Tom Sheehan

The House on Horror Hill

 

Jack Vespers was a strange man for us kids on the big turn in the road where his house, high on the hill, gray as heavy clouds, somber, sad as death itself, somehow promising more than what we might even have bargained for, loomed on Horror Hill as forbidden territory; dark, dreary, constant talk of ghosts and ghostly games. Nothing was ever proven by wind or whisker, but proof we firmly believed had messages all its own, on its own. Fear, once darkness takes place, comes upon us as loud as guns, sharp as keen knife edges, real as echoes, the way echoes can get dragged away from reality by a deviled spirit or a ghost.

 

Never alone, and never the gang of us, did we approach that house, the eternal darkness of it deeper than black, the sense of abiding death casting a smell all its own, a smell forcibly drawn down into lungs, scarring the lot of us with possibility, terror coming all the way afloat in our imaginations, gripping our lives.

 

Kid stuff at the very outset!!

 

The lot of us somehow drew our belts tighter on our pants ... lest those pants fell down to trap our feet on quick and necessary getaways ... some of us hailed it as flight risk.

 

It was apparent to me and the rest of the kids that something else was going on, an element not one of us spoke of, never a word, the way visages hide the bounding elements. A look in anybody else's eyes would tell you so. And we all knew it; someone besides Jack Vespers lived on or about Horror Hill, the Ghost of Horror Hill, night-real, night-ready, night-long.

 

Two of us, me and Barney Spitz, had seen the ghost slip from the trees one night as we sat on empty kegs behind Burke's barn, volunteers on the watch after the rumors had become too big and had spread too far to ignore.

 

After all, this was our territory.

 

The house, after much talk was made of it, came to the supper table each night, and was, in fact, scheduled to be razed by the town years earlier. A noisy court scene ensued whose fateful cast of legal characters seemed quickly swallowed by death, quick and horrible deaths for that matter, the demolition order soon forgotten, the darkness growing apace about the house, until one wickedly cold winter night a light was observed in a lone window, allowing at least one soul had tenancy in the House on Horror Hill.

 

That tenant appeared to be, for a year or more, nothing more than a mere shadow; never seen in daylight except when evening had come spread its wings, and that shadow began to move, filter, shift on soft feet, fall into or out of corners and other shadows until the very dark names were called for by neighborhood kids, us, us needing names for references, continuity, for the feeling in the gut at the moment of conversation. We never used the word silhouette in the beginning because silhouette alluded to a solid form within the darkness, twixt any light source, and we couldn't allow for such formality, not in our ranks.

 

Thus names were brought about, borne, fell into our lexicon with the slippery and intentionally dark grace of the Devil. It came to be The House of Shadows, Shadowville, House of the Dark Soul, Purgatory Anew on the Hill, Death Afoot, Black Motion, Dark Him, Dark It, Death Pointing Finger or Fingers, according to who was talking at the time in a marked whisper.

 

 Decky Pratt, best reader and talker in the group, story-teller, some his own and some memorized from his reading, called it The Needle in the Eye which made us wonder if something else had been shown to him, a story teller of old tales getting a new edge, made us wonder if he too was special in this matter, for it has been said, A rank's distrust at times goes farther than the tie that binds.

 

Were we that approachable? Was Decky? Thinking of it, of the possibilities, of the ways the immoveable had been moved, the unbelievable had been believed, fiction had become fact, grace, for  the time being, suspended because of shadows, our minds went haywire wild.

 

It hit him, supposedly, like this: He was sitting watch, alone one night in the shadows under the trees, daring to be frightened, when he was accosted by the Ghost, who came upon him, about him, all around him, from every which way imaginable, topside, Earthside, ethereally at invasion and barricade at once. Came the voice of voices, "You disrupt my sleep, you and your sycophants and minions, flaunting a realm they dare not reach, yet at dread moments have the haughtiest regard of, which bespeaks to my mind (I have one, you know!) that cowardice and temerity get you no place in this world of yours and of mine, the twixt be-joined before any idea of merriment."

 

We were sure he had made it up, or someone had said it to him for the purpose of being carried on, a threat thrown wider than the near audience, a broadcast from Hell, if you will, from the Devil himself, and too near to be ignored.

 

Shadows moved around the room, the house, that night, but nobody was there to cast the shadow, a shadow, any shadow; it was barren of people and that came as real as hardened cement, solid tombstones, an ax handle or a hammer head. Solid, believable, disruptive light, the passage of light cut abeam of itself, light snipped off at nothing by nothing, disappearance of light for only the nothing of nothing lingered there in those not-empty spaces.

 

Oh, we made grace and disregard of it, of them, of things.

 

Several ideas and proposals were so carried, that the rest of us were flunkies of Decky's, saying that he was our leader, which found some disregard soon as said, that the Ghost, like all of us, needed sleep, that he was human, which also raised quick disregard.

 

Several ideas were proposed on how to get rid of the ghost on Horror Hill. None of them stayed with us until it was Decky himself who proposed "Why don't we burn it down!"

 

We could hear the scratch of a match, the knife-sharp click of it in darkness.

 

He stood then, in that darkness, a quick line delivered ... "It was my idea, but someone has to be the torch bearer!" His head dipped down, as if for pause, excuse, or "let me be! I've done enough!"

 

Then, swift as he ever moved, he lit the torch he'd had in his hands for almost an hour, sort of ingrained, attached, a prosthetic of quick illustration. The blue-red flame lingered by itself for a moment, and with a soft hush, rushed into full life almost the whole length of the shaft, except for that mere part of it reserved for handling.

 

But Decky was part and parcel of the flame, the torch, the blue-red-orange-purple flame, as though his whole arm was fuel and him a tank of it, and he started to  rush toward the house. Headlong, ready to butt, but not at a window, not smashing the torch inside through a broken pane ... instead, he ran headlong at the front door, smashing it open with a loud crash and splintering its lineal components, and rushing inside, the torch wielder by his hand, and a wilder part of him, dredged up from some piece of darkness taking ownership of him, his body, his soul, every sort of him.

 

Oh, how that image leaped upon us, a collective agreement without further voice, the image at large, free, racing with fire in hand to the heart of the house. Fire, we know, is a surprise at some occurrence, is a slow smoker, and at other times, without a doubt, a formidable ignition leaping for its own voice, its own target, an invader, a deadly insurgent, from the first scratch.

 

A puff of smoke becomes legendary when the imagination is hottest. Sulphur's residue, burnt sulphur, still carrying ignition's threat, lingers longest for firemen, and those citizens burnt-out, scarred and bereft of their belongings.

 

Some of our boys cowered, some screamed at the strange sight, a few knew, with the awful sense of plight, that a goodbye was in progress, that a friend had been taken from us, that the ghost of the Devil was at hand and delivering his own amen in the house of Jack Vespers, the House on Horror Hill, Decky's last digs, as it came to be said.

 

The house, perhaps tinder dry, perhaps waiting flame, heat, ignition, notice of some odd sort, an August hay wagon parked beside a careless smoker, leaped up to swallow the last silhouette of Decky, his head and shoulders, amid sudden new flames brighter than the sun, now just swallowing entities.

 

Gone! Forevermore, gone!

 

We never saw Decky after that last glimpse, or Jack Vespers, or any upstanding part of the house which burned a bonfire blaze, like an old barn, consumption galore, flames tree high for an hour, side bursts of red energy gushing out each window like cannon shot. When beams were ripped loose, walls caved in on themselves, brickwork fell as well, and the chimney dropped with a sudden and thunderous roar of sparks into the rock foundation old as history. Ash dust and smoke leaped skyward, we swore, carrying every particle of person and thing with it ... the driftage of terrors.

 

Wham!!!! A wind tore through us, around us, cyclonic, whirling, tossing lives and limbs as mere debris, as though it had come hunting for us, blaming us, setting us apart for history's sake, the peculiars, the odd, the faulted tossed into historical or hysterical blame.

 

We thought we had a ghost before, but a manageable ghost though an apprehensive one; now we had two more, for there was not a piece or an atom left over in the house from Jack Vespers or Decky Pratt, but minions of a proper ghost, having been nothing more than a site deserving of a loose match, a late cigarette flipped by a drunk settled for a night.

 

Firemen, late on the scene, let the fire burn, perhaps history caught up in inert hoses. "Ain't hurtin' nothin' more," the chief said when he finally arrived, seeing the power of the flames, what had been a house with a history older than he was, a threat for all these years at the same time. "Let it burn out, just keep an eye out for big sparks travelin' elsewhere, up the hill, across the river an' lookin' for dry gutters, leaves galore."

 

On the edge of the front seat of his command car, he sat, in belief of fire and the power it could wage, inflict, and cease leaving naught but ashes, dust in the air, memories. Too many conflagrations sat in his mind in sudden collection.

 

And we stood as a group, transfixed, horrified, but not yet fully aware of what had happened, what was happening right in front of us, what was coming down the pike at us in days, weeks, months, years atop years.

 

In time there was a huge hole in the ground ... into which neighbors gradually threw yard debris, junk, old mattresses, now and then a small fire as a new reminder, and always let burned down to a crispy remnant by the firemen, as though a long-standing order had been issued about Decky, Jack Vesper, the ghost from the beginning of all. "T'ain't hurtin' nothin', " the chief would say

 

In time there was a large hole in the ground ... and no one would buy that piece of land ... no one would build on it anyway, Decky hanging around, Jack hanging around, the ghost hanging around, and whatever else stories were brought up from odd or awed imaginations, and usually from one of us, like perpetuating the memory of our pal Decky.

 

As a group, the bunch of us, Decky's pals, moved, leaped, jumped from early teens into later teens, from kid stuff to hard-nose football and graceful baseball and the miracles of hockey and the knowledge and wonders that girls brought with them all along the sidelines of our efforts.

 

It was a smooth transition in most parts, with each moment of experience, each taste of the rigors and deeds required for success ... and then, over the same spill of time, the real horrors of dreams began, within each of us, late night dreams, awful dreams, screams to wake the dead and sleeping parents and sisters and brothers; dreams about Decky, every one of them, with him screaming, "Why'd you let me do it!! My good buddies, my pals. Why'd you let me do it? I'm locked in here and I can't get out. Can't get out! You can't imagine what it's like, locked in here! Jack's hounding me all the time. That damned ghost is at it too, never letting go, making me pay for all of it, and you guys let me do it. You guys! My pals!"

 

The sounds of those dreams came real as stones, cliffs, rocks in  the way of things, tunnels breaking down, granite in its hardest way, escapes breaking down, the horrors of jails, cells, cemented blocks blocking the way to a single freedom, free air the sole remnant of outer reaches, Decky's hands still struggling for a touch of old.

 

Oh, my, it was real. As real as a dream can get, the sounds alive, the screams on a roll into phantasmal echoes, each one, terrifying sounds muffled under pillows or blankets, or coming straight out of a dark closet, the echoes of dark matter, devil matter, ghostly matter, meant for us, coming like punishment, like a whip at command, the lashes cutting in their way, scars forming their strange and awful mementoes on the white scans of our skin, more devious and painful than secret tattoos tortured into arms or thighs or great blank spaces across one's back.

 

The dreams carried on for tormenting hours, leaving all kinds of marks, scowls, carved fears sitting in eyes, on faces, alive, Decky placing blame with scars of memories upon all our souls. None of us escaped the diatribes, the blame, the sound of a pointed finger as wild as possibly imagined as it stiffened in its direct appointment, saying, "You! You! You!"

 

I'm 88 now, and that's about 75 years of shouldering blame, having dreams, hearing an old pal, an old pal of different sorts.