Stories - KB Knight Author

Flash Fiction & Short Stories

This short story is a work of fiction created solely by K.B. Knight. Any reference to historical and non-historical events, living or deceased people, are completely fictitious. Names of all characters and events are completely originated by the imagination of the author himself, and any resemblance to actual people, both living and deceased, is completely coincidental.

The Dempsey Mansion
By K.B. Knight
Copyright © 2016 by K.B. Knight

In Chillicothe, Ohio, some two hundred acres deep into a thick and lifeless-like forest, a mansion awaits. It has not felt the presence of mankind in the better part of three decades due to the legend that goes along with it. It is said that whoever ventures into it will never come out to tell the tale of all its wonders and riches hidden inside. Time has also sunk its claws into the decrepit road leading to the mansion. It has long since dissolved into the earth leaving only a path scarcely visible to the naked eye. Anyone who ventures here would be forced to do so by foot.

Nathan, the heir to the thirty-room mansion, stands in the overgrown front yard along with three other people he recently met: Stacey, Kelly, and Jim. Together they gawk at the monstrous mansion before them under the eerie glow of a blood moon. Fog blankets the ground at their feet, but oddly as they inch through the yard and up the porch, it appears to vanish as if guiding their way.

The porch is in shambles, just ready to give way upon the slightest touch, but it holds firm for them, if willed by something beyond human capability. Nathan pulls from his blazer jacket, an old discolored picture of a woman with remarkably flawless features. This goddess-like woman is Viona Dempsey. Viona was an Irish woman who moved to the United States more than a century ago with only fifty dollars to her good name. She was a beautiful woman who turned heads everywhere she strutted. She struggled daily to earn the cash she needed to rent rooms or shacks for a night, sometimes the size of a walk-in closet, just to stay off the unforgiving streets. But after her first experience at failing to make the money she so desperately needed, which resulted to her sleeping on a bench in a park, she vowed to never allow it to happen again—no matter the cost.

Viona used the exact asset that caused people to turn their heads to her advantage: her divine-like body. She sold it for cash to businessmen, blue-collar married men, and even to people of the law. She did not discriminate, for even women paid considerably well for a chance to explore her impeccable body. It was not long until Viona was able to rent a significantly large apartment. And after tasting the small success of wealth, she began using her apartment as her headquarters to build an empire—one that was worth more than fifty million dollars. Greed and the love of her unique business aided in her desire to continue to grow. She bought a mansion to help house one hundred women who all worked for her.

Although it was never confirmed, and many believed it to be a lie, legend has it that Viona had a dark unsettling side to her. It is said that she kidnapped women and forced them into a life of slavery, sex and drugs. And when their bodies were all but destroyed, she killed them off and kidnapped more to take their place.

Three rookie police officers paid her a visit, but there was a dark side about them. Viona happily invited them in. Unexpectedly they attacked her, all three—one after the other—ravaging her body over and over again until she was passed out from pain and exhaustion. After the final officer raped her unconscious naked body for his eighth time around, he fired one bullet into her heart—killing her instantly. They buried her somewhere on her twenty-acre estate, along with their hideous secret for all time. They set fire to the mansion and strutted off as it burned to the ground.

Nathan reaches into his pants pocket and pulls out a skeleton key. He inserts it into the door and it unlocks with ease, spooking Stacey. “Something that has not felt the touch of human hands in three decades should not open with such little effort,” she mutters.
“I heard this place burned completely down,” Jim piggybacks. “So how the hell is it even here?”
Together they venture inside, drawn by curiosity as if they were insects drawn to a blue electrifying light. After the last person enters, the massive door slams shut without the aid of human hands. “I-I don’t know about this, Kelly,” Stacey stutters.
“Yeah, same here, babe. Let’s just get rich and get the hell out of here.”
“No,” Stacey insists, “we shouldn’t be here. Something…I don’t know what, but something doesn’t belong here.”
“In the mansion?”
“No…on earth.”

“Oh stop with that bullshit,” Jim interrupts. “There’s no such thing as shit like that. Try putting down those spooky ass books and you’ll be just fine, little lady.” Jim guffaws as he leans in to try his luck with a kiss from Stacey, but she is not there—no one is. Jim is all alone in what appears to be an empty bedroom. “What the…” he whispers, uncertain of his location. He shouts for the group, but all he hears is his own echoing voice. He shouts again, but this time his echoing words originate directly behind him, and it is not his voice. Frightened at what lies behind him, he explodes from the room and down the hall screaming for the group. He slows his pace as he comes to a brightly lit open door. He peeks inside and finds Nathan silently speaking to a remarkably beautiful young lady. Jim is utterly speechless, for Nathan’s body, as oddly as it may sound, appears to be transparent—and not of this world.

“N-Nathan,” Jim whispers. Suddenly the lady whips her head towards him revealing her rotting and discolored face with sunken dark eyes. Jim shrieks in horror as he turns to flee back down the hall from which he came, but there is no such hallway present—only a window—and he crashes straight through it. He plummets five stories landing directly on an iron fence. The impact severs his body at the waist, but miraculously he is still alive, moaning, but alive. Suddenly the overgrown grass slithers around each half of Jim’s body, cocooning it completely. Within seconds his body gone—dissolved into the earth like fertilizer. The eerie grass returns to its natural state.

“Kelly,” Stacey whispers out, peering around in confusion, “w-where did Jim go? He was standing right here. Listen, we really need to leave. I can feel the malevolence oozing from the walls. This place is bad. This place is really bad.”
She spins around and grasps hold of the large handle on the front door. “Kelly, are you coming with me?” She turns back for her but she is no longer there. Stacey is all alone.

“Screw this shit,” she says as she swings the large door open. She dashes outside and slides to a screeching halt, utterly floored—standing in the middle of the kitchen. “How could this be?” she ponders. Stacey races to the kitchen door, opens it, and observes an older model police car in the backyard with the engine running. She inches forward, making certain that what she peers upon is real—and it appears to be. She explodes out the door towards the police car screaming for help. She gasps in horror as she realizes she is inside the mansion yet again, in the foyer, standing next to the front door. Her tears pour like a forgotten leaky faucet, realizing the evil house will not allow her to leave. Sensing a presence behind her, Stacey slowly turns around to face it. She is no longer in the foyer, but in the basement this time, judging by the ancient fire-breathing furnace. She spins back around and flees—right into Nathan. “Nathan,” she whispers, gazing into his sinister eyes. She slowly backpedals away from him.

A repugnant smell oozes from Nathan’s body. He slowly extends his arm, holding out his hand. It is dark in that ominous basement, but just enough light reveals what he clinches tightly to: Kelly’s severed head, whose eyes blink chaotically as if she is still there—alive. Blood, pouring from Kelly’s severed head, drains into the concrete floor, evaporating upon contact as if it were a sponge soaking it completely up.

Stacey’s legs refuse to cooperate. She crumbles to her knees pleading for her life. Suddenly Viona emerges from the fiery furnace. Her leptosome grayish rotting body slowly crawls towards Stacey who is frozen with absolute terror. Viona wraps her foul body around Stacey’s like a boa constrictor. And just as Stacey screams out, Viona sinks her jagged teeth deep into her throat, tearing her esophagus from her body. And just as she did with the others, she drinks Stacey’s body dry of all blood—completing the long-awaited process. Her body goes through a stupefying transformation into a flawlessly young woman, exactly how she was before her murder more than three decades ago.

Those officers who raped and killed Viona, have now paid the ultimate price for their misdeed even in their death. Each of them just atrociously lost their youngest kid due to Viona’s restless and malicious spirit, one that tricked them all into coming. She is now in human form, strikingly beautiful, terribly evil, and ready for the world—once again.
THE END