Someone Evil This Way Comes
When Gennae opened her eyes again, it was daytime and Debra came in to help her get dressed and feed her. “You’re going to get to have some fun today, little lady, I insist on it!” Debra said cheerfully.
Gennae was sure what she had seen was not a dream, and she said nothing to anyone, not wanting to have them get concerned over Charlotte. As she thought about it, she was thrilled that this ghostly girl had been able to make her walk and go stroll through the old days of the house as if she had been there.
Paul got up, threw on some trashy work clothes and decided to go and explore the property and see what was there before the boys came over and they went to check out the cemetery. He did not want to get his hand made jeans dirty.
He recalled his dream, if that was what it was, from the previous night and thought that now that he was awake it was actually pretty cool, and he wanted to explore his new toy, a two and a half story house that any self-respecting Goth would give several buckles off his clothing and some eye liner for.
John was getting ready to go outside and assess what the place needed, and was in a somewhat pleasant mood since he had a job to go to Monday and so he opened the front door, and found himself face to face with a rather scary looking man who’s right hand was poised to knock on his door.
“That’s what I call efficient.” The man said.
“Can I be of service?” John asked.
“Nope. But I can. Name is Caleb Isogul, and I am partially disabled so I work around here doing little things to supplement my checks. I saw you folks moved in here and I’m sure you could use some help, in a big overgrown place like this.”
“Well the problem is that I’ve been out of work for a bit, and am just going back Monday. My wife has brought in the money and we’re a bit hard up. I think I have about two hundred dollars to play with.
Caleb nodded. “Welp, yell ya what. I’ll mow you a path around the yard, and get the trees so you can navigate them, take me about a day to do, and you give me, say fifty of those dollars for now. Cuz from what I can see you don’t have a mower and you’re going to need a John Deer to get this yard so your daughter with the wheel chair can even get in and out.”
John paused. “Good point. We’ve been carrying her.”
Caleb continued. “I saw you guys when I was passing the other day and it looks like it’s all you can do to get in and out.”
“Okay, fair enough. We can do that.”
“I have to get my mower, be back in an hour?”
“That would be okay.” John said. Caleb shook his hand as if to seal the deal and went back to his pickup truck. “Perfect.” He muttered to himself. He had permission to be here.
Caleb was fairly tall, his long trashy hair brown and tangly, punctuated by a doughnut beard and deep set eyes like an ape. He was not very stout, indeed he looked as if he might have been unhealthy most of his life.
A long long time back, a certain man named Wesley Sterns had been brought into the world in the south, and had grown up with a basic education in a wooden school house that served as a church on the weekends. Wesley had been the typical youth of his time, growing up with dusty boots, ragged and stained clothes, smoking tobacco, and drinking whenever he could. Wesley was largely a southern product, but he was not concerned with the position of black people in society, his father did not own any, and he never cared to. He spent his time working livestock, and being what was generally defined as a cowboy.
Things began to change when Wesley became a young man and fell in with the trouble makers of the territory, and he began gambling and chasing loose women. He began doing business with a young gentleman named George Rogers, another stormy tempered, but honest and ethical young southerner who himself did not care about the black race, but did consider them inferior to white people. The two young men were stuck working together, even though they often were at odds because George did not drink except socially, smoke occasionally, but did not chase loose skirts.
In the 1850’s the region they lived in was rife with struggling viewpoints over slavery and states’ rights, and both of these young men found themselves on the losing end when the livestock trade they made their living in fell apart, and they blamed the northern business men in charge for the loss.
In the late 1850’s Wesley Sterns teamed with several men he knew and they began to ride the territory robbing banks and trains both to get money, but also to slap the northern citizenry in the face for the perceived damage to their livelihoods. George’s wife and one child died in one of the epidemics that often it the Victorian citizens, and he was angry, grieving, and taking his feelings out with the train robberies.
The gang was very successful and profited from their illegal doings until a shrewd gentleman set an armed force upon one of his trains, and in a gun battle in 1859 the Sterns Gang found themselves going to prison for armed robbery.
At the outbreak of the American Civil war, the brother of George Rogers, a big bearded man who had tried through a career in politics to avoid the war, became an officer in the southern army and the government had offered freedom to Wesley and George in exchange for their service in the army, since in their career of robbing they had killed no one and only stolen money. They accepted, and a cavalry unit was born.
Wesley Sterns had served in the same unit as George, and they had used the war as cover for yet more robberies, stealing money and concealing it as they went.
Confederate cavalry was always on horseback and so they moved constantly. George was very clever at orchestrating robberies of Union trains, banks, and wagons carrying payroll for the union army.
But keeping a pile of heavy gold, or other profit from their crimes was difficult, so they developed a system of hiding their gains and keeping track of them so they could return at the end of the war, largely in case the south lost, and they wanted to rebuild their lives…and of course the normal desire to keep a ton of money they stole, all considered an “act of war” and therefore not something they had to worry about prison for.
Wesley was severely wounded, having a leg crippled, and as war does, it claimed the lives of several of the men from the gang, which meant there was very good odds of loose change hidden in various places if one could find it.
After the war, Wesley Sterns married a certain young lady and had a daughter who became an ancestor of Caleb Isogul.
Caleb was born and struggled through school with learning disabilities and was good at very little, except studying history. He also had a fascination with ghost lore, and as a young adult he became convinced that his ancestor, Wesley, had left a small fortune hidden someplace which would be his ticket to freedom from financial woes. The fact that others had found those kinds of treasures only made him more convinced he was right and more determined to find any if they existed.
To that end, Caleb Isogul had made it his life’s ambition to retrace every step Wesley took when he was alive, and check every rock, sleeping insect, blade of grass and FedEx container in a belief that gold awaited his discovery.
This had led him to become a handy man for John’s grandmother in her last days, and after she had died he spent time in jail, and eventually wound up where he was now, standing beside his pickup truck putting a medallion around his neck which was credited with the ability to ward off the effects of spirits.
Indeed, Caleb was aware of Charlotte in the house, and other spirits, and did not want these pesty obstacles between him and the fortune in gold he was sure existed that promised him a brighter future.
It was a bright Saturday morning, and Gennae was dressed in summer clothes, her wheel chair boarded into the van to join Debra as Paul decided that running around the mall going through stores was much less exciting than exploring the dark secrets of the property his family inherited. It was one thing to rent, one thing to visit, and ahhhhhh, it was the lottery to own an old house particularly a spooky old one that was, ding da da ding, within spitting distance from an old grave yard.
Little kids like candy stores, big boys like pickup trucks and girls, and upper teenage Goths like to walk through the gates of cemeteries with two rather fun loving local kids like Jerry Stroh and Robert Belgrade flanking them.
Seriously, a pile of grave stones towering over boxes filled with dry bones could promise no less than adventure, of course.
“See, the problem is that we came to this place during the day time.” Jerrold said. “No self-respecting person goes to a cemetery in broad daylight unless it’s for a funeral.”
Robert good naturedly looked at his step brother as they walked. “You remember last year….” Jerrold cut him off, pointing his finger at him, in mock aggression. “I wanted those flowers, I asked for them and the grave digger guy said it was okay. That was excusable!”
Paul was carefully examining stones and reading names and dates and he replied “does Betsy care if…” Robert laughed out loud. “Dude, Betsy doesn’t care if you roam the bone yards, heck, she might offer you drinks and cookies. That old woman is more off beat and odd than anyone I know. She’s been known to take that hearse, pack it with kids and drive through here in October, start telling stories and pretend the hearse broke down just to freak them out.”
“Does it work?” Paul asked.
Jerrold grinned. “Not really, since we’re the main people she’s taken for rides.”
As they talked, John was going outside and getting into the van with Debra. Caleb Isogul pulled up into the driveway and Debra looked at John.
“Who’s the inmate?” She asked.
John replied His name is Caleb Isogul and he made a deal for fifty bucks to mow the yard and trim the trees enough to maneuver. He’ll be done by the time we get back.”
“Ok. I knew some things around this area were scary. I’m checking to see if there are any rewards out on him.”
Gennae was toying with her phone and unaware of Caleb’s presence, and John shook his head. “The dude said he was going to work outside. I never said anything about going indoors.”
Debra drove out of the yard and Caleb ignored them and freed up his lawn mower.
He fired it up and as they drove down the road, he shut the engine off. He then looked at the house and fondled a medallion on his chest.
Caleb walked purposefully up to the front door of the house, pulled a large screwdriver out of his back pocket and, almost without stopping, he pried the door open and walked into the house. As he entered, a breeze blew through the whole house. Caleb stomped from room to room talking to himself.
“So. Once again, I say to myself, I am a wounded Confederate soldier, and I have some money I have to let my family know about. This old dump hasn’t changed in forever, and before this stupid bunch of clowns remodels or something I have to find that thing.”
Caleb went to a door that led to the basement. He shoved the door open and went into the darkness. “Good. Those hicks haven’t had time to come down here.”
Caleb dug out a flash light and began carefully perusing the basement. “I don’t care if I have to do this fifty times, if that’s what it takes to find that stash I’ll do it.”
Caleb ran his hands over the walls, checking every little crack and carefully examining the basement. As he did, a wind filled the house and curtains swayed, candelabras shivered and dust billowed in clouds where Debra had not cleaned.
Caleb came out of the basement clutching his medallion. “You can’t hurt me, Charlotte, you can’t do a thing! Why don’t you just show me where it is and I’ll get out of here!”
Caleb walked from room to room. “I know, you’re all mad because of that old goat. She was going to die anyhow! Why can’t you just go sleep in your grave, you putz, you’ve been DEAD FOR OVER A HUNDRED YEARS! Did you hear me, Charlotte Long, YOU HAVE BEEN DEAD FOR…”
Caleb stopped suddenly, and stared. He froze in place like a statue and his eyes locked into Gennae’s room. There it was! His heart sped up, and he gasped. It was right there, next to that stupid porcelain faced doll with the missing eye! Caleb could not believe it! He felt his hand shake and got weak in the knees. It was right there!
Caleb was about to launch himself into the room when he heard voices and suddenly he saw Paul come up the porch with two friends. Caleb panicked and he bolted for the back door, and as Paul walked into the house, he opened the door and swiftly moved out of the house, around front, and started the mower and began mowing.
Paul went to the kitchen, his friends babbling happily as they raided the refrigerator like raccoons, talking about history, ghosts, and cemeteries.
Caleb mowed for a moment then stopped. He sat hard on his rear end on the ground. He had been to this house over and over, and all of the hours he spent in it searching for nothing finally came to that little room. There it was, within his grasp.
Standing up, Caleb bit his knuckles as he heart raced. Now he knew where it was and nothing was going to keep him from getting to it.
Caleb mowed the yard as the boys ate lunch, then he came to the door and introduced himself. Paul was pleasant, shook his hand, and gave him a drink. As Caleb smiled and was about to turn and walk away into the yard he saw an old mirror in the foyer and in it was the face of Charlotte Long looking out at him, her face filled with anger.
Caleb sat and drank from the can Paul had given him. He liked Goth kids, always friendly and easy to get along with. Suddenly Caleb felt so much better, more reassured. But he had a problem.
Years ago he had traced Great granddaddy Wesley to this house, but in his campaign to connect the clues, he had stepped on the old woman’s footsies too many times and she had told him to leave.
Realistically there was not enough of her feeble old brain left to think anyhow, she was just some old broad who had a house full of dolls she spoke to, but that spectral vapor known as Charlotte had taken shine to her, and since Charlotte was stuck like a squashed bug to the house he had totally gotten on her bad side by helping the old gal into the great beyond.
Yeah, probably it was not such a great idea to tick off a ghost if you knew the secret to your great grand pappy’s fortune was in the walls she lived in. Caleb looked at the house. Suddenly there was a cracking sound, and Caleb jumped a split second before a large limb overhead came smashing down where he had been standing, and he realized that if his plot to get into that kid’s room was to be figured out, he needed to get out of Charlotte’s presence.
Caleb mowed, then began cutting g the limbs and was nearly done when, ahhhhh, blessing of blessings, those boys headed back to whatever adventure they were enjoying and alas, the house was his again.
No sooner than had they gone down the road than did Caleb make for the front door, pleasantly unlocked this time, and make for the bedroom.
As Caleb got to it, the large door to the sitting room swung shut, almost hitting him. Caleb grew angry and began to force the door.
Wind blasted through the room and the coffee table crossed the floor and struck Caleb in the back of his legs and knocked him down. He stood and shoved it away.
“I’m not afraid of you, you outdated spook! I get that thing and you can forget I exist, LET ME BE, DO YOU HEAR ME CHARLOTTE?!” Caleb shouted.
He turned to the door and began forcing it open with all his might. Overhead the hanging chandelier began to swing and Caleb looked up to see the chain holding it come undone and it dropped toward him.
Caleb dodged, then as he was about to have one more go at the door, he saw the van come into the yard. Caleb ran for the back door again, and the table moved back where it had been, the chain pulled back up and the room returned to the way it had been. The door opened as the family came into the house and Caleb took a piece of tree limb and threw it in the stack he had made.
He was dripping sweat as John walked up. “Wow. You’ve been working hard! Here is the fifty.” He said. Caleb smiled. “I have to finish up a bit, but we’re good.”
John looked around. “No problem, no problem. Why not take the rest of today and relax and finish tomorrow? We can arrange a little more pay. You’ve done great.”
Caleb nodded. “Yeah, I think I’ve done enough for today. Thank ya.” He said.
John smiled and the two men parted company. Caleb got in his truck shakily and drove away, as a curtain in an upper window moved, a face regarded him, then vanished.