Chapter 2

"In A Gadda Da Vida"

Even as an adult you get to every once in a while approach certain things with a sense of awe and with those butterflies fluttering around in your stomach you thought were buried in childhood. It doesn’t happen often, but it happens... It was about to happen to Kenneth Westman.

All his professional life he had waited for this moment and now it was here. He was almost trembling with anticipation as he parked on Jacaranda Drive and got out of his car. He slammed the door shut without even bothering to lock it. It’s not like old beaten up Dodges were treasured commodities on the black market anyway and if they could get the damn thing started they were welcome to it.

He stood back a little and looked up on the dark stone house in front of him, not realizing he was holding his breath and clenching his fists. There it was… 23 Jacaranda Drive… The Cromwell House. The site for gruesome murders and endless urban legends. He breathed out and laughed a little to himself. Why so tense? It’s just a house after all right? No… He knew it wasn’t “just” a house and that was why he was here.

He looked up and down the street. These were expensive homes and you could tell by the parked cars that it was not exactly his kind of people that lived here. The Jag across the street was last year’s model and the two matching BMWs over there looked just as stupid and clueless as only the rich can get when they are bored. Every house radiated fortune and class and they were all surrounded by beautiful gardens with fantastic landscaping. The only thing that was not up to date here was the house in front of him. The Cromwell House… The very name of the man who committed all those murders such a long time ago still sent shivers down his spine, but they were good shivers. He had always had a morbid fascination with death, even as a kid, and now here he was… all grown up and making a living out of it. He hoped… As the chief historian at the Ashforde County Historical Society (hell, the only historian after his father passed away) he was about to finally be able to capitalize on all the knowledge he had amassed about American serial killings and mass murders. He had been on his knees for the past seven years, begging the owner, Angus McGraw, not to knock the house down, to instead donate it to the society for the afterworld to enjoy as a living museum. Then old McGraw had died all of a sudden (well, he was 93 after all) and surprise surprise! The will stated the Ashforde Historical Society as inheritor of the Cromwell House with him, Kenneth, as the chief custodian.

When Rex, the society’s lawyer, had called him a week ago to give him the good news he had danced a jig right there in the kitchen, freaking his wife out beyond words. (Kenneth dancing was a rather scary thing due to that stick Theresa said he always had up his ass.) He had grabbed her by her shoulders, kissed her long, hard and deep and then said: “We got it! I got it!”

Theresa, who had had no clue what the hell he was talking about, looked even more nervous now because her husband seldom displayed emotions in this big way. “Calm down honey. Tell me what we got… A million dollars? What?”

Kenneth had looked at her as if he just realized who she was. “We… We got the House! The Cromwell House! My house!”

Theresa had cocked an eyebrow at him, knowing how he had ranted about that goddamn house for close to a decade. “You sure hon’? Cause old Angus said he wasn’t ever gonna sell that you know!”

And that was true. He had actually never thought that Samuel Cromwell’s brother would give up the house, even after his death. Angus Cromwell had changed his name to the old family name McGraw so not to be associated with his brother’s heinous crimes but had kept the house after the police had finished the investigation for reasons unknown. From his own residence in Boston he had refused to sell to any buyer, regardless of bid, and had boarded up the property to keep nosy reporters and horny teenagers out.

Kenneth held up his hand to his brow to see better in the blazing sun. Damn it was hot today… The house looked exactly like he knew it would; a tall grey stone two-storey building with a red brick tile roof. The west wing of the house was charred black after a minor fire had ravaged the building in the early 60’s. Local police investigators had considered the whole affair a “harmless prank” by “mischievous youngsters” and since no one lived in the house and old Angus wanted nothing to do with it, nobody ever cared to fix it. The story went that when the fire department had figured out what address the alarm concerned they had “conveniently” failed to respond, but the fire had died down by itself as if quenched by an invisible power.

Stories… Stupid stories that always surrounded places like these… But that was what he had always loved. He was a sucker for the unexplained and the other side. Stuff like that… He had been here countless times before, standing on this exact spot, glaring up at the house… trying to picture what it looked like inside after all these years. Imagining what had taken place behind those walls and boarded up windows and dreaming about the day he could find out for himself by actually going inside. What had gone through the minds of the victims on those fateful days? What had driven Samuel himself? What had happened to his twin girls? He was dying to dig up the secrets of House Cromwell… All in the name of historical interest of course. Of course… Satisfying his own curiosity was just a perk that came with the job.

He walked up to the iron gate and peeked through the bars into the front yard. It laid there before him resting in ominous shadows… Nobody had maintained the yard for over 40 years and it was therefore in a state of absolute neglect. Pale white weeds climbed up ancient tree trunks and moss covered the bottom part of the front steps. Heaps of decades of fallen leaves had created big mounds just inside the gate and filled the air with a musky odor, not quite right for the season. Roof tiles lay cracked on the ground from when past relentless winter storms had had their way with the house and fallen branches littered the wild grown lawn. Bushes and vines had once begun to root but looked somehow stumped in growth and just added a desolate touch to the overall wilderness. The silence from within the yard was absolutely deafening. There was not a chirp, not a squeak, not a rustle of leaves… Just a dead nothingness…

Never had a house with such a grim history had a more suitable setting, Kenneth thought to himself as he turned the big key in the rusty gate lock.

The mechanism made a tortured sound but gave in, and he swung the big iron gate door open with a determined push. He realized that he was holding his breath again. Damn! This place was already getting to him and he wasn’t even inside yet. Shake it off buddy. You can do it. This is your baby now. He breathed out through clenched teeth and stepped inside the front yard.

It was like entering another world. Never mind the decaying garden and the debris littering the ground… The atmosphere itself was thick enough to wrap around him like a moldy blanket. The contrasting scents of decomposition and fresh flowers were so intense he almost choked for a second. He made his way around the corner of the house, past the side yard and into the backyard. The path once strewn with gravel was now just a part of the overall jungle theme.

“In a Gadda-Da-Vida honey…" The song seemed fitting somehow and humming it made him feel a bit more at ease. “… Don’t you know that I love you…" He stopped and looked over what was once a backyard and now a lumpy clearing covered with rose bushes. "… In A Gadda-Da…" The smell of roses was sickening. Overpowering....

The police had dug up the entire garden looking for more bodies and of course hadn’t bothered to fill in the holes again. Years and years of weather and wind had partially done the job but he could still easily make out huge mounds of dirt beneath the sickly vegetation. It was so damn still here. Like watching a horror movie on “mute”; dreamlike and disconcerting, not knowing whether there was a psycho-violin soundtrack playing ominously as he approached the back porch that everybody else but him could hear. He made a point out of stepping heavily onto the veranda so to make at least some noise and snap him out of the funk he was getting himself all wrapped up in.

He stepped right through the rotten porch board on his first stride and sank all the way down to his thigh. He cried out more with surprise than pain and felt his foot resting in something soft. He didn’t want to think about that but quickly wiggled himself free. Fuck! Damn pants ripped. A little blood trickled from some scratches on his knee and calf but fortunately he hadn’t sprained anything. Here he was… The nerdy historian trying to make his way into the haunted house and already making an absolute ass of himself. Fuck it. He was going in now.

He stepped resolutely up to the door and stuck his other Cromwell key in the lock. The door swung open without the slightest squeak before he had even touched the handle. He jerked back with his heart racing. What the fuck?  Either his mind was making too much of things that weren’t there or that door just opened by itself. From inside there was just silence. What was he going to do? Go on checking out the house he’d been thinking of and obsessing with on a daily basis or tuck his tail between his legs and run home to momma? Damn.

“Well, here goes…” he said to himself and stepped inside the dark room. Aaaugh! He realized the second he got inside that he was even dumber than he had ever thought. What good was a college degree when you forgot the flashlight going into the haunted house? Dumbass! There was just no way he was going to go back to the car and get it and come back. Not now… He could do this once today, that was it. He had already a really uneasy feeling about being inside the house as it was and if he went back to the car he would never go back in here again. What if the damn door was closed and then swung open by itself again? Then he would never be able to tell himself it was all a trick of his imagination in conjunction with a freak breeze. Maybe his interest for the paranormal spooked him about things that he wouldn’t have registered otherwise, but he was registering like a big old gay Ghostbuster all right. He would just have to sneak around downstairs here where he could see from the pale light finding its way in through cracks in the boards covering the windows.

He was standing in the kitchen. 44 years had passed and nothing had changed. The sink was filled with dishes (and stuff he assumed was the moldy remains of more moldy remains), the chairs were set around the kitchen table, some of the cabinet doors were open and he could see plates and cups still in there. It wasn’t as big of a mess in here as he had thought it would be. The floor was dirty and sandy but other than that, not too bad. He guessed boarding up the house had helped keeping the dust and dirt out. He quickly walked over to the door across the room and stepped through the doorway to a little hallway that lead to the front room. There were pictures on the wall, but in the gloom he could not make out what they were. In fact, he was already debating with himself if he should even go all the way into the front room without a light. It seemed like there was nothing but black nothingness up ahead. Standing here in the hallway it felt like the walls were caving in on him and the silence was just freaking him the hell out.

“In a Gadda-Da-Vida honey…” His own voice made him jump. It sounded  broken and scared and he decided to shut up instead. OK, he was going to go straight into that front room, turn around and walk straight back. Just so he at least could tell himself that he had completed a first excursion for the Society at the house. He would come back tomorrow with a flashlight and do a real thorough investigation of the state of the property. He had been waiting for this day for so long, but somehow he had pictured himself more bravely striding along, looking at pictures, reading through journals and taking pictures. (Which reminded him he had forgotten the damn camera in the car as well. Did he do anything right today?) Now instead his stomach was in knots and he was sweating like a horse.

He took a deep breath, the air was stale but it sufficed, and then he marched as fast as he could without breaking into a run through the hallway. He came out into a room at the bottom of the stairs totally wrapped in darkness. Almost no light found its way in through the boarded up windows here. At first he couldn’t make out anything at all but after a few moments the outline of the front door was made visible and he could see silhouettes of furniture farther into the room. OK, this was it. He was going to get out of here now and just…

The sound of the kitchen door violently slamming shut behind him sounded like a gun shot in the silence, leaving him in total darkness.

What the fuck??!

Adrenaline rushed through his body and he just lost it. Instead of running back to the door he came in through, he bolted for the front door, hoping he could just yank it open and crawl under the boards. It was locked! He fumbled for an eternity with chains and locks but in the dark he could not find the last bolt to open the goddamn fucking door. All of a sudden he felt the hairs on his arms and on the back of his neck tickle… A surge of cold and absolute dread filled him, as if a giant hand of ice was clutching his balls in an iron grip! He felt his stomach drop. There was something here… Something watching him… He turned around in slow motion, praying to every saint there had ever been, hoping for just more good old plain darkness for the first time since he got in here.

A pale light started to fill the room as he turned… The cold spread from his balls to his whole body, freezing his heart and the sweat down his back to ice. He didn’t want to look up to the top of the stairs, to where the cold came from… He could feel it. Whatever light was shining in here came from up there. But he had to look… He raised his head…

At the top of the stairs stood two little girls, six/seven years old, engulfed in a dim blue light. Their identical little faces watched him, motionless, expressionless. Their hair was gently blowing around their shoulder as if touched by a private breeze. Then he felt it too. A wind that came floating down the stairs, followed by a distant howl that grew in volume. The two girls still stood where they stood… unflinching… observing… And then the force of a hurricane hit him! It slammed him into the door post and drove all air out of his lungs. Kenneth’s survival instincts took over now. He scrambled to his feet and lurched for the kitchen door. The hallway seemed to grow longer as he dashed through it and he could feel something at his back. Something he would rather not stay and face. Finally at the kitchen door he just slammed his shoulder into it and flew through. Again he fell and this time he knocked his head into the edge of the kitchen table. Little spots of light danced at the corners of his vision but he didn’t have time for pain, so he frantically pulled himself up with the help of the nearby chair.

Up again and running for the back door, he yanked it open, almost ripping it from its hinges and stumbled outside. He immediately turned to his right meaning to just jump off the porch down on the ground but his second stride took his left foot straight by that same hole he had already stepped in once and he tripped on a broken board and fell hard (again), slamming his side into the brittle railing, breaking it. With the momentum of the fall he rolled off the porch, crashing into a rose bush, feeling its thorns puncturing him all over. He screamed out loud with frustration and pain and struggled to tear himself out of it. The thorny vines stuck to him and it seemed like an eternity passed before he managed to kick free. He bounced up and looked around, slightly disoriented… His heart beating so hard now he thought it would come ripping out of his rib cage. Nothing had come after him… no light shone from within that kitchen… He could feel the cold slowly leave his body and the death grip on his balls loosen up. That was no ordinary cold though and he knew the sun had nothing to do with it going away either. The house looked as dead and empty as only an old house could look.

But the garden! The garden was not still anymore… It had come alive with sounds. It was whispering! He spun around, trying to find the source, expecting more blue light and hard winds. Nothing there. But he could hear tiny faint voices whispering to him! Too many for him to make out more than fragments of each (“… and for the love… God in all his…  I want my…  leave before…”). They were all around, everywhere… ("… can you tell… bloodpainbloodbonesblood… ") The cacophony made his head swirl with vertigo and he set himself in motion again, heading for the front gate. ("... the children... they are all... ") The cold was settling over him again like a black cloud and the voices were all over, following his mad run for safety… Begging him, pleading with him, mocking him, advising him, singing to him… ("… why are you… of the bones…")

He didn’t bother to stop at the gate but just sprinted out of the yard and over to his car. He opened the door and threw himself inside. Now of course, like in the movies, the damn thing would not start. He fumbled with the keys in the ignition, feeling hysterical laughter bubbling up from within. But the key turned and the car started.

“That’s my girl!” he hollered, throwing it in reverse and revving it up. He took off along Jacaranda Drive and didn’t look once in the rearview mirror.

On the way home he lost it totally. He had to pull over to the side of the road and barely managed to get the door open before he threw up all over the place. Afterwards he just cried hysterically for half an hour, shaking uncontrollably. What the fuck was that? That blue light and the girls? What the hell?  How could he go back?  Did his fucking mind play tricks on him? No. That had been real. Fuck!

He gathered up some resemblance of self control and resumed the ride home.

Going back to the Cromwell House would fucking suck.