In 1967, we moved into an old, early 1900's rental house. I was 15, my brother 13, and there were my mother and stepfather.
Just inside the front door was an expansive living area with a shiny, golden-brown hardwood floor. A fireplace adorned the west wall. But to the right of the red brick fireplace was a hideous spot, a two-foot oblong shape that was black at the center and faded to reddish-brown toward the edges.
It was grotesque and bothered me, so I told mom that I would try to remove it. "It can't be removed," she said. "Many people have tried and failed." Hearing this, I cajoled her to tell me more, and, with an unusual amount of hesitancy, she finally relented.
The landlord had told her about how the spot had gotten there three years before, she said. He said that a family with children, a boy and a girl, had lived in the house. One night the children heard their parents shouting, so curious they tiptoed down the stairs and peered out into the large room from behind a flimsy, plastic accordion door.
They watched their father leave the house and heard the family car's trunk door slam. In a blur, he blasted back through the front door wielding a shotgun. The kids shuddered as they watched him knock their mother to the floor and shoot her. Then, without hesitation, he put the barrel of the gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger, blowing head matter back into a small bedroom located behind the fireplace.
I could see my mother was shaken in the telling of the story, but she told me the landlord had offered her a special deal on the rent. So despite the horrific history, she paid the deposit. She hoped that I wouldn't be upset about her choice of living accommodations.
"Freaky story!" I commented with teenage bravado, not really half believing it. But later, I would regret my blasé attitude.
Oppressive adequately describes the atmosphere in that house. Once, when home alone, I tried to scrub the spot with liquid cleaner, Brillo pads, and then sandpaper, all to no avail. It felt as if some unknown entity watched while I labored.
The windows would not allow light to enter the home, so most days the dark interior closed in like a suffocating fog. The house was somber, but the bedroom behind the fireplace that took the brunt of the flesh-and-bone laden shotgun blast seemed the epitome of darkness. On the hottest of summer days, I entered the room and felt an immediate, unexplainable chill. We, unspoken, left the room empty.
As the weeks passed, my family's personalities underwent a progressive, radical transformation. Once eternally happy, now, night after night my folks fought and quarreled well into the early morning hours. I recall wondering, how could anyone have that much energy to argue so vehemently for so long. Did they ever sleep?
My brother's face hardened, and he withdrew to his upstairs bedroom and alienated himself from the family. At night, I heard him leave the house through an upstairs window and clamber out onto the roof.
One day I stumbled upon my brother and a couple of his friends in the old dirt basement under the first-floor kitchen playing with a ouija board.
"Where did you find that?," I asked.
"We found it buried in dirt," they said, "behind the furnace." I watched as the planchet zipped purposely around the board in response to questions they posed.
As time passed a strange malevolence gripped us. Mom fell ill with grand mal epileptic seizures, and an ominous, black boil erupted on the calf muscle of my left leg. I heard noises, and during the evening hours, dark shadows flitted about at the periphery of my vision.
One afternoon, mom cried out, "Come here! Look at this!" When I arrived at her bedroom closet, she swung the door open. On the floor sat a doll appearing surrealistically human. It appeared at least 3-feet tall with porcelain skin that had all the color and nuances of flesh. Bushy, thick hair cascaded in brown ringlets to the shoulders, and its glistening, moist blue eyes stared back at us, penetrating my soul.
Shirley Temple came to mind. "Where did you get that?" I asked. "It just showed up," she said incredulously. "I've never seen it before."
Bizarre incidents accelerated and temperaments deteriorated, so mom finally said, "We're getting out of here!" We packed everything and moved most of it to a new rental house we had found.
Because of a test, a school project, or it was just too far away, I couldn't move up to the new place with everyone else the first day. I told mom that, under the circumstances, it would be convenient if I spent the night alone at our old house. They could pick me up after school the next day along with the last few boxes of household goods left behind.
After school I hung out at a friend's until dark, and then decided to head home. I arrived at the house around 9 pm and made a makeshift bed on the floor in front of the fireplace, just a couple of feet from the stained floorboards.
I cataloged my surroundings. Nothing stirred; the place was silent as a burial crypt. Seven boxes were stacked near the wall opposite the fireplace and bed. Since the house was empty and there was nothing to entertain me, I extinguished the lights and settled in for what I hoped would be deep, uneventful sleep.
I had no idea how much time had passed, but my eyes fluttered, and I groggily awoke. I focused my eyes on the alarm clock, which read 3:15 am. Then it dawned on me that I shouldn't be able to see the clock because when I had dozed off earlier, the house was black as an unlit coalmine. Now my mind began to race, pondering the origin of the light.
A muted yellow, pulsating light cascaded across the floor, over the boxes, and up the wall. An ominous gray shadow filled its center. I froze with fear, but soon succumbed to curiosity. I had to investigate the origin of that mysterious light.
I rose up slowly on my right elbow and gazed past the malignant spot, past the doorway of the bloody room, and toward my mother's bedroom, from where the light emanated. In the room's doorway backlit and silhouetted by light rays from within, stood the doll facing directly toward me, its arms outstretched, its golf-ball sized eyes glowing red.
Needless to say, I couldn't sleep or move. At sunrise, I jumped up, hastily dressed, and dashed out of the house never to return.
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