Ghost story

Jack Dolittle, in spite of his name, had done everything. He was in hand-to-hand combat in the jungles of Vietnam. He fought as a mercenary for whoever would hire him in several of the brush-fire wars that have plagued the last half of the twentieth century. Tiring of war, he started a thriving import/export company that made him a millionaire several times over when he sold it to a multinational. He climbed Everest, K2, and the peaks of Patagonia. He dove to the bottom of the Marianas Trench in a research submarine. He hunted rhinoceros and water buffalo in Africa and polar bear in the Arctic. He trekked across the Gobi desert and Antarctica to the pole and wrestled crocodile in the Amazon basin. He was many times scarred, but never scared, for unlike other men, Jack Dolittle did not know the sensation of fear. In fact, Jack Dolittle was jaded, tired and bored, and was seriously considering suicide when he chanced upon a man named Gaines at an airstrip, if you could call it that, on the edge of the Sahara.

Over a beer Gaines told him of a haunted house on the outskirts of his home town in northern Minnesota. No one had lived in the house for 80 years, and few would even walk by the house on the nearly deserted dirt road that led past it. Most of those who ventured into the house were never seen again. One had survived. He was found wandering in the woods a couple of miles from the house, babbling incoherently, his clothes torn and bloodied. He had died a few years later in a hospital for the insane without ever revealing what had happened to him. Jacks pulse quickened and he began to feel alive again. Perhaps here was a challenge that would restore him and make him feel that life was again worth living.

Jack headed straight for northern Minnesota, and, with his usual and characteristic thoroughness, set out to discover all he could about the house and its erstwhile inhabitants. He soon found that all that Gaines had told him at the edge of the Sahara was true. The house had been built by a ruthless, vicious and despicable man named Sweeney around the turn of the century. One of victims of Sweeney's many frauds turned on him and slaughtered Sweeney and his family with an ax. There had been no heirs and the house had been sold at auction. The new owners, Ed and Madeline Berg, proprietors of the drugstore in town, disappeared within a fortnight and were never seen again. After that the rumors grew and no one attempted to occupy the house again. Jack found a few newspaper stories concerning people who had dared to enter the house, either for curiosity or on a dare, and who had also disappeared. Finally Jack found an article concerning Rupert Myer, a hobo who passed through the town a couple of times a year. A neighbor who lived a mile from the house had seen Rupert on the grounds on a Sunday evening. The next Wednesday Myer had been found by a woodsman three miles from the Sweeney house, wandering in the woods, screaming obscenities, babbling and drooling. Jack found an obituary dated three years later, almost to the day, stating that Rupert Myer had died in the state hospital for the insane.

Few in the town would talk to Jack, and the few that would were reluctant to tell him anything about the house. But Jack was feeling alive for the first time in years. He set about exploring the grounds of the house and even walked through the house in the middle of the day. He saw little that would not be expected in an 80 year old, unoccupied house. Lots of dust and spider webs, broken windows, rotting drapes and dilapidated furniture. There was no sign of occupation, except for bats and mice. The house actually seemed rather peaceful to Jack, and it occurred to him that this would be a nice place to live. It would take a fair amount of work to make the house livable, but he could buy it for almost nothing.

But, while Jack did not feel fear, he was not foolish. There was the small matter of all the disappearances. He decided to spend a few nights in the house, appropriately armed, and see what might transpire. Jack drove to Chicago, made a few purchases, and set himself up in the corner of what had been the sitting room on the first floor of the Sweeney house. He set up a comfortable chair, rigged up battery operated floodlights, moved in his weapons and ammunition, and settled down to wait for ... he did not know what. He waited through a cloudless and moonless night and saw nothing but bats in the gloom, heard nothing but an owl and crickets, and an occasional creak as the old house settled in for the night. Feeling at peace for the first time in many years, Jack fell asleep in his chair and was awakened by the birds just before dawn.

Suddenly he heard a noise, a solid thump from somewhere near the top of the house that was accompanied by an almost imperceptible tremor in the house. Then again, and again. Something heavy was making its way slowly and laboriously down the stairs from the third floor to the second, around the landing and down the stairs to the sitting room. Jack noticed with curiosity that the hairs on the back of his neck were standing up again. He strained through the gloom to see what was coming down the stairs, but he could only hear it, thump followed by thump until finally it was down the stairs and in the sitting room.

He threw the switch on the floodlights and across the room he saw an ancient, rotting coffin standing upright at the foot of the stairs. The lid was open at the head end and in spite of the brilliance of the floodlights, he couldn't see clearly through the spider webs and gloom of the interior of the coffin. What he could see made his blood run cold, and for the first time in his life, Jack Dolittle felt fear and understood why strong men run from danger. The coffin began to move toward him, wobbling and thumping across the creaking floor. Jack opened up with the Uzi, emptied the magazine, loaded another and emptied that. The coffin continued its advance. Jack threw a grenade. The coffin continued, unaffected. Jack opened up with his flame thrower, setting smoldering fires in the rotting carpet and the remains of the drapes. The only effect on the coffin was to burn the spider webs out of the opening and in the gloomy interior of the coffin, Jack thought he saw gleaming the coldest eye he had ever seen. By comparison even a python's eyes seemed warm and comforting.

The one mistake Jack had made in his planning was to not leave himself an escape route, and now the coffin blocked his exit from the sitting room. He emptied his .45 into the coffin without effect. He threw his Bowie knife. With a satisfying thump the blade buried itself in the lid of the coffin, the handle shuddering in the bright light of the floodlamps. The coffin continued. In a state of desperation, he threw his chair and his beer bottles, without effect. The coffin now was less than 6 feet from the corner where he was trapped and it was still lurching towards him.

Panic-stricken, Jack searched through his pockets for some remaining weapon. He found nothing but two Vick's cough drops. Trapped, and nearly hysterical, he threw them at the coffin...

Amazingly, they stopped the coughin'!