Whispering Corridors

One

There isn't much time. I need to tell you everything that happened. In the end, it's too late for me. He'll be here tonight, before the sun comes up, and there isn't anything I can do about it. But I need to get this out there. Someone needs to know what happened to me. To Lydia. To all of the others.

The old house on Kenwood Drive?

Stay away from it. Just forget it ever existed, all right? Don't go near it.

If you'd asked me about that house before all of this I would have told you there was nothing special about it. Oh, there were the stories, of course. The stories of hauntings; stories depicting all sorts of frightening and nebulous things coming out of there that probably aren't so different from the stories surrounding the old, abandoned houses where you live. Every town has them, and Moorlake, Ohio is no exception.

But I was wrong.

I went inside, and I shouldn't have.

I learned the hard way that there is something different about the house on Kenwood Drive, something that makes it stand apart from its peers. Now that I've visited said house, the one with the tattered beige siding, the one with the crunched-up awning and stained concrete porch, the house where the Upside-Down Man lives, I understand that this place is the genuine article.

And I wish I'd never gone inside.

I wouldn't have ever set foot in the place if not for Lydia. When she asked me out of the blue to visit the joint on Halloween and make a video, I thought she was insane. Lydia was always talking about film. The semester before last she'd taken some course in cinematography, and ever since then she'd become a serious film buff and budding artiste. She never shut up about Werner Herzog; day and night she'd go on about the time he and his crew carried a steamship over a hill during the filming of 1982's Fitzcarraldo, and of her intention to someday pull off something similarly visionary.

Sorry, I'm rambling. That's not the important stuff, but in order for you to understand what happened, to really get it, you're going to have to put up with my rambling. I'm going to give you all of the details, even the tiny ones, to be safe.

Why did I go with her? The million dollar question. It wasn't because I cared about making movies, I'll tell you that much. There was something intriguing about that old house that me and all of the other local kids had spent our youths mythologizing that I couldn't ignore. But beyond that, Lydia was determined to go in there whether I came along or not. My hand was forced.

Lydia did all of her shopping at Hot Topic. Though old enough to drink she stood a measly five-foot-two and she could seldom get into R-rated movies without getting carded. She had purple hair, had dyed it a real serious shade of metallic violet that left it feeling kind of coarse like hay. She was always wearing T-shirts for these hardcore bands whose albums she likely couldn't even name. I'd asked her once to list off a couple of Black Flag songs, to tell me the name of the lead singer of Misfits, but her reply was always the same.

"Screw you, Eric."

I'm a junior at Moorlake University. It's autumn, and truth be told my grades are a special kind of suck. I switched majors four or five times before enrolling in my second year classes, and my GPA was already grazing the limits of academic probation as I started into my third. My folks weren't too thrilled with that little development, and it's not a stretch to say that school was stressing me out—that I was looking for something to fill my time with that had nothing to do with lectures or textbooks.

Something like messing around with Lydia in an abandoned house on Halloween.

In retrospect, I wish I'd chosen differently. And I'm certain she'd agree with me.

But now it's too late for regret.

See, there are places in this world where people aren't meant to go. Places where certain things lay low. Dangerous and awful things that you can see if you get real close, but that you're better off never encountering.

If you take only one thing from all of this, don't go inside.

Don't go inside that house.

Please.

As I sit here, on the uncomfortable cot my jailers intend for a bed, I'm doing my best not to look in the mirror. It's on the other side of the room, just above the sink, and if my eyes shift ever so slightly to the right, I feel like I can almost see something in the reflection...

No! No... I need to close my eyes. Center my thoughts and avoid the mirror. Maybe, if I'm lucky, I'll be able to stay awake tonight, though my eyes are getting heavy and my body's going to give in soon. I wonder if he knows that, if he can feel my fatigue growing with every passing hour. I can't allow myself to sleep until dawn. If I should drift off before that, then...

He's here in the cell with me, I know it. The warden just walked by to do his nightly rounds and couldn't see him, but I know he's here with me...

You need to know about this. About every last detail.

It was an unseasonably cold afternoon, the day before Halloween, and the leaves never seemed to stop rattling against the pavement...

Two

And it was raining. I pressed my forehead against the driver's side window of my Hyundai Accent, a little black hatchback, and let my breath fog up the glass. The house on Kenwood Drive? You serious?

From the passenger seat, Lydia took the lens cap off of her new camcorder, a Panasonic that her parents had bought her, and nodded. "That's the one they say is haunted, right? Let's go there together, on Halloween. I want to get some footage, put together a documentary. Who knows? Maybe we'll get a ghost on camera. Folks down in Suriname were very superstitious. They had all kinds of traditions related to the dead, to the world beyond. What do you think about that? You think they're all a bunch of loonies for believing in life after death? I don't."

This was only the second or third time I'd seen her all semester. The start of her semester had been taken up by a study abroad. Lydia had spent just over two months in Suriname of all places, and was now back in the States, filling out the last month before winter break with a handful of boring filler classes. Supposedly she'd hated it there, and her complaints about the local cuisine never seemed to end. Already petite, I'd been amazed upon her return to campus to find her a good ten or more pounds lighter than when I'd last seen her.

No offense, but I don't really care what the people in Suriname think, I said.

"Because you're unworldly. They speak Dutch down there, and they have a word for guys like you. Eikel. You know what that means? You're a jerk. She sighed. Don't you ever wonder about the other side? This could be our chance to record something that proves the existence of life after death, of the persistence of consciousness!"

I scoffed. Yeah. Or maybe, by going into that trash heap of a house, we'll end up with Tetanus. Or Mesothelioma. You know old places like that are packed with asbestos, right? Between you and me, I'd rather hang around the frat house and enjoy some drinks, check out the parade of slutty sorority chicks, the usual. Let me know how it goes, though.

Lydia took on a real thoughtful look, the kind of expression she saved for those rare moments where she eschewed levity and wanted to have a serious conversation about something weighty. Or to ask a favor. You and I, she began, are going to be dead someday. You know that?

I think I scoffed again. Whoa there, grandma. I dunno about you, but I'm twenty-two. It's a little early for me to start applying for that AARP card, don't you think?

She wasn't letting up. That's not what I mean. We're going to be dead someday. And the end will be here before we know it. Don't you ever think about that? About the possibility of leaving nothing behind? Lydia always wore a lot of makeup, but in the grey light coming in through the windshield her features looked positively ghostly. Her eyes were penciled up in such a way that they appeared abnormally large; too big for a face so narrow as hers. The thing that scares me most about death is the idea of being forgotten. Every day I find myself thinking about that. Who's going to remember me when I'm dead?

Gripping the wheel, I exhaled slowly and then tucked my hands into the pockets of my grey hoodie. Well... I dunno. Maybe I'll con some woman into popping out a couple of Eric juniors for me. And maybe my kids will have grandkids whose names I can forget during their visits to the hospice?

She looked at me with a frown. Children aren't a legacy, she said with such firmness that she may as well have been summarizing an accepted scientific law. "I'm not interested in that. I want to leave behind something concrete, a piece of me that the world will be able to access—will want to access—for years—centuries—after I'm gone. Don't you ever want that?"

Sounds like you want to be immortal, I offered.

I guess so. Anyway, I just want my life to mean something, even after it's over with. I want to leave a mark on the world. She sighed. I want to make movies, Eric.

Drumming against the steering wheel, I looked out at the damp scenery, at the red and brown leaves clinging stubbornly to the hood of my car, and replied, "And that's why it's so crucial that we go out to that house on Kenwood Drive on Halloween, huh? It isn't just a silly movie; this is your legacy." I rolled my eyes, and it earned me a punch to the arm.

So, how about it? I can pick up some cheap light bars to stage the lighting for each shot. I've got this lovely thing to record with in HD, she said, giving the camcorder a shake. "You don't have to do a whole lot. Just keep me company, help me get around the house in case things are dangerous or broken down, yeah? It'll be a barebones production. You know, in Grizzly Man, Herzog covered the work of--"

I cut her off by jamming the key into the ignition and starting up the car. Whoa, now. I get it. I don't need to hear about that movie again, OK? Shifting into drive, I wheeled out of the empty parking lot on the edge of campus and hooked a right onto Wooster Street. I guess there are worse ways to spend Halloween than paling around with you in a potentially dangerous house. One thing, though.

She was peering out the window through the camcorder, testing out the zoom and tonguing her lip ring. It was something she did whenever she was excited. What's that?

I grinned and hit the windshield wipers. If the place is full of violent hobos, I'm totally making a run for it and leaving you to fend for yourself.

She turned the lens to me, squaring me in her sights. Eric Spencer, age twenty-two, of Moorlake, Ohio—tell me: What do you think we'll find inside that house?

I laughed and played along. "Well, miss, thank you for asking. First, I must say it's an honor to be doing this interview. The house on Kenwood Drive, known amongst us locals as the Black House on Kenwood, has a sordid reputation. Countless murders have taken place there, and during the height of the Satanic Panic, cults were known to carry on diabolical rites there."

Her eyes widened. R-really?

It was easy to forget that Lydia was from out of town. I'd lived in Moorlake all my life, but she'd come from next door, some little blotch in Michigan, and so fooling her on matters like this one was easy. No, I admitted. I made all of that up. Sounded pretty good though, didn't it? If you want to use that bit for your movie, you're going to have to get in touch with my agent--

Something dark darted into my periphery and forced me to swerve. I watched as a large, black bird, feathers thoroughly ruffled, fell from the sky and struck the ground with an audible crack. After that crash landing, the thing didn't move again, its plumage matted down to the asphalt by a mixture of rain and blood. I gulped, staring at the bird a long while, and fought back a sudden spike of nausea. Finally, when I'd managed to drive around the carcass and give it a little distance in the rearview, I took up a seasick grin. I should've been paying attention to the road. Had I gone another foot that thing would have landed on my hood. It's gotta be some sort of bad omen, right?

Lydia had dropped the camera back into her lap and was sitting silently, watching the sidewalk speed by as I accelerated. She'd gone pale.

Three

We were standing in the camping section of our local Target, eyeing sleeping bags and tents. Hold on, I said. We're not camping in there. We're just going for a walk inside and shooting some video, remember?

Grinning, Lydia rounded the corner and started towards the checkouts. I guess so. She'd grabbed a few handfuls of granola bars, had put some energy drinks and LED tap lights in the cart as well. The latter were going to be used in lighting up the house so that we'd be able to get well-lit shots of the interior, though looking at the flimsy plastic domes I didn't have high hopes. Relying on cheap lights like those all but assured a murky, unwatchable film.

I pushed the cart across the polished floors, the smell of fresh popcorn from the food court meeting my nostrils and the sound of the rain coming in just over the unceasing din of 90's alternative rock. Slowing just a bit, I tried to remember the name of the song that was playing.

Lydia had stopped off at the cosmetics, was examining a few tubes of lipstick in the light. While she compared different shades of red and purple, she turned and waved me over, the Panasonic hanging around her neck like a weight. You know, we can't just march in there unprepared, she said, settling on Urban Plum and dropping it into the cart. We know next to nothing about the house. We need to get someone else involved with this. Maybe a neighbor... someone who's been in town a long time and knows that place.

I pushed down on the red handle of the cart and popped a wheelie with it, nearly bumping into a rack full of cotton swabs. "Have you ever been to Kenwood Drive? I asked. There aren't any other houses down there. The street's pretty much empty."

"Yeah, but there must be some houses around it. Whatever. I just want to talk to someone who lives close by. Get their take on it as the haunted house's closest neighbor. See, that's a good angle. It's compelling. We're going to frame the narrative with this interview. It'll give us credibility. That's so crucial when you're making a movie like this one. You know, when they made the Blair Witch Project, they included those fake interviews at the beginning with all of those random-looking extras. It really made it seem real, didn't it?"

I dunno, I replied. I never saw it. I'm not into horror films.

Lydia groaned, wresting the cart from my grasp. I don't even know why I'm friends with you. She wheeled past the children's clothing and stopped at the checkouts, falling into line behind a mother with two wailing toddlers in her shopping cart. "What do you say? It's early yet. We can head out there right now, get a look at the house. Just some exterior shots. And then we can seek out