What can I tell you of the spirits which haunt me? Am I myself one of those spirits which have escaped from beneath the bowels of the Earth? Are we contained in the gaseous mess which rises and escapes in fissures? Is that why we are so obsessed with burying ourselves once more in the Earth? … Sometimes I think I see the spirits of the dead in the form of ‘souls’ as they float across the clouded or blue skies … They are white souls and they are many while the black ones are few … those black souls are alone and damned and seem to stick together … Or are these black souls freer? But I digress about the ‘evil’ red ones which I have met as I stayed in that house under the influence of the voices of other souls in that old small town where my descendants had originated … The house was a place where a murder took place once upon a time and as I partook in red wine and brandy and too many cigarettes I drifted off to sleep and the rooms became full of the spirits of those who knew of the murder … it was almost some ghostly party.
The night was silent after midnight and the walls of the rooms around me became almost X-ray with the beds from years ago in the bedrooms, and in these beds were the spirits of men and women as they shared those rooms some sixty years ago …
Red they were! And I was haunted by these red spirits and their bloody halos as they told me the tale of the two men who murdered another man in the very kitchen which I had drunk the red wine … I cannot go into details about these people although I knew them by reputation. It was as though my mind had dreamt them up and given them some sort of embodiment … Red glowing red … Too much red wine.
One was a close relative and her girlfriend and they recounted of how they sold their young bodies at the local drive-in for free entry into the arena and free food and drink from the men in their cars and trucks … They had come home one night as they did every night and slept together in the same bed. It was a full house that drunken evening … There they would stroke each other and hold each other before drifting off to sleep, no matter what their sex. In the other room were two other men who would do the same while in the main bedroom was the owner of the house … and his partner … Or was it? I could not work out if it was actually this spirit which owned the house or if the house owned the spirit … They told me of their sleeping arrangements and how they were involved with the various murderous souls who lived in the town. These tales did not frighten me but as a journalist on the edge of insanity it was interesting and mind-bending. Yes, the edge of sanity, not quite yet insanity, but sanity. It was totally real in my opinion.
One of the red sprits of the house which scared me and who visited from a mansion down the road called himself Little Abdul and his was the scariest spirit I encountered in this house … He introduced me that evening along with the other spirits whose names I can no longer recall, but it was Little Abdul who was a strong and the strongest spirit in terms of metamorphosis which I have ever encountered … I sat in the lounge room when this spirit came and started whispering to me … It told me that it was he who knew of all the murderous spirits in the area and that one of them slept in one of the beds in the house … The house was cursed I thought and there was a fissure underneath the kitchen from a disused well which served as some sort of gateway to this world … Little Abdul spoke in whispers which kind of lapped like the tide in your ears …
“Do you want me to feel you?” … I cannot remember if this is exactly what this spirit actually said as my mind is addled with red wine and ECT given through tablet form … But this moment when I said yes he could feel me was the scariest and strangest as I felt an invisible touch, some sort of invisible caressing hand which reached around me and even through me with a cold touch almost as if it were playing me very being like a harp … The room and air around me felt cold and the hairs on my body began to rise …. It was a feeling of evil, or was it totally evil? For a moment I thought death had visited and that I might actually die. I felt fortunate this spirit did not choose to grip my heart and squeeze and yet Little Abdul said he would return. We had discussed the fact he would have me round for tea at his house down the road and I thought this ludicrous since he was nothing but a spirit and the sprits he spoke of were most certainly dead … Or were they? Certainly the tea would be poisoned.
It was that very night that I returned to my bed drunk as usual and was visited by the spirits of the bedrooms. The murder by the man who shared the bedroom I was in would soon no longer be a mystery as I then saw the murder performed once again – no reenactment but a ghostly rendition which was in colour and as plain as the evil night it was performed. One man with another, younger man … a third was in the house as well and they were getting him drunk with murder on their minds. It was not the first murder he had committed and it was not his first male lover he had killed. The two men got drunk on bourbon but did not kiss, but instead argued at the instigation of the perpetrator … I could not believe the wonders of this haunted house nor the spirits as I lay down in my haunted bedroom trying to sleep. I know I was not dreaming …
They were not all evil and yet the ones which were did not scare me … Perhaps it was because I was insane or ever slightly so about to become insane… Yes, I remember now, Little Abdul had invited the killer over to his place after this murder for tea and had poisoned him for committing the crime against the boy which I was watching at this very moment … Yes, Little Adbul was some sort of justice in terms of the evil spirits … But as I watched the boy in his late teens or mid 20s face the kitchen window, the killer struck with a knife in the back along with his lover who had a hand over this boy’s face … Such was the kitchen where I had prepared my meals that very day… I could bear it no longer and the spirits faded away as I sat up in bed tired of the torture of seeing such barbarity and questioning the unreality of it all … The body I wondered where was the body? I had to know where the body was …. Perhaps Little Abdul would tell, but I didn’t want to know that spirit ever again.
I got out of bed some time around 2am and tried to find a cigarette. I sat out the back in the yard listening to the sounds of the insects and the quiet of the evening. To the right of me was the garage and I had left open the door with only darkness peering at me from the frame. I lit the only cigarette I could find and smoked it as I wondered should I have another red wine … But I did not want to conjure any more malignant spirits. It was then the final spirit visited me that night and it seemed to come from the ground and yet also the darkness of the garage. It was like these sparks rose from the earth and up the frame of the garage door. They were red in colour once again almost like small bots of lightning joined together and they gave the form of a woman.
“Who are you?”
“I am Wendy.”
The only Wendy I knew lived on the other side of the country and the other was from the story of Peter Pan which didn’t make sense.
“What do you want? Can you tell me who is Little Abdul?”
“I want to tell you … Beware Little Abdul … and the body …” the spirit lifted a cigar to her invisible face
“Yes tell me ….” …. Was I thinking these thoughts or was a speaking them out loud? It all seemed one and the same but if I was speaking them it was as though I was hearing them out loud which was almost one and the same. It was madness.
Wendy’s voice was not whispers and there was a metallic sound to them as if it were some sort of electricity which spoke.
“The skeleton is in the garden under the rose bushes” said the red image and puffed on a cigar “…. And Jason … “
“What?”
“Have a cigar.”
And so the sprit departed and slowly faded away and I was left alone with the thought should I dig up that body? But hadn’t the police already done that? The roses looked so beautiful this time of year and the dropped petals I would take to the cemetery to sprinkle over the graves of my ancestors … Or forget about the spirits of that damned house.
Have a cigar? What did she mean by this? Welcome to the the neighbourhood? And have a cigar?
Cult Film Alley 