The house wouldn’t stop making noises. Two massive oaks beat and scraped upon the bay windows overlooking the eastern garden. From within Sigurd couldn't draw his eyes from those windows. Sleep had abandoned him. With the unfamiliar room, scraping oaks, and unsettled feelings any amount of slumber abandoned him completely. Turning to the lamp on the floor he turned it on & grabbed his copy of “The Shining,” hoping it would take his mind away a little. Sure, maybe doing so made him a glutton for punishment in an all too unfamiliar home, but the options were limited. All the books were still on the missing moving trucks, but the thought of the similarity to Jack Torrance at the Overlook did make Sig chuckle a bit. With the depressing day he had just been a part of moving into this new house he needed to find something amusing in an otherwise discouraging situation.
Reading was a deep passion of Sigurd’s and Stephen King always seemed to be one he came back to. He had just gotten to the part where Jack was going to enter room 217 in the Overlook when Sigurd heard three loud knocks just outside his room on the wall in the hallway. Having read for some time, Sig was starting to dose a bit and was being put at ease. However, whatever fleeting comfort existed it was all but gone now. He sat straight up in bed, his right leg tucked under in case he needed to run. Nothing. No more knocks came. Sig’s nerves were a little peaked, a potential real-world haunting could be happening right outside his room. Sure, as an old house, it could be something the house did at night, but he knew better. Closing the tossed-aside novel he set it back by the lamp and decided to chance to sleep again, leaving the lamp on just for good measure.
The oaks raged incessantly upon the house. Staring at the window he could see the shadowed claw-like branches rake against the window and house. Good thing the house is made of brick, he thought. The wind and trees act like they want to tear this house down. If the trees want to raise it, there must be another reason to dislike being here.
Sigurd was roused from his daze with three more raps just outside his room again. This time the knocks came much closer and more intense. Fool me twice was all he could think. He wasn’t taking any chances, throwing the covers off the floor mattress, he ran to the door and turned the light to his room on, and it was blinding. All the while stars were shining in his eyes another set of raps came and after the third knock a small almost undetected scream came from the hallway. Fear was overcoming him now, but he felt the need to know what was going on. Courage or foolishness pressed him to open the door. I am just going to rip this door open and run to the hall light. Quick and simple.
Being nimble enough his plan worked. Ripping the door open he ran to the light which he vaguely remembered turning off before going into his room. Both hands were pressing the wall above the light, he used the last bit of bravery he could muster and pushed himself off. Looking down the now-lit hallway. Sigurd had completely forgotten the massiveness of this wing of the house. There were five rooms on either side of the elongated hallway, all with their own full bathrooms. An eleventh capping the hallway just to his left. It was the Master bedroom, and it was massive, it obviously was the room where his parents slept. Having almost forgotten they were even there. From where Sig stood to the opposite end of the hall was nothing short of fifty feet and veered sharply to the left to the Grand Staircase at the home's entrance. With the lights now on Sig took stock of the hall, especially the wall just outside his room, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. In fact, everything looked as if it had been when he turned the lots off before bed.
“Hey Siggy, what's the deal huh?” Sigurd’s Dad called him out of his stupor. Sig’s dad was standing in the open door of the master bedroom, wearing the same Def Leppard shirt from working all day. However, his pants were noticeably missing.
It did make him feel a lot better seeing his dad standing out in his undies. It took all of Sig’s energy not to laugh in his dad's face. “Before you tell me it is just an old house thing I have been hearing random knocking for the last hour, so, I came out to take a look.”
“Bud, this is a very old house. Whatever knocks you are hearing could be a hundred different things. Please go to bed and turn that light off.” Dad retorted.
“What if I told you that right after the last set of knocks I heard a scream?” The door had almost completely closed until he had said that.
His dad re-made an appearance from the bedroom’s dark void.”What do you mean you heard a scream?”
“Well it wasn’t super loud but I definitely know a scream when I hear one, and I swore that I heard someone scream not five minutes ago.”
“Could you tell roughly where it came from?”
“Honestly I am not sure it almost sounded like it came from out here but it was also so faint that maybe from downstairs somewhere,” Sig said, motioning as if through the floor.
Dad rubbed his eyes and appeared noticeably exhausted, “Look, if you happen to hear something weird again, come get me and we can take a look around. Right now, I am so beat I can barely stand another minute. I love you, but I am going to bed. Goodnight.”
Feeling a little dejected, Sig went about at least going down the hall and calling out just to see if he could hear anything. Even walking down the hall felt like forever until he finally came to the sudden left turn back to the main part of the house. Looking down the hall his heart sank and all jovial feelings from a minute prior evaporated. Before Sigurd was a wall of black deeper than he could have ever imagined. Where the joining hall to the main entry existed now contained a black abyss. Even the residual light from his hallway was eaten up by the gaping black hole. Fear began to grip him, his heart beat within his chest so rapidly he could feel its desire to escape just as much as he did. Still, he felt the need to call out, at least to complete the reason for coming down from his room.
“Hello,” Sig said. “Is anyone there?”
Silence was the response, yet it felt thick and heavy. Almost carrying with it a deeper more ominous meaning. I hear you, Sig thought it said back. Whatever small amount of bravery Sig had left it was in his feet for they took off faster than he realized. No matter how vast that hallway was his stride seemed longer and more determined, before he had even realized he had made it back to bed, even with the door now locked. Bringing his blankets closer to his face he felt like he was half his age all over again. Eight years old and terrified of the dark Siggy back from the past. His eyes barely looked over the blanket across his face, staring unyieldingly at the almost indistinguishable side frame of the door at the far end of his room. Hoping with all hope that nothing would come through it.
Sigurd was beginning to relax a little as the time went on. No more knocks came and all around a normal silence settled over the house. Every minute that went by Sig couldn’t help but feel a fool. Maybe Dad was right, this old house had to be making those noises. I am just not used to it that's all. As convincing as the thought was, he still could not shake the feeling of seeing the black void in the hall. You are tired from working all day, it was nothing more than your imagination running wild, nothing happened, and nothing will. A final thought putting him more at ease than ever. More minutes passed and with it the once elusive sleep he was so desperate for consumed him entirely.
┄
Waking rapidly, Sig’s head ached horrendously. Pain weaved a back-and-forth path from the top of his scalp down until it radiated violently in his right eye. Never had he ever had a migraine this intense before. Attempting to take notice of his surroundings, he opened his eyes just enough to make out the lamp light still on. Through the throbbing, he couldn’t help but notice that not only was the lamp light dimmer than normal but the familiar orange hue was replaced with a dark crimson color. As unsettling as this was, what truly set his panic ablaze was the wicked silence that seemed to carry so much weight that it left Sig feeling like he was sinking into the mattress and then into the floor itself. Outside of the pounding in his head, there was nothing to be heard. No scraping oaks, rain pelting the window, or random creaks and groans of an old home bettered by the wind.
Taking stock of everything as quickly as he could Sig’s panic only grew deeper and with more resolve. He wanted to run, run as fast as he could. Realization hit him like a freight train, I can’t move my body! What the hell is happening to me?
The horrors were coming upon him all at once. Like drowning, he could barely keep his head above the ever-increasing depth of panic and despair. An unrelenting migraine, silence as deep as the grave, and now a smell permeated the room making his eyes water from its potency. He recognized it but could not bring his mind to focus on what it could be. Sig couldn’t take it anymore. He felt his mind begin to crack, pain and insanity burrowing deeper and deeper until he felt all but spent. This was the end and all he wanted was for it to end already. Three knocks penetrated through the murk with which he felt entrapped. Each knock pulled him out more and more. Like venom being drawn from a wound well Sigurd felt himself receiving more and more relief. Three more knocks came and with it, a great pop both felt and heard inside his head sent him spinning. Not with pain but euphoria, as the migraine relented.
With the migraine gone, he could finally gather himself. Paralysis was still there in his body but he could move his head at least. Sig’s relief was not long-lasting as nausea gripped him from the horrendous smell that left him feeling like vomiting. The realization came as he now knew what the smell was. Blood. A lot of blood, with a vile hint of decay. As if the room was suddenly a vat of rotting blood and flesh. He needed to open his eyes and get whatever was happening to him and his room over with. With the last dreg of courage, he opened his eyes and immediately wished he hadn’t.
Blood and decay pooled all around him. Making the mattress he was now stuck to a boat in a sea of death. It was no wonder the smell hit him with such magnitude, as the product of such stench lay within a foot from his face. Three more knocks came and went, pulling him from his stupor. He looked from where they were coming from but the room had changed. All the acoustics were messed up making the knocks sound everywhere all at once. What was a common bedroom now felt like a hellish well. Filled with death’s putrid essence and an echo that never ceased. More knocks this time, each seeming more persistent and intense than the one prior. On the third knock this time Sig’s paralysis was released. He felt like air as both feeling and function returned in full force. Reacting instinctually and in disgust at what pooled around him he crouched in the middle of the bed, ready if needed to make a run or swim if needed. Knocks, almost shaking the house this time, had resonance at the back corner of the room almost directly opposite where Sig now sat. Though the form was hard to make out, he could still see the shape, nothing could have prepared him for it.
A misshapen form half in and half out of the wall was grotesque in every way. Though almost female in appearance only half of the upper body was showing through the wall along with its nearly decomposed right arm. The head lay limp upon its remaining shoulder. Clenching its previously open hand struck the wall three hard times. Each, cracking bone with every fall. The head slowly raised and the long hair spread over the decaying and dripping flesh to reveal a face mostly decayed. Its left eye still intact glowed almost red from the lamp and blood that spread everywhere.
“What you see is the true image of this Home!” The thing did not speak as much as it growled and gargled and anger flared as it said the word home.
Shock, fear, and a new paralysis gripped Sigurd as it stared at the thing in the corner. It knocked three more times and he spoke without thinking. “Who are you? Wha..what happened here?”
“They did it. They wanted us. WE DID NOT DESERVE TO DIE!” A roar escaped its gaping maw. Shattering everything inside Sig in an instant. He could feel its pain, their pain. The intensity was so much that he could not keep back his emotions. Everything came out in warm waves of tears flowing down his face.
“What can I do? I don’t know how to help,” Sig said.
“Truth. We want TRUTH!”
“I don’t understand. Truth? What kind of truth.”
Looking more intensely than ever at him with both eye and socket it replied, “Remove all the walls! LET US COME OUT!”
With no time to react, the roar hit Sigurd like an enormous punch in the chest. Sending him back against the wall his mattress rested against. His body slammed hard, with his head striking the wall from the reaction. Pain seared through his whole body as a result. He looked at the corner and saw nothing but sadness and defeat upon what was left of the face he could see.
“I will help you, all of you!” Determination filled every part of his soul as he replied to it.
A voice enchanting, soft, and unlike the one who had been speaking to him replied, “Thank you Sigurd Lancaster. Good luck and goodnight.”
Blacking out, Sigurd remembered the feeling of hearing that voice. The sweetness carried him into the deepest sleep he had ever had. As sleep finally came, full and rich after much toil, he committed himself in that last remaining moment of consciousness that he would release those trapped within. Old English will no longer be home to those tormented.