| Mom's Home |
| By Tom Beck |
As the Muse, I often see things from a different level than human perspectives. I see things
from the subconscious level of humanity; I truly am on the inside looking out. I see
humanity's nightmares, rub shoulder-to-shoulder with monsters and ghosts, and sometimes
those monsters get out.
In today's world, ghost hunters are televised fascinating audiences, but what happens when
the ghost-watching surveillance equipment becomes available for the normal family? What
would happen if you could purchase the equipment, take it home, and start your own ghost
investigation? Tom Beck lets Liquid Imagination flow, and he answers this question with his
professional debut.
from the subconscious level of humanity; I truly am on the inside looking out. I see
humanity's nightmares, rub shoulder-to-shoulder with monsters and ghosts, and sometimes
those monsters get out.
In today's world, ghost hunters are televised fascinating audiences, but what happens when
the ghost-watching surveillance equipment becomes available for the normal family? What
would happen if you could purchase the equipment, take it home, and start your own ghost
investigation? Tom Beck lets Liquid Imagination flow, and he answers this question with his
professional debut.
The grandfather clock in the hallway chimed once, the warm, rich tones reverberating off the
walls and hardwood floor. Mom had loved that clock and its hour, half-hour, and quarter hour
chimes. Carter checked his watch. The clock had chimed at 6:07. The damn thing had
started malfunctioning after Mom died three weeks ago.
He had walked through the door, just as he had every day for the past six years, and stepped
into the dining room, expecting to see her quiet face, her closed eyes and the slow rise and fall
of her chest with each breath, expecting to complete the daily ritual of feeding her, combing her
hair, and keeping her clean. Only yesterday, it seemed, he had brushed her curly white hair,
plumped a pillow beneath her head, and kissed her goodnight. He groaned as he stared at the
empty corner of the room where her medical bed had been, his body hollowing into an empty
husk.
Carter tasted death in the room. He’d give anything to have her back.
“What’s wrong, Dad?” Melanie, his 12-year old daughter, asked as she walked into the dining
room. She flipped her long blonde hair over her shoulder, bundled it between her fingers, and
began to work it through a scrunchie. When she looked up, he wished she couldn’t see him
like this, on the verge of tears.
“You know, she lived to see you every day.” He looked at his daughter, thankful his voice
hadn’t cracked.
The clock chimed again, just once—6:09.
“It’s her, you know,” she said. “The clock. She’s chiming the clock.”
“Who… what… are you talking about?”
“The clock. It’s Grandma.”
“C’mon, Melanie, this is no time to mess with me.” He felt his face crimson at the thought of
Melanie having the gall to joke about her grandmother, but the crystal innocence in her eyes
showed serious intent. He remembered his mother’s little chats with Melanie and knew the
source of his daughter’s imagination. Mom had inherited a superstitious streak—something
from the old world she said plagued women in their family for generations, something that
violated their dreams.
“How do you know it’s her?”
“A few days before she died, she told me whenever I heard the clock chime she was near and
not to be afraid.” Melanie ran her fingers along a silver chain necklace and then touched an
amulet suspended beneath her blouse. The damn thing, a flat silver disc with an embedded
relic and Cyrillic engraving on the base, gave Carter the creeps whenever he had seen Mom
wearing it, and she had worn it everywhere, believing it had mystical powers of protection.
“She said that to make you feel better, honey. She knew her time was near.”
“If you don’t believe me, Dad, we can get one of those new webcams that show the dead. You
can see the videos on-line at ghoul-tube.com. C’mon, I’ll show you.” Melanie took his hand
and led him upstairs to her computer.
Carter thought it looked like a horror comic cover from his childhood when the website
appeared on the monitor. Animated flambeaux flickered in each corner of the screen, and
dripping blood covered the black background around the borders. A few advertisements for
ghoul-cams blinked on the right-hand side. The website looked as hokey as he had imagined.
Melanie typed a search string and hit enter. “You’ve got to see this.” She looked over her
shoulder with a big, toothy grin. The video launched and Carter saw the dark, round stones of
a castle ruin, probably somewhere in Europe.
The so-called ghoul-cam had surprisingly good video. The camera panned a crumbling
stonewall leading toward an open field. Gray clouds cobbled the sky. The caption beneath
the video read, Banshee Duet.
“So where’s the banshee?”
Just as the words fell from his mouth, a knot of green-blue light glided along the top of the
wall. It stopped and spun in place, growing bigger. Another blob of green-blue light glided into
place near the first and started to spin and grow. The balls of light merged and shifted color to
blue-white and exploded, the computer speakers shuddering with the banshees’ hollow wail.
The sounds of their agony echoed in the emptiness he felt inside his heart, making his eyes
wet with tears.
“This is stupid, Melanie. It’s just special effects done on a computer.”
“Look at this one.”
She clicked an icon and another video appeared. This one titled, The Wraith. She hit the play
button and the speakers roared, vibrating the tabletop. A gaping mouth writhed on the screen.
The wraith’s roaring continued for several seconds, ending when the mouth closed and shrank
back into the dark recesses of a hooded cloak.
“That’s so cool.”
“Am I supposed to think this is funny?”
Carter’s heart burned and his face molded into a frown. He heard the sharp edge in his voice
slice at his young daughter who had never known death until her grandmother had passed
away.
Her smile twisted into a grimace and tears streamed down her cheeks.
“Honey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go off.” The sight of his daughter crying tore his guts out,
and before he could collect his wits, he asked, “Would you like a ghoul-cam?”
The expression she gave wasn’t what he’d hoped. He heard her mournful voice say, “Sure,
Dad. That would be great.”
The ghoul-cam arrived on a Friday afternoon. He heard the Fed-Ex truck wheeze to a stop out
front. The truck had roared away from the curb in a cloud of diesel fumes by the time he
reached the front door. Leaning against the doorframe on the porch was a cardboard cube.
Melanie set up the ghoul-cam on the coffee table in the living room after dinner. The device
looked like any other webcam, a round ball the size of an orange with a lens and a USB cord
connecting to her laptop. She was loading the driver software when he sat beside her on the
couch.
Although astonished he’d actually bought the little scam-box for his daughter, he saw she
believed it would photograph the dead. The promo on the company’s website had mentioned
the tremendous advances in semiconductor physics and materials science used to make the
specialized imaging sensor in the ghoul-cam.
Researchers had accidentally discovered the ethereal properties of an experimental imaging
chip designed for use in high radiation zones. Strange noise patterns appeared in the camera’
s images that the researchers thought were interference from an external source. But as the
true nature of the ghost images became apparent, the company developed the ghoul-cam for
mass production. He didn’t care if it was bullshit or not. He hadn’t seen Melanie this happy
since before Mom died.
Carter turned the evening news on and settled back into the corner cushions of the couch
while Melanie played with the ghoul-cam. She was obsessed with all the controls on the GUI
that adjusted the camera for background and foreground lighting, ethereal density, ectoplasm
histogram, and the general focus, frames-per-second, and exposure settings. He watched her
out of the corner of his eye and enjoyed seeing his beautiful little girl having a ball with her new
toy.
“Dad,” she said under her breath with a hush. “Dad, you’re not going to believe this.”
Carter looked at the computer screen and saw a white, ghostly shape as it stopped next to the
grandfather clock in the hall. His heart thumped once in his chest and then balled into his
throat. He tried to swallow but couldn’t. On the computer screen, Mom’s gentle face turned
and looked at him. She reached through the stained cherry side of the grandfather clock and
plucked the chime—just once, and the wonderful richness of the clock’s peal filled his ears and
heart with a torrent of joy. All this time, she had been the one chiming the clock. She looked
so happy. She was home.
He started toward her, the empty space in the hallway, but no one was there.
“She’s gone,” Melanie said from the couch.
Though he hadn’t chanced to touch Mom again, the emptiness inside the house disappeared.
He felt the peace and acceptance he’d seen in his mother’s eyes instead. She had come
home to see him.
“Dad!” Melanie said. “Dad, come over here.”
He turned around and saw Melanie recoiling into the corner of the couch and clutching a pillow
across her chest. Carter almost laughed as he approached, eyes following her pointing finger
to the computer screen.
A dark shape appeared in the hallway at the entrance to the living room. Bloody, lidless orbs
glowed in the center of the dark mass like eyes. Carter sensed a hunger in its stare, in the
way the red orbs flickered and the dark body undulated as if seen through flames.
Melanie gasped. “Daddy, what is it?”
Carter slammed the laptop shut and wrapped his arms around his daughter.
“It’s not real, baby. It’s not real.”
He looked at the empty hallway, and a chill finger traced a path along his spine. The
grandfather clock bonged eight times. He checked his watch and saw it was at the top of the
hour. Melanie had already unplugged the ghoul-cam, stuffed it back in the box and tossed it
across the room. She punched him in the shoulder, tears streaming, face red with fright and
said, “I don’t want to live here anymore.”
Carter closed his eyes and wished he’d never bought the damn camera. He pulled Melanie
close who snuggled under his arm, sobbing. What kind of parent was he to have bought such
a dangerous device for his 12-year old daughter?
My God, it couldn’t be real.
But he had seen Mom’s face on the computer screen with tendrils of ethereal vapor trailing like
a beautiful white gown. She had smiled at him.
A tear slid down his cheek.
“I miss you, Mom,” he said.
“I miss her, too.”
Melanie wriggled out from under his arm and wiped tears from her cheeks, then buried her
face in her hands.
He cringed at the thought of the dark creature looking for Mom. It had passed through the
space where she had stood next to the clock and seemed to follow her—until he had slammed
the laptop shut.
“Oh no,” he said.
“What is it, Dad?”
The lilt in her voice, the way she had said “Dad,” spoke volumes. She trusted him for
protection. And, dear God, how could he protect her from whatever entity was behind those
eyes, an evil he couldn’t even see? He stared into the empty living room expecting to see the
creature appear out of thin air. It could be there, a few millimeters from his face right now, and
he’d never know it. What in the Hell did it want?
He felt Melanie studying him but couldn’t look at her for fear of showing the gut-numbing terror
feeding on his insides. He turned his head and smiled anyway.
“Nothing, darling. I’m not too happy with the ghoul-cam. It’s just a gadget, you know. There’s
nothing to be afraid of.”
The words sounded hollow and Melanie remained silent. She snuggled beside him on the
couch for the remainder of the evening, and they watched prime time TV. She leaned against
the doorjamb and made small talk when he went into the kitchen to make popcorn and pour
glasses of soda. A palpable fear edged her words as she rambled about school, softball, her
friends, seemingly unaware of her hands sliding the scrunchie up and down her ponytail and
twisting her hair into loops around her fingers. He just hoped his fear wasn’t as transparent.
The late night newscasters finally delivered the last of the news when the Channel 4
weatherman pointed at the forecast map and waved his arm in an arc across the screen,
stopping at the smiling sun, the angry cloud, and the lightning bolt as he made his predictions.
Carter watched his little girl sleep, curled in a ball next to him on the couch, the soft whisper of
her breath a reminder of her innocence and trust. A storm would arrive just after dawn. Of
course, it would probably hit at rush hour and delay his commute—best to get an early start.
“It’s time to go to bed, sweetheart.” He rubbed her shoulder and then pulled a few stray
strands of hair out of her eyes.
Melanie shrugged his hand off and mumbled. “Can I sleep with you tonight, Dad?”
“You’re too old for that.”
“Please!”
Carter watched the start of the late night show while Melanie got ready for bed. She called
downstairs every few minutes and asked, “Are you coming upstairs soon?” She was snuggled
under the covers in her pajamas with the TV turned on and the sound muted when he entered
the bedroom. He sat on the bed beside her and tucked the covers under her chin, kissing her
forehead.
“Aren’t you coming to bed?”
“Nah, I ‘m staying up for a while.”
“Please don’t leave me.”
“I’m not going anywhere, sweetheart.” Carter sat down at the desk and opened his laptop. “I
just need to check a few things on-line before I go to sleep.”
“Can you leave the light on?”
“I’ll leave the TV on. How’s that? Now, go to sleep.”
The hard drive whirred as the laptop booted. He checked his email, read online news, and
reviewed his bank account and credit card statements. The flickering light from the TV cast
harsh shadows and light across the bed sheets and walls. Just the thought of the red-eyed
creature returning made his bones tingle and his gut sour. Going to bed was the last thing on
his mind.
“Daddy, I can’t go to sleep. I’m scared.”
“You need to sleep, baby. I’ll stay up and keep watch to make sure you’re OK.”
She sat up in bed and turned the light on.
“Can you check the room… with the ghoul-cam? That thing could be in here right now and we’
d never know it.”
Why did she have to say that? Carter’s skin crawled.
He went downstairs and found the cardboard box with the ghoul-cam behind the easy chair.
The grandfather clock chimed once—his heart paused—and then finished with twelve steady
bongs—midnight.
Carter connected the ghoul-cam to his laptop in the bedroom while Melanie sat cross-legged
on the bed. She insisted on having the computer on the bed so she could see the video and
adjust the exposure. She handed him the camera when finished.
“OK, Dad. Pan the camera around the room.”
He felt ridiculous, holding the little webcam and slowly turning in a circle. The bossiness in his
little girl’s voice reminded him of her mother.
“Now, behind the dresser.”
The USB cord stretched tight as he moved toward the wall, but Melanie cradled the laptop and
stepped off the bed behind him. He swept the camera up and down the slot between the back
of the dresser and the wall.
“And underneath, too.”
He knelt and then lay on the carpet, aiming the camera under the dresser.
“Anything?” he asked.
She shook her head. They checked the closet, the bathroom, and the hallway before she was
satisfied.
“I’ll stay up for a while to make sure you get to sleep, OK? Now, go to bed.”
Melanie climbed under the covers and Carter tucked her in. He didn’t want to go to sleep, so
he sat down behind the computer and opened a browser. The ghoul-cam window showed the
image of his little girl on the left side of the bed with the covers mounded over her.
Carter heard the grandfather clock start the top-of-the-hour chime. It took a second for him to
realize that he’d been asleep. The awkward position of his legs on the desk cramped his
muscles and his back was sore from having slid in the chair. He swung his feet to the floor to
get the blood flowing again. His legs felt like numb stumps with pins pricking the flesh. The
clock finished the musical chime and bonged twice—2:00 AM.
Melanie whimpered in her sleep.
He turned the swivel chair toward Melanie and accidentally bumped the laptop. The screen
flashed, the hard drive whirred, and the computer desktop appeared. The ghoul-cam window
showed a dark, amorphous shape with red, bloody eyes hovering over Melanie’s head. Black
tendrils of living smoke snaked down from the creature’s center into her eyes, her ears and
mouth.
She moaned.
Carter sprung from the chair and collapsed onto the floor, his legs screaming with numb,
prickly pain. He reached for Melanie’s leg and pulled on the covers.
“Wake up!”
She moaned again.
“God damn it! Melanie, wake up!”
He pulled himself onto the bed and grabbed his daughter’s leg. She appeared to be having a
bad dream in the flickering light of the TV—no evidence of a monster.
I’m going fucking crazy.
He looked at the laptop’s screen again and saw the creature on the ghoul-cam feeding on his
daughter.
“Melanie!”
She didn’t wake up.
He wobbled to his feet then took one giant Frankenstein step and stumbled against the chest-
of-drawers.
“Melanie, wake up. Please, wake up.”
Tears welled in his eyes as he turned back to the bed and reached for her. “No!” Her
precious cheeks twisted in agony.
Carter slid his hands beneath the covers and lifted his groaning daughter into his arms. He
looked at the computer display of the ghoul-cam. The creature’s black tendrils snaked around
his daughter’s head, tightening its grip. The creature’s black essence pulsed where the
tendrils entered her eyes and mouth. All the love in his heart poured from his soul, through his
arms and hands into his little girl.
“Take me, goddamn it. Take me!”
The grandfather clocked chimed once—just once. Melanie’s tortured expression relaxed for a
moment.
“Melanie?”
Her pupils dilated and her face transformed into a frozen mask of pain. Carter lowered her to
the bed and looked at the ghoul-cam video.
The creature’s black body completely enveloped her head. The video window on the
computer screen flashed as a brilliant ball of light burst through the wall and struck the dark
writhing mass holding his daughter. White ethereal energy trailed the glowing ball like long
flowing white hairs. He saw his mother’s face tremble with rage in the ball’s fiery light. She
charged the creature and stabbed tendrils of white spiked light into the creature’s dark body.
The creature released a silent howl as a gaping hole opened beneath its eyes, revealing its
red maw. Mom’s form twisted in agony as the creature’s dark essence corrupted her where
their energies touched.
Melanie gasped and opened her eyes.
“Daddy!”
“My God, baby, I thought I’d lost you.”
He snatched her into his arms. On the ghoul-cam, he saw the creature’s dark tendrils
withdraw from his daughter as it gave up its soul feast.
Living smoke snaked outward from the creature and penetrated Mom’s essence. Her tendrils
of white light coiled around the creature’s dark body. Never in his entire life had he seen his
mother so powerful. She held the creature in her death grip as it ripped her body. The
creature thrashed and bucked tearing tendrils from its form. Mom writhed in agony in the
center of the white light as the creature tore her apart, but she wouldn’t yield.
Carter looked down at his daughter; she wasn’t wearing the silver amulet her grandmother had
given her. He remembered she kept it hanging from its chain on the headboard over her bed.
He pulled Melanie into his arms, ran down the hall, and fetched the amulet from her room.
He returned to his bedroom and found the TV flickering and the laptop asleep as if nothing had
happened in the room. He pressed the laptop’s spacebar and the screen flashed. The black
creature had speared Mom with its dark energy and had torn her beyond recognition. Carter
jumped onto the bed and thrust the amulet into the space occupied by the creature and his
mother.
“Mom! Get out of here!”
The amulet glowed cherry red and burned his hand. He swung it over his head. Energy
swirled in the air around him. Strange light enveloped the silver disc, and the embedded relic
and Cyrillic engraving burned white. Fingers tugged at his grip, trying to make him release the
talisman, but he held tight. A flash of light blinded his eyes and a still silence filled the room.
“Oh, God!”
Carter dropped to his knees and covered his eyes. Colors moved on the inside of his eyelids,
surrounding an afterimage of the amulet and its burning white letters.
“Mom!”
His vision cleared seconds later. The amulet flashed bright silver in his hand, decades of
tarnish burned away. A cloud of shredded white hovered over the bed for a few moments then
moved through the wall. Carter hugged his little girl and closed his eyes. When he opened
them again, his daughter was smiling at him.
“I’ll be with you soon, Mom,” he said, staring down the corridor of time that flowed forever
onward into eternity— in a few decades, or tomorrow, or next week, he now knew he would
see her again. And a smile came to his face when he realized he’d have to take back
everything he’d ever said about her being superstitious.
walls and hardwood floor. Mom had loved that clock and its hour, half-hour, and quarter hour
chimes. Carter checked his watch. The clock had chimed at 6:07. The damn thing had
started malfunctioning after Mom died three weeks ago.
He had walked through the door, just as he had every day for the past six years, and stepped
into the dining room, expecting to see her quiet face, her closed eyes and the slow rise and fall
of her chest with each breath, expecting to complete the daily ritual of feeding her, combing her
hair, and keeping her clean. Only yesterday, it seemed, he had brushed her curly white hair,
plumped a pillow beneath her head, and kissed her goodnight. He groaned as he stared at the
empty corner of the room where her medical bed had been, his body hollowing into an empty
husk.
Carter tasted death in the room. He’d give anything to have her back.
“What’s wrong, Dad?” Melanie, his 12-year old daughter, asked as she walked into the dining
room. She flipped her long blonde hair over her shoulder, bundled it between her fingers, and
began to work it through a scrunchie. When she looked up, he wished she couldn’t see him
like this, on the verge of tears.
“You know, she lived to see you every day.” He looked at his daughter, thankful his voice
hadn’t cracked.
The clock chimed again, just once—6:09.
“It’s her, you know,” she said. “The clock. She’s chiming the clock.”
“Who… what… are you talking about?”
“The clock. It’s Grandma.”
“C’mon, Melanie, this is no time to mess with me.” He felt his face crimson at the thought of
Melanie having the gall to joke about her grandmother, but the crystal innocence in her eyes
showed serious intent. He remembered his mother’s little chats with Melanie and knew the
source of his daughter’s imagination. Mom had inherited a superstitious streak—something
from the old world she said plagued women in their family for generations, something that
violated their dreams.
“How do you know it’s her?”
“A few days before she died, she told me whenever I heard the clock chime she was near and
not to be afraid.” Melanie ran her fingers along a silver chain necklace and then touched an
amulet suspended beneath her blouse. The damn thing, a flat silver disc with an embedded
relic and Cyrillic engraving on the base, gave Carter the creeps whenever he had seen Mom
wearing it, and she had worn it everywhere, believing it had mystical powers of protection.
“She said that to make you feel better, honey. She knew her time was near.”
“If you don’t believe me, Dad, we can get one of those new webcams that show the dead. You
can see the videos on-line at ghoul-tube.com. C’mon, I’ll show you.” Melanie took his hand
and led him upstairs to her computer.
Carter thought it looked like a horror comic cover from his childhood when the website
appeared on the monitor. Animated flambeaux flickered in each corner of the screen, and
dripping blood covered the black background around the borders. A few advertisements for
ghoul-cams blinked on the right-hand side. The website looked as hokey as he had imagined.
Melanie typed a search string and hit enter. “You’ve got to see this.” She looked over her
shoulder with a big, toothy grin. The video launched and Carter saw the dark, round stones of
a castle ruin, probably somewhere in Europe.
The so-called ghoul-cam had surprisingly good video. The camera panned a crumbling
stonewall leading toward an open field. Gray clouds cobbled the sky. The caption beneath
the video read, Banshee Duet.
“So where’s the banshee?”
Just as the words fell from his mouth, a knot of green-blue light glided along the top of the
wall. It stopped and spun in place, growing bigger. Another blob of green-blue light glided into
place near the first and started to spin and grow. The balls of light merged and shifted color to
blue-white and exploded, the computer speakers shuddering with the banshees’ hollow wail.
The sounds of their agony echoed in the emptiness he felt inside his heart, making his eyes
wet with tears.
“This is stupid, Melanie. It’s just special effects done on a computer.”
“Look at this one.”
She clicked an icon and another video appeared. This one titled, The Wraith. She hit the play
button and the speakers roared, vibrating the tabletop. A gaping mouth writhed on the screen.
The wraith’s roaring continued for several seconds, ending when the mouth closed and shrank
back into the dark recesses of a hooded cloak.
“That’s so cool.”
“Am I supposed to think this is funny?”
Carter’s heart burned and his face molded into a frown. He heard the sharp edge in his voice
slice at his young daughter who had never known death until her grandmother had passed
away.
Her smile twisted into a grimace and tears streamed down her cheeks.
“Honey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go off.” The sight of his daughter crying tore his guts out,
and before he could collect his wits, he asked, “Would you like a ghoul-cam?”
The expression she gave wasn’t what he’d hoped. He heard her mournful voice say, “Sure,
Dad. That would be great.”
The ghoul-cam arrived on a Friday afternoon. He heard the Fed-Ex truck wheeze to a stop out
front. The truck had roared away from the curb in a cloud of diesel fumes by the time he
reached the front door. Leaning against the doorframe on the porch was a cardboard cube.
Melanie set up the ghoul-cam on the coffee table in the living room after dinner. The device
looked like any other webcam, a round ball the size of an orange with a lens and a USB cord
connecting to her laptop. She was loading the driver software when he sat beside her on the
couch.
Although astonished he’d actually bought the little scam-box for his daughter, he saw she
believed it would photograph the dead. The promo on the company’s website had mentioned
the tremendous advances in semiconductor physics and materials science used to make the
specialized imaging sensor in the ghoul-cam.
Researchers had accidentally discovered the ethereal properties of an experimental imaging
chip designed for use in high radiation zones. Strange noise patterns appeared in the camera’
s images that the researchers thought were interference from an external source. But as the
true nature of the ghost images became apparent, the company developed the ghoul-cam for
mass production. He didn’t care if it was bullshit or not. He hadn’t seen Melanie this happy
since before Mom died.
Carter turned the evening news on and settled back into the corner cushions of the couch
while Melanie played with the ghoul-cam. She was obsessed with all the controls on the GUI
that adjusted the camera for background and foreground lighting, ethereal density, ectoplasm
histogram, and the general focus, frames-per-second, and exposure settings. He watched her
out of the corner of his eye and enjoyed seeing his beautiful little girl having a ball with her new
toy.
“Dad,” she said under her breath with a hush. “Dad, you’re not going to believe this.”
Carter looked at the computer screen and saw a white, ghostly shape as it stopped next to the
grandfather clock in the hall. His heart thumped once in his chest and then balled into his
throat. He tried to swallow but couldn’t. On the computer screen, Mom’s gentle face turned
and looked at him. She reached through the stained cherry side of the grandfather clock and
plucked the chime—just once, and the wonderful richness of the clock’s peal filled his ears and
heart with a torrent of joy. All this time, she had been the one chiming the clock. She looked
so happy. She was home.
He started toward her, the empty space in the hallway, but no one was there.
“She’s gone,” Melanie said from the couch.
Though he hadn’t chanced to touch Mom again, the emptiness inside the house disappeared.
He felt the peace and acceptance he’d seen in his mother’s eyes instead. She had come
home to see him.
“Dad!” Melanie said. “Dad, come over here.”
He turned around and saw Melanie recoiling into the corner of the couch and clutching a pillow
across her chest. Carter almost laughed as he approached, eyes following her pointing finger
to the computer screen.
A dark shape appeared in the hallway at the entrance to the living room. Bloody, lidless orbs
glowed in the center of the dark mass like eyes. Carter sensed a hunger in its stare, in the
way the red orbs flickered and the dark body undulated as if seen through flames.
Melanie gasped. “Daddy, what is it?”
Carter slammed the laptop shut and wrapped his arms around his daughter.
“It’s not real, baby. It’s not real.”
He looked at the empty hallway, and a chill finger traced a path along his spine. The
grandfather clock bonged eight times. He checked his watch and saw it was at the top of the
hour. Melanie had already unplugged the ghoul-cam, stuffed it back in the box and tossed it
across the room. She punched him in the shoulder, tears streaming, face red with fright and
said, “I don’t want to live here anymore.”
Carter closed his eyes and wished he’d never bought the damn camera. He pulled Melanie
close who snuggled under his arm, sobbing. What kind of parent was he to have bought such
a dangerous device for his 12-year old daughter?
My God, it couldn’t be real.
But he had seen Mom’s face on the computer screen with tendrils of ethereal vapor trailing like
a beautiful white gown. She had smiled at him.
A tear slid down his cheek.
“I miss you, Mom,” he said.
“I miss her, too.”
Melanie wriggled out from under his arm and wiped tears from her cheeks, then buried her
face in her hands.
He cringed at the thought of the dark creature looking for Mom. It had passed through the
space where she had stood next to the clock and seemed to follow her—until he had slammed
the laptop shut.
“Oh no,” he said.
“What is it, Dad?”
The lilt in her voice, the way she had said “Dad,” spoke volumes. She trusted him for
protection. And, dear God, how could he protect her from whatever entity was behind those
eyes, an evil he couldn’t even see? He stared into the empty living room expecting to see the
creature appear out of thin air. It could be there, a few millimeters from his face right now, and
he’d never know it. What in the Hell did it want?
He felt Melanie studying him but couldn’t look at her for fear of showing the gut-numbing terror
feeding on his insides. He turned his head and smiled anyway.
“Nothing, darling. I’m not too happy with the ghoul-cam. It’s just a gadget, you know. There’s
nothing to be afraid of.”
The words sounded hollow and Melanie remained silent. She snuggled beside him on the
couch for the remainder of the evening, and they watched prime time TV. She leaned against
the doorjamb and made small talk when he went into the kitchen to make popcorn and pour
glasses of soda. A palpable fear edged her words as she rambled about school, softball, her
friends, seemingly unaware of her hands sliding the scrunchie up and down her ponytail and
twisting her hair into loops around her fingers. He just hoped his fear wasn’t as transparent.
The late night newscasters finally delivered the last of the news when the Channel 4
weatherman pointed at the forecast map and waved his arm in an arc across the screen,
stopping at the smiling sun, the angry cloud, and the lightning bolt as he made his predictions.
Carter watched his little girl sleep, curled in a ball next to him on the couch, the soft whisper of
her breath a reminder of her innocence and trust. A storm would arrive just after dawn. Of
course, it would probably hit at rush hour and delay his commute—best to get an early start.
“It’s time to go to bed, sweetheart.” He rubbed her shoulder and then pulled a few stray
strands of hair out of her eyes.
Melanie shrugged his hand off and mumbled. “Can I sleep with you tonight, Dad?”
“You’re too old for that.”
“Please!”
Carter watched the start of the late night show while Melanie got ready for bed. She called
downstairs every few minutes and asked, “Are you coming upstairs soon?” She was snuggled
under the covers in her pajamas with the TV turned on and the sound muted when he entered
the bedroom. He sat on the bed beside her and tucked the covers under her chin, kissing her
forehead.
“Aren’t you coming to bed?”
“Nah, I ‘m staying up for a while.”
“Please don’t leave me.”
“I’m not going anywhere, sweetheart.” Carter sat down at the desk and opened his laptop. “I
just need to check a few things on-line before I go to sleep.”
“Can you leave the light on?”
“I’ll leave the TV on. How’s that? Now, go to sleep.”
The hard drive whirred as the laptop booted. He checked his email, read online news, and
reviewed his bank account and credit card statements. The flickering light from the TV cast
harsh shadows and light across the bed sheets and walls. Just the thought of the red-eyed
creature returning made his bones tingle and his gut sour. Going to bed was the last thing on
his mind.
“Daddy, I can’t go to sleep. I’m scared.”
“You need to sleep, baby. I’ll stay up and keep watch to make sure you’re OK.”
She sat up in bed and turned the light on.
“Can you check the room… with the ghoul-cam? That thing could be in here right now and we’
d never know it.”
Why did she have to say that? Carter’s skin crawled.
He went downstairs and found the cardboard box with the ghoul-cam behind the easy chair.
The grandfather clock chimed once—his heart paused—and then finished with twelve steady
bongs—midnight.
Carter connected the ghoul-cam to his laptop in the bedroom while Melanie sat cross-legged
on the bed. She insisted on having the computer on the bed so she could see the video and
adjust the exposure. She handed him the camera when finished.
“OK, Dad. Pan the camera around the room.”
He felt ridiculous, holding the little webcam and slowly turning in a circle. The bossiness in his
little girl’s voice reminded him of her mother.
“Now, behind the dresser.”
The USB cord stretched tight as he moved toward the wall, but Melanie cradled the laptop and
stepped off the bed behind him. He swept the camera up and down the slot between the back
of the dresser and the wall.
“And underneath, too.”
He knelt and then lay on the carpet, aiming the camera under the dresser.
“Anything?” he asked.
She shook her head. They checked the closet, the bathroom, and the hallway before she was
satisfied.
“I’ll stay up for a while to make sure you get to sleep, OK? Now, go to bed.”
Melanie climbed under the covers and Carter tucked her in. He didn’t want to go to sleep, so
he sat down behind the computer and opened a browser. The ghoul-cam window showed the
image of his little girl on the left side of the bed with the covers mounded over her.
Carter heard the grandfather clock start the top-of-the-hour chime. It took a second for him to
realize that he’d been asleep. The awkward position of his legs on the desk cramped his
muscles and his back was sore from having slid in the chair. He swung his feet to the floor to
get the blood flowing again. His legs felt like numb stumps with pins pricking the flesh. The
clock finished the musical chime and bonged twice—2:00 AM.
Melanie whimpered in her sleep.
He turned the swivel chair toward Melanie and accidentally bumped the laptop. The screen
flashed, the hard drive whirred, and the computer desktop appeared. The ghoul-cam window
showed a dark, amorphous shape with red, bloody eyes hovering over Melanie’s head. Black
tendrils of living smoke snaked down from the creature’s center into her eyes, her ears and
mouth.
She moaned.
Carter sprung from the chair and collapsed onto the floor, his legs screaming with numb,
prickly pain. He reached for Melanie’s leg and pulled on the covers.
“Wake up!”
She moaned again.
“God damn it! Melanie, wake up!”
He pulled himself onto the bed and grabbed his daughter’s leg. She appeared to be having a
bad dream in the flickering light of the TV—no evidence of a monster.
I’m going fucking crazy.
He looked at the laptop’s screen again and saw the creature on the ghoul-cam feeding on his
daughter.
“Melanie!”
She didn’t wake up.
He wobbled to his feet then took one giant Frankenstein step and stumbled against the chest-
of-drawers.
“Melanie, wake up. Please, wake up.”
Tears welled in his eyes as he turned back to the bed and reached for her. “No!” Her
precious cheeks twisted in agony.
Carter slid his hands beneath the covers and lifted his groaning daughter into his arms. He
looked at the computer display of the ghoul-cam. The creature’s black tendrils snaked around
his daughter’s head, tightening its grip. The creature’s black essence pulsed where the
tendrils entered her eyes and mouth. All the love in his heart poured from his soul, through his
arms and hands into his little girl.
“Take me, goddamn it. Take me!”
The grandfather clocked chimed once—just once. Melanie’s tortured expression relaxed for a
moment.
“Melanie?”
Her pupils dilated and her face transformed into a frozen mask of pain. Carter lowered her to
the bed and looked at the ghoul-cam video.
The creature’s black body completely enveloped her head. The video window on the
computer screen flashed as a brilliant ball of light burst through the wall and struck the dark
writhing mass holding his daughter. White ethereal energy trailed the glowing ball like long
flowing white hairs. He saw his mother’s face tremble with rage in the ball’s fiery light. She
charged the creature and stabbed tendrils of white spiked light into the creature’s dark body.
The creature released a silent howl as a gaping hole opened beneath its eyes, revealing its
red maw. Mom’s form twisted in agony as the creature’s dark essence corrupted her where
their energies touched.
Melanie gasped and opened her eyes.
“Daddy!”
“My God, baby, I thought I’d lost you.”
He snatched her into his arms. On the ghoul-cam, he saw the creature’s dark tendrils
withdraw from his daughter as it gave up its soul feast.
Living smoke snaked outward from the creature and penetrated Mom’s essence. Her tendrils
of white light coiled around the creature’s dark body. Never in his entire life had he seen his
mother so powerful. She held the creature in her death grip as it ripped her body. The
creature thrashed and bucked tearing tendrils from its form. Mom writhed in agony in the
center of the white light as the creature tore her apart, but she wouldn’t yield.
Carter looked down at his daughter; she wasn’t wearing the silver amulet her grandmother had
given her. He remembered she kept it hanging from its chain on the headboard over her bed.
He pulled Melanie into his arms, ran down the hall, and fetched the amulet from her room.
He returned to his bedroom and found the TV flickering and the laptop asleep as if nothing had
happened in the room. He pressed the laptop’s spacebar and the screen flashed. The black
creature had speared Mom with its dark energy and had torn her beyond recognition. Carter
jumped onto the bed and thrust the amulet into the space occupied by the creature and his
mother.
“Mom! Get out of here!”
The amulet glowed cherry red and burned his hand. He swung it over his head. Energy
swirled in the air around him. Strange light enveloped the silver disc, and the embedded relic
and Cyrillic engraving burned white. Fingers tugged at his grip, trying to make him release the
talisman, but he held tight. A flash of light blinded his eyes and a still silence filled the room.
“Oh, God!”
Carter dropped to his knees and covered his eyes. Colors moved on the inside of his eyelids,
surrounding an afterimage of the amulet and its burning white letters.
“Mom!”
His vision cleared seconds later. The amulet flashed bright silver in his hand, decades of
tarnish burned away. A cloud of shredded white hovered over the bed for a few moments then
moved through the wall. Carter hugged his little girl and closed his eyes. When he opened
them again, his daughter was smiling at him.
“I’ll be with you soon, Mom,” he said, staring down the corridor of time that flowed forever
onward into eternity— in a few decades, or tomorrow, or next week, he now knew he would
see her again. And a smile came to his face when he realized he’d have to take back
everything he’d ever said about her being superstitious.
