The Promontory - Chapter 7

The Promontory 17,000 words

-7-

I didn't have the strength to argue. I dumbly followed her out the door and across the street. It was cold and gray, but this didn't seem to bother her. She led us right to the high-walled perimeter and the rusting, wrought iron gates. A wind had picked up. It was strange, undulating in gusts and streams, and sounding like an ocean surf; waxing and waning in loud exhalations that crashed against the trees. The leaves hissed their silvery response at us. I shivered from the chill of it.

Julie was staring through the gates at the house itself, as if in silent communion with it. The house wanted us, I could feel it. The stones seemed to ache a desire for us to pass through. The brambles at our feet seemed to inch towards our ankles infinitesimally. There was volition in the air. I felt a panic rising within me but my desire to retreat turned brittle under the weight of it. I felt as if I would shatter into a million terrified pieces if I dared to so much as breath my protest.

We entered the house through the heavy doors. The wind outside grew wilder, as if in exhilaration. Shutters clapped in the darkness and objects clattered on roof tiles above. My ears twitched in fear, like the frightened mammal that I was. The inside was murky-dark and drafty, unlike prior visits. I fumbled for a match in my pockets but there was none. Suddenly one of the shutters slapped open, under the force of the wind and the gray autumn light invaded the room.

I was shocked to see that the interior had changed to reveal its true age and neglect. The house looked as it had in my dream. Cobwebs and dust, filth and detritus everywhere. I remembered the china dolls and a red clot of dread rose in my throat. I almost grabbed at Julie but she was already making her way to the basement stairs, around the corner from the main stairway to the second level.

"The journals from the library talked about a series of underground chambers branching off from the basement, Peter. I didn't tell you about them because I was afraid you would decide right then and there that we would have nothing to do with this house."

"You guessed right," I answered through my surprise.

"But I had to know more," she said as she pulled at the basement door and descended into the musty smelling, pitch dark space.

"Why?" I asked, feebly trying to slow her progress.

"I don't know why," answered her disembodied voice. "I just had a feeling, like a pull. No, more than that."

It was time to tell her. "Julie, I know why. You're a Swaney. It could be that the curse is real."

She didn't respond. Instead I heard her scratching at something in the darkness.

I grabbed for a banister, but found none. I was forced to slowly make my way down, step by careful step. I shivered. The dampness was viscous down here, like a clammy water.

A glow appeared from the far wall. Julie had found a flint and a candle. In the darkness. It was as if she knew this place. Or the house was telling her where to look. I shook my head at the illogic of such thoughts.

"This way, Peter," she whispered hoarsely.

"Julie, you don't even have shoes on. And exactly what are you looking for?"

She answered in a distracted, soft voice. "I don't know, but the answer is waiting for us through here."

She went over to one of the old, mortared brick walls and removed a brick. Reaching through the resulting hole, she fiddled with a latch of some kind and, with a great display of schrapnel and dust, a section of the formerly seamless wall came forward on hidden hinges and revealed a dark corridor.

"How in blazes did you know that?" I gasped.

Her eyes gleamed candlelight. "Just come, Peter."

I followed, partly because she was my wife and I loved her, partly because of the depth of the mystery, and finally, because I needed to be stronger than the icy shaft of apprehension which ran through me like an impaling spear. I had to face this thing which killed indifferently, which had removed my child from my life before I could lay eyes on it, and which threatened to conquer my sanity.

I went. Breathing shallowly. Stepping gingerly. Eyes wide in the inky closeness of the dirt corridor. The hidden door closed behind us, sealing us in. Ahead, Julie ambled in a pool of dull, flickering light down the length of the passageway. As she progressed I could see that there were doors evenly spaced on either side of the corridor, for its entire length. It looked familiar.

As I realized why, I felt my resolve melting. "Julie! This is my dream."

She slowed down. "What dream?"

"Before you came home from visiting your mother. I didn't have a chance to tell you. It was terrifying."

She turned. She seemed exhilarated. "You were here, in your dream?"

"Very similar. Except it was upstairs. There's something... or somebody in each of these rooms."

She scanned one of the doorways as she resumed her progress. "What happens in the dream?"

"They attack me. I think they kill me."

"You're not sure?"

"I woke up before the end. I think they'll kill you too."

"But you don't know."

"It's a trap, Julie. For Swaneys. We should turn back while we still can."

She stopped and came back a few steps, towards me. The demonical tone was back. "But we can't run, Peter. We can't hide from what's happened. We have to face it. Defeat it."

One of the doors opened and swung inwards. Without another word, Julie went to it and entered the room. Before I could follow, the door shut behind her, separating me from both her and the candlelight. I was left alone in the darkened corridor.

"Julie!" My cry was swallowed by the earthen walls.

A moment later, all the doors rattled in their frames and swung open. I cringed as my dream began its replay, only this time inescapably real. But not the same. A glow of candlelight emerged from every one of the doorways, as the inhabitants stepped into the corridor; each dressed in a nightgown, each bare of feet and each one of them -- Julie!

I looked from left to right, before me and behind me. Facsimiles of my wife emerged from every room and stepped towards me, like sinister automatons. As they processed towards me they all smiled identically and whispered my name. I was both horrified and flabbergasted.

The closest pair of these strange doppelgangers came before me and reached out to touch my arm. When they made contact, I felt at first the warm skin and soft touch of my wife's hand from both of them, but it quickly metamorphosed into a cold and slippery clench, which as I pulled away, took the skin with it. The soft flesh pulled away from the arms to reveal rotting meat and gray bone beneath. I screamed.

Another of the ghastly duplicates tried to kiss me. In an animal instinct, I pushed the face away, clutching at the skin. It came away like a mask in my hands, exposing an ancient skull festooned with strips of long dead and decomposed tissue. Insects crawled through its cavities and it smiled a death's head grin at me, still whispering my name.

I fell backwards, exactly as I had in the dream, and the army of Julie-ghouls came at me in force, all of them calling me by name, all of them appearing to be my wife. She had to be in there amongst them. I had to find her and escape somehow.

I scrambled away on my back, all the while fending off the slippey skinned simulacrums. It dawned on me that I should try and touch as many of them as I could. Only the real Julie would remain warm and intact following my probing. But how to survive such a strategy? Just as in the dream, these creatures intended to literally tear me into pieces. They would smother me with their numbers. At the thought of this, my chest tightened in fear. My heart threatened to beat its way through my chest. I got up and ran back in the direction of the hidden brick wall.

When I reached the wall, I found the false door closed. I tried to locate the latch, which Julie had worked blindly from the other side, but it was not obvious to the eye. I had no time. In moments, the animated replicas were closing on me. I turned to face them, all the while searching for the latch mechanism by hand.

"Peter. Peter," hissed a Julie-creature. She/It came up to me and tried to embrace me. I shoved it off and skin came off in my hand. It's face shifted off center, like a loose fitting mask, and it stumbled backwards. Its candle caught the hair on its head and ignited it. The creature seemed oblivious to its immolation and continued groping for me. I thought of shoving it into the others but I was afraid I might burn the real Julie and furthermore, consume all the oxygen in the sealed corridor. Instead, I struggled with the creature until the skin covering came completely off its decrepit body. Flames consumed the sheathing as it fell to the ground. I choked on the smell of burning hair and flesh. Blindly, I punched at it. My fist crashed through its rotting ribcage. In anger and dismay, I pulled at the ribcage and came away with a solid bone. A weapon. I beat at the walking corpse until it fell into pieces at my feet.

The others had been momentarily put off by the flames but were fast encroaching. I blindly felt for the latch. As several hands grabbed at my hair and shoulders, I found the latch and turned it. As in the dream of the china-dolls, I realized that the door opened inwards, and I would have to back into the awaiting horde of Julie-creatures in order to escape.

Even as I panicked at this thought, I wondered what the significance of the dream and the image of china-dolls meant in relation to Julie. And these walking corpses, re-animated in the image of my wife. What did it mean? I turned and swung the rib bone at the three figures at the fore. The bone sliced open their gowns like tissue, slicing the belly of one of them to show the putrefaction beneath. Undeterred, they pounced again. They were like puppets, feeling no pain, obeying some sinister will. Was Julie therefore an instrument of someone else's will, like a doll? Who were these ghastly lookalikes? As I swung the bone again, I realized the answer at once. The bodies of dead Swaneys, wrapped in ectoplasm to resemble Julie. The Indian curse. This house will be your crypt. But who built this baneful place, this vault of death?

I took one more swing at my attackers to fend them off and grabbed a candle out of one of their hands. As soon as the next creature lunged at me, I threw the candle at it and watched its nightgown catch fire. I gave it a kick and pulled at the brick door. They tried to grab at me as I was forced to step back into the corridor in order to give the door clearance, but I was able to fight them off, thanks to the flames. I hoped Julie was somewhere back there at the rear of the crowd of deadly impostors, and somehow shielded from all this mayhem.

I dashed back into the musty basement, which was dark, and clumsily groped my way to the stairway. The room suddenly took on a faint candle glow. My pursuers were close behind. I could hear them whispering my name and stumbling towards me. At the top of the stairs, I tried the old door that led to the basement. Pulling at it with what was, no doubt, a certain desperate, preternatural strength it practically came away in my hands, almost sending me tumbling backwards. The hinges were rotten. I managed to kick it open, and turned in time to grab the ledge over the doorframe and give a swinging kick to the witless procession of Julie-clones. They fell backwards, many of them breaking brittle bones in the process, yet still more came. How many were there? And where was Julie, the real Julie?

I realized that, by virtue of the high ground I had gained and the narrow doorway, I had an advantage. Only one of the duplicates could reach me at a time. With methodical fury, I lashed out at each assailant in turn, ripping off the mask of my wife and smashing at them with a piece of the broken door, which had broken into shards after my forced re-entry into the main level of the house. Soon a pile of dust, bones, and long, auburn hair lay below the stairway. A pyre was forming there, as the fallen duplicate candles ignited the false manes made to resemble my wife's hair. And still they came. Outside I could hear a rain had begun. The dark interior of the house flashed with actinic light, as lightning erupted in the skies above me and thunder pealed across the forest, rumbling the very timbers of the old house.

I was growing tired. I had been running on sheer adrenalin fueled terror for the better part of an hour. The fire at the bottom of the stairs was gaining strength, even as mine waned. Then I realized with weary resignation that there might not be an end to the duplicates. They just kept coming. And still no Julie.

The fire, which was steadily turning into a blaze below, was now a threat to Julie, if in fact she was still down there. The house was doomed. I had no choice but to leave, which would hopefully draw out the procession of dead Swaneys, or whatever they were, and with any luck, draw out Julie as well.

I threw the bulk of the broken door down the stairway, barreling down a good dozen Julie-ghouls. Using the lightning flashes, which were coming fast and furious, I groped my way to the entranceway, which was open, and fortunately slipped and fell. Just as I fell, a credenza, which Julie had transferred to our house some weeks ago, came flying through the doorway and crashed into the main stairway that led upstairs. As it smashed into the banister post, it transformed into the rotting, age stained object it really was. A lamp flung itself through the doorway next. I ducked, and looked out at the street in morbid fascination. A full fledged storm had developed in the time Julie and I had been exploring the basement, and my house, across the street was exploding outwards. I could hear violent banging, and I could see the front door was open. Actually the door was smashed outwards from the inside, as were all the windows. All the furniture and household objects, which we had taken from the Promontory, were returning to their rightful home, of their own volition. As I watched, the victorian sofa which we had moved early on smashed through the bay window and hurled itself through the air directly at me.

I ran back inside and came face to face with a Julie creature, its face blackened by soot. As I watched, the sofa flew into the house at a high clip and cleanly decapitated the likeness-of-Julie. It fell like a toppled pillar. I ran towards the relative refuge of the kitchen, at the rear of the main floor. Suddenly I heard a loud crash from below. It was the basement staircase, collapsing under the demands of the flames that consumed it. I heard a collective sigh and a cacophany of thuds like tumbling logs as the Julie-doubles fell into the flames. Except for two, who had made it to the top of the stairs and who now called at me with urgency as they chased me into the kitchen.

In the kitchen, I searched around frantically during the intermittent lightning flashes for a weapon, but there was no time. The twin sinister sirens were moving in fast. It seemed as if they were more animated following the death of their cohorts. They moved with certain determination and quickness. Perhaps whatever powered them no longer had to divide its attention among so many. One of them opened a drawer and found a knife. She scanned the room, saw me, and came after me, saying my name. The other, seeing this, also grabbed a knife from the drawer and followed. I despaired at the realization that I would not have the chance to search for a rear entrance. I ran back the way I had come. They both called after me.

"Peter! Wait!" said the twin voices.

Thunder shook the house. Furniture crashed through the main door. Flames licked the floor timbers from below. It was getting hot inside the house. I had to get to my car. It was my only chance of escape. I decided to try for the front door again. Perhaps I could leap out and avoid a collision with the torrent of flying objects.

As I ran, I took a look back to check on the knife bearing Julie-impostors. I was chilled to see that they were coming at me from opposite ends of the main stairway. They were smarter now. There would be no more escapes to other parts of the house. At that precise moment, something smacked me hard on the back of the neck and floored me. My vision blurred as I crawled along the floor, trying to get away. I looked back again.

From watery eyes, I watched the two Julie-likenesss come at me with their knives. I had to run but my legs refused to obey me. They rushed towards me from either side.

Then, to my astonishment, instead of attacking me in concert, as I had expected, one of them lunged at the other and attacked her counterpart. The two Julie-creatures slashed at each other with their knives, stabbing and feinting, as they stalked each other in a circle around my body.

"Peter, it's me," said one of them breathlessly, not daring to look away from her contest.

The other countered plaintively. "Don't listen to her, Peter. She's one of the creatures. I'm really Julie." She lunged with the knife as she finished.

The other blocked the attack and dodged to the left. She kicked me.

"No. I'm Julie. Wake Up, Peter! She wants to kill you," she said with a flash of fire in her eyes.

Acting on impulse, I grabbed at their legs and tripped them both. This time, flesh did not come loose at my touch. They fell on me in a tangle of hair and night clothes. Desperately, I grabbed at their knife hands and held them at bay. There was no way to tell who was who, or if they were both part of a deadly deception.

My legs were responding to me again, as the hurt at the back of head subsided. I struggled to an upright position, still tightly gripping the wrists of my twin attackers. One of them stopped wrestling and dropped the knife.

"It's me, Peter," she said. "I was trying to protect you from that thing."

The other's eyes widened in surprise, and she also dropped her knife.

"No, it's a trick. It was me who was protecting you. Don't let go of us, Peter, or she'll attack you again."

I hesitated, filled with doubt and horror. Beneath one of these beautiful oval faces was a death's head grin and a long interred corruption waiting to kill me. It could even be that both were this and I was stupidly playing out a lost hope. The real Julie might be long dead and buried under the pyre of burnt bodies, in the basement below.

Shaking off that thought, I dragged the two of them out of the house, ducking the flying objects which dashed past us, and heading out into the storm. Wind and rain buffeted us. Our feet caught in the brambles. Thorns and vines scratched at us.

We made it to the gates and dashed across the road to the car, which though battered by the animated furniture, which continued to crash out of my house on its way towards the Promontory, was still evidently intact. I had to let go of the two Julie-claimants. They stood there, rain drenched, side by side, and looked at me with enigmatic expressions, as I unlocked the car. I opened the back seat passenger door. They looked at each other, then back at me.

"You can't take both of us," declared one of them.

"She's right. Leave us here, Peter," said the other.

"But I can't," I shouted through the storm. "You're my wife. I mean, one of you is."

"And one of us will kill you," replied one of them.

"You have no choice," concluded the other.

I couldn't see a way out of this dilemma. If Julie was standing here before me, the other of these two women was a creature and would kill her, if I left. I couldn't just drive away.

Behind the identical women, flames erupted out of the windows of the Promontory, illuminating us all in flickering yellow light. Then I saw the vital difference. I ran to the back of the car and got the car jack out of the trunk, not believing what I was about to do.

I hefted the heavy iron jack in my hands and steeled myself. I looked over at the mirror image female figures standing by the side of the car. They looked back, both looking convincingly frightened and defeated. But one of them was pure evil. And I knew which one, I hoped.

Lunging with all my strength towards the two Julies, I clenched my jaw and raised the jack. Lightning flashed above us, capturing my grimace and hostile intent. Both women screamed and raised their arms defensively.

"Oh God, forgive me for this!" I screamed at the rain as I swung the jack with all the force I could muster at the creature.

"Peter, no! She's fooled you -- !" pleaded the monstrosity as the metal jack lobbed off its head cleanly, revealing ancient bone. It fell to the ground in a disjointed heap and dissolved into its true form. In seconds, a rotted, soggy corpse lay before us, all traces of a resemblance to Julie dissipated.

"How did you know?" asked Julie, falling into my arms.

"No blood," I hoarsely whispered into her ear, still shaking from the grisly, strobe-like memory of having bashed my wife's head off that body. That had been the difference. Only one of the two women had exhibited blood trickling from the scratches she had received during our dash through the vines and brambles.

"Oh, Peter," cried Julie, sobbing into my chest.

I hugged her tight. "We did it, Julie. What you wanted. We killed it. Whatever it was. It's burning and tommorow it will be a dead hulk."

Behind us, our house groaned and creaked as it began to cave in on itself, a victim of too many broken timbers. Across the street, the Promontory burned brightly in the night and loud crashes could be heard from within. Soon it too would be a crater.

I pushed Julie into the car and dashed over to the driver's side. Closing the door I turned the key and tried to start the car. It heaved and moaned but would not start. I resisted the impulse to pump the accelerator, knowing that would only flood the engine. Taking a deep breath, I calmed myself and slowly tried it one more time. This time, it started. Julie stared determinedly straight ahead, as I put the car into gear and we screeched away from the nightmare that had been the street where we lived.

* * *

We sold the land. There wasn't much house left when we returned with the authorities the next day. The local police had been extremely skeptical of our story, but they were stunned to silence when they witnessed the damage. It looked like a V-2 rocket had landed squarely on the place. The Promontory, strangely, didn't look all that different. There was soot around the window frames, but outwardly the house was intact. I was incongrously reminded of The Three Little Pigs and the house of brick -- only this time it was stone. Even better. An investigation was eventually launched but no rational explanation was ever provided.

Julie left me a month later. She just wasn't the same after the encounter with her ancestors. Rather than release her from the dementia she had suffered following the miscarriage, the final episode inside the Promontory seemed to have possessed her in a new way. She wouldn't tell me anything. She said she couldn't explain the crypt or the Julie-lookalikes or how she knew where the hidden door had been, or why Ramie had kept it all a secret. I wondered if she just wasn't telling. I couldn't be sure anymore. It seemed to me that she knew everything now, and I just wasn't a part of the picture anymore. At times, I questioned if I had saved the real Julie, or another of the walking simulacrums.

Before she left me, she said she would find me someday, when it all made sense again. I nodded but I didn't put much weight on it. We had lost a child, and in a way, losing each other too would make it easier to heal. Easier to forget. I knew it was the end.

For now.