Visions of the Dark

Initially, our research was conducted in our offices. We conducted interviews on patients in order to find the right candidates and fully informed them of the nature of our research into paranormal encounters. After gaining the consent of 21 patients, we began our research by using electromagnetic frequencies while patients were hooked up to an EEG machine.

The results were horribly inconclusive. In Matt’s eyes the results were an utter failure. So we decided to try new methods. Again we met with poor results. This cycle continued until we found ourselves slipping closer and closer into Moody’s original methods. Finally, one day Matt came into my office and announced that he was beginning the renovations to Shockley House.

“It has to be done, Keith. We need the right environment in order to prime the patients. The office here is just too clinical an environment for a ghost sighting.”

Three months later the work was done and the house was refurbished throughout. We were ready to begin with a new batch of eight patients who would be living in the house for a two-week “retreat”. Matt had finally convinced me to keep the real nature of our research from these patients while the experiments were conducted. Gradually, ever so slightly, we had acquiesced on protocols to the point that were now duplicating Moody’s research almost exactly.

We hired on for the staff two nurses, a housemaid who handled cooking and laundry, and a technician to assist with the EEG and EMF machines. Matt and I worked the day shifts and the two nurses were to work the night shifts.

On the third day we still had nothing significant to report. I left for the evening and was awoken in the middle of the night by my phone. I was met with the frantic voice of Nurse Stephenson.

“Dr. Ballinger! You must come quick! Dr. Remy and a patient are fighting!”

“Edith? What are you talking about?”

“Dr. Remy stayed late after you left and apparently tried a procedure on Meagan.”

“A procedure?”

Then there came an awful yell from somewhere in the background and the line went dead. I dressed as fast as I could while trying to call back Edith. She didn’t answer so I tried Matt. There was no answer from his cell either. As I ran out of my house to the car I found myself confronted with a hellish thunderstorm. I was thoroughly soaked by the time I unlocked my car and jumped into the seat.

It’s a wonder I even made it to Shockley House with the storm raging, my car speeding, and me trying to frantically call Matt, Edith, and Mary, the other nurse. No one answered and a feeling of dread began to settle over my rain-drenched body.

When I pulled up to the house the first thing I noticed was how dark the place was. The storm had obviously taken the power out. Lightning cut through the sky followed by a cacophonous boom of thunder. In the brief moment of illumination I saw that the front door stood wide open. I rummaged through the glove compartment and found the small emergency flashlight and then I stole my nerves, took a deep breath, and ran for the house.

No sooner had I made it to the steps than I saw Donald, one of the psyche patients in our experiment, ambling across the yard. I called out to him but he was unresponsive. I ran over to him and was taken aback by the expression on his face. The poor man was in a daze. His features were vacant and his eyes glazed. He acted as if unaware that the rain was pelting his face. He was mumbling something I couldn’t make out.

I tried to talk to him but it was useless. I managed to hold him by the arm and guide him to the back seat of my car. “Wait here Donald,” I said even though I knew he didn’t hear me. It was then that I was able to discern what he was mumbling.

“It’s always watching me. It’s always watching me. It’s always watching me. . . .”

I shut the car door and made my way to the front door again.

The house was dark and quiet. I played the flashlight over the front room but saw nothing. “Matt!” I yelled into the darkness. “Hello! Matt! Are you there? Edith! Mary! Hello!” Nothing.

I started towards the old office of Dr. Moody. Then a blood curdling scream split the silence from somewhere above me. The flashlight beam shot up the stairs just in time to see a shape flying towards me. By the time I realized what it was the body landed head first on the first few stairs with a sickening crack.

I rushed over to the body and rolled it over. It was Mary; one of the nurses. Her head was flopped over to one side and blood was coming from her nose, mouth, and ears. She had broken her neck upon impact against the angulated stairs. The worst part was her eyes. They were wide open staring into oblivion but still held a look of horror; as if she had seen something so terrible that it froze her expression even after death. I checked her pulse to ensure she wasn’t still somehow alive. Nothing. I stood up and a wave of nausea hit me. I had to rush back out into the rain and vomit.

I wiped the foul taste from my lips and pondered calling the police but just then a scream from the upstairs grew in volume over the din of the storm. I rushed back inside and made my way upstairs calling for Matt once more.

When I reached the landing at the top of the stairs I paused, scanning the hallways with the flashlight beam. There was no movement anywhere. And then I caught a faint light coming from one of the patient’s rooms. Slowly I walked down the hallway straining to hear if there was any movement within. Reaching the door, I shined the light into the room. The room was empty of people but it was in complete disarray. The bed sheets were strewn about and equipment of various types were knocked over. The light emanated from a digital camcorder mounted on a tripod. I recognized it as the one Matt and I used to film various interactions with patients.

I pressed the menu button in order to retrieve the last video clip. I pressed play and watched. The clip began with a shot of the room less than an hour prior. Meagan, one of our patients, appeared in the clip strapped to the bed. Her wrists and ankles were secured in leather straps, but most disconcerting of all was that her head was immobilized. She was struggling against the restraints, obviously panicked by what was taking place. She was screaming and kept crying out “No, Dr. Remy! No! No, Dr. Remy! No!”

Then Matt’s back appeared in the frame as he approached the bed from the angle of the camera. I could see that he held instruments in his hands. He reached the bed and then crouched over her head. As he turned to gain a better angle above her head I caught a look at his face. It was somehow not right. It was and wasn’t Matt all at the same time. Something in his features had contorted. Then he said in an angered voice, “I told you! It’s Dr. Moody; not Dr. Remy!”

Then he lifted the instruments and I realized what they were. In one hand was a mallet and in the other was an orbitoclast, an instrument used in transorbital lobotomies. He placed one into her eye and began to pound. Meagan began to scream a tortured wail that shot ice through my body.

Suddenly the room’s light changed. It was the flicker of lightning followed by a clap of thunder. Then the lights went out in the room. The last image the camera caught was a mysterious figure materialize from the wall behind Matt.

I stood perplexed; in shock about the meaning of the film; about what in the hell to do next. What happened? Where were Meagan and Matt now? Where were the other patients? Where was Edith? My thoughts fumbled over each other in a blind chaos of adrenaline fueled madness. Then I heard a long scrape followed by a thump from up above and it repeated ever so slowly again. And again.

While I stood listening and trying to interpret the nature of this sound another sound came from down the hall. It was a moan. A pitiful, sorrowful moan as if someone was sobbing. I inched my way to doorway and called softly, “Hello? Who’s there?” The light shot down the hallway and illuminated a crouching figure in the corner. They faced the corner and it was impossible to tell who it was from just the hump of their back but I believed it was Demetrius, another one of our patients.

I walked slowly whispering his name, “Demetrius. It’s alright Demetrius. It’s me, Dr. Ballinger.” As I reached him I could tell from the back of his head that I was right. It was Demetrius. He didn’t respond to his name, though. He just shivered and kept sobbing. I reached out and touched his shoulder. He jerked as if hit with a Taser and looked up in stark, naked terror. He was pitiful to behold. His eyes were hollow and spittle ran down his chin. A long, pathetic moan crawled from his idiot mouth. The poor man was worse off than Donald.

As the moan died away my attention once again locked onto the slow scrape-thump coming from upstairs. I made my way back to the steps and probed the darkness above. The only thing up there was the thing that I always found the most ominous about the place – the octagonal room that brooded over the whole house like a lurching vulture.

Slowly I mounted the creaking stairs. Millions of years passed as my heart thundered in my chest. I reached the first landing and turned to make my way up the final set of steps. Shining the light up above I saw what made the noise. It was Matt Remy hanging from the rafters by a rope about his neck. At his feet sat Edith, her lunatic features distorted into a look of sheer madness. She turned towards me and began to cackle an insane gurgle of laughter as she continued to push Matt’s legs, swinging him like a child swings its dolly. His feet scraped the wooden floor and then he thumped into the wall only to return to her for another push. The worst part of the whole daemonic show was Edith’s eyes. Protruding from each socket was a bloody, gore-encrusted orbitoclast.

THE END