|
Our first place High School winning entry is by Kat Buescher Farrell from Covington, Kentucky, who attends the Covington Classical Academy. |
When people hear ‘paranormal investigator’ they tend to think of ghostbuster-esque shenanigans with ectoplasm detectors and night vision goggles. The truth is much duller than that. Most of the job is sending in specialists to test for carbon monoxide or to recommend a psychiatrist. On the rare occasion that I do get sent in to do an on-site investigation it’s usually not as exciting as on TV. I bring in an EVP radio and maybe even set up cameras in the areas with the most activity and wait. There’s a lot of waiting in this job. Waiting for paperwork to be sent back, waiting for new hires to finish rambling about native american burial sites, waiting for some dead guy to stop wasting both our time and actually say something.
The house I visited most recently went normally at first. I consulted the inhabitants about what activity they had experienced and decided that it would be best to actually take a look at the house.
It was a gorgeous building, dark brick exterior, mansard roofing, and a well maintained garden. It stood alone on top of the hill. The late October sun was high in the sky and the air was brisk. I got out of the van and helped a colleague, Jeremiah, get our equipment out of the back. We walked up the path and pushed open the front door with a creak. We had instructed the family that lived there to clear out for the day so we didn’t bother to make ourselves known by knocking.
The front hall was dark with deep green wallpaper and ancient looking hardwood. A single light fixture hung from the ceiling covered by a thin layer of dust. The floor groaned under our footsteps. I fished around in my backpack for my radio while Jeramiah searched for the light switch. He flicked the switch and the lights came to life with a dull hum.
“You think this one’s real?” I asked, more to fill the silence than anything.
“Depends on what we’re considering real. It’s definitely real to them,” I gave him a look, “Alright, well, I don’t think there's a ghost here. From the records I could get my hands on, no one’s died in this house yet.”
“Yet?” I asked. He wiggled his eyebrows at me and I rolled my eyes.
I put the batteries into the radio and continued down the hall. The corridor was long and smelled faintly of mildew. I turned a corner and entered into the living room.
It was odd to see the interior look so modern when the house was obviously at least two hundred or so years old. The walls were painted a neutral gray and the decor was minimalist and lacking in color. I sat down on the gray couch and set the EMF radio on the coffee table. I hit the ‘on’ button and immediately it began producing a staticky sound as it flipped rapidly through radio stations.
Jeremiah joined me on the couch and we both stared at the machine, willing it to speak. In all my supposed professionalism, I still can't shake the giddy feeling when first starting an investigation. The radio hummed for what seemed like hours (though from checking my watch it had only been a few minutes) and we slowly grew more agitated. The static filled the room like too-hot air and when Jeramiah finally huffed and turned it off I could feel its absence in the quiet.
“Well that went nowhere,” I leaned back and stared up at the ceiling.
“As much fun as it would be to be chased around by a ghost, I think it’s better that we haven't found any actual activity yet,”
“Ever the optimist. I say we split up to set up the cameras. You want to take the downstairs?”
“Sure. I think they said it was most active in the halls so you’ll want to set up the cameras on top of the doorways.”
“What exactly did they say was happening?”
“‘Chick’s mom claimed that she got lost in a hallway she didn’t remember being there but the lady’s apparently starting to go a bit senile. Other than that it’s the classic cold spots and missing objects.”
I nodded and picked up my backpack off the floor, heading into the hall again. I pulled out the folded up copy of the floor plan I had been given and used it to navigate towards the stairs. The stairs were steep with a shiny dark wood railing. Photos in mismatched frames lined the walls. I climbed up the staircase slowly and listened intently for any sounds coming from above.
When I got up to the landing the floor abruptly changed to thin yellow carpeting. The boards still creaked as I walked but it was muffled. It was almost silent as I put the batteries into the cameras and connected them to my laptop. The air was still and warm despite there being no visible vents from which to heat the house. I was sitting on the floor waiting for all of the cameras to connect when I noticed the door. It was different from the others, a shiny finish on the unpainted surface. I looked around at all the other doors and saw that they were all covered with matte white paint. I moved my laptop to the side and stood up, pulling the floor plan from my pocket once more. The door should’ve been on an exterior wall and let out into the empty space above the backyard.
I turned the brassy knob and it opened silently. The air that hit my face was warmer even than the hall. There should not have been another hall there. The door should have either been covering bricks or open air. There was no way for there to be another hallway beyond that one. But there was. It wasn’t supposed to be possible but it was there and I could see it so it must've been real.
I stepped into the hallway. The walls were covered with the same green wallpaper of many other parts of the house, the carpet was the same thin yellow material that covered the floor behind me, for all intents and purposes it was a normal corridor. I walked farther in, my steps silent now. The floor was ever so slightly softer than I expected. The air was warm and almost humid, smelling strongly of mildew. I took note of the wallpaper as I walked and noticed that it was peeling up in places.
I walked for a long time. Sometimes the hall would go straight for what felt like miles and only a few steps, sometimes it would branch off into more identical hallways, sometimes it would curve lazily around and around until I was sure I was just going in a circle.
I don't know why I was so convinced that I needed to keep going but I had to know where they ended. Maybe I couldn’t turn around anymore. I was scared that if I tried there would just be more of that god forsaken hall. The corridor branched out like roots and I turned and turned until I was sure I would never find my way out.
The air grew steadily warmer and the wallpaper peeled back more and more revealing mold; dark lesions growing into the drywall. The spots pulsed and shifted as they spread, appearing deeper even then the wall itself. I suppressed a gag as I watched the mold undulate and rot the wall from the inside. No, it wasn't mold, this was disease. The circulatory system of whatever this house was was pushing this rot farther and farther into itself, taking me with it. I pressed my hand to the wall and it came away coated with a dark, oily substance that reeked of sickness.
I followed this disease deeper and deeper into the belly of the beast. The house had swallowed me whole and I was determined to meet my end with agency. The heat grew steadily worse and the floor and walls became… fleshier, like they had given up trying to convince me they were anything other than biological. My footsteps squelched on the soft tissue and my clothes were slowly becoming coated with rot and gristle.
Even then I still wanted to think of it as architecture, as a hallway. I wanted it to fit into the manmade niche it obviously was not built for. This house, this creature, was not made for human terms. I could spend days trying to describe the way the tissue shifted from squamous and hard to soft and veiny but I would always, always go back to calling it a hallway. Fundamentally it was not a hallway, it was not anything that could be conceptualized as architecture, but there was nothing else I could understand it as. This structure was not built for me, no sane human would ever build a space like this, and yet there was always a way forward. Sometimes the ceiling hung so low I had to duck to get past or the walls would press in on me but there was always a clear path.
I had a lot of time to think about what was currently devouring me. It was so clearly not a house, it was not any animal I could think of, all the demons I had come up with in my nightmares had not prepared me for the sheer size of this creature. At some point I started thinking of these paths as veins or maybe even a kind of esophagus. There was no reason for the house to follow the anatomy of humans but I couldn't think of them in any other way.
The smell of rot was overwhelming. The infection had almost completely covered the walls until there were only a few patches of inflamed flesh standing against the dark wounds. The path narrowed and pressed against me. Faintly on the edges of my perception, I heard a beat. A dull rhythm began to fill my ears and I felt my own heart start to pound.
I pushed myself forward and started to sprint towards the sound. I slipped on the diseased floor many times but I pulled myself up and ran. The sound grew louder and louder and so to did my anger. I was going to kill this thing that had trapped me. I was going to tear out whatever excuse it had for a heart. I refused to be prey any longer. I ran and ran until I smacked against a dead end. My head pounded and the beat grew louder once more.
I began to tear at the wall. The infected tissue crumbled and fell away as I dug my nails into it. Past the frantic beating of my heart and the beast’s I could almost hear a scream. It was an awful, piercing cry that set my teeth on edge and made the hair on my neck stand on end. I began to dig even more ferociously. I could've been crying or bleeding but it all mixed with the putrefying gore and it didn’t matter anyway. All that mattered was getting to the heart.
Finally I had pulled enough away to reveal the ribs: massive lines of iron and concrete mixing together in a mockery of an organic shape. I slammed my foot against one and it crumbled under its own weight. I crawled through the space, the sleeve of my shirt tearing open on a nail.
What was inside was not a heart. It had the shape and it beat out a rhythm but it could not ever be called a heart. Its flesh was an awful mixture of rotting biological matter and building materials. The foul liquid flowed into it and bloated it beyond recognition. The smell of mold and rotting meat sliced into my nose.
I approached the heart slowly, my eyes staying firmly attached to the great pulsing thing. I laid a hand on its surface and felt the feverish warmth that had pervaded the entire house. I walked carefully over to the pile of rubble I had created and picked up a long, sharp nail. I killed it. The cry pierced my very bones and made my skull feel like it was going to fry from the pressure.
And then it was over. I stood in the upstairs hallway with its doors painted bone white. I didn’t bother to pick up my equipment, I just told Jeramiah we were leaving and went out to the car. Someone else could go get our stuff, I had had more than enough of that house.
![[home]](/Icons/Extras/lilhome.gif){kind=icon}
![[up]](/Icons/Extras/lilup.gif){kind=icon}