Ghost of O'Leary House

Chapter Sixteen

David woke to the rapping of knuckles on the oak door of his room, the voice of his Grandmother ringing through the thin wood paneling.

“Pancakes are almost ready David,” she said. She sounded almost dejected, her tone flat.

“Okay Grandma, I’ll be out in a minute,” David called back, throwing the blankets off him, and stretching in the morning light filtering in through the window. Standing up, he walked across the room, stopping by the dresser where the knife lay. He paused as he looked at the open blade, the knife sitting out of its sheath, red streaks marring the cool metal.

“What the…?” David asked aloud, picking up the knife, the weight of the blade feeling familiar in his grasp. “When did you get pulled out?”

Not bothering to clean the knife, David sheathed it in the leather casing before setting it back down atop the dresser. Moving to the desk where his textbooks were strewn about, he stopped and stared for a moment at the sight that greeted him.

A circle, drawn out in what could only be blood, dominated the center of the wooden desk, the all-too alien writing traced around the edges of the circle. The symbol was drawn with thickened fluid, flies fluttering to and fro, landing in the smears of blood that made up the arcane symbol. David rushed forward, picking up his textbook and tossing it back onto his bed, which was soon joined by his other Biology books. Grabbing his three-ring binder, a glimpse of a drawing on the loose sheaf paper held within gave him pause. Opening the binder, David stared at the pages in front of him.

Drawings in pencil of the circle, of great sections of the circle or of minute details that one would imagine impossible to pull off if writing in blood, decorated the pages of his hundred-odd extra sheets of paper. Flipping through them, his frown deepened as he stared at the ever-present horned symbol in the middle of the circle, sometimes drawn with even greater detail. A leathery skinned head lined with six reptilian eyes, the horns curved back before swooping downward towards the tip of the triangle, which appeared to be a snout in some images.

Flipping through the pages, David didn’t hear Grandma as she entered the room, and spun in a panic when her hand came to rest on his shoulder. Her weary eyes looking over the drawing on the desk, and the drawings in his spare paper.

“Grandma, I told you I was on my way,” David said, holding his chest as she took the binder full of paper from his hands. She flipped through a few pages until she came to rest on one of the more vividly drawn images. She looked up at David, her face drawn into a tight frown.

“You didn’t do it, did you?” She half-asked, half-accused. Taken aback, David didn’t know what to say. That was fine, as his Grandmother had more to say. “I told you to do what you’d promised, and you put it off instead.”

“I’m not writing something out in my own blood, Grandma!” David exclaimed, flushing in slight anger.

She shook her head. “You don’t have much of a choice David. You fed the book for the first time in years, and now it wants to be fed more. It’ll do everything in its power to get you to complete the ritual.”

“What can it do, it’s just a book?” David shrugged, looking at his Grandmother curiously.

“It’s not just a book, but what the book is connected to.” Grandma said cryptically, closing the binder with a snap, handing it back to David as she ran her hands down her apron. “Now, clean up this mess and come have some pancakes. I’ll be waiting for the call today, so you should go down to the pond while you can.”

Grandma turned and walked out of the room before David could ask what she meant by “call”. Moving out to get a towel from the bathroom, he soaked it through with water and went to work cleaning his desk, clearing away the smudges of dried blood until the white towels were stained pink. David took a few minutes to check over himself, looking for cuts or wounds from where all this blood could have come from. Finding nothing, he merely shrugged; while it was certainly bizarre, the fact that the book spoke through blood was disturbing enough to make this little display alarming.

The symbol in the middle was the hardest to clean, scrubbing hard enough with the towel to cause it to tear in several places. Still, after ten minutes he finally finished washing the symbol free from his desk, clearing it away so that he could take a seat and run his hands over the smooth wood without feeling any sticky slime or gore. The towels were ruined, but his desk was clean, and the room felt somewhat lighter, something that he only now realized was making the room dark. Why the bloody drawings had made the room seem somewhat more claustrophobic, David couldn’t say; but what he found was that the room felt cleaner in a more spiritual sense than a physical sense.

Tossing the towels into the laundry basket, David pulled on some shorts and a sleeveless tee shirt that he put his hoodie over. Looking around the room before making his way out, he thought of the strange teen that had accosted him yesterday; the boy looked homeless, and his eyes had glinted with an underlying madness that even David could tell was dangerous. On impulse, he walked over to where the sheathed knife sat and picked it up, slipping it into the pocket in the front of his hoodie. Resting a hand on the pommel, he felt soothing warmth coming from the weapon, one that made him smile. He hid the entire thing in his hoodie and opened the door to his room, making his way to the kitchen.

A platter of pancakes sat in the middle of the kitchen table, a bottle of maple syrup right next to them. David’s Grandmother was sitting with her back facing him, reading a folded-up newspaper; she chuckled at something she read before stiffening.

“Stop hiding and come on out, David. We have a lot to talk about,” she said, pointing to a chair across from her, “and get some pancakes while they’re hot, you’re a growing boy.”

David walked into the kitchen and took his seat across from his grandmother, using a knife and fork to shovel five pancakes onto his plate, which he doused in maple syrup. Looking up, he saw his Grandma’s weary eyes watching him, her face drawn into a wistful smile.

“What?” David asked, cutting into his pancakes, and taking a bite.

“Just wondering what you’ll be like in a few years is all,” Grandma said, looking back down at the newspaper, “it looks like your friends made the local news for vandalism.”

David nearly choked on his bite of pancakes, swallowing the lump as he beat on his own chest. Gasping for air, he looked at his Grandmother as if she were crazy. “You really had them arrested?”

Grandma shrugged. “I merely called the police and let them handle it. I mentioned this wasn’t the first time I’d had trouble like this, and that I caught them out here making wild accusations and attacking my grandson.”

“They were just trying to… they didn’t mean…” David tried to say, struggling to come up with a way to explain the boys’ actions last night. “How did the paper find out they got in trouble?”

“It’s a small town and we have a local crime section, which rarely has anything other than petty theft in it,” Grandma said, cutting into her own pancakes. “To come across a story of teenagers planting dangerous plants in an old woman’s garden would probably be too good of a story to pass up.”

“Well I’m glad I’ll be going home soon, seeing as they’ll likely want to beat me up for getting them in trouble.” David said.

“Speaking of going home, I want you to consider staying for an extra week or two.” Grandma said, suddenly changing the topic.

“What? Why?” David asked, all pretenses of manners forgotten.

“Because I hardly see you as it is and would love to spend some time with you, that’s why,” Grandma said, setting her silverware down and folding her hands in front of her face, elbows on the table.

“Grandma, I don’t want to sound rude, but I really don’t want to stay here,” David said hesitantly. “I mean, between whatever it is that you’re hiding upstairs and the creepy book, I just don’t feel safe in this house. Plus, I have my classes to take, a good deal of which aren’t exceedingly kind about delinquency.”

“I don’t know about the college courses, but you really are in danger. You aren’t safe anywhere until you complete the ritual you started,” She said without a hint of humor in her voice.

“You mean all those symbols and everything, written in blood?” David asked, his stomach turning a little queasy at the thought of the foul stench he’d awoken to this morning.

“You need to make out the symbols in your own blood and then take a photograph of someone you know and lay it in the center.” Grandma explained slowly, as if David were a small child. “Only then will you be safe.”

“Why? What will happen if I don’t do this?” David asked, his breakfast forgotten.

“Then the book will finish the ritual itself,” Grandma said ominously, her tone choked as she stared at David with tears at the corners of her eyes.