The House On Marble Hill by John Lars Zwerenz
THE HOUSE ON MARBLE HILL
Brian Hammond took his wife Teresa to the graveyard in order to pay their respects to her father. Teresa knelt down upon the thick, emerald grass in front of the tombstone to lay a wreath of orange-colored flowers upon the grave. As she did so Brian produced a long, sharp kitchen knife from his coat’s inner pocket. He raised the silver knife high in the glow of the afternoon sunlight and thrust the blade into Teresa’s back. She vomited a good deal of blood as her head went forward into the tombstone. Then her face slid down into the grass, and her body lay still, dead. Brian looked around the area, making sure the murder of his wife went unnoticed by another human being. No one saw the incident. There was no one in the cemetery but himself and the corpse of his wife.
His reason for killing his wife was simple. He hated her. Brian was a man who thrived on hatred. He was a cruel and selfish being all of his life. As he looked down at his dead wife’s body, he smiled with a grim satisfaction. He wiped the blade of the knife clean of his fingerprints with a white handkerchief. Throwing the knife down upon Teresa’s bloody back, he ran to his car and sped off into the distance. By nightfall he was in Connecticut.
The headlights of his car struck the pines on either side of the highway like eerie spotlights on their sleepy, green boughs. Brain drove north as the nascent stars in the black, cloudless evening sky appeared as demonic, glistening candles to the sight of his baleful, malevolent eyes. Brian had many demons as his friends. Yet it never occurred to him that he was at their mercy, of which they had none. At midnight Brian crossed the border into Massachusetts. He reflected on the murder of his wife with a profound cerebral satisfaction. And whenever he did so he felt an almost orgasmic, delicious, ineffable delectation. As his car sped further into the darkness of the night Brian found a rapturous ecstasy in his vivid recollection of seeing Teresa’s blood splash like a sanguine brook upon the tombstone of her father.
Brian Hammond was racing northward with the intention of crossing the Canadian border. He possessed all the necessary papers required to emigrate from The United States and to settle in Montreal. All of his documents were falsified. His identity was that of a fictional person with a fictional name.
The wheels of Brian’s car hissed like a snake on the barren, old highway, for it began to lightly rain. Suddenly a profound, thick fog was cast like a white, cryptic veil across the road, blown in from the forests which lined the highway. Brian could hardly see beyond a mere few feet in front of his rain-spotted windshield. Yet he continued to speed, refusing to decrease the pace of his driving, in spite of the dangerous, inclement weather. A thin spray of rain made the highway very slick. Brian was approaching a sharp curve on the road.
Reaching the curve, he lost control of his car and it slammed into a patch of thick, old oak trees on the right side of the highway. The impact was terrible as the front of the car folded like plastic. Brian’s body broke forward through a leather safety belt, and his chest was thrust violently forward against the steering wheel. At that very same instant, immediately to his right, one of the boughs from an oak tree struck the windshield like a bolt of lightning. There was a sudden, loud noise of metal condensing and shattering glass. The rear of the car rose and fell. Then all of the broken glass fell to the rear and back of the car. The car became still. The boughs of the trees no longer moved. Brian was alive, but he was seriously hurt and was rendered unconscious. He had broken a rib on the left side of his chest and his upper left arm was also broken. His head lay limp upon the large, wet bough of the tall, ancient oak tree.
The rain began to pour heavily into the open car as a sudden wind ripped furiously through the air in violent circles, tossing green and yellow leaves into the car and across the road. Remnants of the ever-thickening fog slowly crept into the shattered car like the fingers of a dark-gray, dreadful ghost. Brian moaned as a flurry of wet leaves slapped his face, driven into the car by the wild wind. He laid there motionless for more than one hour in his devastated vehicle exposed to the harshness of the elements. Not one car passed the sight of the accident during that entire time.
It was now approaching dawn.
The first yellow fingers of the sun rose above the oaks and pines into Brian’s eyes. He opened them, half-knowing he had crashed his car. His car was situated in an embankment off the road beyond the curve and down ten feet. No passersby noticed his wreck. With some difficulty he pulled himself from the car as the driver’s door opened a foot until it was carved into the soil. Brian was a thin man, and as he squeezed his body into the light of the dawning morn he realized the extent of his injuries. He was able to walk, but his left rib and his left arm were in extreme pain. He gazed at the demolished auto with astonishment as he beheld the deadly bough which had entered the car on the passenger side. He then perceived a rough sort of trail in the woods away from the highway. He decided to embark on this path instead of risking an arrest for the murder of his wife. For, he had thought, the police were sure to come upon the scene of the accident before very long. Perhaps some stranger might take him in until the threat of the officials had adequately passed.
He moaned as he stumbled forward on a due east course through the heavily forested wood. He walked for a full three hours without seeing a house of any kind. Finally, as he descended a grassy mound, he beheld a large cemetery and behind it, upon a hill, he could see a huge mansion. The graveyard was wild with tall, yellow throngs of grass which seemed to choke the tombstones. It was ancient, unkempt and naturally looked grim. But the immense, old manor looked like a vision out of hell. All around it were dead, overgrown oaks and birch. No wind shook their boughs which appeared black in the sun. High up upon the mansion the masonry of the four towers which marked the points of the compass were all weather-worn and strangled by black, sickly vines. Dead white and sallow reeds cradled each corner of the old, loathsome edifice. The atmosphere was vile to the scent, as if some miasma had cursed the entire grounds as well as the house itself.
As Brian approached the house he thought he saw the name of his wife upon one of the tombstones. He wiped his eyes clean and referred to what he saw as his imagination playing games. He ascended the green, old, mossy stone stairs and he knocked upon the huge wooden door. There was no answer. He knocked upon it twice more, louder each time. Ten minutes had passed. Brian decided to retreat to the graveyard. As soon as he thought of doing so the huge door opened slowly, creaking as it moved. An elderly man stood in the foyer. He had thick, white hair and was dressed all in black. For the first time in his life Brian Hammond felt the emotion of terror. “I am Fredrick von Devlin,” said the elderly man. “How can I help you, young man?”
“My name is Robert Hamilton,” Brian said. “I need a place to stay. You see, I was in an accident.” “You are welcome here, my friend,” the old man said. “Let me see to your comfort. Come in.” Brian entered what he thought was a dreadful dream. The large, weathered foyer looked like a barren and forsaken museum. To the left there stood a bust of the old gentleman made of moss-covered stone. Above a cobwebbed-covered chandelier swung slowly even though there was no wind perceived, nor the slightest breeze. In front of Brian was a tremendous staircase which led to the second floor where a faint wailing was heard- and the sound of chattering teeth. Mr. von Devlin shut the front door. “What are those sounds?” Brian asked. “The wind, my young friend, this house is old and big.” Mr. von Devlin led Brian up the stairs. “I’m hurt,” Brian said. “I’m sorry Mr. Hamilton, but we have no bandages here. Perhaps you require a hospital.” “No,” Brian retorted, “You see I am young and I just need to sleep.” “As you wish, Mr. Hamilton, - or should I call you Brian Hammond!”
Hearing this Brian ran screaming up the remainder of the stairs, down a long corridor and through two large rooms. He found one door at the end of another hallway give in, and he went inside. As he did so, he noticed a key within the keyhole. He locked the door from inside. He then lay upon a bed of cobwebs and fainted from the terror. Brian felt as if he had expired upon that bed. That in fact he had died. As he fell into a kind of strange half-sleep he had never known before, he heard a horrifying scream from without his door: “Satanas sum!” At that very moment the ceiling of the room split in two. Then in a fit of unspeakable horror Brian heard from without the door: “You are dead now Brian! Welcome to hell!” With fury and rage Brian grasped the doorknob, but his hand went through the wood and he found he could walk through the door without opening it. “Who are you?!” Brian shouted. “We are legion. And I am your host. My reign here is eternal. My name is Lucifer! I am still the brightest angel. Behold my wings of white. They are brighter than your God, Whom you have rightfully forsaken. I have profited from the many contracts made between us. But I despise the very sight of you. For you were created in the image of my enemy. Your creation was an insult to the dignity of angels!” Brian let out a hopeless scream and flew down the wild corridor where mad candles flickered red in an ominous hollow, endless row. To his abject horror he then saw at the end of the hall the terrible features of Teresa’s father, clad in a dark suit with a look of murderous hatred in his steely, red eyes. “Kill my daughter, will you?!!” Brian screamed again a hopeless, hollow scream and ran down the stairs from which he entered from the foyer. At the bottom of the staircase stood his dead wife, Teresa. “You shall not leave!” she shouted with an evil, vengeful, hollow voice. She then pointed downwards to the floor of stone. “Behold!!!” she said. Brian gazed down as the floor opened wide and saw to his astonishment countless stars in an abyss which had no bottom. He then felt a cold, malevolent wind cast him into that bottomless abyss into which he fell…….And falls!
John Lars Zwerenz
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