Beyond Hope

            I didn’t think we were going to make it.

            We were driving up a steep dirt road in our little Subaru Justy, and the engine was getting worked hard. Not to mention that the all-seasons were not providing the best traction in the soft gravel. The little tin can on wheels made me feel so out of place in the back woods of Hope. We really should have been in a four by four, or at least an SUV, but instead we were in a tiny hatchback, loaded down in luggage and diapers.

            I tried to look confident as we swerved around the soft switchbacks, our car sliding every once in a while, edging closser to the cliff on our right, but my hands were gripping that steering wheel until my knuckles were white. Sweat was trickling into my eyes.

            Was this trip a big mistake?

            It had been a difficult couple of months at home. We had a young child now, and despite reading “What to expect when you’re expecting” and getting plenty of advice from parents near and far, it was an ordeal. When Jack first came out into the world, adding his voice to the billions already there, he was so tiny, so precious, and I handled him like he was fragile, like he would break with any abrupt movement.

            How could something so tiny and so precious be such a pain in the ass? I would work at school all day, teaching a bunch of kids who would rather be anywhere else and resented me for their prison sentence, like it was me who invented education and the public school system. I would drag my feet on the way home, leaving a black trail of rubber behind me, and when I entered my house, anticipating some well-deserved rest and relaxation, instead I was handed this little ball of snot and shit and ear-drum piercing wails.

            Months and months of this and I was absolutely spent. I needed a break, and I was sure my wife did as well, and so we decided that we would travel from Richmond to Hope. A trip to hope. Yeah, that sounded about right. I could have used a huge helping of hope in my life, and if it came at a location two hours away from my home, then strap on that seat belt and let’s get there as fast as possible.

            Which was what we did, and that was why we were traversing our way up this hill that seemed perfectly designed for skidders and mountain goats.

            This better be worth it.

            I could not afford to have any more disappointments. I hated to put too much pressure on this holiday, but I really needed this.

            To my great relief, we made the final turn and as we drove along the plateau, there was a turnoff on our left. According to my Dad’s instructions, this was the driveway. We had finally arrived.

            The driveway was a long one, a luxury that was nonexistent in and around Vancouver, and it was flanked on both sides by tall elm trees. I imagined they were sentries, standing at attention as we drove by. Whether they were there to protect us or to attack us, well that would soon be determined.

            The house was absolutely huge, almost a mansion. Situated at the base of a threatening cliff, it was a two story monstrosity that had at least 8 bedrooms, or that was what I seemed to recall from my Dad’s description. When my parents were married, decades ago, my Dad had a logging business and he made good money. He earned it, leaving the home at 3 a.m. and not arriving back home until supper time, usually after having a few drinks in the local bar.

            A recipe for divorce if there ever was one, and sure enough, when I was 8 years old, they split up. It was ugly, and the kids were collateral damage. My older brother and sisters soon fled the situation, working in distant cities and marrying into other, more stable families. But I stayed with my Mom, and basically lived in poverty throughout much of my teenage years. I learned the value of money at that early age, and to appreciate the little things. And I certainly could recognize a wanton waste of resources when I saw it, and this mansion was certainly a prime example.

            The driveway made a loop near the front of the house, and we parked right in the middle of the road, since there would be no one else here for our entire three day vacation. Just peace and quiet. I could feel my body easing up already. I was ready to do my share of napping and lazing around.

            I got out of the car first, and as I approached the door, I brought out the key that Dad had given me when he had visited me the previous year. As I placed it in the keyhole, I could not help but wonder what would happen if the key didn’t work. My wife would go totally ballistic, and my life would descend into an even deeper level of hell. I think my fingers were shaking a bit as the key entered the hole. To my deep relief, the key turned and I heard the bolt unlocking.

            Get a grip on yourself, Bill.

            “Hey honey, why don’t you take Jack into the house and I will take care of the stuff in the car,” I said.

            “Thanks Sweetie,” she said, as she unbuckled him from the car seat and hoisted him onto her hip.

            “We made it,” I said with a sigh.

            She nodded, too exhausted to talk. I could relate. So, as she entered the mansion, I took all of our belongings out of the car and placed them on the ground. When I closed my doors, I realized that I didn’t need to lock the doors. Which was so weird. That would be unheard of in a metropolitain area, an invitation to have it broken into. In fact, the only reason we had the Justy was because our Toyota Camry had been broken into and drove away by a couple of thieves. We didn’t have the finances to get a car of similar value, and in all honesty, we were happy to get rid of that car anyway. Bad memories in there. Enough said.

            I brought the bags into the home, not locking the car and not locking the house door. When I placed the bags down and looked around at the large foyer, I could not help but whistle. I felt so free, living in a place that did not require locks. It reminded me of when I was young, living in a trailer park in the middle of nowhere. Everyone knew everyone else, and so door locks were the least used devices in the entire area. I could have walked right into any one of those trailers and grabbed a snack from their fridges, if I had a mind to. Of course I never did. But I could have.

            “Honey, where are you?” I called out, knowing it was just the two of us. I mean, the three of us.

            “Up here. Check out this room!”

            The staircase was on the right, and when I reached the top floor and walked along the hallway, I noticed that each of the rooms had a completely different colour. Kind of like West Edmonton Mall’s hotel with all of its theme rooms. Quite hoity toity.

            And ours, of course, was pink.

            “Really?” I said in disgust.

            “Isn’t it great?” my wife said with a big smile on her face. “It’s like a princess room.”

            “And all girls are princesses,” I said. “I saw that movie too.”

            She laughed and jumped on the big bed in the middle, covered in pictures of hearts and roses. How could I say no to this, when it made her so happy? Happy wife, happy vacation.

———————————————————————————————————

            The sun was bright and hot in the back yard, and I was melting into the Adirondack chair on the patio. There was a light breeze, which cooled my skin just enough that the heat was not unbearable. I had an iced tea in the shade beside the chair, which I sipped from periodically, in no great hurry to finish the drink … or the vacation. And I was soothed by the sound of our little boy suckling on his mother’s breast behind me.

            There was only one thing missing. I groaned as I got up, then dragged my sorry carcass into the living room through the sliding doors, finding the stereo in the back corner. There was a record player, a cassette deck, and a radio. I hadn’t listened to records since I was a boy, and so I searched through their extensive library, looking for something catchy. It was almost entirely country, which made sense, and although I didn’t usually listen to this music, I felt in the mood for it. I came upon a Vince Gill album, and I remembered one of my sisters talking about him and how great his voice was. So, I decided to give it a try.

            I took the vinyl out, blew some dust off of it, and carefully placed it on the turntable, making sure I didn’t scratch it. Turning the system on was on par with launching a rocket into space. There were so many knobs and levers and switches, and it was completely nonintuitive. But after many failures, I finally found a likely button and when I pressed it, the lights turned on and the angelic voice of Vince Gill filled the room and the back yard area. Nice.

            I returned to the chair and soaked right into it, soon feeling like I was evaporating and floating on air currents. It was delicious and just what the doctor ordered. I was napping before I knew it.

            “Honey!” I heard from a distance. I was still floating over the mountains and approaching the sun.

            “Bill!!!!”

            I bolted upright, my heart hammering at 320 beats per minute. My wife was standing right over me, blocking the sun. She was a big shadow, and it kind of freaked me out. I had to resist the impulse to move backward.

            “What? What do you want?”

            “Didn’t you hear me? I have been yelling at you for almost a minute!” Her shadowy form was shaking, and I realized that she looked scared.

            “What happened? Is Jack okay?”

            She nodded. “Listen.”

            What??

            I took a deep breath, pushing down my resentment for being jerked out of my most pleasant dream. Then I listened. Vince Gill was still singing, and it seemed entirely normal. I was about to point this out, when …

            What the hell?

            There seemed to be a woman’s voice as well, singing a completely different kind of tune. If it was a duet, then it was the world’s worst. It was jarring, disturbing, and it had me running to the living room to investigate the cause.

            The record was turning normally, so no problems there. I looked at the rest of the stereo, figuring that I put the radio or cassette on at the same time by mistake. Made perfect sense. But the radio was clearly turned off, and when I turned it on, a completely different voice intruded. I turned it off again, and looked at the cassette player. There was a tape in there, but the wheels inside were stationary, which means no tape was being fed through the system. It could not be making any noise.

            What the hell??

            I then turned off the record player, and the voice of Vince Gill was instantly gone. I swear I could still hear the voice of a girl for a moment, singing what sounded like a nursery rhyme, but it faded away very quickly, leaving silence.

            “What was that?” my wife asked, scaring the shit out of me. I had no idea that she had followed me in there.

            “I have no idea,” I said, the hair on the back of my neck standing straight up.

            “It sounded like another voice. Was it from the stereo?”

            “I don’t think so, since I checked everything. But I really don’t know. In fact, I am starting to doubt whether I heard anything at all.”

            “But I heard it too,” she said.

            “I know, but we have no idea where it came from. Maybe it was from a distant neighbour, and we just thought it came from the stereo.”

            “Bill, there are no houses anywhere near here. She would have had to scream at the top of her lungs. And wouldn’t we have heard an echo around the valley?”

            These were good points, but I could not allow her to win this, or it could jeopardize our whole trip.

            “The point is, we really don’t know where this came from. Maybe it was from a person who was walking by, singing as she was hiking. I know a few people who do that, especially to alert bears nearby.”

            “Bears? Are there bears around here?”

            Way to go, Bill! You’re such an idiot.

            “Don’t worry, honey,” I said,rubbing her shoulder. “There are fences around, which keep the bears out of this area.”

            I actually had no idea if this was true, but it consoled her and it prevented a serious crisis. A good lie.

            I put that second voice out of my mind, and I went back out to the patio so I could resume my tanning … and hopefully, get a bit more of a nap in. But I did not turn the stereo back on. I figured it would be better to listen to nature instead.

———————————————————————————————————

            I hope my Dad is okay with this.

            Fitness was a very important part of my life. I prided myself on working out in some way every day of the week, and this commitment was certainly not suspended when I went on vacation. But this proved to be a challenge at my Dad’s house. I was used to having a gym nearby, one that had all the right equipment and that would allow me to develop every important muscle in my body. But my father had nothing fitness related, and so this required a bit of creativity.

            Pushups and situps were easy choices, since they could be done anywhere. But how could I hit my back muscles? After searching inside and outside the house, I discovered a strange solution. Dad had a swinging chair that was suspended from a large wooden construction. The cross beams looked solid, like they could hold the body weight of a medium-sized man. So, I used it to do my pullups, proud of my ingenuity.

            I was getting a good sweat going on, especially with the hot spring sunshine blazing on my skin.

            “Bill!” came the discordant voice. It penetrated right through the music blaring through my headphones. I dropped from the beam and turned off my music.

            “Yeah, hon, what is it?”

            “You almost done your workout?”

            “Yeah, I only have one more set. What do you need?”

            “I am making dinner right now, and so I am really busy. Jack needs to be changed. Can you do that for me?”

            “No problem,” I said. Changing diapers was the highlight of my life.

            I polished off my last set, and then after towelling off and putting on my Nike shirt, I went into the house and found my son lying on the living room floor, playing with a pile of Lego blocks.

            “Hey, buddy. Wanna go and get changed?”

            “Daddy!”

            That never failed to make my heart leap with joy … and also cringe in anxiety, knowing that there was a lot of responsibility and expectation built into that word.

            “Okay, my little man. Let’s go get those stinky diapers off of you.”

            I picked him up, noting that he was gaining in size so rapidly. So easy for him. But even after working out for over 10 years, I had made almost no gains in muscle mass. Never thought I would be envying my own child, especially when he was so young.

            The upstairs of the house was really warm, and so I thought I would do the changing in a downstairs room. Much cooler, much further from the ever-watching eyes of my wife.

            The room was all brown – the walls, the bedspread, the carpet – which seemed very appropriate, considering the function I was about to perform. I placed Jack on the floor for a moment, getting all of the equipment I would need ready and in the proper location. I had done this job enough times to know that accidents could happen and a wise parent would be prepared for them.

            I then grabbed Jack and placed him on the bed. But once his little back rested on the bed, he began to scream. Now, I have heard all kinds of screams coming from this child – cries of hunger, cries of pain, cries of loneliness – but this was completely and eerily different. It was a strange pitch, almost like it was coming from someone else’s baby.

            It was so loud, making the entire room and my ears reverberate. And it did not lessen in intensity. Jack was screaming for all he was worth, and he was inconsolable. He was a demon baby, and I swear that my nape hairs were standing straight up.

            The thing about a screaming baby was that it triggers a panic inside of a parent, one that shouts, “Do anything to get that child to stop crying!” I tried talking softly to him, but I doubt he could even hear me over the cacophany. I stroked his skin, and smiled, but this seemed to only make him scream louder. My heart was pounding, and my fight or flight response was in full force.

            I could not fight it, and so I had to flee.

            I picked my wailing child up, and he kicked and flailed like I was the one abusing him, like I was his biggest enemy. Abandoning all of the baby toiletries, I carried him out of the room, and then the strangest thing happened. He stopped crying … like, immediately.

            I swear right when we crossed the threshold of the bedroom door and entered the hall, Jack turned quiet. It was so abrupt that the silence was shocking, and my nape hairs remained as stiff and straight as razors. When I looked down at my boy, he seemed perfectly normal like nothing at all had happened. He was smiling and gurgling, like the past few minutes of hell were a figment of my imagination.

            What the hell?

            As freaked out as I was, I could not leave it like that. My scientific brain demanded some kind of an explanation, some kind of a pattern, and so, I girded up my courage and returned to the bedroom.

            Sure enough, when I placed him on the bed again, he began to scream uncontrollably. That was more than enough evidence for me. I quickly swept him up, raced him out of the room, and carried him right back upstairs to his makeshift playroom. I plopped him by his Lego blocks again and he began to play with them, unfazed by the prior events.

            I sure envied that kid. To be able to put such things behind me, not being affected by them at all? Now that would be a trait I would pay any kind of money to have.

            Admittedly, it was not easy for me to walk back downstairs to that bedroom. I had watched my share of horror movies when I was young. In fact, my mother loved them and every since I was about twelve years old, we would watch them together. Eventually, they had very little effect on me – I would find them more funny than scary.

            But the past ten minutes taught me very convincingly that the real thing was far worse than any movie. I mean, it was only a screaming kid – not like it was a mad man with a chainsaw or bladed fingers, with a deranged desire to carve up attractive young women. Yet that did not console me. My hands were shaking as I gathered the diapers and accessories, and all the while I was looking about me like a vampire was going to jump through the walls and come right for my throat.

———————————————————————————————————

            This is straight out of a fricking horror movie!

            We put Jack’s crib in the room opposite ours – the whole room coloured a baby blue, which was again appropriate – and we had just put Jack down for the night. Ordinarily, we would then watch a movie, one of the few times of the day when we had some alone time together. But we were both so exhausted from the drive, from the crazy events of the day, from life itself. So, we decided to go to bed ourselves.

            While my wife was brushing her teeth, I went around the house and turned off the lights. First the living room, then the kitchen, and finally, the big floodlights outside the house, since they would inevitably keep us up.

            When I was done, the house was plunged in absolute darkness. This was no ordinary dark. I am actually quite convinced that people in the city don’t really know what dark is. In the middle of the night, we still have streetlights, neighbour’s lights, and the lights from the downtown core, not to mention the headlights of the cars driving by.

            I fumbled my way to one of the windows, not even able to see my hands in front of my face, and when I felt the curtain, I opened it and peered outside. Nothing. Absolute nothingness. I could not see the hills, the trees, or even the stars, since dark clouds had gathered in the evening and blocked out the sky. It was freaky. I never realized how much I depended on light, even in its most palest form, until that moment.

            I walked in a direction that I thought would lead me to the stairs, and after bumping into a coffee table, almost knocking down a floor lamp, and tripping over a pair of shoes, I found the wall. I rubbed the wall with both hands, searching like a blind man, until they found a projection.  A light switch. I flipped it and bathed the area in a most blessed light. I could not help but to smile in relief.

            At the top of the stairs, I turned the light back off since I could see the lights of our room. I brushed my teeth, stripped down to my boxers and a t-shirt, and got into bed, where my wife was already hugging her body pillow and was halfway to sleep.

            I lay down and enjoyed the feel of a full mattress and box spring. My body began to fully relax and I felt that I was about to crash.

            What was that?

            There was a creaking coming from the basement area. It sounded like a man walking across the floor, and I could only imagine that this person would be walking up the stairs with his axe, coming to finish us off. I was on instant alert, not moving, not breathing, not even blinking, ready to respond. My heart rate was in the thousands, the blood pounding in my ears, and I could feel a cold sweat on my brow.

            Sure enough, there were more sounds being made, but they were random, coming from all over the house. I sighed in relief. These were just the noises made by an older house, probably in response to a light wind or just settling into a new position due to gravity. I chided myself for being such a wimp. I felt like I was eight years old again, convinced that there was a monster in the closet and another one under my bed. Did I ever really grow up from these ideas?

            I was so tense, so on edge, that I wondered if I would ever get to sleep. But the exhaustion and the fresh air and the ebony night worked their dark magic and I was soon asleep.

            I woke up to a scream.

            I opened my eyes and I could see nothing at all. I could feel the panic rising. Where am I? Why can’t I see anything? What the hell?

            “Is he crying?” came a voice beside me.

            My wife. It was my wife’s voice. Man, I was going to have a heart attack if this kept up. I listened closely, and sure enough, it was the familiar wail of our precious little bundle of joy.

            “Yeah, it’s Jack. Sounds like he’s hungry.”

            “Can you bring him over here?”

            “Sure.”

            The floor was deathly cold, but I felt around for my socks and was rewarded with the feel of thick wool. With socks on, I walked to the doorway and flicked on the light switch. Then, I walked over to the adjacent room and there he was, standing at the edge of his crib and crying softly.

            “Daddy?” I melted.

            I grabbed him, gave him a big hug, and carried him back to my wife.

            “Hey Bill, I don’t see the baby wipes anywhere? Do you know where they are?”

            I thought for a moment. Dammit!

            “I think I might have left them downstairs.”

            “Can you get them please? He is starting to stink, which means he needs to be changed.”

            “Sure thing.”

            I  turned on the hallway light, I turned on the stairway light, as well as the light to the stairway into the basement area. There would be no more darkness if I was to go back down there. I walked as quickly as possible, but it seemed like forever before I reached the bedroom. Turning its light on, I saw the box of wipes right away. I had placed it on the night stand beside the bed. Stupid!

            After grabbing it and leaving the room, I noticed something odd. The bedroom door on the other side of the hallway was open. I could have sworn that it was closed the last time I was down there.

            What the hell?

            I slowly moved towards the doorway, looking left and right repeatedly to ensure I was alone down there. I turned on the light and to my horror, I noticed that the bed was unmade. In fact, it looked like someone had slept on its right side, while the left side was still tucked in.

            I fled down the hall and up those stairs like I was being chased by all the demons in hell. When I got back to our room, my wife was in the process of cleaning Jack’s dirty bottom.

            “Did you get it?” she asked.

            “Yeah,” I said absently, handing her the box. “Hey honey, did you happen to sleep downstairs last night?”

            “What?” she asked. “You know I slept here with you. What are you talking about?”

            Damn it!

            I took a breath. “When you are done, I need to show you something.”

            In a few minutes, we were both downstairs, looking at the messed up bed.

            “Could it have been like this when we got here?” she asked, her eyes pleading.

            “No way,” I said. “I checked every room when we first arrived, and everything was clean and organized. There is no way I could have missed this.”

            And that was all it took. In many horror movies, when a family first discovers evidence that something in the house is wrong – and potentially deadly – they make the mistake of remaining in the home and meeting their ultimate doom.

            There was no way we were going to make the same mistake. We might have had two more days to our holiday, but there was no way we were staying there another moment.

            We had our stuff organized and stuffed in the car with lightning speed, and we were soon driving down the driveway and onto the dirt road. It was far easier to go down that hill (rather than up) with our Justy, especially when we were escaping what was clearly a haunted mansion.

            And although we were going back to the life that had caused so much stress, and although we had not rested nearly enough, it seemed like paradise compared to where we had just been. We soon merged onto the highway, joining the rest of civilization, and we drove 90 km/h away from ghosts and haunted houses and paranormal phenomena.