Below The Surface

By Peter Stone

"Jennifer, why exactly did we move here again," asked Dennis who for the third time that morning had to close the basement door. The Hobbs were a young couple that just wanted a change from the hustle and bustle of the life they experienced in New York. They both had tried to have children with the past partners but we’re never successful. The thought of going through life without a child was turning Jennifer into a nightmare for Dennis. There wasn’t a day go by that she didn’t look up fertility clinics on the internet.

“Jenn, we are trying everything the doctors have asked us to do. I have been tested and my semen analysis test results showed a high count of active sperm. Your tests came back and it showed your hormone levels and ovarian reserve were perfect. We will have a baby and he or she will be perfect just like their mom,” as he hugged the love of his life in his arms.

“You’ve told me the same thing for the past two weeks. Instead of talking all the time take me to bed and create this perfect baby,” the two threw themselves onto the king size bed upstairs of the old Brady Mansion. They made love for over an hour attempting to get Jennifer pregnant.

“That damn door just opened again,” said Dennis as he was going to the shower.

“Why don’t you ask Karl to come over and have a look at it. He’s a great handyman and loves to make a couple of extra dollars,”

Karl was more than just a great handyman. He was actually the person that sold the house to Hobbs. He hadn’t lived more than a year in the house before he acknowledged strange things were happening within the walls of the Brady Mansion. Lights that had never worked would come on during thunderstorms or the forty-year-old wallpaper would change colors just so slightly during super. His father had told him of the town’s folks’ stories of the Brady Mansion being haunted but he wasn’t a believer. That was until one weekend while his wife was visiting her family in New York, the basement door slammed shut while he was checking out a noise in the cold room. He ran up the basement stairs with the hair standing up on his neck and his heart pounding to it’s limits. Pushed as he might to open the door, he couldn’t budge it. There were no locks on the door and it opened just fine when he went into the basement.

“Who is there, let go of this door!”

Just then the old piston pump in the surface well started. Every old house had its own well in the basement but this old well was different. Karl, exhausted and frightened turned to go down stairs but as he did, he felt a hand restraining his leg from moving. Looking down he saw a large ghost of a man with a pitch fork shoved through his skull grabbing his leg. Force as he might he just couldn’t move. Then the pump in the well stopped and the image of the ghost disappeared. The next morning, he woke up laying in a pool of his own blood from the gash he had on his neck. He struggled to his feet and felt absolutely lost to where he was or what had happened just seven hours prior. Grasping the hand rail, he climbed the basement stairs and pushed on the door that just last night he couldn’t physically open. This time it opened with the slightest of resistance. Everything seemed like a dream until he looked in the mirror at what he thought was a gash on his neck and saw three puncture holes. Similar holes the same pitchfork in the basement would have made on the ghost that grabbed him by the leg. The holes were still oozing blood from his neck as he sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee shaking in his hands. Clasp as he might he couldn’t stop the cup from shaking. For the remainder of his stay in the house he never once went back into the basement. He told his wife of over 40 years that he had found asbestos in the basement and he didn’t want her to ever go back down to the cold-room. Six weeks later the house sold to Dennis and Jennifer Hobbs who fell in love with its architecture and its back yard apple orchard. It was spring and all the apple trees were in full bloom. What wasn’t there to love about the house where they were going to start their family.

“Karl, would you please come over to have a look at the basement door,” asked Dennis. There was a long silence on the other end of the phone.

“No, my knees are killing me and I just don’t have time,” replied Karl in a very nervous and agitated voice.

“Not a problem my friend, do you know of someone else that could have a look at it for us,”

“Yes, there an old fellow just next door to your house that use to help me with similar jobs. He lives at 666 Memory Lane and his name is Ralph,”

Hanging up the phone with Karl, Dennis felt a cold breeze coming from the basement. He went to close the door and it slammed shut closing his right hand into the casing. He pulled on the handle with all his might but it was if someone was holding the door shut on his hand. He called to Jennifer for help just as she came from the upstairs the door opened.

“My god Dennis I think you’re losing your mind. We can’t keep this door from opening and now you’re telling me it closed on your hand,” as she laughed going to the sink for a cold glass of water.

“I’m not kidding you, that blasted door closed by itself onto my hand. I couldn't open it!”

“Well, I guess it must have been a ghost,” laughed Jennifer.

“We never go to the basement anyway. Why spend money on getting someone to fix it. I’ll just put a door stop against it and save us 100 dollars,”

The two left Monday morning as usual to the local coffee shop to have breakfast before they started their day working from home. During their meal they joked about Dennis’s hand getting stuck in a door that wouldn’t stay closed. Then they dreamed of having children and raising them in the house of their dreams.

“I’d like to know how many families there have been raised in our love nest,” said Jennifer.

“We’ll take care of ours and let the past take care of it’s self,”

One of the regulars in the coffee shop was listening attentively to the new owners of the Bradly Mansion. He was about to say something when the curator of the museum put his hand on the gentleman’s shoulder.

“Leave them be Hank, they’ll soon learn who’s who in the Bradly Mansion,”

Jennifer and Dennis returned home and started their daily routine of one going to the master bedroom and the other to the downstairs den to work. Jennifer worked as an advertising consultant and Dennis an investment consultant. They always made time for breakfast together and for the next eight hours they might meet in the kitchen for a five-minute chat and then back to work they’d go.

Dennis was getting just a little annoyed with the piston pump noise starting and stopping relentlessly. He knew absolutely nothing about the antagonizing machine but he knew he could Google anything to find the solution. He was about to finalize a huge investment portfolio with a new client so he put a sticky note on the basement door as a reminder.

“Fix the dam water pump before going to bed”

Jennifer hadn’t heard the pump’s annoying noise because she worked with headphones and had her master bedroom door closed. She came down to the kitchen and found the sticky note on the floor upside down and put it in the recycle bin. She prepared a wonder confit de canard with brown rice that was Dennis’s favorite.

“Baby you must want sex again tonight. Confit de canard from Brome Lake Quebec is so dam good. Thank you, a million times, it pays off to land a 500-thousand-dollar contract I guess,”

“Wow! That’s a 50-thousand-dollar bonus. We can have someone come in to fix that crazy water pump,”

“Did you see my sticky note,”

“Oh, I found a note but just thought it was garbage,”

Jennifer had been annoyed by the water pressure going up and down while she prepared their supper and for some unknown reason, she mentioned it off the top of her head. After saying to have it repaired or changed, she shook her head wondering what she had just said.

“Jenn, are you feeling alright?”

“Yes, so let’s eat before this duck gets cold,”

Down in the basement while the Hobbs were enjoying their confit de canard the first owners of the Badly Mansion were planning their evening. Mr. Bradley was murdered by his son that was staying with him and his wife after serving in the War of 1812. He suffered what was known as today as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder but in 1815 was called shell shock. Men would come home from the battle field not able to tell time or know their loved ones. Elmer Bradly was a man that stood six feet six inches tall and weighed over 200 pounds. He cut and split all the firewood for his parents and hayed the pasture next to the small apple orchard to feed the ten head of Jersey cows and one Herford steer they raised for beef.

One extremely hot July day while bringing in a load of hay with the family’s team of horses Elmer’s father stood in the basement door opening with a pitch fork in his hands. He noticed his mother laying next to him bleeding from the chest. Elmer ran towards his father crying,

“What have you done, why did you kill mom?”

His mind went into battle field mode and grabbed the pitch fork from his elderly father. He drove the pitch fork through his father’s head and picked up his mom from the ground. It wasn’t actually his mom but just a bag of beets his dad had just dug from the garden. Elmer’s mind had once again played killer images to him that caused him to kill his own dad. His mom came running down the basement stairs just in time to witness Elmer shoving the pitchfork through his own throat and dropped to the ground dead beside his dad.

Mrs. Bradly couldn’t believe her own eyes. The two men that she loved so much laid dead at her feet. She dragged her husband of over 35 years and her son to the well that they drew water from with a pail and pushed them down some sixty-feet. She then went up stair and nailed the basement door shut. She used the secondary well in the barn for her water supply until she passed away some ten-years later.

It wasn’t until the second owners of the Badly Mansion purchased the property that the stories of ghosts spread throughout the village. One owner experienced the same leg grabbing experience as Karl the past owner and fell to his death on the cement floor. Other owners installed motion detectors that would go off and sound alarms during the night. These events were never told to the Hobbs before they purchased the property. They spend thousands of dollars trying to get Jennifer pregnant. She was losing sleep worrying that she’s never be a mother. Waking up in the middle of the night thinking she was having cravings for dill pickles.

It was on one of these nights of cravings she went to the kitchen. At the bottom of the large circular staircase, she saw Elmer and his dad standing with a pitch fork in their heads. Mrs. Bradly had the fridge door open with a jar of dill pickles in her hand. Jennifer fell to the floor and suffered a massive heart attack and died instantly.

Dennis couldn’t sell the Bradly Mansion after losing his wife and eventually hung himself over the well in the basement with a picture of Jennifer in his hand.