THE DEAD MAN'S HOUSE

Part Three: The Hidden, and our very Grateful Exit

We slowly headed back to the first floor, still hearing a subtle creaking above us. We didn’t hurry downstairs, but we didn’t dally either.

When we got there, I went to the kitchen to turn off the light, and noticed the kitchen outside door was still open, so it wasnt what had slammed earlier. I looked around carefully using the oven lighting, and noticed the wall next to the stove was oddly off, it seemed to have a visual “retreating” effect, like a dark optical illusion.

I called my companions into the kitchen to look a bit closer, and I was a bit nervous to explore this alone. We all crowded in, and they finally noticed it. We circled around the far side of the stove (the walls were so black they might have been painted that way). Turned out next to the stove the wall angled back, and the wall behind it was the same color, so in the dingy lighting, they appeared to be the same wall, but they weren’t.

Only on close inspection we noticed it, and as we looked around the angled wall, there was a closed door, also black of course, kind of blending in. It wasn’t a large door, 6ft high at most, and very narrow, but it was there, and closed, that was the slam noise we heard upstairs.

The knob was grey, and I was highly curious, I turned it, and swung the strange door back. We had to see what was in there, one way or another. I was the first one that hit the clammy light switch, there was light, but not much. We all stepped into the odd room, it was cramped of course, not a single window there, and the walls were the same almost black color, and the lighting wasn’t even dim, it was almost nonexistent. There were far more shadows than light. What little illumination there was came from overhead, and all three of us looked up, to see why it was like this.

Here was a very strange sight, the overhead light was globed, but completely black, except for an outer ring of yellow, like a halo around a large black hole, the halo was the only light in the room, along with a few and a few brighter random cracks peeking out, like yellow streaks of disease spreading from a black wound.

The globe around the bulb might have been painted, but it actually wasn’t. We looked around the room, in the deep shadows there was a single leather chair, and a large table, covered in ashtrays, all of them a bit different; All overflowing with ashes, cigar stubs, and cigarette butts. Not one remained clean.

One back wall appeared to be an open closet, no doors, consisting only of dark jackets, and they were strangely mobile, slowly moving back and forth, as if a soft wind was motivating them, but the air was quite still. One wall was blank, nothing but this same black color, but the other two walls were full and dense. They both were packed with small shelves and square cubby holes like the living room was, and most of them had various pipes and cigars, and literally hundreds and maybe thousands of matchbooks.

Tucker didn’t smoke, and at 12 neither did I, but Arty seemed almost fascinated, being that he loved his pipes, and cigars from time to time. He perused the shelves, in the dim lighting, but every last pipe he picked up, he ended up putting right back down, and I knew why. It was the clammy slimy feel everything in the house seemed to have. It covered every surface in every room.

After a few minutes of this I looked up again at the small halo of yellow sickly light, and I believe I was the first one of us to fully come to a strange revelation.

The globe wasn’t painted black, and neither were the walls throughout the house, maybe they were a dark color by design, but the blackness came from something else.

My realization was this: The darkness came from over 50 years of concentrated smoke, maybe more, from cigarettes, cigars, and pipes, over many decades. We were walking inside a living breathing cancer, the size of a large house. Also explained the clammy slimy feel of every single object in this dark place.

Arty’s friend died of it, and made this house part of his sickness his entire life most likely. We may have been losing a few years of health just being inside there for that short time.

The globe overhead once long ago gave off a healthy bright light, but got obliterated over the years by a scummy black stain, as had all of the walls of the entire house. One could almost feel the cancer in the walls themselves, making itself known, insidiously, like a malevolent black entity, built up over the decades, meaning harm to any who entered and breathed it in, as we were doing at the moment.

Meanwhile, the jackets were still slowly swinging back and forth for all of us to see, but Arty was dismissive, “just the breeze”, he said, although there was not a hint of one, and there was not a single window there in that room.

Tucker and I were the most nervous, and we kept glancing at each other, and neither of us picked up a single object in what I call the “smoking room” of that house. Of course, over the decades, the cancer spread over all of the first floor, and eventually all of the second; However it was concentrated in that creepy dark room, like it was the diseased black heart of this cursed house. At this point, I suspect that both Tucker and I wanted to leave immediately, but Arty had invited us, so we were obligated to stay, until he was done. In for a penny, in for a pound, a perfect example.

He picked up a single sealed box of flavored cigars from a wall shelf, and put it under his arm. I suppose if they were not sealed, he wouldn’t have taken them.

Arty tried to pick up a number of weird looking wooden pipes, then put them immediately back. Nothing in that entire house should have been taken, as far as I was concerned. Not out of morality, but for my personal health.This house seemed damned somehow, and any object that existed in there was probably damned as well.

Finally Arty nodded to us, and I remember saying to them both “Had enough?” He nodded again, and we walked out of the hidden room, with Arty following, and closing the door himself. We made sure the kitchen yard door was closed and locked, turned off the kitchen oven light, then we headed to the front door.

As we were passing the staircase on our left, a door slammed hard upstairs; Since all the doors up there were left open,it could have been any one of them. We gave each other a three way look, and kept walking although slightly faster now. All the years I knew my grandfather, he had a slow but steady gait, never fast, and never too slow, he meandered, but he got there in his own good damned time.

He never rushed, except this one time, I saw him speed his step up quite a bit for the very first time in my young life.. After the slam, none of us even suggested going up to investigate the noise. We just walked quickly to the front open door, not talking, not saying a single word.

When we got out the door, Arty felt his pockets for the keys, and realized he’d put his keyring down to inspect the pipes in the back dark room. He looked at Tucker, then at myself. “Johnny, would you go back to the last room and pick up my keys?”

Tucker looked almost panicky, and glanced at me. Surely if I refused, Arty would ask him instead. Being the youngest, and with a naive boy’s forlorn wish to please his only grandpa, I nodded, agreeing to venture back inside to find them. This might have been the kindest deed I ever did, and certainly one of the most foolhardy.

My grandfather was quite old, with a weak heart, and all Tucker did was shake his head no, and was obviously grateful that I was going instead of him..So it was up to me, as it usually is in my strange life.

I remember only 3 places where arty picked up objects, and so I reentered this strange creepy place willingly again. First I was in the living area, and looked around carefully, no keys that I could see in the dim lighting. The second place was upstairs, but I really didn’t want to venture there, call it cowardice if you will, but I was sincerely hoping it wasn’t up there, especially after the slammed upstairs door. That would be my last resort.

I walked straight through the disgusting kitchen to the back hidden room, and opened the door. The jackets were still doing their slow motions, as if inviting me to investigate, I didn’t accept their invitation. I was brave, but not that brave. Let them swing in no breeze, I didn’t care, as long as I didn’t approach, it was just fine.

I saw Arty’s keys on a small table next to the unlit table lamp. I grabbed them, and looked again at the far wall, at the jackets that should have been immobile, yet weren’t. I could have reached out to still their movements, yet I didn’t, and no power on Earth could have forced me to touch them, let them swing for eternity.

I noticed something odd in the shadows behind them though, a darker large shape directly behind the jackets. Not my damned problem, and I can swear the motion of the jackets quickened a bit. I left the creepy dark room backwards, I refused to turn my back on them, and I never mentioned this to anyone, just telling it now.

There was something in that open closet, and it wanted me to know it was there, especially since I was alone and young. I wonder if I would have gone inside that closet, if I’d have ever made it out? I seriously doubt it. Luckily, my foolishness never reached that level in my life. So here I am, telling you now what happened in that house that night.

I had a sense of self-preservation, some things were best left alone, and I knew this, and closed the door behind me. I returned the keyring to Arty, with no regrets, maybe another more adventurous soul might have investigated, I was not that soul, not at that moment, and I gave him his keys, quite gladly. If I was to be damned or consigned to an immortal cursed existence, it wasn’t to be there, in that sad doomed house, I quite refused that offer.

As I handed Arty the keys, I noticed the facial relief of Tucker, and Arty as well. Yet it wasn’t my first, nor my last brush with the supernatural, in fact, there were many more. They were one of my life’s curses, to witness the strange and unexplainable, this was merely the first of many, but an important one.

Arty put the key in the front door, with no further questions from either him, nor my Uncle Tucker, on what I may have seen. We locked the door on that, forever, and none of us ever discussed this. Although it did unlock my lifelong obsession with the supernatural, and the weird. None of us ever discussed this strange event later, we all moved on, although Arty did have his cigars, that was the one and only object that was removed from that house. The entire house was demolished a few years later, but that’s quite another story.