One of eleven surviving short stories/novellas I wrote in a roughly five-year period (2004-2008).
This was written c. 2010 — a rewrite of a story I wrote in the fall of 2004. The original was typewritten, the last story I ever wrote on a typewriter, and is now lost. I was proud of that original. But if this version's anything to go by, there's nothing there to be proud of. Just pages upon pages of hackneyed hackwork.
* * *
I should had never gone to check out that decrepit building. But I had never suspected the existance of what had lain there within its walls. Never suspected the existance of an evil which had inhabited the place since the nineteen-fourties.
It all began when my father got a new job located in Maine. Unable to coap with the idea of the family being seperated, my mother wanted to pack up the family and relocate to a location close to his anticipated job site. Over a period of a number of weeks, my parents struck a deal with a Raymond Bradley to buy his on sale home on Forman Road, Maine for an even five thousand dollars. After all the paperwork went through, all was final; with some mela-ncholy, we journeyed from Pittsburg to a quiet suburbia in a completely unfamilar part of the country.
"So," my sister, Audrey, asked my father as we made the long approach to our new house in my mother's Olds-mobile Delta Royale, "what's this place like? It isn't a dump, is it?"
My father uttered a short laugh as she said that. "No, it isn't a dump. It was built in 1984, so its relatively new. The house is in good condition."
"Was anybody killed there?" I asked, a slight smirk upon my face.
"Nobody was killed in thisat house," he answered, amused not at all by the macabre question. "The house has no history whatsoever."
We soon arrived at the house. There was nothing spectacular about the building. It was a small, two-story home with blue-and-white paint smeared over its walls; this horrid paint job had been done apparently to convey an aura of cheerfulness, but those who had performed it had failed in their vision.
"We're here!" father exclaimed. He maneuvered the Oldsmobile up the driveway, stopping at the house and shifting the gear into PARK.
We all unfastened our seatbelts, opened the doors and climbed out. As my feet first touched this foreign soil, I immediatly noticed the house across from us, on the other side of the street. As soon as my eyes took in the details of the building, I was left in awe. It was over a century old, a large mansion, six stories tall with an abundance in windows. The dwelling had browned with age, and obviously in bad disrepair; the wood walls were worm-eaten and crumbling, with weathered boards nailed over the front door and window panes.
"We should have moved in there," I said, half-joking, pointing over at the foreboding house. "At least that place looks interesting."
My father looked over across the street at the house, then back at me. "That house was abandoned back in the fourties. Its condemned, and we couldn't buy it even if we wanted to."
At that, we went to place our first steps within our new, badly-painted little home.
Later that night, I sat at our large oak dinner table with my parents and sister as we had our supper, a dish consisting of mashed potatoes and spinach.
"How's dinner, Edward?" mother asked me, looking up from her plate.
"Fine," I replied. Unlike typical children, I found spinach not all that bad.
"Good," she replied, resuming her consumption of her potatoes and spinach.
"Hey Dad," I then proclaimed, looking to him.
"Yes, Ed?"
"Do you know the story behind the house across the street?" I inquired. "What's up with it?"
My father went silent. "Are you sure you want to know?" he asked after a moment passed.
"Why wouldn't I?" I asked. "I would like to know why the house is abandoned."
Father was forlorn for a moment, but then agreed to tell the story about the house.
"Well, back in 1896 a man named Efimovich Velikovsky immigrated here to the States from Russia. He had been a very rich man back in his homeland, and had used his money to build a mansion here on Forman Road. From what Mr. Bradley told me, the house supposedly looked very beautiful after it was finished.
"Nothing eventful happened over the next eight years. Velikovsky seemed to be any ordinary man, friendly to those around him, though he spent most of his time locked up in his house. But then one day he disappeared. He, and all the servants who had been living there. The police eventually launched an investigation, but nothing was found. "They never found evidence of any foul play."
"What happened," I asked. "If they were'nt kidnapped or killed or anything, what happened to him and his servants?"
"No one really knows," my father explained. "He might have moved to another town or state, or even back to Russia. But no trace of him could be found anywhere. Since he had no known relatives and never left a will, the city took possession of the mansion. They put it up for sale, [?]but no one had ever expressed intrest in buying the place. After a long number of years had passed they gave up the place and had it boarded up. No one has entered that place since."
"So you're saying nobody's been in there since they boarded it up?" I exclaimed. "What about all his stuff? Did they take it?"
"No," he responded. "They had left the furniture alone, on sale with the rest of the house. When they decided to abandon it, they found the bed[?] and chairs soiled with mouse waste, so never bothered removing anything when it was closed up."
"Cool!" I declared. "So, if I were to go over there and check it out, I would find all this old rich-guy stuff?"
"I don't want you going over there, Edward!" my father suddenly retorted, looking me straight in the eye. "The floors in there are probably all rotted through by now, with all this town's constant rainfall. I do not want you breaking your leg or arm or anything else. Do you understand me, Ed?"
"Yes," I groaned. "I understand."
"Good." The discussion was over. My father resumed eating.
"Besides," my mother said, entering the conversation, "there are probably rats and mould in there. I don't want you getting bit or infected with some disease."
I was not listening to my mother. The mansion held my attention. One way or another, I was going to step foot inside that building and search to see if anything interesting lay within.
That night, as I lay upon my bed within my new bedroom, I dwelt upon the decaying house and the mysterious dissappearance of Efimovich Velikovsky and his servants. I could not comp[?]rehend as to how several people could disappear suddenly without a trace as to where they went. If they had left intention-ally, why had they not told a soul as to where they were headed? And if they had met sinister fates at the hands of human malefactors, why did their bodies or physical evidence not turn up?
I continued to ponder these questions, when something caught my eye. A light. A bright one. Coming through the window beside me. I turned, looked out, and witnessed a sight which filled me with awe and fear.
Outside, across the street at Velikovsky's derelict mansion, green light escaped sections of window that escaped concealment from the wooden boards which were nailed in place, illuminating the front yard and interior of my bedroom. It was not a fire. It certainly was not a flash of lightning. It was very eerie.
I had to know what was causing that light.
I got out of bed, quickly changing into my discarded clothing. As I had my shoes tied in place, I pulled up the window, slipped through out onto the cool autumn grass, and made a sprint toward the decrepit house. As I touched upon the front lawn of Velikovsky's old place of habitatione, the eldritch green glow dissipated, fading away to nothing. I entered the threshold of the front door, and stopped. Surely the light had been cut off because whomever, or whatever, had been generating it had sensed my approach. I briefly considered heading back; yet I would then never learn the secret of the light, and my curiousity would remain unsatisfied.
I moved away from the door to the side of the house facing west, searching for a means to enter the decaying structure. From one look I knew that, despite their age, the boards across the windows would refuse to yield to attempts at prying them off, so I sought to find a window with few obscuring boards; to allow me a chance to squeeze through a large enough possible gap. I soon found such a window. After a number of strenous tries, I finally wrenched the pane open, and crawled through to the inside. I dropped inside, and found myself within a servant's old bedroom.
I could tell that the little room had once been a comely little dwelling in the past. Yet the years had not been kind to it. The once-white wallpaper had peeled and become stained a hideous yellow from moisture. The ceiling, which had once been coated with a layer of rich blue paint, had turned pitch black from build up of mould caused by water leakage. The dresser at the left of the bed had rotted, and the legs had collapsed sometime ago. The bed had decayed and becoming a breeding and spawning ground for vermin, with the carpeting beneath me dirty a covered with stains.
Disregarding the decaying bedroom, I walked out the open door, into a large, long hallway; it was as run-down as the room I had just departed. Yet there were large, dust-covered, mirrors placed upon most sections of the walls.
"Come on, Ed," I said to myself, "what are you looking for? There's nothing here but cobwebs and a lot of dirty mirrors." Yet I decided to act against my inner unease, and continue to search the depths of this dismal house that at once had been a home.
I walked through this corridor, past the doors beside me which had curiously been left open, til I came to the end. Here also was a door; a closed glass door. I slowly and cautiously wrapped the fingers of my right hand around the greasy doorknob, twisted it to the right, then pushed it open and stepped through the dark doorway.
I found myself in a cavernous room, completely unlike either the bedroom or the other rooms I had viewed through their open doors. The room was massive, the size of a theatre's interior, the floor, walls, and ceiling made of massive stone blocks mortared into place. A titanic wooden staircase led from the open doorway to the depths of the distant floor. There were no windows.
"What was this place for?" I proclaimed, speaking to no one.
I decided to explore this unusual room further, in hopes of finding something of possible interest. I put my right hand down along the old wood stair rail, and began to make my way carefully down. The stairs creaked loudly as I made my way down, swaying slightly to and fro. In fear that the wood was unstable, and possibly close to collapsing, I eased my pace downward. After an eternity, my feet finally touched down on upon cold grey stone; I had survived the descent.
I began to pace about the room, searching for anything that would have provided to me an answer as to the purpose of this pseudo-basement; yet the thick dusty air made progress difficult, and the miserable lack of light prevented me from truly spying anything of value to my cause. After I met with futility, I decided to leave this cold room and make my way back to my warm bed, and turned toward the flight of stairs. As my back was turned about, the room was suddenly bathed in a brillant green light, emitting from a source behind me, opposite the wooden steps.
I spun around, to the distant wall. Only it was not a wall, but a glowing doorway into another world.
I could see clouds within this green dimension, swirling corpse-green cumulus clouds, these clouds obscured to me any ground their may have been beneath them, yet above them, in the far distance, I could see the apex of a tall mountain, a foreboding castle built upon it. To my horror, ghostly figures swirled out of the clouds, heading to-ward me.
"Oh man!" I exclaimed, terrified. I froze.
I watched as the ghosts flew up to this bizarre window into their dimension. I made out their horrible evil appearances, with their sunken eyes and their hollow cheeks. Their arms were emaciated, their clothes rags. They came to crowd at the entranceway, but I could see that they were unable to exit their universe. I saw soon another spirit come rising up out of the writhing clouds, wailing as a banshee. This spectre joined its brethren, pressing up against the doorway, as if it were but the glass of a window.
This ghost was as cadaverous as were its kin. Yet he did not possess his aura of malevolence; indeed, he appeared traumatised, as if trapped within a waking nightmare.
"Please, have mercy on me!" the ghost wailed. His voice was heavily accented, foreign, unfamiliar to me. "I am Efimovich Grigory Velikovsky. I have been trapped here,for too long, terrorized and tortured!"
I knew then that this was the former owner of this sinking dwelling, the Velikovsky which had disappeared so many decades before my birth.
"I was a magician, a sorceror from Russia, before I moved here to the United States," he continued. "I tried to hold a seance, to contact the spirit of my grandfather. By accident I opened a tunnel to the Other Side, and dragged here along with my servants into this abysmal place by the evil dead.
"My magic is useless here. You must save us and bring us back to Earth, child!"
I was dumbfounded. "How?" I asked once I found the words. "Do I have to go in and get you out?"
"You cannot!" the spirit of Efimovich Velikovsky proclaimed. "Only blood can free us from this Other Side."
"Blood?" I
"Only blood can free me!" Velikovsky declared. "Return to me with blood, child! Free me. Save my soul!"
At that, the entranceway sealed shut, and the wall returned to being a wall. At that point I blacked out, and remembered nothing more.
The next mornin I awakened the next morning within my own room, within my own bed. Though it seemed as a dream, I knew the events of last night had truly occured. I had seen through into another world. I had spoken with the ancient Efim-ovich Velikovsky of Russia who had vanished without a trace several decades ago.
Outside my room, a knock sounded upon my door. "It's time to wake up, Eddie," a voice cooed. "School starts today."
"Yes, Mom," I replied. I got then up out of bed, and prepared myself for school.
The day at school went by in a blur. My new teacher, Ms. Campbell-Smith, had me introduced to my new class-mates before I was seated at a desk. I payed little attention to the lectures of Ms. Campbell-Smith, and did little work; I concentrated on Efimovich Velikovsky and on my plan to free him. In little time the school hours were over. I left the building, breaking into a run.
He said only blood could free him, I thought as I ran. I hope the doesn't need to be fresh blood, or human blood. Maybe it can be any type of blood. From anything.
I came to the local supermarket. There, with the money I had, I purchased a large piece of lamb meat soaked with blood. In an following half hour, I arrived at the old home of Velikovsky. Taking precautions to ensure not a soul witnessed my prescence, I stole into the house via the bedroom window. Making my way [?]through the bedroom, down the hallway to the open glass door, I entered the stone room, clutching the paper-wrapped hunk of meat as I made my way down those unstable wood steps.
"Hello?" I called out as I came to the floor, beginning to shiver from the intense cold of the rock walls. "I came back. I have some blood."
As soon as the word "blood" was uttered, the doorway to the Other Side blossomed open. I saw the swirling dark-green clouds; the green sky, and the writhing spirits of the evil dead. I saw also the form of Efimovich Grigory Velikovsky, floating before the gateway's threshold. He looked different somehow; his eyes, once troubled and weary, now shone with a menacing gleam.
"What is that?" Efimovich Velikovsky hissed out from the Other Side at me, his watery eyes falling upon the meat in my hands, voice dripping with malice. "I asked for blood, boy!"
"T-the meat is covered in blood, sir," I stuttered, intimidated by the commanding spirit before me. "I didn't know where to get blood all by myself."
"Fine, fine," the Russian growled, growing frustrated with the conversation. "Bring what you have over here, and place it before the gate."
I quickly did as he commanded. I unwrapped the package of blood-soaked lamb, and placed it upon the floor centimetres inches from the blriliantly glowing doorway.
"Excellent work, child," Velikovsky bellowed, a sinister smile crossing his withered lips. "Now, boy, recite words." The ghastly ghost uttered a long stream of Russian words, all of which were just so much gibberish to me. "And get the words exactly right!"
I decided to do as he wished. I began speaking aloud thore unfamiliar words.
"Yessss..." Efimovich Velikovsky hissed, rubbing his skeletal hands together.
I continued to proclaim the incantation, struggling to pronounce the foreign words.
"Go on!" the ghost shrieked, appearing more-and-more ghastly.
I recited the final words.
At that, there was a terrific explosion; and a shock wave of powerful force lanced out and collided with me. With a cry I was yanked up off my feet, pushed back, crashing into the bottom of the wood steps, shattering them into fragments. In intense [?]agony, I forced myself up into a sitting position, my eyes falling back upon the doorway into the Other Side,. The doorway was shimmering, pulsing and heaving like some grotesque lung. The ghosts in the other dimension, including Efimovich Velikovsky, howled with demonic laughter.
"You pathetic fool!" Velikovsky laughed, throwing a gnarled finger out at my direction. "You have doomed yourself!"
"W-what?" I questioned. "What do you mean?"
"I lied to you, brat!" Velikovsky roared. "I was not forced into this world! I came here of my own free will, dragging my servants along with me. I allied myself with the gods of this place, searching for immortality. They gave me my desire. But at a price."
I sat froze.
"To remain, sacrifices must be made. Human sacrifices!"
With those words, Efimovich Grigory Velikovsky began to push his way through the barrier of the doorway. As he emerged into this world, his body began to rapidly age. His hair turned white and fell out as his eyeballs shrivelled into raisins and vanished into his eye sockets. His skin turned green, brown, then peeled off to expose muscles that dried into black tissue that broke off with his movements. His innards and clothes disintegrated to dust as his gleaming white bones grew grey and ancient. What had once been Efimovich Grigory Velikovsky stood before me, a towering living skeleton with eyes sockets burning with an inner fire; the ghoul opened its skeletal mouth, and issued an inhuman roar.
Horrified, I began to plot my escape; the ghoul was free, and it would only be a matter of time before the other ghosts from the Other Side came through following it. Should I leap for the stairs, the ghoul would quickly overtake me in a few short seconds. I had little hope of fleeing this nightmare.
My eyes then fell upon the wet meat laying on the floor to the left of the ghoul.
"Prepare yourself, rat!" the skeletal ghoul spat, pointing a twisted claw of a finger toward me. "Rejoice in the knowledge that you will be the first in many sacrifices to come!"
Without a moment's hesitation, I got to my feet, and sparang forward; I dodged past the ghoul, and threw forward my right foot. With a wet plop, my toe connected with the slimy lamb, and the chunk was thrown forward; the meat passed through the turbulence that was the gate, soon dissappearing from sight as it fell into the wispy green clouds.
"NOOOOOOOOO!" the ghoul cried, shrieking in absolute horror. "The blood! The blood maintains the connection to this world! Without it, the dead cannot come and I cannot remain!"
With that, a hidieous wail escaped the ghoul's lipless mouth. It was a scream of the dead dying. I looked glanced toward the doorway into the Other Side, watching as it collapsed, shrank.
The hellfire went out in the ghoul's sockets, growing black as the tomb. Life escaped those unholy bones, and they seperated, falling apart and tumbling into the vanishing doorway. The door leading into the Other Side slammed closed, and the bone fragments exploded, shattering into a million infintisimal particles.
To this day I cannot forget the events of that day. I still remember the face of Efimovich Velikovsky; before and after he transformed into the hideous skeleton ghoul spirit. I still remember the demonic ghosts which resided on the Other Side. I still remember the swirling green cloud formations, and that evil castle on top of that distant mountain top. I think about the Other Side, and I wonder:
What if something on the Other Side comes through?
The End
