“The Fall of the House of Ravton” © 4/19/2007 Alex Georges

Title courtesy of Edgar Allen Poe

I remember him. I always remember him on days like this. This is what the weather was like the last day I saw him. I guess I really should have moved on by now, but every now and then the image of his face, frozen there, surfaces in the back of my mind. Anyway, it certainly makes an interesting story, when people get curious enough to ask about it.

“It really wasn’t as long ago as it feels now. Just me, him, my brand new driver’s license, a bunch of our friends, a couple of cars and a rented RV. About a month of planning had gotten us a blessing from our parents, and a little bit of money. We were going down the coast on my first real road-trip, from our little corner of Connecticut all the way down to Virginia.

Not a long road trip, per se, and we were planning to stay at one of his friend’s parents’ house once we got there. It was going to be a week reserved for blowing off steam, planned for right after finals.

The trip down took us nearly the full Saturday, and by the time our car had reached the white-gravel driveway beside the large pond sitting in front of our destination, all of those in our car (the majority of our group opted to ride in the RV) were exhausted, even after taking alternating shifts at driving and sleeping. Mr. and Mrs. Ravton, who graciously allowed all of us to stay there for the week as friends of their only son, were an odd couple. Their “Southern Hospitality,” I remember, was perfect in every way, to the point where it seemed to me, at the time, to be artificial. Rodney, their son, seemed to be distracted by them the entire while he was there.

On more than one occasion, I remember speaking to him about this rather odd reaction he seemed to have towards them.

“Oh, it’s really nothing.” He claimed, but I could see the anxiety in his eyes as he turned away. I pushed the issue. “Ah… how to explain… I have a feeling it’s really best if I don’t go too much into detail about my parents. It’s usually just that I leave them alone. I will say this, though: I don’t wander off alone around the house because of them. Let’s leave it at that.”

And so I dropped the issue. I forgot about his comment until two days later. I was sitting by the edge of the back porch of the manner house, reading a bad novel that I had picked up in a bookstore about a month previous. The four guys in our little vacation party, including Jack and Rodney, were in the large, well-kept field of a back-yard behind the manor house. The other two girls, not really friends of mine but tagging along with their other halves, sat on the patio and watched the game. I think one of them was keeping score; I really don’t remember.

One side scored a touchdown, I believe, and half-time was called. All four of them came in through the screened in patio to grab a drink and sit down. One of the others, Jason, I think his name was, asked where the nearest bathroom was. Rodney, without thinking, said there was one upstairs. Third door to the right of the staircase, if memory serves.

Jason came back with a pale look on his face. He managed to get himself to a chair and sit down. We couldn’t get him to speak, even to get up on his own or eat. He just sat there, seldom even blinking. His breathing was shallow; his eyes appeared to be bulging. Rodney gave him a look over, and his tone turned serious.

“This… this is alright.” He unleashed a heavy sigh or either relief or despair, and then brought a hand up to massage his temples. “He’ll be okay in a couple of hours. Jack, I need to talk to you for a moment. Charlie (this was the name of the other friend), you stay here with the girls. I don’t… I don’t want to risk anyone else getting hurt here.”

They went into an adjoining room. I suppose that now I’ll never know exactly what their conversation was, but I heard quite a bit of it through the thin wall that once separated the screened patio from the inside. I pieced together most of the conversation from memory and wrote it down at a later time.

“…You don’t know what they’ve done here Jack. It still haunts me to this day.”

“But, what you’re asking me to do… the ramifications of that…”

“Jack, you’re my best friend… the best I’ve ever had. So let me tell you something I’ve never told another living soul. I had a younger sister once. She never left the house, always brought joy to my parents. But Elizabeth was wasting away, Jack. Dying slowly like a bird that’s lost its song. And my parents couldn’t handle it. She eventually passed away, and they… snapped. What Jason saw, I cannot show you. I tell you now, only, that a thing far worse than death is what happens when the dead are not allowed to rest.” There was a pause; I heard a clatter from the other side of the wall. The others on the patio were equally curious as to what was happening, but kept their distance from where I sat listening out of a sort of reverent fear.

“And so, Jack, I need your help. Take this knife with you; we will get them both at once. You take the one nearest the right, I, the left. It is this only way.”

I imagined him, standing and trying to digest all this information at once on the other side of the wall. Finally, there came a response,

“Rodney, I think you’ve lost your mind. I cannot explain your story, but I honestly don’t believe that your parents are capable of whatever it is you claim they’ve done. I’m even willing to bet they’ve just kept themselves locked up there because they’re being courteous to us as guests and giving us run of the house. I’ll even go up there with you. But I won’t help you murder them.”

“Fine, Jack. If you have to see, then I’ll show you. But I will not hesitate; those wretched beings are no longer my parents. No parent would do what they’ve done to their own child.” At that, I head them both leave the room.

The entire thing overwhelmed me, and I was compelled to follow them. I turned around to the others sitting anxiously on the patio and said what I know to be my last words to them, “Stay here,” and walked into the house.

I found a big carving knife, presumably left on the kitchen counter by Jack right before he went upstairs, and took it with me, keeping in mind the odd attitudes and comments Rodney had made earlier in the week. I had reached the open doorway to the drawing room when the scene began to unfold.

I saw Jack, standing in front of mister Ravton, Mrs. Ravton watching from an armchair not far away knitting. But that was the only normal part of it all.

Jack was screaming, his mouth wide open with no sound coming from it. He fell to his knees in pain as a sort of blue aura surrounded him, forming a sort of blue halo, a ball of light above his head. Rodney looked on, horrified.

“You fool son of mine!” The elder Ravton yelled at the still frozen Rodney, “You thought you could protect him with knowledge! Look what good it’s done him! Now his soul goes to feed your sister, the true, everlasting life of this house!”

I watched, horrified, as Jack slumped over backward, a blank, void, expression on his too-pale face. I cried out, “JACK!” but could not run to him. I dropped the knife; my knees buckled and failed, and, still reaching out towards where his form lay, unmoving, cried his name again. I knew he was gone, in my heart.

The cry had reached Rodney, who, in rage, raced over to pick up my dropped knife. He ran, in screaming rage, towards where his father stood and his mother sat in the chair behind him. He stabbed his father twice without stopping, then twisted the knives to pull them out and continued forward. Even as his father fell, in a crumpled heap, to the ground, his mother, in a state of shock at her son’s actions, stood up out of the chair. The leading knife caught her in the stomach, knocking her back. The second and final blade pierced her left side and remained there.

Yet, even as he stood there, spattered in his own parents’ blood, Rodney was not finished. He turned toward a door I hadn’t noticed, on the opposite side of the room from the windows that looked out over the pond, on the right side of the room based on the way I had come in. He screamed at it, still enraged, “COME OUT, YOU WORK OF EVIL INTENTIONS! YOU’VE BEEN DEAD FAR TOO LONG TO BE LIVING!”

The door shook. I’ll be honest with you, I was so absolutely freaked out by this point I’d backed against the windows, putting Rodney in between myself and this new door. The hinges began to strain; the lock broke first. What appeared was, at the same time, both the first and the last things I expected to see; a ghost, a monstrosity stood there. But at the same time, I unconsciously noted the family resemblance, even through the cloak of death she wore over her head.

Her face obscured by a dark veil, this girl, probably about my own height, ran flailing and screaming, a scream only the damned could ever have given voice to, at Rodney. The knife pierced her, she grabbed him, but nothing slowed her down. Rodney kept stabbing her, trying in vain to kill what he knew was already dead. He couldn’t escape her dying grasp. They ran into me, pushed me out one of the bay windows. I landed well enough to see them both fall, some distance to my left as I lay on my back, into the pond, still locked in an embrace of death. Soon, I could no longer see them struggling beneath the surface, swallowed up by the murky depths of the pond.

Then, the house itself began to crack. It was a small crack, first in the masonry of the foundation. It spread, quickly, up through the front of the house. It widened, following the face of the house as if it climbed, poked, and prodded the house in two. The house, now completely split along a jagged center, began to capsize. It sank almost as a sinking ship, burying itself and everything in it, everyone in it, deeper and deeper into the ground on which it was built, so long ago. I had gotten up and stood, stupefied by this event, in the gravel driveway where the cars were parked.

I suppose it goes without saying that I never saw any of them again; everything inside the house itself also sank into the ground. I have only the face, the face and the dark and humid weather that brings it to the surface of my mind. The picture of his face, to remember them by; to remember the death of the house of Ravton.