The Visitor
Prologue
I just knew, before I'd even walked the several hundred yards from my apartment to the Butler Mansion, that it was going to be one of those days.
I've been here long enough now that I know this house's cycles more thoroughly than I know my own body's-the house's are a lot more noticeable, in any case, and more disruptive. And when I speak of the house, I mean just that: the house itself is at issue just as much as whatever entities or spirits it might contain. The very structure is permeated with something; I don't know what to call it or even precisely how to describe it, but it's as tangible to me (and to some others) as the physical structure is. Evan says it's a "moody" house and speaks of it as being a living thing in its own right, and I agree. Some days the house absorbs and succors; other days you feel as if it might consume you, or worse.
It's always worse this time of year-"it" being the activity, the energy flux, the moodiness, the general weirdness. As the year winds down toward winter, as the veil between worlds thins and finally begins to shred, this place becomes an absolute creepshow for the sensitive. If you don't set shields to full before you even step through the door, you risk all manner of psychic special effects, some of which can be very unpleasant. Just last week I had to stabilize a young girl, part of a group of high schoolers who'd come through for one of our candlelight "ghost tours". (Sometimes you get more than just a few good yarns and an Addams Family atmosphere.) The volunteer leading the tour had just taken the group into Mrs. Butler's suite on the second floor when the unfortunate girl simply stopped in the doorway, turned chalk white, and began to scream. She had subsided to sobs by the time I got up there from the basement; when I put my arm around her she was shaking so hard I feared she might go into convulsions. I managed to get her down to the brightly-lit, modernized basement office, and kept her there till her friends came to collect her. And all that I could get out of her was a repeated litany, one which made little sense on the surface but chilled me nonetheless: "She was dying, and he wouldn't come."
I just had a feeling, this morning, that there'd be more fun and games of that sort, and I wasn't disappointed. When I was maybe five feet from the door leading in through the basement servant's hallway, said door began to vibrate madly from the force of a sudden fusillade of heavy pounding from within. I don't suppose I need to tell you that no one else was on site yet and that the motion-detectors were still armed and not reacting?
It subsided within a few seconds. It always does. But I still waited until Evan arrived before I unlocked the door and stepped inside.
There was an email waiting for me from Dr. Palmer at the Bidney Institute, with some preliminary findings from their investigation here earlier in the month. Their collected data seems to indicate that we have a genuine haunting on our hands. Oh no, it can't be!
I sound like I'm making fun, but I'm really not. Dr. Palmer and his team were entirely professional and a real pleasure to work with, unlike some of the "ghost hunters" we've had prowling around here in the past. Understand that I have nothing against goths, or dark wyccans, or Satanists, or vampyres, or any other alternative lifestyles; but I have quite a lot against said alties coming into my museum and proceeding to put on a great show of being Overcome by the Powerful Dark Forces in residence. The quickest way to get tossed out of here on your ass is to fake a possession in the middle of a tour. Think I'm joking? I wish I was joking.
The problem is, we're on the circuit now. We've been on TV (part of a Travel Channel haunted-house special), we're all over the internet, we've been featured in several books, and the word of mouth has spread. Now, along with the Winchester Mystery House and the Miami Biltmore, the Queen Mary, Salem Massachusetts and St. Augustine Florida, we are an official destination for the paranormal traveler. This is, to put it mildly, a mixed blessing. I've met a lot of interesting people; I've made friends I hope to keep for life. But I've also met beaucoup idiots, liars, frauds, fakes, and phonies, enough to last a lifetime and beyond.
But the Bidney Institute folks were great to have around. They did their investigation during the last full moon, and it was...interesting. And I had the strangest dream.
I've been here long enough to know that this house likes to fuck with people. It will do things to your mind. Ordinarily I have sense enough to shield myself, but on occasion I'll go in unguarded just to see what will happen. Quite often, nothing does; but once in a while, I get the special effects, too. And this is something that I did NOT tell the Bidney people, though I'm wondering if perhaps I should.
We were up very late that night; Dr. Palmer and his wife were set up in the basement office, while their two grad student assistants were on the top floor of the tower. They had recording equipment and temperature gauges and motion detectors and god-knows-what-all set up all over the place, and they were all settled in for the night, monitoring. Evan and I couldn't stay up all night, since we did have to work just like normal the next morning, so we decided we'd camp out in the house. We've both slept in here before; no big deal. I settled in to the big bed in Mrs. Butler's suite, and he took Captain Butler's room. (The two suites are connected by a large sitting room, dominated by a larger-than-life size portrait of Mrs. B.) Now, what got into us I do NOT know, but we reached the mutual decision that we would lower our shields for the night and sleep unguarded, in the damn haunted house, on the night of the full moon, with the parapsychologists running all over the place goading the spooks out of their hiding places.
The phrase "asking for it" comes to mind.
It was one of those dreams where you're simultaneously watching and participating, if you've ever had one. I am somewhat adept at lucid dreaming and can usually take control of a dreamscape and bend it to my will, but not that night; it was like watching a movie play out, except that even as I watched the scene I also lived it.
It began in the formal dining room on the main floor. The room was dark, lit only by a small candelabra on the long shining table. A scene was playing out between the Butlers-an angry, darkly violent scene. The room was thick with tension, with barely-suppressed rage, with a desperate sadness and a choking desire. I've never felt anything like it before and honestly hope I never do again. I felt these things along with Mrs. B-Scarlett, I should call her by her name-the fear as her husband, Rhett, pushed her up against the wall, thrust her into a chair, flexed strong hands before her face and threatened to crush her skull. The anger at being bullied and brutalized. Her contempt for him, and her confusion, and something else-something even darker that took control as she fled the room and he came after and jerked her into a vicious embrace. What took over then was need, a lust so simple and primal and, well, alien to my nature that I knew that I wasn't dreaming at all but in some way reliving an event from the house's past. For every time I had wished the walls could speak I was being paid in full.
What followed was indescribably pornographic. It wasn't romantic at all; it was intense and brutal and raw and rough. It was like nothing I've ever experienced (or ever imagined wanting to experience), but even as the me part was trying to separate from it, the Scarlett part was reveling in it. Giving as good as she got and then some. And when she came she took me along with her, and it was as if I had gone molten with it, imploded, and then I was awake in a dark and empty room, my body still throbbing with the aftershock of another woman's painful pleasure.
And the next morning, when I staggered sleep-deprived into the basement office and met my equally hollow-eyed assistant, he averted his gaze from mine and muttered something about having a "weird dream." I doubt I need to tell you what we found when we were able to bring ourselves to compare notes.