Chains

A Story by Leif+Henry

In a way, Wayne Ritchie embodied the most obscene charade we put on for ourselves. I am referring to Wayne in past tense, of course, because Wayne Ritchie is dead. Not figuratively or spiritually, he is quite literally dead. I do remember the moment everything turned on him but to say he had it coming would also be a grave inaccuracy. Wayne was a nice enough guy; his head was a bit too large to fit in to those one size fits all caps but on those late nights where we were all drunk inside of some would be haunted house or another he bore to us what would ultimately be how we remembered him. I remember laughing; I remember the gooseflesh he left me with. The coal shovelers in the locomotive of his heart deserved, and probably received, time and a half again and again.

Wayne’s brother had committed suicide long before his ventures in to the paranormal and unknown. Wayne had found him; he was lying in the bathtub of his small apartment and was not breathing. I remember him telling me how Brink�"an odd name but it was his brother’s�"had left his stomach bile all over the bathroom he eventually died in. Wayne said he remembered the lights being on but does not recall how bright they were. All he talked about was the vomit in the cracks of the linoleum floor and the body of his brother lying in the tub with no water.

“I’d forgotten all about rigor mortis,” he’d said, “I thought if I moved his arm or his head it would just flop flop flop.”

He always had this odd way of using the inappropriate wordage. Flop flop flop was a bit too off color and did not match with the morbid look in his eyes; everything I’d ever seen on post-traumatic stress disorder had told me it was because he was re-living the moment. I wish he hadn’t told that story so much. When he did I could see his eyes glaze over and his mind venture far and away from his juncture at that current point in space and time. I wish he would have forgotten all about it; I wish his mind might have been strong enough to build its own great wall. It might have saved his life.

I hope you do pardon me for not being brief but if we want to tell this story the right way we’re going to have to go back to his brother’s suicide�"about twenty five years from where I sit now at my desk.

Most say Wayne went mad but he did not. I too saw what he saw, perhaps it would be the truth to say that I even saw more�"the warning signs, the foreshadowing, if you will.

Not all in this world is what it seems. Cliché as it is to make such a statement it is nevertheless true. Though, I think it takes quite a bit of time for things to build up. Structures, places and things all have a history of some sort or another and to say that the passage of time does not affect the inanimate would be an ignorant mistake. The universe stretches beyond everything, as there most assuredly is not nothing, anywhere, and all we have are two hundred and some odd little elements to tell us what it all might mean. Perhaps those are not the right words, mainly because it all means nothing. We live and we die just as the stars might: only because of a necessity for there to be something occupying everything. Think for a moment on what a universe filled with nothing might look like; I have no doubt what pops in to mind is an empty white space, but even an empty white little room is something. Even when we’re decomposing in our graves we are still something. We are bones, and then we are dust, but we are something.

Where to go from here. It is not easy writing when one is not really a writer, but a cameraman. I suppose I could drone on like some pretentious worm whom happens to have insider info but maybe the actual story will do all of this nonsense more justice than my descriptions of it.

But first, more wine!

“Three, two, one…and…oh for Christ’s sake Wayne put your dick away I don’t want to have to roll this more than once. Just introduce the f*****g show so we can move on.”

“Hi, my name is Wayne Ritchie and welcome to the Specter Safari. Where my erect penis will point us, and you at home, straight towards the ghosts here at Upton Manor.”

“I wouldn’t exactly say straight towards. Do you masterbate often, Wayne? Oh, why do I bother asking we share the same bus.”

“Wayne.”

“Alright, alright.”

“Tabitha?”

“What? I was only saying…”

“Whatever, knock it off with that fake British accent. We want at least a modicum of credibility here.”

“Ugh, we want at least a modicum of credibility here fff fff.”

“Tabitha?”

“Fine, I’ll be quiet.”

“Thank you, alright Wayne. Camera is on you, thank you for putting your pants back on, and three…two…one…” I held my breath for a moment, thinking he’d pull down his pants again just as I’d say action. He did not, Tabitha watched me with uncertainty, too, “Action.”

“Hi, I’m Wayne Ritchie and welcome to the Specter Safari. This episode we will be spending the night in one of Ohio’s foremost sanctuary’s for spooky sightings, the Upton Manor. Few who have entered these grounds�"which extend to the pre-civil war era�"have come out feeling anything but shaken, and bone chillingly watched. I’ve even been warned by the groundskeeper against bringing my team in. He tells us that it may be our last night anywhere. Will this be the last episode of Specter Safari? Stick around, if it is, you won’t want to miss anything.”

“Cut, well done.”

Tabitha Stone was standing off to the side and as soon as the camera was off she belted out a guffaw that sent the crows from their respective branches. The trees surrounding the grounds of the Upton Manor seemed malevolent, like some witch doctor had put them to sleep, their energies flowing in to the Manor with great evil and malice. I don’t know if trees can be friendly, but these were not. But, I suppose that was the whole point. Season two of Specter Safari was already shaping up to be just as much hokum as the previous one.

Though, the trees seemed to be making a mockery of our very presence by how far they stood off around the grounds. The space between us and them was laid out by flat land that grass could barely poke up through. We were standing in front of the vine-woven fountain of the courtyard and had to drive up on a long, long stone-layed drive that I could not see the end of when I looked back. Humanity had either forgotten about this place or had ignored it completely.

Behind the courtyard was the daunting Upton Manor, this too was stone-layed. It looked to be begging for some kind of upkeep but even more than that it begged us entrance. I’ve always been skidish, so of course all I saw was my own inevitable demise in its great windows. A breeze pushed up from behind me and whispered in my ear to walk on in. A crow cawed from somewhere.

“Oh, don’t look so freightened,” Tabitha said, slapping me on the back, “I’m clairvoyant, remember? I’d let you know if this building might spell our doom.” She smiled because she was being sarcastic. If she was clairvoyant, I was the god-damned king of Africa.

We all had a good laugh and walked up on to the steps. Tabitha turned to us said ‘if I kill you will they air the show?’ as she had at every house we three had ever been to. The hipsters liked that there were only three of us and one camera; it made it all so real. Of course, no one ever saw me�"hi, my name is Oliver Shipley, the fiddler in this band.

“What the f**k house did we just come from? Was it Werthersome?” Wayne had asked, “or was it The Gobslee Manor?”

“I thought we all came from our daddies.”

“Clever, Oliver,” Wayne went and grabbed the door at the top of the stairs and opened it. We walked in to a grand room; a chandelier hung from the ceiling and it were black crystalled. The room was sublime with blackness, “the card?” He asked. “And, can someone turn on the damned lights in this place?” He yelled. No one answered. I handed him the card and he read it aloud, “make sure you have the camera on when you get inside, the staff will not be there and Wayne needs to act anxious about that fact so that our viewers think the staff is all dead what the f**k?”

I laughed, “I guess we should have read it.”

“That is really f*****g dark,” he said in his english accent.

I brought up the camera and turned it on, show time, baby. He turned back towards the concierge desk, “Hello?” He said the words aloud and he trembled and looked confused, “I’m Wayne Ritchie, you’re visitor who is about to put you on international television for your little charade?” He looked at the camera, “oh s**t, is that thing on?” The FCC would blur out his swears but he still played the part well. Tabitha turned out the lights from behind me and in turn the light that might feed the camera. “Guys?” Oliver asked in, ultimately, what had ended up being a man made darkness. We had been told to put out the lights at exactly nine minutes and fifteen seconds in to the taping, I’d forgotten about it but it were not my job and I trusted Tabitha.

She turned the light back on and a card was standing on the desk. Wayne grabbed it; it said ‘Welcome’ in some fancy and forgotten cursive. The whole room was dreary and reminded me of something well within my brain, something I might have seen were I asleep. The shadows were palpable. Under the black chandelier was the desk the card was sitting on and there was a mural, it stretched the entirety of the back wall; the mural was of a staircase, but there was no actual staircase, just two hallways on either side of us with doors at the end. The hallways were long and got so dark at the end that we could only see the doors because of their bright brass handles.

“When we first walked in…” Wayne began to say, then he paused and thought a moment, “nothing.”

“Wayne?” I asked, he didn’t seem to hear me.

“That painting tricked me, alright,” he replied, “I thought there was a staircase back behind the desk.”

“Maybe there was,” I said, grinning, the job had gotten to Wayne a bit the week prior but we were almost done filming for the season, Wayne had spent many nights with us in many places holding long shadows. ‘If we do see a ghost,’ I remember him beginning to ask�"this was last week�"me, ‘does that make them real, or does that make us, ya know…?’

I’d seen the little girl, too. I hadn’t thought anyone else had so I’d kept it to myself for fear of being, ya know…

We had come up from the basement; Tabitha was back by the old water heater with the camera beckoning some kind of response from an other-wordly being. The door to the stairway was low so I ducked and when I brought my head back up and looked to ascend the damp stairway she was standing at the top. I don’t know who she was. I saw by her size that she was very young, pintsize even. She had a horribly wicked grin on her face, by the time I went to examine the rest of her she was gone. Wayne was just behind me and poked his head out just as she vanished; that was not the moment he saw her. Instead, he saw her hiding in the oven when he opened it. I know because I saw too but thought if I looked away soon enough it would not have happened. She was not really there, tho she was. But, we’d investigated over a hundred houses and that was the only apparition we’d ever seen.

Anyway, he asked me about seeing ghosts and all that and I had looked at him queerly. “I don’t think it matters,” I’d said, “if it does or does not, if we see them we see them, it makes no difference if they are actually there. We must deal with it either way.”

“I suppose you are right, Oliver,” Wayne had said. Wayne had gotten us to leave that house that night, he said he wanted to be sure to make the next one; I obliged; I’d wanted to get the f**k out of there, too.

So, we were at the next house�"or manor, rather�"where the chandelier was black and everything only seemed ironically sinister. The Upton Manor was built to disturb but the décor had been overdone. It felt like a haunted house, but one you might find at your local county fairgrounds. However, the building felt as quiet as a tomb down well below the earth.

“Where are we?” Tabitha asked.

A grand-father clock went off down either the left or the right hallway, I could not tell which. Then, I heard a knock, I was sure it came from the door down my left. We grew silent; I flipped my camera up.

“Can you knock again for me?” Tabitha yelled to the room. Nothing responded. I kept my camera steady on what I could see of the door down the hallway. “It is okay we would like to communicate with you, we’d like to help you. Can you knock again?”

The door knocked again.

“Can you open the door and show yourself?” Tabitha looked with wild excitement as the handle turned and the door opened and a small man with a mustache and a purple vest stumbled on through.

“Help me with what?” He asked. Wayne started laughing. I shut the camera off. Tabitha flicked me off and lit a cigarette. She looked at the tiny man in the vest as he walked down the hall and towards us. He was a very small man but one of his legs were longer than the other so he walked with a bit of a limp. He was odd. He approached the desk in front of the feaux staircase and stopped, “shall we?” He said, ushering us then towards the right hallway.

The hallway came to a door and the little man opened it. We were rushed through and on the other side was another broad room. It was the same room as before only the portrait of the stairs was not a portrait at all. Instead there was a winding staircase that looked just as grand as the one in the portrait.

Wayne dropped his bags and looked around. I turned on the camera. He stood there and looked and looked, it was obvious what he was looking for. His mind’s reel must have been going back and back to that girl in the oven. Is she here, now? Wayne’s face read it to me in a loud and concerned voice.

He looked like he’d seen a ghost and was now hoping not to cross another. The room we were in reminded me of lungs. I was so certain that I felt the walls move and let out a sigh. I held the camera on anxious Wayne. He looked from stairs on his left to those on his right. Then he looked back at the camera and smiled. “We might not make it out of this one.” He said. His eyes looked excited and then I shut off the camera. I was completely unbecame at that point. Wayne knew when the camera was shut off. The red light would go out. This time he had lingered on the lens with his gaze. His face had been fixed with some wound up smile; he had barely registered when I moved the camera back to my hip.

The tiny man was gone. I didn’t see him leave us but he was nowhere to be found.

“Where’s that midget?” I looked back at Tabitha. She was on her phone.

“What midget?” She asked, sparing a moment to look up at me from that screen.

“The one who walked through the door? When you were yelling at him thinking he was a ghost? The cripple?”

“He’s right there.” She pointed off behind my other shoulder.

I turned and there he was. He looked at me like I’d called him a midget.

My brother’s a midget! I heard my mind yell at me. I chortled a bit and then regained composure.

Wayne said, “do whatever you want ‘til sundown, Oliver. Meet back here. I am going to nap.”

Tabitha and I stole away. We humped in the boathouse. Sundown was in an hour and the humping had taken up seven minutes. We decided to hump again. It was good being inside of her inside of that boathouse. I felt like a fisherman who’d finally come in from sea to…well…come. A true seaman. One who’d not known the wonderful plunder found deep inside a woman for some time but only the relenting hellish b***h that was the sea. Had I a long enough dick I would have tickled her heart.

But that is what the nymphos do and make me feel. She dragged me away from the house by my scrotum and I could not have been happier to oblige. Tabitha had dark hair and her skin was milk and so were her breasts. They didn’t actually contain milk but they looked to house it by the trough. She was short enough to throw around, “get that kayak paddle,” she said, she was always wanting a good pounding on her a*s or a good dick in one of her orifici. And my god could she throw it back. My c**k was nothing to shout from the moon about but all seven inches of it sent shockwaves up to her noggin and it was all because she knew the ways to twitch…

We had to be done just before sundown; we would smoke cigarettes. The cigarettes covered up the smell of her c**t from my breathe. I saw him when I went took the last puff of my cigarette.

There was a tree. It sagged a little but it was a tree with leaves and it hung just above the boathouse. He hung from one of the branches and as soon as I saw him my hairs raised and his eyes opened and then I closed mine.

“What?” Tabitha asked.

“F*****g ashes,” I said, rubbing my eye and ashing the cigarette away from my body.

“I hate when that happens,” she said, ashing hers.

When I opened them he was gone. He was a ghost but I could still tell that he was black; I deduced a lynching. Seeing him was like seeing an off-color hologram. No, no that’s not right. It was like seeing different shades of the shadows ball together and look at me. He was there because I knew he was. I looked up at the leaves on the tree and they twitched in the wind. They’d already started turning. Most would be on the ground within a few weeks. I hadn’t spent much time in southern Ohio but it appeared that autumn was quite the beautiful month. The leaves hung on the trees in their various oranges and reds. The world was made cool and colorful and crisp. The sun brought the warmth and when it sunk under Upton Lake the cold swept in and made my n*****s hard. It was time to go back inside. I took one last look at the tree, which was barely visible; it was post-twilight; enough light still clawed at the earth to show me his limp and hung body. Why had I looked, again?

“How did we get here?” I asked.

“Oh, Wayne,” she said, “we walked.”

My mind turned to a vast sand field. I felt someone raking the field with a broad-toothed comb. Sounds were all there but I was alone and surrounded by no one and nothing. I almost thought I heard birds, and water…

“Wayne,” I snapped too, sort of.

“I’m…”

“Wayne,” she said it again.

“I was going to say Oliver.”

“Babe,” she said, “you are not being funny.”

“What?”

“Are you feeling alright? After you set up the camera you got in front of it and have had this weird look on your face since. Now you’re talking about Oliver,” she looked truly distraught, like she had an itch that cut a mile deep in her brain. Like she was scared to death because things were about to get bad. She sounded like she was splitting in two. She then broke down, “and then I know you saw something over on that tree because you looked at it for a long while and now I’m just really scared because you’re looking at me like you aren’t you and your talking about Oliver…”

…and she went on for a minute. I tuned her out. My head felt like it was starting to go, like it was being wrapped in bubble paper and then shipped off to Fresno. Everything became muffled. Off in the trees I heard someone screaming, ‘let me out, let me out,’ it sounded like Wayne. Was he out there somewhere? Why had he ventured so far? “LET ME OUT!!!”

I heard it then clear as a moon on a cloudless night. Tabitha did not. She only looked at me. I could see in her eyes that she wanted to flee.

“Don’t run,” Wayne said, “it’s alright.” He had come through the trees and was treating her sweetly. I watched her wrap herself in his arms and cry.

“It started last week again, didn’t it?” She asked.

“Yeah,” Wayne said.

“Don’t you f*****g tell her,” I heard myself say. Tabitha didn’t seem to hear me at all. I had a sudden urge to choke the both of them and string them from the trees.

“I hope he goes away,” she said, “I don’t like Oliver very much.”

“Neither do I,” said Wayne. “But come on, we still have television to make.”

I kept quiet and shuffled along after them. Afterall, I was still an important part of the crew.

I hung back for a majority of the rest of the evening. Wayne and Tabitha went from this room to that while beckoning out intelligible horrors from the spirit world. Maybe if they’d found something they would be vindicated and not feel like such phonies.

The house was very spooky at night. Things creaked and air wafted and it all created a general sense of unease. I had not seen the short man in the vest for quite some time, I had not seen anybody, well besides Tab and Wayne. I was looking out of a window by an upstairs fireplace. The trees looked so beautiful on the outskirts of the grounds. They were terrifying, but extraordinarily so.

We were done with our rounds and were way up in the highest room we could find that had a fireplace. There was a bear, a full grown bear, stuffed and sitting above the fireplace. I thought I saw a pair of eyeballs inside its mouth.

I was transfixed with the grounds outside of the window. I thought I saw firelights out deep in the forest. I was certain that I’d heard shouting. The light was getting brighter and coming towards the house! I waited for something to emerge from the tree line but the fire-like-light that was moving throughout the trees had vanished. All was dark and quiet again.

“Oliver,” Tabitha said, I was surprised that she’d decided to address me.

“Tab?” I said.

“If you’re going to hang around…” Tabitha began to speak but I was then drawn behind her. There was a woman there, on the couch just behind Tabitha, and she was giving birth. Her husband, or so I assume he was, stood over her. “Oliver!” Tabitha said again.

Wayne and I both looked and ignored her. The baby came out and was a small black child. Half-so, anyway. I watched as the husband grabbed the baby and threw it out the window. I tried running to grab it but it wasn’t really happening so there was nothing for me to do. I heard the mother scream and when I turned around I saw only Tabitha sitting by the couches. “Are you alright?” She asked. “Wayne?”

“Wayne?” I asked.

“What,” He said. Tabitha was looking at me and her eyes were wide.

Where the f**k were we? And how did we get there? All I was certain of was that long long gravel-laden driveway. It must have been a mile and one half. With half of that being entombed in those dead, however, seemingly thoughtful, trees. Where does the rabbit roam and how had we found our way in to his hole?

“Wayne, listen,” she said some few minutes later. The fire still crackled; the night was now closer to dawn than dusk but only by a minute or two. “Oliver is not real. I think you need to hear that.”

“Oliver?” Wayne thought a moment and I watched him. “I haven’t thought about Oliver in years.”

“Wayne,” she said to him, “he’s trying to get through. Right now. I can see him.”

I looked at her, cocked my head sideways, and spoke, “can you stop being hysterical? We’re trying to shoot a television show here.”

“Oliver,” she said, “leave him alone. You shouldn’t be here. For f***s sake you don’t even know how you got here. Go back down that drive and back to wherever the f**k you were.”

“He can’t,” Wayne piped in, “it’s this place. It’s f*****g bonkers. Like those mosquitoes out there to a warm puddle.”

I looked around and everything was layered in stone, and grand. This building would stand for another few hundred years. The firepit was tall as a horse and probably wide as one, too. The place was haunted and we’d done some quick editing and then wanted to sleep so we could pass the hours until the sun would finally come again. No one wanted to bring up driving through those woods.

When I woke up it was still very dark. I was in the main room, the one with the picture of the staircase. The pitch black chandelier sucked light from the room and I wondered how I’d gotten there. The red walls and carpet seemed to jump at me and I wanted to be away from them. I could hear the chatter of the dead; it bypassed my ear drum and pinned itself directly in to my brain. They were going on about how I should just kill the b***h. She was trying to get rid of me, afterall. At that point I supposed that Wayne might even end his own self, not having Tabitha.

“Wayne,” I heard Tabitha yell, her voice echoed from the door to my left, it could have also been from the door to my right, I could not tell. Wayne was nowhere to be found. The door stood ajar behind me so he may have ran out. Or had I ran in?

Just what was going on? The jig felt up.

“Tabitha!?” I responded.

“Wayne, is that you?”

“Yeah!” I said. “I’m in the mainroom. With the painting.”

I stood and waited for her response or some kind of something to let me know that she would meet me where I stood. The walls around me seemed to sing some odd tune in b minor. Humming, humming in b minor. I was shook. Where was Wayne?

There was a tall tall mirror down by the door in the right hallway. Or was it the left? I spun around and the door was gone. Both sides of the main room were covered in that awful staircase painting. What hell had vaulted itself above ground and in to my life? I could hear horses outside and a screaming woman. I heard feet pounding to my left and when I looked a black specter blurred by me. It looked like the same one who was hanged by the boathouse.

He got no more than five steps past me when he stopped. He was wearing overalls. His head turned before the rest of his ‘body’ had. Space and time bent when he smiled at me. It was not a comforting smile. He knew of things to come and I could see it in his lips: he was happy about whatever demise might swing my way. Then he vanished and the room swung back around and Tabitha descended the stairs. I swear to you that I saw her come down those stairs in the painting.

“Wayne,” she said.

“Tab,” I said.

“You said you were by the painting.” She looked cautious.

“My brain is all mixed up,” I said, ascending the stairs and towards her, “you started talking about Oliver and it scared the wit right out of me.”

“Imagine my reaction when I saw him in your eyes.” She looked me over, “look, can we just get out of here? I’m starting to see s**t too. It’ll make for good television but it seems malicious. Like we’ve entered some sick story that we won’t make tomorrow in.”

I smiled like Wayne would, “baby, what can ghosts do to us? This is what we’re here for!”

I pulled up my camera and turned it on and put it on her face.

“Wayne!” She screamed, “I want to leave.” She was looking behind me and at the black chandelier, I looked too. She was hanging there. Of course, it wasn’t really her but there was limp lifeless Tabbie hanged with her spine crushed from a light sucking chandelier. There was no breeze but she swung none the less. Then I saw what was really going on. It descended the long long fixture that kept the chandelier in place like a spider only it was not one. It had four legs and looked like it might have once been human. It moved so fast. It grabbed Tabitha’s body and threw it on top of the chandelier and began removing her clothes. I put the camera on it but nothing was caught in its lens. The chandelier looked like it normally might.

I looked out of the camera and back at the chandelier. The black crystals that had hung were suddenly various body parts. All of the body parts had a very dark complexion. The thing that had taken Tabitha sat on top like a dragon to his jewels. Then it started raping her and slamming her head down against the human light fixture again and again and again. I looked over at the real Tab and she had her hands on her eyes and was screaming and crying.

Wayne came then. He grabbed her and held her in his arms: shielding her. I, of course, had to sit back and watch.

“Once, we walk out of that door it will all be over, and Oliver will be gone,” he stroked her hair and I felt a rage jump with ferocity out of the well that was my soul. I lifted my camera and smashed it against Tabitha’s face until every last piece of glass from the lens poked out of her. I slammed that back of her head against the wall. I saw the thing latch on to the ceiling as it made its way over to where I was. It was ugly as it was pure evil. I looked back at Tabitha, her eyes were open but there was nothing behind them and blood was everywhere. Wayne tried to help but I wouldn’t allow him. I let go and she slumped down to the ground. She looked like a pile of blankets.

‘Oliver!’ I heard Wayne scream. ‘Why? Why, why, why?’

The human thing was just above me now on the ceiling. It was horrifying. It had no face. Just a blank canvas with a sideways nose. It moved the way a flip book cartoon might were the pages flipped slowly. It was one place, then another, with seemingly no in-between.

I couldn’t take it anymore. That is all it was. I had no choice but to do what I did next. Wayne hollered and hollered for me to stop and that it was all in my head but he was so preoccupied with Tabitha that he was not making a convincing argument. I dove head first from the staircase and my neck was the first thing to hit the ground.

When I got up my body lied there in a pool of blood, I looked up to the stairs and that horrible monster was gone, Tabitha stood there and looked down at me with dead eyes. Wayne was gone. I haven’t seen him since.