Spectre

by John W. Salvage

“What a waste of fucking time,” Jessica Dupress muttered as she stepped out of the comfort of her air-conditioned car and onto the gravel driveway. Everything about the house was old and ugly. From the rusted for sale sign that was still posted crookedly in the ground, through the weedy drive, and all the way up to the farm house, which rotted more with each passing year.

The house itself was a husk of its former glory. The paint had all but chipped off, abandoning the wooden frame to dry rot from season after brutal season of the Midwestern year. The roof had caved in on the northwestern corner some time ago. A mulberry bush grew from the accumulated detritus on the porch. Whatever value the house once held was long gone. If anybody ever purchased the property, it would surely be for the land and not the structure. Jessica was having second thoughts about even entering the house. She was not afraid of the horrors the house was supposed to hold, but rather the very real fear of falling through the floorboards or having the whole damn thing cave in on her.

“What did you say?” Angie asked, stepping out from the passenger side.

“I said we are wasting our time here,” Jessica replied, more angrily than she had intended. Angie was paying her tab after all, so if she wanted to waste her time and money it was her own problem. Still, Jessica had never been ghost hunting before, and the thought of starting now made her want to alternately laugh and pull her hair out for the futility of it all.

Angie frowned and was about to speak but stopped when she saw a gangly figure step from around the corner of the house. She waved and Louis Myers waved back, his long bony arm flopping loosely in his oversized and wrinkled suit. He would have been handsome, Jessica thought, if not for the deep wrinkles on his face and his darkened eyes which told of sleepless nights and excessive booze.

As they walked toward him, Angie picked up her previous thought. “I know you don't believe in any of this. I'm not sure if I do either, but everything else has turned up dead ends. I just want to try this before I give up the search forever. And I need you. . .” Angie continued, breaking off Jessica's question, “to be my neutral observer. I'm afraid that I want to believe it too much. I need you to keep me grounded.”

Jessica understood, but it didn't make the futility of it any less annoying. All the other roads in the case had indeed turned out to be dead ends. She also understood about wanting to believe something so much that you accept it out of hand despite all the evidence to the contrary. It made it even worse when someone was trying to manipulate your perceptions and emotions. She had seen con men at work hundreds of times while working with the force, and now in her private practice. She had seen con men, illusionists, and grifters ply their trade many times and spotting the con had become her special gift. Now it was time for her to see this so-called psychic at work.

The fact that Louis was here before them was unsettling. She had tried to get there before him, but now that he had arrived first there is no telling what he had done to rig the house with special effects for the impending séance. She would search the house both before and after the fact just to make sure.

The two women met Louis at the foot of the front steps and shook hands. Louis picked up on Angie's excitement and smiled as a quick sparkle of mirth washed over his careworn face and then disappeared as he looked up at the house. After exchanging brief pleasantries the three of them, lead by Louis, entered the house.

Louis stopped just inside the doorway. He looked up at the second floor landing and then across to the stairs and down as if he were watching a figure move from one of the upstairs bedrooms down to the first floor. These were the stairs that Dora Mae Richards was thrown down fifty years before.

Slowly, sadly, with a low voice that Jessica could barely hear Louis said, “Rage. I feel so much rage.”

* * *

It was a peculiar case. Certainly not the most difficult that she had ever worked on, but strange nonetheless. The fact that the murder had occurred fifty years before and that the man accused of the crime had already been put to death made it much harder to prove that he hadn't done it. Time had also killed off most of the witnesses and had eroded the memory of virtually everyone else. That left Jessica with only a few scattered witnesses and a whole bunch of court documents and newspaper clippings, none of which were entirely reliable.

On the night of August 10, 1956, Dora Mae Richards was beaten, thrown down the stairs, and finally strangled to death in the foyer of her home. No immediate suspect was found. There was no sign of a break-in and all the doors and windows were locked from the inside. Dora Mae's husband, Jerrod Richards, had an airtight alibi as he was with his sons and some friends on an overnight hunting and fishing trip over a hundred miles away.

Eventually the blame would fall on Cecil Jones, the field hand. He and his wife Etta had been working for the family for many years. In fact, that is how they met. Cecil helped in the fields and Etta cooked and cleaned for the family. On the night of the murder Cecil had many witnesses that placed him at a juke-joint far from the Richards residence, but the word of a black man could be easily dismissed in 1950s rural Indiana . Cecil was tried and executed with little more evidence than what the imaginations of the panicking white townsfolk could dream up.

Cecil was innocent, Jessica was sure. She had managed to poke enough holes in the evidence to assure her of that. What gave her the ironclad proof of his innocence, however, was her interview with Cecil's widow and the other surviving people who placed him at that juke-joint. They were telling her the truth. Jessica could spot a liar and none of them were lying, at least not about that. Despite this information, Jessica was no closer to finding the killer than the jury was in '57 when they sentenced Cecil to die.

After the death of his wife and the subsequent trial, Mr. Richards moved the family away. He complained of bad dreams and unnatural occurrences in the house. He sold the house for far less than it was worth, but the new owners didn't stay for long either. After it changed hands a half-dozen times, it just stopped selling. Its reputation as a haunted house grew and it became a haven for teenagers looking for a scare and passing vagrants. It soon fell into disrepair and the owners stopped trying to sell it seriously. They eventually stopped paying taxes on it until it was forfeited and became the property of the state. Since then it had stayed just as it was, the house rotting and the land gone fallow.

Jessica had managed to talk to several of the owners. They all seemed happy to be rid of the property. “A rotten, unholy place,” one had called it. All were convinced that the ghost of the dead woman still existed there and would sometimes turn violent. Apparently anyone could witness this ghost, but it was usually the woman of the house who received the worst of it. One claimed to be pushed down the stairs. Another had boiling water thrown on her as she cooked. Another spent time in a psychiatric hospital but refused to talk to Jessica about the incident at all.

Now Angie Jones, the granddaughter of Cecil and Etta Jones, wanted to clear her grandfather's name. At first she researched the mystery herself, but turned up nothing new. She then hired Jessica to dig deeper into the matter.

The most interesting lead Jessica found was the fact that Dora Mae Richards had an older sister, Susan Jenkins, who was not noted anywhere in the case record. Jessica had learned this when she looked up the land records for the house. It had originally been built by Susan and Dora Mae's parents. When they passed away, the house went to Susan. Susan disappeared in the early 50s, however, and the house and farm passed to Dora Mae.

The only person Jessica found who had seen Susan in the flesh was Etta Jones. This was when she was first hired on as cook and maid. Etta thought she was just a crazy old spinster. After Dora Mae married, Jerrod Richards moved in to work the farm. Susan would hide in the attic for days at a time and refuse to come down. Etta had caught her lurking outside of Dora Mae's bedroom door, listening while her sister and Jerrod made love. Her mental condition deteriorated and she refused to bathe. She also began to take long walks which would sometimes last for days. One day she left and never came back.

Several months later the police found the body of a woman washed up on the riverbanks. There was some question at the time about whether or not it was really Susan, but eventually they determined that it was and the matter was put to rest.

Because of the initial question of whether or not the body was really Susan's, Jessica had thought for a while that the body was not hers after all. That Susan could have come back on that hot August night and killed her own sister. After a long fight with the courts, Jessica managed to get a DNA test on the remains. The test came back positive and Susan was crossed off the short list. And with that the last of Jessica's leads came to a dead end.

Now there was only one road to take. It was Angie's idea and though Jessica tried to talk her out of it, she was determined to see it through. Angie decided to hire a psychic and go to the house to speak with Dora Mae's ghost. He thought that if nothing else could reveal the killer, then she would get the answer from the only known witness. And so now, fifty years later to the day, Angie, Jessica, and Louis convened to ask the victim to stand witness for her own murder.

* * *

Angie followed Jessica up the stairs. They creaked and groaned at every step. Both walked up carefully and with great trepidation. Jessica was fearful of the aged steps giving way beneath her feet. Angie felt a growing sense of dread that chilled her skin and raised the hairs on the back of her neck. She wasn't sure if it was overexcitement and anticipation, or something more supernatural.

What she told Jessica earlier was true. She did want to believe that a ghost could clear her grandfather's name. She liked to believe in the supernatural and enjoyed being scared by a good horror flick. That is why she brought Jessica along. While Angie wanted to believe and might allow her imagination to get the best of her, Jessica most certainly did not want to believe and would look critically at anything that happened. It was the best way to keep her mind open both to the possibility of the supernatural and the probability of being hoodwinked.

This pseudo-scientific approach didn't stop her from feeling the willies as they pulled up the drive. It didn't do away with the churning in her stomach when the house had finally come into view. And now, walking up the stairs, her senses seemed heightened and she was overly aware of every low groan of the steps and the soft thumping of each heartbeat. There was also the immutable feeling that she was being watched.

Jessica reached the top of the stairs and turned into the first bedroom. She searched the floor, ceiling, and walls without finding what she expected.

“What are you looking for?” Angie asked.

“Hidden speakers. Projectors. Anything that could be used to fake chain rattling or ghostly voices, or whatever the hell it is we are supposed to see tonight.”

“It doesn't look like there is anything in the house at all.” There was nothing in there that Angie could see except dust and some animal droppings.

“I'm not so worried about what is in plain sight, but what is behind the walls. Mostly I am looking for paint that doesn't match. Maybe a loose floorboard that somebody could have stuck a remote speaker under.” Jessica continued to search the room, tapping the walls occasionally. “Anything out of the ordinary, really.”

Angie nodded and then turned to explore the rest of the upstairs. All of the doors were closed and so she began to open them and peer in one by one. The first room, the one to the right of the top of the stairs, was the one Jessica was surveying. And so Angie opened the one directly across from the stairs. Still nothing in there. Still the same dust bunnies and rodent droppings. She left the door open and progressed to the next room, but she never got there.

Instead she stopped short just before reaching that next door. She stood transfixed by the sound she heard at the far end of the hall. It sounded as if something were in the far room, the last room at the end of the hall. Her heart pounded and her breath shortened as her mind raced, telling her first that it was a ghost and then that it was only the animal that had made this its home. She stood unable to move when she felt a chilling breeze blow against her neck. Oddly the breeze came neither from her left which overlooked the first floor, nor from the main entrance, but rather from the solid wall to her right. It came from right beside her. It came from behind her. It circled her like a vulture and stole the breath from her lungs.

The doorknob turned slowly and with a rusty groan the door began to open. Unable to turn, unable to run, unable to scream, Angie stood transfixed and the feeling of impending doom washed over her. Her fear was like something palpable, holding her jaws shut and pinning her arms to her side.

All at once it was as if the dam broke. Angie felt the presence release her and she began to scream. Even as the scream left her lips, every open door in the house slammed shut. The house quaked and was silent.

* * *

As 11:30 approached, Louis, Jessica, and Angie busied themselves with the last of the preparations. 11:30 was the approximate time of death, so Louis insisted that this was the best time to hold the séance. The fact that it was the anniversary of the death would only make the event more powerful.

“When something happens in an area,” Louis explained as he finished arranging the chairs around the card table. “There is a sort of psychic imprint left on the things around it. Time, place, material objects. The stronger the emotions involved with the occurrence, the longer the impression will last. Sometimes, if these emotions are strong enough, they will be locked in time and place for years. When someone dies the soul can sometime be wrapped up in this too. They are doomed to relive the event over and over again. Often times they are trapped in the place. If the spirit is powerful enough it can reach out into the world and affect it physically. The more they react with the physical world, the more powerful they can become.”

“Is that like a poltergeist?” Angie asked. Though still nervous, her tears had subsided and she agreed to continue with the séance. There had been anger and sobbing after Angie stopped screaming. Angie tried her best to explain what she saw and felt, but she was unable to describe it adequately. Jessica blamed Louis and demanded to know why he would do such a thing to Angie. Louis didn't like the accusation and escalated the argument. Eventually, they all calmed down. Louis took Angie outside for a smoke while Jessica searched the rest of the house.

“A poltergeist is a little different,” Louis explained calmly. “While I have my own theories about them, what I am talking about could be better described as a spectre. A malevolent spirit that knows it is dead yet continues on in this world.”

“But that doesn't sound like the Dora Mae my grandmother knew. She said that Dora Mae was generally a sweet woman who never had anything bad to say about anyone.”

“Yeah, well maybe being killed pissed her off,” Jessica said, her voice caked in sarcasm.

“Anything is possible,” Louis said, trying to keep his voice calm and not start another round of shouts and accusations.

“Yeah, anything is possible. Like it's possible for an attic to just disappear?” Jessica asked through gritted teeth. “I know there was an attic in this house. Angie's grandmother talked about it. So did some of the other owners. So where is the entrance?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know, Ms. Dupree?” Louis shouted back, losing his cool. “I've never been here before! Remember?”

“Well you're the fucking psychic! Remember?”

“All right, cut it!” Angie shouted over the two of them. “I'm tired of hearing about it. I hired you both so do what I fuckin' say. And let's get this thing over with so I can get the hell out of here.”

Jessica and Louis eyed each other quietly. Jessica wanted to say more but stopped herself, partly because she didn't want to upset her client any more. The rest was because she could tell that Louis was telling the truth. He had never been here before, but that didn't mean that he hadn't hired somebody to hide the stairs and rig the house. Later, when the séance was over, she would finish her search.

* * *

At long last the séance began. The three of them were seated around Louis's card table holding hands. Louis had his back to the main door. Angie sat to his right, her back to the bottom of the stairs. Across from her sat Jessica, who had placed herself there so that she could watch Louis as closely as possible during the séance.

Candles were lit in the center of the table as well as around the entire foyer, giving off a dim eerie glow. Angie looked around nervously, her eyes closed tight as she concentrated on not being scared. Louis looked calm. His eyes were closed but his grip on Jessica's hand was loose and dry, a vast difference from Angie's clammy hand. His eyes were closed and his head was tilted back slightly as if he were smelling the wind or attempting to hear something far in the distance. It had been a full minute since he had addressed the spirit, asking for it to reveal itself. Nothing had happened in that time and Jessica was beginning to doubt that anything would.

“I don't think . . .”

But Jessica was cut off by the sound of a door opening upstairs. All three jumped and looked up to the top of the landing. In the candle's half light, the three of them could see the door to the far bedroom opening slowly with a loud groan. They sat transfixed as they heard some unseen entity move across the hall.

Though none of them could see anything, all three felt the presence. Louis knew this feeling. He knew what it meant. It was the remnants of the psychic impression, not the spirit itself. Even so, he could almost see the thing in his mind's eye. He could almost see it as it walked across the floor. And then he did see something and his blood turned cold just to look at it. He had seen spirits before, fleeting things that lingered in the periphery of the eye. He had seen glowing mists moving against the wind. He had seen shadows move and felt the touch of an unseen hand, but he had never, until now, seen a fully formed spectre.

It emerged from the wall, in the exact place, Angie noted, that she had been when she had her earlier scare. Later inspection would show that this was where the attic entrance had been before it was sealed off by a previous owner. The spectre leapt at and grappled an unseen target and sent it roughly to the ground. Angie knew at that instant that they were witnessing the attack on Dora Mae. She also grimly realized that the ghost was not that of Dora Mae, but rather the person who killed Dora Mae.

Angie strained her eyes trying to see past the luminescent glow but she could not. She tried to see the face of this spectre and learn who had really killed Dora Mae, but to no avail. The figure moved too quickly, its form constantly shifting between darkest night and luminous fog. Try as she might, she could not pierce the vale.

As the figure continued its attack, pounding, kicking and scratching at its unseen victim, Jessica managed to tear her eyes away. She looked around desperately for a projector, for any rational object that might explain what she was seeing now. She was certainly witnessing this scene. She could not dismiss that, but was she really seeing a ghost? Her rational mind would not let her think so. But her rational mind began to slip when she saw and felt what followed.

The apparition stood at the top of the stairs and seemed to throw something down them. This must have been how Dora Mae was cast down the stairs. Jessica heard the sound of the body falling. The sound of its every thump and thud reverberated through the house. The banister shook with remembered fury as the invisible body landed hard.

The spectre floated swiftly down the stairs, not relenting in its attack. It jumped upon the invisible body and strangled the air. Its face was still hidden by mist and shadow. Even so, its arms and hands seemed to materialize, to grow more solid and real. It seemed as if she could see the tension in its hands as it strangled the life out of Dora Mae.

“Stop it!” Angie shouted.

To Louis' surprise, the spectre did stop. The tormented soul heard Angie's voice and looked around desperately to locate its source. It was not Angie that its dead eyes settled on, however, nor did it seem to see him. Instead, it was Jessica who drew its horrid gaze. As it looked on, Jessica realized this and her heart went cold.

What Jessica saw defied all reason. While the image could have been projected from a hidden camera, the doors opened and closed with magnets, and the thumping of the stairs achieved through other illusionist's tricks, there was nothing that Jessica could think of that would allow this phantom to look upon her directly with such hatred registering in its ghostly eyes. The fog and darkness of this creature's features solidified as its eyes met hers. Its mouth turned into a crooked, horrid snarl and its features became more tangible. What made it worse was that she recognized this phantom from pictures she had seen. Susan Jenkins' ghost released the empty air and lunged toward Jessica.

Jessica raised her hands reflexively as if to block a physical blow but Susan's spectral hands moved right through them and found Jessica's throat. The force of the phantom flung her backward and forced her to the rotting floor.

Jessica fought desperately as she would against a physical opponent. She could not fight this entity, however. Even as she felt its weight and strength cutting off her air, she could not fight back effectively. Her hands pushed through the face and body of her opponent. Her legs kicked uselessly through the space where a body should have been. Even her attempts to pry the fingers from her throat, which felt so real around her neck, achieved nothing. She clawed and scratched at her own neck instead, drawing her own blood but not relieving one ounce of pressure from her throat.

‘Is this how it was for Dora Mae?' Jessica wondered. ‘Is this how it was when she was killed?' She saw Louis and Angie standing above her, attempting to fight with the malicious spirit. Their blows landed no better than hers had.

And then everything grew dark around the edges until only Susan's ghostly form was left. It seemed at that moment as if something passed between them. The rage left Susan's eyes and they were filled with something else. Sadness? Despair? As Jessica's lungs ached and her vision dimmed, she got to see Susan's terrible story firsthand.

Jessica could not tell the moment when past and present mixed. One second she was herself, feeling the anguish of asphyxiation and the next moment . . . she was Susan. She felt the same weight upon her chest and throat. This time, however, it was not Susan doing the choking. It was Susan being choked. It was not Dora Mae being choked. It was Dora Mae choking the life from her sister.

Jessica felt Susan's emotions. Indignation. Fear. Dread. Despair . . . Rage!

Jessica felt the life going out of her just as Susan had felt it so many years before. She didn't know why Dora Mae killed Susan, but she did know that Susan had hatred in her heart that would not die. It would survive and keep her spirit permanently in the netherworld between the living and the dead.

Jessica understood that Susan watched from the ethereal world as Dora Mae and her complicit husband dumped her body in the river. Her anger grew as the two lied to the police and took the house and property as their own. The rage grew and grew until she was able to touch, however fleetingly, the material world. As her hatred and anger grew, so did her unearthly powers.

At some point she had a choice between rest and eternity in a spirit form. Her rage cemented her fate and when she grew powerful enough, she exacted her revenge and killed her own sister. That bitter choice sealed her doom and she was trapped in a terrible half existence, unable to regain her life and unable to move on to what waits beyond death's veil.

With that the vision broke. Jessica felt air flood back into her aching lungs. She saw Angie and Louis standing above her looking both scared and relived.

* * *

A month later Jessica went to visit Louis at his home. The animosity between them died the night Jessica was attacked. The bruises had healed but she was still having problems grasping what she had seen and felt that night. Though she had searched the house thoroughly, she had never found the slightest bit of tampering. Nothing suggested that what she had seen had a rational explanation. It was that more than anything else that shook her nerves. She had come to rely on logic and reason to sort out every facet of her life. Now there was something else. Something supernatural . . .

She had even started going to church again and found some solace in the rituals and blind faith that she had never felt as a youth.

“I can't help with these questions you are asking,” Louis said as he leaned forward and set down his scotch. “People have been asking them since the dawn of man for all I know. I certainly haven't found any answers. Just more questions.”

That was certainly true. The whole thing left her confused and frightened. Though she had tracked down the truth about Dora Mae's killer to her client's satisfaction, there was no way to clear the record. She certainly wasn't going to announce her story to the world and she didn't think Angie would either. She had tried to contact Angie a few times, but her calls were never returned. The check Jessica received in the mail, with only a note marked “Paid in Full,” seemed to end the connection between the two of them. Certainly Angie would have to work through all this in her own way.

“It's strange that Angie wanted to bring me in as the voice of reason. And now reason has deserted me.” Jessica tapped out another cigarette from her pack and lit it, a habit she had recently picked up again.

“You wanted to believe in a certain reality,” Louis consoled her. “A reality where everyone has ulterior motives. Where everyone is either a con man or a mark. Where there is no mysticism . . . only science. Now you see that there are things that can't be explained with science, at least not with the science we have to date. Your grasp on your old reality has slipped and now you need to work in new facts. Because you held onto rationalism so tightly, your confrontation with its failures is more painful.”

Louis paused and lit a cigarette of his own. They sat in silence for a long time after that. They watched cars drive by and people walk past. Jessica imagined each of them in their happy, naïve worlds and felt sad and jealous all over again. How could she ever go back to the way she was before? Did she really want to even if she could? She doubted it. To her, knowledge was power. Now, however, there would always be the glowing spectre in her memory to remind her of how little she really knew. That and her nightmares.