An unexpected torrent soaked the usually dry land and it presently was saturated like a sponge past its capacity. The savage rain could have cared less about anything below. Everything under the heavy clouds were just victims of gravity’s emotionless cruelty.
In a rural domain outside of nowhere, and even farther from anything, was a lone vehicle.
The driver was Steve Cole, a mid-thirties executive, and he was clenching the steering wheel, white knuckled, as if the car might fly away. His wife, Susan sat beside him, and his son was in the back. The night got cold fast, but the sweat on his brow indicated otherwise. Steve used all his retinal powers of concentration to discern the road through the downpour.
Their son Jesse was reclining with his dirty shoes on his mother’s seat. Jesse is a typical 12-year-old wise cracking, snarky know it all. He plays video games any chance he gets, but still manages to get A’s in most of his classes except PE. He too looks very on edge. However, he had different reasons than the unexpected storm.
This family trip comes with one rule: no electronics. No PlayStation, no Grand Theft Auto, and no cell phones. Not even an old Walkman Jesse found in the garage with an AC/DC cassette still inside. “It’s like China, only with less rights,” Jesse said while his mom checked his luggage before they departed.
Jesse now watched raindrops on the window smear horizontally through the wind.
“Dad, it feels like my thumbs are cramping. What if they atrophy? How will you feel then?” Jesse was half joking, and half whining.
Jesse’s mother thought she saw his thumbs move on an invisible controller pretending to drive the car. “Your son has a severe problem. Jess is game miming. Using his thumbs as if he’s holding a controller.”
“I’ve got it!” Steve screamed a bit too loudly. “We’ll drop him off here on the side of the road. Then he’ll be able to hitchhike home. It’s a retro way of using his thumbs. Maybe it will improve his dexterity.”
Lightning lit up the landscape to reveal a swerving, treacherous road that wasn’t ending soon. Everything got serious again. “I’ve never seen weather so violent,” mumbled Susan fearfully, gazing out a window that was more water than glass.
What couldn’t have gotten worse, did. The rain seemed to no longer fall in drops, but rather sheets. The windshield-wipers were being toyed with. The lightweight wipers were outmatched by the heavy weight rain. The car radio, which was partially static before, now stopped producing discernable sounds completely. The overall temperature dropped to what felt sub arctic. The Cole’s were lost and trying to avoid panic.
“Please Steve let’s just stop at the next exit and see if there is a place to stay for the night”, Susan pleaded.
“If anyone cares, I like that idea. I’m getting hungry too.” Jesse muttered.
“That’s a great idea. We could sooner stop and ask a tree, or another dead skunk in the road. There’s no exit for a squillion miles”, Dad said, very sarcastically.
As if half hallucination, Susan thought she saw or sensed a fleeting wisp of light ahead.
“There’s a light. Way up the hill. There it is again”, Susan insisted to her husband.
“I just saw a light too!” interjected Jesse, delighted. “It keeps coming in and out of focus, but I definitely saw it.”
All three saw the distant flickering light now. Like an apprehensive beacon of hope. The rain distorted its shimmer. But it still looked and felt like salvation.
Like a muddy moth, the car slipped and fishtailed slowly down the road towards the light.
“I should have weighted down the trunk. Our traction is zero”, quipped Steve.
Astonishingly, it was raining even harder and more violent. It was angry rain. It seemed personal. As if the closer they got to the light, the more upset the weather was.
It had every intention of cracking the windshield and pelting the Cole’s to death.
As they got closer to the top of the hill, they turned onto the side road leading to the glinting light. The road got very narrow very quickly. The car was having difficulty making it up the steep road. The light had gone out and was not reappearing. Steve began to pull over when an enormous shadow with wings swooped directly in front of the Cole’s headlights.
“Holy schnitzel! What was that?” shouted Steve, his heart palpitating. “I think it was a feathered poltergeist. I’m turning around and getting us out of here.” He put the car into reverse when the light flashed through what looked like a house.
“Well Dad, it did have something in common with a ghost. Both generally prowl the night and make all kinds of undead sounds such as hoots, clicks and screeches.”
“I really hate birds,” said Susan.
“Are you trying to make us feel better or worse?” Dad snapped at Jesse.
“Better,” declared Jesse. “It was just a Great Horned Owl. You know, the second largest bird in North America. They’ve been known to eat porcupines. To me, that should be considered a super power: porcupine eating.”
The Cole’s drove a little farther and made their way into the driveway of the two story house with the light. Turns out, the light in the window was the only part of the property that had any light at all. The metaphor “Black as night” would have been an understatement.
Every part of what could be seen was worn and damaged. Not from vandals. But from the kind of neglect that only comes with age. As they parked and got out of the car, Jesse imagined that it had the feel of a place to put the terminally dead.
The small acreage was infested with Brittle Bush, Ironwood, spiny Ocotillo and Palo Verde. Organ Pipe Cactus seemed to guard the smaller shrubs. The pathway to the door was lined with tall Yuccas. Browning Grape Ivy and Bougainvillea covered the walls with protective vines and sharp thorns. It seemed as if the plants were the rightful tenants reclaiming their estate.
They were getting soaked while walking up to the porch, and the syrupy mud that had collected on their shoes felt like cement. It was a muddy mission. It crested into Susan’s leather Gucci boots. Susan said, “Ooooh no! That feels disgusting.”
At this point, wearing no shoes would have been a more sensible choice. But none of this was anyone’s choice.
“It feels like I have Frankenstein feet. Arrrrrgh!” Jesse joked with his arms outstretched, zombie-like. He found himself to be the only one amused. But he’d become used to this.
They approached the top of the steps leading up to the entranceway. A large, round and tangled spider’s web was crafted along the intricately carved transom above the right side of the door.
“Eewwwww! I hate spiders and their nasty webs! I heard its spider saliva that makes it all sticky,” shrieked Susan. “Oh God! There it is!” A two-inch brown spider sat motionless in the web.
“That’s a Crevice Spider, also known as a Southern House Spider,” said Jesse noticing his parents look of disbelief. Jesse did tend to use the word crevice whenever he could manage. “It’s the reason we’re not being swarmed by other bugs. Having a home that provides meals would be like if our house had a roof that made pizza every night.”
His parents walked toward the house, still half listening. They were all shivering now in their damp clothes.
“And M-m-mom, FYI, Cr-cr-crevice Spiders fray their web with combs on their legs… so it becomes like Velcro, it’s not spit,” Jesse said shivering.
At the top of the rotting wooden steps, Steve looked apprehensive at the decaying double doors. “There can’t possibly be anyone home. No one can possibly live here”, he said with blatant anxiety. Susan had a dejected expression on her wet face.
Steve turned his head to look around, as if there were other neighbors to inquire for help. In the edges of his eyes, Steve thought he saw a something moving in a nearby tree. Was he seeing things? It was a strange tree of oval shaped fruit. But it looked like the fruits were spinning, slowly, back and forth on their stem.
“Fine, I’ll knock!”, Jesse said loudly and decidedly.
“You will not. We’ll knock… together… as a family”, Susan said looking back and forth between the other two, wondering if this was going to be regretful.
Jesse took a step forward. The wood below his feet let out a stentorian creak as if it felt pain. The sudden loud, disturbing noise caused the tree infested with spinning fruit to behave very strangely. Each of the fruits hanging by their single stems dropped off the tree all at once, looked as if they were about to fall, then began to flutter away in all directions, as if gravity did not exist. There must have been fifty or more. Susan and Steve screamed in horror as the flying furry things began to speed in their direction.
“What the fudgesicle are those?!? Ahh!” Steve and Susan were ducking and covering their heads with their arms. They looked like they were reenacting a safety drill.
Jesse was the only one standing up in wonder. He calmly stated, with the confidence of a professor at Hogwarts, “I saw those bats sleeping when we pulled up. Bats sleep upside for their circulatory system. Unlike birds, bats need to drop in order to take flight. And most bats have to live in a colony to stay warm. They eat tons of annoying bugs, just like that spider you were afraid of, and pollinate all sorts of crops”.
“Thanks Doctor DooVery Little”, snarled Steve.
The stairs made and awful crunching noise.
“These stairs have seen many moons,” said Steve, like a Shaman.
“I would gladly provide it with one more!” mocked Jesse. His dad gave him a look of disgust once realizing the meaning of this, and Jesse understood quickly that he should not elaborate.
The Cole’s now stood nose-to-nose with the front door. They still had not knocked after all this time. They still needed to find help.
“Hey, Dad?”
“Yes?”
“If a door has never been opened is it still a door?”
“That depends on what’s on the other side,” said Steve.
They stared at each other for a brief moment before all three of their fists beat the door with a “bang-bang-bang” in unison. The door felt cold, and the hard oak disintegrated just a little where their knuckles met the wood.
Then ever so slowly, the door squeaked open. As it opened, it sounded like air being released from a balloon. Swinging more than halfway open now, it squeaked and a clammy, musty smell was the first to greet the Cole’s.
“Hello?” Steve said, in a voice pitch much higher than his natural tone.
Jesse walked right in, like it was Disneyland.
“Whoa, be careful, we don’t know who, or what’s in here,” his mother stammered. Steve and Susan crept in, one small step at a time. Without the slightest hint of a breeze, the door slam shut.
They all three made a noise that could only be interpreted as terror. Even Jesse lost his teenage cool. Steve found his way to the door and tried to open it. He was unsuccessful.
It was no use, they had to find help, or find a way out. The rain outside must have stopped. If there was ever a definition of “dead quiet”, it was here, and it was now. Quiet had never been so loud.
“Hello! Can we please use your phone?” Susan yelled up the stairs in front of them.
Then Jesse said loudly, “Our family has perfectly good phones, but my parents thought it would be a great idea to vacation like its 1923. Yo… is there anyone in the hizzy?” screamed Junior towards the top of the staircase.
“Really?” frowned Steve, “I don’t think this is the winter home of Snoop Dogg.”
“Shh!” hushed Susan as if she thought someone was listening. She was looking up the stairs to the second floor. Was it just her imagination or did she see faint candlelight up there?
All closed their mouths instantaneously. But nothing was heard. “Shh!” repeated Susan abruptly, but this time, she grabbed her husband and son by the arm, like she really meant it. Miles from distant, an almost imperceptible nano-noise was faintly detectable. One thing became quickly obvious. They weren’t alone. And the noise was getting less faint. That meant it was getting closer.
The three of them, damp and helpless, climbed the stairs single-file, with Dad in the lead, then Jesse, and Susan as the tip-toeing caboose.
The Cole’s managed to reach the second floor and found themselves in a moonlit hallway. Whatever was making noise could be heard at the farthest end of the hallway. It was a thug and drag, thug and drag. It sounded like a lumbering creature dragging a useless appendage. Something, or someone, was assuredly moving toward the speechless Cole’s. The clamor was becoming hauntingly chaotic. Louder and louder, closer and closer. This thing had an eerie, impervious persistence. As if pushed by an invisible energy, the three found themselves inching back toward the stairs.
“Who’s there?” pleaded Susan.
“We just need a telephone or to know if there’s a town nearby. We’re sorry to intrude, but there was no where else to go” Steve said as he quivered a little, weak in the knees, his mud-covered shoe tassels wriggling.
In the place where they all expected a response, was a resounding silence. Abruptly the familiar clamor began again. Thunk, drag, Thunk, drag. It sounded like chains. Whatever it was seemed tethered, rumbling, shackled, vexed, and unwieldy. What ever it is seemed resigned to its own existence. Relentlessly moving toward the Cole’s.
“Who are you?! Say something!” screamed Steve and Susan.
Lightening crashed and the room glowed. There it was. Can their eyes deceive them?
Lightening struck again. The room was as bright as daylight. The only thing louder than their heartbeats was the booming thunder. The light had revealed something beyond fear. This must be a hallucinatory illusion brought upon by extreme fright. And it was just upon them. A third burst of lightening exploded the room into high resolution again. There, just inches away from the Cole’s, was a monstrous, upright coffin shuffling towards them. A thick chain was wrapped around about 20 times, and it was tethered by the tangle of chains to the opposite end of the hallway much like a leash.
With an uneasy zombie-like determination, it hobbled ever closer. But how? Whoever chained this coffin did not want it to be opened, or for it to leave the building. The coffin was scuffling, fighting against a long thick chain. It’s determination undaunted.
“Ahhh!” fell out of Susan’s mouth like her mouth was numb from dental work.
Susan stumbled down the first step and the moldy wood collapsed below her. She fell landing in a pile of dust and debris. Steve ran towards her, and he also found himself falling into the dilapidated debris.
“Get out of here! Jesse run!” his parents screamed.
Still in the hallway, Jesse’s back was now against the wall. As the coffin got closer, everything felt dizzying. Steve yelled at Jesse to run again. He couldn’t get Susan out of the rubble. He knew this year’s family vacation was going to end in death.
Jesse was the last one standing. All of Jesse’s skills and experience blended together. In an instant, his mind produced pure clarity of thought, and he knew exactly what to do.
The solution was in his back pocket.
Like the Witch Hunter meets Jason Bourne, Jesse pulled out a bag of cough drops and stopped the coffin.
