Night Specters

By Artie Margrave

Every member of the Nathan family has lost someone: a friend, a brother, a family, a life. So when David Nathan finds a place and an opportunity to start over, it's an easy and straightforward decision. But as he tries to salvage the remnants of his family, dark shadows threaten their presence. Will they find the togetherness they lost in time to stand against the evil haunting their new home?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Artie Margrave
• Release date: Oct 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310865916

Artie Margrave

Tobi is a developing writer currently pursuing a degree in Computer Science. With your reviews, he hopes to become a reader's favourite. He currently lives in Lagos, Nigeria.

Book preview

BEHIND THE SHADE…

Dewey knew it was a shadow because he had painted it there, but he didn’t know why. Probably like the white dots, he had seen it and incorporated it directly. It was short, squat, thin, not a person’s. Maybe it was just the grasses. He looked up and saw that many of the stooping branches of the bush had actually casted shadows in front of them.

It’s nothing.

The rasp coughs of Mr. Hadley’s truck starting tugged at his hearing. He rolled the cardboard up, rolled the second one, tucked both under his right arm, picked his packaged colors and started for the house. It was late afternoon.

If he had turned to look over his shoulders right before he turned the corner to the patio, he would have seen the white specks begin to reappear.

In their pairs.

Night Specters

By Artie Margrave

Copyright © 2015 Artie Margrave

Published by Artie Margrave at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition

Cover design by the author. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. The events and characters described herein are imaginary and are not intended to refer to specific places or living persons. Any resemblance to any person or persons, living or undead, is purely coincidental.

All Rights Reserved

No part of this eBook may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the express written consent of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this eBook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

For Tolamise.

Wish I was a better brother.

"There's some part of them that's keeping them here."

—Sam Winchester

"…standing before the fireplace, the figure of a tall, stout man with a large, grey dog by his side."

—Elliott O’Donnell

For who can prove that the human spirit goes up and the spirit of animals goes down into the earth?

—Ecclesiastes 3:21 (NLT)

CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

—Part One

~Chapter One—The Birkland House

~Chapter Two—Stewie meets Dewey

~Chapter Three—Scavengers

~Chapter Four—Jay and David let off some steam

~Chapter Five—The Thing on the Window and the Others beyond it

~Chapter Six—Judy gets her talk; Jay sees things for himself

~Chapter Seven—Tom helps out a little, Rachael a bit more

~Chapter Eight—When They came back…

~Chapter Nine—The Nathans move out

—Part Two

~Chapter Ten—The Hadleys

~Chapter Eleven—Something about the estate

~Chapter Twelve—The Logbook

~Chapter Thirteen—Of High Risks and Dire Planning

~Chapter Fourteen—Return to the Birkland House

—Part Three

~Chapter Fifteen—The Search

~Chapter Sixteen—The Possession and the Stand

~Chapter Seventeen—Dispossession

~Chapter Eighteen—The Passing

~Chapter Nineteen—The End to all of that

—Epilogue

Acknowledgement

About the author

NIGHT SPECTERS

PART ONE

The Birkland House

THE NATHANS MOVED INTO THE BIRKLAND RANCH, Appleton County, Kansas, from Oklahoma in the early days of summer. For a long time before then, as far back as most of the present and seasoned residents of Appleton remembered, it had remained uninhabited. It stood on a solitary portion of the county’s suburbs, a fair travel of over two miles from the relatively serene, densely-populated business side of town. It was a large farm covering enviable acres of fertile land that had in a period largely forgotten belonged to a long-dead veterinarian, Dr. George Nicholas, according to the dealer. It was why David couldn’t believe his luck when he found the bargain offer on one of those agriculture tracts one barely took notice of in Oklahoma cafes, much less in a Starbucks. Indeed, it appeared too much of a coincidence to be one.

Prior to finding the offer on the small booklet, a lot had happened to motivate an interest in such details, that magnified the advert into prominence amongst the other prime information. It all revolved around his firstborn, Jay, now seventeen years. Or maybe responsibility-wise, it revolved around him. Jay had just been a victim of his irresponsibility, David was certain.

Sitting where he was by the transparent screen, on his own, tuning out the chattering of the individuals and groups in the cramped coffee shop, the image of the estate conjured a memory blurred by age and a distant existence. It was once upon a time he had a happy family; him, his wife, Naomi, their sons Jay and Dewey (who came ten years after his elder brother, Jay), and their… boys… Percy and Tike (an Australian Shepherd and a Dachsie respectively); a modest home, Woodward, OK.

His vocation had back then afforded him more time at home, even than Naomi who had been a lab technician at this renowned hospital, MedPro, in the deep business side of town. David had been a writer, small-time full-time, in the dawn of his career and just beginning to have a few heads turn his way, a few lips mention his name en passant. By virtue of that, he spent such an amount of time with his boys, all four of them, as would make corporate-working fathers green with envy. In major contexts save one, he was their mum. And he had been there for them every time, even after…

He’d been unable to finish the thought and while her image occupied the entirety of conscious thoughts, he had reached absentmindedly for his phone and dialed the dealer of the property. The dealer was a likeable fellow, a Dr. Hoolahan (Please, Adam.) by name, a pleasant schmoozer, but then, it was a quality required and expected of any negotiator. He’d met the man in a prearranged location, exchanged pleasantries and from there travelled to Appleton to inspect the property. The estate had been in the doctor’s ownership for a long time, bequeathed him by his uncle, he’d explained, but being a man committed to his profession (he was, true, an established general practitioner at Arkansas), he was willing to let go of the place. Plus, he could no longer continue with its maintenance if no one lived in it. It wasn’t something one would hear a negotiator say and the thought had flashed through David’s subconscious with the transience of a lightning bolt.

Y’know, I had some relatives from Wellington lodge here some seven years ago. Was hoping they’d like the country enough to stay. Turned out they couldn’t be… um… deurbanized quickly enough, he’d said. And it’s a real tranquil country out here.

David clearly saw that and it was what tipped the purchase in his favor. He liked it, with pretentious reservation and following a brief haggle, they eventually settled for a price a little below the bargain on the condition that David himself took care of refurbishment, to which he agreed. So David had tidied up what needed tidying up in Oklahoma and they moved two months after. Leaving nothing behind, save memories. And a grave.

Naomi lost her life to a wayward truck six years after Dewey joined the family, her corpse crushed like something from a horror movie. David found it most hard to take, more than others. Depression fought for his soul and he tried to forefend its victory by sequestering himself in his study and bleeding his heart out on page after page, with bit-success, and in the process churning out his career-defining first bestseller, closely followed by others, and then so many absorbing literary exploits since then. What he failed to realize on time was that he had been fighting a right enough battle protractedly and at the wrong time, even in the wrong way. And realization didn’t dawn until his somewhat atmospherically fractured home was very nearly divested of another family member, one who was as close to him as Naomi had been: his first son, Jay. And in almost the same way too. In fact, Jay was the only one of five that barely survived as the Sienna he and his friends had been in somersaulted forever, totaling the car. The first sets of preliminary examination revealed that mechanical failure hadn’t necessarily been the cause of the accident, that it was more to the inebriation of personnel. Copious amounts of intoxicants was the least that had been detected in Jay’s, as well as two others’, bloodstream. As he monitored the still, gaunt figure of his son on life support in ICU 3, MedPro, fighting death, day after day, week in week out, the fruits of his negligence glared at him through vituperative eyes. Because while his late wife’s death had been an unforeseen accident, out of his control, this one had been a factor of his neglect. If he had paid attention to what mattered to him more, rather than wallow in grief and distractions, interviews and book signings, he might have curbed the incident altogether. And so he decided, with the reluctant consent of others, to have a go at a fresh start somewhere else. Judy had supported the idea wholeheartedly. Concerning her…

If there was anyone perceptive of the sequence of personal decisions that led to Jay’s incidence, it was her, Judy Best, Jay’s onetime History teacher. She’d taken especial interest in him after having him in his class and especially after acquainting herself with his father’s works (she stumbled upon a collection of his ghost-themed stories in a well-visited bookstore, and gave it a try) and entering his fandom sometime before his first bestseller. So after Naomi Nathan died, she observed him to ensure the pressure of his mother’s loss hadn’t overwhelmed him, that he was handling her demise well. And after a while it appeared he did, but by occupying himself with an entirely new set of behaviors and values that were, to be frank, reprehensible. His new choice of peers, too, influenced him. So she had made an appointment with his father to express her worries. The appointment had led to a dinner. Then a date. Then a relationship. Then an engagement. All in the space of two and a half years. The social preoccupation had kept Jay just at the suburbs of her watch but that was enough for misfortune to strike. Though David had tried to shoulder all the blame, she’d taken some of it off him.

So David had started work on ameliorating the situation from its foundation. He retired from writing, left a number of projects unfinished and terminated contracts. He put family first. He searched for somewhere away from everything, somewhere solitary, somewhere Jay could recuperate in both mind and body without hindrance, somewhere they both could be actively involved with family. And on a strolling exercise that cool afternoon, Starbucks happened. The rest already detailed.

When the family alit from David’s Highlander used to transport themselves and their possessions, assisted by a capacious rental truck, from Woodward, they marveled at the place, the house especially. Even the two dogs couldn’t contain it and yapped their lives out. Except David of course, because he’d checked it out a little over a month ago.

The house was a large duplex, designed with the post-Victorian era style in mind, having a little bit of that Italian look and even lesser of the venetian appearance with a more simplistic exactitude and had many windows that said looking outside in all directions was going to be no problems at all. The arresting construction looked old and untouched for a long time and its beautiful patterns had become completely drab. Roof shingles had come off, and were still coming off. The painting was nonexistent. The windows had blackened with accumulated dirt but were whole otherwise. It went without saying that the building needed at least a full week of professional revamping. However, real beauty was hidden beneath its wears and tears and refurbishment would restore its lost glory.

So this will be our first family project, David declared, which was exactly what he had in mind when he accepted the doctor’s condition, and why he had declined from hiring renovators. For now, at least.

Everyone baulked at the prospect of so much work, except Jay, who’d been uncommunicative for the most part since being discharged from MedPro. David studied everyone’s faces in turns: Judy feigned anticipation and excitement, an eager body language and David knew it was to infect the boys. But in her round eyes and on her round face, she suppressed a heavy countenance. Her pretentious ardour rubbed off only on Dewey though. The young lad with a shock of black hair (that David knew he’d inherited from his mum’s genes) and a chubby figure hopped about, willing to help even beyond his capacity. Of them all, he hadn’t let his spirit dampened by their recent misfortunes. Jay lolled against the car window, still and expressionless. His right arm had been cast and slung; the ulna had suffered several hairline fractures and some of the ligaments had been torn in the accident. The cast was a precautionary procedure. Not only to Jay’s forearm but to David’s conscience as well, and not just a precaution but a caution too, a stingingly persistent reminder to make things right. All Jay wanted was to be rid of it. But the bandage was quite due to be removed anyway. A trip back to OK was in order. Only when? He reexamined the environment to take his mind off it.

The house stood in the center of an untended plantation choked with weeds. The bushes had grown over having been uninfluenced by human activity for so long, becoming a dauntingly deep-green world of its own. They needed serious pruning. On the left side of the stony grounds a sizable shed had been planted in the midst of an engulfing sea of tumultuous green, visible only by the virtue of its height. Its wooden walls also needed no small degree of restoration; most of the wood was crumbly and decaying and long gone was the color of freshness.

But the shed was itself a paragon of dereliction that the estate had to offer. Behind the manor house were the fossils of a farmstead, infrastructures that had once seen life, had once had purpose and productivity in a distant past but had now fallen into severe states of disrepair. It was now near to impossible to divine what functions some of the structures performed in its heydays.

As Judy and David alternated between the house and outside, stripping it of its few worthless things, Dewey and Jay helped bring their possessions in, as much as they could help, which wasn’t much. With everyone occupied with one endeavor or another, David couldn’t suppress a feeling he’d had since he stepped upon the dusty premises and since he first laid eyes on the house.

That the place was abandoned, rather than uninhabited.

Well, that was probably the catch for the place’s low fee. Even though it was too big an establishment for a fixer-upper, it was a fixer-upper nonetheless. And now they were here. He didn’t want to brood any longer. It was time to make the lemonades out of lemons and watch Life say What?

Through the first week of occupying their new niche, the entire family, even the dogs, did their part in ensuring that the frosty, moldy atmosphere and murky dark they met inside was thoroughly exorcised until a warm familylike aura took a comfortable front seat. The family room, the study, the dining and the kitchen were the constituents of the ground floor of the house. The family room even had a dusty library filled with old, voluminous medical tomes, many of which had rotted, filled with dampened and bleached, unreadable pages and simply had to be tossed out with the other useless stuff. No basement. But Judy strongly felt houses this big ought to have one, a cellar at least. The first floor contained the bedrooms (there were five) and the bathroom. A passageway separated the total number of rooms into three opposite pairs and stretched to a railed gallery from which one could look down and see all going on in the family room below. The bathroom was in horrible shape upon discovery and it took most of that week, and thorough attention, to restore any measure of serviceability to it. Dewey endured most in that time. In the end, the enterprise wearied them stupid and David knew it was over when every bit of motivation he tried to offer was readily rebuffed. Even Judy wouldn’t be wheedled over sex.

So he called in professional services to take care of the rest, repainting of the outside, fixing missing shingles, wallpapering the inside walls and all the rooms, and making sure the plumbing and electricity were in perfect functioning conditions. Once all had been taken care of, David thought they should take a casual tour of the area the morning of the following day, the beginning