Poisoned PH2018

Chapter 1 “Something’s Rotten”

“Ready?” Benny’s voice cut through the silence, striking the nerves of the other boys. A palpable darkness threatened to encroach the one small flame which, creating both light and shadow, distorted the familiar objects around Harrison’s room and the features of the three seated teens. Harrison opened his wallet and pulled out the only picture he had of his birth father. Worn, missing a corner, bent, it had been handled often and appeared to have come from a different age altogether. The image was of the young family outside their house one sunny day-- an inscrutable expression on his father’s face as he held him, an infant, with one hand, his brooding mother firmly by the waist with the other and squinted unsmiling into the lens.

The photograph was the last taken of his father; snapped days before he was deployed to Afghanistan where he fell victim to an IED. He had been laid to rest in Arlington--roundly dispatched of all worldly cares. Disturbingly, for the past several weeks, Harrison had been plagued by dreams he could barely grasp; dark, lingering, shadowy nightmares in which he answered a call from Dad and an anguished remote voice urgently tried to convey something through a staticky and interrupted connection. It wasn’t until he checked his phone yesterday morning and noticed his call log inexplicably showing a series of missed calls that he was sure hadn’t been there before, spanning every night for the past few weeks, all received at 1:00 am from an unmarked number, that he had told his two best friends about the recurring visions. Benny had suggested they try to contact his father using a Ouija, and though at first Marcel’s eyes had gotten all wide and he had blurted out “Aw, Hell no!,” the boys couldn’t help but be intrigued. So here they were, at 1:00 am, on Halloween for God’s sake, initiating contact with the dead.

“Now or never.” He put the picture on the corner of the board, placed his hand on the planchette, and watched Benny follow suit. Marcel observed, armed with a pen and notepad.

Although three friends had laughingly set up the board and candle, their jocular mood dissipated when the lights were switched off and the room grew tense. The friends had agreed that Harrison and Benny would close their eyes and let the planchette guide them as Marcel recorded the activity. Even the air felt oppressive and heavy to Harrison as he held his lids tightly closed, fingers poised on the planchette, which he moved in a circular pattern as Benny spoke, “We are here to communicate with good spirits only. Harris... believes he has been getting messages from his dad, we are here hoping to speak to you, Mr. Corbin, sir….” he trailed off. “Are you in the room with us tonight?” The circling planchette sped up, and took up a figure eight pattern. Harrison tensed up even more, and nearly opened his eyes when he felt his hand being tugged smoothly in a straight line. It stopped abruptly. “Yes.” Marcel said. He turned to his friends astounded, searched their faces for signs of trickery. “It. Said. Yes.”

“Keep going,” urged Harrison.

“Something smells rotten-- what IS that?” Benny hissed, wrinkling his nose in disgust. “What you want to ask him?” he whispered to his friend, his voice strained.

“Dad..have you been trying to tell me something?” the circling planchette quickly slid across the board. Yes.

“What is it? What could possibly disturb your peace over… there?” Harrison was short of breath and nearly choking on his words.

“N.O. R.E.S.T. N.O. P.E.A.C.E.”

The teens hands swept over the board, gaining speed and nearly slamming down at the end of the last word.

“M.U.R.D.E.R.” Marcel read each letter as the planchette stopped his voice sounded forced as he dictated each letter. “Murder...guys… what the #...... I don’t like this.”

“How can I be sure it’s you, dad? Can I see you?”

“#, Harris, I don’t like this at all.” Marcel had stopped writing and stared, fascinated, at the board. He read the letters as the triangle marked them. “I.N.V.I.”

“Invisible” Harrison thought to himself. The planchette stopped and circled furiously before resuming from the beginning.

“I.N.V.I.T.E. M.E. I.N.”

A terrible clatter came from the blackness behind them and brought all three boys to their feet at once. Benny said, “That’s it, I’m out. Harrison, man, I can’t do this. I’m done.”

In two strides he had reached the light switch and the room was flooded with light. On Harrison’s night stand, a framed picture had been overturned and broken glass was on the floor. The three friends looked at each other, visibly shaken. Harrison walked over to the picture and righted it. It was a picture of Harrison, his mom, and stepdad. He turned to his friends, speechless.

Benny grabbed the Ouija board off the table, shoved it into its box, and put it into his backpack. “Well that was a stupid idea.” He said, trying to laugh. The room looked much less of a threat in the bright overhead light, and if not for the boys white faces and the lingering tension in the room, the scene would be normal enough-- a teen boy’s slightly messy bedroom, nothing to see here. “Guys, I really need to get going. My mom is gonna freak if I’m out any later than this. I’ll talk to ya in the morning.”

He hugged Harrison before he left. “Yo. That # could really mess wit your head if you let it. Just let it go for now. You have no reason to believe any of that stuff. You know your dad was killed in action, man. End of story. Truth is we have no idea who or what was on the other end tonight. This stuff is bad news man. I’m done.”

On his way home he stopped and threw the Ouija board in a dumpster.

Chapter 2 “Ghost”

The next night Harrison woke up with a start, sat straight up in a cold sweat, heart pounding. He gasped. Sitting in an armchair, in the corner of the room, was a horrible apparition. It was unmistakably his father, seemed to put off its own sickly light, and was staring at him intently with that same inscrutable expression as in the photo. Worse, it smiled right then, revealing rotted teeth and loosely hanging flesh. “Harrison. My boy.” A voice which had been long in disuse, an unpleasant tone.

“Could it be?” gasped the teen. It’s awful, he thought to himself.

“I can’t move on until I see justice. Stuck here in Hell on Earth, neither living nor dead, I’ve waited until you were old enough to hear what I have to say, and do what is fitting of a man. Your stepdad--my half brother to be exact-- the wretch that he is, poisoned me the night before my deployment and he and your mother conspired to make it appear like I took my own life and to sell you some bull# story about my dying overseas. Are you following me son? They’ve been lying to you for ALL THESE YEARS. They were married within 2 months of my death-- hardly had my body cooled when his was warming hers. It’s most foul.”

Harrison could hardly grasp what he was hearing. His stomach dropped, heart still thrashing against its frame. He couldn’t manage a single word. His face contorted, he grabbed his blankets and pulled them firmly over his head. And for the first time he could remember, he broke down in utter grief. He felt the weight of the whole world in that moment. By the time he dared emerge from his flimsy fort, the sky was brightening and the room empty.

Chapter 3 “A Downward Spiral”

Greta looked at her husband, eyes full of concern, “Clyde, something is really wrong with Harrison. He’s been acting so distant. He’ll hardly look me in the eyes anymore. He has dark circles under his eyes, he’s so pale… what could possibly be haunting him?” Her voice trailed off in a wail. She had never been so worried (well, maybe once).
“...Do you think it’s… drugs?”
Clyde looked lovingly at his wife. He was worried, too. No, he did not think it was drugs. He just didn’t know what could be making the boy look at him with such open contempt (and in stolen glances at his mother too, Clyde had noted).
“I’ll talk to Marcel and Benny about it. Maybe you should call Sophia too. I’m sure he hasn’t seen her in at least a week! We shouldn’t have let it go this far.”

He texted Harrison’s friends and sat down to a glass of brandy. He had never been much of a drinker but for some reason had been filling more snifters lately. He sighed. He’d been prepared for some pushback from his teenage stepson, but this seemed heavier and more foreboding than anything he had ever anticipated. And if Harrison ever found out… the truth… the family would never be the same. Clyde put his head in his hands and sat in his chair deep in thought, hardly moving, for a very long time.

Chapter 4 “I Have Proof”

Harrison had been living in a nightmarish fugue since seeing his father’s ghost. All of his effort went into putting up a brave front at school, which was more than he could manage at home or with people who knew him well. He stopped calling Soph when feigning normalcy with her became impossible. In one moment of weakness he nearly blurted out the whole unbelievable, odious story to her, but he kept it in, instead making some gruff and cruel comment to drive her away.

He hadn’t seen the ghost since that first night, but had been rehashing the horrific news since then: remembering the odd looks his parents would exchange when he asked about his dad, about their history, thinking about how his parents had moved far away from his birthplace, taken nothing of their past with them, how little he really knew about his own history, and he began cursing his position in life in utter anguish. More than once he considered suicide. But seeing his father’s decaying ghost made him none too eager to join the afterlife. At the same time, nothing in life mattered to him anymore. In short, young Harrison was in a very bad way.

He couldn’t talk to his mom. He tried-- his words would choke him. He still didn’t know what to believe. True, his stepdad had been in his life for as long as he could remember, and had never treated him cruelly. His parents seemed to really be bonded, to love each other and him. He had lived a happy life-- not completely undisturbed by the sorrow of never knowing his birth father, but happy nonetheless. Now this, and everything seemed up in the air. Harrison was crushed.

And then came the proof.

Harrison jolted upright in bed, drenched and very much afraid. His dream, of a nameless abysmal terror, faded from consciousness but lingered on in his psyche. Then he noticed the stench. A dark figure stood blocking the doorway. “I have proof, my boy.” It said.

Harrison followed as if in a trance. The figure was blacker than its surroundings and Harrison was glad he couldn’t see it this time. It led him down into the basement (Harrison hatedit there) and in a dusted, locked box (Harrison was handed the key by the shadowy figure of his father) was the evidence that set the final schism between Harrison and the world as he knew it.

It was all there. His father’s death certificate stated the cause of death as “Poison. Took own life.,” not a IED in Afghanistan as he had been led to believe. A marriage certificate 50 days later. Then the letters, written in his dear parents’ own script, hinting at dark guilty secrets that they must hide from Harrison and a fugitive flight.

With brutal reality staring Harrison in the face, he had no choice but to face it. Something in him hardened. Now he understood human nature, and that it was in his nature to be brutal as well. He was ready to do as his father directed.

Chapter 5 “Poisoned”

Clyde and Greta sat down at the kitchen table. “I think we need to tell Harrison the truth.” Greta blurted out.
Clyde nodded gravely, “That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking. I’m not sure how he’ll take it but I think he’s old enough to know. Besides, I can’t imagine things getting worse than they’ve been this past month. I don’t even know the boy anymore. It’s horrible.”
He grabbed Greta’s hand. “Any mistakes we made, all of them, were made with the best intentions. We only had that boy’s best interest at heart. Surely he will understand that. I’ll get the box.”
Greta looked at him gratefully, but through damp eyes, and nodded. She yearned to turn back the clock, and that she had done things differently. But no going back now.

Her nerves were shot. As her husband went to grab the remnants of their tattered past, she fixed herself and her husband a brandy. First time for everything, she thought, looking warilly at the dark sharp smelling liquid. Clyde came back with the lockbox, went out to the garage where they kept the key, and came back smiling.

“Harrison’s a good boy. He’ll understand.”

He sat down across from his wife. They smiled at each other, wished each other luck, and downed their snifters. The front door closed and in walked Harrison. He blanched when he saw the empty glass in front of his mother, the open box on the table. “Mom… you don’t drink.”

Then Clyde started screaming in agony. “What’s wrong? It’s burning, help me!” His mom was turning purple.

“Why did you kill my dad! How could you marry my mom after what you did? You monster!” Harrison screamed at Clyde, who was unable to answer.

His mom looked at him weakly. She was fading, fast, but not before she told him “Your father had a terrible streak, a wicked man. He had tried to murder you when you were just an infant, luckily for all of us Clyde was there. He rushed in, saved your life…. Your father swallowed the poison he meant for you, vowing revenge with his last breath. I’m sorry we… never..told you. I love you son.”

Harrison was left in silence, emptiness, the terrifying weight of what he had just done. His father had succeeded, after all these years, in poisoning him. His life was over. From deep within the house, from everywhere at once, came a deep, guttural, evil laugh. When Benny and Marcel found him the next day, rooted to the very same spot and staring wildly at nothing at all, he was laughing too; a madman.

The End

a reply to: zosimov

Super good read. U2Uing.

a reply to: DictionaryOfExcuses

Thank you DOE! (Sent one back.)