Chapter 4, Page 7

There are some people who will tell you there used to be a house at 2178 Van Buren Avenue. These people have clearly never been down that road. The plot of land there has been vacant for as long as anyone could remember, and the people there always remember.  
They remember a time when their Homeowners’ Association was run by Rebecca Stoutland, an oafish woman who tried to micromanage everyone’s lives. They remember how much they resented her every time she came around with her yardstick to measure fences, hedges, or any of the many parts of their house she tried to homogenize. They would never forget the day she disappeared.  
Today, the houses on Van Buren Avenue could not look more different, in no small part thanks to the many months of torment Miss Stoutland put upon them. The one thing that has never changed is the empty lot at 2178 Van Buren Avenue. No one ever tried to build on it and they would always state that it just wouldn’t feel right, even if they didn’t know why they felt that way.
The people on that winding street full of old houses and old generations would never forget the person whose home was there. Unless, of course, they were forced to.
It was neither through magic nor deceit that the house and its past were forgotten. It was all the fault of the spirit of a frustrated man, one who died a tragically ironic death and yeared to fulfill his earthly desire of writing a novel. Now the house exists inside a rift beyond the boundaries of the mortal world, luring in people like Rebecca Stoutland or even Richard Sullivan.
Richard happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, just out for a walk to the local gas station to get a cherry cola. It was a walk he had made many times before, always without incident.
It was the pained yelping of an injured animal that drew his attention toward the empty lot. Looking that way, he saw a dog, limping around on a clearly broken leg. Without hesitation, Richard took off toward it. Panting desperately as he went, he reached the yard in what felt like an instant.
Startled by the blurry figure vaulting toward it, the dog started running again.
“Shit,” Richard said breathlessly as he stumbled to steady himself before giving chase once more.
Seemingly exhausted, the dog rolled onto the ground and curled into a ball. Richard carefully leaned down and gingerly placed a hand on the dog. As he did so, it seemed to him as though a massive cloud had moved in front of the sun. Everything went dim and he thought he could see the outlines of walls and windows.
Richard rubbed his eyes in disbelief. He restrained the urge to pinch himself, however. When he opened his eyes again, he found himself inside what looked like a really ugly house.
In truth, this mid-century modern nightmare was the house that had once occupied that now-vacant lot. The dog was nothing more than bait on a well-cast line, and it had served its purpose. When Richard looked down at it after coming to grips—more or less as well as could be expected—with the reality of the situation, he would find the half-rotten remains of the dog he had been chasing. His mind raced with possibilities as to what was happening. So fast, in fact, that it did not take long for his grip on reality to become tenuous at best.
“Oh my god what?” exclaimed a panicked Richard almost breathlessly, the entirety of the situation rapidly crashing down upon him.
His eyes darted around the room, trying to latch onto something tangible to focus his mind. He would find several books strewn about the room he was in, each damaged as though they had been thrown against something solid, judging by the crumpled, nearly dog-eared edges of the covers on some of them.
Richard slapped himself across the face.
He had misjudged the swing and wound up with a loud ringing in his right ear for his troubles, but at least he had managed to bring himself back down a bit. He used his newfound sanity to examine his surroundings, picking himself off the floor and turning away from the poor dog.  
Aside from the books littering the floor, the room itself was painted a lurid mint green, complemented by an equally hideous couch and table. The only reasonable part of the room was a quaint fireplace at one end with a wrought iron screen. Looking a bit closer, Richard saw a book sticking out of it and gently wrested it free from its confines. It, he determined, had been shoved there with great force, all but confirming his theory that someone had gone on a wild book-tossing spree there.
“Ok,” Richard said to himself aloud. “Let’s see what we have here.”
He turned the book over in his hand. The title Underneath the Roses was debossed in fancy gold lettering on its rough, hardcover. The contents of the book were strange, to say the least. What seemed from the outside like an old book turned out to be full of handwritten words arranged to look like a properly formatted one. The table of contents page was similarly handwritten, as was the copyright page.
Thumbing through the book he noticed that although there were many entries in the table of contents, the majority of the book was blank. The last page of writing ended mid-sentence, fading away toward the middle before flowing into a sea of empty pages.
Richard furrowed his brow in confusion and quickly grabbed another book. Flipping through it, he noticed that although the handwriting was similar, the story trailed off into nothing much earlier. Checking three other books confirmed his suspicion that they were all by the same person and ended at different points, though trying to read the contents made him feel terribly tired.
He reached for another book but froze in place as he picked it up. At that very moment, a warbling, ethereal voice broke the silence in the house.
“Who is there?” asked the sorrowful voice of a man.
Swearing under his breath, Richard let the book slide back to the floor as he took off running away from where he had heard the question. He stumbled into a bedroom and, panicking, dove under the bed and shimmied himself back against the wall it abutted.
Placing a hand over his mouth, he held his breath trying to hear whether or not the person was drawing near. He never heard the footsteps, but he did see the person’s legs. Legs, specifically, because where there should have been feet were instead shimmering wisps of bluish smoke.
“Please, I’ve been so lonely here. I know you’ve seen the stories I tried writing. I’m terrible at it. I will let you go if you can help me,” said the ghost. “Please, I’m practically begging you.”
Richard, figuring the wrath of an angry spirit was worse than dealing with one offering to help him, slowly scooted out from under the bed. Looking up, he saw the specter of a very disheveled man wearing pajamas. His unshaven and unkempt face reminded him of his uncle’s, a habitual drunk.  
“Ok, as long as you promise not to hurt me. I was just walking down the street on my way to get a soda when this dog—”
“Fantastic start,” the ghost said, cutting him off as he pulled a concealed book from his waistband and produced a pen from behind his ear. “Please continue.”
Richard climbed onto the bed to sit and proceeded to tell him about chasing the dog, how the house seemed to slowly fade in around him, and the fear he felt upon reading the books. He rambled for what seemed like an eternity before he let out a massive yawn.
“Tired already?” asked the ghost. “If you need to rest, please do. I have all the time in the world to wait, after all.
Wearily, Richard nodded, flopped backward onto the pillows, and fell asleep. The man smiled as he looked at the book. Writing continued to fill the page, picking up where Richard had left off in one anecdote about his family dog and why seeing the dead one wasn’t quite as traumatic as he thought it should have been. Eventually, the writing would trail off into page after page of emptiness.  
Looking back up from his handiwork and smiling, the ghost caught the last glimpse of Richard as he faded away into a cloud of words, ones that flowed into the pages. With this, a title appeared on the cover.
“A Sleeping Dog in the Mystery House,” the ghost read aloud, grinning even wider. “What a wonderful title. You even got further than the rest. Commendable.”
Closing the book with an audible thump, he returned to the living room and the fireplace. Gently, he gathered up several of the strewn books and floated over to the iron screen. With a wicked laugh, he opened the screen’s doors and tossed the armful of books into the fireplace, whereupon they burst into bluish-green flames.
“Let’s see how far we’ve come now,” the ghost said, casting a glance over toward the now-roaming spirit of the dog.
As the flames consumed the books, he reached inside himself and retrieved an opulent, golden book. Gingerly, he placed it into the flames and it sprang open, absorbing the flames directly onto the pages.
Once the fire was out, he collected the book. Examining it, he flipped pages excitedly to read the new words he had forged.
“You really are a great help,” he said back to the dog. “With your help there shall be no more shortages of visitors and this story will soon be complete. It may have taken me so many years, but now we’re already seven pages into chapter four. Only a few hundred more pages to go. Now, be a good boy and fetch me someone else would you?”
There are some people who will tell you there used to be a house at 2178 Van Buren Avenue.
You should listen to them.
Category:RTWC23
Category:Books
Category:Ghosts
Category:Places
Category:ClericofMadness