A Haunting On Mephisto Drive: Mephisto Drive, #1

By Steve Conoboy

Cherry's heart crammed into her throat. She was alone with Mr. Pliers. He resembled a grotesque ill-fitting door carved into the shape of a black-suited golem. The top of his head brushed the ceiling. Suddenly the bedroom didn't seem anywhere near big enough. 'It's the view, isn't it?' He chuckled then, a sound which made the ends of Cherry's bones grind together. Phlegm and rust and sparks: these are the things she thought of when she heard that laugh. 'I would gaze out of the window for hours, imagined I could pick up the little people as they went about their days and place them anywhere else if I wanted to. Drop them from a great height if it pleased me.' He mimed the action with nimble pinching fingers, plucking a distant imaginary figure from a sidewalk and flinging them off towards the horizon. In Cherry's mind there was a tiny scream. 'I think you're going to have quite a time in this house, Cherry. Don't you?'

Macadamian Pliers is an unpleasant man with a hideous plan. He's just sold a house to Emmet's Peak's newest family, and they're about to find out it's haunted. He made it that way.In the first volume of a trilogy, Cherry and Frank Raine find themselves in a battle of wits and nerves against both the ghosts in their new home and the man who put them there.

Cherry, physically and emotionally scarred by a car crash, must draw from within herself the strength to confront her fears and save her family. Frank must choose between taking responsibility for once or being led astray by firebug Jack, a local boy with a dark sense of fun.

As the haunting escalates, Cherry discovers that other homes have been affected by the strange-shaped and evil-hearted Pliers, but what chance do a couple of kids have against such a man?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Conoboy
• Release date: Aug 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201476731

Book preview

ALSO AVAILABLE

PIECES OF EIGHT

01 - Shanty For The Soul

02- Canticle Of Oceans Lost

03 - Refrain Of The Fallen

COMING SOON

PIECES OF EIGHT

04 - Melody Of Fools

FORGING THE EIGHT

01- Silus

02- Samira

MEPHISTO DRIVE

02 - Cherry Raine

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Copyright Notice

©(2013) and this minor edit (2021) STEVE CONOBOY. All rights reserved worldwide. No part of this book may be reproduced or copied without the expressed written permission of the Author.

This book is a work of fiction. Characters and events in this novel are the product of the author’s imagination. Any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Cover art under licence from Shutterstock

For Karen. Forever.

Also dedicated to the great movies of my youth:

Gremlins, The ‘Burbs, Fright Night

There’s a little something of them all in here.

UNSETTLING

Cherry didn’t care how beautiful this house was. She wasn’t interested in the spacious rooms with their large double-glazed windows that poured in gallons of sunlight. A newly-installed kitchen with all the zingy appliances a domestic god or goddess could need made no difference to Cherry. Neither did she care for a generous garage with room for two cars and more besides. She couldn’t be swayed by a lush garden with decking for sunbathing, a patio for barbecues and a pond awaiting new occupants. So what if the neighbourhood was quiet and the views from the upper floor relatively pleasant? As for the shower, it could have all the spray modes it wanted. Her mind was made up. She didn’t want to move.

It wasn’t that Cherry adored the house she had lived in all of her life.. She couldn’t even claim that she loved it. Familiarity, however, counts for a lot. She was used to her home, and everything that came with it. The way the back door needed slamming before it would shut properly. The toilet that was forever failing to fully flush. The washing machine that would rattle around as if about to take off. The third stair up that would creak underfoot but only after dark. The drudgery of getting up for school and putting up with her fellow pupils for another day. The recesses in the library doing homework because there was nothing else to do. The lone walks home past places where anything could happen but nothing ever did. Her bookcase so full that the top shelf was giving way under the weight. She was accustomed to her existence. It was known. It was hers. She didn’t want the hope of a new life. Hope could crush her.

That’s if Mom and Dad’s enthusiasm didn’t drown her first. They were gushing over every little thing in an attempt to draw some excitement out of their daughter. ‘A breakfast bar!’ squealed Mom, inviting Cherry to be as amazed as she. Mom was increasing into middle-age and anything involving food flicked her switches. ‘Imagine, we could be sitting around this each morning eating fresh waffles or those cinnamon bagels we both love, having a bit of a chat before we go to school or work, and your Dad can be reading his newspaper at the end there, it’ll be so nice!’

‘We’ll need a t.v. in here, then,’ said Cherry’s brother Frank as he drifted through the kitchen and into the conservatory. His hair was in bunches. He hadn’t arrived with his hair in bunches. ‘Can’t eat cereal without t.v.’

Dad was upbeat as usual. ‘Can and will. We won’t be letting the boob-tube run our lives for us. New home, new start, new us.’ There was always a hint when Dad was speaking that he knew he couldn’t bring everyone on-board.

‘I do wish you wouldn’t call it a boob-tube,’ said Mom, and Cherry mirrored her opinion. ‘It just sounds rude.’

‘A boob, a chump, a moron, an idiot, that kind of boob. Would you prefer me to tell our son to stop sucking on the glass teat?’

‘Oh, Doug, that’s worse.’

‘Because it’s probably time we weaned him...’

‘We look and sound like a normal family when you’re not talking, you know that right?’

‘Dibs on this room,’ hollered Frank from the conservatory.

Mom answered as if she was already prepared for this random request. ‘You’re going to take one of the bedrooms like a normal person, and before you ask you’re not sleeping in the attic either.’

‘There’s an attic? Rockin,’ said Frank, immediately forsaking the conservatory for somewhere more interesting. ‘We should get some pet bats...’

As his voice drifted away upstairs, Cherry leaned against the large fridge in the corner of the room, resigned to her fate. This visit was proving to be the ruse she had suspected all along. Mom and Dad, who’d already viewed the house once, weren’t asking her what she thought of the place. They were showing her the house they had already decided to take. It was three against one. Frank was sniffing around finding a place to sleep. He would drift into this new home in much the same way he drifted into everything. For Frank, if something was happening, then so be it. He wasn’t even fazed by that estate agent guy who’d let them in and was waiting outside. He hadn’t been able, however, to stop staring at Mr. Pliers.

Cherry was terrified of the man, it was that simple. If his father was a human then his mother was a nightmare. Knowing he was somewhere outside the house made Cherry’s skin all goosebumpy. Neither Mom nor Dad would acknowledge having any problem with him. The only hint that either one of them was discomforted by his presence was Mom’s admission that ‘maybe he should wear an eye-patch’, and ‘there’s probably even an online store, like eyepatch.com, with lots of cool designs to choose from’. Straight after that she scolded herself for being squeamish about someone else’s misfortune and stated that it was nobody’s business what the man did with his eye socket.

Cherry would normally agree. But then she’d met him.

Ten minutes ago, outside 7 Mephisto Drive, Macadamian Pliers had been waiting on the sidewalk to meet them. Everything about him was not quite right. If it had only been that brutalised eye then Cherry would have had no issue with him. She was the last person on Earth to judge anyone for their scars. Rather, it was his strange size and peculiar shape, and the unpleasant tilt to his smirking smile, and the unwavering intensity of his remaining eye, and the grinding gears texture of his voice, and the angled face that looked as if it was not born of humankind but hammered out instead in a metalwork class, and the deep crease of his thin eyebrows, and a wealth of other wrongnesses that Cherry couldn’t name that turned her insides to water. She hid behind Dad the entire time, and was overwhelmed with relief when Pliers suggested that the family should look around on their own, take the time to absorb the atmosphere.

She found him unpleasant to be around. She imagined that standing in a grave dug especially for her on a stormy night would be equally unpleasant.

Mom’s voice snapped Cherry out of this grim fantasy. ‘Do me a favour, hun. Drag your brother out of the attic if he’s managed to get up there. Once your Dad and I have measured up in the front room we’ll be leaving.’

‘We’re measuring?’ asked Dad as if this was the first he’d heard of it.

‘For the furniture. We need to make sure everything’s going to fit.’

‘I don’t think that’s going to be an issue. That room’s twice the size of the one we currently have...’

Cherry left them to it. She could already tell how the dispute would resolve itself. Dad would lose. At least something wasn’t going to change.

Through the house and up the stairs and Cherry got no sense that these walls could ever be called home. It felt like a place abandoned rather than an abode patiently awaiting a new family. It’s the lack of things, she told herself. Once all of our stuff’s here it’ll be different. That sounded like a hollow promise. She’d known her home forever. It was the only place in the world that felt close to safe, and now she had to leave it.

The trap-door leading up to the attic was open, the built-in ladder was down. ‘Frank, you up there?’ Her voice echoed in the darkness of the attic, coming back flat and toneless, as if some miserable imp up there had caught it, drank the goodness out of it and thrown back the husk. There was shuffling. An imp coming closer to see what else it could catch. ‘Frank? What are you doing?’ He knew better than to hide in dark places, trying to scare her.

‘I’m trying to find a light switch,’ he replied, and although it was spooky to hear his disembodied voice float through that gloomy portal, at least he answered, at least he wasn’t messing around, and her pulse ceased its acceleration.

‘Mom says you’ve got to come down, we’re going soon.’

‘Soon isn’t now, is it? Come up and look at my new room.’

‘That’s not your new room, and there’s nothing to see without any lights.’

‘It’s not that dark.’ It was. ‘I think there’s some stuff at the far end, I want to see what it is.’

‘Who cares? Just come down.’

‘No, you come up and help. Then I’ll be done quicker, won’t I?’

Cherry hated Frank-logic. There was always some loophole to be found that swung things Frank’s way. ‘You stay up there if you want. I’m going to claim the biggest actual bedroom for me.’

‘Do what you like, you’ll regret it when I find some sweet stuff and I sell it all for a mint. Or I find evidence of a murder and I become a hero. That’s me, a minted hero, once I find the light...’

She’d already seen all the rooms that the house had to offer, but supposed there was no harm in a second tour at her own pace. It was likely that despite her claim that they were leaving soon, Mom would be measuring for a while yet. Cherry wandered into each of the bedrooms in turn. There wasn’t much difference in size. All three were large, at least compared to where she currently slept. Each room had fitted wardrobes, each had plain white curtains at the window, each was devoid of furniture, each was absent of character. She would choose based on view, then. The bedroom at the back of the house was first and it was a winner, no need to see the others. The suburb unfolded from here, rolled down the shallow, steady slope of a long hill. The further she looked, the older the houses were, and the more lush the trees inbetween. There were layers of buildings and trees, leading down to a distant shopping mall, all intertwined with the thread of roads running through. It was pleasingly unregimented, an army of buildings falling out. Most importantly Cherry could see everything around her. It felt good to be looking down on the world for once.

Frank was still thumping and creaking around in the attic. She wondered if he could be persuaded down yet. Perhaps she should leave him in the dark to sprain his ankle, teach him a lesson.

‘An excellent choice,’ said a voice like cogs dying. Cherry’s heart almost leapt from her throat. She was alone with Mr. Pliers. Nobody to hide behind. She turned to see him filling the threshold of the room. His shoulders were wider than the doorframe. He resembled a grotesque ill-fitting door carved into the shape of a black-suited golem. ‘The room,’ he clarified. ‘It’s the one I would have chosen. You have taste similar to mine. Lucky you.’ He turned and tilted so he could get into the room, an obsidian monolith with the power of movement. The top of his head brushed the ceiling. Suddenly the bedroom didn’t seem anywhere near big enough. He took a stride towards the window, long enough to take him halfway across the room. ‘It’s the view, isn’t it? I bet you haven’t even bothered to see what the world looks like from the other rooms. Why try hamburger when you’ve already got the steak, right?’ He chuckled then, a sound which made the ends of Cherry’s bones grind together. Phlegm and rust and sparks: these are the things Cherry thought of when she heard that laugh. ‘Don’t be so surprised.’ The emotion using Cherry’s face was not surprise. ‘It’s my job to read people. I can tell exactly what a person needs within a minute of meeting them. I just get this sense of what they want from a home. Status, security, comfort, nice views. Simple requirements you might think, but they can tell you everything about a person. As a child my room used to have a similar view to this. I would gaze out of the window for hours, imagined I could pick up the little people as they went about their days and place them anywhere else if I wanted to. Drop them from a great height if it pleased me.’ He mimed the action with nimble pinching fingers, plucking a distant imaginary figure from a sidewalk and flinging them off towards the horizon. In Cherry’s mind there was a tiny scream. ‘I think you’re going to have quite a time in this house, Cherry. Don’t you?’ She nodded. It was all she could do.

‘You two! Kabooses downstairs please! We’re ready to go.’

Never had Cherry responded so rapidly to her mother’s voice. She walked out of the room as fast as she could, moving around Pliers in as big a circle as the space would allow. She only paused briefly on the landing to hurry Frank out of the attic. ‘Get out of there!’

‘Cool it,’ said Frank as lowered himself out of the hatch. ‘You want me to break my neck?’

‘I don’t care, just hurry up.’

‘I’m telling Mom you want me to break my neck.’ He was halfway down the ladder and that was good enough for Cherry. Pliers was twisting his way out of the bedroom, and she wanted to keep as much distance between herself and that man as possible. Mom and Dad were waiting in the hallway.

‘Frank’s on his way,’ she said, and went straight outside to wait by the car. Her chest had tightened and it took several deep breaths before it would relax. Only when she noticed the cool breeze on her skin did she realise her brow was peppered with perspiration.

Mom and Dad came out of the house and frowned when they saw she was already at the car. Frank was next, and he made his way down the drive to join her, kicking at stray specks of gravel. Last to emerge was Macadamian Pliers in his midnight-black suit. He didn’t seem to belong in sunlight, this shadow of odd perspective peeled out of a nightmare and pasted at angles into the day. He spoke with Mom and Dad, who laughed too hard at whatever joke he fed them.

‘Didn’t find the light,’ reported Frank, leaning sullenly against the car. ‘I know there’s something good up there.’

‘It’ll just be whatever trash the last people who lived here didn’t want to keep.’

‘You don’t know that. You’re always such a downer about everything.’

Cherry gave this the vaguest of verbal nods. She was watching Pliers loom over her parents, a preying mantis hypnotising its victims before the final strike. ‘What do you think of him?’ she asked her brother.

‘Funny looking. That eye is sweet, makes him look savage.’

‘It’s not an eye. It’s a wound.’

‘Whatever. I wonder if he stitched it shut himself.’

‘Don’t be so gross,’ she told him, but once presented with the idea it was difficult to shake off. The image, so repulsive it was impossible to turn it away: Macadamian Pliers in a dirty surgical theatre, choosing from a broad selection of threads, picking out the thickest, then selecting the rustiest, fattest needle, one that would take some real effort to push through...

Cherry gave herself a shake, hoping to dislodge the unwanted vision. Her mind clung to it. What was behind those sealed eyelids? A marble? The ruins of his eye? Nothing?

She punched Frank on the arm. ‘What’s that for?’ He punched her right back.

‘Ow! If Mom sees you punching me again she’s gonna go spastic.’ Their parents were too busy chattering about the house to notice their offspring fighting. They were moving to the broad, flat trunk of Mr. Pliers’ car, upon which he placed his gleaming black briefcase. He spun the two golden locks to the correct combination of numbers and it rose steadily open. He took some papers from it which he handed to Mom, and closed the case with a tender touch.

‘I think we’re definitely moving,’ said Frank.

‘They didn’t even ask. They pretended they were going to, and they didn’t.’

‘So what? One place is much like any another.’

LOST

The Big Day. Hectic , blurry. A day full of activity. People and furniture and boxes everywhere. The removal men arrived early to collect the remainder of their belongings and soon got one of the sofas stuck in the doorway as they tried to wrestle it through. Dad shouted ineffectual directions at them while Mom directed the remaining removal men and her children to carry the smaller boxes out the back door and round the side of the house. Frank would find something to say about the sofa situation every time he went past, which elevated Dad’s stress levels to new heights. The day’s first snap of a temper was a direct result of Frank asking Dad how comes they couldn’t get the sofa out of the door when it blatantly went in that way. Mom snapped second when the removal men tried to get the other sofa out the back and got that one wedged too.

Cherry liked to think that this was her home having one last laugh at everyone’s expense.

With a lot of care and coaxing the sofas were freed and loaded onto the trucks, and then everything else followed, and then the Raines were taking the ninety minute drive to the other side of the state. Mom complained most of the way that the sofas were probably ruined and they were already behind on time and would never get everything done. Frank wouldn’t shut up about being allowed to have the attic as his bedroom. Dad managed to get lost despite proclaiming he knew the route like the back of his hand. This put them even further back in Mom’s schedule. One of the removal team called to say they had arrived but didn’t have the spare key to get in and get on with the job. Dad swore on his life that he had handed the key over. Mom found it in his jacket pocket two minutes later.

The argument lasted until they finally reached their destination. It filled Cherry’s head with broken glass and the roar of flames.

With the door of 7 Mephisto Drive open, phase two of The Big Day was underway. The sofas went in without a major struggle. The problem this time was Mom’s indecision. She couldn’t decide where anything should go. The layout she had spent the last two weekends planning was completely ignored. She would request a complete re-arrangement of the lounge, asking for the coffee table to be placed over here and the television hung from this wall and the sofas arranged just so instead, then she would consider the changes and have all the changes changed. This happened in every room. Dad, all out of patience, kept excusing himself to go out for some air. After almost two hours of this the removal team staged a mutiny. They brought the remaining items in off the truck, and left.

Thus started the day’s other big argument.

Frank disappeared for an hour. Mom became worried enough to embark upon a tentative search of the unfamiliar neighbourhood. It was a daunting task. In a suburb such as this there were thousands of places a boy like Frank could get to. When he finally returned he was full of wild chatter about one of those places, an old abandoned house all boarded up and begging to be explored. Mom gave him a verbal blasting that was not tempered by his assertion that he clearly intended to investigate further. Cherry went elsewhere while this was going on. She didn’t like shouting, and had heard enough for one day.

Eventually everyone was too tired and hungry to do anything more. It was take-out for a second night, and no-one felt guilty about it. Cherry found a Chinese menu amidst the pile of junk mail that had been pushed into a corner of the hall.

Bedtime came early for the family. Cherry faced her first night alone in the new house. A part of her wanted to ask Mom if she could stay with her, but she knew that was childish, and Dad would never allow it. At least Frank had been denied the attic. There was no way she could have coped with the wooden creakings of him creeping around above her head.

She hadn’t changed her choice of room despite the association with that man of strange angles. His reasons were completely different from her own. She loved the view because it made her feel safe. He was drawn to the view because it made him feel powerful. A huge difference.

Her room smelled of fresh paint and cardboard boxes. She had made a start with the unpacking but there was still plenty to do. There were some clothes in the wardrobe and the bookcase was filled, but everything else was waiting. She wanted to put her belongings into the same positions they inhabited in her old room, attempt to construct the sensation of home. She suspected it wouldn’t work. The shape of her new bedroom was all wrong. Even with the light out she could sense space around her, sense it was different. It was broader, the ceiling higher. It was unsettling, and each time she teetered on the border of sleep she was jolted awake by an alarm in her brain telling her that something was horribly wrong, the walls had somehow moved and they might contract again, crush her, trap her.

Eventually she tipped too far over the edge to come back.

SCHEMER

One vile individual is far from sleep. Macadamian Pliers sits at the desk in his study which is covered in files and pages of data, and he draws up a new chart. There’s a name stencilled across the top. Raine. Dozens of charts are plastered across one wall, overlapping where new ones take precedence over old. These charts monitor progress. The one for the Raines is much like all the others. Across the bottom in small tight script is listed every day for the next three months. Up the left-hand side is a long list of criteria that need to be met. A small black star will mark these outcomes as and when they are met.

His phone rings. It plays the death march. He thinks this is funny. He answers. ‘Good news I hope?’ Ratchets would talk like this if they had voices. ‘I don’t like delays. Don’t make me regret this venture.’ He leans back in his seat to examine his handiwork. Almost done, just one thing to add. ‘So when will you be ready for me to deliver the package?’ He sticks the first black star next to moved in on today’s date. A fresh one has begun. ‘Next week? And here’s me thinking you would keep me hanging around. Good man. I’ll let you know when I’m available.’ He ends the call to make another, elastic fingers tapping rapidly at the phone. There is much for this feverish mind to do.

Not long before another chart would need to be made.

REPEL

On Sunday Cherry finished unpacking the majority of her boxes and bags. It was a long task, made longer by the distraction of the view from her window. The world was slipping into autumn and it was beautiful. She was fascinated by the layers stretched out before her like ruffles in some enormous dress made of the landscape. So many colours in the trees. Some were already golden, with shining coins where leaves used to be. A pretty little kingdom.

She could just about make out the tiny figures playing baseball way over on the school field. Her veins flooded with dread. Mom claimed starting a new school wouldn’t be so bad, Cherry just had to put herself out there instead of hiding away. Cherry had nodded along to this, pretending that the pep talk was making a difference.

‘Hey, you’re nearly done.’ It seemed that thinking of Mom was often enough to summon her.

‘Those ones are all empty. Just got this one to do.’

‘See? Told you it would be painless.’ Mum’s catchphrase all day had been the quicker it’s done, the sooner it’s over with. Cherry suspected the mantra hadn’t worked on Frank either. ‘I’m going to make my special pasta tonight, hun. How does that sound?’

‘Sounds really good, Mom.’ She was swept up into a bright hug, Mom beaming broadly.

‘We’re going to be happy here, don’t you think?’

‘Yeah,’ said Cherry, no longer sure if putting up with the passing of days was the same as being happy.

Cherry and Frank spent the evening persuading Mom that they didn’t need her chaperoning them on their first walk to school. They could see it from Cherry’s window, it wouldn’t be hard to reach. They also didn’t want to look like dweebs. It took a promise from Frank that he would stick to the winding streets and not take the direct route through the trees and down slopes for Cherry’s sake before Mom would agree to let them go alone.

Cherry believed that Frank had another reason for his insistence.

She was proved right. Monday morning, and Mom urged them to leave early so that they had plenty of time to get to school. Frank didn’t argue. Lunches in bags, bags over shoulders, a final word of encouragement from Mom which Frank ignored and Cherry shrugged off, and they were on their way. The air was calm and quiet, the day was starting to warm. Frank was