How I Got the Most Out of My Gateway to Hell

By William B. Ward

Once the smell of excrement hit me I knew it would be another night “out.” They’d been infrequent over the past few months but lately they seemed to be ramping up. That always made me a little nervous, even if I could smell money under the stink.

“The place is hot tonight, huh?” I called out loud; my response was the thunderous pounding that seemed to be coming from the clueless guy upstairs but was in fact something in the ceiling. Maybe. Well, I don’t know how they do it; I know the guy upstairs claims he never hears anything except my screaming.

I grabbed my ever-ready travel bag, keys, wallet, coat and hat, tore the door open against some unseen force, and yelled “Have a ball, guys!” Once I’d slammed the main door of the building behind me and breathed in a gust of winter air I felt much better. I began the walk down the block to “pad number two.”

Fortunately for me a lot of people still think these “gateway to hell” phenomena are rare. It’s this misconception on the part of the public that allowed me to keep the mortgage and pay rent on top of it and buy a new car that I hardly drive because I don’t work anymore. It seems cool now but a year ago I was thinking about killing myself. That was probably due in no small part to all the whispering voices in my condo telling me to.

Truth is anyone who’s seen enough 1970s horror flicks should have gotten the idea. If there was a “gateway to hell” under the house in The Amityville Horror and one in the wall of the 3^rd floor New York City apartment in The Sentinel, why shouldn’t there be one in the pantry in my condo in Denver? OK, I’ll admit it; I never consulted an “expert.” I never had a psychic go into an eye-rolling trance, never conducted a séance where things banged around and flew off the walls. But the rest of it, well, that was just like the movies, from the voices of little girls singing to the shadows at the foot of my bed.

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I had gotten used to a lot; the hot and cold spots were no big deal, and I wasn’t even so put off by the slime coming out of the walls. But when the water from the taps started turning red and yellow and smelling alternately like blood or urine, and the apparitions started appearing in the dark corners, that was when I reached my breaking point. And I was about ready to walk away from it, crash my credit, enter the brave new world of indentured servitude to bankers when Thelma shot from her ample hip and started me on the road to financial security. Or at least that was how it seemed that night.

We focused on the pantry because that’s where it started. Initially it was just the smell, or smells, since it was always something different. Sometimes it was dog shit and sometimes it was cinnamon; sometimes just a whiff and sometimes so strong it almost knocked me over. But the smells in the pantry were all there were until my mother died the summer before last and I brought a bunch of her most personal keepsakes into the house with me to make what I guess was a little shrine on my bureau. It was the rosary beads and crucifixes that set them off, and even packing the stuff in a box and tossing it under the bed and, later, removing it from the building entirely didn’t shut them up again. One particularly bad night someone or something sitting on my bed awakened me. Out of my mind from lack of sleep and everything else, I ran into the hallway to the storage closet and grabbed the building’s community snow shovel and started ripping the hell out of the pantry, just completely destroyed it, cussing as every whack of splintering wood cost me more of the already razor-thin margin of equity I hoped I’d gained from giving up life as a “renter.” Once I split the wood at the bottom it broke away and you can imagine what I found; the red tinted bottomless shaft, the scorching heat and smell of brimstone. Oh yeah, it was all there.

Of course I talked to a lawyer. I talked to three of them, paying the consultation fees for each and demanding that they sue the piss out of the damn realtors (the listing and the selling agents), and the company that renovated the building and the city of Denver and anyone else who walked past my front door. But of course Colorado State law didn’t contain any requirements for realtors or anyone else to disclose “activities of an other-worldly nature, rumored or otherwise” during the sale of a property. One lawyer took the trouble to point out that my realtor actually had disclosed a lot: that the building had been boarded up and vacant for nearly five years before it was purchased by Country Mansion Properties and renovated into condos, and that the last tenant of my particular unit (“lucky” number seven) had died of “unknown causes” in the place. Well, how was I supposed to infer anything from that? Was she trying to warn me? With that big Cadillac and that big hairdo, somehow I doubt it, but maybe that’s my cynicism talking. Fact is she didn’t have to tell me about the guy dying in the place unless I asked. Ever thought to ask that before you buy a place?

Anyway, I was S.O.L. on the lawsuits, and after three straight months of being too terrified to sleep I finally fucked up at work badly enough that I lost my job.

After the pantry incident I ran the three miles across Capitol Hill to Thelma’s again, where I was pretty much already living anyway, and she reached her own end that night with me and my babbling and blubbering. She started saying crazy things.

“So find something good about it, fer crissake!”

“How the hell am I supposed to find anything good about this?” I cried.

“I don’t know, make it work for you! Sell tickets or something.”

It was almost six months to the day after Thelma’s remark that I got the write-up in Westword magazine. It turns out Westword never actually responded to my pleas for them to do an article on me, or at least not directly. Someone who knew someone who knew someone who was a staff writer for the rag took one of my tours and tipped them off. “Tour” might be a little grandiose considering it didn’t take long to show people 800 square feet of glorified one bedroom apartment. Of course I had a few confrontations; a few people calling me a phony and demanding their money back. But even on the nights when there were no eerie sounds or smells-let alone a disembodied head floating through the bedroom-almost everyone who showed up seemed to leave thinking they’d gotten their money’s worth. I was surprised, since I was charging $50 a head; hey, I was out of work and out of credit and had to keep the foreclosure stalled somehow. I think it was the violent destruction of the kitchen, the aftermath of it still strewn on the floor, which got a reaction. Something about the sheer honesty of it seemed to make people think that something was going on, even if they were just in the home of a madman.

After Westword, though, the price went up, and so did the crowds; to the point where I had to start slamming the door at 1:00am because the neighbors where complaining about the “freak show” in the building…and anyway, I had to at least try to get some sleep.

It isn’t all fun, though, and I have this sinking feeling it won’t last. Recently I’ve been getting oddly formal letters--real snail mail--from some guy in London claiming to be a psychic who wants to come and take my tour. I looked the guy up online and he is a psychic--well, he claims he is--but he’s also one of these “debunker” guys who use their “powers” to disprove things. There’s nothing in my place to disprove, but it would be just my luck that the spirits or demons or whatever would behave the same way around a foreign psychic that they do around a rented video camera. Thelma thinks I should put the place on the market now, with the kitchen torn apart just like it is. Maybe she’s got a point. Like I said there’s been a lot of “activity” lately and I’m not sure what that means, if it means anything. And when it's “hot” in there like it was tonight there’s no sleeping in my own bed, even if I am making bank on the disturbances.

“Pad number two” is a small place, a studio I got for $750 a month utilities included. It’s only 3 blocks from the condo so if I ever need anything I can just take a walk. But I’m spending more and more time here and less and less time at the place I thought I’d call home, and I think maybe it’s time to look for a new condo. God forbid, I don’t want to be a “renter” all my life. But one thing’s for sure; I’ll check my next potential purchase very carefully, going as far as to talk to former owners if I can find them, providing they didn’t die there, and maybe insisting on spending a night or two in the place before I sign any papers. My home is my biggest investment. If I am damned enough to buy another place built on top of a Gateway to Hell, I'll be sure to make some dough out of it. Hey, it could happen! After all, if you think about it, the entire North American continent is one big Indian Burial Ground.

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He grew up in California but lives in Denver now. He's been writing since the age of 12. And he sits in front of a computer for a living.

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