1
Phyllis and Shane didn’t stick around at West End Mansion. Phyllis locked the door and at the end of the driveway she stepped out again to lock the iron gates that went up ten feet with tips that looked like arrows. The fence was by the same design and went in either direction as far as the eye could see.
“It’s like a prison or a mental institute, if you ask me,” Shane says.
“You really find it that spooky?”
“I do,” she says, “There’s just something that gives me the creeps.”
“I think you watch too many scary movies, sis,” Phyllis says, “And even if it was: I think that a past like that makes it more interesting. It’s just stories.”
“And you’re going to tell me that the creep that showed us around is alright to?”
“He was a little creepy indeed,” Phyllis says, “But maybe that’s just what happens if you stay in a place like this for too long….” she says in a conspiring voice and she starts laughing.
“With that demeaning tone in his voice and his Miss thisand Miss that?”
“That part about the car was weird though,” Phyllis says, “It didn’t look like he ever did any manual labor.”
“What do you think that guy did over there all day?”
“You mean because there’s little to do?” Phyllis asks, “I think he plays around with dead animals to see if he can bring them back to live….”
Again Phyllis starts laughing and this time Shane starts laughing as well.
*
That night after dinner Phyllis and Shane sat down with Shane’s aunt Emily on the porch. Her aunt is reputed to know something about everyone on the island. She also has a reputation of running her mouth whenever she can and for that reason they need to be cautious about the information that they relay.
Phyllis had specifically told Shane not to talk about them staying at West End Mansion. It was just that this guy Harry Brunt was something that she would like to know more about as well.
“Do you know a Mr. Brunt?” Shane asks flat out.
“There’s only one Brunt that I know of,” she says, “Harry Brunt. Why do you ask?”
“Shane thinks something is up with that guy,” Phyllis says.
“And why would she think that?”
“He came over to the store today,” Shane says, “To pick up fruits and flowers. We chatted about the island and about him being the caretaker of West End Mansion. Something seemed a little off.”
“Well, a place like West End Mansion will do that to you,” aunt Emily says, “He became caretaker shortly after he returned from abroad where some of us were fortunate enough to study and to spend some time away.”
“He’s your age then?”
“A few years younger, but I used to know him socially,” aunt Emily says, “He was nice, but in a way there was something off about him back then as well. As far as I know he never had a woman.”
“But you don’t think he’s a killer or something like that?” Shane asks.
Aunt Emily starts laughing, “No,” she says after they all quieted down, “It’s not like that. Some people are just a little off, but that’s also where it begins and ends.”
“Then you don’t believe the stories that a place like West End Mansion can change a person,” Shane asks, “In a bad way.”
“Those are just stories,” aunt Emily says in a tired voice, “It’s something that we have carried with us from the past: on these small islands there’s very little to do, so we fabricate all these stories, legends and myths to keep ourselves entertained. Okay, we’re very superstitious here as well, but that’s a separate matter.”
Phyllis and Shane look at each other like maybe.
“Now let me ask you something,” aunt Emily says, “What’s really going on?”
“Why?” Shane asks.
“You’re not asking this for no reason.”
“You’ll promise to keep it to yourself?” Shane asks, realizing that aunt Emily most likely will not.
“I do,” she says, “I always do.”
“We will stay there with friends during the holidays,” Phyllis says, “In return for caretaker duties.”
“She will and it’s for a month,” Shane adds.
“I see,” aunt Emily says, “And Harry?”
“He said he will leave the island for that time.”
“Then it’s more about ghosts than it is about Harry,” aunt Emily says, “Let me tell you this: there are a lot of stories about West End Mansion, but most of them are bogus.”
“Most?” Shane asks.
“There were some unfortunate accidents in the past,” aunt Emily says, “Those are historic facts, but other than that it’s just an old building.”
“No ghosts?” Shane asks.
“As far as I know….”
2
That night Jep, Frankie and Jim were all jet lagged and Phyllis orders them to reside by the pool while she and Tony prepare dinner.
“We will feast, starting tonight,” she says, when she’s in the kitchen with Tony, “The caretaker of this place stocked the pantry before he left.”
“You’re sure all that’s there for us to use?” Frankie asks, “We don’t even know yet what all of this is going to cost us.”
“Well,” Phyllis says, “We’re not students anymore, so we should have some cash – but we’re not rich either – long story short: I got us a deal….”
“A deal?”
“After dinner,” she says.
*
Phyllis isn’t that much of a cook. When she grew up she wasn’t best friends yet with Shane and she almost always hung out with the boys and she grew up to be more like a boy than a girl. She was raised by her drunk father and older brothers. It was only later when she was around 16/17 that she became more girly and the only part that remained of her boyishness was this competitive streak. She never really mastered cooking though.
Tony was partly raised by his grandmother, who turned out to be more progressive than his own mother. She believed that a man should be able to cook a decent meal. She used to tell him that women have a weakness for men that know their way around a kitchen.
“You have anything in mind?” Tony asks, while going through the pantry, “It’s like this place has everything.”
“Even things that we can’t get in the store,” she says, “What are these vegetables?”
“Rhubarb,” he says, “Tasty as a sauce: that’s the first part of our meal.”
“Lamb?”
“That can work,” he says, “And mashed potatoes.”
“Vegetables?”
“Those green beans look like they’re still fresh from the land,” he says, “You can go into the liquor room to select a wine.”
“Okidoki.”
Phyllis comes back with two bottles of a fruity merlot.
“Good,” Tony says, “You checked on our guests?”
“They’re really tired,” she says.
“You saw any of them since high school?”
“Nope,” Phyllis says, “I send out the email once or twice a year, but other than that: nothing.”
“So you can’t tell me what’s up with Jim?” Tony asks, “The way he turned all pale after that door slammed earlier. Something is off.”
“You know…. something is strange,” Phyllis says, while she leans in, “At that exact same time when good old Jim turned pale – this thought entered my mind something is off about this place. And I felt a cold chill down my back.”
Tony stops cutting for a few seconds, “You’re joking, right?”
“I wish I was,” she says, “It seemed to me like the same thing happened to him.”
“You didn’t freeze,” he says, “Why would he freeze or pale at something like that, I mean, to that extent?”
“He always was the jumpy type.”
“Now that’s true.”
“But you don’t really believe anything is wrong with this place?” she asks.
“It’s an old place,” he says, “Many things happened here over the years and some of them really aren’t pretty. On the other hand: to really believe in scary stories is something for children, I mean, the ghost stuff and all that.”
“You better don’t tell me that you don’t get scared,” Phyllis says, “That would worry me.”
“Let me just put it like this,” Tony says, “I just like the scary stories….”
*
At eight dinner is ready. They share it at the knight’s table and it’s Phyllis who proposes a toast: “To friendship, to good times and to making new memories.”
“Well spoken,” Jep says in a loud whisper, “Clear and concise.”
“I still need to adjust to this place,” Frankie says, “I still remember us breaking into this place when we were 12 or something like that. I remember that parts of it were still ruins and the jungle was leaning in from outside.”
“It really was different,” Jep says, “I had nightmares for weeks after we visited this place.”
“I remember I got a good spanking when I got home,” Tony says, “At first I thought that it was because I lied about where I went, but then later on I thought it was because my parents really didn’t wanted me to go to this place. At that time I believed that all those stories were actually true.”
“What was the lie?” Jep asks.
“It must have been fishing,” Tony says, “I used that one for pretty much everything.”
“I guess it was a safe lie to tell,” Jep says, “I mean we did fish a lot.”
“And we had our clubhouse next to the beach,” Tony says, “I guess it has been quite a while since you guys went fishing….”
“Not since we left from here,” Frankie says, “And even before then it had been over a year I think.”
“Brains, Big Bones, Jim-jim, Frankie-pankie,” Phyllis says.
“Phillie-pillie,” Jep says.
Phyllis looks like: funny….
“All jokes aside: you guys were the best friends I ever had,” she says.
“Same here,” Jim says.
“Especially when we were young,” Phyllis says, “I remember that you guys helped me sneak out of the house more than once.”
“It did happen more than once,” Frankie says, “You never got a beating when you came back after.”
“In the beginning,” Jim says, “But I guess my mother was also secretly happy for me that I had made some really good friends.”
“In a way we were a group of misfits,” Jep says, “Or Outsiders, or I don’t know what, but somehow we made it work.”
“We were Outsiders,” Tony says, “All except Frankie and Phyllis.”
“I was a misfit as much as you guys,” Phyllis says, “Besides: you guys accepted me for who I was.”
“I was asking myself that same question….” Frankie says, “Naaah just kidding: I figure that the geek in me was stronger than all the rest.”
“Were we geeks?” Tony asks.
“We were pretty geeky,” Jep says in all seriousness, “We were totally geeky.”
Phyllis refills all of their glasses.
“Big Bones,” Frankie says, “You got any more of those scary stories?”
“Big Bones….” Tony repeats, “It has been years since anyone has called me that. Yes I got some more stories. What do you guys want to hear?”
“The beginning,” Jep says, “All the way.”
“Then we will start there,” Tony says.
They all sit back to listen.
“The earliest history that I know of is from around 1800,” Tony says, and he pauses, “Around that time there were still indigenous tribes on this part of the island….” Tony pauses again for a dramatic effect, “The place where West End Mansion was build had originally been a burial and offering ground…. Over the years the natives had carried tons of red sand from the hills to this plot and the reason they chose this plot exactly was because they believed that this was the best piece of land that they could designate for that purpose.”
“Why was that?” Jep asks.
“It was flat,” Tony says, “Most places on Rokset Island are slightly or more than slightly going up or down, but this place is as leveled as it gets.”
“Then what happened?” Phyllis asks.
“The first settlers had left the natives to their own,” Tony says, “That was in the 1750s, because back then they were outnumbered and for a while it seemed that they could live peacefully next to each other. Then another fleet came with another captain and this guy wasn’t so peaceful: he had his men kill every native that they could get their hands on. All that went down in the 1830s and it was the first island governor that had made plans to build a home on this exact spot.”
“What happened to that guy?” Jim asks.
“Killed by the natives,” Frankie says.
“Or poisoned,” Tony says, “The land remained unused for about forty years, until it was bought by the Johnson’s – and well the rest is history.”
“What about the red sand?” Tony asks.
“The natives believed that the red sand was extra-terrestrial,” Tony says, “They believed that by covering their graves in red sand, their ancestors would quicker ascend or reincarnate. The sacrifices were mostly animals from their flock.”
“That’s some bad mojo right there,” Frankie says, “And since this place is build in the middle, I assume that that burial ground is right underneath.”
“When the bad things started happening, the locals immediately said that it had something to do with the fact that they had desecrated a sacred burial ground.”
“That’s really bad,” Phyllis says, “And who in their right mind wouldwanta house on top of that?”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Jep says.
“That first Johnson had never actually seen the burial ground, he had heard about it and dismissed it as some ancient past,” Tony says, “The lot had been cleared all those years before by the governor that had wanted to build there. He also said that ‘these are just stories to scare people off’ and this guy Johnson must have figured that people would tell anything to get him not to build on this land.”
Tony takes a sip of wine.
“Even after the structure was build, there were certain cold spots and weak spots,” Tony says, “I guess you can imagine what those cold spots were about, but those weak spots were something that I never heard about before: when people sat down in those spots for a few minutes, they literally lost all strength in their bodies and they needed assistance to get up. The story has it that in the 1910s a servant who had taken a rest died in a spot like that; she had sat down for too long and couldn’t get back up. There was no one around to hear her cry for help that quickly got softer and weaker, until her heart just gave out and stopped pumping.”
“Wow,” Jep says.
“Yeah,” Tony says.
“Where are those spots?” Frankie asks.
“I guess you should be able to feel it….” Tony says, “As far as I know there’s no map or anything as such.”
“This story creeps me out,” Phyllis says, “I can just see those Indians with their rituals.”
“Wasn’t one of those rituals death by vultures?” Jep asks.
“I don’t want to know….” Phyllis says.
“I guess you don’t….” Jep says, laughing, “But don’t worry they only did this to bad guys and women. Those who had committed a bad crime they left in a far corner on top of a tower to be eaten by vultures. Depending on the severity of the crime they killed the person first, but when it was really bad, they either drugged the person or tied him down and had them eaten alive.”
“On certain nights when there is no moon, you can still hear them scream….” Frankie whispers. They all laugh, but not for long.
*
They all instantly quiet down, because of a loud banging on the front door. West End Mansion is a very deserted place: the nearest road is a fifteen minute drive. Even on that road you might not pass another car when driving to the big town.
Then the banging continues on one of the windows that had been closed off by hurricane doors.
“Are any of you expecting someone?” Tony whispers.
“Not really,” Jep says, “My family doesn’t even know yet that I’m here….”
“What do we have in terms of protection?” Frankie asks.
“There are rollers and knives in the kitchen,” Phyllis says.
“I saw a baseball bat in the liquor room,” Jep says, “And two of those rods to poke the fire in the fireplace.”
“Go get them now,” Frankie whispers, “But be quiet.”
They walk up to the main entrance in two lines. On the right side is Frankie, followed by Tony. On the left side is Jep, followed by Jim and Phyllis. They hear someone scream: “Open up guys!”
They all freeze and look at each other.
“Wait a minute,” Phyllis says, “I think that’s Shane.”
“What!?” Frankie says, “What’s she doing here after midnight?”
“It does sound like her….” Jep says.
“Who’s there?” Frankie yells in a loud voice.
*
“I tried calling you to make sure that you’re alright,” Shane says mostly to Phyllis, once she had confirmed that it was her and they were opening the door, “But I didn’t get you. I was worried, so I came down.”
“By yourself?” Frankie asks.
“I took the car and locked all the doors,” she says, “Besides I have my own place now, so it’s not like I left anyone to worry.”
“You’re staying here, at least for the night,” Phyllis says, “I have an extra bed in my room.”
Shane doesn’t protest, “When I was outside just now I saw that there is no cell phone reception here. I forgot about that.”
“We got internet,” Jim says.
Shane purrs like a kitten, “He Jim-jim!” she whispers, and she throws herself at him.
“I guess we can leave those two to themselves,” Jep says in an off-hand remark.
They drank some more wine and talked about the last seven years. At three in the morning they were too tired and one by one they retired.
3
The next two days went by as you’d expect on an island where the summer never ends. They woke up at 6.30 in the morning when the sun was already up and bright. The morning breeze was smooth and still kind of cool. Jep made a few morning laps in the pool, and afterwards he had a few espresso’s and croissants.
Jim and Shane made their laps together and they went for fruit shakes after. Frankie and Toni came up with a morning workout routine with big rocks, pushups, pull-ups and all that. They both enjoyed a solid breakfast of baked egg, cheese and meat.
*
Around noon they packed two cars with surf boards, towels, chairs and a cooler filled with drinks and headed for the beach. Rokset Island has about forty beaches to choose from and both days they went to the large beaches with pristine white sand where most of the tourists tend to go. When they were younger they didn’t go to those beaches too much, because back then the prices were already about five times from what they were on the less popular spots. Being back after a few years they felt like being tourists for a few days.
They talked excitedly about going back to the secluded beach where they had spend so much time when they were young. Back then they were either fishing, hunting goats or chickens up in the hills and the forest that was close to the beach. Later on they spend their time over there in the clubhouse. The last few years that they lived on the island they threw a few parties as well.
Back then they didn’t need much, mostly because they didn’t have much either and they would never have imagined spending ten days in West End Mansion. It wasn’t just because it was expensive, but it was more because there were simply too many stories going around to feel anything but a little uncomfortable about the whole place.
From the start there were rumors whether Jep and Phyllis had already rekindled their flame. Jep was up for it, but Phyllis didn’t give in, probably because she didn’t want to play that she was easy to get with. That weekend she managed to hold on, but seeing her best friend jump Jim-jim that Friday night had made it hard for her to keep that appearance up.
4
That Sunday night when Jep made his move, Phyllis gave in and that Monday morning they were the ones who woke up late. The house was still quiet though when Jep sneaked into the kitchen to fix a breakfast for two at eleven in the morning. Looking outside he understood why: it was going to be a rainy day.
In any other place a rainy day like this would mean that the day would be dreary, but in the tropics these rainy days take on a whole other dimension. On rainy days like these it doesn’t pour and it also doesn’t drizzle, it’s something in between that might just as well be described as a light rain. There’s little wind and if there’s anything more it’s gusty enough to let the big leaves of the palm trees gush violently back and forth.
The wind isn’t the best part: on rainy days like these it’s a few degrees cooler than on other days when it usually hoovers around 30C. A cool day of 24C gives you a break from the heat and it helps to recharge batteries, especially when living here permanently.
*
“What are you looking so smug about?” Jep asks, before realizing that he can probably guess what it’s all about.
“So the walls finally came down, huh?” Frankie asks.
“It’s like old times again,” Jep says, “Too bad your girl couldn’t come.”
“Well,” Frankie says, “I miss her, but something tells me that it would be less of a reunion like that.”
“You’re probably right,” Jep says, “On the other hand: Shane also wasn’t part of the gang back in the days.”
“Well,” Frankie says, “I heard our Jim had some pretty tough shit to go through these past few years, so it’s probably just good medicine for him.”
“It’s good medicine for any man,” Jep says with a smirk, “I mean, sometimes I really think that we haven’t advanced so much from those cavemen thousands of years ago.”
“I guess you’re referring to the two f’s,” Frankie says, “Food and the other one.”
“Those are the two,” Jep says, “And on occasion the third one.”
“Fishing,” Frankie states, “Well, just look at it like this man: it makes everything nice and simple.”
Jep returns to the bedroom and Jep and Phyllis and they’re all about the two f’s.
“You must have it pretty rough up there in The West,” Phyllis whispers after, “You fuck like you just got out of prison.”
“Right back at ya,” Jep says, “You’re wet like the Niagara.”
5
At two the rain clears and at three it looks like it has stopped for the day. Tony rounds all the guys up to explore the property.
“Places like these always have hidden rooms,” Tony says when they’re all gathered, “I bet we can find one here.”
“What’s in those rooms?” Phyllis asks.
“There are only three options that I can think of,” Tony says, “It’s either a study, a shame room or a play room.”
“Anadultplayroom,” Frankie says, and he winks at Jep and Jim.
“What about the shame room?” Phyllis asks.
“That’s where they locked bad offspring,” Tony says, “Retarded or heavily disabled family members.”
“Jesus,” Phyllis says.
“Right back at ya,” Tony says, “Although I wouldn’t be surprised that there were folks who just shot them if they couldn’t afford to keep them.”
“Back in the days….” Jep sighs.
They all look around for a moment and somehow they all attempt to change the subject, but then they don’t.
“You figure it would be in the main building?” Frankie asks.
“Well, I have a feeling that if there’s something hidden here, then it’s either a hidden study or something like that.”
“Alchemy and that stuff?” Jim asks.
“Right on the money, Jim-jim,” Tony says, “No matter how much money those rich guys had back then, they always wanted more. I guess it wasn’t all so different back then after all. It was like one of the more popular pastimes for men with money and books to try to make gold out of lead.”
*
It took them an hour to explore the whole property, including the building outside and the large greenhouse. It was when Jep told the others that he was going for a drink that he realized that there might be a space between the liquor room and the far wall.
“You’re right,” Tony says, “The entrance should be somewhere in this room.”
It was Frankie who found the entrance: one of the bookcases turned out to be a sliding door and behind it was the door leading to the hidden room. The only thing was that the door was locked. It took them another hour to find in a shallow drawer in what looked to be a small study.
*
This room looked like it hadn’t been entered for years. It was a little dusty, but not too much, since the only two windows had been meticulously sealed from the outside world. Inside the room they found three distinct setups.
The first seemed to be something about time-travel. On a blackboard there was a drawing of this idea that you can travel to the future by circling in close proximity of a black hole, since it’s theorized that black holes slow down time. The only problem is that a blackhole would probably suck up any space-ship and then there was the more practical problem of the fact that the space-ship should near a speed close to the speed of light, which would require an almost endless amount of energy.
On another blackboard there was a theory about wormholes opening up in the space-time-continuum. This theory lined up with a story that Tony had told them about some other time. This story was that those ancient Indians opened up a wormhole that would give them access to the space-time or the dimension where they believed their gods resided.
From the drawing next to the schematic that laid out this whole design it looked like this entrance wasn’t on a hill, but apparently whoever made this whole design, had located it at the bottom of the pool that was build in the middle of the greenhouse.
*
“Wow,” Jep says, gasping at the detail and the imagination of all these designs, “Whoever made this was working frantically, but I think I know what his big problem was: he didn’t know the ritual that would open up the wormhole.”
“And that’s probably why he tried to build some sort of generator,” Tony says, “In a way he might have figured that he would be able to give this wormhole shock therapy to open it up.”
“Like a big crank,” Jep says, “Man, this is cool….”
The design for the generator was equally theoretic. It showed a fusion reactor that basically worked by the same principle as the sun: it collides lower elements (for example hydrogen) to create elements that are higher up in the system (the next would be helium). In these collisions redundant energy is released that would basically be enough to power a city for years.
“There’s just one problem:” Jep says, “To get a generator like this started you need immense amounts of energy to begin with.”
“As in more than the island can generate,” Tony says.
“What about all those medicine books here in the corner?” Phyllis asks, “What do all those things have to do with each other?”
“A lot of them are about physiology, origin of diseases and general system failure and ms,” Shane says.
“What does it all mean?” Jep asks, “I mean, I can understand that you’d get interested in the history of this place when you live here…. Maybe a few ghost stories, but I don’t get this whole time-travel quest….”
“I think I noticed something,” Phyllis says, “It’s the same initials all over: AJ.”
“Sounds familiar,” Frankie says, “The J being Johnson.”
“Arthur Johnson was the last of the Johnson’s to live here,” Tony says, and he feels that he knows it, but not quite. After a minute he says, “I remember it now: this guy had a wife who must have gotten sick and died prematurely. I heard about the early death.”
“I remember that,” Shane says, “I mean, the stories from when my mom told them: when she was young the story was that this guy murdered his own wife, because West End Mansion had made him crazy.”
“Talking about one side of a coin….” Frankie says.
“And look at this painting,” Shane says, “Vertical arrows pointing up into the sky with a round sphere up in the clouds.”
“Definitely some kind of meta-physics,” Tony says, “With the circle as some higher power.”
“The sun,” Phyllis says, “Or the extra-terrestrials of the red sand that the Indians hauled up here.”
“I think we can connect the dots here,” Jep says, “This guys wife got very sick and there was no cure, because ms is a degenerative disease. Maybe it can be slowed down, but that would be the most of it.”
“He must have prayed for a cure or a miracle,” Phyllis says.
“And when nothing happened he must have figured that there might be a cure in another time-line or in the future,” Frankie says.
“Just imagine this guy working frantically,” Tony says, “Driving himself to the verge of madness, because any sane person would realize that this would never work – but he had no choice: he needed to do something. And then imagine this: he pulled a few nights through, hoping for a breakthrough and then he would emerge from his study one morning and he would have found that his wife had died on him a few days ago.”
“Jesus,” Phyllis says, “That’s depressing.”
“To say the least,” Jep says.
“It’s just a theory,” Tony says.
“It sounds true enough to me,” Phyllis says.
“I need some air,” Shane says.
“We all do,” Jep says.
It leaves them with an empty feeling: they expected a dark and exciting history about West End Mansion, but instead they found a history of a man whose wife was slipping away and that he couldn’t safe no matter how hard he tried.
*
That night they’re not much in the mood for scary stories and all that, but instead they light a candle in memory of Mr. Johnson and his wife.
“I can’t shake that image of AJ coming up from his study one day and finding his wife,” Phyllis says after they lit the candle, “I mean, what if all of this happened exactly 20 years ago on Christmas eve. I think that we should take this as a sign: AJ tried to find a cure for something in another time-line or dimension, but I can only imagine that he would have rather spend that time in the company of his wife that he must have loved with all that he had.”
“O man,” Frankie says, “This shit is real.”
“I will visit my family tomorrow, and I think all of you should do the same,” Phyllis says, “If there’s any meaning to that story, it’s that.”
“I was planning to do that anyway,” Jep says, almost off-hand, “But I have to agree with you that that’s probably the message here.”
“Spend time with loved ones,” Tony says, “Christmas.”
Jim looks pale again.
“You’re not feeling well?” Shane asks.
Run ro ied.
----
FIND OUT HOW IT CONTINUES: NEXT WEEK FRIDAY DECEMBER 28 LAST AND FINAL PART.....
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