The Red Light (5 page)

The rest of the family slept
peacefully that night except their covers kept coming off and would
wake up momentarily freezing cold and pull them back up.

Chapter 8

Sarah woke up to the sound of Mike
starting a fire, he had a hard time getting it going but eventually
got it lit and soon there was heat radiating from the huge stone
fireplace.

“
Look at Mr. Mountain Man,
starting a fire to keep his family warm,” Sarah said
laughing.

“
Yeah, I’ll have a long
day of chopping wood and hunting deer so we can eat,” Mike said
jokingly.

“
Oh my God, you can’t kill
those sweet innocent animals,” Sarah said still laughing, “but
speaking of something to eat, we need to go to the store, and our
‘regirator’ is almost empty.”

“
You need to stop calling
it that or Mary will never learn the correct way to say
it.”

“
Oh, I’m just playing
around, it’s Saturday, so let’s get the kids up and dressed, and go
to the store.”

“
First, I’m going to take
a hot shower,” Mike said shivering next to the
fireplace.

“
Hmm, that sounds good,
maybe I’ll come in and join you,” Sarah teasingly said.

Mike went through their bedroom and
grabbed a towel; he went in the bathroom and got into the shower,
making the water as hot as he could stand it. While washing his
hair he had shampoo run down into his eyes as it had done so many
times before, his eyes burned and he had to keep them closed. He
heard the door open and close, and shortly after the shower curtain
opened and he reached out and put his arms around Sarah.

“
So you did decide to come
join me.”

“
Mm hmm,” She answered
back.

He pushed her hair back as
the water ran over them, he leaned down and kissed her holding her
close, then suddenly the water went totally cold and he went
backwards quickly under the shower head trying to get out of the
way of the stream, he rubbed his eyes and turned the water off, but
Sarah wasn’t there,
maybe she got out of
the shower quick when it went cold,
he
thought to himself.

“
What caused that,” he
said while pulling the curtain open, but was stunned to see no one
there. The door flew open and Sarah rushed in and closed it
back.

“
I’m sorry about the cold
water; I needed to fill the coffee pot so we would have coffee
after our shower.”

Mike was in shock, how could he have
just kissed her in the shower when she wasn’t even in the bathroom.
He suddenly felt dizzy and fell down hitting his right knee hard on
the side of the tub. “Oh my God,” Sarah screamed reaching trying to
help him up. “Are you okay?”

All that Mike could do was grunt and
groan in pain, Sarah helped him out of the shower and rubbed him
with the towel as he sat on the edge of the tub. “We should get you
to a doctor and make sure it isn’t cracked,” Sarah said with a
concerned look on her face.

“
No, I’ll be fine just let
me sit here for a little while and it’ll be okay.”

“
Are you sure? It is
already turning purple.”

“
It’s not broken just
banged up, if I go to a doctor they will just tell me to put ice on
it and keep off it for a while. I’ll get dressed and put an ice
pack on it while the rest of you get ready,” Mike said while
holding a towel on his knee.

Sarah agreed and went to get an ice
pack and wrapped it in a hand towel, she yelled at Teddy and Mary
to get up as she walked past the couch and took the pack to Mike.
Mike was sliding his pant leg over his injured knee, and is trying
not to let her know how much it really hurt.

“
I’ll get the kids up and
ready,” Sarah said as she walked toward their bedroom door, but she
stopped and turned around facing him while he sat on the bed
getting dressed. “Why did it scare you so badly, when I came into
the bathroom? You looked like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

Mike sat there for a few seconds
before answering, “I was in deep thought thinking about work and
you just took me by surprise, that’s all it was.”

Sarah accepted the answer and left the
room, she went and shook Mary and Teddy awake, they were both still
in a deep sleep and rose up slowly rubbing their eyes, sitting on
the couch like they were in a daze. She helped the children get
dressed and brushed their hair then told them to go on the kitchen
and eat some cereal before they left for the store.

Mike came in a little bit later; he
had limped down the hallway to a closet that had some of Aunt
Penny’s belongings stored in it. Digging through it he pulled out a
cane; she had walked with a limp most of her life from a leg injury
as a young child.

“
Daddy what’s that?” Mary
asked while Teddy and Sarah looked at the cane.

“
It’s something to help
daddy walk and not fall down again until my leg gets
better.”

“
You look old now,” Teddy
said laughing jokingly.

“
You had better not pick
on me,” Mike said as he raised the cane and shook it toward Teddy
and laughed.

They had breakfast and got ready to
leave, Mike called someone to look at the heater and they said they
would be there around three. They piled into the minivan and headed
toward town.

The family had a good time
at the store, everyone got what foods they wanted, Mary loves
Lunchables and Teddy loves to eat hot dogs and macaroni. Mike was
driving up their lane to the house and seen a truck sitting in the
driveway when they got closer they could see the sign on the
door,
Eric’s Heating and Cooling
Repair
.

Mike pulled up beside the truck and
parked, a man was sitting in the driver’s seat waving at them, Mike
and Sarah waved back as they were getting out. He was a heavy set
man; he wore glasses and had on a trucker’s cap, with a hooded
checkered winter coat.

“
Hello, I’m Eric; I’m here
to fix the heat.”

“
Hello, Eric,” Mike said
as he shook the man’s hand, “you’re early.”

“
Yeah, I got finished with
my first job pretty quick this morning, so I came on out here to
see if you were home.”

“
We went to the store, I’m
glad we didn’t go anywhere else,” Mike said to the man.

“
I hope you haven’t been
sitting out here long in the cold,” Sarah said.

“
Oh no, just about fifteen
minutes or so, and I have a good heater in the truck, had a
mechanic fix it last week,” Eric was laughing, “funny huh, heater
repair man had to call someone to fix his heater.”

They all laughed then began to carry
in the groceries; the children liked the man because he told them
funny jokes and didn’t just tell them to get out of the way. Eric
was beginning work on the heater; he and Mike were talking while he
worked.

“
When I first got here I
could swear I heard someone in the house when I
knocked.”

“
Nope, no one else is
here, just us,” Mike said nervously, and he was thinking about what
happened in the shower earlier that morning.

“
Well, probably just
hearing things, out here away from everyone and an old house like
this, not hard to have your imagination run away,” Eric
said.

“
True, it is a very old
house.”

The men talked for about an hour, and
then Eric flipped a switch in the fuse box, the old furnace roared
back to life and began blowing out heat through the house. Mike
thanked him and led him into the kitchen and asked Sarah to write
Eric a check, he shook Mike’s hand and went to his truck and
left.

Sarah was concerned with how much
money they had left in the bank, but she didn’t bother Mike with
that today, he was sitting on the couch with his leg propped up
watching television. The kids were upstairs in their rooms playing,
Sarah sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, it relaxed
her, and black with no sugar is how she loved it.

After sitting there for a while she
decided to go upstairs in her writing room and try to get some of
her new story finished, she was writing a story of a woman who
moves to the country and finds her true love, she normally wrote
children’s stories, but she wanted to try something
different.

Chapter 9

Sarah was sitting at the old wooden
desk writing the first chapter of her book, the story was coming
easily to her and she loved her characters. She left the door open
so she could hear the children if they yell for her, when out of
nowhere the door slammed shut and made her nearly jump out of the
chair; she sat silently but heard no noise.

The light began to flicker, and the
room started to have a red tint, as though there were a red colored
light bulb in the socket. “What do you want?” Sarah asked in a
forceful voice, but there was silence, and the room turned back to
its normal color. As she sat there quietly, she could hear
something outside the window, the sounds of voices and screams
coming from the back yard, she immediately thought that something
was wrong with the kids outside so she sprung up and ran to the
window that they had uncovered in the little writing
room.

Looking out Sarah could see a crowd of
people dragging a man down by the creek, she looked around and it
didn’t look like fall at all, it seemed like summer, the trees were
green and the grass wasn’t dead and brown and covered with leaves,
it was green and lush, it was like she was looking through a portal
of another time but the same place.

There was a man that stood in front of
the crowd that held another man down that was wearing bright
colored clothes and his face was covered in makeup painted like a
clown. He was saying something but she couldn’t make it out, then
the people began beating the man, some had brought tools like
shovels, pitch forks, and axes.

"You all will pay, I swear everyone
will pay!" The man screamed as he was beaten.

The crowd of people tore the man
apart, they were extremely angry at him for some reason, they
didn't just murder him, they cut him into pieces then burnt what
little was left. There was a woman crying aloud and she kept saying
over and over, "He killed them all, he killed them all."

Sarah turned away from the window and
leaned against the desk, still trying to comprehend what she had
just seen, she went back to the window and looked out but it was
normal, the leaves were falling from the trees and the chill of
fall had returned.

She ran downstairs and woke Mike who
was still lying on the couch; Sarah told him everything that she
had seen. "You must have fallen asleep and dreamed it all," Mike
explained.

"No, this was real, I seen them tear
that man apart then burn the pieces, I think he killed a lot of
people, maybe inside this house."

Sarah was insistent with
her story but Mike kept trying to explain it away, she got
frustrated with him and went back upstairs to the secret room. She
sat at the desk with her hands on her head trying to figure out
what was going on, she looked over and seen the diaries stacked
together on the book shelf.
I bet these
have an answer somewhere inside them
, she
thought to herself.

Sarah sat and read through some of the
diaries, she was amazed at how much Penny knew about the history of
the old house, from the time it was built, up until before her
death, but she couldn’t find anything about like what she seen
through the window earlier.

After more than an hour of reading she
finally came onto something, she read how Penny’s Great Uncle Silas
had come to stay for a short time in 1880, he was a circus
performer and traveled a lot, but had become sick and needed a few
months of rest.

Sarah thought about the man she seen
being dragged in the back yard, he was dressed like a clown, maybe
this could be the man she seen, she continued reading.

Great Uncle Silas had a
terrible secret that wasn’t found out until after his death, while
he was traveling with the circus, at some towns he would murder
children, and by the time they were found he was long gone to
another town. During his stay here while most of the family was
gone to town, he murdered two of his nephews Jessup and Thomas that
were the sons of his brother Amon. Some of Amon’s field slaves and
it was told that the whole cellar of this house was covered in
blood. He tore them apart like an animal, the blood sprayed on
everything. The lantern hanging in the cellar was the only light
down there and the blood covered the glass that protected the flame
and made the lantern shine like a bright red light. Uncle Silas was
found cutting up one of the slave children and they dragged him out
into the back yard where he was killed and his body burnt. The
ghosts of the murdered slaves still lurk in this house, and Uncle
Silas is still craving blood. So many people through the years have
reported seeing a red light, this is the light that was in the
basement, the lantern covered in blood spinning and
swinging.

Sarah sat at the desk with her mouth
open, she couldn’t believe that this was real, but she seen it all
happen, and now she read about it, this is why this house is
haunted, it was Mikes Great,Great,Great Uncle Silas that killed all
those people in the basement of this house.