24 Beckenridge Drive

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ONE

The dark house stands ominously on the edge of Norm’s Pond, a great old mansion that seems to have something truly evil about it. Many rumors circulate in the small community of Druin, Maine, and though the names of the people and the strange occurrences differ in each account, they all lead up to the same conclusion: 24 Beckenridge Drive is haunted.

     Liz and Randy “Mitch” Mitchell drove slowly down the wooded drive, searching the mailboxes for a specific number.
     “You see it yet?” he asked quickly.
     “No,” was the reply. Mitch felt uncomfortable driving so slowly. The road just seemed to drag out forever. He flashed a look at his wife, a pretty blond, who scanned the roadside consistently.
     “Are you sure we’ve got the right road?” he asked for the twentieth time.
     “Of course,” she replied with just a bit of impatience. “Oh, there it is, 24.” The Taurus pulled to a stop in front of the ivy-covered mansion. A great many windows looked out from it onto the road, giving the old architecture an awesome look. Three quarters of the front were covered by a great twisting ivy and a fence, also covered with ivy, wound itself around the property, only broken by an ornate iron gate. The massive old door to the mansion was just barely visible, and seemed able to withstand even a direct attack by a nuclear warhead.
     “Wow,” Mitch said. “Some building.”
     “It certainly seems bigger than in the pictures,” Liz remarked.
     “You’ve got a point there. Let’s take a look at it.” The two walked to the house across the road, number 25, and knocked on the door. They were instantly greeted by a woman in her mid-50’s.
     “May I help you?” she asked regarding the two in front of her. The man was just slightly under six feet, with brownish hair, sharp features and gray-blue eyes. The woman was just a tad shorter, blonde, blue eyed, and basically the American dream girl, only she seemed to be nearer forty, than twenty.
     “I’m Randy Mitchell,” man said, “and this is my wife, Liz. We came to check out the house across the road. I was told that you would have the key.” The woman at the door nodded and pulled a key out of her pocket. “You planning to buy the place?” she asked.
     “I guess,” Mitch said.
     “Well good luck to you then,” the woman said with a half-smile, as if she was enjoying some private joke. “You’re going to need it.” The door closed on the perplexed couple.
      “Wanna-be comedian,” Mitch said, shrugging.
      The great mansion was beautiful. They checked both floors, looking in the numerous rooms. “This one would be great for Brad,” Liz remarked, looking into a big corner room on the second floor with a bank of windows opening onto the large pond behind the house. Mitch nodded absentmindedly. “They really worked on renovating this place,” he said, inspecting the wall sockets. “I just hope we won’t blow any fuses when I plug the computer in here.”
      “I don’t worry about it,” Liz countered. “This is just great. Each of the kids can have their own room up here and we still can have a couple guest rooms left over!” She looked out the back again. “We even have a pond in the back yard.”
      “Yeah, I guess buying that canoe will finally pay off,” Mitch said, putting his arms around her.
      “So, what’s the verdict?” she wanted to know.
      “Definitely yes!” he said looking at the ornate work of the windows. “But don’t you think we should have this room? It’s so romantic!” Liz laughed and poked him in the side.

TWO

The moving truck pulled up in front of the mansion with the Taurus wagon just behind it. Mitch climbed out of the truck and signaled to the car. His older son, Larry, slid out from behind the wheel to look at the house. “Wow!” was all he could say. The other kids, Marian and Brad, were just as awed by the large, ancient structure.
      “Okay,” Mitch called. “Let’s get this truck unloaded.” They spent the rest of the day carefully unloading the truck and the car. Brad, an energetic ten-year-old with his mother’s looks, worked hardest, trying to get the work done so he could go exploring. When they were finished, both Marian and Larry joined him enthusiastically, even though they were sixteen and eighteen and knew that there were better things to do than go exploring. There was something about the house that made you feel like a little kid again.
      The exploration of the top floor resulted in a vigorous game of hide-and-seek. Brad was it. He walked slowly down the hall carefully opening the doors to various rooms, looking for his older siblings. He reached the next-to-the last door on the floor. It was a bit narrower than the other doors. Probably a closet, he thought, carefully turning the knob. The door swung open silently to reveal a flight of wooden stairs leading upward. A thrill of excitement ran up Brad’s spine as he looked up those stairs. He was about to start up, but something in him told him that the others would like to discover this with him.
      “Larry, Rian!” he called. “I found something really cool.” Larry’s tall frame appeared in the door of the room he had just checked. “Hey,” Brad yelled, “I just looked in there! How’d you do that?”
      “My secret,” the dark-haired eighteen-year-old grinned. Marian came down the hall. She was a bit shorter than Larry and wore a black Bulls cap over her short, straight blond hair, jeans, and a T-shirt. Larry wore his favorite jeans and polo shirt, both stained by repeated use inside and outside their last house. Brad was dressed like his sister, minus the cap.
      “What did you find?” Marian wanted to know.
      “Look,” Brad said, pointing up the stairs.
      “So, it’s the attic,” Larry said, trying to be indifferent, but inside he was just as curious and thrilled as Brad.
      “Let’s go up,” his sister suggested.
      “Okay.”
      The attic was an immense room, spanning the whole length of the house. The rafters were visible in the slanted walls. A grand piano covered with cobwebs stood just ahead and to their right. A large octagonal table stood in the center of the room, dusty and ancient, surrounded by several broken chairs. The only other thing the room contained, aside from several old candle stumps and cobwebs stuck to the wall, was a large black chest standing against the wall behind the table. The three stood close to the stairs just taking it all in.
      “I wonder if it’s tuned,” Larry remarked walking over to the piano. Marian went to the table and began wiping some of the dust off it, while Brad explored the ancient chest.
      “Larry?” Marian was leaning over the table motioning him. He came over and looked at the top of the table.
      “What on earth?” he asked wiping the table top. It was covered with strange markings that looked like Sanskrit or Hebrew.
      “Hey, guys,” Brad called. “Look what I’ve found.” He had succeeded in opening the chest and now held a board aloft. It was also covered with markings, but these were common English letters and numbers. Ouiga board, shot through both Marian and Larry’s heads. They had never seen one, but they instantly knew what it was.
      “There’s some other really neat stuff in here, too,” Brad continued enthusiastically. The two older kids came and looked into the chest. There was a deck of cards on the bottom, next to it an object covered by a black cloth and several wooden sticks along with a great number of candles, a couple of nondescript masks and a thick black book with a pentagram etched on the cover.
      “Put it back, Brad,” Marian said quickly. Something in her tone of voice made the boy comply instantly. While the other two were laboring to close the top of the box, Larry suddenly felt the hairs on his neck stand up. A chill ran down his spine as he slowly turned around. Before him stood a hazy figure. It had the appearance of a man with white frizzy hair and wild eyes, dressed in black robes. The figure reached out a claw to touch him.
      “Aagh!” Marian and Brad looked up at their older brother. He stood with his back to them, shaking.
      “What is it?” Marian asked as she came around and .... She instantly pressed a hand to her mouth. Never had she seen Larry like this before. He was white as a sheet, his blue eyes wild, staring at a spot just above her right shoulder.
      “Larry?” she said touching his arm. He didn’t respond. “Larry!” she yelled shaking him. He suddenly came to himself with a start. He was shaking all over, still wide eyed, but she could tell he was looking at her.
      “What was that?” he asked.
      “What was what?” Brad asked loudly. Both teenagers jumped.
      “I don’t know, but I saw this old man here,” Larry said in a shaking voice and described the figure he had seen.
      “Let’s get out of here!” Marian suggested and all three almost ran out of the attic to the sunny lower floor.
      “Nobody say anything about this, yet.” Larry had regained his composure, but still seemed shaken. The other two just nodded their assent.

      That evening Liz noticed something was wrong with her oldest son. Larry, usually the most talkative, was silent, not a word came from him.
      “Larry, what’s wrong?” she asked.
      “Oh, nothing,” he said, absentmindedly stirring his cheese and macaroni.
      “Don’t try  that with me, Larry. I know you better than that,” his mother chided. “Now tell me what’s wrong.”
      “Larry thinks he saw a ghost,” Brad giggled before Larry could even open his mouth. A glare from his older siblings instantly silenced his laughter.
      “A ghost?” Mitch remarked. “Aren’t we a bit old for that?”
      “Dad, I know what I saw, and I’m not making this up,” Larry countered.
      “Yeah, right,” Mitch mumbled. “So where’d you see this ghost?” Larry sighed to himself and recounted the events with some help from the other two.
      “So you saw a ghost, eh?” Mitch laughed. “There’s no such thing. It isn’t rationally possible.”
      My father the realist, Larry thought, almost disgustedly. “Well, Dad, until today I thought so, too, but how else do you explain this?”
      “Hallucinations,” Mitch said, waving his hand.
      “Yeah, right.” Marian wasn’t too convinced of that theory.
      “Well, let’s forget about it for tonight,” Liz said. She suddenly had this funny feeling. It was the same one she had when she had hidden under her covers as a little girl, afraid of the boogey man.
      “All right,” Mitch said. And that was that.

      The rest of the evening progressed normally. Their rooms had been readied somewhat: the beds had been moved in and made, along with the dressers and some other necessities. Mitch and Liz didn’t talk about the incident any more. Brad kept poking fun at Larry because of the “ghost.” The usually reserved Larry blew up at his younger brother, and Marian got it in the neck when she tried to intervene. Finally Mitch exploded into the room, yelled at all of them and sent them to bed.
      “Something’s gotten into those kids,” he remarked to Liz as he crawled into bed.
      “Hm-hm,” was her answer.
      Marian felt very unhappy as she slipped into her bed. The day had started out great, but now this “ghost” story was driving her nuts. She hesitated to turn out the light. You don’t believe this do you? she asked herself. Well, maybe she did. Nah, she thought. Let’s forget about it tonight. It will all look better in the morning. She hit the light and went to sleep.
      About midnight something stirred in her room. Marian sat up. Her neck hairs had begun to stand on end. At the end of the bed a pair of luminescent red spots hovered, just above the bottom of her bed. A low guttural growl came from the spots. Marian was too scared to scream. Slowly a weight began to settle on the end of the bed. The girl pulled her feet up as the weight crept up the bed. The bright red slits glowed ever closer and the growling was now accompanied by an acrid sulfuric smell.
      “Aieeh!” Larry sat up in bed. He was sure he had heard Marian scream. He instantly leaped out of bed and ran to the room next to his. The rest of the family was at the other end of the hall and couldn’t hear the scream through the closed doors. He almost tore the door out of the wall. The room was filled with an acrid smell. Larry covered his nose and mouth with his hand and slipped into the room. His other hand searched for the light switch, but he couldn’t find it. He thought he could hear something growling in the room. Another piercing scream echoed through the room and suddenly the smell and the growling disappeared. The room instantly grew lighter and Larry saw Marian sitting in her bed, pale, shaking, her blue-gray eyes wide.
      “Are you, OK?” he asked. She didn’t answer, just looked at him, afraid he might be another apparition come to torment her. “It’s okay, it’s just me, Larry,” he said. The girl suddenly pitched forward into his arms, sobbing.
      “Are you all right?” he asked again.
      “No!” she sobbed. “It was here. I saw it. I heard it. It almost got me.” He held her for some time just comforting her. A large figure appeared in the door. Both teens shrunk back.
      “I heard you scream,” Mitch said, turning on the light. “What happened?” Then he saw the shocked look on both their faces.
      “It was here,” they said, almost simultaneously. Mitch sniffed the room. “What burned in here?” he asked.
      “It did.”
      “What?”
      “The ghost.” Mitch almost burst out laughing, but the look on his children’s faces stopped him. “Okay,” he said, sitting down on the bed. “Tell me what happened.” They quickly recounted it while Mitch quietly listened.
      “Well, I think we all need to go to sleep. If you want you can come and sleep with us in our room, Rian. Larry, I guess you can manage on your own.” Larry nodded.
      “Good night,” he said and went back to his room. Marian decided to spend the rest of the night in her room and Mitch went back to his room, shaking his head.
      “Well?” Liz said, as he crawled under the covers.
      “They said it was the ghost,” he said sarcastically, wrapping his arms around his wife.
      “Both of them did?”
      “Yeah. I always thought my kids were normal, everyday kids. Now I discover they’re a bunch of paranoid kooks.”
      “Now, Mitch,” Liz chided, “don’t say that. If both of them saw or heard something, it must be real. Stop making fun about it.”
      “All right, all right,” he said, reaching for the light switch, and they went to sleep.

THREE

The next two weeks went by rather quietly. No one worried about the “ghost,” no one even spoke about it. The door to the attic was forgotten and no one even so much as mentioned the strange smells that sometimes wafted through the house.
      It was exactly two weeks after the first time Larry had seen the ghost. Mitch and Liz needed a break that night and decided to go out for dinner. The three kids stayed home, all of them sitting in the large family room next to Brad’s room on the second floor. Larry sat at the computer, typing an article for the local paper where he worked as a free-lance writer. Marian was listening to the TV disinterestedly, while sketching Brad who was reading a book on ghost stories. Suddenly the mechanical click of the computer keys stopped. Larry sat back and listened.
      “What’s that?” he asked. Marian listened for a moment.
      “Bach’s Toccata,” she said disinterestedly. She had taken music history last semester.
      “It sounds wrong,” Larry remarked. “It’s a piano, not an organ like on Mom’s tape.”
      “So, they’ve arranged it for piano,” Marian shrugged. “Maybe someone left the radio on downstairs.”
      “It’s not coming from downstairs,” Brad said monotonously. “It’s upstairs.” Suddenly everyone looked at each other. The strains of the famous piece filtered down to them. Abruptly it changed.
      “Beethoven’s fifth,” Larry remarked. It was his favorite piece of classical music. Brad got up silently. The other two quickly followed him. The melody changed again before they reached the stairs. It had become something none of them recognized or did they? The melody went around and around, ever faster.
      Suddenly Marian called out, “Grieg! I know it’s from Peer Gynt , ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King!’“ Brad opened the door and the three crept up the narrow stairway, Brad first, Larry last, and Marian in the middle. The whole room was lit brightly by candles. An incense burner sat on top of the table and a strange mask was propped up beside it. The ghost sat at the piano, hammering out the music to Peer Gynt . Abruptly it changed back to the Toccata. The melody made their hair stand on end. The ghost turned and looked at them, a hideous grin fixed on its face.
      “Sing along,” came a scratchy voice. The melody changed again, now Beethoven’s ninth. “ Freude, schöner Götterfunken,/ Tochter aus Elysium ..., ” sang the scratchy voice in the original German text. The three looked at each other and ran down the stairs and out the door. Larry remembered to lock it. A hellish laughter seemed to explode from the house as they ran out the gate and to the small house across the street, number 25.

      The door opened almost as soon as Brad had knocked on it to reveal a kindly lady. “Why, hello,” she said pleasantly. She noticed the shocked looks on the face of the three young people. “Is something wrong?” she asked.
      “You won’t believe this, but ...,” Larry began.
      “You saw the ghost,” she finished.
      “How’d you know?” they asked in unison.
      “Everybody knows that place is haunted,” the lady said shrugging. She stepped away from the door. “Won’t you come in?” she asked, beckoning them inside. They entered mutely.
      “I’m Mrs. Lundin,” she said with a smile. Each of the kids introduced themselves. “You know I warned your father about it when he came to pick up the keys for the inspection,” she said.
      “He doesn’t believe in stuff like that,” Marian said with a wave of her hand.
      “Well he should and for a good reason,” came a rasping voice from another room. The three turned just in time to see a wheelchair roll into the room. An old man was seated in it. His hair was long and shock white, uncombed, so it gave him an almost maddened look. He had a large hooked nose and his face was crisscrossed with many wrinkles. He hunched over in his wheelchair, wearing a pair of old-fashioned pants, shirt and a cardigan. But the most disturbing thing about him were his eyes. They were a crystal clear blue, that seemed to be able to look through anything. They had a look in them that reminded Larry of the eyes of the ghost, and yet they seemed tamer.
      “Sit down, sit down,” he croaked at them in a commanding manner.
      “Oh,” Mrs. Lundin said quickly. “This is my father, Mr. Druin. He’s descended from one of the original founders of the town.”
      “Enough formalities,” the old man barked. “Sit!” They sat.
      “All right, now what are your names and what happened with the ghost?” he interrogated them. Larry introduced himself, his sister and brother and told of the encounters they had with their “house guest.”
      “Heh, heh,” the old man wheezed. “Looks like old Jacob still wants his mansion!” He wheezed again and Brad concluded that the old man was trying to laugh. “Well, since you young whippersnappers now live over there, I think I should tell you the story.” Mr. Druin settled himself in his wheelchair, closed his eyes for a moment and began his tale in a scratchy voice.
      “Jacob Druin was a distant relative of mine who lived back in the 1800’s. He was an asset to the community back then, the mayor, judge and a couple of other offices he held. He was also a wizard.” The old man cackled at the looks on the faces of the kids. “Yes, a wizard,” he repeated and cackled again. I knew this was going to come in somewhere, Marian couldn’t help thinking.
      “Well,” the old man continued, “he wasn’t a bad wizard, mind you, but a good kind, who would use his powers to help the people of the village, at least, that is, until he had the mansion built. It is said he built it by pure magic and then moved in. After that things began to change. First of all his wife went insane and drowned herself. Then some of the young girls, girls your age,” he said, pointing at Marian, “started disappearing. ‘Tis said he sacrificed them to the devil. He was then hung for sorcery by the new mayor, but Jacob wasn’t afraid of dying, because he had bonded his soul to the house. ‘I’ll be back!’ he said when he died and a few weeks later he was, playing his piano as usual, doing what he did best: scare the people.” The old man chuckled. “And he still does it, as you got to see.”
      “But what’s that growling thing?” Marian wanted to know.
      “It’s said that that’s his watch dog,” Mr. Druin answered. “It only warns you once. Then,” he said, tightening a wizened hand into a fist, “it kills you.” He reveled in the shocked look on their faces. “Of course,” he said with a shrug, “if you ask Father Reid or Pastor Jenkins, they’ll tell you it’s a demon. But believe me, little ‘uns, it’s a ghost.” He turned the wheelchair. “All right, enough for now,” he said leaving the room. “Remember the ghost!” They could hear him laugh as he rolled into the next room.
      “Some ghost story,” Brad remarked. “Sounds a lot like those ones in the book.”
      “Yes,” Mrs. Lundin said, coming out of the kitchen with some milk and cookies, “but he hasn’t told you the rest of the story.” She sat down in the seat across from Brad. “It is said that Jacob Druin still sacrifices his girls to the devil, because now and again some high school-age girls disappear, and they are always found somewhere in or around the mansion.”

      They spent the rest of the evening watching the TV, but Larry and Marian’s thoughts were far from the flickering screen. Larry’s thoughts chorused around the old man’s words, If you ask Father Reid or Pastor Jenkins, they’ll tell you it’s a demon. Demons! He hadn’t thought or heard about them since a couple of months before moving here. Wasn’t there something in the youth group about that? he wondered.
      “Yeah, I guess there was,” Marian said abruptly. Had he been speaking out loud?
      “Huh?”
      “You just said something about demons and the youth group,” Marian answered.
      “I didn’t realize I had spoken out loud,” Larry admitted.
      “But,” Marian said, sunk in her own thoughts, “couldn’t it be true? I mean, Chris said that they were real and that they had weird powers, sort of like ....”
      “Ghosts,” Larry finished.
      “Yeah.” She shuddered. “But the story seems so much like the other ghost stories, it’s unreal.” She ran a hand through her short blond hair. “It’s weird, Larry, and I’m scared of it.”
      “Yeah, me too,” he said in a near whisper.

      Mitch and Liz arrived back at about 11:30 and the kids returned to their “haunted” mansion. Mitch was his usual unbelieving self and Liz seemed slightly unnerved at the prospect of a ghost in the house.
      “Ghosts don’t exist,” Mitch said for the twentieth time as he shooed the kids into their rooms. “They’re just a bunch of fairy tales.” Even so, that night Marian and Larry found themselves praying for the first time in a long time.
      Brad slid into his bed and turned out the light. It’s actually pretty cool living in a haunted house, he thought with a grin. Wonder what they’d say about that? They were his friends, left behind from the move. He rolled over, looking toward the large bank of windows. Somewhere out there the body of the ghost was buried, and he wanted to find it. He closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them again. What’s that? he wondered. On the floor beside his bed lay something fairly large. In the half-light it looked almost like ... a body?!  Brad reached out to touch the thing, but drew his hand back.

     “Mom!” Liz came awake.
      “What is it, hon?” she asked sleepily.
      “There’s a body in my room,” Brad said excitedly.
      “What?”
      “Come and see. Rian and Larry are already there.” Liz shot out of bed and stumbled into Brad’s room.

      Larry wasn’t surprised that Brad had seen a body. What surprised him was that it was real, not an image like the ghost of Jacob Druin, only a real human body. Marian had screamed when he turned on the light, because of the blood covering the white robes it wore. With her help Larry lifted the lifeless form onto the bed. Lifeless? No! The body was still warm. Either it had only died moments ago or it was still alive. In that case ... Oh my! he thought as the light spilled over the face. It was a girl with long red tresses framing an oval face. Freckles were sprinkled over her nose. Dark lashes accentuated the edges of the closed eyes and rosebud lips were just slightly apart. A rasping sound came from her throat and it made Larry jump.
      “She’s alive,” he said to Marian. At that moment Liz came into the room.
      “Oh, my God!” the woman breathed, looking at the form on the bed. She turned and hurried back to her own room.
      “Randy!” Mitch groaned slightly. “Randy, wake up!”
      “What is it?” he said, coming fully awake. Liz only called him by his first name when there was real trouble.
      “There’s a dying girl in Brad’s room,” she said quickly. “Call 911 and take the boys downstairs and wait.”
      “OK,” he said reaching for the phone.
      As soon as the men had gone downstairs, Liz and Marian began loosening the white robes around the girl’s body. Liz was surprised to find no knife or bullet wounds anywhere. The sight of the blood sickened them, even more so know that they realized it probably wasn’t human blood. Suddenly a siren howled outside the window and seconds later the paramedics came running up the stairs. One knelt beside the bed, preparing an IV, the other one bent over the girl, checking her eyes, shining a light into the partially open mouth.
      “There’s something in her throat, John,” he said to his partner. “We’ll need to do the Heimlich, but it might be too late.” The other paramedic nodded and they performed the Heimlich maneuver. It was successful, and moments later the air passages were cleared. John reached into the girl’s mouth and pulled out a black membrane.
      “Wonder why she swallowed that?” he mused. “We’ll have to take her to the hospital, Mrs. Mitchell,” he said turning to Liz. “What’s her name?”
      “I don’t know,” Liz said lamely. “We just found her here a few minutes ago.”
      “She’s not one of your family?” Liz shook her head.
      “Well,” John’s partner said, quickly packing up his gear. “You’re lucky you found her when you did. A few more minutes and she’d be dead.”
      A police car had pulled up outside the house, alerted by the 911 service. The officers questioned the Mitchells and then left with the inert form of the young woman. They didn’t stay up for long, quickly returning to their beds.