Witch House (25 page)

Dominic leaned forward in his seat, removed
his jacket and placed it around Ursula’s shoulders. “Take this,” he
said, though I knew she could not hear him. Her eyes were open now,
affixed on the twig, the flames crawling steadily along its bark
glimmering in the depths of her pupils. I realized then, that was
the key, a fuse of sorts, for the closer the two flames grew, the
colder the room got.

I turned again to Carlos and caught him
looking down at the floor where a swirling fog had rolled in
underfoot. Already, it was knee deep and thickening, and the cold
it brought with it had begun making my feet numb. I whispered to
Lilith for her to look, but she shut me down with a stare.

“Bastard!” Ursula shouted, startling me
almost as much as the wall of fire did that erupted along the ficus
twig when the two flames met. It had gone up in a flare like flash
powder, burning brightly for only a second or two and then dying
completely.

Across the room, a sixth chair swung up to
the table on its own and scooted in at the end opposite mine.
Carlos addressed the chair as though someone were already sitting
in it, smiling at its invisible occupant and nodding politely.
Overhead, footsteps thumped along the ceiling in a runner’s trot. I
instinctively reached under my jacket for my weapon, but Lilith put
her hand over mine to stop me.

“There is no one up there,” she said, and in
her voice, I found a strange sort of comfort.

“Yes,” I said, “of course.” I holstered my
weapon and folded my hands upon the table. Carlos and Dominic were
not so reassured. I could see them giving me a look as though maybe
I should reconsider, especially when we heard those same footsteps
starting down the stairs in slow precession. What Carlos and
Spinelli did not know was that I could see into the cracked china
hutch mirror across the room, and its reflection gave me a clear
view of the staircase down the hall. Though we heard the footsteps,
I saw no one coming.

“He is here,” said Lilith. She motioned
toward the candles on the table, their flames spewing a phosphorous
green smoke. It spiraled high in unnaturally thick columns,
gathering at the ceiling in layers, each swirling in directions
counter to the other. It appeared more viscous than gaseous; and
more so after Spinelli reached up and collected a handful of it,
balling it up and shaping it like taffy.

“What is this stuff?” he asked.

“Put it back,” Lilith snapped. “It’s
plasma.”

“Whatma?”

“It’s our ghost!”

He dropped it as though it were on fire. I
watched in amazement as it hit the table, splattering like spilled
jelly and dripped against gravity up to the ceiling where it merged
seamlessly with the rest of the substance. By then, the candles had
stopped smoking green. The plasma began congealing in a more
concentrated mass, centering itself over the sixth chair between
Carlos and Ursula. It had not taken on human form; however, I felt
it was trying. Knowing it wanted a chair made me sure of that. I
turned to Lilith and saw her untying the knots of a witch’s ladder,
realizing she had fashioned it using the drawstring ripped from the
window curtains earlier. Already, half the knots were untied. I
looked back at our ghost. His progression in materializing seemed
directly coordinated with Lilith and her knots. Slowly, and with
her help, this green, semi-translucent, glowing blob, which should
have scared the crap out of us but did not, lowered itself into the
chair.

“You are in my house again,” it said,
although the words came from Ursula’s lips. They seemed forced, as
if speaking through her took incredible effort.

Lilith said, “What are you going to do about
it?”

The form morphed into an animal shape
resembling a wolf. It snarled at Lilith, its teeth as long as
lion’s fangs. Not to be out done, Lilith shape-shifted into a
creature more hideous than Hell’s gargoyle; two heads with long
pointed snouts, hob-nailed lizard skin, stubby horns, serrated
teeth and eyes like emerald boot spurs—sort of what she looks like
before coffee in the morning, but not as mean. She hissed at our
spirit host with forked tongues slipping serpent-like in and out of
her mouth as if tasting the air around him. Then she reeled her
heads back and let out a shriek to peel the paint off the walls.
Carlos, Spinelli and I pushed away from the table so quickly that
we nearly fell out of our chairs. When we bellied up to the table
again, she had transformed back into herself.

“Don’t fuck with me, Buster,” she snarled.
“I’ll out-shape you any day; you understand?”

The befuddled poltergeist settled into a
distorted form resembling a man’s body, but with no distinguishable
features. It reached for Ursula and touched her hand. She gasped,
as if coming up for air after a prolonged spell under water.
Dominic skirted his chair closer and placed his arm around her
shoulder. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“She is fine,” Lilith answered. “Let things
take their course.” To our ghost she said, “Talk to us. Who are
you? Are you John? Are you the one we saw earlier?”

He replied through Ursula, “Why are you in my
house?”

Lilith shook her head. “It is not your house
any longer. We told you that. You died and left it to earthbound
inhabitants like us. Do you see we are different?”

I watched the spirit recoil, its featureless
face molded like a rubber mask over a marble silhouette. At times,
the body of the thing seemed fluid, its molecules bound as if
gathered in the vacuum of space. I imagined I could reach out and
touch it, and its surface would respond by rippling, the way a
reflection in a pool might ripple upon contact. Others times, I
believed the mass more gaseous, its green smoke swirling within the
confines of a clear glass sculpture. Never did it present itself in
a solid defined form the way I imagined it would.

“You are not welcome here,” the spirit
said.

“And you are angry,” said Lilith. “You are
not at rest. We want to help you.”

“Fuck you. I don’t need your help,” he said,
the vulgar words sounding strange coming from Ursula’s lips. “I
don’t need anyone.” He appeared to face Ursula. “But I do like this
little filly.” Ursula turned toward the spirit form as if summoned.
I looked down at her hand where his touch made her skin grow pale
and cold. At once, the viscous green mass began flowing into her
body through contact. It happened quickly. Dominic tried grabbing
at it to stop its migration, but it filtered through his grasp like
smoke. Even Lilith seemed surprised and unsure of what to do next.
We watched, angry and embarrassed, as Ursula slipped one hand up
under her blouse and began fondling her breasts. “Yeah,” she said,
again in his voice. She eased her head back against the chair and
savored a deep breath. “That’s right nice, you betcha.”

“Stop that,” said Dominic, wanting to snatch
her hand out from under her blouse, but not knowing how to go about
it. “You make her stop that, Lilith!”

“Let her go,” she said. “He’s trying to piss
us off so that we will leave.

“But Lilith….”

“You heard her,” I told him. “Turn your head
if it bothers you to watch.”

He did, and it was a good thing, too. He
would not have wanted to see the things the poltergeist within her
made her do after that, though I supposed he could have guessed.
The sounds she made; the moaning, the gasps and the shrill pitched
squeals that made her bite her own lip were all sounds I am sure he
had only imagined her making with him. I will spare the details,
saying only that Ursula was never in a position of harm; and even
enjoyed herself from what I could see. In any case, she did not
remember any of it later. I suspect the only person feeling
violated at the time was Dominic, and for that, I felt sorry.

“Are you done now?” Lilith asked, drawing her
collar against the cold around her neck. The temperature in the
room had leveled off at the frost point after things got started.
Now it was dropping again. None of us had come prepared to deal
with the chill we were facing. Only Ursula seemed immune. She was
just buttoning up her jeans when Dominic finally looked at her. Her
belly, exposed to the cold, appeared warm and pink. She sat up
straight in her chair and pulled at her blouse until it met her
beltline. Dominic turned away once more, disappointed.

“Yeah, what the hell, I’m good now,” she
said, or he said.

Lilith asked, “Who is the bastard,
Spirit?”

“What?”

“You said it a minute ago. You called one of
us a bastard just before you showed yourself.”

“He is a Bastard.”

“Someone here?”

“It’s not me,” said Carlos. “Is it?”

“No.”

“Me?” I asked.

“No.”

Carlos laughed. “Oh, then it’s Dominic.”

“No!”

“Then who?” said Lilith, “René Landau?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t you?”

“No.”

“Then tell me what was that money in the
casino bag doing in your cellar?”

“Money? I don’t know what you’re talking
about.”

“In that bag,” she pointed, “by the
door.”

Ursula turned her head. “What door?”

I followed Lilith’s surprised gaze. The door
had disappeared. Wallboard and chair rail now ran the length of the
room completely from corner to corner, filling the gap where the
door had been. “Cute,” she said, smiling. “Now bring it back.”

“Am I the boss?”

“Yes, spirit, you are the boss.”

“Look!” said Dominic. “The windows are icing
over.”

Carlos got up and walked to the window with
one of the candles, holding the flame to the ice. Within a minute,
he had melted a hole through it the size of a grapefruit. He turned
and said over his shoulder, “It’s four inches thick. At this rate,
the entire room will be one big ice block within the hour.”

“Sit down and relax,” said Lilith. “Your
paranoia plays right into his hand. Tony, tell him.”

“Lilith is right,” I said, though I could
only hope so. The truth was I did not know. I knew she had warned
us that spontaneous metaphysical disturbances might occur, but
disappearing doors and sub-arctic temperatures had me second
guessing everything. All I wanted to do was get on with it. I said
to Lilith, “Can we get this show on the road? We are all freezing
our asses off.”

She turned to Ursula. “Spirit, you proved
your point. Put the door back now and warm the room up or I will do
it for you.”

Ursula scowled at that. “Will you now?”

Carlos, Dominic and I pushed back from the
table. Lilith stood and reached for two of the candles, pinching
the flames from each and balling it into one. She then began
working the ball, massaging it within her hands, growing the flames
ever larger with no apparent means of fuel to feed it. She stepped
back and released the ball. It sank only a few inches before rising
again, floating over the table on a thermal wave. “Do it,” she
said, looking at Ursula. “I mean it.”

“Lilith!” I kicked my chair out from under
myself and stood. “This is a mistake. Stop it now.”

“Spirit?” she motioned by clasping her hands
together and then pulling them apart quickly. With that, the ball
of fire doubled in size. “I’ll do it. I will burn your house
down.”

“Lilith, stop it!”

Carlos and Dominic were standing now. Ursula
remained seated, her face red from the heat of the flames. Lilith
clapped her hands together a final time and warned, “Last
chance.”

“All right!” he said. “Here’s your damn
door.”

I looked. The door was back. I grabbed my
chair and slid it over the threshold, straddling it between the two
rooms. I do not know why I thought that would prevent our spirit
from removing the door again, and perhaps I only encouraged him to
do what he did next, just to show me that he was still boss in his
house. I had turned to face Lilith in time to see her snap her
fingers and return the nervous flickers of candle fire to their
wicks, when she motioned for me to look back. I did, and what I saw
chilled me to the bone. The spirit had removed the door again, or
more accurately, moved the door to the other end of the room,
leaving my chair imbedded in the wall, half inside the room and
half out. I looked once more at Lilith. She seemed amused. “Are you
done playing?” she asked.

“I wasn’t playing,” I said. “I thought I
could—”

“Look!” Spinelli pointed to the windows.
“It’s melting.”

It was. The ice over the windows was melting
at an unnatural rate, dissolving into a standing puddle of water on
the floor several inches deep. “This is not right,” I said. “This
is too much water for the amount of ice we had.” Ursula laughed. I
pointed at her. “He’s doing this.”

“Of course he is,” said Lilith. “He’s fucking
with us. Don’t give in to his scare tactics.”

Carlos said, “It’s rising. The water is still
rising. It’s going to swamp us.”

His observations were not understated.
Already, the water had crept past my ankles and soaked half way up
my shins. “Lilith,” I reached out for her and pulled at her
shirtsleeve. “Do something.”

“What do you want?” she said, I thought to
me, but when I looked, I saw that she was talking to Ursula. “Why
are you so damn angry?”

Ursula slammed her fists down on the table.
“I didn’t do anything to him,” she said. “Why did he shoot me?”

“Who? René?”

“Lilith?” I splashed my hands in the water,
which was now waist deep and rising. “Don’t piss him off. He’ll
close the door on us again.”

“He’s right,” said Dominic. “This water isn’t
stopping, and I don’t think Ursula can swim.”

Carlos agreed. “We need to go, Lilith. We can
come back later if we need to.”

“No!” she persisted. “Give us a name, spirit.
Tell us who killed you.”

“I’m getting her out,” Spinelli said, and he
had to. Sitting down, the water was already up to Ursula’s neck.
“Give me a hand, Tony, will you?”