Ghosts of the Past

The memories all rush in like water through a collapsed dam. Dylan felt his heart tighten as his vision blurred over. Breathing grew increasingly difficult as Dylan developed the sensation of his mind flying through space at light speed. Twenty-two years of questions now answered.

       The now twenty-nine-year-old slammed the photo of himself at seven-years-old onto the old wooden table. It had been discovered in a stack of similar images that Dylan had never seen. The little boy was standing in front of an old farmhouse on the side of a mountain, orange and red leaves dotted the trees and ground all around. Only, the little kid was not alone- no, not exactly.

       “Dylan, what’s wrong?” Cherrie, Dylan’s fiancée asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

       Oh. You Couldn’t be more correct, Dylan spoke in his mind. He finally felt the blood running back into his pale face. “It- It’s nothing,” is what he said out loud.

       “Sweetheart, it’s going to be okay,” Cherrie said in a consoling tone, “She’s in a better place now.” Cherrie had guessed her boyfriend had had a sudden fit of rage due to his mother’s recent passing.

       “No,” Dylan spoke absently. His mind was occupied with a sudden explanation to a since-forgotten memory. “It isn’t that,” he followed up with. His mother had been in the ICU for six months- during which Dylan had prepared himself for his mother’s impending death. He missed her, yes, but this image needed more attention now.

       “Then what is it?” the woman asked, worried.

       “Th- The photo,” Dylan stuttered. His hands shook mercilessly.

       Cherrie picked up the image taken with an old disposable camera and studied it for a moment. Her eyes widened when she saw the semi-transparent figure with its hand on the child’s left shoulder. The stranger had red eyes that seemed to glow from the old picture. It had ragged gray hair that hung off its head in scraps amidst bald spots and it grinned with a horrible, taunting smile of jagged yellow teeth. “Who is that?” Cherrie asked.

       A memory played through Dylan’s mind like some sort of horror movie. His Aunt Virginia taking the child to the old farmhouse while his parents enjoyed a day alone to visit the city. Virginia and Dylan taking photos in the countryside to remember their day by. Entering the old farmhouse and exploring the rooms of rotting wooden furniture before a loud crash and total darkness. He had passed out. After that, he couldn’t remember. Aunt Virginia had never been seen again after she dropped Dylan off and heard his parents shouting at her.

       As Dylan grew older, he had figured that his aunt had taken advantage of him in that farmhouse. Three years of hearing loud banging from the closet, waking up in the yard after falling asleep in bed, horrible nightmares of someone chasing him, and being screamed at for acting in a devious manner that Dylan couldn’t remember followed. He had been to counselors to talk to, priests to pray over him, and even spent a few months in a care facility when things had gotten too bad. One day, at almost eleven-years-old, Dylan had woken up to find his life normal again, just like that, nothing more. All this time, Dylan had lived under the assumption that he had been sexually assaulted by his favorite aunt, but no, this explained something far more sinister in his mind. He recounted this information to a silent Cherrie, who listened with pale cheeks and wide eyes.

       “Whatever was in that house had latched onto to me and stuck for over three years,” he paused in thought. Unable to explain further.

       “But,” Cherrie began, “What happened to your aunt?”

       “She ran off to Seattle and lost contact,” a voice spoke from the doorway of the old room, “a year later, Virginia was found dead in her apartment. She had hung herself.”

       “You have some explaining to do, dad,” Dylan spoke to the man in the doorway, who stood with a glass of scotch on ice in his hand.

       “You have most of it figured already,” the older man spoke with a sorrowful sigh as if he were a teenager who was caught sneaking out of the house. He set his drink down and whipped his hands on his pants, thinking of how to begin, “Virginia had always had an interest in darker things,” he spoke. “Usually, it was just ghost stories and exploring abandoned buildings, hoping to find something unexplained.”

       “Go one,” Dylan said harshly.

       “Well, she had grown a new interest in the occult,” Dylan’s father, Marshall paused. He found what he wanted to say, “It was a harmless pursuit of knowledge at first, but something changed.”

       Dylan took a harsh breath and stole his father’s whiskey off the table.

       “Your aunt had gotten into contact with a demon named Dolor,” Marshall told the two.

       “How do you know all this?” Cherrie asked. “And how did you get the photographs?”

       “Virginia confessed half of it to us when she dropped Dylan off that night,” Marshall answered, “The rest we got in her suicide note and from the psychics and priests that helped us get rid of the spirit that was attached to him. The photos we got when I was cleaning out my sister’s apartment after her suicide.”

       “So why did she confess?” Dylan asked this time.

       Marshall reached for his drink before realizing his son had finished it for him, he cracked his neck then replied, “Apparently Dolor had promised her riches or fame or something for the sacrifice of a family member, she didn’t have the heart to pull through with it but she was scared the demon would go after her, so she told us. We didn’t believe her, but I guess he did catch up to her eventually. But he wanted Dylan still.”

       The old man pulled out a chair to sit down on, the other two did the same. He looked directly at Dylan, “Your mother and I would wake up in the middle of the night to you speaking foreign languages, your eyes were glassed over and we thought you were sleepwalking at first. Eventually, we would find you picking rodents and small animals apart, birds would fly into the house, breaking their necks on the walls. It wasn’t until you had stabbed a classmate with a crucifix that we took you to the church.”

       Dylan suddenly remembered his parents driving him to talk to Father Vincenzo at St. Lucy’s. He had had blood on his hands with stains on his shirt but had blacked out while he had supposedly attacked that other kid. It all made sense now, he realized in disgusted horror.

       “Father Vincenzo had to send for Bishop McCabe, who sent messages to the Vatican asking for an exorcism,” Marshall continued his tale, “Your mother was raised Catholic, of course, though she hadn’t been to mass since she was nineteen apart from your baptism and first communion. Her insistence on you being baptized when you were a baby was the only reason why the church approved the exorcism after almost a year of asking.”

       “They flew in a man who had been in Germany before,” Marshall said, “Monsignor Farrell from England. He spent six hours every day for four months with you, Dylan, performing the exorcisms.”

       Cherrie had wrapped her arms around Dylan in fear at some point during this horrible trip down memory lane. Three months? Every day? Dylan could only remember a handful of instances of the Monsignor praying over him. Not ninety days of continual prayer. He made this thought known.

       “You were usually sedated,” Dylan’s father explained to him, “A way of keeping you and everyone else safe as well as ensuring that Farrell would be able to talk to Dolor instead of you.”

       “This makes no sense,” Cherrie spoke up, “Demons don’t exist and they certainly don’t possess people. That was just a way to explain mental issues before more research was conducted over time.”

       “You saw the photo, Cherrie,” Marshall spoke, “You saw what was standing over Dylan.”

       “It’s just a trick of light and you’re playing a joke on us, taking advantage of Dylan’s proclivity to believe in the paranormal.”

       “He’s not lying,” Dylan spoke quietly. He could see in his father’s eyes that the man was speaking God’s honest truth. Huh, God, Dylan said in his mind slyly, where was he for those three years?

       All dark jokes aside, Dylan always did wonder why his parents became devoutly religious seemingly overnight. All of the sudden, his father had converted to Catholicism and the family went to mass every Sunday and holy day of obligation.

       “One day,” Marshall concluded his story, “The Monsignor had succeeded in performing the exorcism and you were all good again.” He paused for a moment, “Though, there were last effects. Dylan would always become moody when someone wanted his photo taken and he suffered from night terrors on and off most of his adolescence.”

       Another lightbulb illuminated in Dylan’s mind. His anger toward photos had always been something he could never explain and, even now, once in a blue moon, Cherrie would have to wake Dylan up from some unremembered nightmare where he was supposedly shouting for someone to leave him alone.

       “So, that’s that,” Marshall said, done with his story. “I’m sorry we never told you before.”

       “Sorry?” Dylan spat, “You had me believe I was fucking raped for all these years!” His anger spilled out like a soda bottle that had been shaken. “I was led to believe that my aunt had assaulted me in that fucking house for over twenty years! And what? Just to find out I was… I was possessed?”

       “Son,” Marshall attempted, “I’m sorry. There was no easy way to tell you.”

       “No, just lead a child to believe he’d been unclean for years, talking to psychiatrists that could have been using that time to help actual rape victims as I tried to explain something I couldn’t even remember. Come on, Cherrie, we are leaving.”

       Marshall tried to apologize again, but his son only stormed past him silently, pulling his fiancée’s arm with him.

       Dylan slammed his car door shut and sped home, not saying a word. He walked briskly to the bathroom without a word to Cherrie, who silently wished to calm her boyfriend down.

 Finally, Dylan knew the truth. He didn’t know what he wanted to believe less. That he had been raped or that he had been possessed. Either choice felt like picking between a razor blade or a venomous spider to be in a piece of Halloween candy.

He splashed cold water on his red face and looked into the mirror with anger-blurred eyes. Looking back at him from the reflected glass was a pair of glowing red eyes over a wicked smile of stained teeth.