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What’s the Matter, Jenny?



Estimated reading time — 9 minutes

You believe in ghosts?

Me neither. I can’t or I’ll go completely off the track. Or maybe I’m already nuts. What happened two days ago in the Chapelgate house might’ve actually happened or might’ve just been my imagination. One thing’s for damn sure, though: I’ll never set foot in that neighborhood again.

Sure, if you got a minute I’ll tell you all about it. You won’t buy an inch of it, though. Everyone thinks I’m as crazy as Jenny. Eric won’t even believe, for Chrissakes, and he’s the one who sent me to that dump to begin with! Came just short of picking me up and tossing me out of his house when I told him. Jenny had the right idea, keeping her mouth shut.

*

It wasn’t an official job. I went out there as a favor to Eric Cunningham, Gary’s brother. Yeah, the schoolteacher. His ward, Jenny — that cute little teen that clutters his house with all the photos — had a medical emergency recently.

Well, I wouldn’t exactly call her “all right”. She’s gone mute and even so much as making eye contact is difficult for her. Shies away from folks like a puppy that’s been kicked once too often. Since her recovery she’s clung to Eric more than ever. Poor Eric’s about to crack, he’s worrying about her so much. We’re old friends, me and Eric, and I wanted to help him out. Now he doesn’t want me near him or Jenny anymore. That’s the thanks I get.

Understand that Jenny has no one else, and the feeling is mutual. Jenny was raised in the Aspenvale Orphanage, but never adopted ‘cos she feared and loathed adults and kept running away. Bright kid, though. Real imaginative and loved a good book. When she ran away the police almost always found her at the library.

For two years Eric held a side-job at the orphanage as a weekly reading and writing tutor. Every week Eric brought boxes of new books for the kids to enjoy, but Jenny always got something special, usually something by her favorite authors: Christie, Poe, Keats, Angelou, Frost. They became friends right away, and whenever she saw Eric she eagerly ran to greet him with crushing hugs and tales of her misadventures in town.

No, Gary’s the one married to Tricia. Eric lost his wife, Gwenny, to pneumonia. Gwenny would have adored Jenny, so Eric became her legal guardian. Even gave Gwenny’s wedding band to her as a birthday present to unite the three of them as a family, and she never took it off. They were just like father and daughter for the longest time: sweet little Leave It to Beaver family.

The whole ordeal began on my doorstep with a 7 A.M. visit from the police. “Eric Cunningham sent us,” one of ‘em said. “Jenny’s in a coma at the hospital.”

I threw on my coat and rode with ‘em. Gave me the skinny on the way there: they’d found her in the Chapelgate house on the furthest corner of Evergreen Drive, where she’d apparently spent the entire night in the kitchen pantry with the door barricaded from the inside. They wouldn’t have found her there if she hadn’t been whimpering like a dog, or at all had her friend Derrick Snyder not told them where to look for her.

All of Derrick’s friends are what you might call die-hard horror connoisseurs, and Jenny was no exception. She loved a good thrill, but in spite of her imagination she presented herself as a hard-nosed skeptic where reality was concerned. This made her a constant target of Derrick’s childish dares, and she never backed down from a dare, that girl.

Derrick had been on a tangent about the house when Jenny last scoffed him. He goaded her to sneak in alone that Friday evening — when its only current residents, the Clarks, were due to leave for the weekend — and take a moonlit tour of the mansion to prove the nonexistence of ghosts. That weekend at 10 P.M. she went, promising to return with a souvenir. Derrick and friends stayed up late waiting for her, but when night came and went and Jenny never showed, they called the police.

She was unresponsive when they found her, and she refused to open the pantry door. When they were forced to break it down she fell into a frenzy of panicked screaming and fainted as one officer reached in to offer his hand.

I’d braced myself for an ugly sight when I got to the hospital, but Jenny wasn’t hurt. Just a little dirty and trapped in a restless sleep. Rashes on her arms and shoulders were the worst of her injuries. The doctor said she’d suffered a shock and no one could say how long she’d be out.

Eric refused to leave her. He was pasty, baggy-eyed, and irritable as hell when I got there. Scowled at everyone, spat his words on ‘em like phlegm. He had good reason to be pissed: his baby was in a coma, nobody could tell him what caused it, and on top of that Gwenny’s ring was missing from her finger. The paramedics and police insisted she wore no jewelry when they brought her in, and Derrick swore she had it when she left on the dare. The ring is precious to Eric and Jenny and its loss would’ve broken both their hearts, but more importantly Eric believed that its return would help brighten Jenny’s spirits and maybe even hasten her recovery.

That was all he asked me to do. Get the ring back, and find out what happened to his adopted daughter.

Well, I did. And me and Jimmy Beam have been trying to wash it outta my memory ever since.

*

Everyone’s heard the rumors about Chapelgate House being a haven for ghosts and demons. It’s no secret that orchestra leader Evadne Chapelgate was murdered there in 1934 by her husband Ralston as comeuppance for slapping him around for twenty years. But nothing’s ever proven the property is dangerous or haunted to any degree.

It isn’t even abandoned: Edie Hathaway, this retired accountant, rents its rooms to families in the process of moving in or out of the city. At any given time there is always two or more people inside. Tom and Agnes Clark, the most recent residents as I’ve said, have had no complaints about the place apart from a few odd smells.

I hoped Mrs. Hathaway might shed a little light on Jenny’s predicament. She didn’t know much about the Chapelgates except that they’d shared a modest fortune, never propagated, and were the most unappreciated artists of our time. She didn’t like to talk about them much ‘cos of the murder. She gave more details about the house itself: two bedrooms, two washrooms, kitchen, dining room, study, cellar, drawing room, and studio. Built by an English merchant in 1850, sold to the newly-wed Chapelgates in 1917, and to the Hathaways in 1940. Renovated twice in its lifetime.

The kitchen caught my interest, of course. The Chapelgates practically wore it out with all the parties Evadne threw (she had an unhealthy love of gin and compliments); after the Hathaways bought the house, none of their tenants ever used the kitchen except occasionally as storage space. The most common reason given was its smell, a strong potpourri of mildew, sewage, and mire.

Mrs. Hathaway squeamishly admitted her growing concern about the moldy stench over the last few years. She cleans the house from top to bottom once a week, including the abandoned kitchen, but the stench clings to the air no matter how hard she scrubs it. She even called a health inspector over on one occasion. He never found the source of the odor, but did manage to find a dead cat tucked beneath the steel dishwashing tub.

I could see Mrs. Hathaway’s skin turning green when she described it. Blisters, rashes, and necrotic lesions covered its body: slimy black fungus peeled the flesh back eagerly like a greedy kid opening a Christmas present. Eyes bugged out of its head like it’d died of fright. Mrs. Hathaway had never seen or smelled anything like it, but while it certainly added to the kitchen’s offensive odor, it wasn’t the source.

Curious? A little bit. Nauseating? Absolutely. But these details still didn’t explain how a house that had served as a hotel for years could turn a young girl’s mind inside-out in a single night. I turned my attention to Jenny’s ring, figuring she would enlighten us when she woke up.

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Damn Jenny. Damn Eric. Damn the Chapelgates. Damn the Clarks and their vacation. Damn my own weak, mushy heart for ever feeling sorry for anybody. The answer finally reared its hideous head when I visited the house to look for the ring.

*

It was the middle of the afternoon by the time I got there. The moment I stepped through the front door rotten marshland fumes punched me in the stomach. I’d been to the house a few times to visit friends that stayed there and never noticed it at all; now here it was in full force like something had recently agitated it.

In all my visits, though, I’d never seen the kitchen. The lights didn’t work, but the late afternoon sun lit it up just fine as it trickled in from a pair of tiny windows eight feet up the eastern wall. The cupboards and counters sagged like the weak shoulders of elderly men waiting for death, their surfaces spotless but worn and brittle. Many cabinets had lost their doors long ago and grinned broadly with cobweb teeth. Along the north wall (to my left from the door) naked cupboards stood at attention on an Egyptian tomb floor of faded tiles. In the far corner the wall opened into a pantry the size of a small walk-in closet. The inside was a mess of broken shelves and crates. The door was in splintered fragments on the floor.

I found Jenny’s ring in the pantry, glistening in one corner as if calling for help. I would have left right after snatching it up, but an odd gurgle — I almost mistook it for a voice — turned my attention to the far end of the room. A partition jutted out from the middle of the south wall, shrouding the corner to the right of the door in thick shadows. Hiding shamefully from the sunlight in that corner was the steel dishwashing tub.

I approached it with my handkerchief over my nose (the smell was worse by then) until I stood close enough to rest a hand on its tarnished lip. A blackish sludge stinking of rot had scaled the pipes to form a puddle at the bottom of the tub — maybe a clue to the source of the mysterious stench. Mrs. Hathaway should’ve noticed it, but never mentioned a clog. On closer inspection I realized the sludge puddle swirled and quivered with sluggish life and its edge was slowly expanding, as if the drain decided to back up on a whim.

The shriek of a rusty hinge attacked me from behind, and I about-faced just in time to watch the kitchen door fling itself shut. I tried the knob and found it frozen with centuries of rust!

In only a few minutes the septic stench had rotted to a choking level that my handkerchief couldn’t fend off: my throat itched and convulsed and fire tickled my eyes. Black sludge continued to puke up from the tub’s drain, filling it halfway, then two thirds, then near overflowing. But just when it seemed on the verge of spilling over the edge, it abruptly stopped.

Some fool curiosity inched me forward for a closer look, but my feet quickly filled with concrete: from the tub’s throat came a thick gurgle that sounded like speech!

The longer I listened, the more the drain spoke. Its voice seemed miles away and grated like a knife against the grindstone, its language slurred and meaningless. A silhouette formed on the south wall, bent slightly over the tub like a washwoman. Another shape appeared, swimming back and forth like a shark on the prowl, occasionally latching onto the first and then tearing away like it was feeding on it. The gurgle-voice shot off a steady stream of vicious nonsense words like artillery fire while the urge to scream struggled to reach my throat and kept slipping back down again.

Suddenly the first silhouette turned on the second. The voice rose to a shrill whine punctuated with the crashing sound of metal utensils scattering on the floor. The first form had the second by the neck, squeezing the strength out of its legs, beating it into submission with its fists whenever it broke free. The attacker pivoted, plunged the weakening shape into the tub with a sploosh I heard but never saw. I counted every second of the eternity that followed while the shape held its victim down with all its might. Then the drain fell silent; the first silhouette wilted like a miserable flower, then vanished. The tub drain released a long sob.

All was still again. I stood unmoving, listening sharply like a soldier in the jungles of ‘Nam. I thought of dashing to the door and coaxing it open with brute force. The stench, as if in reply, swarmed me like angry bees and almost knocked me off my feet.

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A nightmare broke the sludge surface. A hand, its peeling flesh stained black with mold and filth, reached out and latched onto the edge of the washtub. A head wrapped in snakes of black hair emerged, then a set of mildew-eaten shoulders.

I’d seen enough. I scrambled for the door and assaulted it with my boot. It rattled in its frame but refused to give.

Splashing of the nightmare climbing out of the tub drove me into panic. I throttled the door, keeping my eyes fixed on the doorknob. I would not look at it, no matter how much my instincts begged. I would not look at it like Jenny had. I would not suffer the same mental shock with that lurching horror inching nearer every second. The stench strangled all the breath from my throat and my vision began to fail me.

Dripping ice cubes touched the nape of my neck.

The door surrendered.

*

I don’t remember leaving the house. My memory is nothing but fog for several pages; then I’m waking up in the home of Eric’s brother, Gary. He says I showed up on his doorstep pale and exhausted and collapsed in a faint right in the doorway. When I came to he offered me a glass of bourbon, which I gladly traded for Jenny’s ring. Didn’t say a word except that I’d been to the house and found the damn thing.

I think I was on my second glass when Tricia sat beside me and put a cold spread of ointment to my neck. I asked what it was for and she described in great detail a grossly neglected fungal infection. My head still swimming from the things I saw in Chapelgate Manor — teetering toward writing it all off as a terrible dream — I sauntered into the bathroom to see for myself.

Three unsightly welts had formed at the nape, each one raw and inflamed as if it had gone untreated for days. And as you can see for yourself, each took the hideous shape of a human finger.

I took one look, thought of the cat, and threw up in the sink.


Credit: Mike MacDee (Official Website • FacebookSmashWordsAmazon)

Publisher’s Note: The author requests that anyone who desires to narrate, perform, or adapt this story to any other format, or feature it on a YouTube channel, podcast, or other platform, contact them for permission before doing so. Use of the author’s work without this permission is strictly prohibited. You may reach the author here. Thank you!

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41 thoughts on “What’s the Matter, Jenny?”

  1. Johnny:
    In no way does Maya Angelou belong in the same list as Frost and Poe. Couldn’t take this story seriously after that. Sorry.

    You’re right, they’re complete hacks and should never be on a list with the amazing Ms. Angelou – good catch!

  2. i imagined a girl. it was a good story apart from when talking about Jenny and being barricaded in the kitchen pantry. It said she whimpered and went into a frenzy after not opening the door, that’s how they found her. Then, that she was unresponsive & passed out, and couldn’t tell how long she’d been out… But she was obviously just awake?

  3. I found the writing a little confusing at time (Especially, as someone else mentioned, with the washtub; I initially thought the “shark” was actually in the sludge), but overall I liked this, especially that you gave such a vague description of the ghost itself and the narrator intentionally avoided looking. Creepy factor usually plummets the more the monster is described, so this was a nice change. Also, the just-barely touch on the neck? Perfectly creepy, and well done. I’m really interested in what the ghost would *do*, but also totally satisfied that it’s left mysterious. Also, I think it’s funny that the ghost is kept at bay by a pantry door.

    I would have liked a little clarification on how the story was being told, since it’s obviously a recollection. I mean, was it a conversation? A diary entry? A video will? The casual manner of the text (“‘cos,” “’em,” “outta,” etc) makes me think it’s speech, and in that case I’m really interested in who the narrator is telling this story to, and why.

    Re: The people wondering why boarders wouldn’t be in trouble in the kitchen all the time. Notice that the police were able to find and rescue Jenny without issue. I assume that the ghost is either on a loop or schedule (Doing the same thing at the same time, like when she was murdered), or won’t appear with groups present (Ghosts are shy, right?). Also, the house is described as having a dining room, so it’s not like people would have to eat in the kitchen. I mean, just think of haunted house movies. Ghosts are usually triggered by an event or a person being alone, if that makes sense. Picking up the ring may have triggered the event, just as Jenny’s being alone at night might have. I dunno, just throwing out some theories here.

  4. Not a very good read..
    Monotonous and it wasn’t clear what you were doing with the whole expecting the reader to know what was going on without actually telling them, for example where you talk about Eric not wanting them nowhere near jenny but not why and just expect us to know.

  5. I See You Sitting There At Your Desk Staring At Your Laptop..

    Well written and excellent set up! I would love to read more.

  6. mike:
    It’s better to end a scary story with a ghastly reveal than let it peter out with a lot of inconsequential details. “The Hook” ends with the revelation that the serial killer nearly got the protagonists while they were none the wiser — we don’t need to know how they coped with it afterward, ‘cos that isn’t scary.

    cant blaim you mike you should

  7. Very nice and well thought out story the whole read i thought of the main character as a male and to top it off you also used amazing imagery as i was reading the story i felt like i was seeing through his eyes i give this a nice 9.0/10 a very tasty pasta

  8. Very nice story!

    Would’ve been nice to know more of the aftermath. How panic, fear, and the haunting realization of what is to come to the protagonist would affect him or her as the fungus and memory lingers. We know about the drinking and regret for going to the mansion but what else?

    I think I’ll read it again…

    1. It’s better to end a scary story with a ghastly reveal than let it peter out with a lot of inconsequential details. “The Hook” ends with the revelation that the serial killer nearly got the protagonists while they were none the wiser — we don’t need to know how they coped with it afterward, ‘cos that isn’t scary.

    1. If someone told you this story like they believed every word of it, wouldn’t they strike you as batshit insane? You wouldn’t want them hanging around your horribly traumatized daughter.

  9. I loved it. The Poe reference made me squeal like a school girl, he is my favorite author and I love references to him. However, my favorite part, was in the imagery. I felt as if i were there with him in the house, I even smelled the stench.

  10. Ooh, another really great story. I love a good haunted house story, and this one I think really excelled. I like the repetition/reenactment of the deed that so tainted the house. It’s an interesting twist on a haunting, and I liked that. I did have the same hang up as others with the kitchen. While I get that it may not be heavily used, it still seems as if people remain there for some time, so having no working kitchen is a bit odd. And then it would also mean that no one has ever simply wandered in there to check out this extra room in the temporary house, since the events of the encounter happen rather quickly and without any other impetus. It would seem logical that someone would have experienced something in the washtub. But, really, it’s just a minor point that really doesn’t detract from the meat of the story.

    I loved the voice of the story, the way the narrator refers to things “off screen.” It makes it feel as if it is a story based in the true lives of some small town. The descriptions were also lovely. I found the initial description of the silhouette and the “shark” confusing, simply because I wasn’t sure if it was a silhouette and something in the washtub, or otherwise, but a second read through cleared that up. It takes a bit of a circuitous route to get to the heart of the story, but the build up is equivalent to the big payoff in the kitchen, so I don’t mind some additional details thrown in. I loved reading this, and I hope to read more from you! Happy writing!

  11. I like how every paragraph gives us some information, then tempts us to read further by hitting us with the writer’s remorse. I also like how it’s written. It’s very natural, like we’re talking to the narrator, but it doesn’t read like half of a telephone conversation. Just like we occasionally prompt the author or ask a question like “who’s Gary?”.
    I also really love how the narrator’s name and gender aren’t given. I tend to read in the female voice, and it bothers me when a writer gives the character’s gender at the tail end of a story. Makes me go back and have to re-read everything because I had a mental picture of the character that was just ruined. Either give the gender right away, or not at all. And this story does that. I think this was delicious and well-written.

  12. I honestly only have one question. Is this from the point of view of a man or woman because as I was reading I imagined a woman but I noticed other people comment using the word “he”. However, this was a very tasty pasta

    1. I think they just use “he” because they need a gender pronoun since no name was given, and they always assume that a character is male unless otherwise stated. I personally imagined a woman as well, but it’s really up for the reader to determine.

    2. The answer is….entirely up to you. My brother brought that up, too, and made me realize I hadn’t specified anything about the protagonist at all, other than his-or-her friendship with Eric and Gary. I imagined a dude when I wrote it; he imagined a lady when he read it.

    3. Psychotic Grammar Nazi

      I agree with unnamed watcher, most people do imagine a male unless otherwise stated. In support of the main character being male, though, “he” was able to break open the locked kitchen door. It is obviously an old house so that door and its lock were likely quite sturdy. I don’t imagine most women being able to do that.

  13. Wait so if the kitchen was unused how the hell did the people staying there eat dinner? Or was this just so horribly written and vague I missed something?

    1. It’s said in the story that it’s only rented to people either moving in or out of the city. Think of it how people use motels. There’re no stoves in motels either. People that rent that place are probably there for a month, maybe two at the most, so they probably don’t eat there.

  14. Wow! This was great. You win the award for best descriptions…ever with this: “slimy black fungus peeled the flesh back eagerly like a greedy kid opening a Christmas present.” I was a little bummed that later in the story we lose the “one-sided” conversational style the storyteller is having because I’ve loved that style since Stephen King’s “Dolores Claiborne.” But otherwise very tasty pasta!

  15. In no way does Maya Angelou belong in the same list as Frost and Poe. Couldn’t take this story seriously after that. Sorry.

    1. Psychotic Grammar Nazi

      I think we can assume that without urgent medical care, he would have died just like the cat. He still may die just like the cat depending on what medicine can do.

  16. Understand this one thing: You, the author, can’t write “crazy”. You assumed a lot of things in this story that we already knew. You introduced Gary and right after said “Yeah, the school teacher” as if we previously knew him, but the story just started and you just introduced him. That was weird. I stopped reading after you started talking about Jenny and the reading thing.

    I was fearful the story would have gotten worse as we went along a road you were all too familiar with and expected us to run along with you as if we knew the path you were taking.

    1. The parts at the beginning that you are complaining about are replies to questions of another person in the room with the speaker. Only you aren’t hearing the question. (Ie. “Yeah the schoolteacher.” was a reply to an unwritten interviewer asking something like, ” do you mean the schoolteacher?” This is a common writing style. The best example I can think of is Stephen King’s “Dolores Claiborne” where the whole book is a police interview but you never hear anyone’s comments but Dolores’. You only hear her side of the conversation. I happen to love this style. So well done, author!

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