Strange Dominions: a collection of paranormal short stories (short story books) (3 page)

“Who cares?” Tommy replied, tossing aside the iron and beginning his eager ascent.

Robbie hesitated. The ladder’s appearance had unsettled him almost as much as when he had first clapped eyes on the wreck, moments earlier. An unreasonable fear gripped him. He wanted to turn and run. But what horrors, if any, could possibly await him here that he had not already seen elsewhere.

The hurricane lamp Sarah had stolen from her father’s shed sputtered into life illuminating the musty interior of the wheelhouse. Even by torchlight its denudation had already been made apparent. Only the wooden helm remained, overlaid by the same thick matting of dust and cobwebs that were prevalent throughout. Long since disconnected from the rudder, it spun freely beneath Tommy’s eager hands and whatever thoughts of exploration they had entertained were quickly overtaken by the free range of their imaginations.

Their self-appointed leader took to his role as the infamous pirate, Blackbeard, with gusto and he was snarling orders to his motley crew of cutthroats when a distant, mournful drone brought their seafaring adventure to an untimely end. They listened, pricking up their ears at the slightest sound.

“What was that, Tommy?” whispered Sarah.

“A foghorn!” Robbie replied.

Tommy laughed. “Don’t be daft. There aren’t any around here.”

“Well it does smell like the seaside in here!” the youngster then announced, picking up on the growing scent of ozone-enriched air.

Sarah sniffed the dank atmosphere. “He’s right, Tommy!” Spooked, and clinging to him as though her very life depended on it she whimpered, “I wanna go home. Let’s go home.”

“It’s too late for that,” warned Robbie.

Both followed his wide-eyed gaze and, horror-stricken, they watched as the sudden appearance of a spectral-like image of the wheelhouse began phasing in and out with its physical surroundings.

Timeworn timbers, seemingly transformed to new, groaned in sympathy as it began to pitch back and forth, the forceful illusion of movement compelling them to brace themselves against the cabin walls. The encounter was short-lived, however, seconds at most.

Though he had never actually seen one, Tommy held an unquestioning belief in ghosts. People had ghosts, and probably animals, too, but a boat? That was stretching things too far.

Something else also bothered him. What they had seen was not a true representation of the boat as it was now, but had appeared fully equipped and well maintained, as it might have been long ago.

“Let’s get out’v here!” he ordered, the hairs on the back of his neck bristling sharply.

His companions were way ahead of him. They were already scrambling out onto the deck, where yet another startling discovery awaited them; the ladder had vanished, and just when they thought things couldn’t get much worse they heard the sound of lapping water against the unseaworthy hull. They were trapped, seemingly becalmed in an unearthly fogbank, on a sea that had literally materialized out of nowhere.

Back in the claustrophobic confines of the wheelhouse tensions began to surface, the creeks and groans of the boat’s less than seaworthy keel serving to magnify their desperate plight.

“Shut up, man!” Tommy barked in response to the girl’s none stop questioning about what the hell was happening to them.

She fell silent, affording him time to collect his thoughts.

“Well it looks like we’re stuck here - wherever here is - so I guess we’ve just got to make the best of it,” he said, at length.

“But we could all starve to death,” mewled Sarah.

“This is a fishin’ boat, isn’t it?” Tommy reminded her.

She nodded, nervously twining a lock of her hair round her finger.

“Then all we have to do is find a fishin’ net!” he told her.

Heartened by the gangly youth’s reasoning, and finally calming down, she added, optimistically, “Uh-huh, and maybe a ship will come along and we could signal it.”

Tommy just stared at Sarah and rolled his eyes.

Robbie remained silent throughout. He, alone, knew they were powerless to influence the unfolding course of events. Whatever was going to happen would happen – had already happened – and nothing on Earth could prevent it.

Wraith-like eddies of fog flowed and shifted as the boys half-heartedly combed the deck for remnants of netting, partly to appease Sarah’s starvation fears but mainly to help keep their minds off just what was happening to them. The discovery of a hatchway beneath a heavy tarpaulin had offered a glimmer of hope, though all too fleetingly. It had been securely battened down with a heavy-duty padlock that was so filth encrusted that even with a key it would have been impossible to open.

“Hell’s bells!” scowled Tommy, “Now what are we gonna do?”

Realising there was little that could be done the boys kept watch at the bow, hardly a word passing between them, as Sarah sat in the wheelhouse once again wondering how they would survive.

Tommy spent most of his time studying his freckle-faced companion, the youngest and latest recruit to his gang. He had taken it upon himself to educate the former ‘townie’ in their provincial ways and had made some headway in that regard. But Robbie had come across as a troubled kid even then, overly preoccupied with his thoughts and with little or nothing at all to say for himself.

Endeavouring to make light of their situation, Tommy quipped, “Is this straight out’v the X-Files or what?”

“It’s worser th’n that,” Robbie gravely replied, “It’s for real, and it’s all my fault. I shouldn’t ‘ve come here.”

Tommy looked askance at him, “What are ya talkin’ about? It was me that brought ya here. If it’s anybody’s fault it’s mine,” he said.

The youngster knew his friend could never understand the dark and personal history he kept from him. How could Tommy, though older than himself, yet still a mere kid, fully comprehend what a team of scientists had failed so miserably to do? Even
they
were at a loss to fully explain or prevent the strange goings-on at his former home, and now it was happening all over again.

The cold and inexplicable cold spots around the house were just the beginning. Loud raps, footfalls, the sound of slamming doors and breaking crockery became commonplace, despite there being no physical cause for them.

Then, on one particular night, he was awoken by the sound of agonising groans coming from outside his bedroom door. Fearful for his recently widowed mother’s well being, he stepped out onto the landing and was met by a sight so appallingly grotesque that at first he thought he was dreaming.

Sprawled between the bathroom and his room lay the dishevelled figure of a white-haired man, his wildly glaring eyes ballooning out of their sockets from a face so savagely deformed with pain that he looked almost inhuman. Gobs of spittle spumed from his mouth in long, glistening threads onto the carpet. One mind numbing seizure after another racked his body as it arched impossibly from the floor, before slumping back and issuing a low, deep-throated gurgle.

But for his timely scream, Robbie’s mother might have missed the sickening spectacle of the wretched phantom evanescing into thin air. That night she broke a lifelong vow and allowed her son into her bed.

Throughout the following days things steadily worsened. Angry, disembodied shrieks turned the air blue with their foul outpourings, occasioned by disturbing visions of a shadowy form stealing through the house. Robbie’s mother knew that this thing – whatever it was – wasn’t about to leave them in peace. It was then she determined to seek the aid of professionals.

During their initial investigations, the assigned team of parapsychologists uncovered a disturbing secret concerning the house and one of its former tenants, Jacob Dewberry. His history of mental illness was well known to his beleaguered neighbours, as were his violent outbursts. It came as no surprise, therefore, to learn that following a particularly frenzied flare-up their neighbour had taken to his bathroom and had drunk the poison that ended his unhappy existence.

The property had changed hands several times since; yet nothing untoward had ever been reported by any of its tenants. So why, after such a lengthy period, had the apparent earthbound spirit of Jacob Dewberry suddenly chosen to manifest itself?

The abrupt thud of wood on wood shook the youngster from his recollections.

Tommy was looking in the direction of the wheelhouse, fully expecting to see Sarah join them on deck. She didn’t appear. Convinced that she had been the source of the noise he settled back to resume his watch. Seconds later the wheelhouse door burst open.

“What are you two playing at?” Sarah demanded to know, “It isn’t funny tryin’ to scare me like that.”

Robbie’s face blanched. “It wasn’t us!” he gasped, directing their gaze to the face peering at them from behind the porthole of the open cabin door.

Sarah screeched and leapt back in terror, loosing her footing on the wet, cambered decking as the door swung back to reveal the duffel clad presence of the boat’s custodian.

Until then ‘Mad Pedi’ had been nothing more than a name to Robbie. It therefore came as quite a shock to discover he knew her and, more importantly, that she knew him.

Her friendly greeting to him was met with a curt response. Robbie never did quite know how to react to Dr. Martha Pedigrew. Past experience had taught him that though she was kind there was a cold and impersonal side to her nature that frequently surfaced when it came to the dogged pursuit of truth.

“My, my, what an enterprising bunch you are,” she said, helping Sarah to her feet, “It was very clever of you to steal on board during the night. Very clever indeed.”

Tommy’s proud boast, that it had all been his idea fell on deaf ears. She seemed far too interested in their timid friend to give it further consideration.

She studied Robbie intently. “What’s wrong?” she said, “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”

He said nothing.

“Well, Robbie, have you seen something?”

He shook his head.

Tommy couldn’t believe his eyes. “Ya kiddin’!” he cut in, embarking upon a long-drawn-out and histrionic explanation of what had taken place since their arrival on board.

Her uncovering of the truth filled Robbie with dread. Having to endure her intrusive and exhaustive tests all over again was the last thing he wanted.

That they both knew one another and shared a common secret was as plain as the nose on Sarah Elliot’s face. What intrigued her more, however, was how Martha had gotten on board the boat in the first place.

“Up the ladder of course,” she responded to Sarah’s query, “How else?”

“But there isn’t any ladder. We’re in the middle of the sea!”

“No you’re not.”

A look of relief spread across all three faces.

“And there is a ladder now,” she assured them, “You see, it was I who removed it earlier to prevent you from leaving.”

When asked why she had done such a thing she replied, “All in good time, children. All in good time.”

Tommy looked over the bow rail to confirm what she had said, and his face dropped. “Well it ain’t here now, and by the sound of it we’re still surrounded by water,” he declared.

An unbelieving Martha investigated and was shocked to discover the boy told the truth. It was impossible to see the water through the thick fog, but she certainly could hear it.

As the principal scientist to head the investigation into the Dewberry haunting, Martha was fully aware of Robbie’s extraordinary abilities. Had they, she now wondered, evolved to include a psychokinetic ability: a conscious or unconscious ability to impart physical motion to an object and change his surroundings through the power of the mind.

Certainly, the ladder could not have just slipped away as she had tied it down to prevent such an occurrence, and she most definitely hadn’t walked on water to do so. Furthermore, her in-depth study of the Dewberry case had led her to believe that the manifestations were not that of some earth-bound spirit, since all attempts to communicate with it had failed and no interaction between it and them had taken place.

A new and exciting possibility had begun to present itself to her - the ancient and widely held belief system of reincarnation. The transmigration of the soul was an ideology she had become irresistibly drawn to.

Had Robbie somehow tapped into a part of Jacob Dewberry’s Akashic Record, a testimony of his earthly life that had become imprinted on the location to be replayed and assessed by him after his death to see how he had advanced or retarded the progress of his soul and others?

The fact the phenomena had occurred only when Robbie was present led her to theorise that he was the mechanism through which the ‘replay’ was made possible. He had, in a sense, become a kind of biological projector.

From then on she had worked towards a new and hidden agenda, orchestrating events and using her advantaged position to pursue her own obsessive need. She had succeeded in relocating the family onto her own home ground, arguing that so long as the boy remained where he was the phenomenon would continue and his mental state would deteriorate even further.

It had taken a certain amount of clout to achieve her aim – local governmental authorities weren’t exactly sympathetic towards her work – but it had been worth the effort. As she had anticipated, Robbie had branched out to explore his new surroundings. Inevitably his new-found friends and innate curiosity had drawn him to the boat.

“Is the boat haunted?” Sarah asked.

“No it isn’t,” replied Martha, “At least, not in the way you might think.”

Sarah gave a sigh of relief.

In her long and illustrious career the only bogeymen Martha had ever encountered were ignorance and superstition, and nowhere were they more deeply entrenched than in the fertile mind of a child. Disabusing them of their supernatural beliefs, therefore, wasn’t going to be easy, particularly as it would involve revealing Robbie’s secret.

But the youngster had already resigned himself to its revelation, and things had gone too far to turn back now. Reluctantly, he gave Martha permission to tell his story.

Couching it in terms they could best comprehend, Martha recounted the history of Robbie’s extraordinary episodes then sat back, awaiting the flood of questions that would inevitably follow. She wasn’t to be disappointed. All but Robbie chirped in. He had heard it all before and it hadn’t made his life any easier. Knowing there were no such things as honest-to-goodness ghosts hadn’t made his experiences anyway less frightening.