Paranormal Research Club Ch. 03

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GPLockwood
GPLockwood
633 Followers

Lisa touched her mother's arm sympathetically. "We have all had experiences there, and I'm sorry I teased you earlier. How about this: Erin and I will give them a walk-through, and then they can start setting up before Dad gets home. Then, if it's not dark yet, he can give them a tour and cover anything we missed. I know how emphatic Dad was about wanting to be along for the walk through; you know how he gets about that old place. But Dad's been working late a lot recently and if the suicide means that he's going to be working even later tonight, there's no way that he's going to be back before dark."

"I don't know about that," Naomi answered. "David was pretty emphatic that he be the one to do the walk-through with him. There aren't a lot of things that he insists upon like that."

"Yes, Mom," Lisa replied, "But these people have driven half-way around the country to do this investigation for us, and Dad wouldn't want them to miss out on the whole reason they came here simply because he had to work late. It will be fine. I'll make sure that nobody breaks anything or does anything stupid. I promise."

Naomi regarded her daughter's words for a moment, and then offered to stay behind and do the dishes while Erin and Lisa showed us around the church. On the walk towards the old building, Lisa told us much of the church's history that we already knew from Erin, but it was still nice to get another take on it.

We unlocked a side door into the old building and entered a narrow hallway lined with dingy yellow wallpaper. On the walls hung rows of framed paintings and black-and-white photographs of previous pastors. The church was eerily silent. Each small noise seemed magnified, and our footsteps echoed on the hardwood floor. Once we were all inside, Erin locked the door behind us.

Across the hallway from a stained and yellowing black-and-white portrait of some long-dead priest, Erin gestured towards a closed wooden door. She spoke, her voice echoing eerily in the empty corridor. "This is Dad's office. That's where Mom saw the shadow people. We might want someone in there tonight." Opening the door, she gave us a brief look at a nondescript clergyman's office, with a desk, several chairs, a computer, printer, numerous papers and religious items, and several very full bookshelves. A brass crucifix hung on the wall beside the door, and was probably the one that had fallen when Naomi had seen the door slam open. It was heavy and solidly hung on a sturdy carpenter's nail. It would not have come off of the wall easily.

It didn't take us long to satisfy our curiosity there. Walking past a pair of small rooms, Lisa and Erin explained that the footsteps were frequently heard in the hallway as she approached a doorway leading to the nave of the church. Leading us into the large main room of the church, we found ourselves among rows of antique wooden pews made of dark wood that had been polished by years of use. Our footsteps echoed and creaked on the old hardwood floor. At the front of the room was a wooden altar hung with white and green cloth. In expertly carved Lombardic calligraphy, an excerpt from Luke 22:19 had been beautifully engraved into the aged wood: "This do in remembrance of me." To the right of the altar stood an ancient baptismal font that had been carved of stone and had become darkened and worn by centuries of use. High above the altar was a large, exquisitely carved and polished crucifix of dark antique mahogany. Eternally frozen in a pose of sheer and unspeakable agony, the huge, masterfully carved statue of Jesus seemed to grimace down at us uncomfortably from its commanding position in the apse of the church.

The acoustics that some long-dead architect had skillfully planned into the church allowed Erin's voice to effortlessly fill the room. "A previous rector of the church made the altar and carved the crucifix during the late 1800s. This is the room where people sometimes hear a hair-raising sound like someone is screaming, crying, or wailing in pain. You can hear it in other places in the building too sometimes, but this is where it sounds like it's coming from. I've been here when it happens. Not to prejudice anyone's opinions here, but I really suspect that it has something to do with the French settlers or the Loyalists that were killed here. I've heard it myself, and it's absolutely the most horrifying sound I've ever heard. We'll definitely want recording equipment in here."

Lisa spoke to the group. Her voice was barely a whisper, but the room's acoustics allowed for everyone to clearly hear the beautiful young woman's voice. "I saw a priest in this room once. He was clean shaven, wearing a long black cassock with a white collar and a white wig. I asked him who he was, and he vanished."

Leading us behind the sanctuary of the church and into the sacristy behind it, Erin remarked "Here you might hear footsteps going up or down the stairs leading to the basement." Leading us past empty choir robes that stood guard like orderly rows of phantom soldiers, Erin led us into a small room and opened a narrow wooden doorway covered with peeling white paint. The dimensions of the door reminded us that there had been a time before such things were standardized. The old doorknob jiggled loosely in Erin's hand as she turned it, and the worn, ancient door creaked open on its rusted iron hinges. Cold, musty air flooded out to greet our nostrils. Erin flipped on a switch, and a dim yellow light flickered and illuminated a narrow wooden stairway down into blackness.

"Here's the deal, there aren't many modern reports of activity in the basement, but I think that's because we hardly ever use the basement for anything, and like mom said, nobody is willing to spend any time down there. It's the creepiest place I've ever been. I remember when we were kids, both Rachel and Cherry- that's what we called the White Dress Ladies- seemed terrified of the place and told me that there was something down there that was the reason that they couldn't leave the church. They were pretty emphatic that we should avoid the place. The closer you get to the basement, the more active things seem to get. I've lived my whole life here and I've only been down there two or three times before." Erin offered. "It's pretty small and hardly ever even used for storage, but I think that we should put a team down there, and maybe try for some EVPs."

Sarah spoke as we began to file down the creaking antique stairs of crumbling rough-sawn wood. "The basement is where the bones were buried, right? I think it's safe to say that the White Dress Ladies were the two female French settlers that were killed here during the French and Indian War, which would mean that their bones would have been kept with everyone else's and buried in the basement. Do you think that might be why they can't leave the church?"

Erin thought for a long moment before she spoke. "They never said exactly what was keeping them here, but I don't think that they would have been so afraid of their own bones. And based on what Mom saw with all the other figures in colonial costume, something is keeping a bunch of spirits around here. I don't know what it is."

"Maybe they just need a good Christian burial?" Heather offered.

"I don't know." Erin said. "There are records showing that there were services performed for the dead when they were moved into the basement, and I'm pretty sure that they would have taken that seriously. And as far as consecrated ground is concerned, how much more consecrated can you get than to be actually buried beneath a church? Being buried beneath a church used to be considered quite an honor in a lot of cases. None of that matters. The bones aren't down here anymore."

Lisa began to say something in reply, but then seemed to think better of it and remained quiet.

The stairs were narrow and we had to follow Erin down them one at a time. The rickety antique wood creaked and strained as though it might collapse under our weight at any moment. The walls and floor were made of damp, ancient stone that sparkled with droplets of stagnant moisture and white nitre. The basement was cold and gloomy, with an unwholesome musty smell and an oppressive, claustrophobic feel to it. Physically, the basement bore little resemblance to anywhere that I could recall from the concentration camp at Dachau that I had visited when I was stationed in Germany. Even so, the oppressive feeling I had felt as I had walked through areas of the old concentration camp that still reeked of burnt flesh over a half-century later was the closest thing I had ever known to the feeling that dwelt in the eternal night of that miserable chamber. The damp chill made me glad that I had worn my vest and jacket. Seeing Heather shiver, I removed my jacket and handed it to her. She silently nodded her thanks to me as she took it and wrapped it around herself like a cape. A feeling of depression and the threat of lurking danger, as though the whole basement could collapse in upon us at any moment and swallow us whole for all eternity, seemed to hang in the air. Nobody was immune to it.

The people I fought beside in the military had thought that I was fearless. Nobody knew that I acted the way I did only because I had to be brave for the people around me. I am not a brave man, except when I have to be brave for others. If I had been alone, I never would have done many of the acts that I became known for. Once again, the need to protect those around me filled my heart with an icy, ruthless courage and I made my way to the front of the line. Even Diana was glancing about nervously, and I knew that I would be willing to fight the Devil himself if I had to protect my loved ones. Almost unconsciously, I bushed my wrist along the clip that held my knife accessible in my pocket.

A warm hand wrapped itself around mine, and I looked over to see Heather's frightened face. I found her presence comforting.

I thought briefly about the king that I had seen in my dreams and his promise to me of some sort of special treasure. I thought of the centuries that good, holy men and spent trying unsuccessfully to destroy it, and failing that, had hidden in hopes that it would stay lost for all of eternity. I thought of what Erin had said about some nameless thing that had trapped human souls here in this wretched tomb for centuries. I had a really bad feeling about this entire situation. If the priests wanted this Acrato- whatever-the-Hell-his-name-was to have his treasure lost for eternity, then that should be good enough for me. His friendliness couldn't change the fact that something here was far more malevolent than anything that I had ever previously experienced. And I have experienced far more evil in my life than most people.

Our footsteps echoed in the dimly lit room. Aside from that, it was quite literally as quiet as a grave.

"The bones of the French settlers and British loyalists were placed in a small room here. There's only one room off of this one, and the doorway is right through here," Erin gestured down a narrow hallway that was almost invisible in the dim yellow light. "There aren't any records of the bones being moved," she said as she opened a decaying wooden door into the room, "but the bones aren't here anymore."

Pulling the small pocket flashlight that I always carry with me out of my pocket, I shone the beam into the pitch-black darkness behind the door. I could imagine no more wretched of a final resting place than the dark, dank, cobweb-filled room that I saw before me.

"The bones are still here," said Lisa in a quiet voice that echoed eerily off of the stone walls.

Walking down to the end of the hallway, Lisa stopped at a particularly large, flat stone in the floor. I felt vaguely sick at my stomach. "Back when I was a teenager, I was dating this kind of sleazy older guy that wanted to look for the treasure, and he wanted to look here in the basement. I told him that the basement wasn't built back when the treasure was hidden, but he said that maybe the priests had re-hidden it. I told him that was stupid, but he said that he wanted to come look around in the basement anyway. We checked a few loose rocks in the wall, and then he noticed that this rock was a lot larger and flatter than the ones around it. He had a claw hammer and a screwdriver with him, and I told him to leave the rock alone, but he said that he thought that it was loose. It wasn't. The dumbass started using the screwdriver like a chisel and chipping away at the mortar around the rock. I wanted to yell at him because I thought Dad would kill me for bringing the idiot here and letting him deface the church, but I also didn't want to get caught so I decided not to yell. In a few minutes, he had the rock pried up, and I saw that underneath it there was a square opening that led downwards. It smelled terrible. He shined a light down there, and came back screaming that it was full of human bones. I tried to get the idiot calmed down so that he could put the rock back where it belonged. Just about that time there was a terrible burning sulfur smell, and a black shape with red eyes came up out of the hole towards us. My boyfriend swore later that it told him it would eat his soul, but all I heard was a growling sound. My boyfriend actually had marks through the back of his shirt like something with three claws had taken a swing at him as he was running away. Anyway, we both ran like hell but he beat me out of the basement by a long shot. I broke up with him that night, and it took me three days to get the courage to come back down here to put the rock back the way it was so Dad wouldn't find out. But when I came back, the rock was right where it had been before we moved it. I don't know who replaced it, and I only stayed there for a few seconds."

The oppressive feeling that we all felt here in the basement, the brimstone smell Lisa was describing, the scratches on Lisa's ex-boyfriend, and her description of the entity that had manifested in this basement all sounded to me like hallmarks of a demonic haunting. The bad feeling I had about this investigation was rapidly getting a lot worse. Again I regretted bringing my inexperienced family members along with me. We were probably in way over our heads. Diane and I exchanged a worried glance.

"I never suspected anything, and I don't think Dad did, either. You're right, he would have been plenty pissed at both of you!" Erin said to her sister.

"How big was the room?" Sarah asked.

"I'm not sure, but I think it's probably larger than you would guess from just looking at that rock," said Lisa

"Large enough for someone to sit in it and monitor it for the night?" Sarah asked. "If we could set up a video camera and then do some shit to piss off Grendel or Beelzebub or whatever-the..."

"No. Dad said that there were some things in the church that we shouldn't disturb. He didn't say what they were, but... just no. This is why he didn't want us doing the walk-through without him." Erin cut Sarah off. Erin usually had very nice manners, but she clearly was not a fan of the way that Sarah was talking.

"And why not?" Sarah interjected. "You know as well as I do that your Dad was probably talking about wanting us to leave the papers in his office and stuff like that alone and to not do anything stupid or disrespectful while we're here. He'll probably think it's pretty cool that we found a hidden room that he probably didn't know about, and I can't think of any possible reason that he would mind us checking it out. Besides, the mortar around the stone is already broken, so we can get the stone out without doing any more damage to the church. John is strong enough to move it. If we want to get paranormal evidence for your Dad, and there's some sort of evil spirit guarding that place, then we should go there and see if we can piss it off and get it to do something. If we're committed to doing a good job here, then let's do a good job. I'll sit in there by myself if I have to."

"You really want to do this, don't you?" Lisa asked with nervous resignation.

"I feel like we have to," Heather said quietly.

I was shocked to hear Heather take that position. I didn't like the idea of Sarah sitting in the tomb during the investigation, but for now it wouldn't hurt to at least take a look inside of it and see what we would be dealing with from a logistics standpoint if we did decide to put someone in there. Despite the unpleasant feeling I had in my gut, I knew that the odds of a demon manifesting in the room with us at the moment were relatively low. "Erin? Lisa? Do you think it's OK if I move the rock?"

"Be my guest," Erin said in a nervous attempt at being nonchalant.

The large, flat paving-stone moved more easily with my bare hands than I would have expected, and soon I was looking at two huge square beams of ancient, rotting, hand-hewn wood. Between them was an opening about two feet square. A nauseating stench wafted from the icy depths of the hidden chamber. It did not smell of fresh decay. The foul air that had been contained beneath our feet reeked of old death and misery that had resided in this place for far, far too long. Ancient wickedness and suffering had eternally infused the very stones beneath our feet with a foul and repellant odor that made my stomach churn and my hair rise on the back of my neck. It was an indescribably repulsive scent that I had never experienced before and hoped to never experience again, but it filled my mind with morbid thoughts of eldritch horrors that could survive unchanged for aeons. Shining my pocket flashlight down, I saw the bones. Neatly piled against a wall, the yellowing skeletons had been combined into orderly heaps, with the skulls resting atop a pile of long arm and leg bones, and other piles containing the ribs, pelvises, vertebrae, and other small irregular bits of bony matter. I suddenly realized that the room that I had considered the most wretched final resting place imaginable just seconds ago was nowhere near as miserable as the cramped grave I was now beholding.

I climbed down into the dark, claustrophobic chamber and looked around, choking on the corrupted air as my foot splashed into a shallow puddle of foul, stagnant water. The room was a small, cube-shaped chamber, maybe five feet on each side, and with not quite enough room to stand without bumping my head on the filthy, cobweb-covered ceiling. The slimy stone walls were wet with water seepage and noisome growths of unwholesome and unnatural-looking mold, and they glittered with white nitre and water droplets. Sarah began climbing down after me, and I looked around for a place for me to move out of her way without disturbing the dead.

"Uh, Sarah?" I tried to warn her as she climbed down. I didn't know if there was going to be enough room for the two of us to be down here together without knocking over a pile of bones.

There is a certain scream that a human being can only make when they are truly in the utmost extremity of mortal terror. It is a grisly, blood-curdling sound that instinctively communicates an all-consuming horror to anyone that hears it. That particular type of scream is the instinctive final act of a doomed human being, a ghastly and animalistic shriek to which our earliest ancestors instinctively gave unspeakable utterance in their last desperate moments of life. This was a sound that served no purpose aside from warning the rest of the tribe in order that they might live to flee from the greatest of horrors. And when that sound comes from someone you love, it is truly the most shocking and abhorrent sound in the world. That sound, ripped from half a dozen throats, is what suddenly burst upon my ears from above at that moment. The memory of the sound that I heard at that moment will haunt my darkest nightmares for as long as I shall live. My muscles tightened like drawn bowstrings as I instantly knew that the ladies above me were in fear for their lives.

GPLockwood
GPLockwood
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