“I’ve never been out here before,” I said to Jonas as he brought the old Jeep to a stop. I swung the door open and stepped out, my eyes wandering across the mostly open landscape that stretched out in all directions before settling on the time-and-weather-worn homestead standing before us.
We’d been driving for a couple of hours along the southern fence line of the Double-K ranch before we reached the edge of the Kirkmans’ property and proceeded through a galvanized steel gate and into another open area of land beyond, this one wilder and overgrown. Another hour or so of ambling along through the tall grass and rocky ground had brought us to where we now stood.
Jonas had told me that we were now in the old McCullen land, a twenty-thousand acre parcel that Mr. Kirkman had purchased at auction when the last of the McCullen clan died off fifteen years prior. From what I’d seen, it looked like prime pasture land and I’d wondered aloud why we didn’t graze the cattle out here.
“After Mr. Kirkman first bought the land, we did just that,” Jonas had told me over the whine of the Jeep’s engine and the persistent creaking of its suspension as it jounced along the uneven ground. “We spent the better part of a month repairing the fence line around this property. The last generation of the McCullen clan had moved away long before, abandoning the ranch and letting this whole place go to seed. Before we were done, we’d just about replaced the whole damned thing. Cost Mr. Kirkman a good sum of money, I’d imagine.”
“Oh yeah? And?” I prompted, grunting as the Jeep found a particularly ornery chuckhole and tried to buck me out of my seat.
“And, we lost nearly a dozen head of cattle in that first week,” he answered, ashing his cigarette out the open window.
I grinned. “They got out, huh? Must of missed some breaks in the fence, I suppose. Not surprising – damned things have a knack for finding the one place they can escape through.”
Jonas turned a sidelong glance on me and said, “I didn’t say they got out. Said we lost them.”
He could sense the questions stirring in my mind and forestalled them with an amused grin from beneath his bushy gray mustache. “A story for another time, David. Today, we’ve some business to see to, so we’d best keep our focus.”
The ‘business’ that Jonas had mentioned was us looking into a report that came in from one of the crews about an unrecognized truck that they’d seen roaming around on the old McCullen ranch – a parcel I didn’t even know was actually part of the Double-K ranch until this very conversation.
I’d been working that morning in the garage back at the ranch, doing some much-needed maintenance on some of the four-wheelers that the guys use to move around the property, when Jonas walked in. One minute, I was sitting there, replacing an oil filter and humming some old song I had stuck in my head, and the next, there he was, standing right there in the open garage bay door. He was silhouetted by the late morning sun, but there was no mistaking that figure. He was tall and lean, but somehow commanding, with the air of strength and authority around him. The old cowboy hat atop his head was as ever-present and predictable as the sunrise; I could barely imagine him without it.
“Miller’s crew called in – said they saw a truck out in the pastures beyond the eastern fence line, in the old McCullen land. Need to go check it out, see what’s going on out there,” he’d told me. “Grab a rifle, son. I don’t expect trouble, but I’d rather be ready for it if need be. We’ll take the Jeep.”
I knew that, in days past, Jonas would have taken Tommy with him on something like this. The two had been close friends for longer than I’d been alive.
But Tommy had passed away a month before, after a bout of pneumonia had taken its toll on him. I’d gotten to know both of them fairly well over the last couple years, and Jonas had been including me in more and more jobs they were tasked with in recent history. I took it as a special sort of pride that I was being chosen over so many other, more seasoned, hands, and I was grateful for the chance to get to know Tommy before he passed on. Jonas had never been one to have a large circle of friends, but I got the sense that he’d seen something in me that made him think I’d be a fair addition to it. I appreciated that; I liked the old son-of-a-bitch.
So, even though I had a full schedule of maintenance that I expected to occupy my time for the rest of the week, I’d just nodded and stood, wiping the oil from my hands with a rag.
“Sure thing, Jonas. I’m with you,” was all I said.
Within twenty minutes, we were loaded up in the Jeep and on our way out to an area of the Kirkman property that I’d never visited before – an old, abandoned tract of land spreading out into the distance beyond the border of the barbed wire fence line.
And now, here we stood before a surprisingly large and sprawling old homestead, looking more like the beginnings of an aging estate house than what likely started life as a frontier-era dwelling. Two stories high and, by all appearances, solid and whole, despite the ravages of the years and weather that it had seen, it was an unusual sight to come across out here in the middle of all these tree-dotted rolling hills and open fields. The house was surrounded by a long and covered porch that had seen better days, but still looked fairly reliable. A couple of old sitting chairs stood sentry near the front door, their varnish long since stripped by the elements and the wood cracked and dry.
I imagined that there had likely once been a dirt road leading up to the house, and maybe also a front drive of some sort, but mother nature had long since erased that and repainted the area with undisturbed grasslands.
She was funny like that. Man can make whatever marks he wants on her domain, but she’s patient and watchful. Turn your back or walk away and there she is, stepping back in to take back what’s hers.
Behind the house and a bit in the distance off to the left, I saw what looked like the remains of a small patch of farmland, not more than a few acres, cordoned off with lonely fence posts that had long since given up their duty. Even with nature’s reclaiming of the fields, I could still see the regular patterns of tilled earth marking the general area of it.
Over to the right of the home was an old barn that had clearly not fared as well as the house; its roof had long since collapsed and the clapboard walls were not much better; the rear corner of the building sagged pretty severely. Between the two was what looked like the crumbling remains of an old cobblestone well and the remnants of an open-bed wagon lay in a crumbling heap beyond that, half-hidden by the tall grass.
“No shit,” I said with a soft whistle, taking it all in. “I didn’t even realize this was out here. Would you look at that? It’s like something out of a damned movie.”
Jonas came around the Jeep to stand next to me, popping another smoke from his pack and lighting it. He offered me one and I accepted it with a nod.
“I suppose it does, at that,” he said. “Isaac McCullen built this place about a hundred and fifty years ago with his family – six sons, two daughters, his young wife, and a few servants brought along from Ireland. Took them the better part of five years to see it finished,” Jonas said, then turned his eyes to me and cocked a bushy eyebrow. “Some folks have big ambitions; they’re just built that way. Sometimes, it goes their way. Most times, I reckon, things don’t tend to play out the way they expect, though.
“Well, I guess old Isaac McCullen probably felt he was laying the foundation of some great legacy, and in fairness, he made a pretty good go of it for a bit. For twenty years, the McCullens lived here, working the ranch, expanding their family, and making a name for themselves.
“Ashley McCullen was Isaac’s wife – the matriarch of the family. It was said she was strikingly beautiful and smarter than the rest of them combined. She had been the daughter of some minor nobleman back in the old country and must’ve figured it was her place to rule the entirety of her family here.”
Jonas leaned back against the Jeep, glancing to the afternoon sun as it began its descent towards the horizon. “It was also said that she wasn’t exactly right in the head, that something inside her was broken. Twisted. Dark. She was a cruel woman, by all accounts. There were whispers that she’d secretly killed and mutilated animals for amusement, though that was a secret that was closely guarded by the rest of the family. As she got into her years, she only got worse. Bolder and less inhibited. She barely even bothered to hide the carcasses of the animals she caught anymore.
“Well, I’m not sure exactly when, but at some point, the teenage daughter of one of the servant women went missing. They found the girl’s body a couple weeks later, stashed away in some concealed room in the cellar that nobody even knew existed, and it was pretty clear that someone had hurt her pretty good before she died.
“It didn’t take long for them to figure out it was Ashley McCullen’s hand that did the girl in. She never admitted to it, but I guess there was really no doubt about it. I suppose she felt that she was untouchable, and probably wasn’t too far wrong in that belief. Out here, on the frontier, there wasn’t much that could done against her. There wasn’t any law out here back then, even if someone did dare make a public accusation against her.
Jonas turned a quick glance to me. “The one thing she didn’t count on, though, was the girl’s mother. I don’t recall her name, exactly – Delores or Deirdre or something like that – but she was old Celtic blood. The kind that doesn’t forget the ways of the druids and their blood magic religions.
“The story goes that one night, in a fit of rage fueled by grief, the dead girl’s mother up and sacrificed herself as part of some black ritual, an offering to the ancient pagan gods of her ancestors, in exchange for vengeance against the McCullens.
“They say that a fierce storm rose up out of nowhere that night, all wind and rain and hail. Even killed a few of their animals that weren’t able to get to shelter in time.”
“No shit?” I said, not sure how much of the tale I really believed. I trusted in Jonas’ personal accounts, of course, but this was starting to sound like one of those ghost stories folks tend to make up to explain things they didn’t understand. An old and derelict homestead sitting out in the middle of an abandoned ranch made for a perfect candidate of these types of folktales.
“Well, maybe she did and maybe she didn’t.” Jonas looked at me out of the corner of his eye as he drew a pull on his smoke. “Regardless of what any of us believe, though, one fact is undeniable: the McCullens started dying after that. At first, it wasn’t anything too out-of-the-ordinary, at least for that time. Isaac cut himself by accident one day, took an infection, and died two weeks later.
“The week after, Isaac’s eldest son took a spill down the staircase and broke his neck. A month later, one of the daughters climbed up onto the roof in the middle of the night and just… stepped off into the air.
“It went on like that for while, picking away at the McCullens one by one, getting closer to Ashley day by day. She started losing what was left of her diseased mind – started ranting about the mirrors in the house. About something in the mirrors. She insisted they all be destroyed, all except for one. This one, she kept covered all the time, except for when she would peak under the cloth, as if to make sure that whatever she saw in it was still there. I suppose she was afraid that one day she’d look into that mirror and wouldn’t find whatever it was that haunted her; that it would finally get close enough to step out of the mirror and come for her.”
“What happened to her?” I asked when Jonas paused.
He shrugged, finishing his smoke and dropping the butt to the ground, where he crushed it out under the heel of his boot. “Don’t rightly know. Story goes that the few remaining kin decided to pick up and get the hell out of here while they still could, leaving Ashley McCullen all to herself to wander the halls and empty rooms of this place until her final day. The remaining servants – at this point there were only a few left – well, they all just took off in the middle of the night one winter, to points unknown. That’s where the stories end; nobody really knows for sure what happened to Ashley after that. I expect she lived until she died, probably somewhere in this place.”
I listened as he spoke, letting my gaze wander over the homestead. As my eyes took it all in, I noticed a flash of red nearly hidden on the side of the house. Taking a couple slow steps to my right, I could now make out clearly the Dodge 4x4 parked around the side.
“Hey, check it out,” I said, calling his attention to it.
Jonas’ mouth twisted like he’d just tasted something sour and his brow drew down as he took notice of it. “Hell,” he spat, “I was really hoping that we could just take a quick break here in the shade before moving on.”
“Who are they?” I asked, starting to feel a little uncomfortable and exposed out here in the middle of nowhere. My hand found its way to rest lightly on the grip of my holstered pistol, just a reassurance.
“Damn fools is who they are. Maybe dead fools, depending on how exactly stupid they are,” he said. He glanced at me briefly before looking back at the house. “Ever since those television shows started about people hunting ghosts, it seems like all the nut-jobs with nothing better to do than poke around where they don’t belong just came out of the woodwork. We get idiots up here every so often, walking around with their video cameras and fancy electronic gadgets, thinking they’re going to be the next internet sensation. Sometimes we get to them before any damage is done. Sometimes we don’t.”
Jonas reached into the Jeep and pulled two compact flashlights from the glove box, handing one to me. I tucked it in my pocked and followed him as he made his way across to the house.
I’d seen trespassers before; most of the time they were just idiot kids trying to find magic mushrooms in cow shit or looking for a place to get drunk or fool around. In those cases, we’d just give them a little scare and run them off – no real harm done. One time, one of the crews had come across a lunatic taking pot shots at the herd with a .22 rifle. That was a bad one – we had to put down five head of cattle because the vet couldn’t save them after they’d been riddled with bullets.
Who the hell does something like that, just for fun? I don’t pretend to understand what sort of messed-up you have to be to find amusement in that.
From what I heard, they gave that particular asshole a hell of a beating before turning him over to the sheriff, but I didn’t see that part, so I couldn’t swear to it. Honestly, I think he was probably lucky to leave the ranch at all. If it had been another ranch with a different foreman, he’d likely be rotting in a shallow grave somewhere out in the pastures.
Hell, one night, we even came across a group of folks all stripped down naked and dancing around a campfire under a new moon, bodies all painted in reds and yellows. They were chanting and shouting like they were hopped up on something. I think we must have watched them from a distance for probably fifteen minutes before we went and chased them off, just trying to figure out what the hell they were doing.
So yeah, I’ve definitely seen my share of weird out here.
We reached the covered porch and mounted the steps and I took note that the front door stood open a few inches on its iron hinges. The darkness beyond was blacker than I would expected. It seemed somehow more than just shadow, and I didn’t miss the way that Jonas tensed up when he noticed it as well.
Something was eating at him, far more than just having to deal with trespassers, that’s for sure.
He froze when we were in front of the door, and I followed suit, straining to listen for any signs of movement from inside. The only sound that reached our ears, though, was the breeze that swept in from the west and whistled softly through the eaves of the house. I saw Jonas put a hand on the butt of his revolver, though he didn’t draw it, and push the door inward slowly. The hinges groaned louder than I’d have liked as the door swung open, and I didn’t figure there was much of a chance we’d be sneaking up on anyone here.
I started to move forward, across the threshold, when I felt Jonas’ hand on my chest, halting me in my tracks. When I looked questioningly at him, I could see the set of his eyes was serious – more serious than I’d ever seen them.
When he spoke, he didn’t bother keeping his voice low, like he wasn’t expecting anyone to hear us, regardless.
“You listen to me, David. I need you to hear what I’m saying. You know all those dark places I told you could be found around these parts if you looked hard enough?”
I nodded wordlessly, my mouth feeling dry.
“This place is one of them,” he said, his piercing gray eyes boring into mine, leaving no doubt about his earnestness. “Death has always surrounded this place, ended up driving what was left of the McCullen clan as far away as they could get, trying to escape it. I know you can feel something in the air. Something off about this place.
“So, we’re going to go inside and take a look around. If we find those fools, we’re going to drag them out by their ears and make sure they don’t ever come back again. We’re not going to touch anything inside. We’re not going to take any souvenirs. We’re not going to spend long in there. If we don’t find them pretty quick, we’re going to head back out and call the sheriff, let him know that we’ve found another abandoned truck out here and they need to come have it towed away. Understand?”
I nodded, but Jonas shook his head.
“I need you to say it, David,” he said.
I cleared my throat and replied, “Don’t touch anything. Don’t take anything. Don’t stay inside too long. I understand, Jonas.”
With Jonas satisfied with my answer, he gave a quick nod of reassurance and stepped across the threshold of the open doorway.
I followed. Once inside, I immediately took notice of the drop in temperature. Even though it was a hot and humid July afternoon, the air inside the house must have been at least fifteen degrees cooler. It felt like we were stepping into a walk-in refrigerator.
We paused inside the doorway for a minute, letting our eyes adjust to the shadowed interior, and I heard Jonas’s revolver slowly come free of its leather holster. I pulled my own Sig Sauer, just for good measure. There was no immediate threat, but the weight of the 9mm in my hand was reassuring. A moment later, we had both pulled the flashlights from our pockets and flicked them on, the harsh beams from the LEDs helping to dispel the darkness of the interior.
We were standing in a wide entryway – a foyer, I suppose you could call it, though they probably had some fancier name for it. The interior was faded and deteriorated with age. The walls looked to have once been a rich burgundy color, but now looked closer to a mottled and sickly red, reminding me of long-dried blood. Twin staircases curved gently up from either side of the room to the second floor, and a wide hallway continued beneath them directly ahead of us.
Painted portraits dotted the walls around the room, which I assumed depicted various members of the McCullen family in their heyday. I moved closer to look at one of the larger ones, which depicted a beautiful young woman with falls of flame-red curls and a proud, upturned visage, the light dusting of freckles across her cheeks standing in stark contrast to the air of dominance and superiority she otherwise projected. Her light green eyes were surprisingly vivid and detailed, and it was clear that the artist took great pains to accentuate them.
“This must be Ashley McCullen,” I said, startled by the sudden volume of my own voice in the tomb-silent house.
Jonas moved beside me, taking in the details of the portrait. “Yep, that’s her. She’s young in this painting. Probably done shortly after they settled here. Isaac doted on her, didn’t deny her anything. Maybe if he’d taken a stronger hand, things would have turned out different.”
A clattering of something falling to the floor in a distant part of the house stole our attention away from the portrait abruptly, and I’d raised my pistol in its direction without thinking.
“Come on, then – we’d best get to it,” Jonas said gruffly, stepping past me. “Enough dawdling. I don’t like being in this place any longer than we need to.”
I lowered my gun and trailed behind him as we followed the hallway under the staircases, from where we’d heard the sound. As we walked, I tried to be as quiet as the old wooden floor would allow, thankful for the moldering remains of a carpet runner under our feet to help dampen the sound.
“Hello?” Jonas called out without warning, making me flinch. Something about this house seemed to insist on silence, as if the sounds of our presence were some sort of affront to whatever was still here. I felt like Jonas was intentionally flying in the face of that, denying any influence the old house was trying to exert over us. “You’re trespassing on Kirkman land. We know you’re in here – we saw your shitty truck outside. Come out now and there won’t be any trouble. If you make us find you, it’ll go a lot worse for you.”
Only silence greeted us as the last of his words reverberated through the old structure.
Doorways passed us on either side as we made our way deeper into the house, some closed and others standing open, leading into a variety of smaller rooms, each with its own purpose and state of ruin. On our left, we passed what looked like a small sitting, one wall lined with swollen and crumbling books, now hopelessly lost to the ravages of time.
The next room looked to be a sewing room, an antique, foot-operated sewing machine resting atop a scarred and dry-rotting desk. A pile of what might have been cloth at one time sat on the floor nearby.
The next door was closed, but when we moved past it, a muffled sort of sound rose to our ears from beyond, freezing us in our tracks. It was impossible to make out what it might have been, but it almost sounded organic, like it had been made by a living thing.
Jonas looked at the door for a long moment, then turned a questioning eye to me, as if to ask if I’d heard it as well.
I nodded, taking a couple steps backwards and reaching out to the door handle. It hadn’t been fully latched, and when I touched it, it swung inward with a slow moaning of its hinges. A dusty breath of unused air floated past us, smelling of age and forgotten things.
We both gathered at the doorway, looking upon the wooden steps descending into darkness. I guessed it was the basement and glanced up to Jonas.
He met my eyes for a heartbeat, then turned back to the inky-black descent. “Hello down there! Come on up where we can see you. We don’t want to hurt you; we just need you to leave this place. You’re trespassing and I’m giving you the chance to leave on your own accord. We’re not in the mood for any games, so let’s just handle this like grown-ups.”
This time, his voice seemed to be swallowed up by the shadows below, almost like he was talking into a thick fog.
We waited a tick longer, then Jonas pointed down at the uppermost steps with the beam of his light. I could clearly make out at least two different sets of shoe prints in the thick dust that coated the wood. There was another set, mostly obscured and unrecognizable, but they almost looked like they were made by bare feet.
Another shared glance and we wordlessly started down the narrow staircase to the cellar below. The air here was even cooler than above and unlike the humidity of the day, the dampness I felt here seemed almost slick on my skin. The air was thick and musty, claustrophobic and foul. I tried to breathe through my nose as we went, and wondered what the hell could cause such a fetid atmosphere.
Jonas was the first to spot the stray beam of a flashlight, streaming across the basement from where it lay on the floor, casting a bright white beam against one mildewed wall. It rocked almost imperceptibly, like had been dropped and was just now coming to a rest.
“Something’s not right about this,” I said in a low voice.
“That’s a hell of an understatement,” Jonas grunted quietly and took a step into the room. I followed on his heels, keeping my eyes and ears sharp for anything out of place. As I swung my flashlight around the surprisingly large room, it picked out the scattered leavings of years of storage. Old and broken furniture stood stacked haphazardly around the room, along with wooden crates, both whole and split open, spilling whatever miscellaneous contents they once held.
The room was like a maze with all the clutter, and we walked slowly, carefully, through it, the beams of our lights illuminating tiny sparkling motes of dust that floated in the still air. Ahead, I could see another light source, looking a lot like the dropped flashlight we’d already passed. We navigated around a larger stack of crates and I sucked in a breath of surprise when a bright light flashed in my eyes.
“Sonofabitch,” I cursed, reflexively flinching and bringing my pistol up. It only took me a heartbeat before I realized that it was my own light, reflected back at me by a tall and ornate mirror hung on the far wall, and I had to bark a quick laugh at my own skittishness.
Jonas wasn’t amused, though. In the ambient light spilling from my flashlight, I could see his face was twisted into a sharp frown, brows drawn together.
“Goddamn idiots,” he swore in a quiet voice, and I heard the distinctive clicking of his revolver’s hammer being drawn back.
I wasn’t sure what had him so riled, but hearing the steel in his tone set me on edge, and the sheepish grin melted from my face.
We emerged from the stacks into a sort of open area at the far wall of the dusty and long-forgotten cellar, and I now saw a black drop-cloth spilled on the floor below the gilded mirror.
The mirror was strange, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on exactly what it was about it. Sure, it was pretty ornate, but from what Jonas had said about Ashley McCullen, it didn’t surprise me that she’d have something so fancy.
No, it was something about the glass, I thought, moving closer with slow steps, eyes fixed on the thing. What was it about it?
“David,” Jonas said, but I was lost in my thoughts.
The image in the mirror – that’s what it was, I realized. The whole thing seemed just a little distorted, almost like one of those carnival fun-house mirrors, but not quite as exaggerated. The effect was subtle, like I was looking at it through a thin skin of oil, and it made everything in it look surreal and wrong.
“David,” Jonas said again, this time a hint of warning in his voice.
“Just a second,” I said distantly, feeling like I almost had it figured out. Just another minute, I thought. I reached out my hand to touch the mirror, thinking that maybe feeling the surface of the glass might help me understand why it looked so strange.
It was then that Jonas grabbed my shoulder roughly and spun me around to face him, the harsh brightness of our flashlights casting angry shadows across his face.
“Don’t,” he ordered, locking eyes with me. “That’s Ashley McCullen’s mirror.”
He stooped down and snatched up the drop-cloth, replacing it over the corners of the ornate frame, carefully keeping his eyes averted the entire time.
The mirror now covered once again, he gave me a quick shove back towards the stairs. “We’re getting out of here now.”
“But what about the trespassers?” I asked in confusion. What was going on?
His face was granite, all hard edges and without a hint of emotion. “They’re gone. We’ll call the sheriff and have their truck towed, but we’re quitting this place now.”
I didn’t understand. “Gone? But, their truck’s still outside. Where’d they go?”
And then my eyes drifted past Jonas and caught what he already knew would be there, somewhere.
A man lay sprawled on his back on the floor not too far from the mirror. A fancy video camera and a few other gadgets were scattered around him on the floor, as if he’d just dropped whatever he was carrying when he fell. He was dressed in jeans and sneakers and was wearing a t-shirt that had some sort of cartoon character on it that I didn’t recognize.
But all that fell away when my eyes drifted further, to look at his face.
Or, at least, where his face should have been.
Even now, I have a hard time putting in words what I saw in that moment. It was like someone had taken a huge, impossibly sharp, spoon and just scooped the front of his head away, neat as can be. What remained was smoothly cut, not torn or mangled or anything like that. And it wasn’t just his skin that was missing, either, but his skull had been neatly sliced away, too. What I was looking at now was only what remained of the back half of his head. I could see the glistening wetness of what was left of his brain, pink and white and gray, and so cleanly cut that it almost looked like it was pressed under a pane of glass. Below that, I saw what remained of his nasal cavities and jaw, a few molars and wisdom teeth still in their homes like nothing was amiss.
I stood there in shock for a minute, my mind fixating on the fact that there wasn’t any blood anywhere. A wound like this – something this terrible – the place should have been covered in it. But there was none. I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing, and it wasn’t until I heard Jonas again that I was drawn out of it and back into the present.
“Watch out, boy!” he shouted in the dark cellar, and I felt myself being jerked backwards by my collar, pulled off-balance and nearly toppling over a stack of old and discolored wooden crates.
I didn’t get a good look at what had caused his alarm, but I saw his stainless steel .44 magnum swing up in the dim light, aiming at something in the shadows.
The next moment, my ears were ringing and the darkness was shattered by the muzzle flash and incredible thundering of his gun in the confined space. It was so loud and violent that I could actually feel the concussion in my chest with each pull of the trigger.
Six chambers.
Six cartridges.
Six trigger pulls.
The strobe of each shot lit his face in a stark yellow light, and when his gun ran dry, he reached out and grabbed me, pushing me hard back towards the staircase. He shouted something at me, but I couldn’t make anything out over the painful ringing in my ears, so I just took his lead and ran as best I could through the cluttered space, until I reached the base of the steps.
There I stopped and turned, bringing my pistol up as Jonas moved past me and started up the narrow staircase, shouting for me to follow him. I could barely make out his words, but their intent was clear enough.
I was about to haul ass up the steps after him when I saw something emerging from the dark, gliding between the stacks of crates and discarded furniture. I raised my flashlight and nearly screamed like a school girl at what I saw.
Despite the years and devastation that death should have brought to her, I recognized the resemblance of the thing that shambled towards me. I’d seen its likeness in the entryway upstairs, in the portrait we’d examined.
Holy shit. It was Ashley McCullen.
Impossibly alive, but not really – not in any fair sense of the word. Her skin was gray and stretched tight across her skull, which was bald except for a few patchy spots of dirty red hair plastered wetly to her head. Her teeth were broken and jagged, all yellow and brown and protruding from blackened gums from behind receded lips that could no longer come together to cover them.
Her eyes were the only things untouched by the ages, it seemed. Those bright green eyes, filled with hate and hunger. There was evil in them – there was no doubt about that. All humanity was gone from those eyes. It was like looking into a doll’s eyes, created by some mad toy maker.
“Jesus Christ,” was all I could say, stumbling backwards against the bottom step as the thing that had been Ashley McCullen fixed its gaze on me with those demon eyes and surged forward towards me in a rush.
I didn’t even realize I’d taken aim with my own gun and started emptying the magazine at the thing until I felt the painful shocks to my ears once again. I watched as bullets punched holes in the faded and decaying dress the thing still wore, staggering it with a little tremor at each impact. One of the rounds caught her in the cheek and peeled part of it right off, sending bone and dried flesh flying into the abyss.
Still, she came, and a moment later, my finger found itself resting on a dead trigger, the magazine spent and the slide locked back on an empty chamber.
Jonas shouted something at me from the top of the staircase and I turned and ran as hard as my legs would carry me, taking the steps two at a time. I burst through the doorway at the top and crashed heavily into the opposite wall, my shoulder screaming in pain at the impact.
Sparing a quick look back to the darkened cellar staircase, I could see that damned thing climbing the steps, now dropped to all four and scrambling upwards like some nightmare insect.
Jonas grabbed my shirt to get me started and we hauled ass down the hallway, through the foyer, and finally out through the front door into the sunlight beyond.
We must have both forgotten about the few steps leading down from the porch, because a moment later, we were both airborne and tumbling painfully to the ground.
In an instant, I was on my back, my now-empty pistol aimed almost comically at the vacant doorway of the house, waiting for that abomination to appear and launch itself at us both.
It never came, and after a few long, heart-pounding moments, Jonas climbed painfully to his feet, retrieving his revolver from the grass nearby and reholstering it. He moved to stand over me and offered me his hand, pulling me to my feet.
He glanced back over his shoulder at the house – at the empty doorway. I could almost swear I saw those two green eyes peering out from the shadows of that place.
At us.
“We’re safe now,” he said, pulling two cigarettes from his pack and handing one over to me. I didn’t miss the tremble in his normally steady hand as he held the lighter for me. “She won’t come past the threshold.”
He walked over and leaned heavily against the front bumper of the Jeep, resting his hands on his knees as his breathing began to slow to more normal pace. Reluctantly, I released the slide on my pistol and reholstered it on my belt, walking over beside him and concentrating on my own racing heartbeat and ragged breathing.
We remained there for several minutes in silence, crashing down from the adrenaline rush and feeling drained and weary. The sun was growing low in the sky, and I wasn’t so sure I wanted to be here when it dipped below the horizon.
Jonas must have had the same thought, because he finally stood and walked around to the driver’s side of the Jeep, pausing for a beat before he got in.
“Congratulations, David. Now you’ve got a story of your own,” he said, and I didn’t miss the hint of a wry grin beneath his bushy gray mustache.
I spared one last wary look at that old homestead and climbed into the Jeep as he started the engine.
“I think I’d rather just listen to yours, Jonas, all things considered.”