Virgil put another log on the fire. Autumn had fallen in Massachusetts, and the air was
crisp and cool. The embers in the fireplace cast a soft red glow into the log cabin, and
Virgil stoked the flame, slipping into a meditative mindset. He did everything he could to
avoid think about the past, but it felt inescapable.
It was 1921 when Anna died. Anna was Virgil’s older sister, and her life was taken from
her when a drifter came to Taunton. He watched Anna from a distance a few days
before he made his move and strangled her to death. The judge sentenced him to death
by the electric chair, but Virgil’s family couldn’t stand to be there.
Grief weighed heavy on Virgil, who worked in a steel foundry in Tauton, and he took to
drinking to numb the pain. He was the cause of a terrible workplace accident, the kind
that left a wife without a husband and children without a father. After his termination,
Virgil went to live with his uncle to sober up on the other side of town.
His younger cousin, Mercy, lived there with him. She, too, was stricken with grief over
Anna. They were close in their younger days and often played together. So heavy was
her grief that she could feel her stomach pulled upward and her heart pulled downward.
She often wept and doubled over as if her insides were contracting.
For several months, Virgil would come to the front porch of his uncle's house and sit
with Mercy on the steps. They would look out across the yard and retell every story they
had of Anna. Mercy believed this would soothe the pain, but all it did was make the pain
more severe. She often asked Virgil his thoughts on heaven, hell, and the soul. Virgil
was not a church-going man. It would have been better if he had been because he
never knew how to answer these questions.
One day, when Virgil came home from seeking a new job, Mercy waited for him on the
steps. She was smiling for the first time since Anna was taken away. She held up a flier
for a special occasion, an evening with a medium named Hoyce Norry, which claimed
that he could open the door to the spirit world. Virgil was not a superstitious man, but
Mercy was desperate and insisted he go with her.
Twenty-Eight Worcester Street, Tuesday, May 14th, 1921, at seven o’clock in the
evening. A place and time that Virgil would never forget. He and Mercy arrived and were
led into a parlor with numerous other people. Mr. Norry had them sit in a circle, hand in
hand and turned the lights out. He told them each to focus on what they wanted and called out to the air, demanding that the door between this world and the next be
opened.
Around the circle, Mr. Norry encouraged everyone to call the name of any loved one
they wished to speak with. Odd things would happen, such as a bump in the dark or
someone saying they felt a gust of wind. Nothing happened that could be identified as
hard proof that the medium had indeed opened the door to the afterlife.
Virgil felt that he was wasting his time and became lost in thought. He was startled
when he heard Mercy call out to Anna as if she were there. Virgil took a breath and
waited, but nothing happened. He shook his head in the dark, expressing his
disapproval when Mercy squeezed his hand.
The room creaked and then grew cold. Far more cold than a room should have the right
to feel in the middle of May. So cold that he felt himself and Mercy shivering. He heard a
gasp but could see nothing in the dark.
Then he felt a presence turn toward Mercy. It lingered, looming before her, and she
giggled, whispering Anna’s name. She cried and laughed and asked questions that
went unanswered, and this formless, shapeless presence only made itself known
through a series of icy breaths.
Virgil also called out to Anna and felt the presence turn toward him. It felt like static
electricity, or perhaps the feeling you get when another passes his hand over your bare
skin without touching it—a sensation of knowing and being known. Virgil, too, giggled
and began to ask questions, in utter disbelief that they had called out into eternity and
answered.
This joy and merriment was short-lived. The room heated intensely, and icy breaths
turned to angry groans, inhuman growls. All the people in the room began to protest,
uncomfortable, frightened, and confused. A great crash was heard, and a scream
followed. The people in the parlor jolted and demanded Mr. Norry to stop the theatrics.
Upstairs was a thumping, a stomping, and soon the ceiling shook. Bits of plaster fell on
the horrified people, and a scream could be heard again. Then came the sound of
shattering glass and a roar that deafened the participants.
Mr. Norry cried out and demanded the door be shut. The lights came back on, and
every man and woman was as white as snow. Tears fell from terrified eyes, and people
promptly stormed out of the house, angered and scared.
Virgil and Mercy sat in stunned silence. They asked Mr. Norry what went wrong, but
Norry only bade them leave and never return. He stormed out of the parlor, repeatedly
claiming that the night had been a mistake. From another room, Mr. Norry cried out to
Virgil and Mercy, insisting they leave immediately and imploring God’s protection over
them.
Virgil and Mercy did not understand, but they obeyed and left. In the following weeks,
they would come to speak less and less about Anna. So much less did they speak of
her that Virgil believed the grief had lifted. He found work at a small freight company
and was making good money, and soon moved out of his uncle's house.
Months passed before he and Mercy spoke, but she came calling on Virgil one day. He
came to his door to find her with dark circles around her eyes. She was unwashed and
disheveled, and her eyes shifted all over the room. Occasionally, she would look to her
left, and her eyes would widen in fear. She would go silent for a moment before blinking
and apologizing to Virgil.
She wept bitterly and told Virgil of the horrors she had endured. She would go to bed at
night and hear whispering and scratching on the floorboards. Then, she would find
things in her home, having been moved from place to place. Then, she told Virgil how
she would wake up and see a human shape at the foot of her bed. Evil eyes, it had evil
eyes.
Virgil feared that Mercy had gone mad. Her grief for Anna had returned, and with it
came a nervousness and paranoia. These visions and apparitions were inventions of
the mind. He walked her home, noting that she constantly looked over her shoulder as if
she were being followed.
A week later, Virgil’s uncle came calling. He was distraught and spoke through
desperate tears. It took Virgil some time to calm him down before he could make sense
of the man.
Virgil's uncle claimed that Mercy had woken in the night, shrieking like a banshee. She
cursed at some invisible person. Virgil's uncle tried to calm her, but it was no use.
Though he could not see anything, he heard a mocking laugh echo through his house.
Mercy put her hands over her ears and took off, running down the hallway and throwing
herself from a second-floor window onto a fence post.
Upon hearing this, Virgil’s grief returned in full force. The pain was too much for him. He
attended Mercies funeral and felt an irresistible pull within him. Virgil went back to the
bottle and committed to a life of drunken avoidance.
Once more, losing his job, Virgil slept on the streets at night. At first, he passed it off as
mere drunkenness, but on nights when Virgil had no liquor, he knew that he could hear
his name being called from some dark door frame or alleyway. Sometimes, he would
call back to the voice, asking who it was and what it wanted, but it never replied. He
thought that maybe someone was playing a trick on him. Still, he tried to sleep with an
eye open.
The weeks went on, and Virgil found work again for the Taunton newspaper. He found
an affordable room to sleep in and saved up his money, but making sure he had enough
liquor to keep him distracted. Virgil would drink himself to sleep at night and force
himself awake in the mornings to deliver the papers, but soon this was not enough.
Virgil awoke in the mornings to find his door wide open, and his bed moved to the
opposite side of the room. He would straighten the room as best he could but could not
devote himself to it without being late to work. His days continued like this for some
weeks before the end of September.
The shape stood at the foot of his bed and screamed. Virgil could not contain his terror
but once again tried to pass this off as only a drunken vision. He recoiled at what he
believed was nothing, shouting curses all the same at the figure in his room. So fearful
were his shouts that his neighbors came to his room to confront him.
Confused and drunk, Virgil attacked his neighbor. The two men battered one another,
Virgil thinking that his neighbor had been the one behind the torment and his neighbor
shouting that Virgil had gone mad. The police were called, and Virgil was dragged from
his neighbor and detained in the local jail.
His stay in the jailhouse was not a pleasant one. The shadowy apparition came to him
in his cell; its presence mocked Virgil. Nightly, it would go to him and whisper Anna and
Mercy’s names in Virgil's ear. Virgil felt the same presence he felt in Mr. Norry’s house,
but now it had grown all the more sinister.
When he was released from jail, Virgil fled from Taunton, convinced that he was
experiencing a nervous breakdown. He thought some time in nature might do him some
good, so Virgil went south to the Freetown-Fall River State Forest, where he rented a cabin in the woods. Virgil was convinced that he needed to sober up once again, and
maybe all of this would go away.
Now Virgil sat staring at the embers in the fireplace. It was close to midnight, and he
sipped his canteen of water, having left any liquor back in Taunton. The light was fading,
and Virgil reached for another log, only to realize that he had run out of firewood. He
groaned as he stood and picked up his ax, stepping outside to chop a few more logs.
The October wind was crisp and cool. The moon could not be seen, and what little light
his lantern offered made the trees look ominous. They loomed over the small clearing
where the cabin rested, blocking out the autumn stars. Shadows fell on shadows, and
the only sound was the sound of rustling leaves and wind cutting through the trees.
Virgil approached the tree stump, where multiple logs were piled for chopping. He
placed one on the stump and remembered what his father had taught him: always keep
your eye on the log. You cannot miss your target if your eye is on the log.
Virgil chopped down with the ax and split the log. He then placed part of the split log
back on the stump and chopped it in two. He repeated this process until he had a
decent bundle of firewood. Placing his final log on the stump, Virgil steadied his ax.
He raised the handle and swung, but hearing his name whispered from the trees, he
raised his eyes to the trees and saw it. A shadowy human shape with evil eyes peering
at him from the dark. He felt his heart beat faster, his breath stolen from his lungs, and
he screamed when he felt the ax head break into his shin and split his leg.
Virgil screamed, and from the trees, he heard a mocking laughter slither through the air.
He pulled the ax head from his shin, writhing in pain, and began to pull himself across
the grass and back to his cabin. He groaned and strained, grasping at his wounded leg.
He sat up, and with his good leg, he pushed himself along the ground, and his arm
reached back behind him to pull himself.
Almost at the cabin, Virgil raised his eyes to the tree line, and in the illumination of his
abandoned lantern, he saw the same shape that had stalked him since Mercy died. He
kept his eye on the thing, writhing in pain, and reached back to pull himself to the cabin,
but his hand did not touch grass or soil. Instead, he pulled up a sheet of paper,
blood-stained, and in the light, he could see that it was a flier for one Mr. Hoyce Norry.
He threw it away and rolled over, climbing onto his three good limbs, and scrambled
toward the cabin door. In the dark, he felt his hand touch the unmistakable shape of a whiskey bottle. Virgil ignored it and pressed on toward the cabin. Once inside, he
slammed the door shut. His fire had only a few coals to light the room, and the faint
glow of the lantern in the clearing died out. Virgil pulled himself into his bed, blood
flowing steadily.
Sunrise came slowly. The pale morning light poured through the window and lit up the
cabin. Virgil lay on his bed, his leg festering, and knew he would never return to Taunton
from here. There was no point, for if he could not escape these apparitions here in the
forest, then he never would.
He wondered if it ever opened at all, that door to the spirit world. He wondered if Mr.
Hoyce Norry could genuinely commune with the spirits or if he were only a charlatan.
He also wondered if he was experiencing any of this at all or if he was going mad.
It did not matter. Those evil eyes watched him from the window, and blood oozed from
his wounded leg, pooling on the floor. It was only a matter of time.
Thank you to Grayson Sullivan for the awesome submission! Connect with Grayson on instagram @GraysonDSullivan_Author
Also, consider supporting Grayson's Kickstarter! He is looking for help to bring his sword and sorcery novel The Known Wold of Aterra to life!
Thank you for hosting my spooky short and shilling my Kickstarter! Can't wait to see what other stories were selected!