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The Shadowed Walls

by Robert Drake

Four months ago I purchased the home at Five-One-Seven Blackridge Lane. One month ago I moved out. The house has gained a certain…ill reputation…and I can’t say it’s fully unjustified, but I’d like to clarify a few things for any future residents. I truly believe that for the proper people Blackridge Lane can be a dream home, but I would warn most thoroughly those…unsuitable…with its unique aspect

My name is John Bower. My wife is named Lucy, my teenage daughter is named Sarah, and my young son goes by Jim or Jimmy, but never James.

I recently got a job at an office building in Ruport. We were driving around looking at homes when we turned on Blackridge Lane and saw the house we later bought. Five-One-Seven Blackridge Lane contains on it a single imposing building made of a darkened stone worn with age. The house is coldly austere with its pseudo-gothic architecture and cathedralesque proportions. It is a three story building. That is impressive in itself, but the lofty ceilings easily add another. The sheer size of the structure invokes in me thoughts of castles and fortresses from some medieval book or movie.

I took down the number from the real estate agent’s sign and within a couple weeks we already had a closing date. I am a man of fairly good means and was prepared to pay substantially more than was asked, but the place was extraordinarily inexpensive. This was a danger sign for me. I immediately inquired as to why this magnificent building wasn’t going for twice as much. That is when I first learned of the Legend of Blackridge Lane…a legend that, despite the name, only seems to haunt house Five-One-Seven.

Any buyer of this house will inevitably learn of the legend, but I’d prefer you first heard it from me, rather than whatever local loon decides it’s his duty to fill you in on every gory detail. The first and, aside from a dozen unfortunate short term owners, only inhabitant of the house was a man named T. Richard Vanskillter. Mr. Vanskillter built the place from wealth gained in his…particular…line of work.

Not much is known of Mr. Vanskillter, but I shall do my best to summarize the bits of hearsay and rumor that make up the man’s extraordinary and fantastical biography. Mr. Vanskillter was something of a traveling “exorcist”, I use that term loosely, sometime around the turn of the 19^th century. He was not an exorcist in the “popular” manner. He did not bless houses nor did he read verses from a torn and ratty bible at shrieking demon infested half-humans. Mr. Vanskillter was a hunter and a researcher of a most morbid kind. He traveled the world to the deepest, darkest, most forbidden areas seeking…something. He was a most amazing man having gone up the Amazon and Nile, walked into the thick forests of Romania, explored misty caverns in china, and on and on and on.

Eventually Mr. Vanskillter went mad. He is said to have run about his house screaming and mumbling about lost civilizations, tortured souls, bloody demons, and ancient curses. No one really knows why, but of course all the locals assume it was whatever he saw in the terrorizing shadows of the world. I personally am not even sure Mr. Vanskillter existed, but assuming that as fact he just as likely lost his sanity to syphilis as fell to screaming at memories of his travels. Mr. Vanskillter’s madness is the basis of the legend. His visions still fill the hallways of the old place haunting the minds of others now that they no longer have poor Mr. Vanskillter to torment…supposedly.

I don’t much care for ghost stories and I don’t believe in haunted houses, ghouls, or shrieking terrors of the night. But some people do. They should be very careful.

To continue the legend of John Bower, I bought the house, despite the legend, taking advantage of the incredible price. On July Sixth my family and I finally moved into our home at Five-One-Seven Blackridge Lane. The inside is as hard and strong as the outside. The rooms are cold. Even in July we often found ourselves wearing heavier clothing especially at night. The bedroom my wife and I took for ourselves was on the third floor overlooking the road and parts of the nearby town. When the morning sun just peaks there is no finer view in the entire world; it is absolutely magnificent. My son Jimmy took a room just down the hall and my daughter Sarah a room below us on the second floor.

I write this partially as a warning and partially as an invitation. To proceed appropriately I must outline my family’s experiences in that most…phenomenal…house.

Our family lived in peace and harmony for one week. During that week we met all the neighbors who each bedazzled us with tales of Mr. Vanskillter. They seemed to almost compete for who could create the most morbid tale. At first I was somewhat perturbed at how eagerly they told these wretched stories to my family, especially in front of my young son, but he seemed to enjoy them. I don’t even remember all the stories they told us and, as I later found out, neither did they, but they almost universally included Mr. Vanskillter, often dressed in medieval armor, running around his house violently attacking this and that creature that he encountered first in…enter obscure mysterious location here. They usually ended with Mr. Vanskillter collapsing and bleeding on the floor after a legendary battle in the laundry room or wherever the speaker in question decided would be especially horrifying.

I first realized this house was somewhat peculiar at night sometime during our second week there. My son is only six years old, but has never been particularly flighty. He was never scared of the dark or ghosts or monsters under the bed. In that sense he was almost abnormal. He was scared of bugs and absolutely petrified of snakes, but never by less…tangible…things. Jimmy came running into my room breathing heavily and screaming. Lucy and I woke up and held our son till he fell asleep again before laying him back in his bed. Twenty minutes later he was back just as petrified. His skin was white and clammy. He stared through me and barely managed to whisper, “shadows” before fainting on the bed right in front of my wife and I.

We panicked. We put Jim back in his bed and put warm towels over his forehead as we checked his temperature and did every, almost assuredly useless, motherly health treatment we could think of. My son woke that morning just fine. We took him to the doctor who said he had some sort of stress-caused panic attack possibly caused by the pent up tension of moving and being in a new town and room etc etc. I didn’t think too highly of the psychobabble we got, but Jim slept just fine the next couple of days and life seemed good so I didn’t worry too much about it.

Perhaps I should have. Jim’s panic attacks returned. Despite visits with other doctors and psychologists, Jimmy started fainting every night and then during they day. He would wander the house in a deranged stupor always staring, but never really looking at anything. He got paler and paler as his mind fell apart. He could not make intelligible sentences or walk without stumbling. He saw…things…everywhere. Finally it got so bad that we were forced to leave him at a local medical ward…asylum.

I’d like to think that what followed was just the result of all our weakened minds. Jimmy’s slow madness had given my wife nervous fits and near breakdowns of her own. Sarah and I were exhausted. Stress was wrecking havoc with all of us…rightly so I’d say, but still…there was something more. I don’t much care for ghost stories and I don’t believe in haunted houses, ghouls, or shrieking terrors of the night…but some people do.

My wife was the second to go. What a crass way of putting it, but there is nothing gained by dancing around. She went crazy. Like Jim she saw, “shadows”. I’d be reading in the den and she’d run in and nuzzle my arm while crying hysterically and whispering about how a dragon or vampire or ghoul or demon or whatever was infested in some part of the house. These monsters, for all their danger, eluded all my attempts at finding them. Every time it was something different…sometimes a classic monster…and sometimes she’d be unable to name what she saw and just describe vague alien “lovecraftian” horrors that ranged from the absurd to the repulsive and loathsome.

Lucy refused to see doctors or psychologists and instead brought in her own “experts”. She called in mystics and new age magicians each equally certain that this polished stone would channel her inner healing chi or that mixture of obscure unpronounceable plants only they could supply would cleanse the poisons in her blood. Despite their logic bending, time-tested cures from the far away temples of lost lands, my wife still saw shadows and still screamed at night, all the while eating less, talking less, and losing her sanity.

I took vacation from my work and the three of us spent a week at the beach. I hated going so far from Jimmy, especially since the doctors were reporting marginal improvements, but I couldn’t help him any and I could help Lucy. I have loved the beach since I was a little kid, but that was the most unpleasant vacation I’ve ever been on. My wife was a wreck, my son insane fifty miles away, and poor Sarah was doing her best to cope far above and beyond what any normal teenager is subjected to or should be subjected to. Despite being miserable Lucy did improve. That last night she didn’t even scream. I’d have stayed another week, but my vacation was up. I tried to get Lucy and Sarah to stay, but understandably they wanted to get back to Jimmy so we packed up and drove back to Ruport.

As I’m sure you have already guessed, my wife’s condition quickly deteriorated again, but not for a few days. As a family we went and saw Jimmy and color was beginning to come back into his face and he genuinely seemed happy to see us. It was the first time I’d seen him show any kind of emotion other than fear since we’d moved into the house at Blackridge Lane.

It didn’t last though. When my wife had her final collapse, just days later, it sent Jimmy into a paralyzed state of fear that had me, and pretty much everyone else, completely dumbstruck. I knew it was something weird with that house. I should have just left right then and there, but frankly it was pissing me off. It was a perfectly normal, in the supernatural sense, structure as best as I could see. I raged up and down the hallways armed with a flashlight, a canvas bag, pepper spray, a wrench, a holy cross, a can of spray paint, and a knife. For an entire weekend I might as well have been Mr. Vanskillter. For two days I was the hunter of terrors of the dark. My trusty squire was none other than Sarah.

While digging around in one of the rooms, prying at the wooden floor, and testing each of the stone bricks for a secret passageway or other hidden curiosity, I asked her if she saw shadows or ghosts at night. She had not. At the end of my deluded search for the arcane I regained control of my sanity and set about one by one eliminating every reasonable possibility for the affliction that had infected half my family and was gaining noticeable ground on myself and my stalwart daughter.

First I fumigated the place so thoroughly Sarah and I had to stay at a neighbor’s for three days. I put traps, special plants, and those sticker tape things around to catch any possible parasitic bugs that might be the cause of my family’s misfortunes. I was given permission to take Lucy home for a visit, but we had barely been home two hours, long enough for lunch and not much else, before she had a fit and punched at the walls hoping to overcome a malicious imp creature that only she saw. Obviously I had not quite done enough.

Using all my perceptions of cause and effect I hypothesized perhaps the food was reacting with her system. Jimmy’s too. Perhaps Sarah and I simply did not have whatever genetic trait made them susceptible. I had read that certain scientists believe the madness which caused the Salem Witch Trials was the result of a fungus that infected barley or some such. Taking no chances, every bit of food in the house was removed and I did a five hundred dollar grocery run at a different store some twenty miles away.

Performing a similar test as before, I brought Jimmy home, but with him we didn’t even get him inside. Just walking up to the place he started shaking and moaning so piteously I damn near broke down myself.

It wasn’t bugs. It wasn’t food. What the hell was going on with this place? I will be the first to admit Five-One-Seven Blackridge Lane is a bit intimidating, but it ends there. The hallways are long; The rooms sometimes ominous with their massive windows, stone walls, and tall foreboding ceilings, but these are things you get used to. They are aesthetic peculiarities not cursed idols. What struck me so odd was that my wife and son, healthy stable people, were taken to the farthest reaches of their sanity and then beyond and I, with the exception of my eccentric ghost hunt, was perfectly fine. If I knew then what I know now it would have made sense, but at the time I was so frustrated that I thought about nothing else. My work was an unpleasant distraction that only nominally interrupted my intense desire to help my family…and understand what was happening.

I should have been more aware. I’ve always been somewhat obsessive about things. Not obsessive as in an addictive personality, I have never found myself dependant on any action or substance, but mentally obsessive. I am addicted to problems. As a kid my father never let me look at the newspaper because if I was unable to solve the crossword puzzle I’d spend days researching till I finished it. I’ve gotten better, but this was one problem I was not going to put down.

Perhaps I should have. My poor Sarah was not releasing her stress in frenetic bouts of reading and analyzing and calling experts and everything else I was doing. She was simply keeping herself together as stoically as she could. She did so quite admirably, but no teenage girl can fully cope with the loss of her brother and mother and a distant, aloof father convinced insanity was in the house if only it could be found. The trips to the asylum ripped her apart so bad she’d spend the entire next day crying in her room. Unlike Jimmy and Lucy she never saw shadows like they did. She never stabbed at the goblins just behind her or hid under mattresses in fear of multi-appendaged martians intent on fresh blood. If she had I’d probably to this day still be in that damn house performing some new experiment. Sarah complained of always being cold. At the time it seemed a fairly normal ailment considering both summer was slowly going away and the house’s unique architecture. As the days passed she acted increasingly paranoid. She was always looking behind her and sometimes even walked with her back to the wall. I have to be honest, occasionally I’d get the creeps and move about the house like a murderer was nearby, but through sheer force of mind I was able to fall upon the warm comforting blanket of empirical science and logic. Sarah was not.

After packing away a metal detector I had used to analyze the house I saw her sitting in a corner shivering. I walked over and kneeled by her.

“Stay with me Sarah. The shadows aren’t real. They can’t hurt you.”

She turned and looked at me, not into me like Jimmy and Lucy had, “They are. Not to you. Not truly, but they are. I can’t stop thinking about them. They were so real to Jim and mom. How could they not be? Everywhere I go I wonder when they will get me…or you.” She started crying.

“Just stay with me. We’ll get through this together. I will find what caused the visions.”

She put her head on my shoulder, “Mr. Vanskillter caused them.”

“That man probably did not even exist. The neighbors must have thought that whole thing up because of the problems the previous owners had. Besides it is just a legend.”

“I know.” Sarah closed her eyes and went to sleep.

I sent Sarah to her grandparents and explored the house alone. Whenever I tried to bring Lucy or Jim home they refused and I finally had to stop because it was reversing the progress they were having when I left them at the asylum. By this time I was running out of ideas. In a last ditch effort to save my family and my house I talked with each of my neighbors to learn as much of the Vanskillter legend as I could. I wrote it down and did my best to research what was fact and what was myth with little success. After a long day’s work I scanned what I had learned that day and a chill came over me. Exhaustion racked my bones and my mind. With monsters and magic and ghosts so close to my thoughts I looked down a long corridor on the third story of my house and for a second, just a split second, I thought I saw a shadow…a darkness…moving along the stone walls toward me baring the likeness of every childhood fear I’d ever known…and that’s when I decided to move.

You probably think I moved because I sensed I myself was going crazy. That isn’t it at all. The shadow disappeared and the next day I walked those same hallways as confidently as ever. I moved because I knew that in that house my family would never be sane. Not because there were ghosts there. There weren’t and there aren’t. I don’t much care for ghost stories and I don’t believe in haunted houses, ghouls, or shrieking terrors of the night. The problem with that house is that some people do. You want to know what brought my son and wife and daughter to the brink? Well I’ll tell you. They did. Jimmy made himself crazy. There never were shadows on those walls and he never saw any either. He just thought he had.

You perhaps think I speak harshly of my son…he is after all very young, but I need to explain myself more. Perhaps the stress of moving contributed to it and that house certainly looks like something from a horror film, but alone I don’t think was enough. There are a lot of ominous houses and every new arrival has moving stress, but it was that legend. It’s no wonder my son went crazy. He knew that place’s history. His imagination went wild and he wasn’t able to control it. His own mind summoned the demons in front of his eyes and it led down the path of madness. Over time he thought he was seeing nightmares everywhere. Jimmy’s fall only hastened my wife’s descent down the same path. Sarah…she was the only one who tried to fight it, but things just got too much for her.

That’s my story about Five-One-Seven Blackridge Lane, but I didn’t write this as a curious anecdote. It is a warning and an invitation. If you can’t control your imagination…if you aren’t a man of logic and science and rationality you better stay away from that place and keep anyone like that away from that place, but if you see things the way they really are I know a house for sale at a low price just looking to become someone’s dream home.

As for me I’ve found this small lighthouse on the coast that I think Lucy will love just as soon as I show her. It’s a bit old, but Jimmy and Sarah can play on the beach. I have loved the beach since I was a little kid.