Do you think there's a God?
I won't hate you if you say yes. Everyone's entitled to their own beliefs, after all. But as for me... No, no preaching, no bible-reading, no supposed "Act of God" will ever convince me that God exists. Not after what I've seen. Not after I've been in that room.
Moving is always hard, as I'm sure many of you know, especially over long distances. The process of packing up, saying goodbye to the life you'd built in your old home, moving, unpacking, and starting completely over... Well, it takes a lot out of you.
A few years ago, I had to go through the whole moving experience with my daughter. I had found a new job that paid much, much more than I ever expected to make, but the catch was I would have to move from my comfy home in L.A. all the way to the Upper Peninsula of the state of Michigan. Needless to say, Elizabeth, my 16-year-old daughter, was about ready to tear me to pieces when I told her.
"But there's nothing up there, Dad! It's just backwoods, and it's so cold!" She said. "Why can't we just stay here? It's warm, and we get by, don't we?"
What a stupid bastard I am for not listening to her.
As it was, I explained that the company I would be working for wanted me to oversee some of the mining operations they were conducting. We would be moving into an old house on the edge of a modest-sized mining town. From the pictures I managed to dig up, it looked like an old Victorian-style mansion, wrought iron gate and everything.
So, my daughter and I packed up what little we had in our small apartment, said our goodbyes, and caught the first flight out to Detroit. From the airport there, we drove a rental car the remaining seven hours up through the Lower Peninsula, across the Mackinac Bridge, and to the town where we would be living. We had been told that the house was still completely furnished from the last family that had lived there, and that everything was in order. When we arrived, it was early Thursday morning, and the sun was just rising. I squinted as we pulled into the long driveway. While I had an appreciation for older architecture, I had to say... This house was ancient. It looked like it had been built in the 1800's, at least.
Dragging our bags in, Elizabeth and I picked our bedrooms (across the hall from one another), took one small look at the beds, and fell into them, immediately falling asleep.
~
I was awakened by Elizabeth knocking on my door. I groggily looked out the window next to my bed, noting that the sun was at its height in the sky. I saw a mop of red hair stick itself through the doorway, and I almost choked with laughter at the sight of my daughter's combination of bedhead and the "ugh-it's-morning" expression.
"What is it, Liz?" I asked, yawning.
"Hungry," she managed to grunt. I sighed.
"Don't you have something to eat packed in your bag?"
"I ate all of it already," she said, then actually stepped into my room, her sleeping tank top falling off one shoulder and her pink pajama bottoms sagging to the point they were basically just hanging off her hips. "C'mon, let's go get something to eat."
I sighed again, knowing there was nothing for it; when Elizabeth was hungry, there was nothing that could stop her from obtaining food. "All right," I agreed, getting out of bed. I was a little hungry too, I had to admit; neither of us had had anything since we stopped halfway through the car ride up.
So, we got in the car, drove into the heart of town, and found a quaint little diner to eat at. Once we had eaten our fill, we drove back to the house, intending to start unpacking our things and explore a little.
It was then that I learned that this house was a nigh-seamless blend of old and modern. It still felt like an 1800's manor, with beautiful hand-carved railings, doors, chairs, and tables. The knobs on the doors were made mostly of brass, and had an odd type of lock that made use of a switch on the side of the knob to lock the door. It had, however, been updated with all the functioning amenities you would expect of a modern house; a dishwasher, refrigerator, a washer and dryer combo, and so on.
It was while I was exploring that I discovered a room on the top floor that didn't seem to fit with the rest of the house. While all the other rooms were fully furnished and their use could be easily recognized, this room only had a few things in it; namely, a simple wooden chair in the center of the room, underneath the intersection of two rafters, and a black book lying on the floor in the corner. A boarded up window was set in the wall across the room from the door, allowing a few slivers of sunlight in. This was odd, because the room was oriented towards the front of the house, and I hadn't seen any such window when we first drove in.
Curiosity overtaking me, I stepped into the room, walking over to the corner that had the book, bending over to pick it up and inspect it.
It was old, that was for sure. It was bound by black leather, which was cracked and worn from years of neglect. Written in beautifully formed golden cursive letters on the front cover was what I assumed to be the title: The Remorse of Helena Relanra.
I raised an eyebrow. Judging just by the look of the book and the title, it didn't seem to be a very happy book. All the same, the prospect of having something to do with my time seemed better than sitting around and twiddling my thumbs waiting for Monday, which was when I first had to drive out to the mines and start my new job in management and also when Elizabeth started school.
Sitting down in the chair, I opened the front cover of the book, and I was immediately met by a rather disconcerting picture. The first page of the book was a drawing of a woman hanging from the rafters of the room she was in by a rope around her neck. A toppled over chair laid on the floor underneath her. She was wearing a simple white nightdress, and her dark hair shrouded her face from view as she hung there limply, like a wet towel. Behind her, there seemed to be a window-
Wait.
Didn't this room... look familiar?
Slowly, I looked up from the book, glancing around. It was impossible to tell for sure, what with there being so little in the room to go off of, but the room did look uncannily similar to the room in the sketch. Even the chair seemed to be the same, with its odd, pillar-shaped baluster legs. The only things that seemed to be different were the fact that the window wasn't boarded up in the picture, and the obvious lack of a rope and body.
Unsettled, I stood up, closing the book and making my way out of the room. I was a little shaken by the drawing, sure, but also intrigued. Closing the door behind me, I tucked the book under one arm, making my way down one level and walking to my room. I laid down on my bed, opening the book again. Turning the page past the drawing, I frowned; despite the title on the front cover of the book, there was one inside as well, slightly different from it; The Diary of Helena Relanra. Shrugging off the difference, I noticed that the next page was a handwritten journal entry, written in the same flowery cursive script as the title.
*27/10/1876
The first snow of Winter fell today. Leon says that snow is bothersome; I think it's beautiful. I tried to coax Mother to the window to admire it, but she still refuses to move from her bed. Doctor Rennings continues to say that she is merely exhausted, but I am unsure if I believe him.
Father went for a long walk in the forest today, alone. He tries to seem as if Mother’s condition is bothering him less than it is, but Leon and I know better. He wishes for her health just as much as the rest of us. His art is beginning to suffer, as well; his paintings have become rather lonely, depicting long-forgotten, derelict structures rather than people. Although these are just as beautiful as any other work of his, one cannot help but feel acutely aware of how small one is, and this feeling is especially potent if no one is around.
The sun is setting as I write this, and it seems to set the world aflame with its last rays. Father is calling for me now; I shall write again tomorrow.*
I thumbed to the next page, which held an entry much the same as the first, as did the next and the next, and so on, with this woman’s mother’s condition worsening and her father’s depression deepening, until I reached what looked to be the middle of the book, where instead of an entry, there was a red handprint on the page. Written underneath it were the words, the wrath of the devil makes itself known through the eyes of men.
Raising an eyebrow, I studied the handprint. It was quite obvious that it was made out of blood, and was intended to surprise the reader. And the message below it seemed to be a warning, if anything.
Undeterred, I turned the page, and almost dropped the book in shock.
Sketched over the next two pages was a drawing that will haunt my dreams until I die. It was of a woman standing in the center of a room, with her back apparently turned to the reader. However, her neck had twisted a full one-hundred-and-eighty degrees, allowing her face to be seen. Her eyes were completely blacked out, and her nose was bent at an odd angle like it was broken, her mouth twisted in a cruel grin. Fingers seemed to be coming out of her mouth, holding it open. Hung on the walls of the room around her were crosses, and from every one of them hung a naked, mutilated corpse with the stomach cut open so the decapitated head could be shoved in. Scrawled hastily on the bottom of the page were a few words and a date; Mother’s nightmare, 16/1/1877.
Quickly turning the page in order to escape the horrifying drawing, I was met with another entry.
*18/1/1877
It has been two days since Mother had her nightmare, and she refuses to go back to sleep, despite our coaxing. I do not blame her; I myself had a nightmare last night after I glimpsed my drawing by accident. I have inked over the eyes; they are too terrifying to look at. We have cleaned out the room depicted in the dream, covered the window and locked the door. Leon fears that if she enters, she may have another nightmare. Father has sent for a priest, for he fears that Mother may have been possessed.
19/1/1877
Mother finally fell asleep last night, and we all wish now that she had not. She had not been asleep for more than five minutes when she awoke with a dreadful scream, shrieking for the demon haunting her to leave her be. I shall draw her description of the nightmare on the next page, although I fear after seeing it made manifest in the world, I may drive myself insane with fear.
The priest arrived today, and spent the entire day in Mother’s bedroom, anointing her with holy water and reading passage after passage from God’s book. I fear, however, that even He may not be able to cure her, bearing in mind the contents of her dream.*
Bracing myself as I turned the page, I immediately wished I hadn’t. Depicted on this set of pages was a scene similar to the drawing before it, except that this time, the woman in the center of the room had the wings of an angel, and the bodies hanging from the crosses were rotting, with tiny black dots all over them that I realized were intended to be maggots.
At this point, I was so disturbed that I closed the book, attempting to take my mind off of things by walking across the hall to Elizabeth’s room. She was lying on her bed, headphones in as she listening to music and tapped away on her computer, apparently writing (a hobby of hers.) Seeing her busy and probably not wanting to be disturbed, I went back to my room. I had just picked up the book, intending to pack it away, out of sight, when I heard a loud thump from the floor above.
Curious and a bit concerned as to the source of the noise, I rushed over to the stairs, climbing them hurriedly. However, when I reached the next floor, my face paled as I realized the room the noise had come from. Hesitantly making my way down the hall, I gripped the knob, took a deep breath, and opened the door.
Standing inside the room, looking out the now-unboarded window was an unfamiliar woman with black hair, dressed in an old-fashioned white nightgown. I was about to slam the door shut, run away, grab Elizabeth, and leave the house when she turned around.
Unlike what I had expected, she looked perfectly normal, aside from the very sad expression on her features. In fact, if we had been meeting under any other circumstances, I would have thought she was gorgeous. Her gaze was so incredibly lonesome that it froze me with sympathy.
For a long time, there was a chilling silence, before she spoke in a soft voice.
“You are the new owner of the house, am I correct?”
I said nothing at first, trying to find my voice. When I finally spoke, my voice cracked nervously. “Y-yeah. Who are you?”
She sighed, glancing out the window again. “My name is Helena Relanra. The book you took from this room is my journal. I would very much appreciate it if you could return it so I have something to occupy my time.”
I shook my head, confused. “Wait… but that journal is over a hundred years old. How can you…”
To interrupt me, she swept back her hair, which had previously covered her neck. Ringing around her neck was a purplish-black bruise, and she looked at me meaningfully.
“Oh,” I said, lost for words at the realization that the woman standing before me had been dead for a long time. When I found my voice again, I asked, “I… I read a little bit of it. Did your mother… Was she cured by the priest?”
She closed her eyes, shaking her head. “You didn’t read enough, it seems, to truly understand. My mother, plagued by her nightmares as she was, was eventually driven insane and took her own life… as did I, not long after.” Suddenly, as if realizing something, she tensed, her eyes flying open wide. “You must leave this room, now. Quickly! If you should fulfill my request to return my journal, do not open the door; slide the journal under it. Now, go! It is unsafe for you to stay here for too long; I am not the only ghost that resides in this house. Close the door and lock it when you leave.”
Confused but compliant (the fear in her eyes convinced me that if I did not leave as she asked, something bad would happen), I quickly paced backwards, shutting the door and locking it as requested. A second later, a loud bang followed, and the door shook, as if she had thrown herself at it with all her might. Following this, there was a despairing wail, and then silence.
I stood there for ages, staring at the door, too scared to move. The silence seemed to press down on me, making it hard to breathe, or even think. I don’t know how long I was rooted in place, but it was long enough for my joints to feel stiff when I moved again. I had just taken my first step down the hallway when there was another bang, and then an odd, terrifying sound. It sounded like someone was trying to scream, but all that came out was a choking gurgle, like all air had left their lungs and they were still trying to scream despite this.
I ran to the stairs as fast as I could, grabbing my protesting daughter under the pretense of exploring the town, and hurrying her into the car. Unfortunately, my plan didn’t work as well as I had hoped; the town was so small that the main street was really the only part of it worth surveying. And while that wasted an hour or two, eventually, Elizabeth grew bored and I drove us back, not anticipating setting foot in the house once more.
Surprisingly, nothing else happened that day; we went back to our respective rooms and spent the rest of the day on our laptops, whiling away the remaining hours of the day with mindless browsing. No other sounds came from the top floor, and I had almost forgotten the horrifying drawings and my meeting with the ghostly woman (whom I assumed to be Helena Relanra) by the time I fell asleep.
The dream I had that night was not outright terrifying. It was an average dream; random non-sequitur situations rose up and disappeared in a remarkably engrossing facsimile of everyday life, just like you would expect. However, as I dreamed, I was aware of something in the corner of my dreaming eye. I never caught a clear view of it, and it being a dream, I assigned the shape no importance. However, when I woke, I was distinctly aware of the feeling that I was being watched. This faded within a short while, and a shudder ran through me as I realized that it was not in reality that I was being surveyed; it was within the world of my dreams.
I checked the clock sitting on my bedside table; it read 8:34 A.M. Shaking off my uneasiness, I realized that today was Saturday, meaning that, including all of today, I had two more days of utter boredom to fill. Rising from bed, I quickly checked on Elizabeth across the hall; she was still asleep, snoring heavily.
Making my way down to the kitchen, I fixed myself a quick breakfast, then went upstairs to the master bathroom, showered, and dressed myself. As I finished dressing, an odd sound reached my ears, muffled but still identifiable. It sounded like… singing?
Curiosity piqued, I stepped out into the hallway, then immediately turned on my heel and marched back into my room as I realized the source of the singing. I wasn’t doing it. No journal-keeping ghosts or insane mothers today, I thought. And so I sat on my bed, stubbornly putting in my headphones and hitting the shuffle button on my iPhone’s music app.
I had only been listening to my music for about ten minutes when I made out a knock on my door, and Elizabeth stepped in, looking a bit annoyed. Cursing myself for forgetting my daughter’s light sleeping habits, I took out my headphones and winced a little in surprise; no wonder my daughter had woken up. The singing was no longer faint and slow. No, now it sounded like Helena was belting her song out with all her might, and though her tone seemed to be joyous, the sound of her voice still sent shivers through my body.
“Um, Dad…” Elizabeth glanced at the ceiling, her eyebrows knitting in consternation. “Why is there a woman singing her heart out in the room above us?”
I fumbled for a good explanation. “I, uh, forgot to mention… A woman in town asked if she could stay here for a little bit.”
“Uh-huh,” Elizabeth said, crossing her arms and raising an eyebrow in disbelief. “And why would this ‘woman from town’ have a journal here? And why is she in a nightgown?”
I bolted to my feet, alarmed. “You talked to her?”
“Uh, yeah,” Elizabeth said, putting her hands on her hips. “I asked her to shut the hell up and let me sleep, and she told me that she would if I gave her journal back. I told her I didn’t know where it was, and she said that you had it. So, here I am.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling quite stupid. “Right.” Digging through my suitcase, I handed the book to Elizabeth, and she gave a quick, sassy “thank you,” disappearing out of the room. I was just about to put my headphones back in when there was a loud scream and a slam, and the singing stopped.
I tore out of my room, knowing that voice anywhere. I pounded up the stairs, and saw my daughter, huddled against the wall across from the door to the room Helena was in, shaking and staring at the door, apparently afraid to take her eyes off of it. The journal was lying on the floor in front of the door, open and face down.
“Elizabeth!” I rushed over to her, kneeling down next to her. She didn’t even notice my presence. She was crying silently in fear, her body shaking with terrified sobs. “Sweetheart, look at me!”
Finally seeming to realize I was there, Elizabeth immediately clung to me, crying hysterically. I held her tightly, rubbing circles into her back like I had when she was little and had had a nightmare. When she finally calmed down, I asked, “What happened? Did she hurt you?”
She shook her head furiously. “No, she… She tried to warn me before, when she asked for it back. She said, ‘slide it under the door,’ but I… I forgot. Oh… Oh god, Dad, I… I saw Mom!”
My stomach dropped like a stone. Elizabeth’s mother, my wife, had been dead for eight years, having died in a car accident while driving Elizabeth home from school. It had scarred my daughter deeply, to the point that, for the first year or so after the accident, just mentioning her mother could send her into tears.
Elizabeth gripped my sleeve as her tears started again. “She… she was… just hanging there… And her eyes… her eyes were bleeding…”
At this point, I was panicking. I knew that whatever was in that room, be it Helena or something else, clearly wanted us out of the house.
When I had calmed Elizabeth down again, I sent her back down the stairs, then faced the door to the room. Picking up the journal to close it so I could slide it under the door, I stopped dead; the page I had opened to was a drawing, even more terrifying than the last two.
The demonic woman was not present in the drawing this time; instead, taking her place was a small boy, facing the artist. Once again, the eyes had been blacked out. The boy’s chest was bare, and on his chest, seemingly burned in, was a cross. His open mouth had no tongue; it was nailed to the wall above the window. The bodies from the previous two drawings were still present, more mutilated and rotted than ever, and the walls seemed to be pouring some strange dark liquid that I soon realized must be blood.
Closing the journal in an attempt to put the image from my mind, I dropped it and gave it a swift kick, sending it under the door. There was a muffled gasp, and then a soft, “thank you.”
I spent the rest of the day trying to comfort my daughter, attempting to convince her that everything was all right, a fact that even I highly doubted. She did not want to sleep alone that night, and, as I felt much the same, I let her sleep in my bed while I found my sleeping bag and took the floor.
Despite the events of that day, I went to sleep fairly quickly. However, it felt like I had just closed my eyes when I woke up, and to my horror, realized that I was not in bed.
I was standing not two inches away from the door to the room where I had met Helena, and my hand was on the knob. I looked down, and saw that it was unlocked. I didn’t even have the time to give the flick of the thumb that re-locking the door would require before the knob turned, and an unseen force dragged me into the room.
Helena was gone now, and taking her place was another woman. She was standing in front of the window, looking directly at me.
Her eyes weren’t just gone, they were destroyed. It looked as if someone had taken a knife and repeatedly jammed it into her sockets until her eyes had the same consistency as soup.
The rest of her body was little better; up and down her arms were large cuts, some of them so deep and wide that I saw glimpses of bone underneath torn muscle. An entire section of her left thigh had been cut off, and her entire chest cavity had been torn open, allowing for a view of a mangled mess of blood and mush that at one point in time might have been the various organs found within a human torso.
I could do nothing but stand there, rooted to the spot in utter terror. She began to take a step towards me, then the room seemed to spin and flip, and the next thing I knew, I was lying face-down in what felt like a squishy carpet of sorts.
What I saw when I raised my head was the scariest thing I have ever seen and will likely ever see.
It was not a carpet I was lying on; it was the same sort of red mush that had been inside the woman’s torso, and it covered the entire floor. The window was boarded up once more, and covering it were small pieces of paper that I realized were the drawings from Helena’s journal. Blood was pouring, literally waterfalling out of the cracks where the ceiling met the walls, cascading down over crosses where bodies in the same state as they had been in the drawings hung. My horror ran even deeper when I realized that they were the bodies of people I knew, whether they were dead at the time or not; my wife, my mother and father, my closest childhood friends, the list went on and on…
The only person that was close to me that was absent from the crosses was Elizabeth, who hung, naked, from a rope looped over the intersection of the rafters in the center of the room. A toppled chair was under her still form. Her eyes were bleeding profusely, and written in blood on her bare stomach was the same phrase that was carved into the walls wherever there was an empty space; He will not save you.
I completely fucking lost it. I puked all over the disgusting floor, then proceeded to collapse on my stomach and sob like a small child. I laid there for hours, maybe even days, crying until I had no more tears, and then continuing to cry until I felt another liquid leak from my eyes. When I put my hand to my face, it came away red.
The realization that my eyes were in the same state as I had seen my daughter’s in must have made me semi-coherent for long enough that I could rise, open the door, run out, slam the door shut, then collapse and continue to cry.
I was roused by a worried voice calling, “Dad?! Dad, are you all right?!” When I looked up, my daughter was kneeling over me, looking terrified and a little sick. I then grabbed her, picked her up, and tore down the stairs, stopping only long enough to grab my car keys, my wallet, my phone, and each of our suitcases. We then bolted out of the house, drove into town, and found a hotel to stay at. I refused to sleep, choosing instead to watch the door to our room the entire rest of the night, unsure if whatever was in that room had somehow followed us.
The following morning, I called the mine, telling them that I couldn’t take the job after all for personal reasons. I then returned to the house, grabbed everything that wasn’t food and loaded it into the car as quickly as possible, then ran out, locking the front door behind me and throwing the keys in a random direction. I put the house up for sale the next day, basically signing it back over to the real estate agency I had bought it from, not caring how much money I was losing.
Elizabeth and I spent the next two and a half weeks in a car, driving all the way back to L.A. We never once talked about what happened during the trip, and I fell asleep at the wheel more than ten times due to lack of sleep (it's a fucking miracle we made it back alive.) I managed to buy back our old apartment, getting a somewhat decent-paying job after searching for a few weeks.
It’s been five years since then. Even now, when people ask why we moved away and came back so suddenly, Elizabeth (who’s in college now) and I just respond that we didn’t like the weather. Last time I looked, the house was still for sale. I hope with all my heart that no one ever sets foot in it, and that it’s demolished and never thought of or mentioned again.
The only problem is, recently, a new resident moved into my apartment complex, down the hall from me. I don't recognize the first name, but her last name is familiar in a very, very unsettling way.
Relanra.
While writing this, I realized that when I left that room for the last time, I never locked the door.
Submitted August 08, 2016 at 07:50AM by Saimana http://ift.tt/2aEbEdm nosleep
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