Prologue: Dream House

PROLOGUE:

Dream House

June 2006

The house crouched there on the corner of Abercorn and Wayne like something alive but dormant, a hibernating beast, which may soon awaken and swallow the world whole.

Standing across the street in Crenshaw Square, Brad Storm thought he would describe the house in those terms in one of the horror stories he liked writing. Despite the tour guide’s eerie tales about the place’s rather macabre history, Brad only saw a gorgeous Greek Revival mansion. Sure, the house was neglected and in serious need of repairs, but the bones were sturdy. Brad could use his hyperactive imagination to see beyond the busted windows and missing shutters, the moldering brick and general air of abandonment, and envision the house as it must have been in its glory.

The building stood three stories tall, with slightly curving side-steps leading up to the main entrance on the second floor. The details were somewhat obscured in the dark, but on the right side there seemed to be a veranda running the entire length of the house on the ground floor, with equally long balconies stretching along the top two levels. Brad couldn’t see it from here, but he knew there was a two-story carriage house around back.

“The house was built in 1868?” the guide said in a chirpy voice, which made every statement sound like a question. “General Benjamin Wilson lived here with his wife and daughter, at least until his wife died from yellow fever, leaving Wilson and his daughter alone in the house? The General had fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War, and was not too pleased when the Maverick School opened across the street; it was Savannah’s first fully integrated school? He was even more displeased when he learned his young daughter was playing with some of the black children while they were on their recess break? To punish her, he tied her to a chair and sat her by the living room window, so she would be forced to watch the children from the Maverick School having fun at recess but not be able to join them? Back then, before air conditioning, these houses could get quite hot, and I’m sure you can imagine how miserable it must have been sitting right at the window? After a few days of this, the girl died from heatstroke and dehydration? Some believe she never left the house, that to this day her spirit still roams the halls, staring out the windows, still wanting to play with someone? In fact, a gentleman who went on my tour last year sent me a photo he took that night, and you can see the girl’s pale face staring out from the bay window, above the front door?”

In true Pavlovian nature, everyone in the group, including Brad, looked up at the window on the third story.

The window jutted out like a cancerous growth, malignant and pulsing with evil.

Brad chuckled softly to himself. With the right words, one could make something as innocuous as a window sound malevolent. The guide passed around a grainy photo for the group to see. When an overweight woman in a “Crab Shack” T-shirt handed it to Brad, he glanced down at the image and shook his head. An indistinct white blur was visible in the bay window, more than likely a reflection of light on the glass. He supposed it might resemble a crude face, but only tangentially. Then again, he thought he remembered reading something in a Psych class once of how the human brain would often take senseless shapes and rearrange them into something the mind could comprehend, something familiar. The theory explained why people often saw images of Jesus or the Virgin Mary in their pancakes and oatmeal.

Once everyone had an opportunity to scrutinize the photo—eliciting gasps from a few of the more gullible members of the crowd—the guide continued with her spiel: “Some theorize the paranormal activity surrounding 324 Abercorn is strong because of its location? You see, the square we are presently standing in was once a slave cemetery? If you look around, you’ll notice the lack of grave markers, so you may assume that means they moved the cemetery? But you would be wrong? They simply built right on top of the graves? The cemetery also was not confined merely to the perimeter of Crenshaw Square, but actually stretched out for several blocks, including right underneath 324?”

The ground beneath the crowd’s feet seemed to tremble, not with an earthquake, but as if hundreds of bodies were clawing their way back up through dirt and rock, an undead horde hell-bent on retribution for the wrongs done to them in the past.

“What are you smiling about?” asked Crab Shack. “We’re standing on top of poor dead slaves.”

Brad shrugged. “I guess it’s possible. They say Savannah is a city that walks over its dead.”

“Then you should show a little more respect.”

What do you want me to do, go hang from a tree limb? Brad thought, but he merely nodded and arranged his face into a solemn expression.

A young couple near the front of the group, whom Brad assumed were newlyweds based on their inability to keep their hands off each other, took two simultaneous steps toward the street. They paused, as if not daring to go further.

“How long has the house been empty?” the young man asked.

“Since 1973? The family who’d bought it lived here only a month or two, complaining of phantom forces choking and pushing them? They moved out of state, up north, I believe, and have not been back since? However, they refuse to sell the property because they say they don’t want to inflict the horror on anyone else? So the house just sits here, radiating malice?”

Crab Shack raised her hand. When the guide nodded in her direction, she said, “I heard a group of teenage girls were killed in the house back in the 50s or 60s, and the crime was never solved. Is that true?”

“Yes, that is a rather grisly story? We’re running a bit behind schedule, so I’ll tell you the tale as we head down toward Mercer House?”

The guide led the group out of Crenshaw Square and down Abercorn, in the direction of Forsyth Park at the far end of the Historic District. Most of the crowd cast furtive glances back toward the house before moving on, but Brad lingered. He stepped into the street, raising his camera and taking a few shots, thinking he might like to come back in the morning if he had time and get some pictures in the daylight.

The house watched him as he watched it, as if it recognized him, as if their destinies were intertwined.

Laughing at his own foolishness, Brad hurried to catch up with the group. He cast his own glances back toward the house, but his were full of longing.

324 Abercorn was one of the grandest and most beautiful houses he’d ever seen, and he thought it a shame that it was deteriorating this way. He would love to be able to buy it, restore it, and make it his home.

But it would never happen. He’d barely been able to scrape up enough money to take this vacation to Savannah, Georgia. No, tomorrow he’d head home to his cramped studio apartment in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and pack the fantasy away with the one of him becoming a bestselling author. He could dream about living in such an extravagant house, but that was all it ever was . . .

A dream.