Mountain House

By J. N. Sadler, Elaine Mary Kirsons and Craig Witham

MOUNTAIN HOUSE


Young Calvin Schmidt takes his friends to see his inherited home in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. Practical-joker, Darren, is believed to be playing a prank on the other three friends, but intense banging in the walls has something to do with each one’s fate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 17, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483638539

J. N. Sadler

Janet Sadler is a resident of Havertown, Pennsylvania. She has published two volumes of poetry with her illustrations: Headwinds and Full Sail and has been published in many small literary magazines. Once member of the Mad Poets Society in Media, PA, and also the Overbrook Poets in Philadelphia, she reads her poetry at local venues. She was the former poetry director at Tyme Gallery in Havertown, PA and at Baldwin’s Book Barn in West Chester, PA. She has authored thirty flash fictions novels. Twenty-seven titles have been published through Xlibris and can be found at Xlibris.com, under J. N. Sadler Author’s email address: [e-mail]

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

White Birch Mental Facility, a stone complex, rose from the woods of the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania on a cool dark night in late October. Yellow lights showed in the windows. Some of the shadowy figures of patients walked back and forth in front of those windows. Orderlies sedated them, and lights went out in the rooms, leaving only a blue glow in the hallways.

Helmut Schmidt, one of the patients, a small, hunched man in his sixties with sparse hair and wild eyes, sneaked down a dimly lit hall and hid in an alcove until the orderly walked by. He quickly grabbed the orderly, wrapped a wire around his neck, and strangled him to death. The orderly in his white coat, dropped to the ground.

Helmut laughed, quietly, and with the stealth of a predator, continued down the hall, dousing the floors and walls with kerosene. He stopped. An orderly was pushing a patient to his room. Helmut waited until they had passed. He sneaked by every door and left puddles of Kerosene under every one, being careful not to spatter it on himself.

When he reached the front desk, he sneaked up behind the guard and poured a bottle of alcohol over his head. Then, he threw the bottle against the wall. He lit a match quickly and threw it onto the guard. He lit a few other matches, tossing them onto the trail he had left in the other halls.

The flame caught and set the guard on fire. He screamed. Helmut ran to the front door and tried to get out. It was electronically coded. He pushed and pulled. The building was in flames. The fire spread and entrapped the patients and the staff. There were screams of agony. Staff members slid on the puddles of gas and were immediately engulfed in lethal flames. One orderly began to douse the flames with a fire extinguisher. Helmut attacked him and hit him over the head with it, rendering the orderly unconscious, commencing to burn to death on the floor.

Helmut stuffed saturated papers from the desk into a glass and tossed it, as a Molotov cocktail, into the building.

He frantically tried to get out the front door. When the flaming cocktail hit a crash cart, it exploded and added intensity to the already flaming interior. Three chemical blasts broke the front windows. Smoke engulfed the entire building. Helmut choked as he threw himself out the broken window and ran for the woods beyond. He had caught fire, but kept running, his clothes and hair, smoking.

The first fire truck pulled up. A spotlight on the periphery showed Helmut stumbling into the woods, on fire. His clothing fell into a burning heap of ash. He had kept running, badly burned, sentenced to a hard death in the cold woods of early winter.

The fire raged, burning down the walls and ceilings of the mental institution near the town of Lone Pine. Patients were at the windows, screaming. Flames lit up the night. Fire trucks had ladders leaning on the old stone structure. Some patients were jumping into nets below, others, being carried down the ladders. Firemen were rushing to their aid, extinguishing flames and running into the building.

Newsmen with their crews were on the scene with cameras, rolling. A commentator spoke into the microphone. We are on the scene at the White Birch Mental Institution, in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania. No one is sure how the fire was started, but it appears that the building is totally destroyed, and that quite a few patients have burned to death in the confusion of the rescue. After the fire is extinguished, the police will have a body count. Patients who survived will be taken to a facility in Wilkes-Barre for treatment and confinement.

On camera, one of the patients dove out the window without a net, on fire, flailing arms and legs, completely consumed by the flames, like a falling star, screaming. A troupe of medics rushed to the falling victim. The patient was dead when he hit the ground, still smoldering, being beaten with blankets and sprayed with fire extinguishers.

CHAPTER 2

Inside a local night club in Scranton, laughter and conversations abounded. The bar was very active.

Calvin Schmidt, well dressed young man in his twenties, and Margo Blake, also in her twenties, sat close together on stools at the bar. She looked into his eyes seductively. His head turned, like he was looking for someone. She signaled the bartender; a man in his thirties with a dark mustache and sideburns, black bowtie, and Spanish accent. He refilled their glasses.

Calvin turned back and focused his attention on his date.

Hey, Margo, slow down. You’re drinking too much, too fast. Why don’t you eat something? I can order some nachos or fries. You didn’t have lunch or dinner.

Get off my back, Cal. I haven’t had enough to drink, yet. What’s the matter with you? I want to get my drunk on.

She pouted and sloshed some wine. Calvin tried to take the drink from her. She pushed his arm away and got off the stool, clumsily.

I’m going to find someone else, someone who can keep up with me, a free spirit who doesn’t count each drink!

Calvin looked around. Just about everyone here fits that description.

He got off his stool and turned her around. Her wine began to spill onto the floor. She threw it in his face. Others were looking over at the commotion.

Rod, lab assistant from New Delhi, and friend of Calvin’s; along with Darren, broad-shouldered jokester, also a friend of Calvin’s, approached them, through the crowd.

Darren put his hand on Calvin’s shoulder. Rod looked embarrassed at what was going on. He walked on to the bar and ordered a club soda.

Calvin was losing his temper. Margo forced her way back to the bar. Calvin wiped his face with his napkin. He attempted to follow her. Darren blocked the way.

Let her go, Cal. She’s no good. She’s a drunken tramp. Look. She’s falling all over the bartender and whispering in that sleazy guy’s ear. Rap music blared in the background. Most of the people were drunk and not paying any attention to Calvin and Margo, now. He pulled away from Darren.

I still care for her. When she’s sober, she’s different.