...The Hallows presents its Main Attraction...
Ritual Possessions II: By the Devil's Hand
2011
"...and now for more channel 5 news..." the TV broadcasted.
"...local county prison riot leaves one prisoner missing and unaccounted for..."
"...the worst of the worst, Roscoe McCallister serial killer and death sentenced has possibly escaped prison grounds..."
"...full description and picture coming up after the break..."
"...stay tuned..."
"...channel 5 news..."
Maria threw the remote at the TV. She could not believe that they went to commercial. What if this guy knocked on her door during the commercial break?
"Thanks Channel 5, because of you I could very well be part of the body count now!" Maria yelled at the TV.
Her son Leeds came into the room with their dinner. He had helped her move in during the weekend while he wasn't teaching. He lived in Connecticut. The only place he could find a decent teaching job. Leeds was doing his mother a big favor, but the weekend was drawing to a close, and he would have to leave after dinner.
"I'm sorry he left you, Mom. Are you sure you don't want me to stay?"
"I'm sure. You go, you have your own life and responsibilities. I will be okay, Leeds."
Maria kissed her only son goodbye and went back into her lake house. It was dark and lonely, just as she expected. Maria was so fed up with residual anger from the fight earlier that she could not just sit back down in front of the television. She walked around her new house. A lot of the furniture was already here.
In the study sat a journal that was once carried out of this very study by a college kid and never brought back. Yet here it was on the desk, like it had just been leafed through. It was open to the only page that needed to be seen. Maria walked over and read it,
Aug 16th
If you are wondering why the ink is red, it is because last night I killed my brother, Zachariah. And I am now writing with his blood in my new journal. But of course, you know this already according to the last couple of entries. I told father that he was planning to turn us in and he caught him running away, caught him right in the head with his axe. The only problem now is what to do about father. He has become paranoid, sometimes he even acts like he thinks he is invisible. I'm going to have to kill him. Astaroth said I could use him, but eventually have to kill him. All I have to do is trick him into putting down that axe. Perhaps, I will catch him while he's chopping wood down by the beach.
"I love ghost stories," she proclaimed to herself and kept looking through the study's bookshelves for more.
She left the journal on the desk, and the thought never passed through her mind...that the journal entry was actually written in red...
The next book she took out was another journal, but not nearly as old as Zachariah's. The realtor told her about the murders here. He just didn't tell her about all of them. Her name was Agatha, and her diary was full, beginning to end, life to death... Maria sat down in the study and started Agatha's memoir's. It took Maria away from her abandoned existence, just what she needed.
1942
Agatha sat in her father's study. He was away at war. He had been for more than a year now. World War II had spread all across the world after Pearl Harbor. Agatha could take care of herself thought. It was her father she was worried about. Agatha lost her mother to breast cancer when she was just twelve years old. After that it was just her and her father.
Agatha once had a boyfriend. She spent over ten years being with him, but she could never marry him because of the guilt she had over her father. She didn't want to make him feel completely alone. Well after the boyfriend had enough he dumped her, leaving one day and never saying goodbye. Agatha never got any closure. After that her relationship with her father became even stronger for she thought every other man in existence was a creep. It was not long before WWII started and eventually took her father.
Now she had to fend for herself. She had a lot of time on her hands. That is how this diary first started. She began to write down every aspect of every day. It was maddening. She grew and cooked her own food and she was not good at it. Agatha eventually became malnourished and a closet case. Her diary entries turned into rambles.
Eventually, the diary turned into strictly dialogue, as if she was talking to something through the paper book. Agatha clearly had lost her mind. The diary seemed to talk back to her, from the entries and her remarks. Agatha was being conditioned, brainwashed. Whatever it was... convinced her that her father was the reason for her lover leaving. It was the demon in the book who got Agatha to stab her father in the heart when he returned from defeating the Nazis in WWII.
She went out to the lake where her father used to chop wood. She cut open the veins on her arms and walked into the water. The lake turned red and she died in that watery tomb, never to be found.
* * *
2011
Maria put the diary down. One question she could not shake from her thoughts. How did the diary get finished if she was dead in the lake. What she's trying to say is...
"Who wrote she's dead in the lake if she's dead in the lake!" Maria yelled to Leeds on the phone after explaining the diary to him.
"I don't know, Mom. Why don't you go down to the lake and have a look for yourself?"
"Because it's Halloween, Leeds. Don't be an idiot. The water's freezing."
"Here I thought it was April 1st."
"If it was real the realtor, by law had to tell me about it."
"Didn't he tell you about a murder-"
"It was two years ago, these 3 college kids went mad after their other friend committed suicide."
"Mom, I think you bought a murder-house."
"Ohhh, I don't want to be here anymore."
"Want me to come back and get you?"
"No...I'll be okay, Leedsy, you're sweet, but I'll let you go," Maria hung up the phone.
Leeds put his cell phone away and kept driving. He was worried about his mom. She was never this dramatic, or this clingy for that matter. All of this was unlike her. Leeds got off the highway and turned around.
Maria actually went down to the lake. She walked over to the chopping block. It all seemed renovated. She looked at the lake. The reflection of the lake's surface revealed the renovation's lies. It showed her the knife in the stump with blood on it and the still-beating heart on the ground.
Maria stumbled back and tripped over what she thought was the heart. But everything was back to normal and she got to her feet. Suddenly, a giant white blur burst forth from the lake. It hovered in the air. It was Agatha's dead body. Only she was alive and all white, except for her hands, which were covered in dripping blood.
The blood dripped down and onto Maria's forehead. She wiped it with her hand and spread it over the right side of her face. Agatha screamed above her. Maria could feel her pain. She was not afraid. She screamed with the tortured spirit. And in their communion it took Maria.
Maria woke up with her own hands soaked in blood. She looked around. Her hands were holding an axe. It was now on the floor, completely red. Maria looked next to the axe and there lay her ex-boyfriend's dead body. The door opened.
Maria looked up. She had to have been dreaming. It was Leeds. "My god," he exclaimed, "Mom what have you done."
He covers the body with sheets and drags it out back. He pulls the body down the path towards the lake.
"How did this happen?"
"I...I....I don't ...know...."
Leeds goes back and gets a shovel. "We have to bury him under the lake!"
"What?"
Leeds took Maria under the red lake where Agatha's tomb was. She lay on her back, in a pure white dress waving in the water, and her veins kept the lake red. Maria went over to her as Leeds fell into the background. Maria looked over the body. She looked at her face....right in her closed eyes...
Agatha stirred awake and opened her eyes, catching contact with Maria. Maria screamed and she was back beside the lake. The lake was not red. Leeds was gone. Maria ran back inside to the study. She rifled through the different diaries. Each time she opened one it had the same ending as the others. Her son was right.
This was a murder-house.
She had to get out before it over took her. The door blew open and a dark wind shut all the lights off with a scream. Maria covered her ears. "AGATHA!" she screamed.
"LEAVE ME ALONE!"
"NOT...AGATHA..." the demon whispered greatly.
Maria cried out and ran for the back door. The lights came back on and the back door in the kitchen slammed shut and locked itself. The knives came out of the butcher block and flew up stabbing the ceiling.
"Be gone, wretched thing!" Leeds yelled out as he entered through the front.
"Oh, Leeds!" Maria ran to her boy. She hugged him and he felt odd. Leeds laughed. The demon scurried out of the house scared. Maria let go of Leeds.
"What's wrong, mom?" he asked.
"We have to get out of here."
"No." Leeds unexpectedly denied.
"I cannot allow that."
Maria tried to run away, but every time she ran into a different room, Leeds was standing there waiting for her. Finally, she collapsed.
"What is all this?" she confessed in tears.
"Kill me and find out." answered Leeds.
He got down next to her and handed her the axe. She lifted it up. Leeds looked at her. His eyes were red. There were horns poking out of his forehead while he laughed. Maria screamed and plunged the axe into his side.
She awoke under the water in a pure white dress. Opening her mouth to scream choked her with lake water. Maria coughed up the red water next to the body. She was now in the kitchen and the axe was still stuck in the body. Maria pulled it out and flipped it over. It was not Leeds. Thank God. It was just Maria's ex-boyfriend. Is this real?
"Yes it is."
"You're the devil."
"Now that's record time. Congratulations, Maria, no more games, except for the big one."
"Game?"
"For your soul."
"Why me?"
"Your in my house."
"Please let me go."
"If you kill your son when he returns. I will leave you alone."
"Never."
"If you do not kill your son, I will let Agatha possess you."
"This can't be happening."
"And If you let my Lilith possess you...I will let your son go unharmed."
"Who is Lilith?"
Suddenly a snake wrapped around Maria ankle.
"She is my Queen..."
"...and those are your three." Leeds opened the door and caught himself disappearing before his very eyes. Maria fainted.
When she woke up she was in her bed. Leeds was looking over her. "Is this real, Leeds?" She put her hand on his face. He had been crying. "This is real, mom. This is real," he insisted.
The bed swallowed her up and Maria fell into the bowels of the house's unfinished basement. It was swollen with red flares, as if fires were down each and every hallway. Maria looked around for him, but Leeds was gone. A voice came from below. "Have you made your choice?" it bellowed out. Maria screamed and tried not to answer.
It shook her in the room and she cried out for Leeds. But he was not there. In reality, he was still looking over her lying on the bed as she slipped back into unconsciousness.
"I will not kill my boy!" she yelled. Agatha rose from the dead lake and climbed after her as the snake came from the other side.
The devil stood before her and offered his hand.
Maria grabbed it and was saved from ghosts and demons. She was taken to hell, as she unknowingly accepted the fourth and final choice. Her soul for her son's freedom. She sat down next to King Lucifer and begged for eternity to return to her place by her son's side. The devil told Maria there was a way to get back, save Agatha's soul, and have all her questions about the house answered.
"What must I do?"
* * *
Maria woke up. She had been in a coma for 3 years. Her boy was long gone. She was being taken care of by privately hired hospice. Maria walked into the study and looked at the diary on the table. The one she had left there. When she picked it up. It was not Agatha's name that was on it but her own. Maria looked at the date.
2011
She was back in time before the devil had taken her. Leeds was staring over her. Maria opened her eyes. "Tell me what I do, Mom" Leeds asks simply.
Maria got up and left the house. Leeds followed her out. "We should go!" he begged, over at his car as she walked for the lake. When Leeds got over there he found his mother pulling an axe from the lake. He approached her and she lifted the axe to swing it. Leeds screamed as the axe came down on him. How could his own mother do this?
The axe is caught by the handle and Agatha is shot in the gut. The man who saved Leeds from his mother takes the axe. He puts his gun away as Leeds crawls next to his mother bleeding on the floor. He does not say thank you, he does not blame him for shooting her.
Roscoe McCallister holds the forsaken axe in his hand and Maria finishes her mission, only to be tricked again. The serial killer breaks Leeds in half as he drives the sharp edge of the axe down the kid's spine. The tool of evil has been placed in the machines hand. . . The Devil's plan all along. And now, for that... Agatha, Maria, and Leeds join together as their souls ascend to Paradise.
But for those who conspire with the Devil there is only Purgatory, and all three of their spirits were forced to return to the house on the lake. And the devil laughed, as he collected 3 more souls to do his bidding.
"You said all my questions about this house, you would answer..."
I will next Halloween.
No comments:
Post a Comment