Gianfranco Mancini’s Reviews > Disturb Not the Dream > Status Update

“The energies in that house are in a state of growing frenzy and excitation. The manifestations get stronger every week. There is an unhappiness there that wants comfort and an evil that wants exorcising.” George snapped to attention. “I think I saw that movie. Are you going to do the Father Damien bit?” he asked ironically.

Her father would have been horrified if he had seen the play of emotions upon his daughter’s face. They were expressions he had seen often enough upon the rounds of the mental wards—eyes rolling, skin suffused with a rush of blood, teeth gnashing, and mouth close to frothing. She was actually tearing at her hair and screaming silently, already plotting her revenge for her father’s treachery.

They left her in the cellar all of that night and most of the following day, ignoring her heartrending pleas for release as she screamed her terror of the dark. When they released her on Saturday morning, they finally had a child more to their liking. She seemed to be totally docile at least; never again did she defy them. The Ryans finally had the perfect child.

She froze at the window-seated landing where the moonlight filtering through the stained-glass window gave an eerie cast to the scene before her. Lissie was standing before the forbidden door next to the fireplace tugging at the knob with all her might and tapping at it with her little fist calling “Daddy, Daddy, I’m here, I’m coming to you, Daddy.”

“Peculiar thing, isn’t it? We’ll have to keep it locked. The stairs behind it are perpendicular,” and he proceeded to explain its use to her. “Lissie must never go near it, Bert. I want it nailed up and something put over it. I know it sounds crazy, but I could swear there’s something evil behind it.”

Life was even more difficult since Evan, over her objections, had hired a new housemaid, a pretty little local girl of sixteen. He insisted that Nancy live in, so that breakfast could be served early. She was given the attic bedroom, which had its own sitting room with fireplace. His wife was sure that Evan was sleeping with the girl, since she often heard footsteps creeping up the attic stairs very late at night.

“Pregnant again? Well at least we know it’s the last one, don’t we, dear wife? Unless of course you get raped again, which is doubtful. I often wonder where your bastard is—don’t you?” With this response to her announcement, Eve Desmond abandoned all hope and devoted all her energies to being a mother and housewife .She went out only to go to church with her children.

She screamed, screamed from the pit of her being, but her tiny, panic-stricken voice was as nothing against the howling wind, the bedroom was a mass of writhing shadows, a vague, black figure leaned over the bed and blotted out the candlelight, its arm rising and falling with furious speed, the glinting object in its hand slashing at the two naked bodies entwined on the bed.