The Harold House Mysteries: Prologue

A man inherits a cursed house. WC: 2918 words

The Harold House Curse

Prologue

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Even though the light in this room isn’t that good, it is easy to see that the fireplace is the most impressive thing in the room. It is a massive marble edifice that dominates the wall. The marble is white with veins of pink and gray running through it. To be fair, it is the only thing in the room now. I imagine that, in the past, there were rugs, statues, chairs, and tables scattered about the room. Now, it is completely bare, much like the rest of the house.

I am the last in a long line of owners of the Harold House. The house sits on three acres of lightly forested land with a passable road in front. The last owner was my aunt. She died three months ago when a power line broke loose and fell on her car. The year before, her husband had been killed while falling into an open sewer hole in town. The reason he’d fallen was that he’d been hit by a passing ice cream truck. They passed it to me, complete with a past due property tax of $3,000. I checked into it, and the property tax has not been paid for three years. My aunt and uncle were not rich people; they did what they could. I expect that is why the house is empty; they sold everything just to make ends meet, and that had not been enough to keep up with the taxes.

I, of course, am not rich either. My jobs are seasonal, and right now I am in between.

The executor of their will had come by my apartment, if you can believe that, to drop off the deed, keys, and a sealed envelope. He was a strange man; tall, and thin to the point of gaunt, but wearing bright colors.

I answered his knock, and he asked, “Jason Harold?”

I just nodded.

“Good. Your Aunt and Uncle Harold left you this,” he said, then handed me a package.

I looked at it, then at him, then asked, “Aunty Lisa is dead?”

“Yes. Quite. Twelve kilovolts will do that. I’ve written up what happened and put it inside the package.”

“Ah. OK.”

“That is all I know. Have a pleasant day, and may He-Who-Sleeps rest on while She-Who-Doesn’t continues her work.”

He turned abruptly and left.

I took the package in and put it on the kitchen table.

“Who was that?” my roommate asked.

“Some lawyer. My aunt died.”

“Oh. Crap. Man, I am sorry. Look, I gotta go to work. We can talk later, if you want.”

“Yeah, don’t sweat it. We weren’t close. I’ve barely seen her since I was a kid.”

He nodded and returned to his room.

I opened the package. In it was a box with a deed, a handwritten description of my aunt's death, her death certificate, and one for my uncle, a short note, an envelope, a set of keys, a bill for $350 from a car storage yard, and a wand. A magician's wand, like one sees stage magicians use.

I picked up the wand, and it tingled in my hand. I pointed it at the far corner of the kitchen, and said, “Sparkle warkle”. I am not a magician, but a colorful spray of sparks shot out of the end of the wand.

I was still standing there pointing at the other wall when my roommate came in.

“Is that a wand?”

“Uh, yeah. It was in the box.”

“Weird. Was your aunt or uncle a magician?”

“Not that I know of,” I said as I carefully put the wand back in the box.

“I gotta go. You going to be here tonight?”

“I don’t know.”

“OK, well. See ya.”

He left.

The deed was normal for this county.

The note was a pretty gruesome description of my aunt’s death.

The envelope contained a handwritten letter from my aunt that was on the same scale of weirdness as the man who delivered it. It rambled on about activities that happened a long time ago when I was a kid, and my parents would get together with her family. I was just about to toss it back in the box when I got to the last paragraph …

If you are reading this, then we have been taken by the curse. Jason, as much as we love you, we love our children and grandchildren more; this is why we left you the cursed house. All I can tell you is that the owners of the Harold House eventually meet their demise, generally, in a gruesome manner. We have heard there is a way to lift the curse, and that it involves a fish, a knife, and fire. That is all we know. Good luck. Please don’t leave it to our children.

I picked up the key ring. There were four keys on it. One looked like a car key, one looked like a key to a lock, another was a mail box key, and the last was a large ornate key. I touched it, and it tingled. The end had a large circle with carved vine circling it, and a shield in the center with the letters ‘HH’ on one side, and the words ‘Harold House’ on the other.

I don’t own a car, so I called a taxi to take me to the storage yard where her car was.

“Oh, yeah, that one,” the guy at the counter said. He stared at me for a full minute before he said, “It’s a little weird. The report said it got a power line dropped on it, but there really wasn’t much damage. The car works fine. I’ll have it brought around.”

I just nodded. The actual fee was only $150, which was a huge relief. I was going to ask about the difference, but my good sense kicked in, and I just nodded and paid the man.

The car was ten years old, but was in really good condition. It even had a mostly full fuel tank, and a crystal. I got in, and drove off before they could change their minds.

I know very little about magic curses or magic in general. So, I went to a witch emporium on the edge of town.

“Hello? Whatcha looking for, handsome?” a girl only a couple of years younger asked when I stepped into her booth.

I pulled out the key, and the letter, and handed them to her. She looked puzzled at the letter, then gave a little ‘yip’ at touching the key, and dropped it.

“That’s cursed!”

“Yeah, that is what I wanted to ask about. Look on the last page at the last paragraph, please.”

She did, then said, “Look, this is well beyond my abilities and knowledge.”

“Anyone else her-”

“Yeah, but they are out until next week, sorry.”

She looked at me for a moment, sighed, then said, “Lemmee try something.”

She turned to the back of her booth, and picked up a stick that was about a foot, and a half long. She used that to pick the key up, and place on a small circular felt covered table. She then waved the stick in circles over the key muttering something.

A sickly green nimbus flared up and formed a creature that gestured and hissed at her.

“Yeah, well, up yours too,” she said to it, then asked, “What is the source of this curse?”

The creature made another gesture at her. She frowned and muttered a few words, and a spark shot from the stick to the creature. It yowled and started rubbing where the spark hit it.

“Answer.”

It said something to her, and she nodded, made a gesture with the stick, and the creature and nimbus disappeared.

She put the stick down, then picked up the key with a hanker chief, brought it to me,, and said, “OK. That told me that this key is not cursed, but is part of a curse. That to lift it involves a fish, knife, and fire. I know that’s what the letter said. It also said something about underground. I can’t help you any more than that, I am sorry.”

“Thank you. How much do I owe you?”

“Nothing. To tell you the truth, that was fun. I haven’t had to deal with a curse manifestation since school. This was the first interesting thing I’ve done since I opened here. It’s usually love potions or tracking spells or glamour spells.”

“OK. Well, thanks,” I said as I turned to leave.

“Hey, if you don’t die, come back, and tell me what happens.”

“I will … even if I die.”

“Ah, no. You are cute and all, but I don’t need a ghost haunting me.”


I could sell the house as is, but they’d passed a law that you can’t sell anything that has a known curse on it. There were exceptions for museum stuff, but not houses. I decided to head out to the property and see what I could find out.

The key unlocked the front door. I spent a hour looking around the outside, and inside on the ground floor for some kind of entrance to a basement, and failed to find anything. If this does start underground it is not going to be easy to find.

I ended up in the living room looking at this fireplace, since it is the largest and most obvious thing in the house. It starts with a massive eight-foot hearth that is two feet deep, and rises six inches above the floor. The fireplace opening is four feet wide and five feet tall. On either side of the opening are carved columns that hold up a massive mantel. In the fireplace is a large, iron andiron. Everything is spotlessly clean. No one has had a fire in there in ages.

I vaguely remember a movie where there was a secret door hidden inside the fireplace. There aren’t any sconces or ornate hooks on the walls around the fireplace so I pull out my flashlight, and play the light over the front of the mantle, and see a bunch of stylized flames in relief along the front edge. I am just about to give up when I notice that some are slightly larger than the rest.
Standing on the hearth the mantle is right at my nose level, and the symbols are about a foot apart all along the front edge. There are seven symbols in all, and three are larger. The center one is larger than the symbols to either side. I reach out, and touch the one in the center. Nothing happens, but I feel a slight-almost-electric buzz. I touch all the symbols, but only the three larger ones give out that feeling.

OK, if it is a binary pattern, then I got seven to try. If it isn’t binary I am going to have to search for some hint somewhere. I start touching the symbols in order until I get to 7. How am I going to press all three at the same time; they are two feet apart?

Boy, am I glad no one is here to see this. I press my nose to the center one, and touch the other two at the same time.

I came to a few minutes later, lying at the foot of the fireplace. I feel a tingling all over my body. It’s a lot like the first time I touched the hot and neutral in an electrical outlet with my bare hand.

I get up, look around, and nothing has changed outside the fireplace, unless it’s in another room, which would be really annoying. I pick up my flashlight and play the light around inside the fireplace, and immediately notice that the right side is different. Getting into the fireplace is awkward because I have to duck below the entrance, and not step on the andiron. Whoever designed it did not have people stepping on it in mind. Once in find it, I can stand, if a little awkwardly. There is a slightly open five-foot-tall section of the side wall. I push it open and see that there are stairs leading down.

So here are the basement stairs. What kind of nut puts stairs to a basement inside the fireplace? What if it’s winter, and you need a fire, how do you go down to the basement? I am starting to think great-granddad was crazy as a loon.

I squeeze into the opening and head down the stairs. There are fifteen steps. They are grouped into sets of three steps and a landing. The stairway curves to the right as it goes down. The walls are brick at first, then change to rough rock. The last step lets out onto a small landing in front of a door. The door has a fish on it. So I have now found two of the three things to the curse. I hope just finding them is enough. I hope the knife reference is not to a knife or knives that will come shooting out and eviscerate me when I open the door. I wish my ex were here; I’d let her open it while I held the flashlight.

Maybe I watch too many adventure/horror movies, but I flatten myself against the wall and use the front door key on the lock. I hear it click, and the door pops open slightly. I wait for a few minutes, then toe the door open farther, then quickly look into the next room with the flashlight. All I see is part of a large room with a dirt floor. Nothing came out except the scent of musty air, and … the sea?

Gathering my courage, I step into the room and see that it’s more like a hallway than a room. I walk down, shining the flashlight on the walls. They are covered in primitive drawings, runes, hieroglyphs, words, and other symbols. Some I have seen before, but none of it is the least bit coherent to me.

Should have paid the witch to come with me. Ha, like I could have afforded that.

I walk along until it seems to dead-end, but it actually has a sharp right turn that goes into a very narrow, maybe two-foot-wide, hallway. I look down it, and can see a brightly lit room at the other end. I sidle along and enter the room. It is large, roughly rectangular, and the left-hand wall is taken up by a huge fish tank. It’s at least ten feet high and twenty feet long. It is murky, but I can see that there is an enormous goldfish swimming in it. It’s white with orange stripes. Further on in the room is a cot with something on it. The walls are covered with murals that are really hard to look at. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but they are disturbing. There is an old writing desk with a chair in the corner, beyond the cot.

I approach the body cautiously. The fish is pacing me, and seems to be getting more agitated the closer I get to the cot. There is a body on the cot with something on its chest. OK, in its chest. It’s a bone-handled knife. It looks like it pierced his heart. I lean over and see that the corpse's eyes are open and that he looks familiar.

“Dude,” I say stupidly as I straighten up.

The eyes rotate toward me, and the body sits up; I back up quickly. I try to work up a plan to deal with a zombie, but my mind is failing me, I can only stare at it.

The corpse-man looks at my face, then takes a wracking breath, exhales, then repeats this a half a dozen times. I can hardly take my eyes off the knife in his chest as he attempts to get his breath. Out of the corner of my eye, I see that the fish is now hovering near us, watching.

“What are you doing here?” the corpse asks.

“Who are you?” I counter.

The corpse glares at me for a moment, then says, “I am Jacob M. Harold, the owner of this place!”

“I am Jason Harold, your great-grandson,” I say, glaring back.

“Great grandson, you say?”

“Yes.”

“How long have I been down here?”

“My mother said that you disappeared when her father was about 10 years old. So that’s about 86 years.”

“86 years? What the hell?” he says, looking at the fish, then asks. “Why did you come down here?”

“Uhm. Trying to lift the curse?”

“What curse?”

“The one that keeps killing the owners of your house?”

“Killing? That ain’t right.”

“A lot of things ain’t right; like why are you talking to me, and you’re dead?”

“I ain’t dead, stupid kid.”

“Then explain the knife in your chest.”

The corpse-grandpa looks down and reaches a hand to tug at the knife. It doesn’t budge. He says, “Well, son of a … you damn liar!”

He turns to the fish and glares at it. The fish responds by retreating to the farthest corner of the aquarium.

“Help me get this gods damn knife out, boy!”

I reach over and pull hard; it gives slowly at first, then pulls out. There is no blood, and the grandpa-corpse falls back on the cot. I find that I can hardly hold the knife with one hand. It’s like it’s being held by someone else, and they want to put it back in great-grandpa. I put both hands on it and keep it away from him.

I look at the fish, and it’s focusing on the knife. I drag the knife toward the tank, and I bring it over my head. Standing only a couple of feet away, I plunge the knife into the glass of the aquarium. It penetrates pretty easily. The knife stops fighting me, and the fish retreats deeper into the aquarium. I stand there panting like I’d run a marathon. I don’t know why I plunged the knife into the glass wall.

“Good instincts, boy. You can let go of the knife, now. His hold over me is gone,” grandpa-corpse says.

I let go, retreat from it quickly, and turn to him. He is still dead on the cot, but hovering above his corpse is a … ghost? Part of the ghost is still in the corpse.

The great-grandpa-corpse-ghost cursed for several minutes, then asked, “How is the family?”

I relate what happened to his children, and their children, and updated him on his great-grandchildren. “Cousin Elsa is pregnant, and in about three weeks you would have been a great-great-granddad.”

The great-grandpa-corpse-ghost’s face shows pride, then sadness, then it says, “Despite G’thum’s machinations, the line lives on. Well, it’s over. It seems ole G’thum there was using my kids’ lives to keep me from moving on to the afterlife so he wouldn’t be lonely. Selfish bugger. This room, and that hall in front, aren’t part of the regular world. So you head on back, and when you pass through the door, lock it by turning it to the left three full revolutions. That will start the process of severing this place from the world. The regular basement should appear in its place. Might take a few days, hard to tell, 86 years is a long time.”

“What about you?”

“Thanks for worrying, Jason, but I finally get to move on. Ole fish-face here can stay, be lonely, or go back where he came from. I no longer care. You go on now, and thanks.”

“Ah, I hate to ask, but did you leave any … money? My parents and aunt had a hard time keeping up with the property taxes.”

“G’thun, lying sack of ...” great-grandpa-corpse-ghost yells at the fish, then turns to me, and says. “He was supposed to see that my kids had more than enough money to keep them well. Bastard. When the regular basement returns, you should find some treasure left there. I don’t remember how much. I hope it’s enough. Thanks for freeing me, Jason. You take care, now.”

I watch the ghost slip out of the corpse, drift to the back wall, then fade into nothing. I feel a long sigh escape me that I didn’t know I was holding.

As I turn to leave, I hear/feel a voice say, “I can give you your heart’s desire! For a small sacrifice on your part, all your children will have all they need for their entire lives. Just pull the Kafa Blade from the glass.”

The pressure on my mind was almost overwhelming, but I steel myself against it, and walk towards the entrance to the narrow hallway.
I force myself to focus on putting one foot in front of the other.

“Anything you want! I can give you anything!”

The urge to listen to it is almost overwhelming, but I remember where the knife started. I make it to the hallway, and the pressure lessens. I can’t hear him/her/it, but I feel it trying to pull me back.

I reach the door after what feels like a century. I was moving the whole time, but it felt like walking against an unseen barrier. Once I close, and lock the door, per the ghosts instructions I am freed from the pressure. I stand for a moment just breathing. My knees are weak, but I manage to climb back up the stairs. I stand at the top, and catch my breath.
So, great-granddad made a deal with that fish-god to provide for his kids, and it cheated by shortening the lives of his relatives. That is the first god I’ve met, and I think I want it to be the last.

I get out of the fireplace and touch the center flame symbol. I hear the door inside the fireplace click shut. I look around and see that the house hasn’t magically become full of nice furniture again, but it does seem a little brighter. I leave that room and stand in the hallway. I see the outline of a new door under the stairs. It’s mostly just a rectangular shape. I’ll give it a few days, then go down there. I wonder what I will find in a basement that hasn’t been visited in at least 80 years?