The Curse of The Leper

I begin this tale with some trepidation as the truth of it has caused me much anguish and pain. Yet it shall and must be written for the sake of what little attention it may get and for the sake of those who come in contact with the notorious DeSanto House.

It was sunset when I fitted the key in the lock of that accursed house and entered the narrow, shadow-hung hallway. Shadows hung the stairwell, crept along the rafters, and shrouded the floor. Mildew infested the walls and floor. The house was rank with its stench.

Some said, then, that I was a fool to have bought the house, but the price was cheap, and the realtor had insisted that the place could be fixed up at a minimal sum. Elen and I could easily scrape off the many patches of mold and mildew that grew along the floors and walls like a pestilence. It made me shudder to look at them. And the more I looked, the more that pestilence took on the semblance of some cancerous disease that riddled the house with contagion.

With an uneasy shrug I dismissed these thoughts and threw my hat and coat across the nearest sofa. Elen and the kids would be along tomorrow. There was no sense in thinking such depressing thoughts.

I suddenly caught myself thinking out loud. I say I caught myself, because I heard my own voice come echoing back to me from empty rooms beyond the stairs. It was a vague and hollow echo, so vague that it seemed not my voice at all, but the voice of something equally vague.

Again, I shrugged off these disturbing thoughts and set about exploring the house as I’d done when the realtor had first shown me the place. So long as I kept my mind busy, I knew that I could keep these disturbing thoughts at bay.

The first floor consisted mainly of a living room, bedroom, kitchen, and study, all leading off from the main hallway. At the end of the hall a staircase climbed up into darkness. I set about putting light bulbs in their various sockets in each room. Then, I returned to the stairs and set a bulb in the socket above, having turned on all the lights downstairs.

Slowly, I ascended the stairs. A sudden cold current of air chilled my entire body. I crossed the landing as a great mass of air swept past my feet like an arctic wind. I turned, nearly falling, to see what was rushing down the stairs. It was a cat.

Sighing with relief, I let the poor thing out, and switched on the lights in the hallway and the light on the stairs. I, then, headed upstairs. There, in one of the four bedrooms on that level, a shutter creaked in the wind just as the realtor had left it earlier in the day “to air the place out” as he had put it. I closed the window and the shutter, and, and as I did so, a sudden hush stilled the crickets outside. The house seemed as still as a tomb. An electric tension hung the air. A sense of utter evil and madness overtook the atmosphere of the house.

I turned to the door and sensed it strongly, as if some nightmare were ascending the stairs, as intangible as the wind.

I ran to the door and slammed it shut, thanking God that there was something with which to bolt it. The evil presence drew closer. A hulking shade appeared beneath the door, the shadow of a thing that belonged in neither heaven nor hell. Oh God, what crypt of blasphemy had unleashed it?

The latch shot up and down in a convulsive movement. Again and again, until the very sweat of terror dripped down my face, cold and icy like the ragged moon. Then, the clawing began. The door was thick oak. The think couldn’t possibly . . .! The clawing stopped abruptly. I heard a vague sound as of dead tissue being rubbed between two fingers. I clasped my hands together until they were white. Because it was sniffing, I tell you, sniffing at every aperture and contour of the door!

I awoke some hours later, dazed and confused, drained of energy, my body drenched with sweat. Whether I had passed out or slept, I knew not. All I knew was that “it” was gone.

I grabbed the pistol from my travel bag and pressed my ear to the door. I heard nothing but silence. I cocked the pistol and flung wide the door. The hallway was empty. Examining the door, I found no signs of disturbance. There were no marks on the door; no shards of wood littered the floor. Cold bumps of horror went up my arm.

I found myself searching for some excuse, any excuse to explain away the events that had transpired. Or had it really happened at all?

I descended the stairs, thanking God that I’d had the foresight to turn the lights on beforehand.

I tried to dismiss my experience as a nightmare, a hallucination brought on by working too hard and worrying too much. Yet there seemed no solace in it.

Confused, I retired to a bedroom on the lower level which consisted of a canopied bed, a dresser, desk, sofa, and mirror. Gazing out the single window, I saw the meadow and the night-hung trees beyond. With a shudder I tore myself away and went to bed, but not without carefully bolting the door.

Sleep had nearly overtaken me when my eyes locked wide open. I found myself staring at that draped window. Something loomed black and shapeless before the outer sill. With the blood pounding in my brain, I rose and walked towards the window like one possessed. The shadow shifted, moved. Ghastly eyes flared through the drapes. The smell of ooze and slime filled the room like that at the bottom of a lake. And, God, that tapping, that tapping on the cold and lifeless pane!

The shape began scratching at the pane as if to remove the caulk, howling and whining like an animal denied a feast of blood. With a crash I tripped over a chair and screamed into the living night. I turned towards the window. The drapes were flung to either side like rags; the window gaped its black maw to the stars. A naked, leprous blasphemy rushed back from the pane into the accursed night. Gasping in horror, I rushed across the room to shut and bolt the window when I saw it.

Across the meadow towards the woods, the thing loped wildly. Its gruesome, mud-caked head nodded beneath the moon, body stooped towards the earth, fleeing towards the night-black trees beyond the meadow.

An awful silence lingered in the hours afterwards, hours during which I could not, dared not sleep. Trickles of moonlight dragged their shrouds across the floor. That tattered moon fled through the gnarled clouds as the hours dragged mercilessly by. The house seemed to hold its breath under the black shroud of night as if awaiting my inevitable flight. And when the break of dawn came, I grabbed everything I owned and fled back to my wife and kids.

I write this manuscript with a full view of the sloping hills beyond the sanitarium. I have been here for some months now. The doctor said that I had contracted a strain of leprosy that he’d never heard of before. Yet they say it is healing. In a month or so, my wife and kids and I will move down by the sea. The doctor says it will help my mind to recover. The doctor says I was in a fever that night I stayed in the DeSanto House and had imagined the whole scenario that I had frightened my wife with upon my sudden return that next morning. I had been brought here for immediate medical care. I cannot say that I didn’t need it. It is said that the sea brings healing. I know that it will heal me also.

The doctor ventures no explanation as to how I could have caught the leprosy. So this is my constant concern. Or shall I say terror? For I know that this is the curse, the curse of the leper, the horror that I envisioned loping into the trees beyond that accursed meadow.

So whenever the wind howls without and the tall pines sough in the wind; when the meadow looms vacant and forbidding in the far off hills; when black shadows drag their cloaks past my bolted door, my mind spawns again the evils of the night I spent in that hellhouse. Even now, those hideous memories come drifting back to torture me. Yet I know that I shall find rest in memory and dreams so long as I don’t SCREAM AGAIN!