Ghost Shadows (17 page)

“Oh yes,” she replied enthusiastically. “It was one of my favorite works.”

“Uh
,
yes.” He said. “That was really
. . .
something. I was wondering, do you know where that shutter came from
?
I mean
. . .
originally?”
 

The woman seemed to be thinking for a while then said somewhat reluctantly, “You know, I am not quite certain. You see. My husband buys all of the items I paint from a variety of sources, such as yard sales, auctions, fire sales and such.”

“It is very important to me that I learn more about the origin of the shutter
,
” Eddie said, noticing a strange look appear on the woman's face. He quickly made up a lie saying, “When people come to our home and look at our wall hangings, they all want to know about the artist and how to get in touch with them. They often also ask about the origin of the piece of furniture the artist chose to paint. I suppose it gives them a better feel for the work or something. Is there any possible way your husband might recall where he bought the shutters?”
 

The woman now seemed more at ease. “Why don't I ask him when I get home, and if you are still interested, you can give me a call or email me? I will be happy to let you know what I find out.” She reached down and picked up one of her business cards, handing it to Eddie, who tucked it into his jacket pocket.

Then he said to the woman, “Thank you very much. I will get in touch with you in a few days and see what you have found out.” Eddie had never gotten so deeply involved in Maxine's purchases before; then again, none of her prior purchases had managed to scare the daylights out of him either.

Once they arrived back home, Maxine began carrying each piece from room to room deciding where it would look best. After several hours of work, placing hangers on the walls with Maxine supervising to assure the locations were correct, all of the newly purchased items were in place, and Eddie was ready for dinner.

After dinner Eddie retired to his study to work on paying some bills. Looking up from his desk he saw the shutter hanging outside in the hall. He had a direct view of the strange thing from his desk. He tried ignoring it, but the more he tried the more he seemed to want to stare at it. Frustrated, he got up, went over and closed the door to his study blocking the view.

When he was just about finished, he thought he heard what sounded like someone laughing. It was not a happy laugh but one sounding maniacal, like the laughter of a crazy man. He got up from his desk and quickly opened the door to his study to see if he could pinpoint the source of the laughter. But as soon as the door was opened, the laughter stopped. Eddie shook his head, deciding it was time to pack it in for the day, as he was obviously exhausted.

He went to the family room and joined Maxine for some evening television before going to bed. He no sooner sat down in his recliner than he was fast asleep. Next thing he knew, Maxine shook him out of a sound sleep appearing frightened. It took him a moment or two to get reoriented with his surroundings and asked, “What's wrong Maxine?”

“Eddie. Do you smell that?” she asked.

Eddie took a moment to sniff the air then replied, “Yes, I think I smell smoke.” He jumped from his chair as Maxine followed him down the hall toward his office, which seemed to be the source of the smell. Inside, he found the contents of his trashcan ablaze. Without thinking, he opened the French doors leading out to their patio from the office, and grabbed the trashcan, throwing it out the door
and
landing it square in the middle of their swimming pool.
 

“What happened, Eddie?” she asked. “What were you doing in here that could have caused the fire? You weren't smoking again were you?”

Eddie had quit smoking about ten years earlier and had, on occasion, had relapsed during that time. “Absolutely not!” Eddie insisted. “I don't have any cigarettes anywhere in the house, and I don't keep lighters or matches in the office either.”

“Well, something must have started it!” Maxine said with an accusatory tone. “It certainly didn't start by itself. Just make sure everything else is secure around here, and then come to bed. I've had enough excitement for today.” With that, she left of the office, pulling the study door closed behind her.

Eddie stood scratching his head. He was certain there was nothing he could have possibly done
that
would have caused a fire to ignite, but obviously something had caused it. He closed the French doors to the patio, watching the smoldering trashcan glowing in the night as it slowly sunk down into the pool. “Just great!” Eddie thought. “One more job for me to do tomorrow
. . .
clean the stupid swimming pool.”
 

Then Eddie heard it again, the strange maniacal laughter coming from somewhere out in the hall. He threw the door to his study open, but the laughter immediately stopped. He looked across the hall at the shutter, certain he would once again see the hideous image emerge from the background, but it did not. Then, shaking his head to clear his mind, Eddie closed the door to his office and went to bed.

Over the course of the next several days Eddie and Maxine continued to find strange mini-fires throughout the house. The day after the trashcan fire, Eddie had gone around the house changing the batteries in each of the smoke detectors since they had obviously failed to warn them about the office fire. Now with fresh batteries, as soon as any smoke was detected the alarms sounded.

One day they had found a scented decorative candle knocked over on its side, which had set fire to a lace doily. That fire was blamed on the cat, Mr. Kitty, who they assumed must have overturned the candle. Another time they smelled gas and found one of the burners on their kitchen gas stove had been left turned on. That instance they blamed on a “senior moment
,
” being cautious not to point the finger of blame at each other. There were other such near misses throughout the week, and there were also several times when both Eddie and Maxine thought they heard strange laughter throughout the house.
 

On Thursday Eddie noticed Mr. Kitty sitting in the hall outside of
the
study staring at the shutter hanging on the wall. The cat was growling low and deep in the back of his throat, something he rarely did. Shortly thereafter, the cat was nowhere to be found. Eddie had suspected he may have gotten outside and was roaming the neighborhood. That was, until Saturday morning when he found the cat's charred and burned carcass lying in the bushes next to his office patio door. He disposed of the cat but never said anything to Maxine, assuming it was better if she thought the cat had run away than to know of its horrible demise.
 

Eddie realized there was something about the shutter, that one particular work. All of the problems they were experiencing started happening after bringing the shutter into the house. Eddie went to the hall closet and reached into his jacket pocket, retrieving one of the business cards from the woman at the craft show.

He walked outside and using his cell phone dialed the number. The woman answered on the second ring. He introduced himself and asked what she had found out about the shutter they had bought.

“Yes. Well
. . .
” she said hesitantly, “George, my husband, luckily remembered exactly where he bought
the shutter. In fact, he bought about thirty exactly like it at the same time. He was traveling through Virginia and saw a sign for a fire sale. It was a place called
t
he Shady Rest just outside of Fredericksburg. I think it was some sort of convalescent center or something like that
that
had burned down during a tragic fire. I hope the information
is
helpful. And I hope everything is
OK
, and you are happy with the work.”
 

“Ah
,
yes
. . .
” Eddie said absently. “Everything is fine. As I said, I was simply curious. Thank you very much.”
 

Eddie hung up the phone and then walked to his office, being careful as he walked past the shutter to act as nonchalant as possible. He felt a bit foolish behaving this way, but there were just so many strange and dangerous events taking place during the past week, he could not take any chances.

When he got to his office, he closed the door and immediately logged into his computer, doing an internet search using the words “Shady Rest” in quotes, followed by “Fredericksburg, Virginia
,
” and finally the word “fire
.
” Within two seconds he found exactly what he was looking for. He clicked the link and read a newspaper account of the fire.
 

He learned
that
the Shady Rest was not exactly a rehabilitation or convalescent center but was actually a sort of insane asylum. It only permitted non-violent offenders to reside there for community safety reasons, but something had gone very wrong. One of their guests, as they referred to them, rather than inmates, had an undocumented violent past. The man's name was Mason Tennyson.
 

Mason
was
apparently sent to Shady Rest under court order to be analyzed to determine where best to send him for his actual treatment. Mason was a pyromaniac who had been arrested for setting numerous fires around town, which resulted in thousands of dollars worth of damage.
 

The authorities were not aware of anyone being hurt in any of the fires
,
but of course they didn't know about all of his other fire-related activities. For example, they did not know about the hundreds of
stray cats and dogs he had burned to death or the several homeless people he had kidnapped, taken into the woods, tied to tree
s,
and set ablaze.
 

Apparently, one night while the residents of
t
he Shady Rest slept, Mason went from room to room setting fires. The fires quickly raged out of control turning the Victorian era mansion into a furious inferno. Mason tried to escape through a side window but found its shutters locked closed, blocking his escape. The raging fire had blocked him from leaving the room as well. All tolled, seventy-five people perished in the fire including Mason Tennyson, whose charred body was found stuck fast to the window shutter where it burned as he struggled for fresh air w
h
ile trying to escape the inferno.
 

Eddie's breath caught in his throat as he realized
that
the shutter out in the hall had to be the very shutter to which Mason Tennyson's body had been fused. He realized much more than the crazy man's flesh had been merged with the shutter, but his very essence, his evil soul had become one with the shutter as well. And now that wicked spirit had invaded the sanctuary of his home.
 

Eddie jumped up from his chair and raced across the room throwing open the office door. He could now hear the maniacal laughter louder and more evil than ever before. As he stared at the shutter hanging on the wall, the face once again began to appear in the background. It seemed to have three dimensions as if it were rising up from the surface of the shutter. It was charred black, and its burned flesh hung in smoldering chunks from its exposed soot-covered skull. The large white eyes seemed to bulge from their sockets, as all that still remained around them were the fleshless orbital bones.  

Next, two
 
 charred hands emerge
d
from the background, their bones jutting from burned flesh which was barely existent. Within seconds the creature's entire torso extended out from the shutter, its artwork now engulfed in a mass of white-hot flames.
 

Maxine heard the commotion and came down the hall toward Eddie screaming with horror at the site
unfolding before her. With one quick movement of its hand the specter of Mason sent a ball of fire down the hall striking Maxine square in the chest, spreading instantly all over her body
,
engulfing her in flames. Eddie watched in terror as Maxine's flesh began to drip like tallow from her still standing body, her once lovely eyes melting like marshmallows, running from her skull.
 

Before Eddie could react, the creature now laughing like the madman it once was, sent a ball of fire in his direction and after a few agonizing seconds of searing pain, only darkness remained.

Soon the entire house was ablaze, and before the fire company could arrive, it was completely engulfed and unable to be saved.

Several days later after the fire investigators had completed their work, two local vagrants were sifting through the remains hoping to find something valuable. One of them stumbled upon the shutter laying face down among the wreckage.

“Hey. What's this?” The one man asked.

The other replied, “It looks like a shutter
,
you know
,
for a window.”
 

“What's it doing inside the house? Shouldn't it be on the outside?” He replied.

“Don't you know nothin'?” the second man replied. “It's like a decoration
.
S
omething people hang on their walls like a painting. Hell, it probably had something painted on it one time.”
 

The first vagrant looked down at the shutter then flipped if over. “Holy Mary Mother of God!” The man screamed as he backed away from the shutter.