The Red Light (4 page)

“
Come on Ted, now do you
wanna play?” The creature said laughing.

“
Mo… Mom… M…,” Teddy
stuttered trying to call for his mom.

“
Mom!” The creature
screamed and was still laughing. “Go ahead Teddy, call your mom up
here, you and I can kill her Ted, we can have so much fun Ted”
Teddy couldn’t see a body, just a head beside his
pillow.

“
I’m gonna go for now kid,
when you do wanna play just yell for Uncle Silas!” The head said
laughing.

Teddy had closed his eyes tight, the
cold air was gone, the red light was gone, he finally got up the
nerve to look over beside his pillow and the head was gone, then
suddenly his night light came back on and it made him jump. He
didn’t get much sleep that night, and he wasn’t the only
one.

Sarah was lying in bed asleep, until
she was startled awake by the sound of the bedroom door shutting,
she looked down toward the foot of the bed and seen someone
standing there, she inhaled quickly and lay startled, she tried to
speak and ask who they were but the figure held up a finger to her
lips like to say ‘shhh’. At first it was transparent and Sarah
could barely make out who or what it was, but it began becoming
clearer, it was a black woman with a headband over her hair, she
was wearing a checkered dress that looked to be from the eighteen
hundreds, she looked like a servant slave in the old
movies.

Her head suddenly went backwards as
though someone pulled her hair hard, her throat was being cut open
but Sarah heard no sound, and she could see the blood spraying out
but there was none on the bed, then there were cuts starting all
over her body, her stomach and chest were sliced open and her
insides poured out, then just as suddenly as she appeared, she was
gone. Sarah still lay there barely able to breath, she was thinking
that she was in a dream and she would wake up screaming soon, but
she didn’t, she was afraid to even wake Mike, she just lay there
and went to sleep after a long while.

The alarm went off and Sarah sat
straight up in bed, all that she had seen rushed back to her, she
got up and looked around the bedroom, but there was no sign of
blood or anything moved.

“
It must have been a
dream,” she mumbled.

“
What, what a dream?” Mike
asked while getting dressed.

“
Oh, nothing, I just had
some nightmares last night, but they seemed so real.”

“
Old house, new
surroundings are just…” Mike replied.

“
If I hear that
explanation one more time I am going to scream,” she said getting
out of bed and stomping out of the bedroom. She went upstairs and
woke the children to get them ready for school, and then went to
the kitchen to start on breakfast.

“
I’m tired mommy,” Mary
said rubbing her eyes, “I was cold all night.”

“
Cold, with all those
covers you were still cold?” Mike asked.

“
The little boy kept
pulling off my covers,” Mary answered.

“
What little boy?” Sarah
asked.

“
The little black boy with
no shoes, he would pull my covers off and run out of the room
laughing.” Sarah and Mike had stopped eating and were staring at
each other.

“
Maybe it was a dream
sweetie,” Sarah said trying to keep Mary from being scared. “Did
you have any bad dreams Teddy?” Sarah asked.

Teddy sat there not knowing what to
do, should he tell them, or keep his mouth shut, what if Uncle
Silas is real, they would all die, and if he isn’t real they would
think he’s crazy or something, he decided to keep quiet about it
for now.

“
No mom, I didn’t have any
bad dreams,” Teddy said and kept eating his cereal with his head
down.

Sarah got the kids off to school and
Mike left for work, she went inside and was sitting at the kitchen
table drinking coffee and reading the news online on her laptop.
She heard a sound down the hallway toward the steps, she went down
the hall cautiously, thinking of what she seen the night before.
She got to the bottom of the steps and on the floor was a puddle of
something red on the white carpet, she moved slowly toward it and
kneeled down, she reached out and put the tip of her finger in the
puddle, it was blood, about one foot in diameter and almost an inch
deep.

Sarah felt dizzy, this wasn’t a dream
this was real and she could touch it, she looked up at the ceiling
and it was clean, nowhere else in the room had any blood on it. She
ran to the closet where she keeps the towels and grabbed a couple
of them when she went back to the bottom of the stairs the blood
was gone; it was still stained on her finger where she touched it,
but on the floor, on the white carpet there was not even a drop of
blood.

“
What the hell?” Sarah
said aloud. “It was just there, that’s impossible.” She went back
to the kitchen to wash her hands and sat back down at the table,
she heard another noise down the hall.

“
No! Screw that you aren’t
gonna get me to go back over there, I’ll make the kids beds later
on today,” she yelled down the hall like she was talking to someone
standing there in front of her. Sarah put the breakfast dishes in
the dish washer then sat at the table with a notebook and pen, and
began writing on a story that she had been working on for the past
week, everything in the house was quiet for a few hours.

Chapter 7

Later that afternoon Sarah was
starting to get chilly, it was cold outside and the heater wasn’t
lighting, she called Mike and he said he would be home soon and see
if he could fix it. She went upstairs and made the children’s beds,
and then to the bathroom to cleaned up the dirty clothes the kids
left lying around the floor, she was walking by Teddy’s room and
seen the covers on the floor, Sarah knew that she just made that
bed and it made no sense to her that they would be on the floor,
she made the bed again and went downstairs.

She heard something outside and went
to the window to look out, it was Mike walking around the house to
the old shed out back, and Sarah went out to meet him.

“
What are you doing in
there Mike?” Sarah asked.

“
I was out here the other
day and found some wood stored in the back,” Mike
answered.

“
What about the gas
heater?”

“
I’m going to look at it,
but it is going to be dark soon so I’ll bring some of this firewood
in just in case we can’t get it going.” They both carried in some
wood to the huge fireplace, Mike looked at the gas furnace but
didn’t see anything wrong with it.

“
I’m not sure what’s wrong
with it; I’ll call for someone to fix it first thing in the
morning.”

“
You know we have an hour
or so before the kids get home, maybe we could fool around?” Sarah
said seductively.

“
Maybe another time, with
all the stress of getting the business going, I just haven’t been
in the mood lately.”

“
Okay, whatever, another
time,” Sarah snapped.

It had been a long time since they
were intimate, Mike always blamed it on his work, but she figured
this time it was something else, but what she didn’t know. She went
into the kitchen to start another pot of coffee. Mike stayed in the
living room putting a bunch of paper into the fireplace, then
placing the firewood on top of it, he was no expert at it but he
eventually got a small fire going. Sarah came back in the room with
two cups of coffee; they sat on the couch together and watched the
wood burn.

“
Some strange things keep
happening,” Sarah said.

“
What sort of things?”
Mike asked.

“
It may sound crazy but,
last night I seen a slave woman get murdered at the bottom of our
bed, and today there was a huge puddle of blood at the bottom of
the stairs, that just disappeared a few minutes after I seen it.
Have you heard or seen anything unusual?”

“
No, I haven’t heard or
seen a thing, everything seems normal to me. I am so glad my aunt
left us this place and once you get used to it you won’t ever want
to leave here.”

Mike knew he was lying to her, he had
seen and heard things but he always tried to explain everything
away. He didn’t want to tell her that throughout the years some
people in his family always said that the house was haunted, he
didn’t want Sarah and the kids to be scared just because of
rumors.

“
I think we should all
sleep in here tonight,” Sarah suggested.

“
Sounds like fun, it will
be like a campout.”

“
Yeah, a campout on the
North Pole,” Sarah said laughing.

Sarah turned around and gave Mike a
kiss, then laid back on him watching the fire. This is what she has
been needing, closeness; it had been forever since they sat this
close and didn’t talk about bills, business, writing or anything at
all. She looked at the clock and noticed that it was time for the
kids to get home; Sarah put on her jacket and walked down the lane
to wait on the bus. Mike stayed inside and put another piece of
wood on the fire, he someone down the hallway around the corner, it
was Mary’s voice.

“
Daddy, daddy look what I
made!” The voice said as Mike walked around the corner expecting to
see Mary running toward him.

“
What did you make
sweetie?”

Mike froze, the hallway was empty,
suddenly the front door opened and the children ran in.

“
Daddy, look what I made
today!” Mary said excitedly.

“
That’s great sweetie, who
is that in there with you?” Mike asked.

“
That’s the boy in my
room,” Mary said.

The picture was a little girl running
around with a little boy who was colored in with a black crayon.
Mike looked at Sarah and didn’t know what to say.

“
Go hang it up on the
fridge sweetie,” Sarah said to her.

“
How was your day Teddy?”
Mike asked.

“
It was good dad, I kept
falling asleep, but besides that it went fine.”

“
Why are you so sleepy?”
Sarah asked.

“
I was just, cold last
night and didn’t sleep well.”

“
We are all going to sleep
in here tonight by the fire, the furnace needs to be fixed.” Sarah
said.

The children were happy that they were
all going to sleep together in the same room, especially Teddy,
after seeing that ghost, Uncle Silas, he would feel safer with the
rest of the family and Sarah was thinking the same thing after what
happened the night before. Mary seemed happy with seeing a little
kid in her room, but she was young and didn’t know that it wasn’t
normal to see things like that.

After doing his homework and having
dinner, Teddy took his bath and was ready for bed. The bathroom was
warm and steamy from the hot shower and when he opened the door
into the hall the cold air hit his damp skin and felt like ice all
over him. He ran down the stairs and into the living room jumping
on the couch and quickly pulling up the covers. Mary was at the
other end of the couch covered up, they began pushing each other
with their feet together, and trying to push the other one off of
the couch, and Sarah turned off the hall light and came into the
living room.

“
You two had better settle
down,” she said with a smile.

Mike was in the kitchen at the table
where he sat every night doing paperwork, a few times Sarah would
come up to him and ask if she could help, but he would put his arm
over the papers and politely tell her he had it taken care of. Mike
got up and stretched, and went to put on his pajamas and came into
the living room and lay down on the floor in front of the fireplace
beside Sarah and heard Teddy talking to Mary.

“
My friend Jeff got in
trouble for listening to his mp3 player in class, the teacher took
it away and told him he could get it at the end of the day, but he
forgot to go back and get it,”

“
I hope you aren’t doing
anything like that, you go to school to learn, not to sit and
listen to music all day,” Mike said sternly.

“
Oh, I don’t do that dad;
I don’t even take mine to school.”

“
Good,” Mike said with a
smile, “maybe you will become a lawyer like me one day.”

“
I don’t know,” Teddy said
shrugging his shoulders, “you never know.”

Mike was about to ask Mary how her day
went, but she was a lying on her side almost asleep. The family lay
there in the living room everyone covered in layers of blankets,
the fire was about out and there were glowing coals in the ashes
that gave an ominous red glow throughout the room.

Hours later Mary had woke up laying
there on her side; staring into the fireplace, she was dozing off
barely able to keep her eyes open when suddenly there was a figure
in front of the hot coals; she could see through the figure and
could barely make out what it was. The figure didn’t seem to have
any feet and Mary couldn’t make out the features of the face, but
she could tell that it was standing in front of the fireplace with
its hands behind its back, like it was warming itself in front of
the fire. The figure turned and looked toward her and she covered
her face, then she peeked out again and it was a little bit closer,
she did the same thing and it was even closer, so the last time she
covered her face and never looked again, she wanted to yell for her
mother but couldn’t speak, she lay there under the covers until she
fell asleep.