The Boylan House Trilogy Read online

  The Boylan House Trilogy

  Ron Ripley

  Published by Jolly Publisher

  Copyright © 2015 by Jolly Publisher

  All rights reserved.

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  I’d like to take a moment to thank you for your ongoing support. You make this all possible! To really show you my appreciation for downloading this book, I'd love to give you a FREE extra spooky bonus scene on The Boylan House. This won’t spoil any scenes in the book, but will surely leave you running scared!

  Visit below to download your extra scene and to learn about upcoming releases, future discounts and giveaways.

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  Keeping it spooky,

  Ron Ripley

  Book 1: The Boylan House

  One

  The Boylan House stood at the end of Meeting House Road in Monson, New Hampshire.

  As far as the residents of Monson – all thirty-six hundred of them – were concerned, the house had always been there.

  The house was huge, an ancient beast of a building with a wraparound porch that seemed to beckon the unwary. The colors, perhaps stunning and sensual at one time, had bled into a dull monotony that spoke more of sickness than anything else. A center tower reached up a full story above the first two and, unbeknownst to those who dared a closer look, there were trap doors in the porch’s roof, close to house.

  The few windows on each side of the house were narrow and set back into the thick walls. Sturdy shutters stood open but were able to be closed when needed. There were two doors to the house, one in the center of the front, and one in the center of the rear, and if there had not been the road which ended in front of the house, no one would have known the front from the back. Everything about the house was identical, including the two doors. They were made of thick planks of old oak bound by iron, hinged and opened by the same.

  No power ran to that house, and no sewer either. Where the water might come from, if there was water, was also a fair question. The Hassle Brook, which had run near the Boylan House four centuries before, had long since shifted its course. As it was, the Boylan House stood silently upon its slight hill and looked down upon the world.

  And finally, in the matter of taxes, those were paid out by way of a trust fund. The checks arrived yearly, on the fifteenth of August, and issued by the law firm of Boylan, O’Connor and Gunther. It had always been the case.

  Just as the residents of Monson, for the most, believed that the Boylan House had always been haunted.

  Two

  Mason pulled into an open parking space on Monson’s Main Street and fished around in his ashtray for quarters. He found half a dozen of them amongst the legion of pennies, nickels, and dimes. Holding onto them tightly, he got out of his pickup and closed the door. Walking around the front of the truck and ignoring the smell of oil slipping out of the old Dodge’s crankcase, Mason stepped up to the parking meter.

  The dull gray meter had a sign that read, “No time limit. $.25 = 30 minutes.”

  Mason looked at his watch. It was ten thirty. If he needed more time, he was going to have to come back and feed meter dimes by one thirty the latest.

  Nodding to himself, Mason fed the quarters into the meter slowly, making sure that each one bought some time. He didn’t want to end up with a parking ticket because he was in too much of a rush.

  And he was in a rush.

  Mason went back to his truck, opened the passenger side door and grabbed his carry case. He didn’t bother locking the doors. If somebody really needed the change in the ashtray, or would even bother to crack the steering column and hot-wire the damned thing, well, more power to them.

  His only concern at this point was the Boylan House. It was October twenty-seventh, just a few days away from Halloween and the urban legend that had haunted him for the better part of his life.

  Three

  Halloween. 1980. Meeting House Road.

  Mason stood on the road dressed as a Stormtrooper from Star Wars. The vinyl coveralls that served as the Stormtrooper’s black and white uniform was loud as he moved, the elastic of the plastic Stormtrooper mask was biting into his scalp and the battered Star Wars pillowcase was heavy with candy in his hands.

  He looked at the Boylan House, a single light shining through a window on the second floor. His cousins Matthew and Luke stood beside him. Both of them were older. Matthew was Han Solo and Luke was, well, Luke was Luke Skywalker.

  A few of Mason’s cousins’ friends were with them, all of them dressed as Star Wars characters. Mason’s mom had dropped him off. She was pulling the night shift at the Memorial Hospital ER in Nashua. His dad hadn’t been around for years.

  Aunt Margaret had been happy to have him. Nobody wanted Mason to miss Halloween. Including Mason.

  Although he wasn’t too happy about being at the Boylan House.

  There was something wrong about the house.

  I just didn’t feel right.

  “I’m going up there,” Kevin, one of Matthew’s friends said. “Anybody else?”

  No one answered him.

  “Bunch of queers,” Kevin laughed, sliding his Darth Vader mask up and onto the top of his head.

  Kevin was a mean boy. He hadn’t done anything mean to Mason, or to anybody else that night. But just as Mason knew that there was something wrong with the Boylan House, he knew that Kevin was mean.

  “Come on, Matt,” Kevin said, sneering at Mason’s cousin. “Don’t be such a girl.”

  Matthew only shook his head, and Mason saw in the moonlight that his cousin’s eyes were wet with tears. Matthew was too afraid to even answer.

  A soft wind rustled the tops of the trees, the remaining dry and desiccated leaves making a low, rattling sound.

  “You’re a bitch,” Kevin said in a low voice and Mason heard the threat of violence in it.

  “I’ll go,” Mason said.

  Kevin’s head snapped to the right to look at him. Surprise replaced the sneer that the older boy had been wearing. But the sneer quickly came back. “How old are you?”

  “Seven,” Mason answered.

  Again, the look of surprise.

  Mason knew he looked younger. His mother and her best friend always talked about it.

  Kevin shook his head, grudging admiration in his voice as he said, “Well, hot damn. Kid, let’s make this happen.” Kevin handed his bag of candy off to a boy named Chad.

  “I’ll hold yours,” Luke said softly.

  “Thanks,” Mason said, letting his cousin take the pillowcase.

  “Are you okay?” Luke asked him.

  Mason nodded, his throat suddenly too dry for him to speak.

  Kevin started walking up the slight hill towards the Boylan House, and Mason followed a few steps behind him. The older boy glanced back once just to make sure that Mason was there, and Mason saw a flicker of relief on Kevin’s face.

  It seemed to take a terribly long time to get to the Boylan House’s front door, but they did.

  Mason had never seen a door so large. It towered over both of them and was set back in the doorway. Above the door was a trap door, set into the overhang of the second story and barely visible in the moonlight.

  Mason noticed how silent the world was whilst standing before that door.

  The insects and the night animals had seemingly been robbed of their voices. The wind had vanished, and an ancient, sickening smell seemed to rise up from the grass beneath their feet. The temperature had dropped sharply, and Mason suddenly felt sick to his stomach, the American chop suey that Aunt Margaret had made threatening to come back up.

  In front of Mason Kevin had noticeably stiffened, a visible tremor in his hands. Instantly Mason felt sorry for the o
lder boy, even if Kevin was mean.

  Kevin was scared.

  But both Mason and Kevin knew that the older boy had to do something, even if it was just knocking on that huge and frightening front door.

  Mason watched as Kevin took a deep breath and put his Darth Vader mask back on his face. The boy’s body tensing as he raised his right hand and closed it into a fist.

  Movement caught Mason’s eye and he looked up.

  The trap door above them was opening.

  Mason stood frozen, petrified and unable to scream as Kevin knocked once, ever so softly upon the thick and ancient wood of the door.

  A pale white hand shot down from the trap door.

  The wrist and forearm, as pale as the hand, vanished into the depths of a black sleeve while the hand’s long, yellow nailed fingers buried themselves in Kevin’s loose blonde curls.

  With a sudden jerking motion, the hand and arm dragged Kevin up through the trap door and into the house.

  Kevin and Mason’s screams drowned out the closing of the trap door.

  As Kevin’s screams were suddenly silenced, Mason turned and sprinted for the road. Mason's own screaming triggered that of the other boys and his flight from the Boylan House sent them racing back along Meeting House Road.

  Mason raced after them, breathless in the October moonlight.

  Four

  The Monson librarian looked at him in surprise as she unlocked the door while he climbed up the last few granite steps.

  “Is this a first?” he asked, grinning as she held the door open for him.

  She smiled. “It is,” she said, “I’ve never had someone waiting to use the library before.”

  “I’m Mason,” he said, extending his hand.

  “Julie,” the young woman said, shaking his hand. “Come on in.”

  “Thank you,” Mason said.

  As the door closed behind them, she asked, “Is there anything that I can help you with today?”

  “Well,” Mason said, walking beside her towards the front desk, “I was wondering if you have a local history section. And then I was wondering if you have a microfiche or microfilm machine.”

  “You’re in luck,” Julie said, walking around the desk and taking a key off of a hook on a rack hanging on the wall. “We have a large local history section, which I’m sure is a complete surprise to you,” she smiled, “and we have both microfiche and microfilm machines.”

  “Excellent,” Mason said.

  “May I ask what it is you’re doing research on?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Yes,” he said, “I’m doing some research on the Boylan House on Meeting House Road.”

  Julie nodded. “Okay. Come on and follow me.” She walked back around the desk and went to a closed door with a brass plate engraved with the name, “Gunther” upon it.

  “This,” she said, fitting the key into the door’s lock, “is the Gunther Room. This is where we keep our local history materials, both published and unpublished work. Monson doesn’t have a historical society, so all of that stuff is in here too. Letters, maps, journals. All of that good stuff. There’s even a filing cabinet of photographs.”

  With that said, she turned the key, then the doorknob, and opened the door, slowly taking the key out of the lock as she did so. As the door finished swinging open, Julie reached in and turned the light on.

  The room was small but immaculately clean and organized. A large and old reading table, with a green shaded brass lamp coming up through a hole in the table’s center, dominated the room. There was an equally ancient reading chair at the table, and there was barely any room around the table to get at the shelves packed with books of various ages and gray, neatly labeled manuscript boxes. A pair of sixteen over sixteen windows stood across from the door, letting in the late morning light and looking out over the Monson cemetery. Row upon row of ancient headstones stood in precise order, with barely an inch or two between the sides of each stone, and only a few feet between the rows.

  “We’re open until four thirty,” Julie said, stepping aside so Mason could enter the room. “Don’t worry about your truck,” she smiled. “I’ll give the police a call. My brother’s on duty today, he won’t write a ticket up on someone who’s actually using the library.”

  “Thanks,” Mason said, turning to grin at her. “Is there a place that I could make copies if I need to? And also, I have a wand scanner, do you mind if I use that?”

  “First,” she smiled, “I have a copier, and I can copy whatever you need me to. I’m pretty much caught up on my work, and I just finished a book last night that left me with a book hangover. I can’t start a new one until at least after lunch.”

  “Understood completely,” Mason laughed.

  Her smile widened. “And second, as to the scanner, that won’t be a problem at all. The only thing I ask when you’re using the Gunther Room is that you leave whatever you take off of the shelves or out of the filing cabinet, on the reading table. Things get lost easily.”

  “They do,” Mason said softly, looking into the room. “They do.”

  Five

  Halloween. 2000. Meeting House Road.

  Matthew smoked nervously, a slight shake in his hand each time he brought the Lucky up to his lips. He looked over at Mason, clearly unhappy.

  Mason sat on the lowered tailgate of his Dodge, a cup of Dunkin’s coffee in his hands. He looked steadily at his cousin.

  “Why the hell are we even here?” Matthew asked, glancing up at the Boylan House.

  “We’re waiting for darkness,” Mason answered.

  “No shit we are,” Matthew responded. He finished the cigarette, dropped it to the pavement and ground the butt into the pavement with his foot. Even as he did so, he was fishing his pack of Lucky’s out from his jacket pocket and fumbling with his lighter. It took him a few times but soon Mason’s cousin had the cigarette out of the pack, into his mouth and lit. He exhaled two streams of smoke sharply from his nose. “The last time we were here,” Matthew said, stabbing the cigarette in Mason’s direction, “Kevin Peacock got snatched by some goddamn child rapist and murdered.”

  “You know that’s not true,” Mason said softly. “I don’t care how many times you tell yourself, or how many times the psychiatrist and my mom tried to tell me, that is not what happened, Matthew.”

  “I don’t give a shit about what you believe,” Matthew said, smoking furiously. “Kevin’s dead, they never found his body. End of the goddamn story.”

  “Why,” Mason said, taking a sip of his coffee, “did they never find his body, Matthew? They searched for days. Hell, they even brought the National Guard and the Marine Reserve units in to search for Kevin’s body.”

  “They didn’t find his body,” Matthew snapped, “because there're a hundred acres of wetlands and conservation land behind that damn house.” He refused to look at the Boylan House, keeping his eyes on Mason instead.

  And Mason could see the fear in his cousin’s eyes. It was deep, and old and painful.

  “I’m sorry for bringing you out here,” Mason said sincerely, “I just wanted someone with me. You’re the only one I trust enough to do that with.”

  Matthew merely nodded.

  Mason started to take another drink of his coffee when Matthew stopped him with a horrified, “Look.”

  Mason looked up and saw it.

  A single light had come on in the upper left-hand window as darkness finally settled in completely over Monson.

  If they had been in the town, where the electrical wires were strung from pole to pole and pole to the house, he would have believed that there was a light on a timer. But Mason knew better. Mason knew that there was something more.

  He set his coffee down on the Dodge’s tailgate and got off of it. “Watch my coffee, okay, Matthew?” Mason asked.

  Matthew nodded, a terrified look on his face as he stared at the Boylan house, the cigarette quickly burning down between his fingers.

  Wiping his own nervous sweat o
ff of his palms and onto his jeans, Mason started walking up the small hill towards the front of the Boylan House.

  His childhood fear came rushing back, settling into his bowels and threatening his control over his bladder. Foolishly he felt seven again, walking up behind Kevin Peacock and wondering how frightening the house really was. Never realizing how horrific the house was. Never realizing that the simple act of walking up to that house would haunt every night’s sleep.

  Mason straightened his back and clenched his teeth as he walked toward the house.

  Soon he stood before the house. Not in front of the door directly, but about a half a dozen feet from it. Mason looked at the door. He looked at the house. Nothing had changed. The air was still. The insects and animals were silent. Something stank beneath the grass.

  “Do you remember me?” Mason asked. “Was this real? Was there something here that took the boy? Or did he simply get lost or snatched by some murderer?”

  A soft creak answered his question. As if someone was walking in the house, just above the second floor.

  Mason looked up and saw the trap door which he had long ago seen open –

  And it was opening.

  A slow, casual opening. No sudden jerking motion. Just a smooth pulling up of the trap.

  A moment later something black fell down, landing gently on the granite doorstep. The trap door closed with a whisper.

  With a mouth that was suddenly and painfully dry, Mason forced himself to move forward, keeping an eye on both the door and the trap door. When he was close enough to squat down and reach out for the item that had fallen, he did so.

  His hands closed on plastic, but he didn’t look at it. Mason kept his eyes on the trap and the front door.

  He couldn’t trust the house.

  Mason straightened up, walked backward for a dozen feet down the hill, then turned and forced himself to walk calmly down to where Matthew was standing. His cousin had a fresh cigarette shaking in his hands, and he looked at Mason, asking, “What’s that?”