Lizette

The door slammed shut behind me. A cloud of dust kicked up to greet me. Coughing and sputtering I asked myself

“How did I let myself get talked into this? Is 50 dollars really worth potentially catching tetanus?”

The silence was deafening and accusatory. I looked on as the motes danced along the dilapidated wooden floors. The broken body of a bird lay, half-eaten. Plump maggots falling from its eyes. Nothing alive belonged here, this was a place meant for the dead. To draw breath felt tantamount to treason. I swallowed guiltily, cool sweat running down my neck.

Digging my nails into my hands, I took a deep breath and forced myself to calm down.

“You can do this, Charlie. You can do this. It’s just a house. 50 dollars, for walking around a stupid house. You can do this!”

Picking up the video camera, I turned it to face me.

“ Hey there Troy! I have just entered the old Millbrook house. So far it is certainly living up to the hype.” The house greedily gobbled up my feeble voice. As if determined to make me realize I was truly alone; even my echo was suppressed. Gathering my lettermen tighter around me I took my first step in.

The floorboards groaned with complaint under my weight. The thought of falling through to the basement skipped across my mind. I quickly threw it into a far corner.

“I am now making my way d-d-d down the hallway. I will start telling the story while moving from room to room, as per the bet. Lizette Millbrook’s husband left her for a younger woman. He took her wedding ring while she slept and left a note saying he never loved her.”

I stopped as I walked into the living room. There was an old couch that rested against the mold-infested wall. Torn and brandishing countless stains, it seemed akin to a dying beast. Just waiting for someone to set it ablaze and free it from its suffering. A battered coffee table was next to the couch, littered with mementos from squatters. The trash from other invaders stretched across the entirety of the room. Metaphorical flags of conquest informing others that they had been here first.

“I am now in the living room. It’s a real pigsty, and smells atrocious in here”

“I don’t pity the maid who has to clean this.” I said as I panned the camera over the devastation.

The wind moaned through the thin walls of the house. The only answer to my bad attempt at a joke.

“Ugh that was a groaner. Even the house thinks so.”I dismissed the slight shame at boring the house with a wave of my hand, and moved onto the kitchen.

“Lizette was so depressed by her husband’s affair, and his leaving that she decided to commit suicide. However, she also had children. She had to figure out what to do with them.”

Trepidatiously, I looked around the bleak kitchen.

“The kitchen leaves much to be desired. There is a rickety table against the wall. An oven that has most certainly seen better days, I think it has a bird’s nest sticking out of it. At least it is making itself useful, even if it is only to some homeless birds. There is a fridge leaking some questionable green liquid, I really don’t want to know what that is. Probably the start of the next global pandemic. Oh dear god, what is that smell! It must be the -”

There was a loud bang as the sliding door on the other end of the kitchen slammed shut.

My heart jumped into my throat, and I began to breathe very quickly.

“Hello, is there anyone there”

No answer and the air began to get denser. My body began to feel heavier. I could feel something coiling itself in the darkness, getting ready to pounce. Licking its lips and hungrily tracking my every move. Waiting for a chance

“T-t-tough crowd”

I decided to move on, quickly.

“She decided she couldn’t leave them behind to starve. So she decided to kill them as well.”

I found myself in what appeared to be a bedroom. There were two small beds. One had a unicorn painted on the headboard. It was faded and flaking in places, but I could still make out the horn, and the faint outline of a horse.

“I am now in the bedroom of the two children”

As the words left my lips, I heard what sounded like light laughter over my shoulder. I whipped around and there was nothing there.

“That was weird, I swear I heard something. Either this place is certainly living up to its reputation, or I am starting to lose my mind”

Neither option was favorable in my opinion. The hairs on my arms and legs began to stand on end.The feeling that maybe I was not alone began to build in my chest. I decided that was enough time in this room.

“She waited for both of them to be deep asleep and then she suffocated them with a pillow one at a time.”

As I said those words, there was a rattling from the children’s bedroom.

“Oh hell no! I need to hurry up and finish this bet. Shit is starting to move in here now. Unh unh.”

I ran to the last room.

I entered the master bedroom. The roof looked like jagged teeth jutting forward to devour the room. The bed lay in a state of utter decay. A giant rat pulled itself from what remained of the putrid mattress. The air was sour with rot and heavy with the stench of rat feces. I placed my shirt over my nose to keep myself from gagging.

“ Gross! Just disgusting, there is a giant rat staring me down. This house is the worst! I finally made it to the master bedroom. This is where Lizette took her life. After smothering her children, she came back to her room. Took her husband’s straight razor, and slit her throat.”

Thump, thump, thump.

A grey hand shot out of the gaping darkness under the bed. I could hear scratching as the few nails that remained on the hand, strained against the wooden floor. I began to slowly back away toward the wall, stuttering with disbelief, as I watched something pull itself free.

My brain shut off at this point because I couldn’t process what I was seeing.

A woman was pulling herself free from this filth. How could that happen?

Once she was completely out she stood up and smiled. Her teeth were black, some were missing. Her clothes were dirty rags that hung from her frame like spectral ribbons. In her right hand, she held a rusty straight razor. There was black gunk rolling down her chest and there it was the infamous cut throat. This was Lizette Millbrook, in all her ghostly glory.

She stared me down with two piercing black eyes: malice dancing upon the edges. As she took me in, her smile began to widen. The muscle movement caused more of the fetid ichor to discharge from the wound.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The tar-like substance began to pool on the floor under her.

A raspy voice began to skitter across my mind

“Hello, Charlie.

Have you enjoyed my home?”

She motioned around her room

“Please excuse the mess. It is so hard to find good help, nowadays”

This couldn’t be happening! Once you die that is it!

Run! Scream! Do something! My mind raced through all of these thoughts, but my body refused to move.

In the end, all I could manage was a slight whimper.

There was this warm sensation under my leg. Warm, and slightly burning. I realized what it was, I had pissed myself.

“Oh dear, Charlie! I haven’t had a guest in what feels like ages. Just my luck, that my first guest in a dog's age isn’t housebroken. That won’t do.”

She began to finger the back of the blade.

“That just won’t do.”

She began to open the blade, all the while her eyes alight with menace.

“A guest who can’t behave is an animal.”

Click.

“An animal who does what it wasn't ordered to do, must be sick.”

Click.

“A sick animal should be put down.”

Click.

“So as to preserve its dignity.”

Click- clack.

“Wouldn’t you agree, Charlie?”

The blade was now fully drawn, she began to make her way toward me. Slowly, taking her time.

In those moments, she fully infected me with fear. I felt it moving along my skin, causing goosebumps to appear. Then it danced against my tongue, tasting of bile and stinging my tastebuds. It ran from my eyes as well, hot singular tears rolling down my cheeks.

The affliction she had visited upon me was so thick and virile that it choked out my will to live, to breathe, to even blink with ease.

Lizette was feasting upon my hopelessness, but casually almost as if savoring the taste of my terror. Like a fat cat sitting upon a dying mouse. Watching as it struggled pitifully, reveling in the power it had.

I am going to die.

Here in this disgusting room, in this decrepit house.

“How pathetic you are Charlie. Even when confronted with assured death, you lay prone. Men like you deserve to die. Men like my husband. You all are a plague on this world, and I am the vaccine.”

She stood mere inches from me.

“Oh Charlie, there is no need to worry. This will all be over very soon.”

As she raised the blade high over her head. Feeling erupted back into my legs. My heart began to dance in my chest. My body awoke in revolt. I felt it surge through me and out of my lips.

“Fuck no!”I yelled.

I shot up and began to run clumsily out of the room.

“I am coming for you Charlie! “

In the other bedroom, two heads snapped to look at me from the two beds.

The dead children looked at me, a curious expression on their faces.

“Ready or not Charlie.”

As if they could hear their mother’s voice inside my head, they looked towards the hall and then back to me. A smile slowly spread across their faces.

“Better run Charlie!”

“Yeah better run fast!”

“Fuck you! This entire family is so screwed up! ” I yelled as I tore through to the next room. They began to fall into peals of laughter. I cut through the kitchen, just as the oven roared to life. A fire erupted out of it and headed right for me.

I screamed and jumped past the flames, crashing to the floor. I looked up and there was Lizette, standing in the doorway to the bedroom. An unnerving grin played across her decrepit lips.

“Tsk Tsk Tsk

You know they say the kitchen is no place for children, Charlie.”

I clambered to my feet as she crossed the threshold. My leg hurt badly, and I couldn’t put all my weight on my ankle. I shuffled into the living room, hearing the floor creak behind me as she pursued. I was so focused on the panic that I didn’t even see the coffee table in front of me.

I tumbled and hit the floor hard.

Dazed, I raised my head.

Creak.

Lizette drew closer and closer.

I began to crawl down the hallway to the front door. Every inch was pain, my chest and ankle felt like they were shattered. I was desperate to survive, hungry for life. I would not give in.

Creak. Creak.

I could hear her getting closer. I finally reached the door.

I reached one shaky hand out to grab the doorknob.

Creak.Creak.Creak.

I could feel her hand grabbing at the back of my letterman. She was beginning to yank me back Just as I turned the knob to the door. It opened gingerly.

Silence. The door swung open and the early morning sun poured weakly into the house.

I dared a backward glance. Lizette stood over me, waving and smiling. Her two children were on either side of her.

“Be seeing you, Charlie.”

They began to dematerialize into what appeared to be dust particles. They blew back into the depths of the house.

I cautiously climbed to my feet. Then began my slow, and pain-wracked walk home. The video camera tucked under my arm.

Back home I collapsed onto the bed.

I survived!

Oh my god I survived!

It still felt so unreal. That is when I remembered the camera. I stumbled over to my computer, and plugged it up. My heart dropped, there was nothing but static. I looked at the camera and saw that the memory card housing had been smashed. I must’ve damaged it in my escape.

All that for nothing! I went through hell, and had lost any shred of evidence I might’ve had. I cried out of frustration. Throwing myself on my bed, I let my emotions take me over completely. My whole body shook with my sobs. I don’t know when it happened exactly, but exhausted I fell into a deep, troubled sleep

I awoke to a beam of moonlight cutting through my curtains.

I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and sat up in bed. I had slept through the whole day.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

I began to look around the darkened room.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Where was that sound coming from?

Drip. Drip. Drip.

As I rolled over in bed a cry of pain shot from between my lips.

A cold feeling spread over my thigh. I reached into my pocket to investigate, and I produced a rusted straight razor. My fingers were covered in my own blood.

I turned white as I realized what I was looking at. She must’ve slid it into my pocket right before I opened the door. Her last words ran through my mind.

Be seeing you Charlie.

Drip. Drip. Drip.