Rhayven House (8 page)

~ ~ ~

     He ended up fading in and out for the remainder of the morning and into the afternoon. Forcing himself off the sofa, he figured he'd run less risk of napping if he was up and mobile. Napping tended to ruin his chances of sleeping when it was bedtime and he didn't want to tempt Fate and run the risk of another sleepless night.

     A walk up the mountainside sounded good. He hadn't been walking since the day he discovered the house hiding down in the valley back in June; it was now the end of September. So he exchanged the boxer shorts that were his usual night wear and pulled on a pair of jeans, and then went in search of a pair of hiking boots. Adrenaline was the body's version of caffeine; releasing endorphins would wake him up and pull him out of the funk he felt like he was beginning to sink into. Fresh air usually cleared his head and aided him in sorting out the myriad story ideas always floating around in his mind.

     Fall foliage in its full glory spanned the whole mountainside and spread down into the valley. From his view, it was a wide and far reaching ocean of red, orange, and yellow.

     Hiking around the mountainside, even without his beloved dog Alex, soothed Ian's nerves much better than Xanax ever could. There was something to be said for the sense of serenity one achieved by simply getting outside and exploring nature.

     All the thinking about ghosts and the Borghese family from a century ago go might have freaked him out a little more than he'd care to admit out loud to anyone, but it also got his synapses firing and all kinds of ideas for his books came flooding into his brain. Initially an unholy maelstrom, they'd begun to separate and he started to make more sense of them and get the feeling for which idea might work for which story.

     He got metaphorically lost in the woods and, after a couple hours, found himself down by the Gold Church, wondering if he'd been subconsciously summoned since he hadn't even been thinking of it.

     “Knock it off,” he muttered.

     Reaching into his pocket, he located his cell phone and checked for text messages out of habit. Ian also noticed there was no cell reception. He couldn't remember if there had been, the last time he'd schlepped out to the Church. He had difficulty wrapping his brain around the idea there were still places where cell towers and signals hadn't yet permeated on the planet. The lack of bars on his phone was a bit shocking.

     The cemetery exuded a real creepiness in the middle of a bright, sunshiny day and Ian couldn't imagine anyone sneaking in to play a game of flashlight tag late at night. If there was any truth to the urban legend you could hear whispers in an ordinary cemetery overnight if you listened real close, Ian imagined you'd be able hear a whole damn conversation in this one.

     Although he didn't suffer from
coimetromania
, he would confess to sometimes finding a few old cemeteries fascinating. He truly enjoyed discovering odd markers and engravings. This particular cemetery, though, it felt more freaky than fascinating.

     Odd pieces of funerary trivia popped into his head, including one about how coffins should have a permeable seal because that is safer than one with an impermeable seal. An impermeable seal will cause methane gas to build up, staying trapped inside the coffin as the body decays. Should the gas not be allowed to leak out, the coffin could explode.

     Ian had to stop and laugh as a morbid image came into his mind of coffins exploding in a graveyard as if they were land mines detonated by phantoms walking around. He made a mental note to use that in a story sometime. And wondered if the phrase “whistle past the graveyard” had root in any of the superstitions surrounding cemeteries or if people just didn’t want to acknowledge their uneasiness around final resting places.

Eight

     Squirrels playing around in any cemetery generally  creeped Ian out as a rule, and the ones he saw in the Gold Church’s graveyard were no exception to the rule—rattling around in the leaves and chattering in what sounded to him a nonsensical, but eerie manner. He loved animals of all kinds, but squirrels in cemeteries were a whole other matter.

     No explanation for it; it just gave him goose bumps and a weird feeling.

     He watched as these two squirrels chased each other round and round as they spiraled up the thick tree trunk all the way to the top, and then chattered an entire conversation. Feeling somewhat like a voyeur, he turned and walked away as nonchalantly as he could. He had the distinct impression the squirrels were talking about him like he wasn’t there.

     For all the time he lived in Coventon, he’d never made the time to really take an in-depth look at the old, strange church. It was a Mecca for tourists and the film industry; it served as a great source of revenue for the city since it had taken ownership after the Church and its cemetery had been abandoned.

     The legend of the Gold Church, spilled down through the years, probably diluting like an ounce of food coloring over a waterfall, until it was nothing more than speculation peppered with pieces of truth or fact. Each succeeding generation adding its own twist.

     A well-researched book would be the best way to learn about the place. With all the interest from the aforementioned paranormal-minded tourists and the film industry, surely someone competent had authored one by now. Ian made a mental note to stop by the bookstore in the mall and see what they had. Failing that, he’d search online.

     Ornate churches just weren’t built in valleys for nothing. There had to have been a method to the madness. The congregation almost certainly hung around for a few generations, before the oft-mentioned abrupt abandonment. He concluded this, due to the fact that the cemetery surrounding The Church had more than a handful of residents. He took the time to appreciate the hand-carved headstones, before staring up at the golden onion domes from which the Church took its name—more typical of Russian architecture than Byzantine, but how he knew that he didn’t know. Ian understood perfectly now why people described the place using the term “mystical and mysterious majesty.”

     When the sun struck those golden domes, it bounced off in a blinding display, so brilliant he quickly looked away while his vision swam in an aftermath of blotches. Blinking until his vision returned, he then wiped away a tear and chastised himself:
You know better than that, dumb-ass; it’s like looking into the sun
. He raised his hand to shield his eyes from the light reflected off the domes and took in the sight of the Church for the first time. The tall, pointy-arched windows with their detailed designs had Ian stepping closer for a better look. No religious iconography was evident, as far as he could decipher, but it drew him in despite his lack of comprehension. Mostly, he made out vines and leaves, some flowers, and birds. He counted at least eleven—no, make that thirteen. One trinity of windows depicted either a sunset or a sunrise with orange, red, and yellow, and with leading not near as thick as he would have thought for windows of this age. Fine craftsmanship, indeed. If they weren’t manufactured by a local or nearby artisan, they would have been as expensive as hell to commission and ship. The Church obviously had members of means.

     Knowing he couldn’t go inside without prior permission because the city kept the Church locked, Ian studied the carving of the great front doors and the woodwork around them. Intricate patterns consisting what looked to him to be more vines or ivy wrapped around the columns and the door frame. Done in such a way, the vines looked like they were growing out of the wood and slithering up and around the columns and door frame. Peering closer, Ian made out carvings of more birds toward the tops of the columns.

     The stone of the Church must have been quarried locally, most likely out of the same mountains that shielded and sometimes shadowed the valley. Amazing architecture for the area, and usually reserved for churches that boasted huge congregations, members in the high hundreds, as opposed to what surely couldn’t have been a membership of more than two hundred. That was being generous in his estimation. But then again, judging by the number of residents in the cemetery, he could be underestimating the count of the congregants.

     The white marble sure as hell didn’t come from a local quarry and would have had to have been brought in at great expense; he wondered how the congregation had come up with all that money.

     Ian reached out to caress one of the columns. Section by section, it was amazing, but taken as a whole, the Gold Church was nothing short of mesmerizing; he understood what drew all those paranormal people and movie people. There was an energy about the place. Not just the building, but the land, the cemetery, and the woods around the Church. Not positive, not negative, just an energy he felt running along his skin like a fine mist. The kind you’d get by walking in the fog.

     If he subscribed to some of the same things he’d written about in his books, Ian might go as far as saying the area felt alive, sentient. And if it was, did it know he was there? He rather thought it did. Again, it felt neither positive nor negative. Just there. Letting him know in a benign manner it was there and don’t be doing anything you shouldn’t be doing,
please and thank you
.

     Surreal.

     Ian wondered if other people felt the same thing as he felt, and he wondered how on earth he could bring the subject up to ask. Not the easiest subject to work into every-day conversation.

     “Those clouds make it look like it could rain this afternoon and hey, do you feel like the Gold Church is alive out there in the woods by my house?”

     He would either get the answer for which he was looking, or a hefty dose of Thorazine administered drip-drip style.

     Next, he fished his cell phone out of his pocket and walked around to take some shots of the headstones as possible inspiration for his writing. Every once in a while, Ian came across a grave marker he liked enough to take a photograph and frame it. Not an obsession; more along the lines of a quaint, macabre appreciation. In old cemeteries like this, Ian usually came across at least one with either eye-catching carvings or a tongue-in-cheek inscription out of which he’d get a chuckle. Some of the old time people had a wicked sense of humor when it came to the words they wanted scratched into their stones, expressions of sarcastic whit that garnered laughter from those who understood the meaning.

     Framed black and white or sepia tone prints lined the staircase that spiraled its way all the way up to his glassed-in writing room. It was the lone room that made up what he called the fourth floor. A couple of the tombstones shots would be right at home in his gallery of graveyard goodies. Especially the one carved like a smaller version of a grand piano, its lid up, with cleverly carved keys. You'd swear you could play Beethoven. Someone must have loved music enough to want to continue to play throughout eternity.

     When Ian snapped the shot of the raven perched atop a twisted cross, he knew he had a winner, and maybe a new favorite.

     He insisted the footsteps he heard following him were really the sounds of the animals, specifically those weirdo squirrels, skittering and stalking, and hiding behind tombstones so he wouldn’t see them. The thought brought a smile to his face, and he thought seriously for the first time about adopting a dog. Maybe the time had come, with him getting the house and having property for a dog to safely run around, explore, and play. The stone wall would keep him or her safe; Ian could easily go for walks in the woods and up the mountainside with a dog, just as he’d enjoyed doing with his Alex.

     The entire place made him feel weird. Not like there was something there, but more like there was something missing. No matter how much it unnerved him, it enticed him more and Ian found himself returning time and time again.

~ ~ ~

     Waking up in a grave, just the claustrophobic idea of it, made Ian sick to his stomach. His suffocating fear of being buried alive served as an ironic counterpoint to his fascination with cemeteries and gravestones. The irony was not lost on him as he downloaded the photos he took to his computer and clicked through them.

     Thankfully, he had yet to have any macabre dreams about waking up in a coffin. In this day and age, the fear shouldn’t exist since the reality was he’d most likely be embalmed before being placed in his coffin and put on display at his funeral. No, he’d take a pass on the funeral, too.

     Wouldn’t that freak people out if he suddenly sat up in the middle of the service and started talking?

     During research for one of his books, he’d stumbled upon the origin of the term “graveyard shift.” According to lore, a string was wound around the finger or tied around the wrist of the departed and run up through a hole in the coffin, continued up through the ground, and attached to a bell. Someone then was charged with sitting in the graveyard all night in case the corpse should come to life and ring the bell; then the grave would be reopened and the dearly departed saved from a ghastly death. And that was the supposed etymology of the term. If it wasn’t true, then it should be because it’s one hell of a piece of folklore.

     Allegedly, the term “saved by the bell” came from this same legend. Regardless of it actually originating as a boxing term, it sounded like it really could have come from someone awakening after being buried and tugging on the thin string to ring the bell and be saved by the person working the graveyard shift.

     Ian spent most of one night reading stories of people who had been suspected of being interred alive when their graves were exhumed. They'd used their hands to claw in vain at the top of the coffin, tearing their clothes in the process. Their contorted bodies evidence of the agony and in some cases, their faces were set in a rictus. Horrific.

     Not much freaked him out and haunted him, but ever since he read all those awful stories, the concept of premature burial became his greatest fear. Whether or not these incidents were true didn’t matter, the concept scared the fuck out of him. Ian couldn’t fathom what it would be like to wake up in complete darkness in such a confined space as a coffin and scream and scream and not have anyone hear you or save you.

    
Fuck Edgar Allan Poe
, Ian thought. The dude was obviously as obsessed with premature burial as the rest of contemporary society. He sure as hell wrote about it enough.
The Premature Burial, Berenice, The Fall of the House of Usher,
and
The Cask of Amontillado
—although the last one was about immurement which is technically different than being interred alive.

     He used to love reading Poe’s gothic tales, and still did, but not the ones about being buried alive. Just thinking about reading them fed his nightmares. If he suffered from hypochondria, Ian was sure he could convince himself he was cursed with catalepsy and subsequently manifest the death-like symptoms.

     And of course the rumors of Poe’s own premature burial haunted his thoughts when he got like this.

     Clawing at the coffin lid in vain until your hands were raw and bloody. Slowly suffocating as the finite supply of oxygen dwindled to nothing. Lungs burning as the breaths come shorter.

     But it did not deter him from being endlessly infatuated with bizarre or creepy headstones.

     Ian supposed the only thing worse than waking up after being buried in your grave would be waking up during the embalming process…or maybe during the cremation process. Finding yourself in the furnace would surely burn your ass. Literally. Scratching at the coffin lid, trying to get out, until your fingernails are torn and you're bleeding.

     Laughing at something like that had to demonstrate how morbid his mind could be; he kind of felt like he shouldn’t be doing it, but that only served to make him laugh harder. Maybe that’s what’s meant by a macabre sense of humor. He’d have to look it up. He had to monitor himself when he was looking stuff up though, because he inevitably got lost in a spiral of bizarre things that captured his attention and, before he knew it, he’d spent hours digging through articles and learning lots of strange but fascinating information.

    
Holy Christ, he was grim and gruesome,
he thought. But he’d come to peace with that—convincing himself it was an attribute in his line of work.

     Finally confessing to himself there truly was a chill in the air, albeit not cold enough for him to be able to see his breath, Ian wondered if he should turn on the heat or build a fire or something. Maybe the chill was helping to add to the odd feeling in the house that night. He decided he felt too lazy to actually try to gather the paper, kindling, and wood and set it all up in the fireplace. He told himself if he couldn’t deal with a little chill he could put on a sweater

     Glancing at the clock, Ian realized he was up late even for his standards, but he wanted to get a bit more accomplished before he gave up the ghost and called it a night. The hands of the clock had flown by without him noticing as he worked on his newest manuscript. Judging by how heavy his eyelids were getting, he’d need a little more caffeine inspiration if he wanted to keep his eyes open for another hour or two.