Part 1
https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1854he4/i_encountered_an_ancient_evil_at_bittaker_manor/
“Oh my God,” my sister said, horrified by the story. “First of all, there’s no way any of that’s true. Second of all, even if it was true, why would he still live there?”
“Well, that’s the story he told me, and he never changes an iota of it,” I said. “Usually liars tend to embellish stories over time. I mean, obviously, it sounds crazy, but you haven’t lived in that house. I have. It’s not normal. Something inside of it is alive or aware in some way.
“And I asked him the same question you did. Why would anyone still live in that house after what he had been through? But you know what Alexander said, and I think I understand.
“He said he can’t leave. He said he tried, but whenever he did, the place he lived would immediately have some sort of issue. He bought a mansion in Connecticut, and it burned down after a week. He bought one in Florida, and it got caught in a sinkhole. A sinkhole! Imagine the chances of that.
“Anyway, he says the house reaches out to him when he tries to leave, and I think he’s right. He says the fires and sinkholes aren’t just bad luck, but the black shadow creatures swarming him every time he tries to leave. They create bad luck and death somehow. And whenever he tries to leave, things began to go horribly wrong. He ended up in a mental institution for three months last time, and he has lived here ever since. He says that even though this place is nightmarish and haunted, it somehow gives him energy and clarity when he’s inside. He said that the voices are a lot quieter in here than when he’s outside.” We turned onto the private road leading to Bittaker Manor, winding through acres of wooded fields.
The trees around the Manor always seemed to look strange to me, like claws reaching up into the sky. Many of them were dead and leafless, even in the hot summer months, and animals didn’t seem to do well around here. We would find the corpses of coyotes and even bobcats scattered around the bare trees or entangled in the thick brush off the side of the road on a regular basis.
I pulled the car into the front of the house, parking in front of a statue of the Archangel Michael wielding a sword, his wings unfurled behind him as he stood as straight and proud as a soldier. Katherine immediately got out, grabbing some of her suitcases.
“I’m exhausted,” she said. “I’m going to bed. Can you show me where I’ll be staying?” I pointed to an empty doghouse in the backyard, barely visible from the glow streaming from the windows of the Manor. She laughed. “Sure, you first.”
I got out, a sudden burst of energy coming over me as I felt the cool autumn breeze blowing over my skin. I looked up at the house, and from the top floor, I saw faces peering out of every single window.
“Do you see…” I asked Katherine, pointing, but by the time she had turned her head, the silhouettes had disappeared from the windows.
“What?” she asked, confused. “The house? Yeah, it’s pretty cool-looking, you’re right. I like all the statues and turrets. And the Victorian windows. This was built back when they made houses to last.”
“Yeah, and they also filled them with asbestos and lead paint, probably,” I said.
“Well, you gotta cut costs somewhere,” she said, grinning, and I laughed. Yet the faces I had seen in the windows still gave me a creeping sensation, like ice dripping down my spine. I remembered how the vents had shook, and how I had seen that face- my own face- rotten and grinning through the metal slats.
I showed Katherine to her room. She gave an exclamation of wonder at the beauty of the front chamber as we strode up the sweeping, polished stairs.
“They’re so wide you could drive three cars down them! It’s like the size of a highway!” she exclaimed. She looked at the ornately carved banisters and balconies overhead. In some places, huge gargoyles with twisted faces looked down, their bodies fused into the house itself. Out of large, carved pieces of mahogany, artisans had carved the gargoyles scattered throughout the house, their bodies muscular and reptilian with each individual scale hewn into their hides by hand.
“They’re supposed to protect the house from evil spirits,” I whispered confidentially. “Alexander thinks they work. After the… incident, he brought in professional sculptors and had them add these to the home.”
“The placebo effect is a powerful thing,” Katherine exclaimed in a scholarly tone.
“Yeah, well, I don’t know anything about that, but the house has calmed down over the last few years. It used to be worse. I used to wake up in the middle of the night and see ‘people’ standing over my bed. They wore black robes and their faces looked like they had mostly rotted away. They spoke to me with a voice like the cracking of falling rocks, and the stench of decomposing meat would linger in my room for days afterward. At first, I thought it was sleep paralysis, but after a while…
“They’d say things like, ‘The black god’s minions rise in the secret chamber,’ and, ‘The Bittaker blood will spill to cleanse these walls, and you shall all die with him.’”
“Secret chamber?” Katherine asked, perking up. I nodded.
“Yeah, there’s all sorts of hidden tunnels and secret rooms in this place. I’ve found a couple by accident, but I don’t go looking for them, and I definitely don’t go exploring them. This place was built in the 1700s, and half of those tunnels could have already collapsed.”
“Well, that’s you,” she said, her eyes glinting with excitement. “After I get settled in and sleep, I’m going to have a look around.”
“Good for you,” I said. “You start work tomorrow at 7:30 AM. Mr. Bittaker likes slab bacon, eggs, French toast and coffee for breakfast, by the way.” She nodded, that gleam of adventure still marking her face. “OK, goodnight.” I turned and left, going to my room and falling quickly asleep.
***
“Jesse,” someone said softly. A small hand gently tapped my shoulder. “Jesse? You awake?” I sat up in bed, looking around in the near-total dark.
“Get back, fiend!” I said fiercely, taking my silver cross necklace off my head and shoving it towards the sides of the bed. “Back, I say!”
“No, no, it’s me, Katherine,” a diffident voice said. I sagged, leaning over and flicking on the lamp.
“What the hell are you doing walking around in the pitch-black?” I asked. “And what time is it?”
“Look, it’s 3 AM, but that doesn’t matter. I found something,” she exclaimed triumphantly. I sighed, pulling on a long-sleeved shirt as I got out of my warm bed.
“Fine,” I said groggily, slipping my shoes on, “I’ll check it out. But this better be really cool if you’re waking me up in the middle of the night.”
“Oh, it is,” she said with a sly grin and a wink. “It is.”
I followed her downstairs into the library. I saw Alexander had slept in his own bed tonight, rather than posting an all-night vigil by the books and liquor cabinet. I saw a shot glass with a small amount of liquid next to a bottle of gin and some tonic and juice.
“Eww, gin,” Katherine said, gagging. “How does anyone drink that crap? It is so freaking gross.”
“Is this, um, what you wanted to show me?” I asked tiredly, rubbing my eyes. She laughed.
“No, no, that’s over here,” she said, moving towards the dark fireplace in the center of the far wall. It was swept clean. No one had built a fire here in years, maybe even decades. The house, after all, had central heating, and the fireplaces simply remained as remnants from a more primitive time.
The gray stone swept up in an arch over the fireplace, and a large mirror hung there. A statue that appeared Mayan stood on the ledge, next to other ancient trinkets that had stayed there for God knows how long. Centuries, perhaps.
The statue had a creature with fangs and bulging eyes, with a snake coiled loosely around its arms and neck. It had big, naked feet sticking out, and a strange, pyramid-like hat with countless runes and symbols carved into it towering over its head.
“Check this out,” Katherine said, reaching out and grabbing the Mayan statue by the top. She pulled it forward, slowly and gingerly. She seemed to strain for a moment, taking both hands. With a heaving gasp, she pulled the statue forwards a fraction of an inch. Behind the walls, I heard rolling and clicking and sliding as gears started to work.
The fireplace opened in front of us like a parting mouth. Below, I saw dusty stone stairs leading down, down into the dark.
“I’ll go get a flashlight,” Katherine said, running gleefully back to her room. I groaned, waiting there. I thought I saw movement at the bottom of the stairs, as if a lighter-colored patch of shadows had flitted through the darkness, but I couldn’t make it out. I heard light steps below, and I wondered if it was rodents- or something worse.
“OK, I have two!” Katherine said excitedly, running into the room behind us. I jumped as her voice rang out behind me, knocking me out of my reverie. She shone the light down into the tunnels, and of course, no one was there.
“I could’ve sworn I saw something,” I whispered, more to myself than to her. She ignored the comment.
“I’ll go first,” she said, beaming, looking as thrilled as a kid on a school field trip.
“Katherine, I kinda have a bad feeling about this, and I really, really don’t think you should…” I began, but she had already started down the stairs. I sighed, following close behind.
***
We found an ancient den of nightmares at the bottom. The first thing I saw when I shone my light into the chamber deep under the house was an iron maiden, the metal rusted, the bloodstains black under the bright glare of the LED flashlight.
Then I saw all the skeletons. They had long ago had all the meat stripped off their bodies by roving bands of rats and flies, and now they laid on the ground, their dried bones a muddy yellow.
Katherine began to walk around, and soon, on a counter covered with soiled torture tools, she found a journal. I looked in horror at the pliers, the knives, the grinders, the pullers and twisters, all covered in ancient, dark blood. She began to read.
“According to this,” she said slowly, the excitement having gone out of her eyes, “these were slaves. The original Bittaker Patriarch who built this house, Jefferson Bittaker, had… bizarre tastes. He documented all the tortures and murders he committed here. It looks like he murdered hundreds of slaves.” She looked up, disgust marring her features. “Do you think Alexander knows about this?”
I shrugged. I had no idea, and honestly, I didn’t see how it could possibly matter.
“This happened a few hundred years ago,” I said. “Who cares? What are we going to do about it now? Absolutely nothing, that’s what.”
“But don’t you think we should contact a historical…” she began, but then I heard the footsteps behind me. Turning, I saw Alexander, walking down the stone steps with a sawed-off shotgun in his hands. He wavered from side to side, looking extremely drunk.
“What in the hell are you two doing down here?” he asked in a gruff voice, squinting his eyes. “This place is cursed. No one should ever open that passageway again. I should’ve had that goddamned statue removed, I knew it.”
“What’s going on here, Alexander?” I asked. He looked at me with watery eyes, giving me a sad smile.
“Today is the fortieth anniversary of the death of my parents and grandparents,” he said. “And I don’t think these bones will stay silent. I don’t think it’s a coincidence your sister came here and found this passageway tonight, of all nights. I am the last of the Bittaker line, and they want my blood. They won’t ever let me rest until they have it. But I’m not going down without a fight.”
Without warning, he pointed the sawed-off shotgun at the grinning skull of a skeleton laying next to him. The gunshot went off like a cry from God. The shotgun bucked in his hands as he whooped, blowing shards of bone and clods of dirt all over the cold stone chamber.
As if in response to the indignity, black streamers began to run down the walls, coiling like snakes as they spread across the ground and began to move towards the prone skeletons scattered all over the floor. I saw dark, cloudy smoke swirling around the leg bones and arm bones, moving to fill in the chest cavity and wrapping around the jaw and spine like a boa constrictor killing an animal. They formed a covering of spongy, dark flesh, and the bodies began to move.
Dozens of skeletons, now turned pure black from the writhing and curling of the tendrils, raised their heads and stared at me. That was when I knew the source of the black shadow creatures Alexander had seen.
“Oh God, it’s starting again,” Alexander said as the bodies began to rise, the shadows covering their bones. They looked like black silhouettes now, the void that moved through their bodies animating them with a jerky, skittering quality. With haunted eyes, he turned to look at us. “Run!”
We didn’t look back. Katherine and I peeled out of the room. I heard Alexander at our heels, breathing hard. He nearly stumbled as we made it out of the fireplace. He turned to try to shut the tunnel, moving his hand towards the Mayan statue, but two shadowy figures ran out and knocked him hard to the ground. He kept his grip on the shotgun, raising it from a prone position and shooting both in the heads. Bone splinters rained down on the wall behind them as the shadowy auras flickered and then dissipated, the smoke turning invisible in the moving air within seconds. Two half-destroyed skeletons fell limply to the floor.
Katherine and I each grabbed Alexander under a shoulder, heaving him up as more creatures ran through the opening. We sprinted away, heading towards the library and shutting and locking the door behind us. Alexander immediately went to the liquor cabinet, pulling out bottle after bottle of expensive liquor.
“This is no time to start drinking,” I said, shocked, but then he began to smash each bottle on the ground, covering the floor with shattered glass and the fumes of whiskey, vodka, gin, tequila and all other manner of booze.
“You guys better get out of here,” he said in a hopeless, dead voice, pulling a lighter out of his pocket. I saw what he meant to do at the last second.
“No!” I cried as he knelt down and ignited the alcohol. A blue flame spread across the floor, a sucking, gasping noise following as it rose from one side of the room to the other. I pulled Katherine by her arm, leading her out the servant’s door and towards the kitchen.
“We have to get out and call for help,” I said. “We can’t let it happen again.” The door exploded open behind us. Alexander came sprinting in, dozens of shadowy figures close at his heels.
They came running out of the inferno like the beasts of Hell. The fire exploding out of the door licked the ceiling with long tongues of flame as black, choking smoke filled the hall.
I saw them overtake Alexander, knocking him down with their long, twisted arms. His shotgun went sliding across the marble floor and under the table, landing near my feet. Their claw-like fingers began to reach down, heading towards his eyes and mouth as he gazed up at them with horror.
“Oh God, please, no!” he said as one cut out his right eye, ripping off the lid and then digging deep into the socket to cut the connective tissues in the back. The others gathered around. An eerie, echoing susurration of voices began to filter out from the crowd of nightmares that looked down on Alexander like a patient on a surgical table.
A few looked up at Katherine and me, their heads rising. Though they had no eyes, I could sense their cold, reptilian stare. I quickly knelt down, feeling under the table for the shotgun. They came at us in a blur. My fingers closed around the cold metal of the gun. I raised it, firing.
Their chests exploded as the black smoke kept coming, blowing past me in a cloud as the shattered bones fell to the floor. And yet others began coming, streaming through the door. I grabbed Katherine’s hand and began to push her towards the back.
I felt cold claws ripping across my back. A torrent of blood began to stream down and soak my shirt. I spun and began firing, seeing more black clouds evaporate as skeletons fell to the ground.
Katherine and I reached the back door. I saw an endless abyss stretching outside, as starless and dead as a black hole. But I remember the story Alexander had told me.
“Don’t stop!” I cried. She closed her eyes and quickly stepped from the threshold out onto the spongy void beyond. Her feet seemed to sink slightly into the ground, as if she were walking on foam.
I followed. As we traveled further away from the Bittaker Manor, I looked back to see flames licking the Victorian turrets, and white, skeletal faces peering out of every window.
We kept walking and suddenly, with a popping sound, the street and houses whooshed back into existence. We looked around, the silence seeming overwhelming after the chaos and bloodshed of the last few minutes.
As we waited for ambulances and fire trucks to arrive, after going to the neighbor’s house and calling 911, I stood there, watching the Manor where I had worked for so many years. It had seemed like home at times, but like many things, it had dark secrets deep in the bowels of its soul.
The moonlight streamed down from above. Clouds passed overhead, dark gray like the face of a corpse. And though I couldn’t tell for sure, I would have sworn I saw black, twisting shapes rising up into the stars above.