A little over a year later, I found myself driving back down the "trail, unimproved" in my jeep, with three five gallon jugs of gas in the backseat, a sheet of handwritten prayers tucked into my pocket, and my dog Baxter curled up near the jugs. Leaving with these things in hand, I told my mother the area where I was going to 'hike', and took off.
I only hoped they were enough to finish what I had started.
I kept the events of that place to myself, knowing that I had experienced what some in my faith might call "a minor miracle”. I had told the story about my first ghostly encounter as a kid to some people as a means of entertainment, (much like I am now). The room would always get quiet shortly afterwards, until someone would softly mutter "That's fucked up"…and that was that.
Still, I knew the house was there, and unlike in the first case, I knew that I had disturbed whatever presence haunted that house.
I arrived at noon, with the first whispers of an early summer thunderstorm stirring in the horizon. If this fire ended up out of my control, I had hoped to let nature deal with it. I hauled the three cans out of the jeep, along with a coil of rope, and a shovel. I kept my knife in the small of my back, and clumsily hefting the three cans, I walked towards the house, ignoring the sudden sinking feeling in my stomach.
Where there had once been a good wind moving through the wood line died when I began walking towards the house. Baxter's tail went stiff, and his hair stood on end again. Everything was literally silent; No birds flew, no trees moved. It felt like high noon at Dodge City, and to break the tension I blew the first few notes of that song you hear in most spaghetti western flicks.
Apparently, I hadn't broken shit; I had only driven it away from me in a desperate moment, and I couldn't be sure when it might come back. As I set the cans down, one of the 2x4s from the second story window chose that time to pop out, making an empty thunk as it hit the top of the awning. Baxter barked once, and I loosened St. Mike's medal from inside my shirt, wearing it openly while spreading the contents of the first can around the outside of the house.
The complete lack of anything happening was more frightening, I believed, than if it had appeared gibbering and screaming around the corner of the house. I took a note from Ghostbusters, of all things, and tried my damndest not to think about what the hell it could do. When my foot got caught around a root, I let out a scream, thinking that it was coming out of the ground for me. My heart was beating as loudly as the first time I jumped out of a plane, and I was relieved when the first can was finally empty.
The second and third cans were meant for the inside of the house, and while it was still noon, the light inside seemed less substantial. The door opened like a yawning mouth, inviting me inside. Calling Baxter to my heels, I marched in and immediately spread the gas around as fast as I could. With my first step, a hard stiff wind blew from the direction of the storm front, and the entire house groaned in protest. The hand I had seen before had not moved an inch from where I remembered it, but I avoided it all the same.
As I went into the kitchen, I took a moment to look around, and noticed on the counter a fresh patch of footprints on the dust, about infant sized. I quickly drowned them under the onslaught of gas, and had used up over half of the second can when I saw the entryway into the parlor.
Draped over the windows were large white sheets, each painted with a single pentacle…A hex mark, in other words. Was it designed to keep something in…from escaping? The darkness was more alive in there, and my bravado failed me when I tried to take the first step in, pouring the gas from the safety of the threshold and letting it leak into the room. Something thumped around upstairs, and I felt I didn't have much more time before things got out of hand again. I went back to the center of the kitchen, grabbed the last can, and started spreading it on the hallway walls that led to the upstairs. I definitely wasn’t going up there, but I didn't count on the small trapdoor in the pantry, leading to what might have been a root cellar.
Flicking my lighter, I could see that it was covered with steel-banded wood, holding down the rusting door. There was no need for a lock, as the boards over the door were bolted into cement around the trapdoor. Nothing was getting out of that. All the same, when I flicked my lighter shut and continued on my crusade, something wailed in the dark place under this house, causing my dog to howl in response while I dropped the gas, spilling it all over my boots and jeans. Something down there made the house shake, sending loose chunks of ceiling down on me.
It was time to leave.
I drove my knife though the jug and tossed it down the hallway, ignoring the persistent thump thumping upstairs, like a heartbeat, and ran until I was clear of the pooling gas. Running my lighter along the wall, the gas began to spread into blue flames running in both directions. Carefully keeping the flame away from me, I ran for the door.
The inside of the house had shielded us from the wind that waited for us outside. The storm had snuck up on us and I was almost thrown back by the sudden gush. Reaching down I picked up the dog, threw him over my shoulder, and ran towards the car, taking shelter behind what trees I could. I turned back towards the house, and the fire was starting to take, licking against the dried and rotted wood. I stood there as the wind bent the trees almost sideways, and watched as one tongue of flame formed a blue ring around the house.
Then the smell came, the stench of rot and the decay from last time, with unseen figure slamming around the doorway, highlighted by the flames. I felt my fear drain away at that moment…all the anxiety that had been building was replaced by a sudden anger. Anger at what, I didn’t know….maybe at whatever had caused all this to happen; Regardless, I laid Baxter on the ground, drew my knife, and took a step forward. I was literally seeing red, going into the berserker drive that had won me so many fights before.
"I'm right here motherfucker! I'm not going anywhere!" I screamed over the wind, as if it was just another dude talking shit. The absurdity of it all still strikes me today, a guy yelling at the air and brandishing a knife like a retard at something that wasn’t there. Baxter came up next to me, growling low in his throat, eyes set deep in his massive head.
I still wonder today why it didn't charge me. Was I just taking out my rage and frustration on a figment of my own imagination? Or was it really there, and merely unused to simple human courage, of bravery that drew a line in the dirt and proclaimed "Here, and no further". Whatever the reason, it stopped thrashing, and the outline of flames surrounding it disappeared.
The red faded from my vision shortly after the first story ceiling caved in, and I walked backwards the entire time, never taking my eyes from the house.
I went to the jeep, got in with the dog, and we had dinner at Subway.
Roast beef with bacon for two, on cheese bread. It started to rain when we arrived at Subway, and kept on after we had returned to the smoking embers of the house. I had made a stop on the way back to pick up a flashlight and a crow bar. Using the shovel, I shifted the ashes, not finding anything of interest until I got near the trapdoor. Baxter dug it out, which turned out to be a caved in skull that was partially destroyed by the fire. The skull was too large, and the eye sockets uneven. I ran a finger around the nose and wondered again what had happened here. After several minutes of work with the pick and crowbar, I more or less had an answer. The faintest smell of corpses rose up to meet me, like a soda can in winter that housed a dead mouse from the spring.
There was a skeleton down there, and from the wider set of the hips, I deduced it to be a woman, with both of her femurs smashed. Several skeletons surrounded her…small infant skeletons. Making several knots, I tied off the rope to a sturdy looking tree nearby. If worse came to worst I could always chimney my way up, as it was only a ten foot drop. Either way, I had made sure that someone knew where I was if the shit hit the fan.
I crawled down, looking at the skeleton surrounded by three infants with odd skulls and other deformities. I was surrounded by great despair, and shook my head at the madness of it all before carefully shouldering the skeleton and making the climb up with it. My inner revulsion was offset by a need to do the right thing here, so it took me several trips to collect all the bones, and even longer to dig the actual graves in the dirt, softened by the rain. I piled stones over each, five graves in total. One for the mother and, I assume, her four children, and pulled out my sheet of prayers. I prayed to God, to Saint Michael, and afterwards folded up the paper and offered my own blessings. Baxter sat and watched quietly, and when I was done, he howled low and long.
I walked from that place filthy while covered in soot and dirt, and my nose was filled with the smell of fire. There was no scent of roses, no smell of gunpowder freshly burnt, but there was a smell of things growing underneath it all that hadn't been present before. That, I thought, was all I needed to know that we had done the right thing.
I got in the jeep, and we drove away. I have never taken the supernatural for granted since.
-End
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