Max_Writer

The farmer looked at him for a moment and then climbed slowly down the ladder.

“Why you goin’ there?” he asked. “Ain’t nothin’ good there.”

“That’s what I’m hearing,” Fuller said. “I’ve been hired to investigate the house and see that it’s still intact. By William Abington; he’s apparently the owner of the house now.”

“All right, there’s been some strange things going on up there.”

“I gathered.”

“I think I know what’s going on up there.”

“Oh really?”

“Oh yeah. It’s haunted.”

“That’s what the man at the train station said.”

“Yup, yup, yup,” Hardy replied. “It’s a place to be avoided.”

He swallowed.

“I can take you up there if’n you want,” he said. “Are you armed?”

“Yes,” Fuller said.

“That’s good,” Hardy replied. “Is your friend here armed too?”

“Yes.”

“That’s probably good. I’d fear for your safety. I don’t want to be responsible if anything might happen to you.”

“Thank you for your concern.”

Hardy looked up at the sky.

“You know, supper will be ready soon,” he said. “Why don’t you come in and share some supper with us and I’ll hook my team up after that.”

“Thank you very much,” Fuller said.

Hardy took them in and introduced them to his wife Annette. They were shown into a small, quaint parlor and Fuller noticed a pair of weapons on the wall: a double barrel shotgun and a .22 rifle. Within a half hour, Annette had a simple dinner ready for them. They ate by lamplight. The house had no electricity. Hardy made small talk, asking about each of their professions. They learned that he farmed and worked at the mill. Annette complained loudly that he spent all of his time at the mill, working extra shifts.

“Got to make ends meet,” he said.

After they had eaten, he hitched up two horses to a wagon and helped them get their luggage in the back.

It was getting dark as they made their way down the road. A half-moon rose up by the time they reached a broken down church building that leaned towards the road and seemed to look mournfully at them with empty windows. The small steeple in the front leaned crazily to one side. A small stone wall behind the church was intact though a few stones were missing here and there. A lane led up the steep hill behind the church.

The lane proved treacherous, partially washed-out, and had three sharp switchbacks before it leveled out for almost a quarter of a mile. The trees and undergrowth were thick in the area and grass grew between the ruts of the trail. It eventually opened up into an overgrown clearing in the trees, with those on the left being thicker as they went up the mountain than those on the right, which receded steeply below.

A good-sized clapboard house shrouded in darkness stood in the clearing behind a picket fence. The house was obviously old but in fairly good shape. It was two stories high with a steeply sloped roof pierced by three chimneys. To the right was a lower building connected to the end of the house, obviously of newer construction. A well was also visible there, attached to the house with a copper pipe. The building appeared to have been added to and the left side of the house where the porch stood was the oldest. The windows were shuttered and the house closed up tight. The outbuildings were in poor repair and nearly falling down though the house itself appeared to be intact.

The wagon came to a stop near the front door of the house.

“If you want, I can come check on you in the morning, if you’re still here,” he said.

“Thank you,” Fuller said.

McAfee climbed out of the wagon and got the luggage out. Both he and Hardy stared at the house nervously.

“That would be appreciated,” Fuller said to the farmer. “Thank you.”

He handed Hardy a dollar bill and the man nodded at him and thanked him.

“We’ll see you in the morning,” Fuller said.

“I’ll come after sunup,” Hardy replied.

It took the man a little bit of effort to get the team and wagon turned around but he was soon riding slowly away as Fuller and McAfee looked at the house. Fuller took out his pistol and made sure it was loaded. He was feeling a little nervous at what he’d heard through the day. He suggested getting one of the lanterns lit.

As McAfee went to one knee to light one of the lanterns, he suddenly gasped and then keeled over. He grunted, almost convulsing, and the cigarette he was smoking fell out of his mouth. Fuller grabbed one of the electric torches and shined it on the man. McAfee’s face and his hands were blistered and dripping fluids. His eyes had clouded over as if they had filled with blood and he gasped, his face twisted in pain. Fuller recoiled in horror.

“Mr. Fuller, what’s going on!?!” McAfee gasped. “What’s going on, Mr. Fuller? I can’t see. I can’t see anything!”

Fuller didn’t know what to do but after only a quarter of a minute or so, McAfee blinked and looked right at him. His face was still twisted in pain and his hands still dripped pus.

“I don’t think I’m going to be able to help you with the front door Mr. Fuller,” he gasped. “Not unless I feel better.”

Fuller got one of the lanterns lit but it felt insignificant in the looming darkness all around the crouched Campbell House. He picked up the pry bar and found a small board nailed across the door to hold it closed. It took the man about five minutes of work to finally pry the board off and he saw that the door handle was broken off but the mechanism was still somewhat intact. He reached into the hole and manipulated it. The door opened with a click, revealing a dark room within.

He pushed the door further open and held the lantern high. He could make out several pieces of furniture covered with sheets and a fireplace. On the floor, leaning against the fireplace, was a portrait of a harsh-looking man with red hair in 18th century clothing. What really caught Fuller’s eye was the bullet hole in the painting, right between the man’s eyes. Steps led up to the floor above. Two more doors flanked the fireplace.

He put down the lantern and then went to help McAfee into the house. Unfortunately, Fuller was a very weak man and could do little more than guide the massive McAfee into the house and get the sheet off the couch, helping the man to lie down upon it. As he helped him down, he couldn’t help but noticed a scorched mark on the floor.

Except for McAfee’s ragged breathing, the house was deafly quiet.

Fuller lit a glass lamp on the table and then went back outside with the lantern to slowly bring in their luggage and supplies. It took him three trips. McAfee still looked like he was in a great deal of pain and Fuller didn’t know what to do about it. He did his best to make McAfee comfortable.

He noticed that the back door was ajar and he also saw a door in the back of the stairs. He examined the back door, but found that the lock was broken and the wood splintered near the lock. He peered out the back door with his lantern and found a small porch connected to the back of the house. Lying on the floor nearby was a piece of wood with some nails in it. It was about the same size as the board that had held the front door closed. He also noticed that one of the columns that held up the roof was splintered, and he saw a couple of outbuildings, one of them little more than a pile of rubble, and an outhouse.

Pushing open the door in the back of the stairs, he found that it, too, had a broken lock. Steps beyond it led down.

He took the piece of wood from the back porch and leaned it against the back door. Then he pulled the basement door shut as well as he could. He moved the painting and then took a sheet off a ladder-back chair and used the pry bar to break the chair to pieces. It took him over 10 minutes to reduce it to kindling. He tossed the pieces into the fireplace and poured a little kerosene over them. It lit easily enough but he was unnerved to see handprints in the soot all over the back and side walls of the fireplace.

By that time, McAfee was breathing easier.

“I think I’m starting to feel a little better, Mr. Fuller,” McAfee said.

“Good,” Fuller replied. “I’m sorry I can’t do more.”

“Don’t worry about it,” the other man replied.

He still looked awful but he managed to sit up on the couch, leaning his head back.

“I have never felt pain like that before, sir,” he said.

“What happened?” Fuller asked.

“I don’t know,” McAfee said. “I couldn’t see. It’s still sore, but it doesn’t hurt like it did. There was pain everywhere. It was the most awful, awful thing I’ve ever felt in my life.”

“I’ll be glad to see Mr. Hardy return in the morning.”

McAfee drew his sidearm and opened the cylinder before closing it with a click and putting it back into his jacket pocket.

“This might help,” he said, lighting up another cigarette.

“We can sit here and we can take it easy a bit,” Fuller said. “We’ve got all night.”

“I think I’m fine,” McAfee said, blowing a cloud of smoke into the air.

Fuller found a four-foot by four-foot grate in the floor. He guessed it was a vent and when he shined his electric torch down into it, he saw ductwork below. He also noticed that one of the doors that flanked the fireplace had a broken lock on it as well.

He drew out the manila folder that held the articles Mr. May had given him and started noting upon it the damage that had been done to the house. As he looked around more carefully, he noticed that there was a broken place on the wall where it was punched through. The plaster around it was blackened. He also saw several smell holes in the corner near the back door, as if it had been shot at some range by a shotgun from somewhere in the living room. The window next to the back door also had a broken pane. When he returned to the fireplace, he found a bullet hole in the brick and the wall near the chimney. He made notes of it all.

He didn’t write down anything about McAfee’s sudden fit.

“What do you want to look at first,” Fuller said to the other man. “The back porch looks like someone tried to shoot their way in.”

“I’ll take a look at it,” McAfee said.

The police officer noted that the markings near the back wall looked like shotgun blasts. The damaged column on the back porch was the same and he pointed out blood on the floorboards of the back porch as well. He found holes in the back door, indicating where the board had been nailed in.

“How’d you get this one open so easy?” he said, indicating the back door. “I saw the trouble you had with the front one.”

“It was already open,” Fuller said.

“It wasn’t nailed shut?”

“No.”

“Okay, because there’s holes here.”

“Wait a second. He said they nailed it shut!”

Fuller showed him the board he’d found and told him that it had been lying on the back porch.

“That means somebody else’s come in here,” Fuller said.

McAfee nodded. He told Fuller that there were powder burns on the painting where it was shot, and whoever fired at the painting had done so at very close range. He also pointed out the handprints that Fuller had already seen.

“You don’t think people are going crazy just being here, do you?” McAfee asked nervously. “I mean, that can’t happen, right?”

“You don’t think people suddenly come down with a case of blindness and sores and aches and chills, do you?” Fuller said. “I have no idea.”

“I don’t know Mr. Fuller,” McAfee said. “You’re in charge. I’m just here to protect you. I never had any kind of medical conditions. I don’t know what that could have been.”

Fuller closed the back door and propped the board up against it again. McAfee went to the front door and slid a chair over far enough that it held the door shut. Fuller felt better with the doors closed. McAfee moved an end table to the back door to hold it closed as well.

Fuller decided to explore the house. They started by heading to one of the doors that flanked the fireplace.

“You want me to go first, Mr. Fuller?” McAfee asked.

“If you feel up to it,” Fuller said.

“I feel fine,” McAfee said. “It looks awful and it’s sore, you know how you get blisters and they pop? That’s all it feels like now. It’s nothing like it was before. It’s nothing like that. Thank God. That was the worst pain I’ve ever felt.”

Both men carrying lanterns, McAfee opened the unlocked door, revealing a large dining room. A large table covered by sheets stood in the center of the room, surrounded by sheet-covered chairs. Over the far fireplace was a place to hang two crossed swords but only one was there. Two chandeliers hung above, ruined candles standing in each one. The chain that held each up went to a pulley and then down to a crank on the wall. A few nondescript paintings were scattered along the walls. An exterior door stood in the wall to the right and Fuller found it intact and locked. Two more doors flanked the fireplace on the far side of the room.

They went through one of the far doors and found themselves in a small kitchen. There was a table and chairs in the center and a counter and cabinets on the right. A tin sink was in the counter with a pump next to it. In one corner was an iron stove with an icebox in another. All of the windows were shuttered and a fireplace stood in the wall nearest them. A closed door stood across the room.

Fuller worked the pump and dirty water came out. He continued to pump and the water cleared up after about a minute: cold and clear water pouring out and into the sink. It tasted like well water but seemed fine.

He found a coffee pot on the stove and a bag of stale coffee on the table. Tins of food were under the counter and they looked like something he could have purchased in the grocery store. He was unsure how old they were but guessed they were still good. He also found several tins of kerosene. There were old grounds in the coffee pot.

The back door proved to be locked and the lock intact.

“If we want a pot of coffee later on, we can have one,” he said.

They returned to the living room. The door nearest the front door proved to be a closet. The one at the foot of the stairs opened to be a study. A bookshelf stood against the far wall with several dusty books upon it. A large roll top desk was in the other corner, the top open and several ledgers upon it, as well as a small key that went to the desk. A swivel chair stood near the desk with another lamp on the table near the door.