Eleanor (3rd re-write)

This is my first real try at writing horror. This version is actually the third re-write. Wehn writing this, I took into consideration some of the comments given to me and eventually came up with this. I think it's much more potent, much more tied together and fluid, but I'm sure there's more I could do with it. Any feedback is welcome and will be considered. I'm not afraid of criticism Thanks.

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The house was dark, with smudges of shadow bruising the walls. Bits of crepe and banners hung from the porch roof and waved in the wind, leftovers from that night’s party. James raised his head to look up at the scraps as the wind whispered to him. He shivered at the phantom voices that spoke to him in words he couldn’t understand.

Just the wind, he thought. Just the wind.

He shivered again, rubbing his arms to fight the chill. He could hear the sounds of the old house settling around him above the creaking of the weathered rocking chair he sat in. It was as if it, too, had a voice.

“Creepy old house,” he muttered to himself, brushing a nervous hand backward through his hair. He lifted his gaze to watch as the wind finally claimed one of the crepe paper streamers as its own, tearing it away and carrying it off. Like a hawk with a mouse, James thought and shivered for a second time.

From the open window above strains of an old Beatle’s song drifted through the nighttime silence, interrupting James’ thoughts and lifting his head to stare up at the porch roof as if he could see through to the bedroom where his wife slept.

…look at all the lonely people…

He shivered as the lyrics drifted down. There was something menacing about this particular night. Even the song seemed more menacing than usual. Pinching the bridge of his nose, James heaved a sigh. He had to admit, there had been nothing good about that night. What should have been a cheerful celebration of their tenth wedding anniversary had ended with three people in the hospital from a fight, and his wife, Jane, resting upstairs because the strain had been too much on her weak heart.

No, nothing good had come of that night.

James sighed. Nothing good had come of their house, either.

It was gorgeous, true, and just what he had imagined for his family. His dream house. Its wrap-around porch and cheerful yellow exterior gave it the façade of perfection. The quaint old house and the yard around it were the only things left of what used to be a prosperous farm. It should have been a happy place to live, but since moving in, James had noticed changes in himself and each of his family members. Jane’s health had been declining for a long time, but lately she seemed even more drawn, even more frail than ever. Her cheeks had become hollow, her skin pale. He could clearly see the delicate blue veins that ran beneath her nearly translucent skin and it frightened him.

…lives in a dream…

Their family doctor had referred them to a specialist when it became obvious that his own attempts to treat her were ineffectual. On the third visit to the specialist, James exploded. “She’s dying, doctor. I’m afraid to let her out of the house! Afraid a strong wind might snap her in two,” he’d told the specialist, gesturing wildly. “What’s wrong? We’re in the country. She should be feeling better, not worse! Isn’t that what the country does? Makes you better?” There was an edge of desperation in his voice that might have shamed him otherwise, but he in this case he ignored it. It was a small thing in the face of his wife’s illness. Just the thought of losing her tore at him. His wife was his heart, and he would walk through Hell itself if he thought there would be a chance of making her healthy again. Of making her live again.

She used to be so vibrant, so alive, James remembered. Her golden hair simply radiated sunshine, and her blue eyes were always so full of life and laughter. Her slight body had never felt frail under his hands, but strong and sturdy. For two years, they were so blissfully in love it seemed nothing could touch them. Then, a week before their third year anniversary, Jane had started feeling ill. When she’d started throwing up blood…

Shaking his head to clear it, James pushed himself out of the rocking chair. He stood in front of it a moment before crossing the porch, his shoes thudding dully on the wooden floor. He didn’t want to think of it anymore. He didn’t want to remember how it used to be. Remembering only made it harder to face how it was. The screendoor creaked as he opened it and let it slam shut behind him. Within moments, he was sent reeling as a wave of dizziness swept over him, nearly bringing him to his knees. He swayed with it a moment, leaning heavily against the closed door behind him, clutching at the doorframe before the ground finally felt steady again. He scowled, fear clouding his eyes.

“What the hell?” He look around as if he could find the source of the dizziness, but the only thing that met his gaze was their black cat as it streaked past him into the night, the cat door flapping behind him. James took a shuddering breath, then swallowed with some difficulty as he moved away from the door, heading toward the stairs. He was still unsteady on his feet as he walked down the hall. He would have the house checked to carbon monoxide the next day, he resolved. He didn’t know if carbon monoxide could cause dizziness, but he couldn’t think of another answer. As he passed a mirror hanging on the wall, he stopped, turning to look at his own reflection. He stared at the deeply lined face, the haunted eyes that greeted him. With narrowed eyes, he studied himself. Too old, he thought. I look too old for my age. He leaned forward until his breath fogged against the glass, swelling and receding with every inhalation and exhalation of breath. His eye lowered to the strip of white at his neck and he reached up to touch it with his fingertips. The clergyman’s collar used to seem like a beacon to him. It used to keep away the darkness.

What happened to that? he wondered. That feeling that nothing bad could touch him because he was a man of God. That he would be safe because he was a man of God.

But lately he was beginning to doubt. The doubts circled like vultures to his soul. He leaned in until his nose was less than an inch from the mirror, staring into his own eyes, searching for the whirling black shadows of the doubts as they spun around his mind.

“When did God abandon us? ” he demanded of his haggard reflection. “Since when has God become so powerless on Earth?” The words seemed to echo in the hallway. Powerless. “If He’s left us…if He’s truly left us…” He shuddered. What happened to the infallible God he’d been taught to believe in? What happened to the merciful, benevolent diety that could set the world right and keep His people from harm? The God that could keep genuinely good women from becoming sick. Then he closed his eyes, horrified by his thoughts. He pressed his forehead against the mirror, squeezing his eyes shut. He couldn’t think that way. He couldn’t let himself think those things. But he was weakening. Every day he lived in the house weakened his faith.

“Lord,” he whispered, his voice harsh in the near-silence of his house. “How can I lead my flock if I doubt?” He shivered again, feeling the cold of the mirror against his feverish skin. “Help me find my place, Lord, God, please. Please. Help me find my way back to you.”

…where do they all belong?

James took a shuddering breath and then lifted his forehead from the mirror. After a moment, he opened his eyes. His vision blurred for a moment, but when it cleared he felt fear freeze his blood. Superimposed over his face was a misty, ghoulish countenance. It bared long, white teeth at him in a hideous grin, hissing a laugh. James cried out and stumbled backward, slamming into the wall opposite the mirror. He turned his head and squeezed his eyes shut. “No, no, no, no. It’s not real. It…it can’t be real.” Shaking, he forced himself to open his eyes and look. He did so slowly, cautiously turning his head toward the mirror.

The only eyes he met were his own reflected in the mirror, his white collar a sharp contrast against the blackness of his shirt and the darkness of the hall.

“It was just my imagination. That’s all. Just my imagination.”

…a dream…

He struggled to push the horrifying vision from his mind. It was too much to think about, too overwhelming. When a sudden thump above had James’ head jerking back to stare narrow-eyed at the ceiling, he was thankful for the distraction from his fear. What was his daughter doing up at this hour? She should have been asleep a long time ago. With his heart still beating fast, he mounted the stairs to check on his little girl, and as he did he thought again of his wife and daughter and the changes that he’d noticed.

…lonely people…

It wasn’t just his wife, he reflected. The house had changed Eleanor, his daughter, too. If he’d been a superstitious man who’d believed in his gran’s fairy stories he might have believed the faeries had stolen his daughter and put a changeling in her place, some dark creature not of this world. Sometimes he didn’t even recognize her. It didn’t seem possible that she was the same child. The biddable, sweet-tempered child he’d raised had disappeared in a matter of weeks and what was left was something…other. It wasn’t just the backtalk and the lashing out, though those were bad. It was the drawings that really shook James. The pictures she’d started creating within a week of moving in were both dark and disturbing. She drew depictions of devils and demons and other creatures that should never crawl from a child’s crayons. He’d watched her draw them twice before. She hummed to herself the entire time, cheerfully working as she created her horrors. If he hadn’t known better, if he hadn’t been able to see, he would have assumed she’d been drawing pictures of her family, of flowers, of the bright happy things little girls draw.

What she was drawing instead were creatures and scenes that were so horrifying they lead James to seek outside help. So he’d taken her to a child psychologist, he’d consulted his church, he’d done everything, but there were no answers. No one could tell him why his baby had been acting that way, or drawing those pictures.

Not even Eleanor could tell him. She had no memory of drawing the pictures. Any of them.

And in the meantime, she had grown almost as sickly as her mother, and no doctor could tell him what was wrong there, either. For weeks now she’d been unable to leave the house to attend church, and just when she seemed to be getting better, she would relapse.

James McKenzie was trying very hard to ignore the niggling sensation that the sickness was merely a diversion, an attempt to avoid anything Holy, anything religious. The thought that his little girl—who used to love listening to him preach—was actually avoiding God was too much for him to bear.

Another thud interrupted his thoughts and he frowned at the blue light coming from under her door at the top of the stairs. He should have gotten her to bed before she had a chance to ingest as much sugar as she’d had at the party, but there had been too many people to talk to, too many parishioners to listen to and offer advice—even at his own anniversary party, he could not avoid the troubles his parishioners brought to him. By the time he’d found his little girl it had been long past her bedtime. So he’d marched her straight upstairs to bed. She’d fought him, of course, as she’d fought him on almost everything lately, but he’d thought she was finally asleep by the time he left her.

Obviously, he’d been wrong.

He sighed as he finally reached her door, knocking softly. When there was no answer, James turned the knob and gently opened the door, pausing briefly as a sudden terror struck him. He trembled for a full minute and was forced to brace himself against the door, clinging to the doorframe. A cold sweat broke out along his skin and the urge to flee was so strong that he found his feet moving before he even realized what he was doing. Even when the terror finally settled into little more than a dull throb of fear, he stood for a moment and continued to quiver, trying to regain control. He scowled at himself and shook his head to try and clear it. “Ridiculous. I’m being ridiculous,” he muttered to himself in frustration. Stubbornly, he forced himself to open the door the rest of the way and swept his gaze around the darkened room.

“Ellie? Eleanor? Are you awake, sweetie?” He took a step into the room and another wave of the same gut-wrenching terror swept over him, turning his skin even colder than before. Once again, he began to shake, but he did his best to ignore the itch in his feet to turn and run.

His gaze swept over the open window and he saw his little girl standing in front of it, motionless. “Sweetie, what are you doing?” He stepped toward her and the air thickened as the temperature dropped. His eyes widened as he found it a struggle to breathe, and what breath did escape formed an icy mist in the air. Shadows danced in the moonlight like tiny black-eyed sprites. He could almost see their spindly limbs and tiny, sharp needle-teeth starkly outlined against the dark. He stared dazedly at the swirling shadows for several moments. The shadows seemed to dance around Eleanor, as if she were the light and they the moths. As if she were their beacon. James drew a struggling breathe and finally succeeded in pulling his gaze away. As he did so, he became aware of an almost palpable darkness in the corners where the moonlight didn’t reach, as if the shadows had taken on a concrete form and had begun to crawl across the room, closing in on him, surrounding him.

He felt…hunted.

“Shadows can’t hunt,” he muttered to himself, then shook himself again and stepped toward his little girl.

His progress was halted, however, when he heard a low chorus of snarls from the shadows. He turned his head slowly to peer into the darkness and his breath hitched in his throat. Three sets of sharp, gleaming fangs appeared beneath three sets of eyes so black the rest of the shadows seemed bright by comparison. The three snarled again, sounding like six.

He felt the hair on the back of his neck raise and he forced himself to look away.

“They do not exist. They don’t. Not real, they’re not real.” He muttered, frantically trying to believe his own words, and when he looked back, they were gone. A light tremor shook him and he turned quickly to his daughter, trying to block out the terror that was again creeping in. “Ellie, please sweetie…let’s go to bed. It’s time…”

Then his daughter turned. “But daddy, I’m not tired.” The plaintive voice came from his daughter’s lips, but it wasn’t his daughter’s voice.

…he walks from the grave…

“You…you are not my daughter.” James heard his voice rasp in the darkness.

A hideous smile twisted over his daughter’s face. “What do you mean, daddy? It’s me. Eleanor. I’m Eleanor.” The girl took a step toward him and he found himself taking a step backwards. When she grinned again, he thought he saw a fang. “It’s me. I’m Eleanor.”

The closer she came, the better he could see her face. Her eyes were pure black, no white showed, and yet they seemed to glow. The skin around her eyes was dark, her eyes sunk back into her skull. The rest of her face was pale, and her lips were a dark dark blue. “I’m Eleanor, Daddy. I’m Eleanor! I’m Eleanor! Eleanor! I’m Eleanor!” She lunged at him, teeth bared. For an instant, her face was fluid, the features moving and changing as if something from inside were pushing against her flesh, trying to make its way to the surface. At first it was a vague impression—lipless mouth, lidless eyes, a darkened cavity for a nose. And then it became solid, the skin on its face leathery, its rancid breath hot against James’ skin. A raspy, demonic voice hissed from this new face. “Eleanor! I’m Eleanor!” And then it began to cackle as it latched onto him, digging long, sharp nails through his black shirt and into his skin.

“Demon!” James gasped. “You are not my daughter! Where is my daughter?” James screamed, wrapping his arms around the creature and spinning its slight body around so that its back was to him. Its claws ripped through his skin as it twisted, sending out a spray of blood. It bucked and struggled, hissing a laugh as it did so.

“I am I am I am I am!” it chanted in its raspy voice, clawing at James’ arm that was pressed against the creature’s throat. For it was a creature now. Nothing existed of his little girl anymore except the white nightgown that was now stained with James’ blood. “I am I am I am!”

…where do they all belong?

“Give me back my daughter!” James growled, tightening his hold on the demon’s neck. He could feel his skin being rubbed raw from the coarse hair on the demon’s leathery flesh.

“Mine mine mine!” the demon hissed gleefully, its tail lashing at James’ legs, drawing blood with each sweep against his shins. “Mine!” Suddenly, James cried out and stumbled as the creature’s tail dug into the meat of James’ calf, ripping through flesh and muscle down to the bone. His hold temporarily loosened on the hellish creature and it began to writhe wildly, flailing its long, bony arms and shrieking.

With a grunt, James tightened his hold on the creature again and he knew. There was only one thing to do. He knew the risks. He knew he might lose her. But he also knew he had no choice. The demon had to exorcized or he would never see his little girl again.

So he began.

“In the name…of God!” James roared. “I cast thee out!” The creature gave a peculiar hissing shriek and struggled more, straining against James’ hold with surprising strength. Its tiny, wiry body arched away from him, its claws ripping through the skin on James’ forearm, turning the smooth flesh into thin, tattered strips of gore. James gave a cry of rage and pain and fell to his knees but tightened his hold on the creature with his mangled arm. He freed his other hand and the creature began to struggle violently, trying to break free, its black eyes wide as it tracked the movement of James’ hand toward its forehead.

“In the name…of the Church,” James grunted as he struggled to hold on to the demon. “I cast thee out!”

The creature began to scream.

“In…the name…of the Father!” He began the sign of the cross, touching the creature’s forehead.

The creature writhed and bucked, its scream becoming louder and more shrill with every second.

“And of the Son!” He drew his thumb down toward the creature’s nasal cavity.

The creature’s scream seemed to split into three sounds, an off-key, hellish harmony that sent chills down James’ spine and made his thundering heart beat even faster. The beast squeezed its demonic eyes shut and its struggles became more frenzied, more frantic. “No! No no no no no no! Daddy daddy daddy daddy daddy daddy DADDY!” He could hear his daughter’s voice emerge briefly amidst the litany of the beast’s cries, fighting to be heard and crying in pain.

The sound of her voice brought tears to James’ eyes and made his breath catch in her throat. When he spoke again, it was with gritted teeth. “And of the Holy Spirit!” With a final sweep of his thumb, he finished the sign of the cross across the creature’s forehead. The skin began to bubble and blister where he’d touched it.

…died in the church…

The creature’s shrieks shook the house. Its body bowed almost double, its long limbs scrabbling at the air. Glass shattered in every window in the room, sending lethal shards flying to embed themselves into James’ flesh, slicing to the bone. And still James did not release the creature.

“I CAST THEE OUT!”

A thick, phlegmy hiss left the creature’s lipless mouth. “Father McKenzie…” It shrieked once, then went limp in his arms.

James held it for a moment, then released the body. It slithered to the ground like a ragdoll, unmoving and boneless. James took a shaky breath then reached out to turn it over. It rolled easily, crunching on the shattered glass beneath it. James closed his eyes before he could see the face, taking a deep breath and offering up a prayer. Then he swallowed once and opened his eyes.

The creature was gone, and in its place was his little girl, his Eleanor.

…no one was saved.

James stared in horror. “Ellie…Eleanor…Ellie…” His voice was strangled as he reached for her, his fingers brushing her deathly pale skin. She was cold. So very, very cold.

Suddenly, the door behind him opened and he heard his wife, her voice panicked. “James, what…”

A moment of silence preceded her scream as it caught in her throat. Her eyes widened and when she finally did scream, it reverberated throughout the house.

James turned to look at his wife, his eyes wide and haunted. He lurched to his feet, bloody hands out to his wife. “Our baby, Jane…our baby…he had her…I had…I had to! I had to! And He…He took her anyway…He…” Then he collapsed forward, sobbing. Jane stumbled back from her husband, gazing horror-struck at his bloody arms and clothes. James fell forward onto the carpet and didn’t move, too incapacitated by his grief. He didn’t even stop Jane when she fled the room, her bare feet pounding on the floors as she raced downstairs to call the police to report the murder of her daughter.

He didn’t move until he heard the hissing cackle behind him, and when he turned to look at the prone form, he saw the face of the creature superimposed over the face of his little girl. And with the red sun rising through the open windows, the face turned to gaze at him with black, soulless eyes.

“Father McKenzie Father McKenzie Father McKenzie,” it sing-songed in its demonic voice. “Belongs to me belongs to me belongs to me, she belongs to me!”



…no one was saved.