The house was definitely haunted. The monster haunting it had been not-quite-unknowingly invited in by the brutal wickedness of its first occupants, selfish, abusive people with more money than good reasons to spend it. It rejoiced in their sin and nursed them along to a place where they presently gave in to their most base impulses, and in one foul night of rape, murder and suicide, every one of them perished and was gathered to the bosom of Hell.
Over the next hundred and fifty years, the house was passed on from relative to relative, none of whom were inclined to stay long (the brute saw to that); then it was let out to a succession of hapless tenants who were unaware of the place’s grim history, and certainly unaware until it was too late of who, or rather what, they were sharing their home with.
Then the house lay dank and empty for nearly twenty years, its history hanging around it like a bad smell from a swamp. The monster waited impatiently for new victims, making do in the meantime with terrorising the dreams of the neighbours’ children and enjoying the frisson of fear from those who were obliged to walk past it on gloomy evenings. It drifted about the neighbourhood conjuring illusions of crying children, terrified women and dark men in masks with long, wickedly curved knives.
Every Halloween, some foolish teenagers, dared by their friends to break into the house and spend the night there, left the place with unseen scars on their soul, foul images of rats and spiders and decay tattooed on their minds where there ought to have been dreams of hope and warmth and love. The monster rejoiced at every small success it had in smearing foulness on their hearts and kept hoping that one day it might repeat its first great triumph, using murder and suicide to send more unsuspecting fools on to the next world unprepared.
Then an opportunity to do just that seemed to develop. A woman in a dark business suit arrived at the gate one dull Autumn afternoon. She pushed her way through the brambles that overlapped the path like old women’s bony fingers, and stood looking at the house. It seemed to stare back at her with a threatening expression. She shook her head and stepped forward to the front door. She unlocked it and pushed it open, then stood in the entrance for a moment waiting for the dust to settle. Fumbling in her bag for a moment she found her mobile phone, summoned up the camera app and began taking pictures. Then she moved inside, photographing the rest of the rooms, being careful not to allow herself to brush up against anything.
The monster watched her carefully, understanding that it needed to allow her to do her work undisturbed, yet unable to resist planting at least one dark suggestion in her mind; it was a slave to its own unpleasantness. She finished what she was doing in a hurry and left.
Several days later, workmen arrived. They smartened up the overgrown land at both front and back, installed new windows, replaced shingles on the roof, rewired the place and did a hundred other things to bring it, kicking and screaming, into the twenty-first century. The result was actually surprisingly pleasing: the house had scrubbed up very nicely.
The monster was pleased too. It was only a matter of time before someone snapped up this very desirable residence.
The workmen finished up, gathered their tools and left, glad to be shot of the job so they could move on to some location that did not bring unexpected shivers and disturbing daydreams.
Only a fortnight later, a young couple with a van full of boxes pulled up outside the house. They stood for a moment grinning and looking at their new home, full of the hope of a new life begun together, still not quite able to come to terms with their good fortune in acquiring such a big property with their limited means, and hugged each other before going inside to have a look around.
By the time the day ended, they had their home about as well furnished as it was going to be for a while: a bed, one sofa and one armchair, an oven and a fridge that had both seen better days, and just about enough knives, forks, cups and plates to do the two of them and maybe one visitor. It didn’t matter. They were delighted and thankful.
The monster watched them, affronted by their naïve happiness, feeling a monumental rage building. It would soon put them in their place. These poor fools would be sorry they had ever seen this house.
Evening drew in. The new man of the house busied himself with the routine of checking that everything was locked up and switched off while his wife went upstairs and got ready for bed. He finished it off by dropping into the armchair and just sitting there for a moment, enjoying the novel feeling of being in his very own home. Then he leaned forward and bowed his head.
Upstairs, the lady was sitting on the edge of the bed with an open book before her. She read just a few lines, but it seemed to be enough for her; she bowed her head too.
If the monster had been a creature of flesh and blood, it would have clenched its fists and ground its teeth. Prayer, indeed! And was that book really a Bible? It forgot all its plans of a gradual assault. It would rip these two apart. There would be blood and screaming before they had been here a week. It would show these stupid animals how useless faith was in the face of horror.
It gathered itself up in a sense that there are not really any adequate words for, except that it was perhaps the spirit-equivalent of drawing a great breath to scream, or a tensing of the muscles to strike a ferociously heavy blow.
The young woman suddenly raised her head and opened her eyes, holding still as if listening. She did not quite know what was amiss, but it was immediately clear to the brute that her faith was not something sleepy or wishy-washy. It was alert, sharp as a kitchen knife being brandished in the face of an intruder. The brute’s rage increased.
The woman uttered something. The monster could not have told exactly what it was, but it felt something beginning to shake at its very core.
Downstairs, the young man raised his hands heavenward and began to sing quietly.
It was too much to bear. The brute let out a long, wordless, soundless roar, the greatest roar it had ever articulated, the expression of the very deepest hatred in its being.
In the houses surrounding, children sprang upright in bed and screamed for their mothers. People felt their knees and their bowels turning to jelly but had no idea why. On arms and on the backs of necks, hairs rose. Lights flickered. Everyone felt the impulse to draw a blanket around themselves, as if a wind from the coldest part of Hell had blown over the roof. One old man’s heart gave out, and he slipped into the next world before he could call on God to save him. It was the monster’s last victory.
The young woman spoke quietly once more, words that were at once simple, decisive, incomprehensible and incomprehensibly unsettling to the creature threatening her; and everything changed.
The monster had the sensation (- sensation! How could it have a sensation? It was a spirit-being!) of being grabbed by the shoulders by great blunt fingers that dug into it painfully, mercilessly, like the serrated edge of a mechanical digger’s bucket digs into the earth. Something – no, Someone – roared at it with a depth of wrath that made its own wrath a moment before seem unspeakably puny. It was like being held in a jet of blazing napalm. The unseen hands endlessly shook the monster like a rag doll, and it could not even entertain the notion of resistance.
Then the material world seemed to retreat an infinite distance, and the brute felt itself being flung backwards, skinning its arms as if on the uprights of a doorway before hitting the wall beyond and bouncing off it to land with a wallop on the floor. There was a great crash as of a metal door slamming, then the sound of bolting and double-bolting on the other side.
In the silence that ensued, the monster tried to get to grips with its situation. It was in the most complete blackness imaginable, but it could feel that it had a body, and it was able to touch a cold steel floor and steel walls all around. It roared its fury again, as if expecting the metal cell to fly apart at the mere sound, but the yell was weak and pathetic; the cell trembled no more than a brick wall would in the face of a toddler’s tantrum. It held itself still and listened again. Very, very faintly, it thought it could hear the sound from above of dirt being shovelled and then patted down. Then there was nothing, for ever and ever.
The monster wanted to cry out and ask what was happening and how this was possible, but it knew the answer even before the question had been asked. They don’t want to think about their final fate, but all monsters know it is coming. They have always known. Holiness terrifies them much more than they have ever terrified us.
Silence and darkness settled on the monster with the weight of a millstone. Its long, long Halloween was over. All Hallows had finally arrived.
David Ferguson is an author and musician. You can find his books on Amazon and you can find his music online on Spotify, iTunes, etc. (Search for David J. Ferguson. Don’t forget the “J.” because there are apparently a gazillion David Fergusons out there.)
...but you already knew that. 