  There was a steady flow of crimson, orange, and purple light emanating from a solid stone wall and passing right through his body.  They advanced to the concrete wall and examined it with vigor.  After a thorough investigation, they all found nothing.
    “Well, this infrared lens shows the lights coming out of the wall here,” Frank said.
    “Ghosts are not solid,” Mandy pointed out, “They would be wandering right through the Earth, passing through the house.  Just like Jennifer said, it’s a ghostly highway.”
    “But why here? This is just a house.  Ghosts would be attracted to something more meaningful, like a monument or a church.”
    “The ley lines.  I’m sure Jennifer will take that in mind when she’s researching.”
    Above everyone’s heads, there was a single dim light bulb hanging on a chain from the ceiling.  It suddenly burst, raining glass and hot tungsten on the floor.  Everybody recoiled with the sudden explosion, as darkness befell the whole room.  The wall parted open, releasing sulfur into the basement.  The four people backed away from the opening as it grew bigger, and a red glow crept along the edges of the portal. 
     A surge of glowing fluid spilled from the massive fissure onto the basement floor.  By this time, the four people had fled from the basement up the wooden stairs back to the doorway that adjoined the basement to the kitchen.  They looked down and saw the glowing red river rushing from the cracked wall to the other side of the basement.  It looked like lava, for it was red and orange with a crusty black surface.  A hot, ghastly stench of sulfur rose to the ceiling.  With the immense heat from the fluid, the bottom part of the staircase ignited into flames.
    “Our house is now a volcano,” Pat mumbled.
    “That’s impossible!” Frank remarked, “A volcano would be located on a crater, or somewhere near tectonic activity.  There’s none of that here.  This must be a supernatural trick.”
    Anya approached the group of people huddled at the doorway, and she inquired, “What’s all this ruckus?”
    “Well, there’s liquid hot magma flowing in the basement,” Frank explained.
    “What?”
    “See for yourself,” Frank gestured. 
Anya peered down the stairs to the basement.  Darkness enveloped the chamber below; the lava has receded.  Frank could only gasp, as Patrick, Mandy, and Henry were dumbfounded with confusion.
    “Are you joking with me?” Anya asked.
    “No mom,” Patrick clarified, “It must have been another ghost thing.  The basement was flowing with this lava.  But now it’s all gone.”
    Anya and the other four crept down the staircase, to find that the rupture in the wall was gone.  All that was in the basement were the remains of the broken light bulb.

To be continued...

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