Dead Voices Read online

  Dead Voices

  by

  Rick Hautala

  Necon Classic Horror #17

  Cover by Kellianne Jones

  A digital edition published by

  Necon E-Books at Smashwords

  This Edition Copyright 2011 Rick Hautala

  Cover Copyright 2011 Kellianne Jones

  Dedication

  To the memory of two very dear lost friends ...

  Ruth Black and Lillian Standley ...

  déjà révé

  Acknowledgments

  I hope this won’t start sounding like a list of “thank yous” for an Oscar, but I want to acknowledge the people who have helped me with this book ...

  Detective John Chase of the Westbrook, Maine, Police Department, answered some very unusual questions about police and detective work without batting an eye. His willingness to discuss his work not only helped me, but actually suggested lines of action the story could take.

  Mike Kimball, who, along with three to five phone calls a week to urge this book to completion, started the whole thing off by telling me about E.V.P. (electronic voice phenomenon) and those voices from the “violet world.”

  Bill Barry, who carves a mean-looking walking stick, conjured up the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini for me, which helped inspire the cemetery scene.

  Dave Hinchberger, who runs the Overlook Connection, constantly gives me and my writing some major boosts ... I’m just glad he doesn’t pass his phone bills along to me.

  My trusted manuscript readers — Chris Fahy, Kathy Glad, and Mike Feeney — who, with their support and brutally honest reactions, make my books much better than I could make them alone.

  And Brian Thomsen, my editor at Warner, who makes my manuscripts bleed, is taking my “rough cuts” and turning them into polished stone.

  Also, I have to mention the section entitled “How to Raise the Dead” in Jacqueline Simpson’s book Icelandic Folktales and Legends. Those three pages are perhaps the scariest I have ever read, and if you scout them out yourself, you’ll see why!

  And finally-as always-I want to thank Bonnie, Aaron, Jesse, and Matti because they not only created the time and space for me to write; they also created the necessary distractions that pulled me away from it from time to time

  Table of Contents

  Part One: Listen, the dead are speaking!

  Prologue

  1. Late Night Visitor

  2. Plot 317

  3. Toys in the Attic

  4. Old Flame

  5. “Hey, Ouija! We need yah!”

  6. The Old Crone

  7. Night Hunter

  8. First Date

  9. Jonathan’s Hand

  10. Another Warning

  Part Two: Look, the dead have risen!

  11. Seance

  12. Visiting Caroline

  13. White Noise

  14. Button

  15. Dark Meeting

  16. Further Investigations

  17. Waiting for Midnight

  18. The Summoning

  19. The Sacrifice

  20. Healing

  PART ONE

  Listen! The dead are speaking!

  There’s something quieter than sleep

  Within this inner room

  It wears a sprig upon its breast,

  And will not tell its name.

  — Emily Dickinson

  A sick person pining away is one upon

  whom an evil spirit has gazed.

  — Homer

  Prologue

  “ ... Another incident, which the reader may find curious, albeit inconclusive, concerns the arrest and subsequent execution of one William DeBarry, a brewer of ale in the village of Dunbane, Scotland. According to the Magistrates Records for that year, A.D. 1579, DeBarry was apprehended by a group of enraged citizens in the cemetery behind St. Jude’s Cathedral. Long reputed to be a wizard and servant of Satan, he apparently was engaged in the disinterment of a corpse, in this case the body of his son, Jonathan, who had died the previous winter. DeBarry was taken to the local magistrates, who acted swiftly and, within a week, tried and convicted him of ‘witchcraft, most foul and heinous.’ Like many reputed witches and warlocks of that era, he was burned at the stake in the village square.

  Unfortunately, the records of his trial and subsequent execution have not survived in their entirety; but portions have, and from them we can reconstruct the scene.

  DeBarry, a widower of some ten years, had been an object of suspicion and mistrust for many years in the village. He had a reputation as a man not to be crossed and, on several occasions, according to the fragmentary trial transcript, had overtly threatened his neighbors with ‘curses foul and damnable.’ One Harold 0’ Keefe, another local brewer, testified that, through DeBarry’s ‘evile Spells and Sorcerie,’ his ale had not fermented properly for the past three years, thus destroying his longstanding reputation as a brewer.

  When first the populace, carrying torches, prayer books, and crucifixes, entered the graveyard, DeBarry was observed sitting within a crude and unholy design which he had inscribed upon the ground with white powder at the foot of the grave of his deceased son. At five points of a crudely drawn inverted pentagram, the symbol of Satan , black candles burned, dripping, so said several witnesses, wax ‘as red and thicke as blud.’ Also, within the unholy design were, ‘assorted instruments of Evil,’ although the chronicle fails to specify exactly what those implements were.

  The boy’s coffin had been exposed and thrown open. Grave vestments were cast about on the ground where DeBarry sat, cradling the pitiful corpse of his son in his arms and rocking back and forth on his knees. Several participants testified that he was muttering the Lord’s Prayer backwards, in Latin. The air was heavy with sulfurous fumes, and several eyewitnesses attested that they heard and saw the shapes of demons and devils, lurking in the shadows on the tombstones of the Christian-dead.

  The magistrates hesitated not in convicting DeBarry as an ‘Agent of Satan and Servant of the Beast.’ Throughout his trial, he spoke little other than the oft-repeated accusation, ‘Had you not interrupted me, I would have had him back!’

  DeBarry was taken in chains to the town square, where he was burned. His ashes were removed to a sewerage gully on the outskirts of town, where they were spaded under, and the ground sprinkled with salt. Local tradition maintains that, even unto the present Nineteenth Century, the only vegetation that will grow on the spot is a rank weed with small, red flowers, known locally as devilsweed ...”

  Quoted from Practicing the Black Arts,

  published by Frederick and Cole, Publishers, 1872.

  ONE

  Late Night Visitor

  1.

  Stinging pellets of ice beat like tiny bullets against Elizabeth’s face as she raced up the steps to the front door of the darkened house. All around, the night hung as if the storm clouds, heavily laden with snow, were pressing down on her, smothering her. She felt as though she had to fight her way forward, futilely batting her arms against sodden, clinging blankets that slapped her heavily, holding her back. In spite of the inches-thick cushion of snow, her shoes clacked loudly on the wooden steps. Due to her exhaustion, the stairs seemed to telescope outward, multiplying to dozens instead of the seven she had counted from the ground.

  Finally, she reached the relative shelter of the doorway. She pressed her weight against the door and fumbled for the doorknob. There was no time for the formality of knocking. She was desperate! She had to get inside the house and out of the storm. Her hands were chilled and didn’t want to work as she struggled with the latch.

  Was the door locked?

  At last, after what seemed like long, sludgy minutes, she heard the tumblers click, and the door swung inward with a
heavy, rusty-hinged groan. With an explosive sigh of relief, Elizabeth stumbled into the chilled darkness of the house.

  Tendrils of melting snow water ran down her face and neck, and under her coat, making her shiver wildly as she looked around the deserted house. It looked as though no one had lived here for years. The strong aroma of stale air, of dust and decay, reinforced that impression. She could hear the storm outside the house, moaning softly, like the sound of someone in pain.

  “Damn!” Elizabeth muttered. Her chattering teeth diced the single word into tiny pieces.

  She was slightly surprised that, even with the lights off, she could see the distinct outlines of three closed doors in the entryway, hovering like rectangular slabs of black marble in the gloom. One was to her left, one to her right, and one in front of her. The feeling of confinement, of being trapped in a box, was almost overwhelming. She found the wall switch and madly flicked it several times. Nothing happened. Of course the power was off. Even if someone was still living here, the lines were probably down this far out in the country.

  Elizabeth knew she couldn’t spend the night here in this icebox of a house. Although the place seemed vaguely familiar, she didn’t know who — if anyone — lived — or had lived — here. Besides, she knew she couldn’t stay here long. She had to leave ... had to get to where she had been going. As she glanced frantically around the dark house, Elizabeth was filled with an almost overwhelming sensation that she had forgotten something ... something important. If she stayed here, she knew something she was supposed to do wouldn’t get done.

  Either that, or else something bad would happen!

  But what was it? she wondered as bone-deep chills wracked her body.

  In her panic to flee the broken-down car she had left more than a mile back on the snow-choked highway, what she was supposed to do had entirely slipped her mind. Maybe, she reasoned, it was just that, after struggling through the cold and the darkness, it had simply eluded her. She knew that whatever it was would come back to her as soon as she got warm and dry ... as soon as she started feeling a bit more secure.

  But why the hell, if it was so damned important, couldn’t she remember what it was? She took a few tentative steps toward the closed door to her right.

  Why was she so sure something bad would happen if she forgot ... and what could it be?

  ... Or was there something she should forget ... something bad, something horrible she was supposed to forget?

  Trembling from both the cold and her own disorienting sense of uneasiness, Elizabeth reached out toward the door on her right. With a little effort, she turned the knob, swung the door open, and, leaning forward, looked into the room. It was much smaller than she had been expecting, and — surprisingly — it was a bedroom, not the living room or dining room she had been expecting to see on the first floor.

  Against the far wall, between two lace-curtained windows, was an old four posted, canopy bed. Beside the bed was a nightstand with a large, shaded lamp. The heavy bedspread draped to the floor, looking a sickly yellow in the gloomy light, and vague lumps of antique furniture-two tall bureaus and a slouched chair-stood along the walls to the left and right. Also on the left, Elizabeth could see a black rectangle that must be the bedroom’s closet door. The windows were both open a crack, and snow drifted like gritty powder onto the sill and floor. The storm wind whistled as it stirred the curtains.

  Looking up, Elizabeth was unnerved that she couldn’t see the bedroom ceiling. The walls simply stretched up and seemingly outward, as though the room had larger dimensions above the floor. The odd angles of the walls were lost in the darkness overhead. For all she knew, they extended all the way up into the storm clouds. Although she couldn’t see them, Elizabeth felt heavy clots of black cobwebs wafting like funeral lace in the upper reaches. and the walls seemed almost to drip with darkness, as though they had been splattered with gallons of thick, black paint that was still sliding down to the floor in inky puddles.

  As she glanced around the room, not daring to enter, the walls seemed almost to shift position, expanding and contracting like the fretwork of breathing lungs. As they seemed to press in close on her, Elizabeth was startled by the sensation that she was about to be crushed between them, as if between colliding boulders. Aware of the burning ache in her lungs, she pulled back from the room, as though it held a deadly threat.

  For several seconds, Elizabeth hesitated in the doorway, not knowing if she should enter and look behind the closet door, or else move into another part of the house. A growing sense of desperation, of imminent danger, was coiling up inside her gut like an over wound spring. It was obvious there was no one in this small room, but that didn’t stop her from calling out.

  “Hello? ... Is anyone here?”

  Her voice echoed in the vast darkness with an odd reverberation, sounding close and thick. She felt a tingling through her entire body. She wanted to leave, to close the door firmly shut behind her and forget about the unnerving sensation this room gave her, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the bed and the partially opened windows. Milky light, as powdery as chalk dust, filtered through the lace curtains that wafted in the vagrant breeze. She thought she heard a faint stirring, as though cloth was rubbing against cloth. Hurriedly she pulled back and slammed the door shut.

  Back in the entryway, Elizabeth backpedaled until she bumped into something solid. She leaned her back against the closed front door, brutally aware of the chill it gave her as she fought to control her rapid-firing nerves.

  At last, when a measure of calm returned, she looked at the closed door to her left, opposite the one she had tried. If that had been the living room on her right, converted into a bedroom, no doubt for an elderly or sick resident, then this door, she reasoned, would open up onto either the dining room or the kitchen. Her feet practically glided over the floor as she went up to the door and gripped the cold brass doorknob.

  Her heart gave a tight squeeze in her chest when the door swung open, revealing a room almost identical ... no, not almost — absolutely identical to the one she had just left! The four-posted bed, the furniture, the closed closet door, the windows-everything was exactly the same! With a strangled, gagging sound, she staggered back into the hallway.

  What the hell is this place? she wondered as she frantically scanned the surrounding darkness. How could I lose my way and end up in the same room?

  Outside, the storm beat against the side of the house as hammer fisted gusts of wind rattled pellets of ice against the windows. Elizabeth was shivering wildly as she approached the third door. A cold draft snaked across the floor, tugging at her feet. Her hand shook violently as she turned the doorknob and pushed the door open.

  “No ... !” she muttered as she stared, horrified, into the same room again. “This can’t ... This can’t be happening!”

  Her mind filled with the sudden, terrible knowledge that even if there were a hundred doors in this hallway, all of them — every damned one of them — would open up into this room!

  Choking back a scream, she turned and started to run. Her feet slipped on the floor as though her boots were coated with grease. The entryway seemed to distort, and the door, like a life raft to a drowning person, was incredibly distant until, with the suddenness of a car accident, she slammed into its cold wooden panels. She clawed at the doorknob to turn it and practically ripped the door from its hinges as she opened it, expecting to plunge back into the blizzard. Instead, she found herself standing in the darkened bedroom.

  Elizabeth wanted to scream; she wanted to fall onto the floor and sob with the knowledge that, no matter what door she opened, she was being forced to enter that room. And now she was trapped, as she had feared ... as she had known she would be all along!

  Her heart leaped into her throat when she saw that this time she was not alone in the room. She could see the darkened silhouette of a person, sitting on the edge of the canopied bed. Elizabeth’s throat closed off, trapping all sound and air inside her l
ungs.

  In the instant of surprise, Elizabeth raised her hand to her mouth, as if she could force even a small amount of air into her chest. As soon as she let go of the door, it slammed shut behind her, echoing with a hollow boom. Entirely against her will, she felt herself pulled into the center of the floor even as the room expanded in a dizzying, black outward rush.

  The woman!

  It was a woman, sitting silently on the edge of the bed. She hadn’t been there before, of that Elizabeth was positive ... unless that rasping sound of cloth had been her, extricating herself from under the sheets. In the dim room, Elizabeth couldn’t distinguish any of her features other than a frizzy nimbus of gray hair, hanging loosely around her head and shoulders. The light from the windows behind her made her hair glow like steely smoke.

  “Come on in, Elizabeth,” a crackling voice said softly, hissing like a cold wind in the room.

  As the woman spoke, the room seemed to brighten slightly. Either that, Elizabeth thought, or else her eyes were adjusting to the darkness.

  “What do you ... ? How do you know my name?” Elizabeth stammered. She could see — or else sense what she couldn’t actually see — that this was an old woman. She was dressed in a tatter of filthy rags, the hem of her dress like a tangled spiderweb that melted into the floor. Her shoulders looked slouched and bony thin beneath the bulk of several layers of clothes. The indistinct features of her face looked haggard and cracked.