Demon House

Copyright © 2015 by Will Strange.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-5035-8192-0

                eBook             978-1-5035-8191-3

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Rev. date: 07/13/2015

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Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PROLOGUE: STRANGE STORIES

PART I: RETURN TO THE MONSTER

PART II: RUNNING AWAY

PART III: AFTON, GEORGIA, JUNE 1993

PART IV: THE HOUSE ON WITCHER STREET

PART V: THE MOST HAUNTED TOWN

PART VI: DESCENT

PART VII: FACING THE MONSTER

EPILOGUE: WAKING AND WRITHING

Except that the monster never dies. Werewolf, vampire, ghoul, unnameable creature from the wastes. The monster never dies

—Stephen King

Cujo

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

M ANY THANKS TO many people. But especially: Mark Larsen for the mouth in the stairs. Dr. Nadia Behizadeh who told me the house should be green. Kevin Peart, co creator of Chiller House . The ladies of 320 Brooks Avenue for putting up with me. Edmund Royster, Matt Laoisa and Joshua Shaffrick for taking such an interest in Afton’s haunted goings on. J. D. Vann for introducing me to H. P. Lovecraft. Dad for sharing stories of the real Afton. Mom for believing.

PROLOGUE

STRANGE STORIES

I have heard, as everybody else has, of a spirit’s haunting a house; but I have had my own personal experience of a house’s haunting a spirit.

—Wilkie Collins

H EY— HEY KID, turn off your walkman. Get off your skateboard and come here a second, will ya? Yeah, I recognize you, too— from the plane. We sat next to each other. Remember? Yup, it’s you. We keep running into each other, don’t we? I thought, at first, it was a coincidence, but not anymore.

Do you like strange stories?

Would you like to hear mine?

I used not to like strange things; but that’s not the case anymore.

Do you have a few minutes?

What’s that? No, it won’t take long.

You’ll want to hear this. Trust me.

It’s sort of a romance, to be honest. No, not like Jane Austen. It’s about a guy— me, Kevin Yoo. Hi. A morbidly obsessed, down on his luck fella who moves to a small town in the middle of nowhere and falls in love— with a house. Yes, a house. He develops a dark obsession with it, really. And the house, well, it falls in love with him, too. Then the house, see, it has no intention of letting him go, so it tries to kill him— over and over again. To eat him alive, you might say. Literally. Pretty gruesome, huh? So you see, this is a different kind of romance altogether. One with buckets of blood pouring out of the walls and severed heads turning up in unexpected places and things that go bump in the night.

But that’s not all. There’s more. And worse. An Old God lurking in the darkness beneath the house. Endless labyrinthine passages carved out by the dead. Red litten caverns where unspeakable rites are acted out— gruesome sacrifices made with offerings of blood and flesh all in an attempt to raise a necromancer. A gateway to the land of the dead. An attempt to bring about the end of the world— all that kind of stuff.

Now I have your attention, right? Would you still like to hear it? Think you can handle it after what I’ve just told you? Okay, great. But you’ve been warned.

Well, let’s see… Where to begin.

I know.

We’ll start in medias res, as the Romans say— you know, to get the action going.

It seems like it was all such a long time ago— a lifetime ago, which, in reality, I guess it was.

Because, you see, this story starts the day before I died.

PART I

RETURN TO THE MONSTER

Once inside, one would go endlessly along its twisting paths without ever finding the exit… There was no possible way to escape. In whatever way they ran, they might be running straight to the monster.

—Edith Hamilton

Mythology

T HE HOUSE, IT got her.

That’s all I can say.

Over and over again.

I keep muttering it to myself. I can’t stop.

I’ve got a crazy, shaky feeling like I haven’t eaten in days. Maybe I haven’t.

Where’d you find him, Jerry?

Sheriff Sadler is kneeling in front of me, looking back over his shoulder at Deputy Hansford who is standing a few steps back, thick arms folded over his barrel chest.

I have a vague recollection of having seen him before once or twice since I came to this town.

I glance down, see a pair of hands resting in my lap, filthy, mud covered, knuckles scraped and bleeding. They belong to something that just crawled out of a grave. Sight of them startles me. I jerk back. The hands leap up at me.

Oh God, they’re my hands.

I let them fall back into my lap. No less relieved knowing they’re mine.

Over off Witcher Street, says deputy Hansford. He was just wandering down the road, barefoot.

Did he say anything?

Only what he’s been saying.

The house. It got her.

Kid, where’s your shoes?

For the first time, I realize I’m barefoot. My feet are caked with dried mud. I have no idea what happened to my shoes.

I’m shaking so bad that when the sheriff fills a plastic cup with water from the water cooler and tries handing it to me I can’t even hold it. He reaches up to steady my hand, helps me hold the cup and tilt it so I can take a drink. Even so, most of the water spills down my chin and onto my bloody, shredded shirt.

Looks like you got clawed by a lion, Sheriff Sadler says, meaning the ragged tears in my shirt, the numerous scrapes and cuts on my face and arms.

The house. She did it.

My thoughts are murky like the water at the bottom of a lake. I can only remember nightmare flashes. The putrescent eyeless horror peering in through my bedroom window, staring at me with black sockets. The wormy mass in the unlit upstairs hall that sucked my arm in up to the elbow. The halls and doors and stairs that shifted and changed, subtly, so subtly I couldn’t ever place my finger on just what it was that was different from before. I also remember—

The heart.

The hideous heart. Beating— pounding like thunder in the darkness beneath that monster house.

The forest of veins spreading out through the blackness, thickening as they went, pulsing with sick life, splitting the rock, delving down, down, down…

God, how far down does it go?

The House.

It is just the beginning. The wart on the surface. The tip of an iceberg.

The bulk of the horror lies undisturbed in the darkness underneath. Waiting to manifest itself— to break out of the sewer holes all over Afton in the form of gore dripping squid tentacles.

The house is finite. It has walls, a roof, floors, can be measured more or less, despite its trickery.

But that gorey web of pulsing veins in the darkness underneath spreads and spreads…

Thoughts of that bloody skein fills me with revulsion and I shudder almost convulsively, put one filthy hand to my mouth, smell the dank earth beneath my nails as my fingertips touch my lips.

The earth I’m smelling came out of that darkness. I jerk my hand away quickly, feel tempted to spit on the floor.

The heart? Son, what are you talking about?

I must have been babbling out loud, because Sheriff Sadler is giving me a funny look, squinting at me, trying to make sense of what I’m saying, like he’s talking to a crazy person.

A sudden clear picture of the heart flashes in my mind and my stomach rolls. It feels like I’m going to be sick. I lurch forward, but nothing comes out. I’ve already thrown up all there is to throw up. Nothing else is coming out. I’m shivering bad again, leaning forward, hugging myself for reassurance, sobbing a little, I realize.

He’s in shock, Jim, Hansford says.

Yeah, the Sheriff agrees. Edith, go call Dr. Crickshaw, get him over here right away.

Yes, chief, says a woman standing nearby and she hurries across the room to the phone at her desk.

The wave of nausea passes. A few moments more and I can raise my head again without the world swimming out of focus.

Sheriff Sadler has his hand on my shoulder, bracing me, keeping me from falling out of my chair. I look around now, take in my surroundings. I’m sitting beside a water cooler. The sun is shining in brightly through the glass door.

God, it’s beautiful.

The sun.

Especially after the darkness.

Across the room, the woman, Edith, is on the phone. I can hear her speaking in hushed tones to the doctor, I guess.

Yes, Jim asked if you could come over right away. Like I say, I don’t think it can wait. No, he seems pretty bad off.

More water? the Sheriff asks me.

I shake my head, answer weakly, Please.

My throat feels coarse as sandpaper. My voice is hoarse, raspy like I’ve been screaming a lot lately.

Which I have.

The heart.

Oh God.

He fills another cup, hands it to me. I can handle this one on my on. I gulp down the water greedily. I’ve never been so thirsty in my entire life. I see the tension go out of Sheriff Sadler’s shoulders, like taut rope slackening all of a sudden, falling from the ceiling, coiling in a heap, a conjurer’s trick dismissed. He knows he’s not going to lose me. I’m not going to go catatonic or start foaming at the mouth and babbling unstoppably like a lunatic. He gives me a little relieved smile.

That’s better. I’m Jim Sadler, he says with a sigh.

I nod. I know.

You’ve had a bad scare, looks like. Do you remember your name, son?

Yes, I know my name. It just takes a moment and a massive amount of effort to move my lips and form the words.

K— Kevin— A pause, a deep breath and then I can get the full name out. Kevin Yoo.

The name sounds alien to me. That name belonged to a person I used to know, a dim lit stranger, a half remembered dream. A lifeless silhouette. It was the name of the person who went into the house on Witcher Street three months ago. Even as I say it, hear the name in my own ears, traveling what seems like miles of ear canal to reach my brain, I don’t know if the name still applies to me anymore.

Sheriff Sadler gives me another encouraging smile.

That’s a start. More water?

Still shaky, but feeling more confident now, encouraged by his support, the familiar surroundings of a normal and unpossessed building, the warm sun on my face and scratched arms, I say, No thank you.

Do you know where you are?

Yes. Afton, Georgia.

The day?

That’s a puzzler. I don’t know. I’ve been lost in that house so long, I can’t remember.

The month and year, at least?

That one, I can handle.

August… 1993.

He nods.

Jim, Edith says from behind her desk. Dr. Crickshaw, well, he said— um, there was no way in hell he would come over here. But not to worry; I called Dr. Simmons over in Clay County. He’s on his way. Might be a minute.

Thanks Eddy.

Why the hell won’t Crickshaw come? Hansford asks.

Don’t know, Jerry. He didn’t say.

Sheriff Sadler turns back to me. You worked for Dr. Crickshaw, didn’t you Kevin? Did something happen between you two?

I’m trying hard to remember. But honest to God, the fog just hasn’t cleared that much, yet. I give up. Shrug.

You hungry? Want a sandwich or anything? I’ve got egg salad in the fridge or Jerry can run down and pick up something for you at Birdie’s.

I shake my head violently. I can’t eat now. Not yet. Not after what I’ve seen.

Maybe I’ll never eat again.

Maybe I’ll never sleep again, either.

So kid, what in the hell happened to you? deputy Hansford asks.

I’m not a kid— not by a long shot. I’m thirty three. But I have a youngish look. Asian genes, I guess. It always used to bother me that people thought I was younger than I was. But he doesn’t mean any harm. So I let it pass. People thinking I’m still a kid is the least of my worries right now.

How to say it? How to explain?

They’ll think I’m insane.

Am I?

No.

I know what I saw. What happened— the terror I’ve experienced these past weeks— it’s real. I lived it. I survived.

I open my mouth and let the words come out, the only words that will come.

The house. It got her.

Sheriff Sadler and Deputy Hansford glance at each other. The troubled look in Sheriff Sadler’s eyes passes quickly, but not before I catch it.

We’re sharing something. A feeling of mutual unease, a feeling that crawls and squirms like worms in the stomach.

In that moment I realize.

He’s heard this before.

Deputy Hansford doesn’t believe me. I can tell by his face, the smirk tugging at the right corner of his mouth, just waiting for the right excuse to be a smartass. But Sheriff Sadler— he knows something. Has seen something. That momentary wince of unease and long suppressed pain gave it all away. Sheriff Sadler clears his throat.

What house are you talking about, son?

It’s not so much a question, I can tell. More like a formality. He knows the answer already, even if he doesn’t want to hear it.

The one— on Witcher Street.

There are other houses on that street, of course. And yet, there’s really just the one.

One house.

IT.

I can tell at a glance that he knows. For a second, the hairline fractures of vulnerability show on his face. Then he straightens up, gives me a stern look. Kevin, I’m a pretty easy going guy, anybody in Afton will tell you that, but if this is some kind of joke—

It’s not a joke!

My voice is louder than I intend.

Okay, okay, he says.

You know the house.

Sheriff Sadler sighs. Yes, I do.

And Hansford agrees. Everybody knows that damn house.

There’s a sense of weird relief in Sheriff Sadler’s secret knowing. He is tied to it somehow. I don’t know exactly how, but those bloody threads are stretching out thin and invisible from all the way across town, from deep in that basement beneath the house on Witcher Street and they’ve slithered inside Jim Sadler’s shirt, burrowed down into the flesh of his chest and pierced his heart. He might not know the full extent of the horror that I’ve been through, but he knows something. Something from a long time ago.

That house has given lots of people in Afton trouble through the years, Sheriff Sadler says.

I read the book, I manage. The one by Stanley Shaftrick. You know it?

Yup, I know it, says Sheriff Sadler, but he doesn’t sound glad that he does.

Demon House, says deputy Hansford. His tone says it all.

Here we go again.

A young woman went missing thirty years ago in that house, I say.

Yup, says Sheriff Sadler. I know that too.

And Shaftrick, he wrote a book about the disappearance.

Sheriff Sadler is quick to correct me. "He wrote a book— loosely based on the disappearance that occurred in that house in the summer of 1963. He has had to make this correction many times over the years, I can tell— to tourists, thrillseekers. He says it flat from rote memory, emotionless like an automaton. Shaftrick was an opportunist. A schlock meister. He heard about what had happened here— and he saw a way to make a little money off of it. So he cobbled together what little he knew about the case— which wasn’t much, by the way, he adds emphasis on that point. And what he didn’t know he made up, threw a few ghosts and goblins into the mix, bleeding walls, screams in the night, pigs climbing on the ceiling, that sort of thing— and churned out a sensationalist piece of garbage. He got rich on other people’s suffering— that poor girl’s family for one— I know. I remember. I was there.

And the good people of Afton? Well, they got stuck with Demon House. He says the last part, the title of the book, with a touch of bitterness like the words taste bad in his mouth.

That’s what I thought, too, I tell him. I came— not believing in that sort of thing at all.

Yup, we get plenty of gawkers. Every year. Vandals. Kids starting fires on Halloween. Crank calls— ‘Help, Demon House got my friend, my mother, my cousin’, that sort of thing.

I would probably have thought it was funny once too, I guess.

But it’s not funny now? he asks me.

No, not anymore.

Can you talk about it?

I nod, swallow.

Silence.

What are they waiting for?

I realize they’re waiting for me to start talking.

I take a moment to get my thoughts together, take a shaky breath and begin.

I moved in there three months ago, at the beginning of the summer.

That’s the only sentence I get out before deputy Hansford interrupts with a snort.

Jesus, I knew it. A damn prankster.

Sheriff Sadler gives me a disgruntled look, points a finger in my face. Son, I warned you, if this is a joke, it ain’t funny.

What? I moved in there three months ago. Do you want to hear this or not?

Bullshit, says Hansford, shaking his head. He’s scowling down at me, face reddening, fed up suddenly. He was maybe ready to give my story a chance but not now.

Why? What’s so unbelievable in what I’ve just said.

No one’s lived in that house for thirty years. Not since the disappearance. Not since the summer of sixty three.

What?

I heard what he said, but it doesn’t make sense, like he’s telling me up is down and down is up. There’s a sudden danger things might start spinning again. Maybe— maybe I’m still in the demon haunted house, lying asleep in that drafty upstairs bedroom with that eyeless thing crouched down out on the roof, looking in at me, prying at the window with its chicken bone fingers, trying to get in. Things are about to turn terrifying— walls crumbling, corpses rising, the sheriff’s flesh melting off his face.

I give it a second, expecting the worst, expecting the world around me to toilet flush down into a sewerific nightmare. But nothing happens. The sheriff is still the sheriff, flesh clad and there are no corpses. I’m awake.

That might be even worse.

It’s abandoned, kid, boarded up, Hansford says to me. Condemned. Not fit to live in. Certifiably uninhabitable.

They see the confusion on my face. I feel a little dizzy. My stomach has turned leaden all of a sudden.

No— I lived there. For three months. I was there. In that house.

Sheriff Sadler’s stern look has softened to one of near pity. He just shakes his head.

I feel a sense of panic spring up in my gut, let loose like a bunch of terror stricken mice darting out of holes in the ground, scattering in all directions, shitting little pez sized mouse pellets as they flee.

Take me there.

Sheriff Sadler raises both his hands in a preemptive kid calming gesture. Son—

Take me there, I say, stiffening in the chair. I’m starting to breath heavy. Now the panic stricken mice running loose inside me have eyes tinged red with anger.

Calm down, son; you’ve had a shock, that much is clear. Getting upset is only going to make it worse.

You have to take me, I say again. I can prove it. I’ve lived there all summer. I—

I look helplessly from Sheriff Sadler to deputy Hansford and back again.

I can prove it— if you’ll just take me over there. Let me show you. Please.

I need to see it too, I guess. What they’ve said has started to pick at my already unbalanced brain. Little weeds of self doubt are already springing up like dandelions through the cracks, spreading their seeds of confusion in turn.

They have to know. I have to show them.

I can’t stop that crazy person pleading tone from creeping into my voice.

Deputy Hansford gives a shrug— a what-the-hell gesture.

Sheriff Sadler looks me in the eyes for a few seconds. I’m shaky, but I hold his gaze.

The clock on the wall ticks away the seconds. It’s right over my head, but it sounds echoey and a million miles away. A dream sound.

I’m not crazy.

That’s what I want him to read in my eyes.

But those dandelions have spread all over the inside my skull, a whole dark field full of them, fuzzy heads swaying in a cold cranial breeze. I look away.

Am I sure anymore?

Every second that passes makes everything that happened in that house feel more and more like a bad dream. They’re so hard to remember when you wake, even though they’re so blood drippingly vivid at the time. Now that I’m out and away from the house, I feel free of Its spell. It’s power— It’s hold over me is fading.

No.

That’s what It— the House— wants me to think— so It can go on spreading those veins in the dark in all directions, fathomless and without end, snaring the whole damn town. I must face the house on Witcher Street once more.

Sheriff Sadler takes a deep breath, blows it out, runs his fingers through his hair, mulls it over a second, chin resting in his hand. He’s looking off somewhere far away in his mind, I can tell, chasing a memory from a long time ago. Maybe he’s looking for that woman who went missing all those summers back.

Maybe he’s got those dandelions in his head, too.

When he looks at me again, it’s with the ghost of old hurt is his eyes, old wounds being opened up. A trickle of fresh blood rising to the surface. Three decades late. I can see it.

Alright, he says. Let’s go.

Before we leave, he makes me take a shower. I don’t want to. I just want to go back to the house and get it over with. But I am admittedly a bit of a mess, shredded, mud spattered and bleeding. When I see myself in the locker room mirror it’s a shock. My hands were bad. My face is worse.

Not just the dirt and dried blood. But I’m looking gaunt. Hollow eyes. Crazy looking eyes.

Weird.

That’s not the reflection I saw in the mirrors at the house on Witcher Street.

That’s not what the house wanted me to see, I guess.

Sheriff Sadler gives me a pair of spare sweats and a tee shirt from the locker room to wear. And we’re off.

What am I supposed to tell Dr. Simmons? Edith asks. He canceled all his afternoon appointments for you.

Tell him we’ll be back, Sheriff Sadler says over his shoulder. Give him the egg salad if he wants it.

But Jim— Edith protests, there is something so comforting— so reassuring in her small town worries and daylight concerns.

Neither of us waits long enough to hear what she is going to say.

On the car ride over my heart is pounding. I’m running my thumb knuckle back and forth over my lower lip. Over and over. I don’t even realize I’m doing it.

You okay? Sheriff Sadler asks, glancing over.

I stop picking at my lip, straighten up, say, Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.

I’m not, of course.

What if he’s right?

What if we get there and the house is boarded up, abandoned, in ruins, just like he says?

What then?

Does it mean I’m crazy.

Or—

Does it mean the house has a power?

A power to twist reality in this town.

Slow down. Take a breath.

The day is bright and warm. I close