Prologue
Part I
The house was still as it sat right in the centre of the eternal and unending blackness of the huge twisted and deformed forest that surrounded it. Reserved, resting, patiently waiting in some kind of disquieting way for an unknown and undisclosed incident in the darkness. Its windows were blackened out completely, emitting no light whatsoever into its ghastly and completely unexplored and undiscovered interiors. The house yawned its silence and emptiness across the endless horizon of blackened soil, twisted and soulless trees and darkness-filled, lifeless sky. Its towering edifice in this unnatural land was unbearable to the unwilling earth that supported it and gave it permission of existence, like allowing the life of a disfigured and empty child, watching helplessly by as a cancerous growth in a body slowly grows in size and power, drawing more and more treacherous cells to its whole being as it tightens its evil grip. Its undeniable power of a living presence casting its shadowy, silent and unspeakably evil eye above the tainted and twisted figures of the tress surrounding it, like silent emissaries that were once a recognisable mark of the face of nature. The support structures of the house had become talons, tentacle-like black roots clawing, tearing, scraping and burrowing their way deep into the soil of the earth that supported it, its incredible evil seeping like a poison into the earth, infecting every cell of the soil with wickedness, darkness and absolute revulsion. This sickness, this disease that inhabited this small patch of the earth bore a name that many knew, but dared not speak its name out loud; Vautusceen House. This was evil in its most darkest, most powerful, most patient and most human form, as it always was, is and probably always will be.
A hefty tree branch suddenly creaks in the silence of the graveyard-like garden of darkness, echoing its ungodly presence over the blasted landscape, throwing off a bundle of brittle, dried up dead leaves into the air to fall silently and gracefully to the ground in a feather-like manner. A pair of disjointed silhouetted fleeting figures move awkwardly on top of the branch as they struggle to find a suitable place to rest. The figures eventually find their support and sit quietly and comfortably, their unseen faces staring and unflinching at the deserted house before them, the lower trails of their monk-like gowns fall and envelop the branch like a cascading blanket, blowing eerily and ghostly in the faint whisper of wind that blows past them. The figures sit with their legs crossed, their hands resting on their laps, their fingers on both hands slightly touching. A tiny glint of light from the main finger of the figure on the right gives away the presence of a small, intricately designed ring on its finger with a large blood-red stone jewel buried deeply into it.
The figure on the left takes a long, parchment-like paper out of its pocket, the bottom end of the raggedy and slightly torn paper blows quite strongly in the breeze, as though it is being pulled by unseen but powerful hands from their grasp. The figure brings the paper and pushes it rather forcibly down onto its lap and presses hard into it with its long tapering fingers, silently and angrily relinquishing all power from the wind to take it and tear it apart. The figure lowers its hood covered head down to the paper and consults the barely recognisable, expertly written writing that is laid before it.
“Tell me,” said the figure sitting on the right, its voice deep, slightly unsympathetic and brimming with repressed irritation. “Why have we been sent here to this unnatural place in the midst of such danger?”
The figure on the left ignored the question as it sat staring with great concentration at the writing on the paper, the long tapering string of an unseen monocle collecting in a coil-like pattern on top of the paper. “We must be patient,” the figure said at last, its voice equally unsympathetic sounding, yet giving off the obvious tone of a much older man. “We must watch this place closely, tonight and gain as much information as we possibly can. The Brotherhood of Mystery has sent us here to observe, to wait and to watch. They are certain that something will happen here, tonight, something inside this place will awaken. After many years of sitting silently in the dust of its surroundings, it will awaken.”
“But, why,” asked the other figure. “Why after a hundred years of sitting in this squalid and evil place would it suddenly awaken. The evil that was implanted in it all those years ago has always had the power to strike out and cause harm. In all the years we’ve observed it over that time, there hasn’t been a whisper of activity from its vacant interiors. What has changed in the meantime?”
“The Brotherhood of Mystery is unsure of that, at the moment. Their supposition is the changing of the times has somehow caught its attention. After all, at the moment, we’re living in a state of complete change that is taking over the world. Perhaps this collective energy has found its way to this place and given it life. Or, perhaps, something has awakened it, something small and seemingly insignificant. But, at the moment, we cannot be sure.”
“What information are we expected to gain from this assignment, mere collective notes on its present state of being, petty notes to take dust like so many of our records? This is a waste of time, we should send in our most qualified and experienced members to tear its grip away from the earth and raise it to the ground. The place is to dangerous to be allowed to remain.”
“Some of The Brotherhood of Mystery share your reaction and wish the same thing, but the others overruled them. Before we do anything, we must ascertain just how much of a threat it actually is. Plus, this is the perfect time to study such a powerful entity. Never before in the whole history of The Brotherhood of Mystery have we had the opportunity to learn of what we spend so long fighting. If we learn as much as we can, it will be invaluable to us in the future.”
“A pity this edifice hadn’t awakened in the time of our near great calamity. Perhaps we could have stopped it before it had the chance to grow in power.”
The other figure said nothing of the others statement, but a fierce anger seethed inside him like a pressure cooker waiting to explode. His hands clenched and tightened, crushing the long piece of parchment with a loud tearing and cracking sound. The other watched him closely, scrutinising his behaviour with a deep feeling of remorse and guilt.
“Forgive me, my friend,” he said in a calm and forgiving tone. “I did not mean to torture you with such thoughts.”
“Your apology is not needed,” said the other. “That incident was many years ago, it is all in the past. The assignment we have been given, that is our job now.”
The two silhouetted figures resumed their concentrated gaze upon the large, overwhelming black tower standing in front of them like an enormous tombstone in the centre of a huge cemetery filled with soulless trees, disturbed earth and unseen and unnatural forces lying in wait for the unsuspecting.
The air around the two watching figures continued to breath out its unrelenting spectrum of silence across the irredeemable wasteland of the ground below. Echoing out its symphony of a reclusive and unnoticed state from the blank, featureless and blackened sky above. Devoid of reason, mercy or any kind of humanity to its unspoken name. The whole image of the sky suddenly became some dark and terrible image to those unfortunate enough to behold it in their vision of sight. The image of an unseen figure lying in wait in some dark corner, closely watching and studying his intended victims with intense scrutiny from his protected hiding place, his cold and barely noticeable breath ghostly ticking its way across the back of the necks of those unlucky enough to be nearby.
Then, just as the watching figures had become accustomed to the smooth, mirror-like quality of the deafening silence, the mirror was suddenly broken as a totally unexpected sound rang its echoing bells across the landscape, ringing out its haunting tune to all those within earshot. The sound instantly caught the attention of the two watchers, shaking them up to the degree of hearing a sudden gunshot in the dark. Their whole bodies instantly coiled like springs as they drew their bodies nearer to hear the sound better and to better understand it, their tensed and slightly shaking hands digging deep into the brittle, paper-like bark on the trees, the parchment paper hung barely noticed from the older figures hand. Their ears were fully tuned and ready as they studied the sound they heard bellowing out like a trapped and ensnared creature deep within the ungodly walls of Vautusceen House. After a few moments, they recognised the sound. It was undoubtedly the sound of an organ playing from within the house somewhere, bellowing out its haunting tune to the flittering trees outside.
“What is that ungodly note?” The figure on the right said with a disturbed tone. “How could the sound be from an organ from within those walls, an organ needed to produce a sound as powerful as that would have to be enormous.”
The other remained silent for the moment, his eyes never relenting from the silhouetted effigy of the house that seemed to scream its inhuman presence to the whole world. Finally, he uttered a deep sigh and said: “It must be an organ of some sort. After all, in the whole one hundred years it has been here, no one within The Brotherhood of Mystery or outside in the world has ever set foot inside it. Therefore, we have no idea what to expect from its interiors. But, one thing is certain, something its inside its walls, watching from the windows, its eyes piercing the darkness, watching and waiting for someone to come. It is true, my friend, something is living in some form of life inside Vautusceen House, but the house has nothing to do with it, it is not alive, nor does it have any sentience to it. It merely serves as a vessel for the living evil that has made its home here. We must find out what this evil is before it has the opportunity to cast its terrible scythe across the face of the world. The Brotherhood of Mystery must be informed as soon as possible.”
The two figures ended their fearful conversation and remained in their unflinching positions with their eyes fixed on the terrible image of the house. Their fingers digging even deeper into the bark of the tree, their ears fixed on the piercing shrieks and wailings of the scream of power that rang its terrible dirge-like path across this blasted landscape as it announced in its own terrible way. I am here, I see, I am aware.
Prologue
Part II
Pain, that was all he knew, nothing but pain. Agony even. The same agonising feelings one would associate with when your whole nervous system, your muscles, your whole skeletal structure and every organ in your body, now matter how insignificant or small a player screams its torment like some poor, unfortunate child locked forever in a tiny, darkened, underground room where no-one can hear its cries for help.
It was strangely amusing, despite everything that was happening to him, but he didn’t expect Hell to be like this. He didn’t expect Hell to be an endless sense of great dizziness, fatigue, semi-consciousness and the slightly strong sense of being in two places at once. The feeling was very familiar to him, except for the pain that is, the only thing that he could attribute to being proof of actually being in Hell. But the rest was very familiar, bringing hints and scraps and distorted memories of when he was in Boarding school, back in the Dark ages and had smoked some rather illicit substances and other kinds of peculiar, Eastern tobacco with his friends and colleagues and revelled in the semi-consciousness, almost unearthly sensation it gave him, struck only with limited nervousness of the dire implications of if and when the ‘old-school‘ Headmaster caught them in the act. By rights then, he would have been in Hell ever since he was young and had enjoyed it. But, in all that time, it had never brought him pain, not like this. The worst it had ever gave him was a sick stomach and a bad headache. This pain was something new, something strange, something much more internal, something . . .familiar.
But, that was pain that one would know only in Hell. Only the pain felt by those who had disgraced their benevolent Creator and had warranted their eternal disgrace in the fiery pits. A pain that wasn’t linked to anything physical, that could only go so far. It was the pain felt deep within the soul, that agonising celestial torment of knowing the acts that brought you to this. He didn’t deserve Hell or the pain it mercilessly bestowed on its trapped souls, that he knew, even through the pain that almost completely clouded his judgement and even his own sense of personal reality, leaving him in this state where he had no idea which way was up or down, where or when he was exactly, even who or what he was at a stretch.
But, gradually, small flickers of his immediate vicinity began to force their way through the haziness of his mind, giving him the freedom to move around, at least a little. With the aid of his partially numbed fingers that he could just about move around a few inches, he could feel that he was lying on something, something that felt soft as he ran it backwards and forwards through his fingers and over his palms. It felt like a kind of synthetic material, manufactured from some kind of linen and then expertly stitched together with careful craftsmanship to form the rounded edge of something like a sheet, a blanket.
Yes, that was it, he thought excitedly. That’s what I must be lying on, some kind of bed. I’m resting, but where? I must be at home, I wouldn’t be anywhere else. But, I can’t be certain . . .but this doesn’t feel like my bed, at least not how as I remember it. They don’t have beds in hell synthetically made . . .do they?
He groaned and shuffled around a little as he felt a quick swift breeze from somewhere caress the skin on his face. For the briefest of a moment to his side, he caught sight of something that was probably a small chair beside his bed being pulled backwards and out of sight by unseen hands. He quickly blinked in rapid succession and rolled his eyes up toward the back of his head as the pain, the sense of vertigo and the strange feeling of only half-existing began to grow stronger, filling his body with the sense of briefly rising in the air on some unseen wind before falling softly back down.
A strange, looming shadow suddenly appeared above him, a shadow that almost looked as though it could be a human head, but he had no idea, his mind was too clouded to comprehend anything. But, whatever it was it definitely had eyes, without a doubt. The very same eyes it now used to stare down silently at him. He blinked in constant rapid succession as he tried to make it out, grumbling and groaning as each blink brought him nothing but more irritating pain. But, while his eyes were refusing to work, his ears were in perfect working order. All around him, he could hear a torrent of noise, shouts and groans and children’s strange voices, permeating from every corner of wherever he was. He heard groans of pain, strange echoing voices and words, cackles and squawks and slowed-down conversations between unseen, unfamiliar people. And, reaching over the sound of all of them was a strong distinctive heartbeat, pumping its almost speaker volume pitch deep into his ears. But, he was certain that it wasn’t his heartbeat.
Through the fogginess and confusion, he could hear a voice, speaking to him, one that was almost too indistinct to understand clearly.
‘Er . . .st.’ The voice said. It was very low, almost nothing. He couldn’t be sure whether it was a male voice or a female voice, or even a human voice for that matter. ‘Ern . .t, can you h..ar me?’
“Hmn, whaaaat?” He tried to speak as logically and carefully as he could, but it was hopeless. The words he heard and the words he spoke sounded as though they were being uttered in slow-motion, much too slow to be understand at all.
‘Do you k . . .ow what’s happ . . .nd to you?
“Hurt . . .all oveeeer. Don’t knout whaaaat’s happennnninnng. Where ammmm IIIIII?”
He couldn’t even begin to tell if the figure had understood him or not, but they continued anyway.
‘You a..e in ho . s. .tal. You had n….mer..us wounds to y…ur b.dy. The p..lice found you w..th a b.dy in your h..use. They confirmed it w.s your d……hter. ..he died from su…ious wounds to the bo…y. Do you k…ow an…hing abo..t it?’
“I can’t . . .I can’t.” His tongue was very dry and uncomfortable as it dragged itself across the roof of his equally dry and dehydrated mouth as he struggled to speak, the gears of his mind rusted and cracking as they desperately struggled to make sense of what was happening and provide coherent questions to what he was being asked. It was all too much, he had to rest.
Rest now . . .
Need to . .go . .sleep.
Can’t . . . think.
Daddy?
Chapter One
The four strangers sat within a tiny circle of small metallic and plastic cushioned chairs cramped inside the simple looking room within the old cottage, all of them waiting rather impatiently for someone at least someone to come through the tall dark wooden door and give some reasoning why they were here. The only movement that occasionally came from one of them was a slight muscle spasm or a slight change of how they sat on the tough and slightly uncomfortable seats.
The old cottage was hidden deep inside a mist-soaked forest of dark, leaf-less trees that bore an unmoving witness to the dead leaves spread across the floor as the ice and frost mercifully crushed them underfoot. Each of the trees lay asleep in deep hibernation to hide from the freezing temperatures of the winter months, as the fog ceaselessly drifted around all of them like a creeping figure looking for a way in.
A thatched roof canopied the cottage, draping a large canopy over the small building, silhouetting the wooden framework that surrounded the house like bones, circling the small windows with long flowing cotton windows inside.
The room that seated the strangers was decorated with a few stone busts of unknown distinguished looking individuals from centuries long past, their unpronounceable names etched in elaborate writing at the bases of the heads. Exotic looking plants both real and plastic rested in a few places around the room, drawing the attention of a few tiny insects. A few golden candle hangers were fixed in numerous places on the faded walls, each holding three over-used white candles that looked as though they were ready to fall to the floor. A large stone fireplace dominated the tiny cramped room, a strong log fire with flittering sparks constantly spat out from the warm corner and warmed everyone inside from the unfeeling cold outside.
A thin stream of bright sunlight shone like a direct beam from the sun drenched single window of the room and onto a bare patch on the dull wall opposite.
Every one of the figures sat within the room bore the unmistakeable appearance of being from totally different backgrounds, yet at the same time, being experienced in the same field.
The first was quite obviously a catholic priest dressed a plain dark blue shirt, dark brown trousers and an itchy looking brown coloured jacket with tiny hairs sprouting out like loose wires from a bare circuit. The small recognisable white collar adorned around his neck. His hair was dark brown with a slight sign of baldness appearing in the centre of his head. His tired wrinkled half open eyes slowly studied the small rough-looking leather bound Bible in his hands as he silently read the countless passages inside.
The man sitting beside him was slightly smaller in stature, he occasionally batted his eyes to the side of his chair to ensure there was sufficient distance between him and the priest, the mere presence of him sitting beside him made the man uncomfortable.
The man bore a sullen expression, great wrinkles and folds of skin were gathered like an un-ironed blanket underneath his tired yet continually alert eyes. His hair was thick and bushy like that of a sheep. A thick dark blue open buttoned jacket covered the criss-cross pattern of his dark coloured shirt underneath. In-between checking the tiny distance between him and the priest, he made numerous notes on a small pad on his knee with a half sized chewed pencil, silently and mentally taking down information from a confusing and technical looking thick book entitled: ‘The rudiments of physics and parapsychology in haunted environments.’
The figure beside him was quite obviously a much older man that the other two, within his late fifties or early sixties. Much of his hair was gone, leaving behind only a few frail looking fragments that barely covered an almost completely bald head. A pair of thick dark rimmed glasses partly obscured the pensioner looking eyes beneath. A thin looking light brown jacket surrounded his clear white shirt that bulged out due to his fat stomach. A cross-hatched patterned light brown tie hung loosely from his tight collar.
A Gladstone shaped black plastic case rested on his knees, his fingers impatiently tapped in rhythm on the large moth-eaten grey coloured book that sat on top of the case. ‘Voices From Paradise’ was the book’s title
The fourth and final person in the four was a youngish looking woman in her late twenties. Her eyes were pretty and innocent looking, sitting comfortably underneath her sleek black hair that was tied into a ponytail that reached to her shoulders. Her lips were small and slightly parted with a few slight chaps in the skin revealing sore and reddened flesh underneath. A collection of religious looking necklaces adorned her swan-like neck. The most prominent of them was a large silver circle with a star shaped pentagram fixed inside, the one resting just beside it was a large silver crucifix with the large figure of the crucified Christ. The few other necklaces bore the symbols of unfamiliar religions and beliefs from around the world.
A long black gown loosely covered most of her body to just above her black stocking covered legs, a thin straight dark red line ran the length of the gown a couple of inches from the outer edge. Her slightly wrinkled small pale hands rested one on top of the other on her lap. Her fingers were awash with countless silver rings with imitation glass made jewel of Cubic Zirconium fixed into them. A large silver bracelet with tiny reflective jewels hung loosely from her right wrist, the jewels twinkled briefly in the ray of light. She was sat almost rigid in her position, like a strict school teacher silently observing her quiet children behind her large wooden desk.
The awkward silence inside the room was suddenly broken as the thunderous sounding knock banged on the door, everyone spun their heads round to face it, pathetically trying to hide their surprise. The door opened and a tall handsome middle-aged man with a bushy moustache, a dark black bow tie and a dark green lime coloured suit popped his head round and quickly surveyed everyone inside.
“If you would care to step this way please.” He said in a well spoken English accent.
He opened the door fully till it came into contact with the wall opposite and stood inside the doorway drawn up to his full height, his hands holding each other covering his groin.
The four individuals stood up from their seats, collected their possessions and began to walk out of the room into the long dark red coloured, dimly lighted corridor outside. The man with the bushy hair carrying the book of Parapsychology stopped in front of the well dressed man in the corridor as the others continued, standing uncomfortably in front of him and flashing him an irritated stare.
“Why am I here?” He asked the man in a quiet cultured accent. “Why have I been dragged from the university to this poky little building. I haven’t been told why I’m here or what you want of me. You escort me into that car with the others outside the university without any explanation.”
The man simply stood rigid in his fixed position looking down at him with an unaffected and pathetic regard for him or his annoyance and impatience. He simply sighed and said: “Sir will explain everything to you in due course.”
The man continued to look up menacingly at him for a few moments before finally tutting and walking off into the corridor after everyone else. The well dressed man turned and watched him go.
The four strangers continued to walk down the perfectly straight corridor, briefly glancing at the numerous portraits of well dressed, moustache wearing Lords and people of the Monarchy that ran the length of the corridor, staring at intricately patterned golden frames of the many mirrors on each wall.
None of them were exchanging words or finding out from each other any of the reasons of their presence here or even exchanging simple handshakes, idle chatter or even nods of hello. Everyone simply quickly walked on down the dark red corridor, eager and impatient to see whoever had brought them here. No one really wanted to be here, all of them had been encouraged, or more likely dragged off from other personal appointments by tall sinister looking men in long dark coats, hats and scarf’s into a small black car for no reason at all, with no effort of explanation and driven miles through the huge city of London for miles before stopping outside this unfamiliar and rather grim looking building with darkened windows and crumbling walls in some distant and quiet corner of the city then led into the small room they waited in and told to wait there till they were summoned. Everyone managed to keep themselves from simply walking away and ignoring what they told by the ever constant feeling of curiosity and the unusual nagging feeling that there was something of interest to them all in their own unique ways. They could all smell something here that appealed to their particular business.
Everyone reached the end of the corridor and came up to a large dark coloured wooden door that was open ajar and stopped.
“Come in.” Said the low old sounding voice from inside. Everyone immediately stepped through the door into the room inside.
Everyone looked around in a gasp as they beheld the elaborate room inside. The dark red intricately patterned wallpaper, the many well-polished frames of the portraits of many high-standing men decorating the walls, the long varnished hard wood of the table that sat in the middle of the room with gothic looking chairs underneath decorated with unfamiliar images carved into the wood at the back of the chairs.
“Hello,” the voice said again from somewhere in the room. “I’m so glad you could all make it here.”
Everyone turned their heads to the direction of the voice and saw that the opposite side to the room was canopied in semi-darkness that almost obscured all view of it. A small seated figure was sat at the other end of the table, another two tall figures were stood at either sides of him.
“What the hells going on here?” Shouted the man holding the Parapsychology. “Why the hell have I been dragged here against my will. What’s going on? Who are you?”
The silhouetted figures made not a move nor the slightest indication that they heard his outburst and allowed a few awkward moments of silence to pass before answering. “Oh, I’m sorry,” Said the seated figure. “I neglected to turn on the lights for you, here.” The seated figure extended out his left arm to some unrecognisable silhouetted object beside him and tugged on something hanging from it. A small light the size of a firefly that gradually and rather quickly grew more and more in intensity began to appear from the small object until after only a few moments, it was the size of a football and filled the whole shadowy area of the room with an eerie light that reflected like running water off of the reddened walls, withdrawing the shadowy canopy from the mysterious figures.
The seated man looked middle aged, somewhere in his early fifties, a long thin streak of dark brown hair covered the top of his head, a pair of small lens glasses covered his almost tiny eyes that regarded the four individuals with great concentration. He was wearing a black suit with a black tie and a carefully folded white handkerchief poking out of his breast pocket. Quite obviously a man of some importance, almost the archetypal image of someone high up in society being part of the Order of Freemasons.
But no one had any clue as to who he was or could be. He clasped his hands tightly together in front of him on the table.
The two sinister looking men standing on either side of him were almost identical in their appearance. Both wore a long black velvet coat that completely covered their bodies from head to toe, a large trilby hat was on both of their heads, partly obscuring their phantom-like faces in shadow. Their hands were clasped behind their backs, their reflective and unusual looking eyes piercing into the four strangers like a microscope causing them to unconsciously enclose their chests with their arms in defence. A bright spark of sudden realisation passed between the four strangers as they briefly thought the two figures were the mysterious men who brought them to this bizarre place, then immediately drew back when they realised their mistake, though still slightly unnerved by the two men’s striking similarity to them.
“Now,” said the seated man. “I would imagine that you are a little curious as to why you have been brought here against your will. I can understand that.”
“You understand nothing!” Said the Parapsychology man, slamming the book he was holding down with an almighty crash onto the dark wooden table, alarming the other three individuals. His open palmed hand pushing down hard onto the worn leather of the book. He violently stuck out his slightly chubby finger at the seated man in great contempt. “I had a very important project going on at Durham university on Parapsychology and natural human phenomenon. And then you send your bloody men in black over and dragged me out of my office without so much as an explanation and thrown into a car and driven for miles from Durham, throughout all of London to this damn condemned building. Now, What the hell is going on!?”
Like the man with the lime green suit before him, the middle-aged seated man simply remained unfazed in his seat, his forefingers stuck together underneath his chin, the rest of his fingers clasped together, his tiny eyes fixed squarely on the man’s angered and twisted face.
“Very well, I see from your attitude that you don’t want to hear apologies or our understanding of your inconvenience. So, I will get straight to the point. Please, sit down.”
He extended out wrinkled and cracked right hand toward the four strangers and to the empty chairs beside them. The Parapsychologist violently yanked the chair next to him from underneath the table and slammed it down onto the hard wood panelled floor before sitting on it, dropping his book and papers on the table in front of him. The rest got into their seats fairly quietly, all of them angered about being here, but deciding not to display their anger quite like the Parapsychologist did.
Everyone waited for the seated man as he rifled through a collection of papers beside him, scrutinising each one with his small glasses and narrowing his eyes whenever he came up to a particularly important section.
“Now,” he said looking from the four strangers and back again to the papers as though checking something. He looked toward the Parapsychologist. “Now, from what I see written here, your name I take it is Doctor Daniel Stephenson. Am I right?” The man sighed, turned his head the other way and nodded. The seated man turned his head to the next person, the priest. “And, your name is Father Donald Heathers, correct?” The priest raised his right leg and rested it across his left then nodded quietly in response.
He looked toward the nervous young woman in the long black flowing gown. “And you I take it, my dear is the medium, Sarah Tuttle ?” The girl leaned forward in her seat and nodded eagerly, constantly blinking her eyes. “And lastly, you would be Doctor Ernest Furlong, have I got that right?” The man nodded and casually tapped the hard plastic of his black case with the ends of his fingers.
The seated man pushed aside the countless pieces of paper and joined both his hands together in front of him, making no effort at a smile or a warm and relaxing hint of body language.
“Now, my name is Mr Samuel Hawkins, these men and the men who brought you here to me work for me. We are all part of a highly secret underground group called “The Brotherhood of Mystery,” it is our job to investigate strange and unusual occurrences within the British Empire, or more international.”
Doctor Stephenson suddenly disturbed the man as he burst out laughing and caught everyone’s annoyed attention, cocking his backwards and uttering long drawn hilarity at the man’s statement.
“You must be joking,” he said greatly amused. “You mean you search out for creaks on the stair, crop circle’s, strange lights in the sky, things that go bump in the night?” He executed his last statement with a sudden slam of his hand on the table. “You don’t honestly expect me to believe all of this childish banter you’re feeding me, do you?”
Mr Hawkins looked at him with a slightly obvious growing annoyance, his hands constantly rubbing against each other in a hurried pace. He sighed and said: “I didn’t know you were such a talented dramatist, Doctor Stephenson. But, in your own amused way, you were right about one thing you spoke of. ‘Things that go bump in the night.’ As a matter of fact, that is precisely the subject I was about to mention that fully explains your presence here. You, Doctor Stephenson are a professor of modern parapsychology, natural, yet still unexplained phenomenon, the hidden depths of the intricacies of the human mind and its bearing on unseen physical phenomenon. You, Father Heathers, a devote believer in the Christian faith, your almost limitless knowledge of the Bible and its earliest histories and the most greatest theologian in all of London. Ms Sarah Tuttle, a medium of the highest standing in the community, your name shines in the field of the medium community and the ability to contact the dead. And lastly, the most interesting of you here, Doctor Furlong, an expert in the recently discovered and unusual phenomenon of Electronic Voice Phenomenon. The ability to contact the dead through the means of electronic recording equipment.”
“Hmn,” Doctor Stephenson uttered suddenly, extending his vision to the ceiling, a smug smile on his face. “So, you’re one of those insane individuals then, are you. You hear the voice of your dead grandfather through the radio, do you? Huh, you’re just as mad as the man who discovered it, I forget his name, now.”
Doctor Furlong embraced the plastic case in front of him with his arms in the defensive posture, shielding whatever was inside from his venomous words. He shot upwards suddenly into a standing position and threw the book he was carrying onto the table. His angered and contorted face staring unrelentingly at the hurtful man.
“I should have know you’d take that attitude to this insightful and completely brilliant phenomenon. I’ve heard all the spiteful remarks that people have come up with, the stupid ramblings and quick explanations. Well, let me tell you something. The evidence for this is infallible, there isn’t an ounce of room for doubt of its existence or its proof. Its here, right in front of us. And idiots like you will learn the truth.”
“Oh, yes, I’m sure we will.”
Doctor Furlong had had enough of his remarks and was about to walk up to him and hit him before Sarah Tuttle raised her hand out toward him and stopping him, her silver bracelet glinting in the bright light of the lamp on the other side of the table. Doctor Furlong looked down at the girl at her troubled gaze at him, then after a few moments settled himself down and returned to his seat, carefully picking up the book he threw down and holding it in his hands.
“Now,” Said Mr Hawkins. “If we are all quite finished with these childish outbursts, I will explain everything to you. You are all the best four in your fields, you have sufficient learning and experience in your chosen fields and have only the utmost knowledge and the greatest degree of your personal vocations. And that, my friends is why I chose all of you to be my staff in a particularly intriguing and strange case that we have all been studying for man years, though despite numerous attempts to study it and gain an insight into what exactly is going, we have so far been unable to discover anything more than what I will tell you.”
Doctor Furlong looked at the others beside confused then back at Mr Hawkins, leaning closer toward him. “But, what exactly is this case, where is it?”
Mr Hawkins looked at him squarely. “Vautusceen House.”
Everyone jumped in surprise and muted shock, their mouths open partly. Everyone, including Doctor Stephenson reacted the same and looked at each other very seriously.
“I can see from your reactions that you recognise the name.” A bright smile revealing his slightly yellowed and crooked teeth appeared on Mr Hawkins face. “Tell me, do you know any of the details of why it is refuted to be such a damnable place?”
Everyone looked at each other nervously, as though unwilling to speak or acknowledge that they knew anything at all. Each of them passed worried glances to one another and quick glances with their wide-open eyes. Finally, after much hesitation, Doctor Ernest Furlong leaned forward and cupped his hands together in front of him.
“Well,” he said trembling slightly. “I’ve heard some, only the basics and the highlights, if you could call them that. But, as far as I can remember, it was built by a wealthy cult leader called Valerious Vautusceen who, I think, made his money on the legions of prostitutes in his employment. Anyway, he and the masses of followers he had bought a huge area of land and used workers, who were basically just slaves, to work terrible conditions in a mine a few miles away inside a great mountain to mine out the soot black very strong stone that was buried inside. They carted the stone down to a site in the centre of the land and built a great huge mansion shaped like a church where they could worship some insane religion. That’s all that I know.”
Mr Hawkins looked at him for a few moments with a great concentrated stare, his hands held together and suspended by his elbows that rested on the table. “Very well,” he said in a flat tone. “I supposed that you would know that much. I can understand the hesitation from all of you and your unwillingness to speak. I’ve have heard the numerous stories about the structure myself, and I know that they are not comfortable listening material.”
Sarah Tuttle looked at Ernest with a confused expression. “How was the man able to be head of such a powerful group with so much money that he was able to get away with it?”
Ernest thought for a moment before answering. “I think he had his claws in the richest and most high up people in the nearby town that was only a mile or so from his mansion. He had them wrapped round his finger. No one could touch them. That is-”
“That is,” Mr Hawkins said suddenly breaking in. “Until the police and the authorities grew tired of their incessant hellish activities and unnatural habits that they forcibly removed power from the townspeople, stormed into the mansion and arrested the cult. What they found inside was beyond anything they could imagine. Debauchery, live sacrifices, murder, vice, torture, devil-worship, bestiality, necrophilia, cannibalism, rape, child-molestation. The list could go on.
The cult members, along with Valerious, were dragged to the mine high up in the mountains and then hung them from a gallows suspended over the endless vertical hole straight into the mine itself. After they were killed, their bodies were dropped straight into the hole and abandoned there. Valerious was the last to be killed by hanging and was completely gutted before he finally fell into death and was thrown with the rest.”
Everyone’s reaction was the same, a ghoulish and extremely uncomfortable feeling of nausea, sickness and sickening images tearing through the invisible barriers in their minds.
“Anyway, so as not to dwell on the morbid and horrid subjects any longer. The house has been completely deserted for over a century, not a single presence, human or otherwise, according to our sources has been near nor inside the structure. However, because of the countless stories and the many atrocities that happened there, the building is now one of our highest ranking assignments which must be investigated as soon as possible to discover just what exactly is happening inside its walls, to collate data, as much as possible and report on its current, ‘behaviour.’ This is precisely the reason for your presence here, now. We have chosen you to be the ones who will study the mansion and collate all necessary data.”
Everyone except for Doctor Stephenson suddenly felt the shock and overwhelming feeling of fear surge up through their bodies like a dam ready to burst. The whole idea of being within something that was considered so dangerous and so gruesome in its history was too much to bear. Doctor Stephenson simply smiled and leaned back in his chair. “So, let me get this straight. You want me to leave behind my very important project behind that you took me away from, go to some so-called haunted house with these pathetic religious idealists. All for you and your ‘Brotherhood of Mystery?’ Who in the hell are you anyway, what is this group of yours exactly, where do you come from?”
Mr Hawkins smiled with a sinister delight, as though mentally revelling in some great secret that only he knew of and relishing the idea that he was the only one who knew this secret.
“You would receive, in benefit, a lot of experience in something far beyond your understanding by undertaking this venture, as well as further experience on your credentials.”
“Oh, for gods sake,” Doctor Stephenson said disgusted. “I have enough of this childish game of yours and your insane ramblings, I’m getting away from here as quickly as possible. If I may do so?” He said sarcastically.
Mr Hawkins nodded. “Why of course, you aren’t a prisoner here, you’re free to leave whenever you wish.”
Doctor Stephenson bolted upwards and walked the few paces to the door, his hand on the doorknob ready to turn.
“How does £4, 000, 000 sound to you?”
Doctor Stephenson stopped in his tracks, his body completely frozen as he pondered the question in his head, his eyes staring blindly at the countless thin grains of wood and splinter that formed the sturdy wooden door. After a few moments, his head turned to Mr Hawkins, as well as the shocked faces of the rest.
“You are completely serious about this, are you.” Stephenson said with a sigh, as though his mere curiosity about the money was a complete betrayal of his principles.
“Oh, yes,” Said Hawkins. “I am absolutely deadly serious.” He clicked his fingers and the sinister looking man on his right stepped forward and took out a large black leather suitcase from inside his long coat and placed it flat on the table, the handle facing the assembled open-mouthed. Hawkins reached into his breast pocket and took out a small silver key attached to a chain that connected to the inside of his pocket. He unlocked the case and lifted the top half revealing piles and piles of crisp brand new notes, each pile stacked carefully and neatly into position, each note and each pile for each of the four persons totalling £16, 000, 000. The reaction of everyone seeing the money here before them and the promise of it to come washed away any kind of fear or nervousness of what they were all about to undertake.
“You are all sure I take it that you truly wish to undertake this assignment for us?” Asked Hawkins.
Everyone readily agreed, their greed and hunger for the money taking absolute control of their senses.
“Remember, only with the collated data presented in a report will gain you the payment of this money. Once the task is done in the correct procedure, you may all go your separate ways. Now, I must ask you to all sign this paper to prove to my superiors of your sincerity.”
He took out an A4 sized paper with four separate dotted lines printed on the front from a drawer in his desk and pushed it over to the eagerly awaiting four individuals who each signed their names as neatly as they were able due to the excited nervous shaking of their hands, all under the concentrated, mysterious watchful gaze of Mr Hawkins and the two men behind standing behind him, their narrowed eyes glazed grey in the shadow obscuring their unnatural faces.
Chapter Two
The road leading up toward Vautusceen House was long and rugged as the four doctors and one medium were drove up in one long and sleek black unmarked black car, tearing through the thick canopy of fog that totally enveloped the whole area, as though obscuring itself from the rest of the normal everyday world.
The road was strewn with pieces of discarded rubbish and other unrecognisable material. Tall, elongating trees continuously lined the outer rim of the road and followed on into the distance in one large great forest. Their strong bark made roots, body and limbs were soot black, their leaves almost gone from their skeletal like branches and lying like forgotten dried up bright coloured corpses scattered about on the ground, occasionally gathered up by the strong wind that incessantly gathered its surroundings in a cold unfeeling blanket. The many kinds of animals and rodents that once made their homes and hunting grounds here had now long since abandoned this unnatural place.
The four scientists, each masters of various fields of the unknown, watched the curious and eerie looking sight outside as it passed by their rain soaked windows, constantly deliberating to themselves in their heads of whether they were doing the right thing or not by coming. For a while, the promise of money from the mysterious ‘Brotherhood of Mystery’ grabbed their attention and filled their hearts with envy and greed, they had signed their possible safety away when they signed their names on the dotted lines, hungry for wealth as it lay just inches from them. But, now, that insatiable desire had passed them by, like a pop phenomenon that gradually dissipated over a short period of time, replacing their excited feelings with feelings of doubt, anxiousness, worry and even fear that gradually seemed to get stronger as each second that passed, as they grew ever closer to the completely unknown structure that lay in wait for them.
Doctor Stephenson watched the trees and foliage outside his windows blurrily pass him by with nothing in his heart and mind other than a slight anxiety. Of course, over these few hours of them driving up here, he never once allowed for the possibility that Vautusceen House was haunted, that one two or possibly more spirits continually prowled the abandoned and long echoing corridors within as they searched for peace and forgiveness. Such a thing was not possible in his mind, things like that were only the ramblings of terrified human beings throughout the ages that desperately concocted a place for them in this strange world and alleviated their fear of total obliteration that would one day come.
The slight fear that nagged away inside his mind was one far more closer to earth, yet one that was still partially unproved. It was the fear of what kinds of energy where present inside the building. Certain natural energies he had read and observed before such as powerful telekinetic abilities or strong negative incidents or feelings that have occurred in the past could gather in a certain place, which had the right ingredients to store it such as certain stonework, would generate an impossibly powerful energy field which could have unknown, but negative and possibly dangerous effects on anybody inside it, possibly drowsiness, vomiting and quite possibly brain damage.
This phenomenon which had been largely unrecorded and examined before, but well studied by Doctor Stephenson, was a great part of his project back at the university before he was dragged away before he had a chance to complete it. If he had been allowed more time to study it, he would have had the right knowledge of how to combat it if and when it affected him or the others.
The truth was however that he had to admit to himself was that he didn’t have any idea at all of what kind of energy to expect from Vautusceen House and could only hope that it was combatable, or more convenient, wasn’t there at all.
Doctor Stephenson watched rather uncomfortably as Father Heathers clasped his hands together in prayer beside him, his head lowered rather deeply, his eyes screwed up tightly.
Everyone felt the sudden unnatural cold gather around them as they neared the house, as though they were open suddenly to the unfeeling elements outside. Everyone responded by tightening their coats around their necks and quickly slipping their quivering hands inside woolly gloves, sitting mute disbelief as they beheld their breath escaping from their mouths. The sight encouraged them to immediately wrap up even warmer.
They looked out of their windows as they watched the featureless grey-streaked sky above suddenly descend into a pitch-black darkness, devoid of stars or the moon or any kind of friendly looking light anywhere.
“What’s going on?” Doctor Stephenson asked the bowler hat wearing driver in front. “Why’s it suddenly gone so dark, its only 3:30 pm?”
“It’s the trees,” the driver said flatly without turning his head. “Because of the thick concentration of trees that are growing in the area close to the mansion, they’re always blocking out the sunlight putting everything into permanent darkness. The sun never shines here.”
Stephenson sniffed loud enough so the driver would hear his distaste and sat back in his black leather covered seat, quickly averting his eyes from the priest beside him. The situation was getting slightly worse with each foot that the wheels covered, he didn’t need any religious nonsense. Hopefully, this pointless endeavour would be over soon enough and he could collect his four million pounds before any of this religious brainwashing could have its influence on him.
Before long, the unnatural and uncomfortable cold and slight breeze quickly began to grow more in power, transforming into something almost like a tornado in a matter of minutes, tearing up the grim-looking forest around everyone like matchsticks, turning the endless streams of dead leaves into a psychical canopy of onslaught, causing long and powerful trees to sway violently from side to side then break them in half like thin and brittle matchsticks.
“What the hell is going on here!?” Screamed Doctor Furlong as loud as he could to the driver as him and the others flailed over and over each other as the powerful tornado-like wind constantly threatened to topple them over.
“I don’t know, Sir,” he answered in a equally loud, but strangely calm tone. “The Brotherhood of Mystery has never seen anything like this before. But, rest assured, we’ll get you to Vautusceen House quickly and safely!”
Though everyone was being constantly knocked against each other and against the insides of the doors, they still questioned the ethics to the drivers answer. Surely, it would be wise to turn back and get out of harms way before the freak and unusual weather tore them apart and wait a while, or better yet, go back to London, declare the mission as a failure, and blame it on bad luck. Somehow, in a slightly disturbing way, it seemed like whoever The Brotherhood of Mystery was, they were putting the mission and the data they wanted over the lives of those they sent to gather the data. The sudden thought caused a slight painful twinge to pass through everyone like a barely noticeable electric shock. A brief though passed between everyone as they quickly pondered whether to take control of the car themselves, dump the driver and get the hell away from whatever kind of danger they were putting themselves into. But, the constant and ongoing itch of curiosity and the promise of something new to learn that resided in the deepest regions of the human instinct reared its familiar, though not always welcome head and demanded complete loyalty from those it whispered its sweet promises of something more in everyone’s ears.
The black car continued on its almost impossible journey through the hurricane attacked forest, the driver constantly reaffirming his control over the steering wheel and forcing the car back onto its four wheels as the powerful wind continually tried to raise it upwards. They tore up great piles of dirt and mud and scattered leaves as they put the car into its highest speed and gear and raced on down the darkness engulfed dirt road.
After what seemed like an endless journey of being thrown from one side of the car to the other and desperately trying to stay in one piece, the car finally reached the threshold of victory. The huge black tower shaped structure pointed high into the air. Vautusceen House.
The driver pressed his foot as hard as he could on the brake pedal as he saw the main gates suddenly appear out of the darkness right in front of him, the wheels screeched loudly as they struggled to stop through the hopelessly muddy and rain-drenched road. Everyone braced themselves for an eventual impact with the gates and raised their arms over their upper torsos, fearing the rusted metal would punch a hole through the windshield and impale them all. The car quickly began to slow in a matter of seconds, dragging up multitudes of dirt, mud and leaves under its wheels, then coming to a dead stop just as the nose of the car began to press hard onto the rusted metallic gates.
Everyone calmed themselves when they saw they were safe, relaxing their shaking arms on their legs, sighing with relief. Father Heathers grabbed the cross around his neck with trembling hands and kissed it.
Everyone at the back of the car looked around and out of the window expecting the uncontrollable winds that threatened to batter them to death, then stared in surprise and mild shock as they realised it has gone, completely dissipated as quickly as it appeared, replaced by nothing more than a strong breeze that blew the leaves across the outside of the car, returning this sudden and unnatural night to quiet. The driver was right, the thick concentration of trees in this area was completely blocking out the sunlight and any other details of the sky. Everyone felt slightly unnerved at the prospect of working in endless darkness.
“What is this,” Doctor Stephenson asked in quite a fearful voice to the driver who was sitting quite comfortably in his seat. “Where did the wind go, what’s happening here?”
“Please,” the driver reassured holding up his open hand. “Nothing will be gained through panicking. I don’t know where the wind went. As I said, The Brotherhood of Mystery has never seen anything like this before. Hopefully, this new strange information will be included in your report.”
“Oh, the hell with your ramblings. I’m going to go inside the damned place and get this over with. How do we get inside?”
The driver pointed outside the window. “There, that is the man you want. He will tell you were everything is and what needs to be done.”
Everyone stepped out of the car and stood by the open doors as they spotted what he was pointing at. A tall man stood beside the mangled and rusted gothic-looking main gates, behind him was a tall stone made pillar with a rusted useless gas lamp sitting on top. Large bolts were driven into the right sides of the pillar to fix the rusted and distorted looking gate in place.
A long black cape was draped across the man’s whole body, swaying from side to side by the breeze. A large bowler hat on his head concealed his features with a deep unrelenting shadow that draped over his face like a mask. His hands were white and pale, possibly due to the darkness and lack of colour anywhere, or perhaps another reason. In his hands swung a small set of old gothic looking keys.
Everyone stood without motion beside the open doors of the car while their minds wavered like a clock pendulum from side to side.
They all knew they had the chance here and right now to leave this frightening place if they so wished, just go back to civilisation and forget this ever happened, and try to forget about the four million they would have been paid if they went through with it. They each glanced inside the car, at the sleek and shiny leather of the seats, the comforting bright light that shone from the small overhead switch in-between the back and front seats.
They craned their heads up as far as they could to see the extent of the silhouetted shape of Vautusceen House up in the black sky that was entangled by the countless limbs and branches of the many, many trees. They stared with a morbid fascination at the cold and lifeless building looming in front of them, the thick mist circling the building in a strange kind of dance, every one of them seriously considering what unknown and possibly dangerous things they would find inside its soulless stone walls.
After only an instant of deliberating, all of them decided to stay, to see it through to the end and hopefully find something none of them had ever seen nor experienced before. They walked through the muddy bramble covered earth toward the strange man who waved a silent order to the driver who responded by reversing the car and driving on down the blackened path, the strong bright headlights piercing through the darkness as he went.
Everyone watched the car leave with a slightly shaky feeling deep inside them. They turned round to see the mysterious man holding out his arm to them, the rusty metallic keys dangling from his hand.
“These are the keys you will need.” He said in a harsh unnerving voice as he handed them to Doctor Stephenson. “And here is a map for the house and the immediate grounds in front and behind it. You will find comfortable lodgings inside and a suitable room to sleep in. It would be wise and no doubt useful if you allocated one particular room specifically for the accumulation of your data. We have reason to believe that there is a suitable larder prepared for you in the freezer area of the kitchen.”
“What? Hold on a minute.” Doctor Stephenson interrupted suddenly. “What do you mean, there should be a suitable larder. Didn’t you stock the kitchen up with food using your own people?”
The cloaked man made no indication of any kind of response, as if he hadn’t heard a word he said. Everyone watched him feeling slightly unnerved as he remained perfectly still, his hands crossed in front of him and covered in shadow, his long darkened cloak blowing eerily in the wind.
“No,” He said finally. “We didn’t bring any of The Brotherhood of Mystery in before you came, we imagined it would ‘affect’ the success of your mission. The house has been empty for one hundred years. Interruption of any kind in a place such as this could affect the mission.”
A worried and anxious expression suddenly appeared on Sarah Tuttle’s face. “What do you mean?” She asked him in a worried child-like voice. “What is inside here?”
The cloaked man turned his head toward her, his face still obscured by the shadow draped across it. “We are not certain of that, as of yet. That will be your mission. To discover what lies behind these doors.”
The statement didn’t bode well for anyone to hear. The fact that no one had even been inside this place for so long to check it out and make sure it was safe, coupled with the fact that the status of the supplies in the larder or their living conditions were merely conjecture and something to be guessed at made the whole situation seem pointless, amateur-like, even dangerous. None of them had any clue who the hell The Brotherhood of Mystery were and what they’re intentions were, but they imagined that this would have been above board and at least relatively safe, at least enough to keep whatever was inside at arms length.
“I suggest that you make your way inside the house as soon as possible. This wind is unpredicted and could grow worse at any moment. I see that you have all of your relevant equipment and textbooks. A car will be here to pick you up in three days, hopefully you will have the data we so require. Good luck to you all. Be seeing you.” He said tipping his cap to them.
The man turned round, wrapped his cloak tightly around himself and began to slowly make his way through the thick entanglement of trees and the countless numbers of sharp claw-like branches.
“Hey, wait,” Doctor Stephenson shouted after him, holding out his arm. “There are some other things I need to discuss with . . .”
But, strangely, the man seemed to disappear into the trees and the darkness as soon as he entered them, causing everyone to instantly recoil a little in surprise. Wherever he went, he wasn’t going to answer any more questions.
Doctor Stephenson relaxed his arm back at his side. He lifted the heavy metallic keys in his left hand and looked at them for a moment as he silently deliberated to himself. After a moment or two, he simply sighed, then turned and looked at the others behind him, all of them looking at him with strange expressions as though anticipating something he might or might not do. Father Heathers clutched the crucifix hanging from his neck tightly in his hand, Sarah Tuttle held both her hands clasped in front of her, two identical dark purple incense sticks stuck out of her hand bag. Doctor Furlong clasped his large black plastic Gladstone case against his chest, his expression faltering sometimes into a slightly aggravated expression when his sight caught that of Doctor Stephenson’s.
“Well,” He said again with another deep sigh, tossing the keys up and down slightly in his open-palmed hand. “We’d better get to work.”
Father Heathers and Sarah Tuttle both crossed themselves as all of them began to walk to up the darkness filled path, using all of their strength combined as they forced the rusted gate out of the way, forcibly pushing open the rusted and disjointed metal as hard as they could through the deep and slightly hardened mud and discarded leaves. After a few near exhaustive efforts, the gate was finally open large enough for them to squeeze through.
They all looked at the path ahead feeling a little useless. The path was plunged completely into perfect blackness, no one could see the path up to the house at all, not even able to see where the silhouetted images of the countless trees and bushes finally gave way to the lighter shade of darkness that was the sky. Everywhere, there was darkness, strong enough to make them rub their eyes hard to ensure they weren’t all blind. The only thing that was clear enough was the huge powerful looking image of Vautusceen House standing high above, quite obviously a much darker shade of black than anywhere else.
“Wait, hold on a minute.” Sarah Tuttle said suddenly reaching into her handbag. She fiddled around inside for a few moments before taking out a small handheld torch. She pointed it in front of them and switched it on. Finally, and with a sense of relief, they saw the path, thick with dirt, some mud and a multitude of dead leaves scattered everywhere. She pointed the torch upwards in the sky and saw the jumbled entanglement the leaf-less bony branches criss-crossing and overlapping, some of the branches had met with another and created a strong knot binding them together. The endless series of this hanging above them was another stark reminder of how the darkness ruled this place and light, no matter how powerful, would never shine here ever.
Sarah pointed the torch at the house, but saw no distinguishing details such as brickwork, possible gargoyles and only extremely small windows. They were too far from the house from here to see anything. She shined it back down at the path and began to walk, allowing everyone to stay behind and follow her up.
The strong breeze had all but disappeared into the background now and was nothing but a loud whistle in the branches. Nobody could hear the slightest sound of a bird singing or a small animal searching for food in the undergrowth. This place was dead. Only the sounds of their footsteps and the eerie whistle of the wind behind them broke the stiff uncomfortable silence that wrapped around them.
After what seemed like an endless walk up the un-kept and overgrown path, they finally reached the main doors of Vautusceen House. They were large, almost double the size of a man. Two large stone doorknockers with roaring lion effigies were fixed onto both of the double doors, their eyes glared menacingly at everyone that looked at them. The wood of the doors was dark coloured and seemed to be made of oak. A great amount of resin had been applied to them some years before, but was now chipping and flaking away like charred firewood, the rest of the doors seemed to be following in their wake.
“Bring the torch around here.” Asked Doctor Stephenson. Sarah angled the torch to where he was slumped forwards and the light found his hands holding the set of the keys to where he felt the door-lock. He pushed the relevant key in the lock that was engraved ‘Front door.’ He twisted the key around in the lock numerous times as he struggled to chip away the roughness inside it that had gathered over a hundred years. Finally, the key slipped into the correct position and he began to turn it.
Sarah withdrew the torchlight from him and angled it up above her and across the front of the house.
The stonework of the building seemed smooth in most places, aside from the occasional part that was rough with many tiny bumps and lumps stretched across its surface. Deep gouges were torn into some of the stones, as if something long ago had forcibly removed pieces of the stone, or something incredibly strong and heavy was dragged across it. There was no sign of any gargoyles of any kind. Sarah felt slightly happy about this, it would have been a shame in some ways to have them here. This mission was very important, not just to The Brotherhood of Mystery, but to herself and gargoyles fixed into the stonework would have given the place some kind of humorous look, like the kind of haunted house you would find in a children’s book.
Hearing her words spoken to herself, she immediately bit her tongue. She said it, she said the word haunted. It wasn’t a word she used as haunted was simply something else that belonged inside a children’s book. Though, she knew full well that this building could occupy spirits, spirits that possibly sought to escape this hideous and hopeless place. She hoped she could help them if there were any. She was a competent medium, experienced and knowledgeable in many areas of spirit incantation, table-rapping, séances and the ability to communicate directly with spirits should the need ever arise. Though, after hearing The Brotherhood of Mystery’s representative speaking of what went on here and the kind of people that lived within, she wasn’t exactly sure that she wanted them to communicate.
Her torchlight reached further upwards and stopped at a small window. The frame was made of some kind of strong and powerful wood, the glass reflected the light but emitted only darkness from within its as yet undiscovered interiors.
She shuddered and felt cold at the sudden unnatural feeling that something was standing at the window from inside the room, its dead, lifeless and evil filled eyes were staring down at her with some hideous contempt.
She jumped with surprise suddenly and spun round as she heard the loud metallic hollow sound echoing out from the lock on the door, desperately trying to keep the torch steady in her hand as it shook violently.
Doctor Stephenson retracted the key from the lock and dropped it into his pocket. He lay his hands flat against the doors and pushed as hard as he could. The doors refused to open properly at first, due to the mass of rotted dead wood that clogged up the narrow gap in-between each of the doors, but after more struggle and force, they finally came open wide, breaking the dead wood into many tiny pieces. A rush of sepulchral air escaped from within the house and echoed its way past everyone into the night like a wailing soul, ringing out its wailing voice at the pleasure of being released from some tormenting prison.
Everyone stepped forward a few paces into the doorway as they struggled to see any kind of feature, image or anything that would give them they’re bearings. But, everyone saw nothing but the same endless expanse of pure darkness that equally matched the darkness outside. Their footsteps echoed hollowly as they came up against what felt like stone, or possibly metal, the hollow sounds rushing around them uncomfortably and racing hurriedly deep inside the house.
Everyone looked at each other suddenly as they noticed something, something strange and irregular. They leaned backwards and stood stock still, their ears attuned to some strange sound coming from somewhere around them. Then, they noticed it, there was absolutely no sound coming from anywhere, even the whistling of the wind behind them had vanished leaving nothing behind but a sudden unnatural silence.
The winds began to steadily pick up again, slowly at first, then gradually began to grow more and more stronger in only a matter of a few moments. The wind started to blow everyone’s coats and personal equipment in their faces, whipping them hard with some acute powerful force, everyone shielded their faces and closed their eyes as hard as they could, but the steadily rising wind meant that this was futile and pointless.
Everyone could suddenly feel their feet being pushed across the floor by the wind in opposite directions, the hard leather of their shoes and their minute strength of their toes as they struggled to find a grip in the soil was useless, the wind seemed to have a force superior to that of any wind ever seen before.
“Quick,” Doctor Ernest Furlong shouted and screamed at the top of his voice over the screaming and unbearable high whistling of the wind. “We have to get inside the house, now, or this wind will pick us off our feet!”
Everyone turned to look at him with heavily scrunched up eyes and their face and torsos awash with dead leaves, they quickly nodded in response to him and summoned every nerve ending and ounce of strength inside them to get them all into the house and away from this chaos. Throwing up one leg after another into the air and tearing their way through like a pen through paper, they steadily made their way further through the doorway and into what they could only guess was the main hall.
After a great effort and great strength, they finally made it inside the house. They dropped their equipment and textbooks on the floor and all of them pushed as hard as they could against the rotten front doors, hoping to god that although they were brittle and weak, they would have enough strength to hold up against this. In a moment of gambling their hopes on it, they began to push the doors closed, constantly being forced backwards by the god-like power of the wind.
They all stopped their team effort suddenly as they heard something else coming from outside. They looked around at each other with their hair whipping across their faces and realised with horror that it was the sound crashing trees collapsing to the ground all over the place.
Their heads shot upwards suddenly as they heard a number of trees crashing down in front of them. With one last conjoined effort of will, they pushed the doors closed and locked them securely, all of them drawing away from the door as quick as they could into the darkness around them and heard the trees smash down like an exploding bomb directly in front of the doors, pinning them inside the house irrevocably.
Chapter Three
Doctor Stephenson and Doctor Furlong, with their combined yet small strength, continually pushed, kicked and threw their shoulders against the strong wooden doors as they tried in vain to get them open, constantly throwing their weight against the tough splintered wood and somehow push the enormous trees outside that pinned them in like rats in a cage. But, it was futile, no human strength in the world could shift them away. Slowly their weaknesses began to show throw, their attempts at pushing the door open became slower and sluggish as they gulped for air, screwing up their faces and exhaling air throughout their nostrils as they smelled the stale, rank and rust-choked atmosphere around them.
Eventually, both of them had sunk down toward the hard stone floor as they continued to gather up as much as air as they could to recover themselves. Doctor Stephenson was still hunched up slightly, trying as hard as he could to keep upright on his otherwise energy drained legs.
“Come on,” he said through gasping breaths to Father Heathers and waving his toward the doors. “You have to help us . . .with the doors. Hurry . . .up.”
Father Heathers remained in his standing position a few feet away, overshadowed entirely by the intensely thick darkness apart from his legs that quivered with anxiety and fear. His shaking hands held tightly like a steel clamp to the tiny crucifix hanging from his neck.
“Come on,” Doctor Stephenson asked again walking a few steps toward him. “We have to get out of here. In case you didn’t realise, we’re pinned down inside here and we have to get out. Do you hear me?”
He stepped forward and grabbed his arm tightly, trying as hard as he could to pull him away from his frozen stance and toward the doors. He felt the nervous tension within his muscles, his racing pulse as it darted like a bullet throughout his arteries, he heard the chattering and tiny whimpering from his mouth. The glint of the crucifix shone out of the darkness toward for an instant. Doctor Stephenson merely regarded his fear with a repressed anger and impatience. He didn’t have time for his pathetic child-like whimpers or even his worry at this moment. He needed everyone here behind him to get out and away from this damned place. At that moment, he would have gladly thrown the priest against the door like a battering ram if it helped them get out into the open.
With a frustrated tug at his arm, he finally pushed Father Heathers away, realising it was futile trying to get his help.
“What good is your damn faith when your god doesn’t lift a finger to help.” He said in one final acidic outburst against him and walked away toward the door and leaned against it, his eyes wearily focused on what little of the doors he could see in the darkness.
“What about a back way?” Doctor Furlong said suddenly as if deep in thought. “Couldn’t we get out through a back door, through a kitchen, or something?”
Doctor Stephenson exhaled a deep breath of air and allowed it to embrace for a moment before stepping away. He walked up toward Sarah Tuttle and held out his hand. “Would you give me the torch, please?” He asked in a calm, yet slightly impatient voice. She handed him the torch. He reached inside his jacket pocket and drew out the small, wet and slightly torn and faded map of Vautusceen House and pointed the torch at it as he held it in his left hand, looking as hard as he could for another way out. Doctor Furlong stood beside him and looked to, though, after a few moments of studying the map intently as they could, carefully following each and every room and marked line, it was clear that there didn’t seem to be any other way out of this place. They were truly and apparently irretrievably pinned inside with no way out.
In a sudden fit of outrage and a strong grunt, Doctor Stephenson threw the soggy map away, allowing it to drift hauntingly through the inescapable darkness around them all, until it finally settled lifelessly on the cold stone floor.
“That’s it,” Doctor Stephenson uttered in an annoyed tone as he began to pace back on forth across the floor, his hurried footsteps echoing unnaturally around the room. “That’s it, we’re trapped in here, we can’t get out. Those bastards at that damned Brotherhood of Mystery have trapped us inside. There’s no way out!”
Doctor Furlong watched him as he paced over and over his own footsteps in the endless surrounding gloom, watching him rant and rave like some demented patient in a lunatic asylum. He could tell that he wasn’t someone who reacted well when a crisis was on his hands. He supposed that the nearest he ever got to a crisis or a problem was something within the fields of his own work, something under the real, but still equally unknown field of Parapsychology. When in that situation, he was experiencing something that was known to him, something that he had studied religiously for many years and so understood it and knew what had to be done. There, he had his relevant information, machinery and notes and own initiative to go off .
But, in the space of only a few minutes, he had totally flipped out, losing all sense of calm and careful thinking, all because nature, though strange nature at that, had decided that a strong wind would barricade them in here with a few dislodged trees.
Although, despite the man’s almost maniacal ravings, Doctor Furlong himself felt slightly unnerved by all of this. The stark fact that they were indeed trapped within this strange and totally unexplored building did give pause for some serious thought. True, given his experience in his own unique field of study, he knew full well that there was more to life than the material and the man-made, and while he still firmly believed that the freak wind was undoubtedly caused by some terrestrial phenomenon, the part of him that knew better still managed to create a tiny crack of doubt in his logic.
He looked again at Doctor Stephenson, still proclaiming that their situation was dire and on the brink of losing all sense of control and emotion. Doctor Furlong began to grow tired of his behaviour, regardless of the fact that deep down he rather enjoyed watching him behave like this, to until quite recently patronise and scorn anything outside of his own treasured knowledge and field that he held onto like the Bible. And to see him here and now behaving like a distressed child lost in a busy overcrowded street-side.
Doctor Furlong composed himself and held himself tightly as he tightened his hand ready to slap Doctor Stephenson and get him back under control. He began to walk toward him in a hurried pace and extended out his arm as he approached when he stopped in his tracks and immediately turned his head round to the side, as did everyone else.
It took a moment for everyone to register what it was they were hearing just a few feet away from them, but when they finally did, they could hardly believe nor understand it. A telephone somewhere near was ringing excessively, piercing the darkness and the echoing sounds that everyone made and reaching their acute ears, ringing with a loud and distressed tone. But, how was it possible that a building that had been abandoned for well over a hundred years that had no kind of electrical cables running through its body, and hadn’t even had a visit from an insect in all that time, suddenly able to possess a phone that worked and that someone somewhere had the number to.
Everyone looked at each wearing frightened expressions on their faces, somehow taking some small comfort from the sight of each other which offered some kind of mental escape from this terrible frightening situation they were all in. Eventually, after a few frightened moments, Doctor Furlong composed himself, sighed, grabbed the torch from Doctor Stephenson’s hand and walked over to where the sound was coming from.
He shone the torch and angled the beam of light directly in front of him. In a nanosecond, the darkness within the light was lifted, revealing something utterly strange and rather uncomfortable.
The first thing all of them saw was the stairs, running from the bottom floor to some high and unrecognisable distance upwards. The stairs were made of some kind of metallic gauze or something similar that formed the bulk of the staircase, the inside of which was hollow. A long thick dark red carpet with a gold coloured intricate pattern sewn along the sides stretched from the bottom of the stairs to which it unveiled itself into a large square shaped piece, and climbed up each step toward the next floor up. Doctor Furlong shone his torch up as far as he could to see further upwards, but the distance of the torchlight was to limited to see the first floor and could only make out small fuzzy features.
He shone the torchlight toward the surround walls. They looked as though they were made of the same kind of material that the floor was made of. Some kind of unique black stone native only to this area. The walls were beset with large and small deep holes, cracks had started to appear in many places, allowing the small blackened metallic scones suspended on the walls to tilt to the side as their supports were slowly allowing them to fall away.
Doctor Furlong angled to the torchlight again to where he could hear the sound of the ringing telephone. The beam of light landed on a small black 1950’s telephone that sat on a small wooden table beside the bottom of the staircase
What the hell is a phone doing in here? He though quietly to himself as the machine continued to tick over unanswered.
Finally, he lowered the torch and walked over to the telephone and picked up the receiver.
“Hello,” he said rather matter-of-factly. “Who is this? How did you get this number?”
An awkward silence passed for a few moments before a man’s strangely emotionless voice sounded through the quiet static of the receiver.
“You must continue,” came the harsh monotonous and emotionless voice from the earpiece. Ernest didn’t recognise the voice at all, but guessed that it must be one of the many ‘troops’ of the bizarre ‘Brotherhood of Mystery.’
“You have to help us,” he said in the most relaxed voice he could summon from his throat, desperate not to cause any more anxiety in anybody else. “We’re trapped inside here, a powerful wind knocked over some trees outside and they’ve toppled outside the main doors. We’re pinned in, we need your help to get out.”
“You do not need any help at this moment.” The voice was hard sounding, as if unfettered by hearing the situation they were all in, glazing over Ernest’s nervous words with a simple unfeeling sentence that seemed to abandon their plight with a selfish response.
Ernest couldn’t believe his answer, yet felt slightly unsurprised to hear it. After hearing the few words and watching their behaviour in such short a time, Ernest came to somehow expect this kind of thing from all of them. His lips closed together and tightened, as did his fingers as they angrily gripped the receiver close to his ear, so hard that he could feel the material of the telephone rubbing hard against his skin. In that one moment, he felt like choking the man to death, or at the very least, drag him by the throat into this situation that they all felt dumped into.
“What the hell do you mean,” ‘we don’t need help.’ “I’ve just told you that we’re trapped in here, we have to get out and you’re the only people that can help us.”
“As I said, you do not need help. Your situation is not dire at this time and we will only intervene when events spiral out of control. You will collect the data as stated before to you and will present it to us in the nearest possible time.”
Ernest held back his anger this time, it would do him no good and he needed answers from whoever this was.
“Well, if you can’t help us, if you don’t have the tools, or something, what if I contacted the emergency services, the fire brigade. I could give them directions to this place and-”
“You will do nothing of that nature!” The voice screamed from the earpiece, throttling Ernest’s eardrums with a deafening tone that made it painful for a few seconds, forcing him to retract the receiver a few inches away. “You will not contact anyone, the telephone has only direct link between The Brotherhood of Mystery and Vautusceen House. It doesn’t have the capability to reach any other locations.”
The nagging desire constantly told Ernest to push for the answer of why if the telephone could only reach The Brotherhood of Mystery and they had a direct link with it, why did they put the phone in here in the first place when they said that no one had been inside it for over a century. Plus, the question of why they phoned here in the first place, was it check that they were here, or simply to gloat in some sadistic way. The questions burned like cinders inside his mind, screaming for answers from these mysterious people that sent them here. But, he knew in his heart and at the back of his mind that he would never get an answer to any of them, or at least, not the kind of answers he would hope for.
“From now on,” the voice continued as it returned to normal from its outburst of rage. “You will continue with your assignment of collating as much data as you can. Use the methods you are each adept at and try to discover as much as you can about this place. There is sufficient board and lodgings in the upper floors, comfortable beds, clean cutlery and dining requirements. The larder is stocked with a sufficient number of dry food and plenty of meat in the freezers. We will send someone in a car to collect you in a matter of days.”
With that final ending statement, the owner of the emotionless voice replaced the receiver and ended the call. The small ball of anger, doubt, disbelief and unanswered questions within Ernest made him feel a little disorientated for a few moments, so much so that he had a hard time placing his whereabouts, not even noticing the questioning faces of the others as they looked at him with an impatient gaze, waiting for some small piece of information from The Brotherhood of Mystery that would get them out of here as soon as possible. Through sheer control of his instincts, he replaced the receiver and listened to the soft single note of ringing from the telephone as it echoed of into the distance.
“Well,” Doctor Stephenson asked walking toward him with his hands out open palmed to him, the others following closely behind him. “What did they say, that was them wasn’t it, The Brotherhood of Mystery? Well, was it? Are we getting out of this damned place, or what?”
Ernest turned around to face them, his head hanging down to the floor, his mouth partly open and his eyes half closed as his mind struggled to fight its way through the enormous enigma inside him toward the light of free will. After a few disorientating moments, he recovered himself and drew his head upright toward everyone, taking in a quick deep breath of air. He looked at everyone for a split second as though he didn’t recognise them.
“Please,” Doctor Stephenson asked again pleadingly. “Tell us what’s happening, are they someone to help us?”
Ernest shook his head, his eyes trying hard not to meet everyone’s tortured gaze, darting his sight from one end of the unbreakable darkness around them to the other. “No,” he said finally. “They’re not coming to help us. They say we’re not in as bad a situation as we could be and they’ll only help when things get really bad.”
No-one could believe what they were hearing. How could someone just pass off the danger that you’re in as some simple predicament that you could easily get yourself out of without any help. None of them truly knew The Brotherhood of Mystery or how they thought, or what kind of standards they had, but they imagined that they would help someone when they needed it.
Everyone felt abandoned suddenly, as though cast off by some unforgiving, unfeeling power.
The sudden thought gave them the uncomfortable feeling that they didn’t know who these people were, what they stood for or what they really wanted out of this whole insane venture they had dropped them into. They truly were at the mercy of them, whoever they were and could only hope for their help when things could, or probably did get a lot worse.
“Are they just going to let us starve to death, then?” Doctor Stephenson said outraged, clenching his fists and hanging his arms down in the manner of a Neanderthal man. “How are we supposed to survive in this place?”
“He said that there was enough food still in the larder and its edible, everything’s clean and tidy and there’s enough rooms to be had. Right now, we have to do what we’ve been sent here to do. Everything will alright if we pull together and help each other when we have to. A few days will go by quickly if we don’t think about it.”
Sarah Tuttle and Father Heathers both nodded, more out of a defeatist attitude than out of agreement.
“Forget all of that shit!” Shouted Doctor Stephenson. “They’ve left us here, abandoned us. I’m getting out of here however way I can, I don’t care about the money or their damn data. I’m getting out somehow. There!”
He spun his body round as he searched frantically for an escape route and stopped as he turned ninety degrees, reaching out his hand and pointing toward the silhouetted image of the large double windows hanging a few feet from the floor. He ran over to them with frantic footsteps, almost slipping a few times as his feet skimmed across the smooth stone floor. He reached the windows and made numerous attempts to jump up toward before he got a tight grip on the rusted metal bars inside the glass. He pulled himself to the window ledge until he had a comfortable position against the windows then proceeded to bang his clenched fists against the glass, smashing it to pieces and sending countless fragments down to be shattered more as they crashed against the stone floor. The sounds of the violent act echoing throughout the darkened room.
He grunted as the sharp pain of smashing thought the glass with his bare hands shot like bullets through his arms and throughout the rest of his body, his brain sending messages to his consciousness, begging him to cease his painful act, his hands slowly overflowing with trickles of blood that began to drip everywhere around him. Yet, with all of this going on around and inside him, he continued relentlessly, ignoring the pain, filling his heart and mind with desperate thoughts of escape and to hell with the consequences. A faint glimmer of hope rushed through his system as he began to feel the smallest signs of the cold outside on his hands and arms and face, the trickling blood feeling almost icy as it ran like a river against his skin.
After a few moments of grunts of pain and loud sounds of echoing breaking glass, he stopped his frantic efforts, focusing his attention on something that was beyond the glass. With the incessant surrounding darkness, he was blind to see it and outstretched his arms and bloodied hands toward it, his fingers groping around frantically to understand what he was feeling, the ends of his fingers feeling constant sharp pain from the small pieces of glass that were stuck to the frames. He stopped his attempts when he realised what he was feeling. They were bars, thick metallic and stone bars stretched from one end of the window to the other, running from side to side and top to bottom.
He lowered his head down to face the windowsill and without warning uttered a shrill cry of pain and distress that filled the room with an endless echoing uproar of activity, bouncing off the walls, the floor and the ceiling, bringing the whole place to life in one almighty surge of activity. He banged his fists hard against the hard unrelenting bars in the window, feeling but hardly noticing the constant wash and splatter of his blood on his face and clothes as he constantly subjected his hands to more and more hideous onslaught.
“We’re never going to get out of here!” He shouted out like a distressed child. “They’ve abandoned us all, there’s no hope left!”
Chapter Four
A small darkened chamber somewhere inside a bigger building, a small glass petal shaped light fixture hangs from the ceiling, long threaded dusty cobwebs hang loosely and lifelessly from its small cracked bulb inside. A sudden gust of wind from outside an open ornate window quickly breaths its cold air around the unlit room, causing the long silk dark blue curtains draped across the window to dance in an eerie manner. A small candlestick in a pewter base briefly rolls forward before settling again in its original place as the breeze rushes past it.
The light emanating from a building opposite scrapes its dim light across the street and into the room, throwing its almost unseen poor light across an old wooden table with ingrained cuts and numerous gothic-looking wooden chairs underneath. Two pairs of pale-skinned hands clenched into fists rest comfortably on top of the table, the quick glint of light from the ends of the dark sleeves gives away the presence of two pairs of intricately designed cufflinks. The two seated figures are apparently unaffected by the cold ghost-like grip of the breeze constantly circling them.
“Well?” Came the voice from the figure sat underneath the window, his voice calm and well-mannered.
“They have just recently arrived inside Vautusceen House,” the voice of the other seated figure said. His voice was equally well-spoken, yet had an air of a young man to it. “An agent called them on the telephone we placed inside to find out for certain. They sounded upset and anxious when they discovered things about it that they didn‘t know before.”
The hands of the first man clenched even tighter. “What of their overall morale and state of mind. Are they competent at doing the assignment they have been assigned?”
“We believe so,” answered the other man. “The sudden shock of the incredible winds they faced, the trees trapping them inside the house and the unnatural appearance of the interiors of Vautusceen House has caused them to feel unsettled for the moment, but we believe that that will soon subside allowing them to undertake what they have been sent to do. Their differing experience in their related fields of work may however cause a rift of distrust or misplaced anger could lead to more difficulties.”
The hands of the first man began to shale slightly, the ends of his fingers slightly touching the rough wood of the table. “We cannot allow this opportunity to pass us by, too much is at stake. We have worked to long and hard to not grasp this unique knowledge with both hands. However, it is partly the fault of The Brotherhood of Mystery. Vautusceen House has been in our sights as long as it has been there, we should have taken our chance a hundred years ago before the unknown powers inside has the chance to fully mature and grow stronger. Perhaps it was a mistake to send four individuals who had no experience of this.”
The younger sounding man said nothing for a few moments, his unfaltering silhouette sat facing the other man, his overshadowed eyes constantly staring at the other silhouetted figure.
“It was necessary to send them there.” The figure said finally. “As you said, ‘we cannot let this opportunity pass us by.’ If we are able to acquire the date we need from Vautusceen House, it will mean a new age for us, a new way of keeping up the fight that we have long since been fighting throughout the ages. Do not forget, we are all but human beings, gifted human beings, but nevertheless, human beings that are not completely protected. If we cannot protect ourselves, we cannot hope to protect the rest.”
The first man uttered a deep sigh and slightly unclenched his fists allowing a hint of pressure to wash away from him.
“We all hope that we have put sufficient enough faith in this. It is not always our way of bringing in outsiders to do our difficult work for us.”
“It will work,” the younger man said. “If god wills it.”
It took almost half an hour for everyone to get Doctor Stephenson calmed down and to stop his frantic outbursts, causing Doctor Furlong to literally pull him out of the window and slap him in the face a few times to get him to relax, trying to rouse him from his frustrated anger and eventually settling for a dazed half aware state. Using a crumpled packet of tissues in his pocket, and about half of a small bottle of scotch from Doctor Stephenson‘s crumpled coat, Ernest treated his wound as best as he could. Doctor Stephenson flinched and hissed air from his clenched teeth as he felt the powerful stinging sensation of the liquor as it splashed across the open cuts on his hands. Ernest Furlong slowly walked him from the window and the myriad of broken glass that was all over the floor, his arm draped over him. The others following behind a few paces away.
Fearing that he would suddenly lose control again, Sarah Tuttle and Father Heathers approached Doctor Stephenson slowly and cautiously offering assistance. Father Heathers offered his crucifix or spiritual assistance to the dumbstruck and wavering Doctor, he regarded them both with nothing but an open hanging mouth and wide-open un-registering eyes. Sarah Tuttle offered the same as well as some meditative herbs, but Doctor Furlong ushered them both away with a quick wave of his hand.
“What about these?” Sarah Tuttle asked again, taking out a large collection of incense sticks, each with differing odours. Doctor Furlong looked at them with a concentrated stare for a moment then looked back at Doctor Stephenson hanging from his side.
“Okay,” he said waving his hands toward him. “I’ll use those, maybe they’ll help him somewhat.” Sarah Tuttle handed him the bundle of sticks as well as the small torch she held, he carried them tightly in his free hand and walked on, carrying Doctor Stephenson’s bulky and heavy body up the stairs, the torch shuddering slightly in his hand as he struggled to keep Doctor Stephenson from falling. The others continued to follow closely behind, suddenly seeing and feeling the overwhelming presence of the darkness wrapped around them.
The sound of everyone’s footsteps on the metallic staircase was strange and hard to listen to, its hollow unnatural sound parasitically entering their bodies and playing its un-godly notes on their bones. The sound echoed and bounced off of everything around them, screeching its wails at anything within earshot. As though yet another disguised and patient lever or switch inside Vautusceen House had been accidentally activated, bringing the house one step closer to being completely awake from its long dormant state.
“What do you plan to do with him?” Asked Father Heathers suddenly. His voice though only slightly unprepared for, instantly caused Doctor Furlong to jump out of his skin and almost dropping Doctor Stephenson in the process. It had suddenly hit him that before now, Father Heathers hadn’t spoken a word to anyone at all. From when they were all assembled in the small room with the official from The Brotherhood of Mystery, to their almost apocalyptic journey through the dead forest and up to Vautusceen House, he hadn’t spoken a damn syllable. He had almost forgotten that he was with them, at times it seemed just him and the two others. That sudden realization coupled with the unprepared shock of hearing his voice come straight out of the blue made him laugh a little.
The mild humour subsided when he realised something that made him stop in his tracks for a split second. Doctor Stephenson was somehow the leader of their group, and unofficially he was, even though their had never been a leader to begin with. Doctor Stephenson was the rational one amongst them all, the one who they hoped would take the disquiet chaos of whatever lay within these walls using his specialized equipment and would mould it all into something they could recognise, to hopefully control and eventually learn from then destroy.
Now, he was in his almost vegetative state, his possible life-saving expertise locked away inside his unreachable mind. Now, somehow everyone else had become like a headless cobra, useless at fending for itself. With its unofficial leader gone, Doctor Furlong was now the leader of the rest, he was the one who take control of this unusual situation when everything else failed, he was the one directing everyone to what was best to do right now and eventually get them all out of this place. The weight of it all, the weight of his sudden responsibility suddenly dropped itself like an enormous pressure on his shoulders, forcing him to topple slightly, his knees bending from the sheer mass of everything he now had to bear.
As he picked himself up again, his head started to look quickly from left to right as he became aware of everything around him, as well as the question Father Heathers had asked him. He took in a deep breath and hoped that the gap in-between the question and his answer wasn’t to great to cause worry and puzzlement..
“Um, well, uh,” he started, desperately trying to keep his mind focused on the tasks at hand. “Well, the person on the telephone downstairs told me that there were bedrooms in this place, somewhere. We’ll find a suitable one and put Doctor Stephenson in there. If we leave him be for a while with these incense sticks burning, perhaps that’ll give him time to recuperate and hopefully give us some help.”
He knew full well that his words weren’t the best that anyone would want to hear from someone they put faith into in a seemingly hopeless situation. Even with the others walking on behind him, he could easily get the impression from them that they didn’t feel completely safe with his awkward response and his fumbling way of sorting a problem, god knows, he didn’t feel overly safe and comfortable himself. But, it would have to be something that he would need to practice and learn the art of later on.
With the shell-shocked lumbering figure of Doctor Stephenson under his arm, Ernest and the others following up behind him, they reached the next floor up. Suddenly, with a sudden expelling of surprised breath, everyone immediately wrapped their arms around themselves as, without warning, a sudden unnatural chill appeared as if from nowhere, causing their hairs to stand on end.
Jesus Christ. Ernest thought to himself as the cold passed over him. As if something had walked over his grave.
Then, after a few moments, a thick blanket of mist appeared from nowhere right above their heads high up in the darkness. Everyone looked up in astonishment and nervous anxiety as the mist slowly began to make its way down from the ceiling and down towards them. Everyone stood their ground, held their breath and remained in a fixed unmoving position as the mist passed over them, chilling their skin and their bones with its icy coldness, like then hand of something unnatural and evil brushing its chilling fingers across their bodies.
The mist eventually came to settle on the first floor, stopping only inches from the floor, its long curling ‘finger-like’ extremities continually curling around themselves, as well as everyone’s ankles.
“Here, take him a moment.” Ernest said to Sarah and Father Heathers as he handed Doctor Stephenson’s quietly shaking body over to them. Their expressions awash with anxiety about taking him, not knowing what he might do.
Ernest walked over to the outer edge of the walkway that made up the first floor and held out his hands in front of him, his footsteps almost a scamper as he hastily made his way through the icy chillness of the fog and cold. He stopped when his hands felt something cold and metallic right in front of him, the coldness of the metal was like the inside of a powerful freezer and caused him to hold himself tightly and grit his teeth as the shooting coldness ran through his nervous system and his bones. He recovered himself and walked closer. The metallic objects he felt were long steel sword like poles that were sharpened on the end, sticking awkwardly out of the floor of the walkway. Huge black stone pillars with the onset of age well noticeable in them poked out from numerous positions along the walkway, rising high toward the blackness engulfed ceiling. A long set of black rusted chains with numerous hanging locks ran the length of the walkway, twisted and wrapped around the sharpened metal poles.
Well, I suppose this is what passed for a safety rail to the cult.
He approached the makeshift walkway, rested his hands as close as he could on top of the metal poles without injured and looked over the side.
Below him lay a seemingly endless abyss of unbroken darkness, the thick layer of mist hanging in the air above it as though unwilling to move further down. The upper half of the long metallic staircase appeared at the top of the darkness, the thick elaborately designed dark red blanket was almost unclear, its strong colour washed away leaving behind a dark grey streak.
Ernest looked upward, scrunched up his eyes and tried his best to see anything from the opposite side of the walkway. He could see nothing but the same endless and unbreakable darkness and the powerful looking stone pillars, the fog circling and wrapping themselves around them like ghosts slowly flying from one side of the huge room to the other.
I suppose we’ll need something more than our own eyes. Ernest thought to himself. We’ll need to light to sconces and make a fire.
He turned round from his observation point and looked toward the others holding Doctor Stephenson’s limp and mentally shattered looking body. Sarah tried her best to pick up his huge figure with her small strength, helped in only a small way by Father Heathers, his body constantly shook with fear, his hands trembled nervously as he struggled to keep his small golden crucifix steady in his hand as he offered Doctor Stephenson a silent prayer. Sarah joined him, her mouth mouthing silent words, her head hanging downward with her eyes closed.
“Okay,” Ernest said walking toward them. “Let’s get him to one of the rooms. I think it’s best if we hurry then we can get started on figuring out how best to get out of here.”
He took the doctor’s body in his arms and pulled him up to an awkward standing position then the three of them continued further, Sarah holding the torch steady but a little nervously in front of them.
Without the torchlight shining, everything around them seemed strange looking, gritty and unclear, as if some kind of blurriness or unseen degradation had silently seeped inside the house, breaking everything up into unclear disjointed images, or the fuzzy picture of a broken television. The surreal images were given physical form as everyone felt the unsteadiness and dry rot of the long wooden planks that covered the bare black stone underneath.
They walked along the walkway, the torchlight shuddering constantly in front of them as they desperately tried to make out the features of where they were going. After a few yards, they found a corridor in-between two walls with faded dark green wallpaper with strange small silhouetted images of plants embellished across it.
Ernest took the torch back from Sarah and took point in front of them, dragging Doctor Stephenson’s body as quickly and easily as he could inside the corridor. The walls in here were decorated with dark red wallpaper that had long ago started to fade away, the once soft ripple-like 3-d circle’s dotted all across the wallpaper was now as hard as stone and beginning to peel away to the bare wall behind. The corridor was long and short-width, the opposite end of the corridor disappeared into semi-darkness and milky-looking mist. Large stone arches standing from the floor to the ceiling were positioned a few feet apart from each other all the way down the corridor, forming a curved angle as they reached the ceiling. Numerous large ornate and gothic looking doors were inset on both ends, a large elaborate pattern was etched into the doors, each depicting many images of demons, angels, human beings, strange religious and sacrificial rites and other unrecognisable pictures.
Everyone reacted with a sudden jump as they felt something cold and wet run across their faces. They looked up and saw driblets of water oozing from the bland grey water streaked ceiling, running off of the small black glass petal-shaped light-shade, all across the walls and down to the floor creating an inch-deep pool of water.
“There,” Ernest said pointing toward one of the nearby doors with the torch hanging from his remaining fingers. “We’ll put him in there.”
Sarah and Father Heathers followed him as he trudged heavily through the water, dragging Doctor Stephenson’s heavy body as quickly as he could, constantly trying to stop him slipping out of his grasp and falling headlong onto the floor. They reached the door and Ernest tried the small golden rusted doorknob. It wouldn’t open and hardly even turned aside from a few awkward rattles that signified that it was probably loose.
Well, what can I expect after a century of rot and rust.
Ernest released his grip on the doorknob, stepped back from the door a little and slammed his foot against the door in one quick movement, causing the door to swing open after being sealed shut for more than a hundred years. Large pieces of rotten twisted wood broke away from the door, flying into the air and finally settling on the water-covered floor. The doorknob was torn from its tenuous position and dropped heavily onto the floor with a splash and a soft metallic ring. Ernest stepped closer to the almost shattered door and peered inside, holding the torch up high.
Inside he could see what looked like a small room. Just to the right fixed into the wall was a small simply constructed stone fireplace made into a perfect square. Stretching up into the ceiling from it was the indentation of a small chimney covered by a black, perfectly smooth and featureless wall. Just next to it further into the room was a large old wooden cupboard with numerous splinters and holes dotted around the doors.
Beside the cupboard was a small window that was open, long tattered remains of dark red curtains full of holes and tears wafted eerily in the air as the breeze passed like an invisible spirit across them. Ernest could feel the cold wind coming from it wrapping itself unwelcomingly around his body.
For the briefest moment, Ernest was sure that he had found a window that was open and that they could all get out of here and away from this bizarre place. But, once his torchlight passed across and settled on the window, he realised that although for some reason there was no glass, there was still a set of bars fixed into position across the window.
It angered him to see this, his anger suddenly became so intense that it felt as though his blood would boil. It burned him to see the window open with the bars across, to feel the cold breeze brush against his face like a helpful and welcoming hand brought with it the sweet sense of freedom. Then to see the bars cut him off from this freedom, to be denied his escape when it was so close by a few pieces of metal, knowing that although they were heavily rusted from age and the onslaught of time, his weak and feeble human strength would be futile against them. The whole hideous and irritating scenario tore at his heart and mind, as if the members of the long dead cult were still here, heckling and mentally tormenting him with something they put in place. His whole body was taught and ready like an impatient bullet in its chamber as he unconsciously summoned the strength to run toward the bars and use every fibre of his will against them until they broke away like matchsticks in his hands.
You can’t do it, the quiet but sane voice inside him said. I’m telling you that you can’t, it just isn’t possible. They need to see you keep a level head in this, they’re depending on you to get out of here.
Slowly, Ernest regained his self-control, purging his muscles, mind and senses of all of the anger and almost blind hatred until it was stored safely away inside him, his body shook a little and almost fell to the ground as he took back hold of the reins of his own control. He took a deep sigh and pointed the torch back into the room, panning it backwards and forwards until he found the bed sitting to the immediate left. It was a single bed, the dirty white sheets hung off the sides like tattered remains full of holes and wear. Both of the headboards were small rounded and wooden, jagged and sharp around the edges due to rot. A small pillow sat lifelessly and uncomfortably against the upper headboard.
Not much, but it’ll have to do.
Ernest dragged Doctor Stephenson into the room, then using Father Heathers help, picked him up like a sleeping child by his legs and shoulders and placed him gently on the bed. Ernest took the incense sticks and spread them across the top of the stone fireplace, lighting them up with Sarah’s lighter. He noticed that there were a few embers left in the fireplace and started a small fire. The mixture of yellow, red and orange light glowed eerily all across the room, throwing its fiery presence over everyone close by.
Father Heathers kneeled down beside Doctor Stephenson and mumbled a quick prayer. The sight of him made Ernest tutt in mild humour. The man was only in shock and needed rest, he didn’t need the last rights and to if Doctor Stephenson were to compose himself and see him mumbling beside him, he would have lashed out to him and venomously attacked him and his beliefs.
Ernest turned round and surveyed Doctor Stephenson in the bed, glancing everywhere around the room for anything else he could do to make the place comfortable for the time being. He didn’t like to leave him alone in here if the rest of them were going to be downstairs or elsewhere in the house. He could wake up, not know where he was and have a panic attack and no one would know. Vautusceen House was a big place, and given the fact that very little around here would make much noise, distant shouts or other noises would still be to far away to hear. But, given the choices they had, there was nothing else they could do. It would take them hours searching round here for a better bedroom to put him in closer to them and that was something they couldn’t afford to do. He was in shock, he needed rest and he needed it now without any interruptions.
The thought passed him by as to whether, if the situation arose, would it be safe to rouse him from his completely closed off mind if there was an emergency, if for some reason unbeknownst to anybody they had to leave suddenly because of a fire or something no one could predict. Waking him at the wrong time could cause him to snap, go into a coma or leave brain damage. He had no first aid training at all, if the worst came to the worst, he would have absolutely no idea what to do and he could die.
He chose to ignore that train of thought, for now at least otherwise it would crack him up. They would cross that bridge when they came to it, right now, there were other pressing matters to deal with.
“Is that all that we need?” Came Sarah Tuttle’s quiet, feminine yet strong accented voice. Ernest turned round to her and Father heathers. Sarah was stood beside the lighted incense candles, the powerful glow of the fire and the feeble light of the candles cast over her, lighting up her outer edges and making them glow brightly, giving her the appearance of a saintly being or an angel. She was stood stock still, her figure tall and unwavering, her hypnotic eyes looking straight toward Ernest. Her whole image was like that of a proud soldier, awaiting further instructions.
Father Heathers was stood beside her, his upper body hanging downward towards the floor like the awkward figure of a hunchback. His feet constantly fidgeted from side to side, his eyes were alive with anxiety and apprehension, sweat poured from his brow and trickled past his slightly opened mouth, constant breaths of air passed his lips in a constant biological response to absolute fear.
“Come on,” Ernest said to them waving his arm toward him. “We’ll go downstairs. We’ll have to discuss some things.”
Chapter Five
After a couple of hours of trying to find their way around, a few things were completed and everyone felt comfortable and relatively at ease. Using the lighter and other makeshift fire sources, many of the black pewter sconces on the walls had been lit, along with a few additional small smouldering fires in small rooms and had been left to burn.
Along their way through some of the rooms, they had discovered many elaborate ornaments. Strange and bizarre set-pieces unique to the owners and builders of this place. Draped across the walls in almost every room they searched were long dusty white sheets, long ago already beset by countless attack from insects and exhibiting numerous large and small holes. The sheets appeared to have been attached to the walls by stuffing the ends into the tiny gaps that ran in-between the ceilings and the floors with the side ends fixed into position with large black nails, allowing the sheets to cover the walls completely.
What purpose does this serve? Ernest thought to himself as he looked in deep concentration at the sheets in front of him, the dust and remaining ghostly ribbon-like remains of cobwebs dancing in the air as the light from the torch’s brought them into view.
Perhaps they wanted to forget everything that happened in this place by blocking it all from view. Even just locking it away and never coming back here wasn’t enough for them.
The pointlessness of it all whirled around Ernest’s mind. Why did they just lock the place away, cover everything in these sheets and then just leave? Why couldn’t they have raised the house to the ground, destroy it and remove everything that it stood for, everything that it represented instead of just leaving it here to be a blot on the landscape, a testament to a despicable evil that had once rained over this land like a disease.
The idea of it standing here as a constant reminder to everyone around reminded him of the numerous concentration camps that had been allowed to stand across Europe, true they were a sight most people would give anything to bring down, even with their own hands. But leaving them there was for a reason, to show people the depths that humanity can sink to in the name of some twisted and distorted dogma or for some arrogant and megalomania point of view.
In some other of the rooms they traversed, they encountered many stuffed animals that were presumably, from their appearances, brought from abroad and shipped across to here. Large, grizzly bears with their mouths wide open and fixed into a permanent silent roar were found in some of the rooms, their unpleasant looking sharp teeth glistening in the eerie glow from the burning sconces. Their postures were all the same; standing high and proud on their powerful hind feet, their huge claw-filled hands reaching out into nothingness. Their once threatening visage and the horrifying inevitability of what fate lay before you once you set eyes on them was now reduced to a dusty, moth-eaten husk of a once dangerous creature, sitting in some dark, forgotten corner of the room.
Among the other animals on show in the various rooms were snakes, fixed forever into a non-moving, non-responsive curling shape around a small collection of twigs and short branches with a few dark brown leaves that was completely covered in resin. The base of the branches ran down to a small piece of simulated earth that completely covered the bottom of a large glass case that covered the whole natural spectacle.
Seeing these beautiful and expensive looking pieces around him, Ernest couldn’t help but wonder how the cult managed to get their hands on something like this. His own experience of cults from public knowledge, literature and the news gave him the impression that cults were nothing but a small loose group of people that delighted in devil-worship, the black arts, or forbidden acts of cruelty to themselves for sadistic pleasure, or to others in pursuit of their dark worshipping rites. Seeing all of this around him, it gave the impression that Valerious Vautusceen and his cult of followers had not just the influence or the power to control and spread fear through people for their own gain, but also had the financial resources to buy and get their claws onto anything they wished.
It makes you think who are the real rich people in this world, Ernest thought to himself.
The elaborate images of the interior design of the building was both beautiful and attractive, yet at the same time, haunting, gothic and arcane. In many of the smaller rooms, large ornate church-like windows with strange and complex images fixed into them were built into many of the darkened walls, half-obscured by long tapering shadows that spread themselves across them like an unyielding unseen hand. Draped across some of the windows were large blood-red curtains made of cotton and velvet. A long heavily worn gold-binding made of cotton ran the outer edges of the curtains, all the way down to a long hanging golden rope like a male lions tail that hung down to the floor.
Some of the walls were panelled with strong dark resin covered wood, broken up into separate square-shaped segments with a long thin darkened line highlighting the outer edges.
Large, elaborate and arrogant looking statues made from marble and stone were placed on high circular bases in the centre where many corridors converged. The most common statue found was of a nude, arrogant looking and powerful bald man, either looking arrogantly into the empty air above him, or looking down at the top halves of powerful men and women reaching out to him with their large hands with a long, thin javelin-shaped sharpened object held tightly in his hands, angling it to be in the perfect position to attack those before him. Some of the domineering effigies were draped in a marble or stone made cloak, or fitted tightly into small sadomasochistic garments around their waists, heads or their hands.
Repelled by this strange, arrogant and disquieting imagery around them, yet strangely drawn and attracted to them at the same time, they found the concentration deep within them to keep going and keep pushing forward. Looking at the map and getting their bearings, they looked for a room, section, anything that passed for a larder, kitchen, or some kind of food storage. Running his slightly trembling nervous finger over the wet and soggy map covered with holes, slowly moving across the many seen and unseen rooms and unknown places within the house, Ernest’s finger stopped and lightly tapped on one small square situated at the bottom centre of the map that read: Cellar/Basement/Freezer.
A small low grumble of apprehension mixed in with impatience sounded within Ernest’s stomach as the names he read silently in his mind reached down to his stomach. Whatever this ‘freezer’ was that was mentioned here by The Brotherhood of Mystery hopefully was some kind of larder, though, if it was, he had no clue or suspicion as to whether the food would be safe to eat after so long hiding in the darkness under the house. Then again, he wasn’t even sure if people had freezers back in the 1860’s, or not. But, while his mind swam with curious and problem solving thoughts, his stomach swam with other thoughts. Thoughts of sustenance, fresh and tasty food to nullify and appease the uncomfortable groaning pains inside it.
Beckoning himself and the others around him to continue, they made their way down the long dark, narrow, echoing corridors as they followed the maps directions down to the basement.
The air became much colder and clammy on everyone’s skin as they neared the entrance door to the basement. They could see their breaths escaping from their chattering teeth as it eventually dissipated into the semi-dark filled staircase. Everyone’s body shuddered uncontrollably as the cold seeped its way through their nervous system like a sudden sharp pain hitting an open nerve. Ernest and Father Heathers both wrapped their jackets around their torso’s as tightly as they could and buttoned them up with the few buttons they had stitched on.
The whole experience was like walking down the narrow steps to a tomb that hadn’t been opened in years, or walking down to a freezing morgue where the icy chillness of the freezer drawers unintelligently made their way toward them.
Lets hope its neither of those and opt for it being just an ordinary larder. Ernest thought eagerly to himself.
Ernest’s hand shook continuously in response to the cold, his shivering fingers desperately tried to keep a tight hold of the torch and not let it fall to the ground and shatter. The long beam of light in front of him constantly shook violently from side to side as he struggled in vain to keep it still.
The steps of the staircase were made of blackened stone like everything else in the foundations, except that this was much rougher, riddled with holes and bumps and rounded edges. The stonework of the surrounding walls were the same as the steps, everyone felt the strong shark-skin like roughness of it on their clammy hands as they laid them open palmed across the walls slowly to navigate their way down.
They reached the bottom of the staircase and stood just inches from the large metallic door that led to the freezer. There was not a sound from anywhere around, except for the endless chattering of everyone’s teeth, the sound of the torch in Ernest’s hand as it repeatedly bounced off of his palm and the rustling of the material of everyone’s clothes as their whole bodies shook. Sarah Tuttle pressed her shivering, goose-pimple covered legs against one another and wrapped her black cotton gown around herself as tightly as she could to stop the cold. The small golden crucifix in Father’s Heathers hands danced around in the air and in-between his fingers as his shaking hands desperately tried to keep hold if it without it slipping away. His nerves jangled and his face radically transformed into a sudden expression of panic whenever the cross fell from his grasp.
Why the hell did we have to come here? Ernest thought quietly to himself. Doctor Stephenson is shell-shocked, we’re freezing to death in here just to find food and they’re bars on the bloody windows to keep us inside. All for the damn benefit of The Brotherhood of Mystery. God, if only we could get out of here and say to hell with this assignment.
Ernest kept his anger steady and controlled for now. After all, it wouldn’t help suddenly exploding withy anger when there was no need for it. True, they were well and truly trapped inside this god-forsaken house with no stability or support but themselves. But, regardless of what had happened to them, they were here now and the important thing was to keep their heads and take control to feel their way along for answers and eventual escape. And, if food was indeed behind this door, they would fill themselves up with substantial sustenance to keep their minds focused.
Ernest kept as steady a hold on the torch as he could manage and shined the light across the large metal door. It was just over six-feet high and had a deep copper colour to it. Running along the edge of the door was a regular pattern consisting of countless small squares attached to each other that were spread all across the edge of the large rectangular shaped door. The middle of the door itself seemed to bulge out from the rest of itself, as if some incredible strength from the other side was trying to forcibly push the door open.
Ernest ran the torchlight downward and noticed the small door handle that poked out from the door and pointed to the right. Ernest reached out with his other hand and grasped the handle, immediately retracting his hand with a small cry of pain as the fierce, fire-like sudden cold enflamed his hand with pain, almost as if he actually had put his hand into a raging fire. The torch he held in his other hand crashed violently to the floor, but Ernest was too consumed with pain to notice. He held the wrist of his injured palm with his other hand and he and the others looked at his open palm that shook with cold and pain.
Many small blisters caused by instant frostbite riddled his palm, small blackened and reddened sores and cuts had in the space of a single moment burrowed their way down the flesh of his hand, striking a cord with his unprepared nerves. With small grunts of pain, Ernest slipped his injured hand in his pocket as slowly and painlessly as he could, then reached down to pick up the torch from the floor. He flicked it on and off, the light still worked perfectly, not at all affected by the sudden crash to the stone floor.
Once piece of good luck. Ernest thought.
“Here,” Sarah said suddenly holding out her hand toward him. “You are hurt, let me take the torch and lead us.”
Ernest smiled a little and shook his head. “No, that’s alright, its just a little accident. I’ll be fine.”
Sarah did as he said and retracted her hand back.
Ernest appreciated her offer of help. He enjoyed the feel he got from her that she was someone who actually cared about others, unlike most people, and was glad to see that, unlike Father Heathers, she was clear minded and kept a level head. That was an important thing to have in this place and gave Ernest a small amount of hope that everything would turn out alright.
Looking back at the small handle on the door, Ernest placed the torch on the floor and wriggled his hand around inside his sleeve until his hand was deep inside the material and the end of his sleeve drooped down toward the floor. Fumbling around hurriedly with his fingers, he took hold of the end of the sleeve and gathered it up in his hand until it was wrapped up tightly into a small scrunched up ball in-between his fingers. He reached his hand forward to the door handle and slowly wrapped his slightly shaking fingers around its cold metal exterior. It worked, thanks to the material of his jacket sleeve, the icy coldness couldn’t reach his hand and only allowed the slightest hint of chilliness.
He turned the handle downward, a loud jangling mechanical grind suddenly sounded from the door as a sudden waft of cold air escaped from the tiny crevices surrounding the door that made everyone shiver in an unnatural way. Along with the cold air came a sudden whiff of sepulchral air that carried with it a long drawn out single note of trapped sound that bounced and echoed against the hard stone of the walls and the staircase.
Ernest sniffed up with his nostrils as a distinct smell wafted its way unnoticed under his nose as the escaping air from inside wafted its way around. The smell was unmistakeable. Meat, he thought excitedly. Meat and vegetables, it is a larder!
Not wasting any more time, he pulled hard on the metal door handle and opened the door widely to see the room inside.
A hollow chillness suddenly filled the air around everyone as the door was opened, as though it were a deep and powerful sigh emanating from the throat of some huge creature sleeping inside, breathing its great resting breath over anyone who dared to approach. Standing slightly nervously in the doorway, Ernest outstretched his arm and shined the torch into the icy room in front of him. The brilliant light from the torch revealed the wall on the opposite side just a few feet away. Composed of countless medium-sized bricks that were roughened and rounded in a slight jagged fashion around the edges, they was held in place by thick cement. Large overlapping strands of hardened cement hung out crookedly from above and underneath the bricks where the wet cement had once ran freely from the wall to the floor.
Nailed up against the wall were large stacks of wooden shelves with large sacks, pieces of rope, small and large empty tubs and small plates that had long been beset with cracks and great cakes of dust. Ernest stepped out from the doorway, his soft footstep on the hard stone floor created an echo that ran all throughout the surrounding room. He shined his torch down both ends of the wall. From left to right, what he thought of as a room was simply a long seemingly endless corridor that disappeared of into unyielding blackness. The shelves that lined both ends of the wall of the corridor continued with it, each holding the same or similar useless objects.
The same lingering and unavoidable smell of meat and vegetables still remained in the air, Ernest and the others could feel the saliva build up in their mouths, the perfect and unadulterated images of the perfect meal chaining themselves to their conscious thoughts.
Where on earth is the food? I can smell it, it has to be here somewhere.
Finding no sense of direction or help from his mental senses, Ernest turned his plight of finding the food to his physical senses. Constantly sniffing up the ungraspable food that smelled as though it were only feet from where he stood, he followed the scent like a tracker-dog, his head held up high and ferreting around from direction to another, standing slightly awkwardly on his toes.
There! He shouted to himself in his head as found the right direction the smell was coming from, his body rigid with excitement, as though holding some invisible tether from his nose that would guide him.
“Come on, its this way.” He said turning round to the curious face of Sarah Tuttle and the constantly nervous expression of Father Heathers. Together they walked down the right side of the tight corridor, the great blasts of air still blowing from both ends of the corridor, shaking across the many wooden shelves and causing the plates on them to rattle to rattle in an uncomfortable rhythm. The whole experience of the blasting air on everyone’s faces and on their bare hands was slightly disconcerting, evoking strong mental images of quite preposterous childish thoughts that were still equally disturbing. It was as though the imagined picture in their heads of a great huge creature causing the blowing air actually existed, some immense horrific and dangerous monster was sleeping some deep slumber somewhere in the bowels of this great building, hiding away quietly in some as yet undiscovered room, its constant exhales of breath from its infernal mouth serving as a dire warning to anyone nearby of what was to come.
Obviously, not one of them believed in monsters or fairy-tail like creatures and never had, even as children their inquisitive minds still managed to shine through their small inexperienced heads. And, despite being from different yet similar backgrounds of the study and belief of something beyond our world that was far greater than anyone had imaged, they only rarely allowed their fears to get the better of them.
But, being in this dark, disturbing, unnatural and completely unknown place with their beliefs and quiet English manners being put to the test, it was hard not to abandon rational thinking and quickly adopt a crazy, terrified imagination of what lay undiscovered inside here.
Moving further down the corridor, they came across a large wine shelf constructed of numerous long pieces of wood nailed together into a distinct shape that formed small diamond shaped holes. To everyone’s dismay, the holes were empty, totally devoid any kinds of wine or anything to drink at all.
My god, do they even have food down here at all. What if the smell is just from meat and vegetables that were stored down here when the house was inhabited years ago. The smell could have been lingering down here sealed off from outside.
The thought passed by Ernest’s mind quickly, yet still managed to create a sudden knot of discomfort in his stomach. He stopped for a moment, his arms held out slightly by his sides. He started walking again down the corridor, refusing to be disappointed and refused a good meal.
Reaching the end of the corridor everyone stopped as they came up to a strong solid wall made of steel, not fully expecting where the food would be exactly if it was indeed here somewhere. Feeling slightly irritated, Ernest pointed to the torch at the wall. It was indeed made of steel and seemed to block off the end of the corridor completely. The whole surface of it was covered with frost and ice, a thick mist of ice cold air constantly wafted round and round, turning in and out of itself. Bringing the torch down the steel wall, Ernest stopped as he saw what appeared to be a large door built into the wall at the bottom right hand corner. A long indentation made up the surrounding edges of the door, giving it a distinct oblong shape.
The smell of the food was almost within touching distance from here, the strong smell was almost an intoxicating taste that excited taste buds on their impatient tongues.
It must be in there, it must be. This is where the smell is coming from. But, how do I open the door without getting frostbite again? It’s much too cold to use my sleeve over my hand.
Steadily, still holding the torch squarely on the large steel door in front of him, Ernest made a few slow steps toward it. The icy-chillness of the whole air around him felt almost incredible now, like being inside some long forgotten sealed up tomb deep below the surface of the earth, or sitting for hours on end within a large ice encrusted freezer system. He tightened his jacket around him as tightly as it would deem possible, embracing his shivering body in his equally trembling hands, his teeth constantly chattered, the clear sign of his frigid breath oozing out and joining the rest of the coldness around it. He reached the freezer and stood within inches of its cold unapproachable surface. He held out his hands flat in front of him and felt the icy chill and freezer-like cold on his bare palms, quickly retracting them when the cold became to intense. The whole wall seemed to emanate some strong overwhelming presence over him, giving the imagined sensation of someone very tall with a great domineering and powerful aura standing right beside him.
Shaking off this uncomfortable feeling with the shivering of his body, he looked at the door, wondering to himself how best to get it open in the soonest possible time.
Scrunching up his eyes, he regarded the door with an intent concentration, picking out every small detail that he could find on its cold, sharp, crystallised surface, brightening up every small piece of it with the harsh bright light of the torch. After a short while of scanning the door as the cold air around him constantly threatened to swallow him whole, he finally found what he was looking for as the torchlight cast a small rectangular shaped shadow on the door; a handle. The handle was made of the same material as the rest of the door and of the large solid metallic wall. It stuck out from the door at about a few inches. Judging from the way it was designed and the amount of space inside it, Ernest could tell that it was designed for at least four fingers to open it up.
Ernest looked at his hand with the palm covered in blisters, cracked skin and reddened sores, the ghostly wisp-like freezing air breathing its icy breath across it like the ethereal touch of a spectre. His hand flinched with a sudden muscle spasm as the freezing air seemed to almost bite at his flesh.
I can’t use my hands to open the door, I’ll just get the same treatment as I did before. This door is way to cold for me to just use my jacket sleeve. Perhaps, I can use the whole jacket, that could be enough to protect me from the cold.
Agreeing with himself, Ernest proceeded to take off his jacket, instantly quivering violently as the small snug warmth of it around his body suddenly left him. He looked in mute amazement and shock as he beheld tiny ice crystals forming all over his jacket like swarming bacteria.
My god, I’ll have to hurry, otherwise we’ll freeze to death.
He gave a quick worried glance to the others behind him, huddle together like terrified animals in the freezing cold, wrapped up together in whatever garments they had on them. The tiny slowly fading lights of their eyes could be seen in the endless blackness of their combined silhouetted images, their teeth could be heard chattering incessantly, pausing only in the fraction of a moment to allow their icy breaths to escape into the atmosphere. Father Heathers bravely held out his outstretched hand out into the unforgiving freezing air, the small, almost unnoticeable crucifix shaking violently in his pale, whitened hand.
Not wanting to waste any more time, Ernest took his jacket and wrapped it up in as tight a bundle as he could, and as his ever weakening grip, would allow around his hand. He stepped up to the metallic door, outstretched his protected hand and gripped the door handle as tight as he could. The thick layers of the jacket surrounding his hand and fingers made it difficult to get a good enough grip, forcing him to ferret around with his quivering fingers.
Damn it, we haven’t got time for this. Where the hell’s the bloody handle, for gods sake!
Finally, after a few short irritating moments, he felt the handle tightly in his grip. The pleasure of it almost seemed to create a mild warmth around his body, releasing him from some of the icy shackles.
Summoning up what little strength remained in his refrigerated and ever-weakening body, he pulled on the handle. It was almost impossible to open, the sheer mass of frozen water on the other side had almost irrevocably sealed it shut forever. But, Ernest’s rage of coming this far only to be stopped by frozen water, the fact that they were imprisoned here by their curiosity and the great hunger that boiled like a raging fire deep inside him, all of it was enough to keep him pushing, pushing every fibre in his body to remain true to his will until they had what they wanted.
Sarah offered to help, uttering uneven and awkward words from her small frozen lips. Ernest declined her offer with a quick flap of his other hand in the air toward her. Standing himself up to his full height and gripping his ice-water covered shoes on the hard concrete floor, he thrust his free hand on top of his other, gripping the small handle tightly as he could and pulling it toward with all his strength, so much that he thought his arms would soon be pulled from his sockets.
Then, at last, in one quick and sharp tug of the handle, the door swung open with a loud, scraping metallic cry, almost a cry of pain, as the countless ice crystals that held it in place for over a hundred years came crashing down to the floor in their thousands, shattering into pieces with the same intense sound of an explosion. Ernest’s half frozen body fell backwards to the floor, shards of ice washing over him like a frozen torrent wash of machine-gun fire. Looking from under half-closed eyelids with drowsy eyes, Ernest beheld the frozen interiors of the freezer that had been sealed and forgotten about for more than a century.
Everywhere inside was covered in ice, great chunks of ice that had piled up to such a height to look almost like frozen dunes of snow. Long visible wisps of freezing air wafted away from its once impenetrable prison cell, now free to join the rest of the unsympathetic atmosphere. Long, sharp, clear shards of ice stuck out like sharpened spears from the dunes, as if serving a warning to anyone who dared enter this forbidden place. Lying underneath the countless layers of ice and small snow dunes were large wooden shelves looking almost pure white in the cold. Stretched across the shelves wrapped up tightly in large frozen nets and large sacks was something else. Ernest looked closer, wondering whether the onslaught of the cold on his senses had been more severe than he thought, perhaps he was imagining that he opened the door and he was really lying across the hard stone floor unconsciousness, the others trying their best to wake him up and stop him freezing to death. His drew his fingers to each other into as tight a fist as the biting cold would allow and thrust it forward to the floor. He instantly felt the sudden rush of pain run like an electric shock throughout his whole body, his mouth outstretched into a silent scream of pain, his eyes tightened hard. Just as he hoped, he wasn’t asleep, this was reality. He found himself slightly surprised to realise that about himself.
Sarah and Father Heathers rushed over to him. Sarah helped him up, strands of her hair ran down across her face, frozen into place and already beset with tiny fragments of ice. Her small feminine mouth shuddered continuously, her eyes struggling to stay open and fight off the sleepiness that the cold constantly forced upon her. Father Heathers stood beside her, his eyes wide open as he beheld the amount of food stacked out before him, the crucifix holding as still a position as possible in his frozen hands. He uttered a silent prayer as his hands made out the invisible sign of the cross.
Seeing the same glorious sight as the others, Ernest rushed into the room and began to run his pleasure-filled eyes over the many large pieces of meat and frozen vegetables that were stacked up tightly together. With every second that passed, the unforgiving freezing air everywhere grew one step closer to taking Ernest into its loveless fingers, but Ernest ignored it and totally forgot about it, he was too excited to think about it once he saw the food.
Picking up as many bundles of meat and vegetables that had frozen solid into his violently shaking hands, he ran from the room, quickly ordering the others to follow suit. They immediately did as he said, their combined hungers where to great to even worry about survival to stop them. After accumulating as much food as they could carry, they ran as fast as their frozen legs could carry them down the long tight corridor toward the cellar door.
Chapter Six
The three of them carried the frozen meat and vegetables up the long cold, narrow corridor up to the small, dimly lit room which led back up to the ground floor, stopped and waited impatiently as Ernest checked the map, constantly trying to keep the rapidly defrosting food steady in their shivering, ice water covered hands, the food constantly threatening to slip away from their tenuous grasp and crash down to the floor and shatter into pieces.
All of them were relived to be back up on the ground floor after spending an endless eternity trying to negotiate the narrow, ice encrusted, tomb-like quarters of the cellar, succumbing to their most primal of urges, that being food. True, the air in here, and in the rest of the house was unnaturally cold and smelled stale and almost bitter, like walking around in a sealed cupboard that was dusty and un-aired. But, regardless of this fact, coupled with the fact that all of them seemed irretrievably trapped here for the most part, anywhere was a welcome change from what they had endured downstairs to acquire something so needed by the human body.
Ernest pulled and tugged at the damp and torn map in his breast pocket, holding as solidly and desperately as he could to the pieces of pork and beef wrapped in withered nets. His wet and shivering half-numbed fingers ferreted around his pocket as they struggled get a firm grip on the paper and not drag it out in wet and useless fragments.
Come on, god, come on, we haven’t got time for this crap. Where the hell is it?
Finally, he got a tight hold on the paper in his pocket, he could feel the soggy edges of the paper constantly brushing against his fingers that shook with irritation and the body’s natural impulse to warm itself up. Heaving a deep sigh of relief back into the surrounding air, he felt a small warmth embrace his body, warming his chilled bones and releasing the rush of blood throughout his veins. It was as if his body had some higher ability, some sixth sense of knowing that the near future would be better than the last few hours and was letting Ernest know this fact for himself.
Ernest gripped the map tightly in-between his thumb and forefinger, taking great comfort in the warm fuzzy, static-electric like feeling in his hand, hoping his instincts were right.
Balancing the small frozen pieces of meat on his left arm, he opened the map in his other hand using his thumb and little-finger. The map was severely damp and awash with driblets of ice water that ran all across the paper down to the floor, threatening to wash away much of the details of the buildings floor-plan. Numerous small holes caused by the dampness in the map had started to appear, tearing out many small rooms and what type of rooms they were.
Damn it, we’ll have to keep this safe, otherwise we won’t where the hell we’re going.
He studied the map and scrutinised every small square that made up a room, every small staircase there was as he searched for some kind of a kitchen, dining room, larder, anything to get some food in them. His anger and frustration increased as followed the rooms down each of the floors and came to either a smudged out word or name, or a large gaping sodden hole, forcing his to start somewhere else. The strong and ever strengthening desire of revenge against The Brotherhood of Mystery and all of their cloak and dagger like henchman began to take control, infusing his nerve with hate and anger. They had dragged them here with promises of money, the chance to see, record and experience something far beyond what any of them had experienced before. Then sending them in here with vague hints of what they would inside and what exactly they had to do, then to discover they were virtually imprisoned in here with no chance of escape and then to have their pleas ignored by an ignorant representative of their group yet again.
Only the icy chillness of the meat sitting on his shaking brought him back from his intense trip of rage, clearing his sight and his senses and returning him to the task in hand. Looking back at the map, he saw it almost instantly, as if it was laid out in front of him. The kitchen and dining area. His sudden bolt of repressed excitement almost made him drop the quickly thawing meat and embracing the map as if he adored it. His empty stomach groaned with anticipated delight.
He looked up and around at the small room they stood in and saw two separate doors situated on the outer walls that stretched out from the ‘v’ like indentation opposite him. Pointing toward the door on the left, he began to walk briskly toward it, followed immediately by the frantic footsteps of the others behind him. He turned the small golden coloured handle with his free, wet hand and stepped through the creaking, rickety door
The room inside was in darkness, just like the rest of the as of yet, undiscovered parts of this place. But, from the deep, yawning air that sounded back toward them like the patient breath of some huge unseen creature, they could sense that the room inside was by no means small.
As their eyes became accustomed to the darkness, they began to make out small shapes and features of the objects inside. Sitting just a few feet from where they stood huddled together like frightened creatures in the small aperture of the doorway, there was a small ornately designed wooden chair with a small cushion built into the seat. The framework of the chair itself was expertly crafted into meticulous 3-D images of figures and small wooden flowers that seemed to grow from within the chair itself. Sitting
Sitting above the chair was a long wooden table covered with a dusty, stained white sheet. Delicately positioned all along the table were large black goblets resting beside small pewter plates and hideously shaped cutlery.
Looking up high into the darkness covered ceiling, Ernest could see the smallest hint of a chandelier hanging from the rafters, the small glass and silver-made droplets hanging from the golden supports emanated a slight tinkle of sound as they were pushed ever so slightly by some unseen wind. The comforting appearance of the room within made the situation worse, somehow. Everyone expected the whole house to be the exact opposite of what it was, given the nature of the previous occupants. Everyone had expected hideous interiors, cracked walls decorated with chains, hooks, black curtains and the skeletons of long butchered animals that were once used in some unholy black Mass. But, what they had found, in here at least, were comfortable surroundings, comfortable chairs, the whole of the dining room ready and waiting for guests. Everything seemed so uninviting, yet at the same time, comfortable and relaxing. It was as if someone who was still inside knew they were here and, while they had been exploring the rest of the house and hunting for food in the cellar, someone had come into the dining and prepared the place for them, setting out plates and glasses. The uncomfortable, but forced thought came into Ernest’s head. What if someone was in here, whoever had done all of this was inside this room and was stood just a few feet away from them in the darkness, unseen and completely masked by the darkness, but was staring right into the eyes of him and the others in the doorway?
Ernest immediately retracted from this horrid and utterly frightening thought, shaking off the overwhelming feeling of a third invisible presence stood beside him. Oh god, don’t ever think about that again. Thoughts like these had always been his ever present companion as he grew up, sitting like a resting demon at the back of his mind that constantly tweaked at his small, inexperienced imagination, feeding his mind withy uncomfortable, unsettling and frightening images. It was such an unwelcome gift to anyone of any age to have such an imagination that seemed to obey the will and desire of some higher unnatural power. As he grew and discovered his passion for EVP and psychic phenomenon, he longed for this unwelcome ability to disappear, leave his body and pass on to somebody else, someone who would give it space in their head and use it to their advantage. But, no matter how much he tried or how much he pleaded with his own subconscious to kick this gift out into the cold and leave it to slowly die, he began to realise that it was here to stay, it was a part of him and it wouldn’t let him go.
Ernest was the first to take the first daring step into the dining room that was wrapped in a shroud of blackness, holding the torch in front of him and pointing it nervously inside, his hands and forehead constantly perspiring and slackening his grip of the torch, his senses instinctively springing into action, poised and ready to defend him against anything that could suddenly jump without warning out from the shadows.
The silence was deafening with its low undeniable tone of a gentle humming in the background, stroking his ears with invisible fingers, blowing its warm breath onto the fine hairs inside his ears and causing them to quiver nervously
Ernest shook his head, dragging his consciousness from the agitated and rambling thoughts at the back of his mind. Get a hold of yourself, its just the air, it’s a little stale, that’s all.
Pointing the torch outward in front of him, Ernest and the others who were watching cautiously behind him in the semi-safety of the doorway saw the small unveiled patches of the room inside that were lit by the torchlight. The light shined on the opposite wall, revealing the pattern of three squares eclipsed inside one-another, surrounded by another square that was thicker than the rest and made of some kind of stronger and darker wood. The whole of the wall was covered with grain that since its construction and its eventual abandonment to the elements had long since started to peel away and become brittle. Placed in numerous positions along the wall were well-painted portraits of pale-skinned sinister looking figures of men and women clad in many black garments, as well as what looked like a thick scarf wrapped tightly around their necks that seemed as though it was part of their ‘robes.‘ Their features were disturbing and menacing with the fierce slants of their large almost completely blackened and empty eyes that almost seemed to stare out of the picture and right into everyone’s soul, burning with some unearthly fiery sparks. As if the presence of Ernest and the others stepping out of the doorway had suddenly awakened them from their countless silent hours of staring into the shadows and were now staring right into their terrified and unsuspecting eyes, whispering their completely unheard and terrifying comments to each other.
Their noses were long and sharp, like that of a hideous and frail incredibly old person. Their mouths were open wide, so much so that every one of their filed down teeth were visible, glinting in some unseen light source that the artist had implemented in the pictures long ago. Their tongues poked out like that of a lizards out of the gaping blackness of their open mouths, sticking out red and bulging as if consumed with blood, rasping sadistically at all who once regarded them with distaste or pure hatred.
Ernest cringed as he beheld these hideously deformed and twisted images before him. The sudden realisation that these ‘people’ had once lived inside this building and done the ungodly things that they did here with themselves, other people, animals and quite possibly even children made Ernest’s blood run cold, the hairs all over his skin stood on end as he stared unrelentingly at the blank, fierce and soulless eyes of the figures in the paintings. As though the eyes still retained some kind of dark life behind them, or the less fanciful, yet still terrifying thought of someone standing behind the painting, wedged up inside some tiny little space behind the walls and were watching him through tiny pin-prick holes in the eyes of the painting, staring deep into his soul, staring hard at the small features of his skin and taking great sadistic pleasure in the knowledge that they could see him and he didn’t have any idea that they were there.
A spark of anger that was close to hatred suddenly began to overwhelm him, shutting out the fear that invaded every nerve of his body and squashing it into a small ball of slight anxiety. The hate was turned toward the figures in the paintings, anger at the things they had done to other people, animals and children, how they had infected so many innocent lives, infected them defiled them, dirtied them and used them for their own sick little pleasures, obsessions and twisted cultish ways. Yet, despite their horrific crimes against the innocence of the world, here they were in these paintings, embellished and lionised forever as powerful, rich, totally ignorant and arrogant creatures once secure in their devilish little fantasy world and nothing could touch them, until the authorities had at last shown the intelligence to do something about them and invaded their squalid hiding place with many men and executed them thoroughly.
Ernest took the whole history of this place very personally. He had always despised evil in all its forms, had always had a great abhorrence for all of it and had not simply shook off the whole reality of it in the same way as everyone else did by saying that there was nothing they could do about it, or someone else should sort it out. Someone else, I don’t care, I don’t give a damn, Ernest despised anyone who thought that way, someone who wanted to bury their head in the sand and pretend it wasn’t happening. And this evil that existed all around him like a poisonous gas cloud, the kind of constructive, organised, orderly kind of evil, this was the kind he hated the most. It wasn’t the kind of evil that you would imagine with a single, scared and self-righteous little serial killer, scampering around the world and killing a small few, totally alone and having no intelligent kind of system of surviving with their ’unique’ mental landscape in the world. This was an evil that was something like the gangsters and organised crime of the world, how they travelled all over the civilised world killing countless many in their pursuit of money, power and personal achievements. No authority, no backlash or any kind of power and not even the hand of god had the idea or the courage to stop them and simply allowed them to continue in corrupting the earth and others around them.
Calm down, Ernest said mentally to himself, bringing him back from the depths of hatred. You don’t have to hate these creatures anymore, they’re long dead. Take comfort in your beliefs, there must be a hell out there somewhere. That’s were they’ll be right now. Now just relax.
Tired, dazed, hungry and still swimming on the borders of disgust and rage, Ernest turned around and saw the others behind him cowering like scared animals underneath the circular arch of the doorway, gripping the stone and metallic surfaces of the doorway with shaking hands that were dripping wet with the quickly defrosting food they tried desperately to carry. Father Heathers still pointed the small cross in his hands up the thick expanse of darkness in front of him, as though protecting himself with his faith alone. Both of their wide eyes were alive and glazed with frigid torment that they tried in vain to suppress and keep sane.
“Its okay, now, Ernest said as calmly as he could. “You can bring the food in. Hopefully there’s a stove or a furnace in here somewhere. We’ll put some candles on the table, that should give us some light.”
Not completely comfortable about stepping inside, Father Heathers and Sarah Tuttle both stepped cautiously into the room, staring quickly in both directions around them as though watching out for something that they thought was following them. Their footsteps echoed against the hard, freezing cold tiles and stone floor surface underneath them, sending out the hollow high note of it deep into the unbreakable darkness. Father Heathers found chair underneath table with his outstretched and trembling fingers and in one swift movement dragged it out from the table, sat down on it with great force and shoved it hard back underneath the table, then laid the whole mass of the frozen food he carried onto the table. He carefully dropped the cross on the table in front of him and lay his hand flat and hovering just above it, his shoulders and lips shuddering slightly with fear.
Ernest watched him in his terrified posture through the large circular window of the torchlight, a posture like that of a shell that looked as though he would at any minute just break out of and scream out his lungs to the whole room around him, shrieking in suppressed torment and terror, destroying everything around him in a fit of terror and total lack of spiritual support. Ernest pulled out a chair from underneath the table and sat down in it, grinding his teeth momentarily as the strong squeak of the chair legs scraping across the hard surface of the floor tore through every nerve in his body causing it to recoil and twist out of shape.
He sat down in the chair and felt the very uncomfortable pressure of the hard and bare wood surface of the back of the chair pressing hard into his back, the intricate and 3-dimensional designs covering the surface digging hard into his spine and muscles like the hardened knuckles of a clenched fist constantly forcing itself harder into him. It was painfully obvious that the cult that built and designed this place had absolutely no interest in comfort, for others or themselves, a further reminder of their belief system that was the pursuit of pleasure being great pain, a pain they indulged in every moment and every conceivable every-day task.
Unable to bear any more, Ernest removed his coat, wrapped it up into a bundle and tied it as tightly as he could into a ball and pushed it in-between his aching back and the chair, giving himself something soft to rest himself against. Kneeling forward to allow the coat to get into the correct position, Ernest moaned in pain and immediately reached to his back with his hand as he felt the sharp tingling electrical impulses shoot through his nervous system. He bit down again on his teeth as he tried to ignore the pain, slowly massaging the pain with his hand.
Looking up at Father Heathers, he could see that the chair he was sat in wasn’t affecting him the same way it was him. He wasn’t constantly shifting his body around to get comfortable or feeling nor showing any kind of pain in his face. He was just sat there, staring blankly and looking rather sad down at the hard wood dusty surface of the table with the wide arced beam of the torchlight draped across it. His arms remained still in front of him on the table, his hands clenched into fists, the long-chained golden crucifix resting in a bundle in-between both of his hands.
Ernest reached out his hand and took hold of the Father Heathers wrist, instantly causing him to suddenly jump in shock and surprise and instinctively grab hold of Ernest’s wrist and stare with a deep and silent rage into his eyes. Ernest could fathom from this sudden outburst that he was most probably in some kind of self-hypnotic trance and meditating fiercely. Ernest’s sudden incursion had violently awakened him, bringing him back suddenly from his deep waking sleep. For a long moment, Ernest and Father Heathers eyes were fixed into an unbroken gaze, staring hard into each other’s souls, piercing the soft flesh and unclosing iris and breaking the physical bonds between them. Finally, Ernest could take no more of his constant staring, people staring at him had always made him feel on edge either from afar or from someone right beside him, as if they could see right inside him. It was such an invasion of privacy for him.
“Let go of me, now.” Ernest said with a toughened and impatient tone. Then as if by some kind of hypnotic snap of someone’s finger’s, Father Heathers relaxed his tight grip on Ernest’s wrist, drew back from his repressed rage-like appearance and constant staring and relaxed back into his seat. An expression of confusion and total ignorance of what had just happened covered his wrinkled face. For a quick moment, it seemed as though some force had taken hold of him, possessed him and tried to strike out at all those around him. The thought was believable, but at the same time unnerving to Ernest and he quickly trashed the thought.
“Now, look,” Ernest spoke again to Father Heathers tired and worried figure, more softly this time but still with an air of authority. “Listen, we’re all scared right now, we’ve all become trapped in this place for the moment, but you have to know that you’re not alone in your fear. Sarah is scared too and so am I. I know if feels like your faith has deserted you here in this ungodly place, but you have to remember that god can see everything, nothing is beyond his power or his gaze and no matter what you believe, god is there to comfort you. You just have to believe in him and more importantly in yourself. Okay?”
Father Heathers didn’t appear to hear him at first, his confused face didn’t seem to alter at all. But, finally, he registered Ernest’s calming words with a slow nod and tightened his lips together. He slowly unclenched his right hand and took hold of the chain fixed to the crucifix and kissed it. Ernest smiled a little as he watched him grow a little calmer. He had no idea he was so good at comforting people with his words, he was no psychiatrist that was for sure. Many a time in the past he had done some of his experiments in haunted houses in the dark, completely alone with nothing but the darkness-filled empty rooms, his tape recorder and the presence of something non-human drifting silently and invisibly from room to room, speaking its uncomforting and haunting words into his machine. It was at those times he had wished so much for a partner in what he did to give him the strength and courage he so desperately needed. It was so unfortunate that the EVP phenomenon was so widely unknown and unrelieved by nearly everyone. True, he believed in god to some degree, or more technically, he believed in some kind of creator and all powerful being, what that was exactly he absolutely no idea. But, his belief in this unknown god and the empty words he constantly spoke silently to himself to calm him and ease him away from fear did little to wash away the ever present factor that stared him in the face. That he was alone, completely with something he couldn’t see, hear nor touch but was there probably right beside him that was staring right into his face and he had no clue whatsoever that it was there.
The thought made him shiver. Here he was caught again in the same darkness and the same unnerving and unnatural fear he had experienced many times before in many different locations. Trapped in a place he didn’t know the full history of, the specific types and personas of whatever walked its narrow corridors somewhere above, underneath or around them. He had always made it a priority to investigate and research the exact location he was studying and exactly which spirits were there so as not to go in unprepared and totally ignorant of what lay before him. The rushed and almost forced actions of The Brotherhood of Mystery had forced him to abandon such methods, leaving him with nothing but his tape machine and his experience. At least, however, this time, he wasn’t alone like before, he had others with him who shared his fear and his position. Plus, they all had relevant experience necessary to keep from going insane. A strange kind of peace and comfort suddenly appeared within Ernest as he realised this thought. He was again in a possibly haunted location with the darkness around him, but this time he wasn’t alone, this time he was armed.
Chapter Seven
The three of them sat around the table with their freshly cooked plates of meat and a few vegetables in front of them. A few candles in black pewter holders were positioned in an evenly-spaced vertical row down the table, each casting a small gloomy, eerie light across the hard, slightly splintered wood of the dining table. The faces of everyone sat around the table were ablaze with a fierce and fiery light from the candles like the glow from a roaring campfire. Their nervous and slightly frightened wide eyes were all aglow with a fountain-like yellow glow, the orange fire-like intensity brought out every wrinkle, every facial scar and every tiny bone structure in their faces.
The food still bore the taste of being recently frozen as they shovelled it like starving third-world citizens into their mouths, the tiny and hardly visible signs of ice still partially visible on its surface came to life with a watery-like translucence as the candle-light stretched across its dripping surface.
All three of them were gathered around the table, greedily and predatorily gorging on the food in front of them, each positioned within a few inches of the next. All of them could sense something in here, something that was all around them, even now. It was stupid and slightly cowardly to admit it to themselves, but they were all scared, very scared about this place.
Ernest gorged down the last piece of partially frozen beef into his throat with his trembling meat-stained fingers and moaned in relief of consuming plenty of food and tiredness of the arduous task he had just put his whole body through. The inside of his throat and his stomach still pulsated slightly with pain as the food worked its way throughout his system. It had been a while since he had eaten anything and while eating food that was over a hundred years old from inside a place like this still seemed peculiar, almost obscene, it was still nonetheless a great deal of sustenance that he had to consume as quickly as possible before he starved.
Calm and contended, he sat back into his chair, breathing out a relaxed deep breath as he felt the soft pillow-like easiness of his folded up jacket on his back. He stared at the empty plate in front of him. The translucent-like effect from the candle washed over the whole plate, rippling its curving, water-like appearance over the hard, smooth porcelain. The light glinted as it came into contact with the few tiny crystals of ice that had almost melted to a small pool of water in the centre of the plate, giving the impression of a small jewel, or a staring eye.
Ernest moved his gaze upward and looked at the other beside him. Sarah and Father Heathers had both finished their meals too and were quietly contended in their own little worlds. Father Heathers was leant forward a little toward his empty plate, his trembling hands gripping the golden crucifix he had. His eyes were shut tight, his lips trembled and uttered a quiet whisper of a personal prayer. Ernest listened as best he could to his words.
“Please, oh mighty Father. Please Forgive me for the heinous act I have partaken of. God forgive me, I have eaten from His plate, I have out of starvation and self-indulgence taken from His blasted and sordid table to feed myself when I should have taken from your table, oh Lord. Please, forgive me, I have partaken of forbidden fruit for my own guilty and selfish needs.”
Ernest turned his attention away from, dissatisfied still with hearing his tortured words and unearthly fear. He had tried to calm the man as best as he could, tried to tell him that he wasn’t alone, but it seemed that that wasn’t enough to keep him from sending himself completely insane with fear. If he chose that path for himself, though, it was his decision and Ernest wouldn’t be there to hold his hand all the way.
Looking the other way, he caught sight of Sarah sitting close beside him. She too was knelt in prayer, but a prayer that didn’t seem as intense or involved self-humiliation and heresy like Father Heathers. Her elbows were balanced on the table in front of her, her hands held up a few inches in front of her face and clasped perfectly and calmly in the mode of prayer. Her eyes were delicately closed, her long thin lips that glowed a bright red in the candle-light barely moving except for a slight flicker of movement as she silently spoke the religious words to herself. The pentagram and the image of the crucified Christ she wore around her neck glowed with the same fierce translucence as the plate, instantly giving them an uncanny appearance of suddenly emerging into life, casting their unfamiliar and powerful magic from their surfaces. The image of the crucified Christ became a deep and fierce red in the light suddenly, giving the strange appearance of being covered in blood from head to toe with a bright and powerful yellow flame appearing in the centre of his chest.
Ernest was too consumed with food to fully notice this strange spectacle and turned his sight away from it before standing up from his chair and walking around the table, taking great attention and interest at the vague and distorted images of the surrounding walls and its features lit by the silent glow of the candles.
Numerous unrecognisable statues of powerful, unearthly figures made of a deep, reflective black stone were placed in various positions around the room, held aloft by tall, strong pillar shaped bases made of steel with wire gauzes fixed into position inside diamond and square shaped hollowed-out holes. A strange, deep phosphorous glow of dark reds and dark greens emanating from some unseen source from behind the panelled walls shone down over the small statues, reflecting off of the shiny, slightly dusty surface.
Some of the figures, while bearing great majestic open bat-like demonic wings, were still angelic in appearance with perfect, almost beautiful facial features with eyes that seemed to give off an aura of peace and tranquillity. In each of their hands was a long thin spear that was poised back with their long, perfect thin arms ready to be thrown. The figures were covered with a long torn, worn and ripped robe that was filled with holes revealing the intricate details of the bare fabric. The robes were constructed in the permanent and unfrozen appearance of being blown backward away from the wearers by unseen, silent but powerful wind.
A few smaller stone effigies were of a similar nature as the last with tranquil, beautiful looking maidens each holding a large jug filled with an unknown liquid that they poured down to a small constructed piece of earth beneath them with their hair tied back into a bundle or allowed to blow freely with the wind. Long flowing robes and dresses that they wore cascaded downward to the floor from their perfect, unblemished young bodies revealing a bare breast or navel that they took little interest in to cover up.
Other statues around the room, however took on a much different image than the others. One, the size of a small rabbit, appeared to depict a ghastly and horrific looking creature with bulging muscles all over its naked, inhuman body. Its animal-like head was fixed into a deep, unrelenting position in-between its great shoulders with the obvious absence of its neck. The head itself was ugly in the way it stuck out, elongated like a horses head but covered with a roughened and thick coat of fur from which two tiny reflective black eyes stared out into nothingness and a small pig-like nose fixed on the end of its long snout. Its huge bristling arms were raised high into the air with small naked human figures clasped tightly into its gorilla-like hands, each of them forever frozen into a permanent silent scream with their dismembered limbs lying strewn like the limbs of a doll across the ground. A small number of figures lay flat across the earth in torn robes or on their knees as they wept and tore at the earth in anger and suffering with their agitated hands, or holding them out toward the creature in a bid to stop its unrelenting progress towards them.
The rest of the hideous statues followed the same premise with ungodly and malevolent creatures forever fixed into positions and poses of power, a silent roar or total arrogance with unrecognisable and intricate emblems and symbols held tightly up to those looking down at them as they stood within a mass image of slaughter amid countless tiny corpses of human beings, animals and children that lay torn apart and trampled underfoot around them.
Ernest shuddered with a sudden unnatural that suddenly swept up from underneath him like a whooshing breeze as he felt his intestines move inside him in an agitated manner, threatening to bring up the hundred years old food that slowly digested away in his stomach out into a hail of vomit up over these horrid tableaux’s. Silently reassuring his stomach, he lay his hand flat over it and took in a few deep sigh’s, drawing him back from total dissolution and into a quiet state of calm. Drawing himself back and heaving a deep sigh of relief, he turned round to face Sarah and Father Heathers who were both sat in a quiet, contented, if slightly nervous manner and prepared himself to speak.
“Alright,” he said, drawing himself up to his full height and trying to look as calm and unfazed as possible. His sudden word of attention to the others seemed to have alarmed them a little as they suddenly jumped a little in their chairs, opening their half closed, half asleep eyes to being fully open. Ernest almost regretted bringing them round from their half-slumber, wherever they were just now, they were at some kind of peace, a peace he wished he had the luxury of joining in with. But, right now, rest could wait, what he had to say was important.
“Look, I know that things have gotten from bad to worse in the last few hours for all of us, and we all possess hate and have great feelings of contempt for the insufferable Brotherhood of Mystery and how beguiling they were at drawing us in here with empty promises of money and recognition for what we might find here, but right now, in this moment of time, none of that is important. Right now, we have to look at where we are tight now, what we have to aid us in escaping this dreadful place and keeping our minds focused. Let’s look at the facts. We’re trapped inside here because of the bars on the windows, the trees piled up in front of the front door and all other doors we’ve come across so far are all locked, but we’ve remained calm as we can be and haven’t let pour fears overwhelm us. Doctor Stephenson allowed panic and fear to overwhelm him and injured himself in the process of trying to escape, but we calmed him down and put him to rest and he will recover in time. We were hungry and desperate to find sustenance, but we found the frozen food in the larder, brought it up here and cooked it and had ourselves a little feast. Now, we are calm, contended and allowing our minds to work. That just goes to show you that all of the problems we have faced so far, we have remained vigilant, decisive and always come out at the top.”
He then extended out his index finger towards and kept it firmly straight and pointing directly towards them. “Now, keep what I have told you in your thoughts until we escape from here. That knowledge will help you keep your heads.”
He retraced his finger to join the rest of the nine other trembling fingers he kept as still as he could on the back of the chair he stood behind. He felt suddenly light-headed at speaking all of those quick-thinking and stolen words he heard spoken by someone a lot more stronger than him years. The great speech he churned out to Sarah and Father Heathers seemed to do them some good as he saw them sitting up higher in their chairs, a more confident expression on their faces and Father Heathers not taking as much attention of the golden crucifix in his hands that he now simply looked at with only slight interest. Ernest smiled at this sight, finally his forced upon role of being leader and protector to these people had paid off. But, his own confidence boosting words did little to comfort him as, deep down, his stomach churned with worry and great anxiety at what waited for them deep in some as of yet undiscovered room on the other side of this surreal building, hearing their echoing footsteps from a distance desperately trying to find a way out and it, whatever it was, remained in the shadows, watching them unseen and invisible from a safe location.
For most of his life of chasing the unknown, chasing the shadows of invisible entities and slight blips of irregularity that constantly hinted at the possible minute fact that their might just be something else beside what him and the rest of human race saw every day, Ernest had over all of that time had no patience whatsoever with the narrow-minded members of the public who repeatedly spat his facts back in his face. To him, they were just nobody’s who got in his way, those that resented the chance of being part of something greater than the sad retches they all were. But, right now, stood on trembling feet in an almost pitch-darkness room, bang smack in the middle of the completely undiscovered country of what could almost certainly be the key to another world with only his tiny knowledge for defence, he envied those people who had spent so long hating and growing tired of. Right now, he would give everything he had, all of his knowledge, all of his experience to be one of those people and be in this situation and after everything that has happened to still remain confident in believing in nothing. At least, that way, being completely ignorant of what was around him would make him feel a little better.
Drawing himself away from his rambling and far away thoughts, Ernest again drew himself up to his full height, raising up his shoulders as high as he could and expelling a great amount of piled on pressure from his shoulders to again prepare himself to speak. But, he knew that this time, it wouldn’t be confident or feel-good words he would give them.
“Look, Sarah, Father Heathers. I’m sorry, but I have to speak to you again, but this time you won’t like what I have to say.” He drew in and expelled another drawn out breath before saying any more. “I think we should go ahead with what The Brotherhood of Mystery wants us to do here and carry out the experiments.”
The whole room seemed to shake and collapse in on itself after he spoke the words aloud to the others with an intense hummed silence, as if the weight of what he was proposing came down on him like a ton of bricks.
With a guilt filled expression, Ernest gathered the strength and confidence to look up at them both. Father Heathers had returned to his unbreakable terror and taken another strong grip of his crucifix and was forcing it hard into his head, possibly in some futile attempt to summon Christ into this room. Sarah, who amazingly was sat quietly in her chair, not shouting in anger and fear over what he said as he fully expected to see. Instead, she was just sat their, her right arm laid across the table with her open-hand lying flat, her right hand fiddling with the collection of religious necklaces she wore. But, then he saw her face and realised her true feelings. Her face was narrowed sharply into an expression of repressed anger, her eyebrows narrowed into a very fine ‘v’ shape, her narrow mouth slightly opened and exposing her clenched teeth to the flowing liquid light from the candles that washed over them.
“What exactly are saying to us?” Sarah said with a voice that was feminine, cultured, but at the same time, fused hard and awkwardly together with intense anger. “You are telling us to remain here in this cesspool of evil to carry out pathetic little experiments for people we know nothing about just to collect our simple mortal money. I would rather burn in hell with the damned.”
Ernest listened to her words and instantly realised her mistake in what he was saying. “No, no, no,” he said with his arms raised up and his flat palms open and appealing to her. “You misunderstand me. I don’t want us to carry out these experiments for the money we have been offered, I couldn’t care less about that. What I’m saying is that we perform the experiments to keep our minds focused on escaping. Simply running around and trying to find a way out won’t do us any good, it will just send us round the bend. I think that performing the tests will help keep our minds fresh, allowing us to quietly think of ways we can get out and at the same time, provide us with information about this place and hopefully show us that our fears our unfounded and without grounds for existence. We can all put our specialised fields of knowledge to the test and carry out sittings, scientific tests and I can perform my EVP experiments. If we do this well and focused, then before we know it, we’ll be away from here and back into the world of the living.”
Sarah timidly raised her head and looked up into the ceiling that was canopied by an intense, endless void of darkness, broken only by the faint wisps of trailing candlelight that shimmered like water in a disturbed pond, tearing away the sheet of blackness and briefly revealing the intricate etchings of the panelled wooden ceiling made up of countless eclipsing squares.
Sarah stared intently at these vague details hanging above her. As if she could see beyond the simple etchings and faded wood grains made by simple tools that everyone else saw and was instead seeing something that made its presence known only to her. Whispering its presence in her ears and keeping itself silent to the others.
Her eyes began to change suddenly from being wide open and aware to all that she could see through the dark-filled haze, to being filled with great anxiety and fear, as if some terrible fear had found its way inside her mind like a festering parasite. Her breathing began to grow laboured, faint wisps of her breath started to appear in front of her. She began to nervously rub her arms up and down, more and more, faster and faster, as though some great chill had begun to overwhelm her, chilling her to the bone.
“I can feel something in here,” she said with an agitated, almost terrified tone through the occasional chatter of her teeth. Her gullet began to contract and retract, as if something was climbing up it toward her mouth.
“Something is in here, watching us through hate-filled eyes, seeing us in our fear and revelling in our desperate attempts to escape. It won‘t let us go. Oh, god, the horrible things in its head. I can see them, I can see them”
Ernest had started to realise that her behaviour was increasing, becoming more and more out of control. He began to step away from the wall behind him towards her, reaching out nervously with his hand to calm her down. His eyes glanced over toward Father Heathers, silently wishing him to help him calm her. But, it was useless, he could see that he was hopelessly lost in his own maze of silent terror to notice anything beyond himself. He could see how hard he clutched tightly to the crucifix he had, almost forcing it into his skin and into the flesh of his hands. The face of the cross was squashed into his wrinkled face, his eyes wide open and staring right into the eyes of the crucified Christ, burning with an intense hunger for salvation and redemption.
Ernest retracted his eyes back to Sarah without uttering a single blink. He slowly edged toward her whimpering and shaking figure, taking long careful steps across the hard stone floor beneath his leather soles.
“Its alright, he whispered to her, careful not to agitate her. “Its alright, we’ll be fine. You don’t have to worry.”
Sarah slammed her open palmed hands down on the hard wood of the table in front of her, causing the empty plates of partially frozen meat to clatter suddenly and Ernest to stop in his tracks in a single sudden heartbeat. His attention wavered from her for a moment as he caught the slight echo of Sarah’s sudden response out of the corner of his ear, sensing the reverberation of sound ring out all around him to the silent rooms of the house beyond.
Gaining his stability, he looked down again at Sarah with partially opened lips. Her hands were still lying flat on the table, strands of her bundled hair had come free and were hanging across her sweat-covered face, moving like a pendulum backwards and forwards as her intense breathing worked like a busy pump inside her throat. Her eyes were wide open and almost completely white with fear, staring hard into Ernest’s eyes. A faint trickle of a tear had run from her right eye and over her cheek.
Ernest’s eyes moved downwards of their own volition toward her chest, heaving up and down with her breath and covered in sweat. He felt himself become sexually excited and with great power steered his eyes back up towards hers.
She began to mouth something to him, something he couldn’t hear from where he stood. Feeling slightly agitated, he stepped closer to her, turning his right ear to her frantically whispering mouth and taking a strong grip of the edge of the table. He leaned the side of his head over to her, she sat up and almost pressed her lips onto his waiting ear. Then, through the feel of her hot breath against his skin, he heard her words.
“You like don’t you, you perverted bastard. You looked at her pert tits and you liked it didn’t you, didn’t you. Go on, take her, kill the god man and take her now across the table like the whore that she is.”
Ernest instantly drew away from her as he briskly stepped back, almost tripping over his fast, frantic feet. His left arm instinctively raised upward, covering his ear with his open palmed hand to protect himself from these words that clearly didn’t belong to Sarah.
With an agitated and shocked expression, he looked at Sarah’s transfixed, contempt-filled and soul-piercing eyes that stared right into his skull underneath twisted, narrowed eyebrows. Her thinly-stretched lips were pursed tightly together as she held them with her teeth as though feeling some great hatred at seeing him in front of her. Her hands were held out in front of her with all fingers stretched out as far as they could go, the long nails digging deep into the grainy wood of the table.
Ernest had seen this before many times in front of him in the countless haunted houses he had visited in his profession. The sudden alteration of personality, of facial features, angered behaviour and the pronunciation and sound of the words spoken aloud. They were all obvious signs of possession. A great wash of fear like an electrical surge of nervous anticipation suddenly came over him as he realised what he was seeing right before him, something that was staring right into his mind behind the eyes of an innocent girl. All of the past occasions of possession he had come across in those haunted places, they were dangerous, but he could handle them because of the comforting fact that he wasn’t alone, he had others with him that witnessed the event unfolding right before their eyes. He wasn’t alone like he was now, with only a poor possessed child and a priest who seemed to have completely left the material world behind.
Don’t look at her, he said to himself in a silent agitated tone as Sarah’s unflinching, hateful eyes continued to burn like small searchlights into his head as though silently judging him for some unspoken crime. He turned away from her, giving her only his left side to stare at as he balanced his right elbow on the wall, trying his best to pretend that the situation wasn’t happening. A strong sense of guilt managed to burrow its way into his consciousness as he realised what he was doing. He was allowing some dark, possibly evil entity to take over this young woman, allowing it to tear away the moorings of her soul away from her body and to leave her drowning in the darkness while he simply stood there and did nothing.
What can I do, he said aloud in his mind, hoping wherever Sarah’s essence was, she could hear him. I know I’ve dealt with this before and won, but its different this time, I’m completely alone, I have no help, whatsoever. Please, I’m sorry, I want to help, but I don’t know how.
‘How delectable you look there, professor.’ Ernest breathed in a hurried and sudden gasp of air as he heard the strange, whispered, almost animal-like voice resound in his ear. His whole body froze from the surprise of it. He quickly spun round to Sarah, expecting this inhuman voice to be coming from her mouth as did the words before and was instantly taken aback with an expression of disgust and terror when he saw her.
There, washed over Sarah’s face like a hideous portrait of an evil figure, was a huge, jester-like grin, grinning with infinite, perverted delights as it joined the piercing eyes in its destruction of his sanity. The lips were raised almost as if they had been pulled by meat hooks up into her cheeks. The teeth within were of a countless number, their pale whiteness shone eerily and ghostly in the watery candlelight. The nails on her fingers were still embedded deeply into the roughened wood of the table and had left behind ten separate scrapes in their wake. It was like looking at the twisted, hideous image of a clown
Ernest backed away to the wall behind him, almost knocking over a few of the small ugly statues behind him onto the floor. His whole body trembled as he beheld this hideous sight, a sight that seemed to defy any logical physical explanation and worryingly still, had happened while his back was turned and had no idea it was happening. He raised his right arm up toward his mouth, his grinding, trembling teeth digging hard into the material of his sleeve, great trickles of saliva fell like gushing water across his arm, joined by child-like whimpering.
‘You fear us then, don’t you, little man.’ The same voice echoed again inside his head, he quivered as he noticed the obvious lack of movement from Sarah’s horrifically altered mouth as he heard them. ‘How we revel in seeing you all so afraid and desperate as you try to escape this beautiful place we have built. We watch you in the shadows, standing mere inches from you, breathing down your necks, running our hands over your sweaty skin, staring into your eyes and simply delighting in how you have no idea that we’re there.’
The words made Ernest feel sick, his skin crawled as he imagined their whole journey through the many rooms of this place, knowing that they weren’t alone.
‘We have possession of the girl, and while we so enjoy having her, feeling her body from the inside out with our countless hands, we will give her back. Do not ask why, that is not for you to know. But know this. We have this girl’s knowledge of The Brotherhood of Mystery and how they brought you here against your will . . .to us. Know that it was them that brought this on us so many years ago, took away our footholds on this world, tore our souls from our bodies before our work was completed. The insufferable pigs will suffer for this. Now, go, do your research, your tests, let the world know that we are here, we exist, we will be . . .soon.’
Ernest couldn’t bear the words in his head, or the terrifying sight of the twisted clown image any longer. With a great effort of will and huge repressed abject terror, he tightly closed his eyes, shielding them timidly with his trembling arms and hands.
“Oh, my god, help me!” The blubbering, terrified and recognisable sound of Sarah’s voice came through the shield of Ernest’s terror. Slowly, he dropped his still shaking arms away from his face and looked again at Sarah. She was slumped over the table crying and sobbing, her hands were draped like a protective canopy over her hair and the top part of her face. Her crying and sobbing were mental torture to him as the horrid sounds pierced into him like a dagger, like listening to the uncomfortable sounds of a child’s crying and having no power to help.
Well, to hell with those damned spirits. Ernest thought to himself as he slammed his fists down hard against the hard stone wall behind him, ignoring the surge of pain that ran like electricity through his nervous system. Reinforcing his stability of mind and keeping his completely forgotten fear under control in this otherwise totally insane environment. I’m going to help her, come hell or high water, they won’t play us like toys. I’m going to get her and the others out of here safely, whatever it takes.
Chapter Eight
It took some tremendous amount of effort, a lot of coaxing and some harsh words along with both mental and physical stamina from Ernest’s part as he struggled to get Sarah and Father Heathers out of the darkness-filled dining room, into the mist-filled main hall, up the echoing stairs as safely as he could and getting them as comfortable and calm as possible in some quiet protective room somewhere.
He suddenly felt totally alone as he harnessed all of his strength as he was forced to almost carry them both upstairs, their wills and mental strength had all but left them in the face of such overwhelming and horrendously evil presences in the house. It almost felt as though, whatever was in the house was systematically tearing down the emotional and mental pillars of strength in everyone to make their eventual defeat that much easier. The sudden frightening thought made Ernest feel like a child, totally alone and lost in some unfamiliar darkened room with something watching it in the shadows.
I should have been one of the first to go, Ernest thought to himself as he struggled to get upstairs with the others. I’m not strong, I’m weak, Doctor Stephenson, Sarah, they’re strong than me, there’s no doubt about that. But, why hasn’t it done this to me? Why the hell do I have to be left alone like this and left to fend for myself. I need them, god we all need each other to survive this place otherwise we’ll never get out of here. Oh, god help me.
Sarah had retreated fully into her crying and total sorrow over the complete invasion the unnamed entity had taken of her body, leaving behind nothing but a sobbing corpse-like body. Her tear-stricken face barely ever leaving the private safe solitude of darkness her hands provided for her. Father Heathers too had retreated into his own private world of his faith, praying for Christ, his saviour to come and release him from the tight bonds this place had got over him like a coiled snake. Ernest couldn’t help but imagine him lost and completely alone in an unrelenting desert wasteland as he sought out his saviour from some unsearched place and always finding nothing.
No offence, Father, but at the moment, I couldn’t give a damn about your own soul-searching. Right now I could use you to help me and not leave me completely alone here. God, One of you please, please come back to me, come back to the living.
Though, while he was filled with both intense fear and great anger as he walked with no other company but himself up the stairs, through the mist and up toward the next darkness-filled floor, he couldn’t shake off the nagging wish in his head that he could descend into total dissolution, escape into his own safe and secure mind like the others and escape whatever was watching them, at least, escape in a way that they wouldn’t notice what would inevitably happen to them. Like being murdered when you’re asleep. You’ll die, but you aren’t awake to realise or be afraid.
Carrying them both as much as he could up the carpeted staircase in this manner was almost like carrying two corpses up a flight of stairs, both of them completely lost to you and not moving a finger to help in you moving them.
Ernest reached the next floor up and paused to take in a few much needed deep breaths, pausing for a moment with his head angled upwards as he realised that this wasn’t one of the area’s that they had given light to. He stared mid-gasp and open mouthed at the great gaping mouth yawning blackly before him, stretching from where he stood in his anxious spot to the totally unseen and obscure opposite end of the corridor. He silently cursed himself when he realised he had left the torch back in the dining room. He was sure as hell not going to go back.
Doing his best to ignore it, as well as the terrifying thoughts of what watched him from the darkness that plagued his consciousness like laughing demons, he lowered his head and closed his mouth, taking a close look at the slightly torn and still a little wet map in his hands, trying his best not to drop Sarah or Father Heathers in the process. Following what remained of the floor plan of the house, he plotted his position of where he now stood and tried his best to find a suitable place to put the others as well as himself. But, with the damage done by the wind outside and the freezing and thawing from the underground larder, much of the map was either indecipherable or almost completely faded away.
But, finally, after what seemed like tremendous work to find somewhere just to sleep and pushing himself to continue looking and not give up, he finally got them both into a suitable room he found that was just a few feet over to the right of where he was. Gathering them both tightly in his arms and flinging their arms over his shoulder, he carried them swiftly over.
The door to the room creaked loudly as he pushed it open with his cold and trembling hand that held tightly to the brass doorknob that was embedded in the elaborately decorated and slightly rotten wood. He ignored the embellishments this time, wanting only to get himself and the others somewhere safe where they could rest. The brief thought of Doctor Stephenson being alone in his room somewhere else in the house passed by his thoughts, but his quickly fading and tiredness stricken mind had all but lost all sense of other problems and he quickly forgot about him.
A few tiny sharpened splinters of dried, rotten wood came away from underneath the door and fell across the floor inside the room as the sudden pressure of the door being pushed across the floor’s surface tore them off like grated cheese. With a last tiny ounce of will and effort to stay awake, Ernest pushed the door open fully and looked inside.
This room was just like the others he had seen thus far in this place, dusty, archaic, dishevelled, grim and almost hideous to look at with its disjointed, twisted and surreal looking furniture, its torn and faded wallpaper revealing smooth black stone underneath.
A small collection of paintings in golden frames, undoubtedly portraits of the cult, were positioned on the walls. Ernest did his best not shine the torchlight across their faces as he surveyed the room. Another glance at those truly demonic expressions would make him totally sleepless and lose the opportunity to join the others in their brief escape from this nightmare.
This room, like the dining hall downstairs housed numerous small bronze, copper and stone effigies of unrecognisable and equally grotesque creatures along the walls, resting on top of slim, narrow-legged tables that only the previous tenants of this place would recognise. Four grainy, scratched and oddly-angled looking metallic support structures with wire gauzes covering the hollow bases were housed in all four corners of the room, holding the void-like blackened ceiling above the dusty, bare-wood of the floor. Ernest tapped at the floor a couple of times. A hard wooden knock came back as he did, signifying that the floor was solid, presumably with more stone.
Enough of this damned interior design, I want to rest.
As he struggled to stay awake just a little longer, he picked up the torch and shone it over to the right, almost shouting out in happiness when the light climbed across the large double-bed in front of him. He stepped closer, leaving the others in the hall behind him, for the moment and scanned the bed closer. The first detail that was noticeable as it glinted in the torchlight was the four long separate chains attached by strong metal locks to each end of the two opposable metal jagged headboards on either side of the bed, the whole apparatus holding the bed a couple of millimetres above the ground. The bed still boasted two separate rumpled cushions and a good strong mattress.
It’s the ugliest bed I’ve ever seen, but I can’t afford to be picky.
Holding the torch in his teeth, Ernest turned back and back into the hall to the others who were both still lost in their own torments, completely oblivious to everything Ernest still had the misfortune to notice around him. He exhaled a great deep breath of air, kneeled down beside Sarah and took her up in his arms before flinging her over his shoulder. Desperately trying to keep on his feet and not allow Sarah’s weight, nor his ever-growing tiredness bring the both of them crashing down, he stumbled over to the bed, his eyes forced downwards by the pressure on his head down to his heavy footsteps scraping against the rotted and sandpapered bare floorboards.
Finally, after endless painful moments of keeping his eyes open and never allowing them to close, he reached the bed with Father Heathers underneath his right arm. As with Sarah before him, he hurled Father Heathers onto the bed beside her until the both of them were lying with their bodies almost completely covering the whole of the bed with their open arms and legs. Ernest looked at them both with tired, bloodshot eyes, breathing his hurried and laboured breath over their unresponsive figures. He quickly checked their pulses and eyes to ensure they were sleeping comfortably and found a place on the bed for himself in-between them both. He picked his feet up off the floor and lay them flat in a restful position down below him and joined both of his hands with the other on his stomach, interlocking the fingers. He took great comfort in feeling the warm presence of the others lying beside him and sensing their slow, regular breathing.
Lifting his head and looking up from the dusty, moth-eaten blanket he lay on, he checked the door in front of him and ensured it was closed before again resting his head and allowing the well-earned tiredness to overwhelm him, quickly forgetting the fact that the door wasn‘t locked.
Chapter Nine
The rest of the unnaturally pitch-dark afternoon passed without sound or incident as the exhausted and deeply frightened scientists slumbered within the silent, dust-choked and uninviting chambers of the house, sleeping off their great half-thawed feasts of meat, dreaming sweet dreams of escape from this place, escape into the dark and unrelenting darkness and cold presence of the breeze outside and retreating back to the normalcy and comforting ignorance of the rest of humanity.
The mile-long corridors running like empty veins within the house sat, as they had done for over a century, in total stagnation. Echoing out their long drawn out, single syllable breaths of stillness, silence and disquieting nature all across the metallic low-bearing pillars, underneath the archways, across the faded wallpaper and rugged and crumbling brickwork, past the ever-closed and un-opening doors and against the dust-encrusted chandeliers and cupboards and bookcases. Carrying the dust along with it down the corridors and into the deserted and vacant rooms like a visible phantom in the blackness, looking over what was once its home.
In one of the many rooms the dust phantom paid a visit was the room where Doctor Stephenson rested from his frantic and raving efforts of escape from the house in a cold, dust-covered, iron-sprung rotten bed with a rotten, hole-filled blanket covering his shaking body. He lay on his side, his head lying but barely resting on the almost emptied pillowcase behind him. His body twitched nervously and continually as he played out some unknown nightmare deep in his thoughts, quietly rambling frightened and unheard words to himself, his bloodied and hurriedly bandaged hands gripped tightly to each other in front of his stomach in a pointless attempt to calm himself down.
He began to kick wildly with his feet underneath the thin blanket as his nightmare grew steadily worse until finally he knocked it silently to the floor. His hands began to violently shake, his trembling fingers digging deep into what remained of the mattress, his frightened words became more prominent and louder as he almost screamed them into the air.
Don’t. . . . don’t come near me! Please . . . I beg you, leave me alone. Oh, god, oh my god . . . don’t hurt me, pleeeeeaaaase!
With one final long drawn out cry for help from his nightmare, he suddenly awoke with a start and jumped into a sitting position on the bed, his hands were behind him, his fingers still embedded firmly in the mattress, his breathing rapid but steadily growing quieter. His bright, fully-opened eyes slowly scanned the room he was in from right to left, across the torn wallpaper, the almost blank and empty bookcase where the remaining remnants of an incense stick silently burned off its remaining smoke into the air. He saw the barred and unclean window straight across from him, the long, torn, ripped and decaying remains of the curtains hung over it.
What happened, what am I doing here? Did they put me in here, why, I can’t remember.
Feeling a sharp pain run through both of his hands and reacting to it with a hiss of breath through clenched teeth, he brought his hands toward him and instantly drew back when he saw the dried and clotted blood covering his palms, two ripped pieces of cloth tied up rather awkwardly into a quick knot covered his wounds. Looking at them closer, his memory began to flood back.
That’s it, I remember. I tried to get out through the window, I broke the glass, but I couldn’t get out, there were those damn bars in the way. I pulled at the glass with my bare hands. God, what a damn fool. I was stupid enough to listen to those morons from the so called ‘Brotherhood of Mystery.’ They should have just give me the money and let me leave. My god, why did I allow myself to be taken in to study a so-called haunted house. I have to find a way out, there must be a back door, somewhere.
Jumping out the bed and running toward the window, he checked it over. It was just like the one he smashed downstairs, barred with no way out. In a fit of anger and annoyance, he kicked hard at the wall underneath the window, barking out obscene words and phrases. A cake of dust fell from the ceiling and down to the floor as the sudden impact of his foot sounded them out of their hiding place. Quickly noticing something at the corner of his eye, he stopped his angered frustrations and looked through the window out into the entangled mess of trees and branches and suddenly realised something. It was dark, pitch-dark. He checked his watch; it read 8:30. It was the wrong time of year to be so dark at this time, by now it should only be twilight, only just beginning to go dark. Then, another flash of memory passed by his consciousness. He had noticed the darkness before on the way up here. He had asked the driver of the car they come up in about it, he told him it was the sheer number of trees that blocked the sunlight. Therefore, it was always dark, whatever time of time, or time of year.
Without batting an eyelid, he quickly wrapped himself tightly in his arms, suddenly feeling so uncomfortable at the unusual nature of this place and sensing the deprivation type symptoms of always being in darkness. His eyes refused to relent from the sight of skeletal-like branches moving slowly and eerily in the breeze, looking almost like a ghastly wave to him. Goose-pimples appeared instantly all over his body and made him shiver in fear and intense cold as the weight of everything around him suddenly took hold. He took some small amount of pleasure at hearing his wristwatch slowly tick regularly, keeping up with normal time. Right now, it was the only thing that appeared normal and recognisable in this place.
Keep calm, man. There are only branches out there, that’s all, blowing in the wind. Your mind is only imagining fears that aren’t there. You don’t want to be like the others here do you? Dreamers who are firmly convinced in a life after death and claim to talk to ghosts? Science is the only true religion. Science proves that we are the only things to exist, we are the only gods, the only intelligent and sentient creatures on this earth and this universe. You have to keep reminding yourself of that.
Reinforcing his strong-held beliefs in his mind, he began to calm down again. He shivered with delight as he felt the warm embrace of his own self-affirmation covering his body like a blanket, instantly taking away the cold goose pimples all over his body and returning him to rational thought. He turned away from the window and raised himself to his full height, tugging both ends of his coat tightly around him. Raising up his injured hands toward him open palmed, he slowly tightened them into fists, cringing at the sharp, stabbing pains spreading like electric shocks throughout his hands and wrists. His eyes flickered into repetitive twitches as the pain became stronger, spreading throughout his nervous system up to his pain receptors as they screamed for him to stop. Through the narrowed slits of his eyes, he could see the trickles of blood pouring from his hurriedly bandaged wounds and crawling across the edges of his hands over the bare skin and down to the floor.
This was an old technique of his that he had used many times before in the many years of his research and other more personal and awkward moments. If a situation became to intense for him and his body cringed up to the point where he had to force himself out, he found a good method was to intentionally bestow great pain on himself, either by cutting himself with scissors or a knife, or banging his foot, leg or head against something hard, or something like this where he made an injury even worse. Doing this to himself would then release the pressure and pent-up anger or frustration out into the open, relaxing him and keeping his mind focused.
An incident of him using this technique before in a supposed haunted house he studied seven years before in a council estate in Oakley. The idea of being in a council estate in the first place had already injected a great amount of pressure and irritation in him when he arrived there, the only thing keeping him from publicly addressing his feelings toward the residents of the house was keeping the image of his mortgaged house in London firmly placed in his mind. Then, to study the house, the so-called ‘haunting,’ the incidents that happened and to give the house a clean bill of health to the residents and have them throw his diagnosis and many years of university teachings back in his face by constantly declaring that the haunting was real instilled more and more of his anger and frustration deep within his muscles.
Leaving them standing in the hall waiting for his comeback from what they told him, he retreated to the shadowy kitchen at the back of the house and sat in the small plastic chair underneath the lime green coloured table in the corner. There he sat for what seemed like an eternity with the frustration and the impulses of taking it all out on the family he used all his strength to hold back shooting through his body like microscopic invaders, constantly egging him to take it out on them and get out of this wretched place and back to his own class of people.
Seeing a knife lying on the corner of the table, he picked it up and dug it a little into his palm, his fingers flexing at the pain he felt as he dragged the sharp ended knife all across his palm from one end to another. He calmed as the frustration slowly ebbed away from his body in the blood that he spilled. Quickly cleaning up the blood drops on the table with a handkerchief and throwing the knife into a plastic bowl of water in the sink, he walked back out the family in the hallway and without saying a word got into his car and drove away.
As the memory began to slip away from his conscious thoughts and return again to darkness of his mind, he slowly began to open his eyes and breathed out a long drawn out breath of relaxation and contentment. Looking down at his hands, he could see that they were now almost completely covered in blood, much of it had fallen down to the floor around his feet. His makeshift bandages had torn open in some places, leaving nothing behind but bloody tatters. He calmly took away the stained pieces of his bandages off of his hands, barely noticing the slight needle-like stabs of pain he got from the wounds with his newfound calmness and inner warmth that to him felt like a narcotic high.
He held his hands behind his back and looked around the room with slightly dazed eyes and a wavering body as the narcotic-like calm atmosphere he felt filled his body like a poison. He stood staring with only half-concentration at the tattered remains of the wallpaper hanging from the walls, the broken down bed and torn mattress, the hole-filled and ragged curtains and then to the crumbling bookcase, instantly noticing the small rugged looking book lying at an angle on one of the shelves. He walked over to it in almost a waddle, his arms hanging by his sides and swinging around like a child’s.
“Well, then. What have we here I wonder?” He said as he took the book from its shelf, hardly noticing as some of the frayed loose pages fell from the book onto the floor. With an awkward laugh-like grunt, he bent down to the pages and scrutinised them as they lay in front of him.
Scrawled across the pages were great quantities of text, scratched on with an uneven precision into roughly readable words. Beside the words were numerous drawings of oddly shaped metallic-looking masks, helmets with long and sharp spikes and metal locks and wire gauzes built into them. There were ritualistic daggers, metallic suits looking as though they were designed to be worn over the torso and unrecognisable and vicious looking torture instruments, apparently designed by the cult members as ways of bestowing pain on others or themselves. Doctor Stephenson flicked through the rest of the pages in the book and saw that they were the same. The whole of the book read like a sadomasochists handbook, filled with numerous ways and devices of pleasuring themselves at feeling pain the strangest and most brutal of ways.
Doctor Stephenson laughed like a drunken man as he realised the similarity between this and what he had just done to himself.
Propelling himself upwards with his unsteady hands, he sat himself down on the edge of the half collapsed bed and began to read the book he had, his reddened and wrinkled eyes looking hard and unrelentingly at the hideous and unsettling images and paragraphs detailed inside, his mouth half open with his tongue curling over his teeth as he yearned for more.
A sudden sound rushing past his door made him look up with a slow upward tilt of his head, his eyes half closed, the tip of his tongue falling out over his bottom lip and his head twitching feverishly from side to side. He stared at the door as it slowly opened with a loud creak with only half of his mind concentrating on the noise and what it meant to him, the other, more alert and reasoning half of his mind taking note of the fevered imaginings of the drawings in the book he held and wishing he could draw them if he had a pencil.
The door remained open as it hung awkwardly on its old, rotten hinges, revealing a gap of a few inches out into the corridor outside. Daniel Stephenson giggled a little as he watched the door twitch slightly from the slow, steady breeze that wafted in from outside, causing it to move in an eerie and ghostly fashion. He held his breath momentarily and turned himself away to the left of where he faced the door, clutching tightly to the book he held as a child would protectively hold a toy it was meant to share. Daniel watched with a partly open mouth and slightly frightened eyes as he saw a large black gulf of a shadow slowly approach the partly opened door with a loud shuffling sound. The shadow was a large, shapeless bulge and had no signs of arms, legs or even a head as it made its slow, heavy journey towards him. Daniel continued to listen yet felt only slight fear and agitation as it came closer and closer, the shuffling sound it made giving the impression that someone or something was crawling across the carpeted floor, or someone was dragging something like a body across it.
Daniel pressed his feet firm into the floor where he stood and slowly shuffled them across the floor as he made a strange and surreal attempt to mimic the sounds made from outside, making his hands into fists and roughly throwing his arms through the air as a child would make the playful movements of a train moving across a track. He smiled brightly and showed much of his front teeth. A large sheen of sweat ran down his face and down to his shirt collar, he made no obvious sin that he was aware of it.
Daniel ceased in his strange playful mood as he watched in silent, excited anticipation as the large, formless shadow finally approached the gap in the door and a large, unearthly and frightening face came into view as it peeked through the gap in the door. The face was too indistinguishable to be recognised as either male or female and seemed to be more ghostly or like the face of a corpse. It was large and bulbous and almost completely white, aside from a few long black streaks that circled the large, bright dead-like eyes and around the large, silent-scream like mouth. Its hair was long and black and strangely well-groomed as it trailed the floor behind it. From its position, it was clear that it had indeed dragged itself across the floor towards him. Daniel watched in apprehensive silence at the terrifying, silent ghostly image before him, the heel of his right foot lifting off from the floor while the toes were pressed firmly into it. His arms were arched and held close to his chest in a defensive posture, his half-opened eyes staring back in the deep, black emptiness of the ghost‘s eyes.
“Can, um . . .can we play, yet, please?” He asked in a tense, childlike voice. The ghost moved its hand out from behind it and across the gap in the door and waved it around in silence as it made unusual and unfamiliar signs with its blackened fingers, pointing towards itself, to the direction it dragged itself from, to Daniel and to the rusted, rotten, wooden door behind it.
‘. . .make sure you are all right.’ The ghost said in an unearthly, whooshing, high-pitched voice. ‘They want to talk to you. . . .play with toys . . .won’t know about you. Headshrinkers.’ It pointed to its head with long, tapering blackened index finger. ‘Not right in the head . . .need specialist modern medicine . . .care.’
With that final note, the ghost continued to shuffle itself across the floor and along the corridor over to the right, shouting out a loud, maniacal, screeching laughter that filled the whole floor, bouncing out across anything solid that was in its way. Daniel regarded its cryptic messages and its overall image with curled lips and confused eyes, his fingers fumbling with the small ratty book he held close to his stomach. He moved the upper part of his body to the left and peered through the gap in the door toward the door the ghost had pointed out. Not a though passed through his mind, not the instinctual reasoning of the ghost’s words or even registering the terror and absolute fear he should have felt at having such a terrifying phantom. He merely stood his ground and continued to look confused, as if all logic had been purged from his mind and left him with nothing but basic instincts.
He turned round to face the window behind him suddenly as he heard something like a small stone being thrown softly against the glass. Walking over slowly to it, he peered through and looked curiously at the small, frighteningly creepy image of someone standing in one of the many forest of trees outside staring back at him. The figure was stood comfortably in one of the upper stronger branches of the tree and seemed to be standing perfectly, making not a single movement as it continued to watch him. It was dressed in black jeans that hung from its waist and had a black, leather jacket. Its face seemed ordinary and commonplace with a short, ordinary hairstyle. Daniel peered closer and saw that the figure that persisted in staring at him was actually a cardboard cut-out of someone that had been deliberately placed in the tree. The cut-out was cut perfectly cut around the edge of the figure and had a small square-shaped piece sticking out from the base of it to ensure it stayed upright. Daniel didn’t recognise the figure as he looked at it, it wasn’t someone he knew in his career or his personal life, not that he had much of a personal life, at that. He tried to think back to all the people he had known in his life going back years, but couldn’t bring up a single image to mind. Nothing that remotely questioned the strangeness or the sheer disquieting menace of it flashed brightly as something to be wary of in his mind, nor did that fact that a cardboard cut-out had somehow managed to throw a pebble against a window. Daniel simply relaxed against the side of the window where he stood, staring absently at the cut-out and observing its posture, noting only the fact that its subject was positioned in a tall relaxed shape with its hands behind its back, almost like that of someone posing for a photograph. Daniel uttered a deep sigh and slowly began to close his eyes as tiredness overwhelmed him.
He broke of his half-slumbering suddenly and turned his head to the direction of the corridor as he heard a door quickly slamming open, the same door the ghost had pointed out to him.
‘Daniel.’
The quiet whisper he heard came from outside the window. He turned his head to the right and looked outside. The cardboard cut-out of the figure had changed position and was now bent downward, its tiny, yet strangely twinkling living eyes still continued to stare at him as though it really could see him. Its right arm was bent and its index finger held vertically over its grinning lips. Daniel smiled as he heard a soft, whooshing shush make its ghostly way from the figure to his ear. With a slight nod, he made his way out through the door and out toward the one outside.
Slowly, he pulled open the door, fully expecting to see the same dank, dilapidated, crumbling corridor outside and the severely ravaged door beset with rising damp sitting and waiting patiently in front of him. He gave a passing thought to the frightening ghostly visitor he saw dragging its loathsome carcass across the floor, and how it might be waiting for him outside, standing rigidly against the wall to the left or the right of the door and would terrify him with its sudden shocking appearance and its deep, bottomless, sunken jet-black eyes. But, if it was there, then he simply thought, it shouldn’t be so mean and scary, to me.
He took hold of the rusted, old doorknob of his bedroom door and slowly pulled it open. A great, drawn-out, nerve-tingling creak rang out like immense ringing bells around the room, almost filling the air with its unnatural and almost unearthly wail. Daniel ignored it totally, his eyes fixed into an unfaltering position and staring straight ahead, taking in every minute detail of the countless cracks in the wood, the dampness and the ceaseless dribbling water that coated its scabies-like surface.
The door slowly opened, but instead of seeing the corridor outside, there was instead a room, a large room that was totally unlike anything that was anywhere else inside the house, a room that logically, shouldn’t exist anywhere in physical reality.
It was a child’s room, though more like a bedroom for newborn babies, at that. The walls and ceiling were painted with a thick, deep blue colour to resemble the sky. Great countless dabs of a paintbrush in various places around the ceiling gave the impression of clouds floating in the sky, torn away from there eternal freedoms in the sky and frozen forever into a permanent mannequin-like posture . About halfway up the walls from the floor there was painted a large wooden, picket-fence with a sharp, triangular edge on the top of each plank, perfectly painted and showing no signs of having been created by a bristle-filled brush. Scattered around the room were numerous children’s toys varying from a large number of plastic footballs half painted white and light blue with star shapes decorating them all around, to plastic buckets and spades and small rag dolls with disturbing and disquieting smiles and bright, creepily aware eyes made of stitched strands of wool and shiny, glowing buttons. In the opposite left hand corner of the room was a small playpen made of a plastic fence, similar to the one on the walls. Inside was an oddly-shaped type of small, bright yellow pram used by little girls. The metal supports underneath it that housed the wheels were raised up considerably high, placing the basket high above from the floor. The edges of the basket were sharp and pointed and looked sharp enough to hurt very easily if you got to close.
Daniel saw the room and was instantly gleeful, producing a large set of small, underdeveloped teeth behind a wide smile appearing quickly on his face, the type of smile a child would give at seeing its Christmas presents on Christmas day. His eyes sparkled brightly as he scanned the room, joyful and ecstatic at everything he saw around him. He danced on the spot and clapped his hands together before running into the centre of the room and looking at all the toys, wondering which he could play with first, his fingers trembling at the sheer pleasure of it all.
It didn’t even hit him in the slightest possible regard of how this room could be, how it could be so perfect in every way, unblemished and brand new as if it had been painted only yesterday while every inch of the house around him had long ago surrendered to the steady encroachment of time and fell to crumbling walls, degenerating furniture and total rot and decay. In the space of a few moments, his mind had lost all its present knowledge and memories and had fallen back to that of a child’s mental landscape and childish ways, taking away all grown-up thoughts of analysis, scientific study and putting whatever he saw, felt and heard around him to his crystal clear singular perceptions of reality. His mind was now filled with dreams of adulthood, eagerly awaiting it with a twinkle in his eye and dreaming of what was to come in his later years. Gone were the pleasures and joys of discovering new facts in the hidden world of science and proving himself right and others wrong and was now replaced with the simple joys of playing with toys, acting out seemingly endless imaginings of fighting imaginary battles between good and evil and saving the world with his own limited supply of strange gifts that had suddenly been bequeathed to him.
Mummy has been nice to me, he thought in a child’s voice. I didn’t hurt myself today, I got to be good, didn’t play with the razors or the knives. Mummy said I can play with new toys if I was good. Mummy put me in t’ other room with toys, daddy can’t see me in here, he can’t hit me today. What was mummy cross for when she shouting at daddy? He pulled her hair, got her crying. I hate him.
His childish, troubled thoughts abruptly ended when he saw the tall, enormous cubes standing against the wall behind him, high enough almost to reach the ceiling. Each side was painted a different colour ranging from blue, white, red and yellow. Imprinted in tall, 3-dimensional layout were large numbers or letters that had been embedded deep into the plastic. Daniel ran excitedly to them and ran his hands eagerly across them, giving great thought to how he was exactly supposed to play with them, all the while his tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth and dribbling, a deep excited regular breathing pattern whooshing in and out of his overworked lungs.
‘Why, hello, little boy.’ A strange, disembodied and disturbing female voice said from somewhere in the room. Daniel turned his head around and looked openly and in a childlike curious manner all around the room, only half aware of the strangeness of the voice. His eyes opened wide and sparkled with light. “Is that you, mummy?” He said excitedly, gurgling as he finished.
‘Oh, no, the voice said again. ‘No, darling, I’m not your mummy. No, I’m here to help you with a little problem you have, right now, okay? I’ve some long talks with your mummy and daddy and they think that your sick and you need someone to talk to about it. Well, that’s why I’m here. I’m here as someone you can sit and talk to and tell me any problems you might have and I’ll be able to help you with them.’
Daniel rested on the floor with the support of his knees and shuffled a little on the floor, saying nothing back to the voice. A slight wonder of where his mother was quickly passed through his mind. He looked down embarrassed at the floor and twiddled his thumbs together with his fingers. Looking up, he saw a small teddy bear in resting uncomfortably beside the playpen. He quickly crawled over to it and picked it and began to play with its stumpy little arms and legs. He looked into its face and instantly noticed its frown and its droopy little button eyes. Daniel looked at the bear dejectedly with a great wash of sadness smeared across his face. He pressed the bear against his chest and hugged it tightly, his upper torso swinging comfortingly from side to side. A long stream of a single tear ran from his eye and down to over his cheek, landing silently against the soft wool of the teddy bear’s head.
‘Look, the voice said in a slightly annoyed manner, as though speaking through gritted teeth. ‘Why don’t you come and sit down in this nice, big comfortable chair and tell what’s wrong.’
Daniel slowly and absently turned his head to the right and noticed a large wooden rocking chair swaying creakingly backwards and forwards in an eerie and dubious manner. A small deep red coloured cushion was placed in the centre of the seat. The shadow of the chair was cast in an elongated way across the whitewashed floor and silhouetted against the opposite wall. Daniel looked at quietly and reservedly for a moment as he noticed that there was a silhouetted figure that seemed to be sitting in the shadow of the chair, yet in the physical manifestation of the chair, there was nothing. The figure seemed to be that of an old woman or a woman around middle-age. Her hair was bunched up into a bundle with two large hatpins and her head was bent downward looking toward the floor. Her hands were perfectly still as they rested in her lap. Daniel simply shrugged his shoulders and ignored the bizarre phenomenon in an uninterested manner. He looked down at the bear in his hands and patted and stroked its head and kissed it lightly a few times.
“Can my teddy sit with me too and hold my hand?” He asked the voice.
‘Yes, of course, why not.’ It responded. Its soft, gentle, female voice had now altered slightly to an almost monstrous tone, deep, grunting and croaky like that of someone who hadn’t spoken a word for many years.
Daniel walked over to the rocking chair, the teddy clutched tightly in his hand. He looked down at his saddened, pathetic expression and responded with a mimicked one of his own before rubbing the teddy softly against his cheek with his eyes closed, feeling its soft fur against his skin. “You’ll be alright,” he whispered to it.
He reached the chair and sat down in it as carefully as he could so as not to be too heavy for the woman in the chair. He brought his legs up from the floor and pushed them underneath him then crossed them together. He pushed the teddy-bear tightly against his chest and began to stroke the fur on its head softly. Looking over to the shadow of the chair that was cast against the wall, he saw that he had decreased considerably in size and was now the same height as a boy of seven or eight years of age. Looking back again at himself in the chair, he was exactly the same, 6 foot and four inches.
“Stop playing scary games with my eyes,” he shouted fiercely to the shadow of the old woman who’s silhouette was totally unresponsive, she simply remained steadfast in her seat as it rocked backwards and forwards over and over again with the same incessant creak, her head bent downward and looking straight at him with her hands clasped around his waist, though he felt nothing around that area. He watched as he saw the woman raise her index finger and pressed it against her lips, shushing him with a seemingly endless pitch.
“You must remain silent,” she said in a dubious whisper. “They will hear you and I can’t let that happen, because I’m here to help you.” She raised her right hand over his head and began to stroke his hair in a slow, repetitive, lovingly way. Still, Daniel felt nothing that even closely resembled a touch from some bodiless entity.
“You see, Daniel,” she began, “life has many doors, many doors that must be known to you as you go on. Some of these doors are in life and some are in your mind. Some lead to somewhere important, some lead to nowhere. You must trust yourself for the answers that they wish to give to you, or madness will consume you. Some have only a limited number of doors to which they can pass through, many of these are locked, irrevocably, and cannot be forced open or tinkered with. These doors are around us all, everywhere and we must make the right decisions with each one we face to ensure that we get what we deserve from the unknown rooms beyond, otherwise, time will fester on, eternally, the doors will become blurred in our sights, their routes and journeys will be blocked from us and life will be but a dream.”
Daniel sat in his seat with his eyes and attention stretched out into oblivion, his trembling, sweaty fingers still caressing the teddy-bears head only in an instinctual, mindless manner. The woman’s words where cryptic to him, much too cryptic for a mere child or someone with the mind of a child to understand, let alone someone of his physical age. She was trying to tell him something, get something across to him, some kind of important information, but what was it?
The woman continued to filter out words to him from her almost invisible lips in an almost pre-recorded manner, or the mumblings of a lunatic, locked away forever in some faraway padded cell. “The cards we are dealt in life . . .no deals . .no match point, no reshuffle. Darkness in the air . . .evil in the soul, cards of malice, yay even the Joker card. Dark deeds, terrible facts, but facts nonetheless. It cannot be denied, burned away . . .inexorable, merciless. Only one path to take . . .the lonely path of malice.”
Daniel’s mind reeled with confusion, tormented words and an even deeper cryptic meaning. He felt something burn inside him, something strong, something wanting to burst out any second, something he had known intimately all his life and yet had shunned it from passers-by and from himself. The ecstasy of some newfound nature began to invade his veins, his lungs, his heart and his mind, but, he didn’t resist it, he welcomed it like an old friend and gave a comfortable place to rest, to get warm and to make its presence known.
“Who are you?” He asked the woman in a timid manner. For several seconds, she made no response, either in words or the movement of her shadow until she at last spoke for the last time. “It doesn’t matter who, or what I am, Daniel. I have guided you all these years, showing you the true path that you must follow, guiding your hand to the correct doors that you come across. You have denied me for many a year, far too long in fact. But now, the time has come to bring you to your fate, your destiny, to show you the true face that you possess.”
Suddenly, she raised her head away from the constant staring at his small, child-like shadow projected against the wall and looked directly at him from the wall, her head bent down at an unusual angle. She slowly raised her right arm and pointed in a strong, fierce way with her finger down at a patch of the floor close by him. Looking down, he saw a large accumulation of bizarre, severely rusted pieces of metal that seemed as though they would fit around the body. The last fragment of everything he was before disappeared like a grain of a sand as he stared hard and with a hideous grin at the empty eyeholes that stared silently at him from the metal helmet that was propped on top of the rest of the assembled pieces.
Chapter Ten
Ernest awoke from his much needed rest after a few hours, still feeling the slight hazy grogginess within him as he rapidly opened and closed his eyes. The split-second, half-conscience thought that he had gone blind in his sleep suddenly entered his mind until he realised that it was the room that was plunged into darkness, there was nothing wrong with him.
Rolling over onto his back, his hands fumbled around on top of him as he searched for the blanket. He couldn’t find it, only the rest of his body that was completely uncovered.
Where . . . Where is it. Must have fallen off the side of the bed again. God, I wish I could find some way to stop that. It wakes me up every damn night. He ran his hand across the side of the bed as he searched for the blanket, but felt only a strange roughened and apparently torn material hanging from the mattress.
What, what’s going . . ? Oh, forget it.
Closing his eyes again as he lied back down on the suspiciously uncomfortable mattress, a thought passed through his mind.
Hang on, where’s my alarm clock. I couldn’t see it just now. I remember I fitted it with a small electric light so I could check the time in the middle of the night. He opened his eyes again, sat up and looked straight ahead, but saw no saw no sign of any clock or any kind of light. What’s going on here. First the bed now the . . .has the battery gone, it must have done.
He closed his eyes as he shook his head, trying to figure out what had happened. A strong warm and fuzzy sensation passed through him as the last remaining feelings of fatigue left him. Then he remembered.
Wait, I’m not at home. This . . .this isn’t my bed, it’s . . .Oh, good god, I’m here, I’m in Vautusceen House. Oh Jesus Christ. Now hold on calm down. Relax, you’re not alone, remember, you’ve got the others here with you, okay. Just relax.
He sat in silence for a moment to hear the light snoring and deep restful breathing of the others by his side before he uttered a deep sigh of relief and lied back down, tightening the pull of his jacket over his body.
Moving his head over to the right, he could tell that his head wasn’t lying on a pillow, it lacked the ability to mould itself around him and seemed to be tougher with a more rigid form. Lying as still as he could, he nervously reached out with his hand over to whatever it was in the shadows behind him. His hand felt something strong with a definite shape to it, something with some kind of soft, very thin covering over it. Unsure of what it was he was actually touching, he felt no kind of danger from it or anxiety. Perhaps it was simply not the pillow, but some other part of the bed, something he couldn’t identify. Lord knows, many times he had waken up in the darkness, felt around and had no idea where he was.
Moving his hand slowly downward, his fingers slightly trembling, he suddenly felt something else, something much softer, long and thin. Then his hand stopped, his heart jumped into his throat and a sudden overwhelming feeling of guilt washed over him.
Sarah!
It was Sarah, he was lying on her body. He had felt her ruffled skirt and then ran his roaming hands over her bare leg. He quickly removed his hand and plunged it deep into his pocket as he vainly tried to wipe away the invisible and totally imagined signs on his palm of what he had done.
God, I’m sorry Sarah, please forgive me. I just didn’t know I . . .I’m sorry.
He knew full well that this was the decade of free love to most young and permissive people in the country, but not to him, he knew his time had come and gone long ago. Now he was an old man. To do what he had just done was almost sickening to him, like touching his own daughter.
He remembered what the animal-like voice had told him before in the dining room as it uttered its unearthly words from Sarah’s twisted and hideous lips. It tried to instigate his deep and repressed sexual desires that he had for her, heckling and making fun of him over it and forcing him to take her.
Touching her leg in this way, despite the fact that he knew it was an accident and it was dark, he still couldn’t shake off the horrid feeling that the voice, for all he thought of it, was right. It had claimed that it had looked into all of their eyes totally unseen as they looked for a place to escape from here and for the grace of god, a thought as frightening as that made Ernest cringe and suppress it as quickly as possible. If something like that was a fact, something that could do those things and remain completely invisible, then their chances of escape were extremely slim.
He cupped his hands together in front of him, holding them tightly together as he struggled to keep his wits about him. He knew that whatever was going to happen in here with any of them, he would have to be the one to deal with it, he had become the natural leader. But, how the hell would he lead them in a place like this. The only experience in haunting and paranormal phenomena he had was from semi-haunted places, the type of spirits that had neither the strength, nor the courage to do anything more than rattle a few cups and saucers and give frightened and very vague words or sentences on his tape machine. In a place like this that can store up incredible amounts of energy within its foundations and be the cold, heartless dwelling place of any number of evil, soulless and twisted entities, then nothing that he knew would help them. He knew deep down that he was no leader, he didn’t have the skills to help or fight off something that can’t be seen.
He had trapped them all here within these cold, stone walls. He had told them that time would pass quickly for them if they all they just got on with their work and try to understand this place better. He had the notion that even though he told them that the money they were promised was meaningless now given their situation, they all still harboured a grudge towards him over his decision and possibly felt like taking the reins themselves. God knows, he wished they would.
Leaning up on the torn, withered and almost completely gutted mattress of the bed, Ernest moved over to the left, hearing the squeaks and creaks of the iron springs beneath him. He sat perfectly still, breathing as slowly as he could without making much of a sound and looked around the room.
The room was in total, unrelenting blackness. It was almost like staring into a black hole. Looking harder at the darkness and narrowing his eyes, he could define vague shapes and silhouettes of vases on pedestals and on the left and right sides of what looked like a large, oddly-shaped fireplace decorated with small picture frames and unfamiliar plant stalks that seemed to grow from within the fireplace itself. A few oddly-shaped effigies of animal/human-like figures stood stock still in the corners of the room on tall, narrow support pedestals.
Must be more of those ungodly statues the cult made. I’m sure I’ve seen some of them before in old text books. I wonder . . .
He was glad that he couldn’t see whatever pictures or portraits were in those frames if they were anything like the hideous portraits of the cult members downstairs in the dining hall.
He turned his head to the left and could make out the rectangular silhouette of the door. He could feel the cold, icy air from underneath the door brush against his face like an invisible hand. Reaching for his cheek, he felt the coldness deep in his skin and the countless tiny Goosebumps that covered it. The door was till and shut, safely closed from anything outside, but worryingly, still unlocked. He reached into his other pocket and felt the entanglement and cold steel of the keys as he ran his fingers across the each individual marking and lock design on every one of them. The thought crossed his mind of possibly finding the right key and locking it, it would make him feel better. But right now, with the others asleep and only him being awake and alone, he didn’t even have the courage to get down from the bed. The comfort and warmth of the others around him was enough to make him feel slightly at ease.
Suddenly, without warning, Ernest uttered a loud frightened cry as he felt something cold brush against his leg. Crying out in anguish, he suddenly leapt out of the bed with one single spring-like movement and landed with a great deep and hollow sounding thud against the bare floorboards of the floor. Hurriedly taking in and breathing out huge gasps of air out of his lungs as his adrenaline-filled blood raced throughout his veins, he looked down at the bed as he struggled to look through the shadows at whatever it was.
He reached into his trouser pocket as he searched for the torch and found nothing. Confused, he checked his other pocket and still found nothing.
What, what the . . . Where is it, where. Oh, god, I didn’t did I?
With his nerves still jangling and a steadily fading rapid heartbeat, he ran his hands over the empty space on the bed until his left hand caught hold of something cold and metallic with a definite shape to it. The torch. It had rolled out of his pocket in his sleep.
He smiled in a mixture of quiet laughter, relief and shaken nerves. Still, despite how afraid he still felt over everything that had happened, this tiny little amusing incident had cheered him up. He wished he could the same for the others.
A small, restless and long drawn out groan from the bed alerted him that the others were slowly beginning to wake up from their death-like rest. From the sound and audibility of the groan, he could tell that it came from Sarah, a groan that was almost arousing. Ernest suddenly felt depraved and discontinued that train of thought.
Sarah’s body began to move slowly as she wavered from side to side, as though awaking from some endless coma, her body becoming accustomed to movement. She turned onto her right and brought her legs up closer toward her, her screwed up and tightened face buried deep into the musty old cushion behind her. Father Heathers made not a sound as she moved closer toward him, he was apparently still lost in slumber land. Reaching down with her left hand, she tugged awkwardly at her skirt and pulled it down a few inches more over her legs.
A feeling of guilt and remorse came over Ernest as he watched her cover herself. He suddenly had the feeling of being a small, irritating child who had sneaked into the bedroom of a female friend, saw that she was asleep and fulfilled his young and questioning desires by touching her legs and looking up her skirt.
Or, worse than that, like an old man who had tried to take her innocence.
Desist this train of thought, you idiot, for god’s sake. You’re neither of these imagined people. All you did was accidentally touch her, you didn’t know it was her. If you go on like this, you’ll give yourself an inferiority complex, now stop.
Sarah was now almost completely awake as she sat upright on the bed with her hands flat against her face, taking in deep underwater sounding breaths and exhaling them as she struggled to wake herself up. Removing her hands, she swivelled her head from side to side as she cracked and relaxed the bones in her neck. Finally, she ruffled her hands through her hair, scratching her scalp with her long nails and leaving it as a small mess. She lay her hands flat on the bed, turned and looked at Ernest with a half-awake, pleasant expression on her face.
“Oh, hello Ernest, you’re up? Well, good morning.”
She turned her head to the right for a few seconds and stared into the darkness before turning her head back. “Or, should I say good night, or good evening? Do you have the time?”
Ernest simply stood staring at her with a confused look on his face as he tried to understand her sudden mood alteration and an almost complete personality change, the question she asked of him passed right by him.
How can she not remember what happened to her just a few hours ago? Has she lost her memory, is it a result of the shock of her possession? What’s happened to her?
Then, her question suddenly clicked in his mind as his body jerked into action, checking his wristwatch on his left arm.
“It’s, um . . .uh, almost nine o’ clock. Yes, that’s the right time.” He said still trying to keep his attention on what was happening.
“Um, thank you.” Sarah responded, unsure of his behaviour. She slid off of the bed and stood in front of Ernest. “Are you alright?” She asked hesitantly, keeping a few inches from where he stood. “Is there something wrong, are you ill? Is there anything I can get you?” She took hold of his right hand and rubbed it a little. Ernest batted his eyelids and shook his head as he sensed what she was doing. He looked down with his half-open mouth and looked back at her. “Yes,’ he said finally. “Yes, I’m sorry, I was a million miles away. Um, no , there’s nothing wrong with me, I’m fine, I’m just . . .I’m just a little confused at waking up in here, that’s all.”
Sarah gave him an affectionate, half-cocked smile and let go of his hand, turned round to the bed behind her and put her hands on her hips when she saw that Father Heathers was still asleep, his crucifix lying spread out across the bed. Walking over to the other side of the bed, she leaned over and put her hand on his shoulder, gently shaking him. “Father Heathers,” she said in an almost mother-like tone. “Father Heathers, wake up. We have to get to work, now.”
Ernest watched her, still confused at her sudden change of behaviour as she moved around the room effortlessly as though some great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. It was as though she had been altered in her sleep, her memories of her possession had been extracted from her, leaving her completely unaware of what happened. Even the fear and agitation of being sealed inside this house and her remembering that the sunlight never came here didn’t seem to bring on an further fears.
Perhaps it was the influence of whatever spirit took hold of her, for whatever reason had blocked out or eradicated the memories of it speaking through her and left her relaxed, confident and almost happy in some strange form. It could be her mind’s way of coping with the torment of what befell her by blocking out the memories, storing them somewhere in her subconscious until the moment something encouraged them back up to the surface, or they emerged slowly on their own.
Ernest hoped that this wasn’t the case. He had read about situations like this before where someone, out of desperation had blocked out painful memories only for them to rise back to the surface and almost destroy the individual as they remembered what had once happened to them. Sarah could be a ticking timed bomb, primed to detonate at any moment. If that happened inside here, there was little to nothing that Ernest could do to keep her calm or keeping her from having a complete nervous breakdown.
Whatever had happened to her, whatever the reason, Ernest felt a little relieved over it. With her fears now apparently gone for good, or at least, for now, she would be easier to deal with and hopefully to work with. He didn’t enjoy the idea of having to look out for them all like a frightened parent taking care of a couple of insecure children.
The thought came into his mind of whether he should tell her about what happened to her just a few hours ago, to break this unusual sense of peace she had acquired and give her the facts, whether it was good for her or not. But, what would that do to her? Would being told what had happened mix in with the sudden re-emergence of her suppressed memories make her even more volatile? Telling her would be a way of keeping her mind fresh of what could happen while they was here, encouraging her to keep her guard up.
Ernest’s mind reeled with the conflict of both decisions, both avenues of thought had their own advantages and disadvantages. Finally, he chose one, he decided not to inform her of what she had forgotten. It was better in the long run if she wasn’t told and ensure as best as he could that her newfound calmness would last, at least until they were out of here, after that, she would get the help she needed.
Ernest turned his head downward suddenly and faced the bed as he heard yet another groan emanating from it, this one fraught with a deep gurgling, almost croaky sound. Through the canopy of semi-darkness, Ernest saw that it was Father Heathers slowly reawakening shadowy figure rolling on his side as Sarah stood beside him with a slight grin on her face like an amused mother trying to wake up her child. Sarah raised her head and looked toward Ernest, flashing him a half-smile and exposing her two front teeth beneath wide-open, bright eyes.
“Well,” she said confidently with an almost excited and yearning undertone. “What should we perform first in our experiments. Would you like me to attempt a sitting?”
A strike of worry and intense anxiety suddenly resonated like a thunderstorm in Ernest’s head as he heard her proposal, gearing up the thoughts of his mind like an intricate machine.
No, wait. You can’t let her perform a sitting, it’s too dangerous. Remember what happened downstairs? What if it happens again? There might be no stopping it once you summon another spirit. Try something else, something less risky.
“No, that’s alright,” Ernest said finally to Sarah with a slight shake of his head, summoning all of his will to hide the deep fear he had from her. “You don’t have to conduct a sitting, just yet. They require too much strength and concentration and we’re all exhausted.”
Sarah responded with a half-cocked pitying smile. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’ve had a good few hours sleep. Really, I feel well and able to perform a sitting for you.”
Ernest held out his flat, open-palmed hand toward her, eager for her to change her mind. “No, really, I insist. As Doctor Stephenson, who as you know holds the greatest number of qualifications and scientific knowledge in this particular field is unfortunately incapacitated at the moment, I appoint myself as head of this investigation. And it is my decision that first of all, we will conduct an Electronic Voice Phenomenon experiment in one of the rooms downstairs. That way, we should acquire sufficient voice samples to test in a safe environment and possibly gain some physic fissures from the surrounding walls.”
Sarah put her hands on her hips and looked down at the half-asleep, twitching figure of Father Heathers on the bed with a slight look of disappointment in her face. Ernest watched her close, eager for his sudden acted stance of an authoritarian speech to be registered well. He didn’t want to have to force her to see it his way.
Finally, she responded with a slight nod of her head and a little bite of her lip. Ernest half-closed his eyes and heaved a deep relieved sigh.
Chapter Eleven
The countless lit candles surrounding every conceivable place in the large sitting room flickered wildly as the researchers walked constantly from one end of the room to the other as they prepared for the experiment, forever casting more and more large fleeting shadows like menacing spectres across the faded wallpaper and large metallic and bizarrely-shaped mechanical contraptions standing with a great air of presence in the corners of the room.
The horrifically designed furniture of twisted chairs, couches and small tables resting in a disquiet manner around the room seemed to possess their own sense of sentience and unsettling natural life as the tiny light from the candles licked across them. Breathing their unnaturally cold breath of life across the back of the researchers necks from their soot-black coloured, coil-shaped legs, blood-red stained cushions and frighteningly realistic skull effigy‘s sitting like silent predatory birds along their outer edges.
Sarah walked tentatively from one end of the room to the other, sprinkling a very fine mixed layer of rock salt and powdered silver along the edges of the room, quietly clapping her hands as she sprinkled it like fine chalk-dust along the edges of the floor.
At least, as far as the dim-light of the candles could reach until they gave way to darkness. As she walked, she mumbled unfamiliar words of magic to herself.
Ernest watched her quietly as he sorted through the mass entanglement of long plastic wires and the large accumulation of blank cassettes he held in his lap. Obviously, Sarah was an avid follower and deep believer in magic and centuries-old myths and beliefs of people and civilisations from ages past. The rock salt Ernest knew to be a very old useful deterrent of evil spirits. Sprinkle some underneath your front door and they couldn’t pass. The silver, virtually performs the same as the rock salt, but was also a good weapon to use against any demonic presence and possibly just as old and antiquarian as each other.
Ernest chuckled a little to himself as he watched her, speaking the words to herself with a great degree of belief and strong knowledge that it would help. Ernest had never been a believer of such things, things that belonged in a museum along with the rest of the primitive and ancient devices cultures from long ago had used to protect them from the myriad number of evil spirits and endless line of vengeful gods and goddesses. He had always put his belief in science, the belief of the twentieth-century, but a belief that provided its own evidence without any question of truth. But, given the knowledge he had accumulated from his many years of studying physic phenomenon and the many mysterious of life after death that surrounded our world, coupled with his own experiences, he had seen that even the most primitive and long-held beliefs in the world beyond sometimes held credence.
Most of the candles that now surrounded their hurried and makeshift laboratory were from Sarah’s own personal belongings. Some, like the others before, she rummaged out of her handbag. A few smaller others, she had found lying at the bottom of her suitcases, long forgotten. Some of the taller candles, they had to break in half and give them their own silver candlestick holders just to have enough to go round. All of them had considered searching the drawers and hidden places within the room or some of the rooms next door to find some more, but no-one went as far as to volunteer to look.
Ernest took a tight hold of the small tough handle on the side of his large square plastic case and pulled it up towards him with a heavy grunt before finally resting it like a pile of bricks on top of a small ornate and rather repulsive looking table sitting on its gothic, bare-bone looking legs in the centre of the room. Ernest angled the heavy case around so that the handle part faced him directly and pressed the ends of both of his thumbs and index fingers against a pair of unseen locks before they sprang open with a loud click. He opened the top half of the case and allowed it to fall backwards toward the floor freely and silently. The ample candlelight in the room flickered and shone its intense fiery glow across the interiors of the case, reflecting its orange and yellow light like flowing liquid across the rounded plastic that covered and protected the two separate coiling strands of unused plastic tape underneath.
Ernest looked at the tape machine in the case for a moment, balanced on his knees with his hands resting on either side of the case with a glint of satisfaction in his eyes.
He was proud of his tape machine as he looked at it with its many buttons and switches, not because it was such a useful technology, but for what it represented for him. He was proud to have such a machine in his possession that hardly anyone in the world knew had the power to communicate with the other side and get messages back from those that chose to speak to him. People used them in their everyday lives to record simple messages for themselves or others, never realising that something so simple, but with enough patience and determination in mind, could breach the barriers of reality.
He felt almost privileged to be allowed this unique contact, as though some higher power had chosen him to do this work, almost like a modern day Moses. He realised he was overreaching himself, here and decided to stop.
Reaching into the narrow band of darkness on the left side of the tape machine, he pulled out a pair of plastic oblong-shaped headphones, the back of which were the palest white and had two thick separate strands of wire that ran down to the machine, the ear-portions were black with small metallic earpieces inside. Resting them comfortably over both of his ears, Ernest reached forward and pressed two buttons on the machine. A low-audible, fast-paced and squeaky noise rang out from the machine as the tapes rewound back to the beginning before Ernest pressed another switch and listened for a few seconds.
“Yes,” he said aloud to no one in particular. “Both of the tapes are new, they haven’t been used.”
“Is that important?” Sarah asked standing beside him, screwing the lid down on a small transparent container which housed the mixture of chalk-dust and silver. “I mean, you’ve got an ample number of tapes at the side of you. Why can’t you use those?”
“Its vitally important,” he answered. “If I use a tape which I think is blank in one of my experiments and speak aloud into it asking for the spirits to speak to me, then I’ll play it back and think that a voice in the middle of the tape is a definite voice, but turns out to be nothing more than my own earthbound voice. EVP experiments have to be strictly controlled and must abide by obedient guidelines.”
“Humph,” Sarah uttered quietly, almost looking down at him with an annoyed displeasure. “I can see that there’s a lot to it. It’s so much more technical and complicated than the work that I do.”
She stood beside him looking off into space, idly screwing the top of the lid on the container she held well after knowing it was sealed, almost as if she was waiting for an answer from him after her slightly sarcastic statement. Once she noticed that he wasn’t listening, she walked away and made herself comfortable on a small, irregularly curled chair decorated with varnished dark brown artificial skulls beside the fireplace, her hands resting in her lap in a tentative manner.
Ernest made a few last small checks of the tape machine before pressing another final button in the top right hand corner, allowing a bright red light signifying activation to light up. Reaching into the case again, he pulled out a small metallic mesh covered microphone and pulled it into the air as far as his arm could reach, allowing the long trailing white wire behind it out completely. Holding the microphone in front of him, he licked his lips and took in a great deep sigh before beginning to speak.
“This is Doctor Ernest Furlong about to attempt an experiment in EVP within the dusty, archaic and rather unpleasant interiors of the supposedly haunted mansion know as Vautusceen house located on the wooded outskirts of a town called . . . .um, . . .oh, I can’t remember, I don’t think I found that out, or even where the hell in the country we are in fact. Anyway, we are here at the behest of a group of employers who call themselves The Brotherhood of Mystery who want us to make a detailed study of the house, to put every kind of scientific analysis to the place to discover if it still does, or has ever harboured some kind of unsettled spirit or spirits. The group consists of myself, Sarah Tuttle, Father Heathers and Doctor Stephenson, who is otherwise . .indisposed at the moment.
This is experimental recording #666.0432. The time is . . .10:05 pm.”
He shook himself a little, gripped the microphone and held himself a little tighter as he prepared to begin.
“We ask of you, spirit, or spirits that may dwell in this house . . .to come forward and show yourself, or yourselves to us. If you would care to tell us your name, or names into this tape machine, or utter a sound, or perhaps even cause an object to rock or fall in this room, then we would be very grateful.”
Ernest concentrated on the low frequency noise uttered by the tape, listening as hard as he could to hear anything, a voice, a sound, even a syllable. His trembling hands held tentatively onto the speakers over his ears as he sat in silence staring into the slowly revolving tapes in front of him. But, his acute listening senses heard nothing except the same unending tone of the tapes in the machine recording the still, unbroken silence that echoed its presence like the sound of a flat, calm lake.
But, then, given the very nature of the spirits being the unquiet dead of monstrously evil and brutal cult members that may or may not dwell in this place like silent rats, perhaps it was almost inevitable that they wouldn’t answer the frail and scared little voice of a terrified human being. They would consider themselves way to superior to come down to their level of consciousness.
As the silence of the hopelessly failed experiment reverberated in Ernest’s ears, he reached out to switch off the machine when his attention was suddenly caught to Sarah suddenly standing out of her chair and remaining stock-still in front of it, her face blank and totally devoid of thought, feelings , or even awareness. Ernest simply sat where he was with his eyes glued to her, his hand hanging almost statuesque above the tape machine as it continued its recording of silence. His sudden and unrelenting disquiet fear rooting him to the spot.
His eyes twitched for a fraction of a second as he saw Sarah’s lips move for a moment. At first, he thought he imagined it, that it was simply the shadows cast by the flickering candlelight playing tricks on him. But, then he saw it again, much more clearer this time. She was definitely saying something, but very quietly.
“Are . . .are you . .alright?” He asked nervously, stretching his body a few inches toward her, his eyes constantly flickering back and forth toward the semi-engulfed, unmoving figure of Father Heathers.
“ . . . . . . . . . . .here.” He heard her say almost completely silently.
Ernest looked again at Father Heathers, filled with a mixture of fear at his almost corpse-like stillness and irritation at him, yet again, not lifting a finger to help. He kept a close eye on Sarah’s unflinching cold dead stare, despite that seeing her eyes like this filled him with dread.
“I’m, uh, sorry, Sarah. I didn’t hear you, you’ll have to, um . .?”
“Something . . .is here.” She said finally.”
Ernest barely had a moment to react to her uncomfortable words when he suddenly jumped out of his skin in sudden terror as he became aware of the tiniest fragment of a voice sounding from deep within his headphones. Placing his hands hard above the outer casing of the earpieces, he shuffled back to his original spot and listened as hard as he could to the voice, still keeping a semi-concentrated look on Sarah as she continually repeated the same statement over and over.
“Please,” he said to the voice that had almost faded to nothing. “Please, I can’t hear you, can you repeat what you said?”
He reached out toward the machine and adjusted the speed-sliders that were fixed in key positions beside each other, one four volume, one for pitch, one for the volume control of the microphone, one for volume control of the headphones and another to increase or decrease the recording distance around the machine. He moved the volume control of the headphones up from 60 decibels to almost 100 decibels, causing a high-pitched tone of unfaltering silence to radiate into his ears. A slight ringing in his ears and a slight nagging pin-prick of pain could be felt going through his ears and seemingly into his head.
He listened harder, concentrating solely on the electronic recreation of stillness and absolute quiet. Timidly reaching out his hand, he grabbed the speed slider for the pitch control which adjusted the note of sound to a higher level, then he dragged the slider for the volume control up to its highest level; 130 decibels. The electronic equivalent of silence never seemed to powerfully loud and painful as it eradiated inside into his eardrums with the power and pain of a sharp-bladed dagger slowly piercing into his ears. The incredible noise echoed around and inside the heart of his senses, crackling, hissing and roaring its breath of pixel-filled electricity like the sound of a frying pan seething with heat as ice-cold water shoots down onto it with the force of a waterfall. The sound was so powerful and uncomfortable, it made look behind him occasionally in fear and agitation as he checked that it was just the three of them in here. He was only slightly relieved when he saw only darkness partially pierced by the candlelight.
“You’ve crossed the threshold.” The croaky, extremely deep voice said finally in an almost unbearably high tone, causing Ernest to immediately fall, backwards in sudden shock and unbearable pain, gritting his teeth together as hard as he could to stand it and almost cutting his tongue in half. As he pulled himself together from the overwhelming feelings of total shock and deep terror, the voice bounced around his mind like a tennis ball, hitting the nerve centres of his memory. It was that voice, the same voice, the same voice that Ernest heard emanating from Sarah’s hideous clown-like mouth in the dining room.
Ernest simply remained seated in mute surrender in a mixture of fear and curiosity, like an eager scientist, his attention was focused solely on the voice that seemed to chew away at the inside of his ears, completely forgetting about anything else around him.
“You are from The Brotherhood of Mystery. The bastard’s that threw us like dogs into the chasm of the abyss! You seek knowledge of the unknown. You are children, we have voice but no wisdom. You contaminated our world. You will be hurt, your mind’s will fall. You are bastard’s . . .you possess ugliness . . .contaminate.”
With that final word, the voice stopped dead, the switch that powered the tape machine flicked off in its wake, Ernest immediately twisted his head round toward it as the sudden sound caught his attention. He sat taking in small mouthfuls of air, his mind still trying to fathom what just happened.
He drew his head round again with a sudden great intake of air as he heard Sarah suddenly fall to the floor, banging her head against the hard wood chair behind her. “Sarah,” he said instantly jumping up toward her and taking her in his arms. “Are you alright?” He shouted to her as she lay lifeless but still breathing in his arms with her eyes closed. He checked her head for any bruises or injuries. She was fine.
Slowly, she began to come round, her eyelids flicking open and closed. “Ernest?” She asked sleepily.” What . . . Happened. I heard singing in my ear. Beautiful singing . . .it was telling me something.”
“You did hear something,” he said. “But, luckily, so did I.”
Chapter Twelve
There was nothing but absolute silence in the room that Ernest now sat within, alone and resting silently on the dusty, decaying bed underneath him with his legs hunched up and his clenched hand pressed against his closed mouth in the classical posture of The Thinker statue. The darkness that had engulfed this room unrelentingly for over a hundred years now had a visitor, someone who had disturbed its perpetual state of nothingness and silence, bringing deep thoughts and pensive ideas. The thick unseen cloud of dust accumulated over many years of age, rotting and decaying objects and old death wafted around the room, carried on by the slight breeze that occasionally brushed its icy fingers across Ernest’s neck. Ernest could smell it as he took in regular fills of air through his hair-filled nostrils, immediately blowing the dust back out as he caught the whiff of it and wretched.
Like the smell of death from an alpine forest that’s been torn down and the smell still lingers.
Ernest was aware of the objects around him, despite the fact that his typical human eyes, long ago evolved passed the need to see prey in the dark, could only make out vague shapes and unnaturally shaped silhouettes.
This room, like so many of the others he and the others had explored earlier harboured the hideous amalgamated statues of gods, demons and evil spirits the world over, perched high on narrow wooden tables. One of the more hideous ones Ernest recognised as Garuda, a Hindu bird god in the shape of a vulture with a large body covered in feathers and outstretched wings and painted in a dark brown paint from the top of its head to the beginnings of its feet. It’s well muscled legs stretched downward to the base toward three golden claw-tipped toes which grasped onto a gold-painted branch. The god was not usually represented as an evil god to its followers, but presumably, the cultists who once inhabited this place planned to corrupt its name and everything about it by placing it inside here, no doubt using it in their ungodly dark rites as they tried to use it to their advantage.
Ernest took a swig of Bourbon from a small bottle he kept inside his jacket pocket. He felt guilty hiding it from the others who had to improvise from the lack of its benefits, but right now, he needed it. After the near fatal efforts of his half-assed experiments and Sarah’s twice possessed and used states, his nerves were shot. After the last experiment, he had told Sarah and Father Heathers to go upstairs, find a room somewhere where they could rest and stay there until he told them otherwise. Sarah had offered and pleaded with him to listen and study the tapes with him and they could work them out together, but he had readily declined, wanting to get her as far away from all of this as possible. Of course, the most safest place would be almost three hours away by car, but with their obvious lack of any kind of escape routes from here, he chose the only other alternative.
He felt a little better getting her away from him, somehow he felt like he was a bad omen, bringing these terrible haunting’s down upon her, every time he suggested something they could do, it all failed terribly with almost dire repercussions.
Ernest took another swig of his bourbon, drinking it down and feeling its strong hot liquid running down his throat made him smile. He had hidden it from the damned members of The Brotherhood of Mystery like a prisoner hiding his ill-gotten gains from the officers who walked right by him. They thought they knew everything in their arrogance, with their over-inflated ego’s, but they didn’t.
He looked round again at the interiors of the room around him, seeing only vague distorted shapes, the shadows of the statues thrown across the walls that his mind constantly swore had moved. It was a room he had discovered on the second floor while searching for somewhere to rest his head and think for a while, a room that was yet another of the myriad number of bedrooms that littered this abomination of a structure. Obviously, the cults influence stretched far beyond this immediate area and had managed to brainwash many others from far and wide with its poisonous teachins and beliefs.
Ernest took in a deep breath and shivered a little as he felt the bourbon inside him warm him up with a relaxed welcome heat. Turning his head round to the left, he caught sight of the tape recorder he had lugged up here, merely a silhuouette in this ill-lit room. He ran his slightly shaking fingers across the machine, his fingertips caressing against the buttons and switches that covered its outer skin. His hand stopped as it hovered above a button on the far right hand side of the machine. He pressed it and listened to the high-pitched whine of the tapes rewrinding.
Despite being slightly drunk, he still knew the layout of the buttons and switches like the back of his hand.
He lay back on the bed as he waited for the tapes to come to the beginning and closed his eyes, balancing the large bottle of bourbon on his stomach with his hand. His jacket was unbuttoned and lay flat in a disorderly pile either-side of his slightly oversized stomach. He hummed a tune to himself, hearing the music and the lyrics in his mind. It was a tune he had sung often to his daughter when he put her to bed at night, a song alas, he couldn’t remember the title to. He used to love seeing her smile when he sung to her as she held her slightly moth-eaten teddy bear her grandmother had given her, seeing the myriad of curls from her golden hair fall across her freckled face.
That was from so long ago, from when she was still alive, before . . .
His whole body began to shake uncontrollably as a great sea of emotion welled up in him like an approaching storm. He pressed shaking clammy hands up against his face, pressing hard into the flesh on his face, hard against the hard bone, sinew and muscle behind it, digging in with his fingernails. He could feel it, rising out from deep inside him like a parasite crawling up from within him. He could feel it clam up behind his eyes, pushing out the salty tears out from inside, gushing them out like a torrent ocean.
Don’t, don’t let it. He thought to himself as he felt the emotion constantly threatening to escape. Don’t let it take you over, you’re strong, you’re very strong. You have to suppress it, suppress it now!
He thought he had it under control by now. He hoped he had reached a new apex in dealing with his grief. He firmly believed he had locked it away in the cage deep inside himself and thrown away the key, left it to fend for itself deep inside the dust-filled, abandoned wing of his mind. But how wrong he was, for here it was, just below the surface, waiting to grab a hold of him when he least suspected it and shake him, throttle him and spew its horrific words into his ear.
Finally, his attention was grabbed again from the brink of despair and miserable grief as he heard the dull thud of the tapes reaching the beginning. Releasing a deep sigh, putting the pain of his grief back into Pandora’s box, he sat back up and pressed the play button on the machine and listened.
The tape began as normal with his own awkward and anxious sounding voice tentatively calling out from the low-audible hissing of stillness for any spirits to come through and make themselves known. He laughed a little at how it sounded to him. Timid, nervous and practically frightened, almost like the scared voice of a child. How many times had he conducted these experiments up and down the country over the years and how many times had he sounded so afraid as he did here? The fear he had felt before in those simple little council houses on bleak, dimly-lit estates and very, very occasionally, in large stately manor homes owned by some wealthy landowner and his three silver-spooned children.
He had been in all of them. Alone in the darkness, groping around and reaching out with his hands with only a dim-watt light bulb to help him find his way and sitting alone in some dusty, silent corridor or bedroom with the tape machine playing silently in front of him as he waited for anything to come through, but heard only the occasionaly rush of the breeze brush past him or the creak of a floorboard.
The fear he had felt in all of those occasions, how he had believed that this was as afraid as he would ever be in his life. That made him laugh. Then to hear his fear, his absolute terror behind his simple little words on the tape. The fear he had felt those countless past times had been nothing compared to what he had felt downstairs, gathering round him like a choking blanket.
He listened hard to the tape as it continued on with his pre-recorded voice playing over, sounding so alone and hopeless in the middle of the silence.
A fat lot of good the rest of them were to me. The damned vicar just sat there in the dark without lifting a finger to help. And that itchy little medium. What the hell is up with her? She must be losing it. He took another swig from the bottle that he held rather tentatively in his hands, the sound of his voice on the tape became slightly irratic and distorted as he continued to drink, almost as if it was being played in slow motion. He fell backwards onto the unaired, musty, dust-ridden mattress behind him, barely noticing as the dust gathered in the air above him like a phantom. The dust flew slowly and silently through the air, taking with it tiny scraps of moth-eaten fluff and cotton across the blackened void that filled the room over toward a small chair covered with a white sheet resting in the corner. Gradually the dust began to fall from the centre of the room and down towards the chair, dripping silently onto the pure white sheet like droplets of water from a cloud.
Ernest simply lay on the bed, caressing the torn, almost withered mattress with his right hand as he held the almost empty bottle on its side against left jacket pocket.
A sudden sound caught his attention momentarily through the vague and distorted screen of drunkeness that shielded his senses, a sound that his subdued mind barely registered as human or otherwise. But one little detail was clear, they were definitely footsteps he heard, roaming around just outside his door.
What, what the hell is it?
“Is somebody out there?” He shouted outside, forgetting completely about his fear. He sat up, trying as hard as he could not to drift over and fall sideways. He let go of the bottle and allowed it to fall almost silently down to the floor. He stepped off from the bed and walked awkwardly and slowly toward the closed door ahead of him, stumling forwards with the last few steps and reaching out to grab the wall with his hands.
“Hey,” he said aloud again, desperately trying to stave off his extreme sense of drowsiness, constantly breathing in and out with great gulpfulls of air. He stood for a moment beside the door with his hands supporting his whole weight, his eyes constantly threatening to close shut. With one great effort of will, he reached out with his left hand and took hold of the brass doorknob, still supporting himself entirely on his trembling right hand. He turned the knob and opened the door, feeling the great wash of a powerful draft overwhelm him like a raging wave, seeing only th4e semi-darkness and jagged shadows thrown across the rotting, withered walls and discarded furniture.
‘Ernest,’ came the small, unfamiliar sounding voice from the down the blackened corridor. ‘Ernest, please.’
“Alright, alright,” he said to voice, totally forgetting its strange, transient nature. “I’m coming.”
A little hesitantly, though still drunk enough to almost completely ignore what he was doing or what was going on, he advanced further out of his room until he stood completely in the corridor amid the endless expanse of blackness that surrounded him. Stumbling around on his slow, heavy, shuffling black boots with his hands held out in front of of him like a lost blind man, he gathered his bearings and slowly made his way down the right hand side of the corridor, making his way with tentative steps.
He could smell the wood as he walked, the wood from the loose floorboards that someone long ago for whatever reason had pulled up from the various floors in the building and then propped up against the walls to simply be left there to rot and decay like everything else in this hellish place. He could smell the staleness of it gathering underneath his nostrils, the dryness of it like the smell of a great decaying tree, almost a forest with its tiny loose splinters gathering on the incessant breeze that blew its unnaturally cold breath all the way down each one of these deserted corridors and echoing wings then falling effortlessly on the lens’s of his glasses and clouding them up. He awkwardly wiped away the cloudness with his barely registering hand.
He suddenly coughed a little as he felt the loose splinters gather on his tongue and reach all the way to the back of his throat. He coughed hard, almost knocking his glasses off of his head. He wiped his eyes of the tears wrought by his splutters before replacing his glasses.
If it’s not the taste of a good Bourbon running down my throat, then I don’t much care for it. He thought vaguely in his sleeping mind.
He continued on his way down the corridor, still following the bodiless unearthly voice that seemed to call for him some distance away. Despite being drunk, slightly off-balance and looking through tired blurry eyes, he was well aware of where he was going. True, his mind at the moment wanted nothing more than to return to his bed and sleep like the dead for the duration of his imprisoment here, his mind was still and always was as sharp as a tack. It had to be in the countless different occasions he was holed up totally alone in some haunted and totally deserted house, hotel, bedsit or other barely remembered places in his lonely past of doing this job. Times like those was when he had to be completely aware of what was going on around him, aware of any possible hiding places for hoaxing humans and aware of all room locations and near enough the entire contents of ornaments that decorated the darkness engulfed myriad number of corridors that reached out to him while he would sat in the centre of these connecting passageways.
He tripped forward a little suddenly as he felt his foot falling into what felt like a hole in the floor, taking him completely by surprise. He steadied himself then carefully lifted his foot out from the hole. He reached down slowly and ran his fingers and open palms across the spot he had just fallen until he found the hole. He ran his index fingers around the edges, realising that it was just one of the many places a floorboard had been torn away He cursed himself and then whoever it was all those years ago that had torn it out in the first place.
A thought came into his mind suddenly as he pondered whether tearing up the floorboards would get them all out of here, then realising that it would be a waste of time and energy.
Steadying himself with his hands lying flat against the dust covered, decaying floorboards, he readied himself to stand back up. Then he felt something rush against his left hand as he shifted it. He instantly recoiled with a sudden start and a loud gasp as his mind reeled at what it could be.
Oh, my god, something’s here. Oh, my god, oh, my god, oh, my . .
Remaining where he stood with his feet pressing firmly against the floor behind him and his upper torso stretched out in front of him, he could do nothing but remain perfectly still with a steadily trembling body as a great and powerful sense of a great presence standing beside suddenly washed over him like a threatening blanket, his fingernails digging deep into the splintering wood in front of him, his tightening fists clenching with overwhelming terror as they joined his tightly closed eyelids that pressed hard and painfully against each other. His breathing became heavier and fast-paced, constantly warning him of coming close to hyperventilating.
He remained in this hopeless, unfaltering posture for what seemed like hours, yet, the endless series of horrible fates that could befall him from this presence that ran like a speeding train through his almost hysterical mind never came.
My god, oh, please. Don’t make me wait, just take me, please.
But, still, the inevitable action he painfully waited for never happened. With a flickering top eyelid and an ever growing heartbeat that constantly threatened to explode from his chest, he slowly began to open his left eye and looked through the watery haziness of his drunkness. His eye flickered like a predator’s eyes from left to right, to up and down . . .but he saw nothing, nothing but the darkness, the planks of wood and tall jagged shadows.
What, what is what, is something there? Please, where is it?
His left hand shuffled again and once more he felt the soft material against his cold skin. Tearing his hand away and bringing toward his back, he looked down at what it was. It was nothing more than a piece of discarded clothing, lying on the floor and gathering dust.
He exhaled a deep sigh of relief and wiped his wrinkled, sweat-laden brow his right hand, cursing himself for being so stupid, then giggling a little to himself as he laughed off his fear.
Steadily, he stood back on his feet, then wiped himself down with his hands off all the dust and grain that his trousers and shirt had collected. He looked down again at the material by his foot, he leant down and picked it up, studying it with drowsy eyes. It was definitely some kind of material useed for clothing, quite a large piece at that. Looking at it right away, he could tell it didn’t belong to anybody who had once dwelled inside this house, it was much too new, too smooth and had collected nearly as much dust. He unravelled the whole item in his hands, holding it in front of him like a shirt he was trying on. Then, that’s when he realised. That’s exactly what it was, a man’s white shirt unbuttoned and slightly wrinkled. It could only have come from someone who was already here, someone who had passed through this way not too long ago, someone . . .
No, it couldn’t, it . . .it is, it’s his shirt. Doctor Stephenson. He must be around here somewhere. My god, what’s happened to him, I hope he’s alright, but how do I . . .
Then he heard it cutting across the edge of his hearing and instantly arousing his attention, instinctively drawing his open and alert eyes scanning intently down both ends of the corridor. It was a sound a sound that sounded close, the more he listened, the more he realised what it was. It was music, music being played by someone, or something in some undiscovered room.
Its sounds like . . .organ music.
The walls around him hummed with power and life as the invisible, unseen notes pierced the dank, empty, odour-filled air around him and bounced against the bare wood of the floors and the bare black stone of the walls.The planks of wood and the dust that gathered over them trembled and shook as the music continued, filling the whole area with an unnatural and slightly uncomfortable degree of sound and noise that seemed to climb up Ernest’s back like an invisible creature, constantly threatening to reveal itself to him.
He could be in trouble, I have to help him.
Holding the wrinkled shirt tightly in his left hand, he ran as fast as he could down the corridor toward the music that grew in intensity and volume as he approached, constantly throwing him the powerful urge to turn back, ignore it and walk away. But he couldn’t, he couldn’t just turn and leave, the Doctor could be in trouble and only was close enough to hear the music permeating like some lost call.
The sharp shadows surrounding him were quick and fleeting as he ran, momentarily appearing as dark menacing figures all around him. He ignored them, irrational fear was unimportant right now. He began to run quicker, his footsteps were short and thunderous as he banged them hard against the dusty old floorboards. His breathing was laboured, pumping out of his nostrils and his clenched lips like steam gushing from a chimney. He began to feel a tightness in his side as a stitch of painful cramp threatened to root him to the spot and force him to rest, but he was having none of it, totally ignoring it and continued to run, his fiery determination shone like a beacon in his wild eyes. Too much had happened to all of them in here in only a few hours, he wasn’t about to lose anyone just yet.
Ratty old decaying furniture, cupboards and sideboards littered his way as he ran toward the steadily rising music, constantly threatening to trip him up and fall to the floor and possibly cause himself a major injury. They lay against the walls or tilted at an angle against the floor, the small shelves in the sideboards were halfway out from their hiding places, now subjected to the elements and rapidly fading into dust. Large cobwebs covered in dust and holes stretching from the floor to the ceilings also stood in his way, as though forcing him to remain where he was, rethink what he was doing and go back. He wasted no time in stopping to survey them, choosing to run and tear his way through them, ripping them from his face, hands and body and discarding their pitiful remnants onto the floor.
Nothbing will stop me, I have to help him, find out what’s wrong.
He pictured his young daughter running ahead pf him, skipping to be more precise. He could see her their in front of him, dressed in her long white dress with ruffles on the bottom dancing like clouds in the sky. Her pigtails bounced slowly and eerily about her head as she went, almost in tune and in unison with her tiny black shoes decorated with golden spangles as they tapped, tapped, tapped against the floorboards.
Show me the way, he thought aloud to himself in his mind, believing she could hear him. Show me the right way to go, my dear.
Her movements began to grow slower and blurry, as if she was running in slow motion. Features that he could see had now begun to dissolve away into nothingness, leaving behind nothing but a blank patch allowing him to see straight through her. Slowly, she turned her head back toward him, her pigtails, her pretty white dress, her freckled face and button nose were now hardly noticeable or even recogniseable as the dissolvement of her whole body continued, now becoming nothing more than a few stray fragments of memory lit up in his eyes like the few remaining sparks and ribbon-like glows of a dying fire. He looked hard as he could into the mess of blurriness and distorted colours that was her face, totally ignoring the great pains of cramp he felt in his sides or the agonised pain of his lungs as they begged him to stop and take in air.
He watched suddenly as he saw her motion her hand in the air and draw it slowly and ghostly back toward her. He could hear her soft voice calling to him in his head.
This way, daddy, it’s this way, follow me.
“Annabel,” he whispered out loud to her from his pursed and trembling lips, completely forgetting that she was nothing more than a rapidly diminishing painful shard of his memory. “Annabel, please, don’t go, please, stay here.”
Annabel withdrew her face from him as she slowly turned it back in a great haze of blurred colours and slow-motion, her small hand gradually returned to its original place by her side, moving backwards and forwards as her fading image began to disappear from his sight completely, now leaving behind nothing more than a few fine stray strands of yellow, white, black and pink from her rosy cheeks that now blew silently in the air before him like feathers falling to the ground.
“No!” He screamed out loud to her vanishing figure, reaching out as far as his body would allow out towards her with dancing, trembling fingers, his frantic footsteps now picking up more and more pace as they ran, now hardly leaving a dull thud against the floor as they pursued her fading memory. A stream of tears now began to pour like a gushing waterfall from his eyes. “Please, Annabel, don’t go, please!”
He slipped forward suddenly with a start as he lost his footing, his feet scraping franticly and noisily as they struggled to regain a foothold and a strong steady grip back on the dust-streaked floor. His already outstretched arms now served the purpose of reaching for something to grab hold of, something to stop him crashing hard aginst the floor, against the wall or fall into some unsuspecting hole that lay in wait for him.
Suddenly, without warning, he came to a sudden crashing halt as his whole body shot like a speeding bullet against a closed door lying right in front of him, careering into it like a rag doll plummeting hard to the ground, his limbs flailing around uncontrollably as his whole weight crashed against it with a lid bang, breaking it open from its small now insignificant lock on the other side. He stopped finally as his body came up against a wall lying just a few feet behind the door, rebounding a shockwave made by him back towards his unsuspecting body, hitting him with the powerful unmistakeable sensation of running into a wall.
His head slid down against the wall behind him for a second as he drifted in unconsciousness for a moment before sharply drawing his head back as he struggled to stay awake.
“No, he said sleepily. “I can’t . . .I can’t fall asleep. . .have to . . .get him . . .have..”
A great warming haze suddenly overwhelmed him as he struggled to open his eyes, a warm feeling of drowsiness that seemed to cover his whole body in a warm blanket. He tried to wrestle free of it with the little remaining piece of will that he had, but his hands and feet simply sway idly from side to side until the sweet embrace of sleep got the better of him.
Chapter Thirteen
The pillow was cold and flat as Sarah lay across the tattered old bed with her right cheek pressed against it. It was almost totally devoid of innards, hardly any amount of feathers, wool or anything inside it that could be used to stuff a pillow. She could feel the cold, rough, hard steel of the headrest behind her, pressing deep and painfully into her scalp. Great flakes of rust and small degraded fragments fell from the cold, hard surface of the headrest and landed in her hair. She vainly tried to brush them away with repeated ruffles from her clammy hand. Beneath her long, restless body she could feel the hardness of the myriad number of circular iron springs beneath what could loosely be called a mattress for all the lifelessness and raggedness it beheld within its ratty and dirty looking case.
Constantly, she moved her legs backwards and forwards, side to side as she struggled over and over to find a comfortable position to lie in, but found nothing but the same unending and repeating process of feeling the cold, hard steel and iron pushing hard into her skin all down her body.
Hmn, must be what the poor spirits of the damned have to endure in Hell, she thought, contemplating her own simple unending torture lying in this bed. They all try to get some rest from their plight, but find nothing but the same demonic figures that constantly taunt and torture them.
Finally, she could endure the annoyance of the iron and the steel no longer as she took in one great gasp of irritated air, immediately coughing it back out as she realised where the air was coming from.
She thought back to what Ernest had said to her, told her and Father Heathers to stay here where it was safe, wanting to keep them somewhere where he knew they would be and he could check on them. She hated the idea of being treated almost like a child or an invalid when she was a full grown woman. It reminded her of when she was actually a child, or technically speaking a young teenager quite some years ago and had told her friend Father Joseph Richards of her local church that she wished to become a clairvoyant and wanted him to train her up. How she enjoyed watching his face twist and alter into a mixed expression of great shock and great joy. She remembered feeling slightly irritated and so small at how he had told her slightly outraged that none of that was real, that it was all in her head and that what the Lord Jesus Christ taught us and what the Catholic church recognised was what was real and not imaginary. The whole time talking down to her like she was some ignorant tiny little nobody.
These people pick and choose what they want to believe, she remembered thinking while feeling annoyed.
Father Richards had given her the first ‘beginner’ classes of what was required and what was absolutely essential at being a medium, then taking her additional lessons and intense concentration classes with her mother who was what she believed a powerful soothsayer. Her mother had always warned her about going into her chosen field of territory, telling her it was not for the faint hearted or the easily afraid. To have this constant attack at her totally ignorant state really irritated her, but, hearing it from her mother was more mellow to hear than from the priest. Because it was from her mother, she could understand.
She enjoyed thinking back and remembering her mother back in those days when she was still alive, how she used to wear large, thick strands of shiny, reflective beads round her neck and wrists, beads she always insisted came from her great grandmother who had also been a medium, while totally ignoring what everyone knew; that they were from a junk shop. How she used to wear a gypsies handkerchief round her head, which was actually genuine, something she had seen a gypsy wearing while they were sat outside their dirty caravan and had made them an offer. It was strangely kind of pleasant and almost like a children’s game how she used to practice her soothsaying in the corner of the room sat at a large oak table underneath a large satin sheet held up with the same large rusty nail. She used to laugh when she remembered seeing her stare into her crystal ball with a great mixture of concentration and complete bewilderment. But, all of that was just for her own amusement, Sarah always loved to see her mother smile at her with her great thick, ruby-red lips and look up at her with her bright, sparkling, heavily-made up mothering eyes.
She heaved a deep sigh and produced a great thick smile. It was strangely kind of pleasant to be a medium sometimes, to have the knowledge that those you have loved and lost in life where, in some form or another, still around in another dimension, but Sarah always still managed to produce a tear of sadness when she thought about her. She slowly wiped it away, sniffed up and looked around the room, her hands cupped tightly in her lap
This was a dreadful place to be, a horrible place even to visit for a mere few moments. The place stank of terrible vivid images that burrowed out of the stonework like a seeping poison and then parasitically find a place to hide inside your incorruptible mindscape. The air was rife with sickness and degradation, hanging heavy in the air like a swarm of silent unseen flying insects ready to crawl inside your lungs and fill them with polluted air. She suddenly felt ill as she conceived the notion, holding her stomach to alleviate the slight sensation of numbing pain.
The people who lived in this place were sick individuals, people who were lured into and worshipped a terrible religion that involved nothing but, pain, sorrow, misery and corruption of innocent souls.
Filthy souls with clouded minds. She thought to herself with a great surge of anger.
She thought of the religion that the previous tenants of this building had worshipped. Regardless of its possible intricacies or hidden details that could possibly have manifested deep within its secret nature that might have explained the reasons for its worshippers to honour it, or the reasons behind their brainwashing and succumbing its dark fantasies. It was evil, plain and simple. There were countless other religions like it in the world from every corner of the civilised world, each with their own warped ideas of how to honour your life or your place in the world. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands of them. Their were thousands many centuries ago and there were would be many more in the countless years to come.
For many years during her life and her awakening to a spiritual life, Sarah had long pondered the reasons why people were drawn to a religion that taught its followers to do nothing but hurt themselves and others and destroy others that didn’t think like they did. The fundamental law of any religion to her was that it must teach compassion to each other and create respect and peace amongst its fellow men, basically a religion is the glue that holds a society together, to have a religion that creates corruption, hatred and resentment can only undo society.
But it was obvious, people the world over just enjoyed giving pain, relished in hearing the tortured cries of those they hurt. To kill someone is to have the power of life and death in your hands and to take their life from them was to crush their soul, an expression of someone’s own twisted sense of power.
She closed her eyes as she felt pain from this track of thought, crushing her eyelids together. Her long internal anger of the unfairness of mankind often got to her, filling her with a deep hatred that couldn’t be alleviated.
She looked around the room around her, seeing nothing but almost complete darkness and the very faint and vague ghostly images of small, oddly shaped tables and chairs, distorted and disturbing effigies of hideous figures of worship. She screwed her eyes up and rested both her hands over her heart, listening deeply to its steady, rhythmic beat and her own troubled thoughts.
How could they have worshipped such horrible figures, such terrible gods and demons that believed in nothing but pain?
Feeling Father Heathers roll over uttering a low groan beside her snapped her out of her deep lamentation, causing her to jump slightly in shock slightly and turn her head over to the side toward him. She looked at him with a slight amused smile at the sight of his clumped, potato-like face as it was pressed hard against the ratty old pillowcase, his deep breathing now nothing more than a soft wheeze that gradually became a strange kind of high-pitched whistle. The fleeting glint of the silver crucifix he was holding made her look down toward it, held firmly and tightly in his hands, clutched as hard as possible to his chest with a fierce sense of absolute fear, trapped in a dark realm of religious abandonment.
Sarah returned her sleepy gaze back to the shadows sitting disquietingly in front of her. Taking in a deep breath of contaminated air, she stretched her body out as much as it would go, stretching out her legs and feet and wiggling her toes, raising her arms high into the air and stretching out her fingers up into the darkness above as far as the flesh and the bones beneath would allow, enjoying the occasional crack of a few bony connections and the rush of the calming sensation running through her body like the effects of a sleeping pill. Slowly, she brought her arms back down behind her, resting her slightly fatigued hands down onto the musty old mattress, all the while , with her eyes softly closed, listening to the steady, rhythmic, unending silence that surrounded her like a sleeping dangerous creature, hearing its hissing-like breath in her ears, wincing at the occasional creak of some unseen floorboard.
I can’t sit around here all the time, she thought, slightly annoyed with herself. I can’t just let Doctor Furlong try to fight this alone, I have to help him. We all need each other’s help in here, otherwise we’re done for.
She stood up from the bed, falling to the side slightly as her foot landed against a weak floorboard. Slowly and all the while nervously listening to the disquieting silence all around her, she walked steadily around the room, her hands knotted tightly in her slightly uncombed hair, her long nails playfully scratching her scalp. She looked up and saw a slightly irregular shaped door in front of her, resting awkwardly in a triangular shaped alcove. It was almost the shape of a typical door, but with a strange ripple like pattern all around it. Fixed into the top half of it were three small windows shaped like various pieces of a cake cut into separate parts. A soft, hazy yellow light shone from them onto her face, illuminating her skin with a deep, pale bronze colour.
She stopped in her tracks and froze solid. The sudden realisation that there was another door leading into the room all the time and she, nor Doctor Furlong had seen it. The idea that something could have walked in here without her knowing while she and Father Heathers was asleep. The fear pierced her with an unsettling sense of dangerous ignorance, ignorance of her knowledge, how close she had been to possible danger and how by sheer luck she had avoided it.
Although, the idea of a wandering spirit walking into her room without her knowledge was nothing new. It had happened to her on numerous occasions throughout the years, sometimes they would walk in on her when she was painting her nails, reading, or on one embarrassing incident when she was in the shower.
At least he was a gentleman she thought, thinking back slightly amused at that particular incident. He didn’t try to speak to me until I had finished.
Thankfully, all of her ’visitors’ in the past were passive, gentle spirits. Not like the ones in here, these are monsters.
She mentally grabbed as much memory of the shower incident as she could, desperate for something that reminded her of the lighter side of her profession to lighten the deep fear she felt right now.
She turned her back to her door, suddenly fearful that something unseen could be watching her from behind it. She closed her eyes, tilting her head back as far as it would go, scratching her scalp more severely this time as she struggled to reaffirm her strength and power of will over her irrational fear. Come on, come, you silly girl, she thought hurriedly. There’s nothing here, there’s nothing here. Its in your imagination. For once in her whole life, she wished she didn’t believe in ghosts, sometimes being totally ignorant of such things made your life easier.
She walked away from the door, now totally invisible to the fact that a myriad number of dark, shadowy hands were now pressed against the hazy, yellowed glass in the door, running their long, tapering fingers across it silently and eerily while Sarah stood still and allowed her mind to wander. The hands steadily began to gather in number, clumping together like a huge swarm of flies and twisting the silhouetted hands into a large blackened, indescribable shape.
The sudden sound of running footsteps broke Sarah’s daydreaming as she abruptly turned her head round to the shadowy, grainy door to her left. The footsteps quickly died down as they reached the end of the corridor over to the left, marking the moment when the unseen shadowy hands quickly disappeared, evaporating back into nothingness and allowing the hazy, yellow light to return.
Sounds like one of them, Sarah thought fiercely to herself, all too familiar of the sound of a ghost’s footsteps. Though, which spirit it actually was she preferred not to know, given the ungodly horrendous nature of the previous occupants.
Slowly, she began to walk toward the door, careful not cause too much sound as she went less the footsteps came again and she lost them. She took what seemed like an endless amount of time in each tentative step, grinding her soft leather shoes deep into the roughened, dust-choked, threadbare carpet, her hands in front of her stomach, fingers nervously fumbling and picking at each other.
Like the Grandmother’s Footsteps game, she thought amused to herself with a slight smile, remembering the slow, almost silent footsteps.
Finally, after what seemed like an endless of time fumbling in the darkness, she reached the door, its appearance heavily dirty and gritty from the effects of the near absolute darkness in the room casting a great, almost midnight blue colour shadow across it. Tentatively and as quietly as she could, she rested the left side of her face against the cold, hard, splintered wood, nestling her ear against a particularly gritty and roughened portion of the door. She placed her fingertips of both hands as softly as she could on the door and listened hard, desperate not to hear some sudden scream or shriek bellow out from outside like a great sudden rush of hot steam from a pipe. That was something else she had encountered in the many years since she had adopted this unique and often laughed-at career. Many times she had encountered lost souls who were not always caring and considerate like others she had reached. Many of them had not had the patience for her to contact them and had screamed in her ear when she least expected it, causing her heart to thunder furiously with absolute terror. Other times they had summoned up enough strength to slap her across the face, shaking her by the elbows or grabbing her by the arm, taking her completely by surprise. Though, given the nature of how many of them had died, how their lives had been so cruelly torn away from them before their time, before they had the chance to live their final moments and say goodbye to their lives and their families, it was hardly surprising they reacted how they did.
To die suddenly before you could enjoy your final moments and not say goodbye to your life and your family. That terrible but realistic fact always cut her the deepest, more so than many sad facts she had experienced. Life was so short, so full of mysterious things, things that people tried so hard to fathom but never achieving the answers. The greatest moments of your life only happened so many times in a lifetime, only so few moments to truly live your life, to feel the surge and energy of life and existence flowing like fire throughout your veins. So few happy moments with your family, kissing your children, watching them grow up, remembering your mother’s perfume . . .She bit her lip lightly and reaffirmed her ears position back on the door, sighing and closing her eyes softly, she listened to the steady unending, disquieting rhythm of almost absolute dead silence, broken only by the occasional interruption from Father Heathers as he shifted his position on the bed. She almost welcomed such interruptions, they helped to bring her back to reality, reminding her that she was totally alone.
Many minutes passed by without the slightest sound of footsteps, a small ghostly voice, not even the occasional creak or pop of the floorboards reacting to the ever-changing temperature, or the fleeting whoosh of a breeze gathering up a blanket of loose dust.
Eventually, she began to lose her patience after hearing nothing but total unrelenting silence for what seemed like many, many hours. Nothing seemed to be stirring from outside.
She began to back away from the door with a deep saddened, yet strangely relieved sigh, steadily lifting her fingertips away from the door.
Please . . .mummy. The voice definitely came from outside somewhere, somewhere out in the corridor, that she was sure of as she darted like a speeding bullet back to position against the door, pressing much harder this time. Though, from which direction the voice came from, it was hard to tell, it seemed to echo out all around her, bouncing off the walls and reverberating around the shabby, deserted rooms.
Please . . .mummy . .following me.
She could hear it much clearer this time and much louder, so much so that for a split second she thought it was in the room with her somewhere, hiding in the shadows. It was hard to understand a spirits voice due to their unique sound, their speech and even sometimes their language. So often a man’s voice would sound like a woman’s, or a child’s would sound like a whining animal. She was not accustomed to ‘hearing’ spirits in her line of work, much of it was what some would call ‘Old School’ techniques of table rapping, séances and good old-fashioned prayer. She was what was scientifically termed a ‘physical medium,’ someone who would bring results that would have physical effects such as objects moving, knocks on the table, rumblings and uncomfortable sounds echoing from some unseen spectre.
She wished that Doctor Furlong was here with his tape recording equipment and experience in EVP. He had a much greater ‘ear’ to understand this kind of thing.
She listened harder to the disembodied voice as it continued, hearing it bounce around the room like a tennis ball, outside the corridor and against every surface around her, constantly replaying the same words, the same steady rhythm in the same voice, winding down from an almost ear shattering noise to an almost indistinguishable whisper. It sounded like a child’s voice to her, a little girl’s voice, but that was as far as her interpretation could go. She allowed herself not to be taken in by the words that c9onstantly replayed themselves like a broken record, too many spirits could disguise their voices with words that someone of another age group would speak.
“Speak to me, please.” She said in a soft whispering voice as she beckoned for the unnamed spirit to reveal its identity, to hear its voice in her mind, to reach it telepathically and offer it a kind, comforting ear. But, she heard nothing, nothing but the now almost dead silent whisper echoing out eerily from down the left hand side of the corridor. The left hand side, that’s it, it’s coming from down that way. I have to get to her.
She stepped away from the door, facing it with a steely look in her face, her arms bent and held out in front of her as though ready to engage in a fight. She thought of what might await her outside, who or what the gradually disappearing spirit beckoning to her actually might be and what it’s intentions were. She hesitated only briefly before flinging herself towards the door and pushing it open into the grainy, sharp-shadow filled corridor and stepping out over the threshold.
The outside corridor was just like everywhere else in this damned building, wherever you were unfortunate enough to find yourself. It was staid and stagnant, crumbling and decaying into its former natural perfection of stone, dust and formless rubble. Every once habitable area plunged into almost perfect blackness now and eerily quiet and deserted in a disquieting kind of way. Every inch of the whole of this structure seemed to scream out its sterile, utterly black magnificence at all who dared to walk the undiscovered country of its halls, its corridors, its disquietingly silent and empty rooms. Long abandoned halls and rooms that once bore the twisted machinations and demonic ideals of its former inhabitants now left to be gazed at by nothing more than the darkness, the shadows and the final remaining thoughts and unseen personas that still clung to what remained of their horrid lives. Gathered up over every noticeable patch of wood, stone, metal and steel was a strange kind of gauze or filter that seemed to dirty and further grain the appearance of everything, almost like taking a photograph in an almost pitch-dark room.
It almost made Sarah wretch at the idea of walking within its confines. Almost like disturbing the scene of a mass-murder, the decaying bodies still visible underneath the loose soil that had accumulated over their stagnant corpses, the unmistakable stench of death that still hung heavy in the air like a rampant plague. The ice cold contours that made up the houses exteriors, like a rat groping around the sun-bleached bony remains of a long-dead corpse, the gaps and holes in-between the spaces that had once housed its most important practices, its most major organs, now hanging open like an open wound to the harsh outside elements, allowing the cold wind of change to echo out its sublime ice-cold perfection inside the remains of what once was hideous perfection.
Sarah retracted her thoughts away from her present wanderings and returned them to the here and now. She cursed herself slightly at allowing her mind to wander as it did, her profession and more importantly, the present situation required her to keep her concentration in full use and not to let her mind wander to insignificant things. But, in the end, it didn’t matter how hard she tried, her mind would always drift off to higher and deeper things and drag her along with it, just like it did as a child, allowing her thoughts to drift off to deeper and deeper notions of the nature of life after death, what awaited for her in the great abyss of mystery and darkness that so few had brought back remains and pieces of knowledge back with them over the centuries.
Concentrate, she again forced herself to do, reaffirming her grip on reality. The poor child needs your help.
. . .lease, . . .ummy. The voice came again, echoing its unearthly resonance back down the corridor towards her, carrying with it a stark reminder of its terribly short life in this unnatural place, the unmistakable whimpering resonance of its once fragile childhood.
“I’m coming,” she said, quickly getting her bearings on where the voice was coming from. “I’m here now, don’t worry, I’m going to help you.” She omitted to falsely reveal herself as the spirit child’s mother. Despite the fact that using such a small white lie to other child spirits in her lifetime had quite often helped to create a stable and relaxed relationship between them, she decided that this time would not work so well. Obviously, the spirit wanted its mummy, but Sarah couldn’t bring herself to pretend that that was her. This was a spirit who, after viewing the terrible, inhuman things these sick, twisted cultists had done to the children they kidnapped, this spirit child’s mental state would be like nothing she had encountered before. Better to be just a friendly interloper and take it from there.
Hearing the strong ‘whoosh’ like sound of the unseen spectre ahead of her, she began to sprint forwards, her eyes darting from one end of the corridor to the other, desperate for a glimpse of it as it passed before her.
“Where are you, please?” She asked the spirit, stopping in her tracks to look around for a pale phantasmal face, an eerie glowing shape, even just the pale appearance of its small, child-like hand. “Please, my dear, I need to see you. If I can see you, I can help you. I alone have the power to free you of this terrible place. I know that there is a wonderful place out there, just waiting for you. Your mother‘s there, your father, your brothers and sisters, if you have any. And yes, even your favourite. They‘re all waiting for you up there in god‘s domain under his protection. But, for you to get there, I first need to see you, then we can be friends.”
They don’t want you to see me, came the child’s voice, echoing inside her mind like a radio signal bouncing back and forth. She closed her eyes to hear clearer.
Who won’t let me see you, she asked inside her head, already knowing the terrible answer.
The bad ones.
What have they done to you, sweetheart, tell me?
Lock me away in the dark place . . .can’t come out till end of day. Always dark, here, always dark and scary. Bad ones say funny things at night, gather round table with weird candles. Stick big knife in something, makes noise like baby puppy. William, my best friend, not here anymore. Big trees outside watching you, never stop . . .where is sun, mummy? Where is the sun, I can’t see the sun anymore. Always dark here, always . . .
The anger and resentment began to well up inside her, her muscles tightened as they began to prepare for a battle that would never take place.
Are you alone? She asked, her eyelids crinkling with pity and sorrow.
We play, we all play in the dark place, downstairs. Toys and slides to climb on. Funny dolls, have scary eyes, talk to me when alone in dark. Berty takes all toys for himself, we can‘t play. Dark men and ladies say we can play with them inside, they say they have fun games with fun toys.
Sarah bit her lip and remained silent to the spirit voice a moment, the fragmented yet crystal-clear indication of what the poor thing had to suffer at the hands of these terrible people brought her almost to the brink of tears, held back only by the deep, agonising knot of rage and hatred that boiled like hot lava deep inside her, constantly threatening to burst out in a torrent of unrestrained destruction. How much she longed to travel back in time and take unrestrained vengeance on these insane creatures who dared to call themselves ‘spiritually aware’ and give the children back their lives, the lives that been so cruelly taken from them by sneaking, cowardly opportunists.
Feeling the disconnection of the spirit from her mind, she opened her eyes and looked back down the pitch-dark corridor ahead of her, hearing nothing now but the same unending rhythm of silence, the dull, microphone feedback like sound, perpetuating throughout this hideous stronghold. She began to sprint again, ignoring the rapid succession of what little light remained around her as it vanished into an abyss of nothingness, as if something were pulling it back toward it in the shadows. She stopped suddenly as she caught sight of a pinprick of light appearing right out of nowhere directly ahead of her to the left. In the space of only a second and a half, the light grew to the size and width of the corridor with the shape of candlelight, yet strangely, no light was thrown anywhere else and seemed to only light up what was contained inside it. Sarah stood her ground and readied herself, narrowed her eyes and peered into the light. Right in the centre, she could see what looked like the strong silhouetted image of a staircase leading downward to the lower level, beginning at the end of the corridor. She remembered the floor plan of this level from when they all came up here and knew that this staircase was real and not just an illusion fabricated to deceive her.
Suddenly, she gasped, as the silhouetted shape of a small figure suddenly appeared standing at the top of the staircase. It was fixed into position, not moving at all, almost like watching the shadow of a mannequin. Sarah could tell easily that the figure was that of a child, even with a shadow to build on. Its hair was short and slightly bushy, the silhouettes of its nose, chin and lips were easily definable as those belonging to a child. A strange, almost unrecognisable shape sat in-between its neck and its chest and looked like what Sarah could ascertain as being some kind of bow-tie or a cravat.
“Is that you I can see?” Sarah asked as softly as she could, her eyes fixed on the figure. She watched as the shadowy figure raised its arm and hand toward its mouth. Slowly, it formed its hand into a fist and extended its forefinger in front of its bunched up lips.
Sssshhhh, the figure uttered in a frighteningly close whispering tone. Don’t let them hear you, they are watching us, they are behind you, beside you. They are mad at you, not allowed to talk to us. You have key to pearly gates, sunshine and happiness. Bad ones don’t want that, want darkness, comfort of shadows and cold. Muddy where they are, muddy . . .cold, not nice, spiders walk over them.
Quite obviously the description of the burial place that the cultists had been thrown into by what they claimed where The Brotherhood of Mystery. The great chasm just a few miles away had served as their eternal resting place for their filthy corpses.
A pity their filthy souls couldn’t have been trapped there with their bodies, she thought coldly to herself.
Like you, the spirit said rather mysteriously again. Like to play, play like Tom, hide and seek. Want to sit beside big fire . . .warm and dark.
Its words were slightly cryptic, though not surprising coming from someone who had died a long time ago. In her experience, it was often very difficult to interpret a spirits wishes, words and sentences. But, on this occasion, Sarah could understand what it wanted. It sounded to her like it wanted some kind of company beside some, as of yet undiscovered fireplace. How she pitied it at not being able to find other spirits of its age that had been lured here so many years ago and brought brutally to their untimely death. She hated the idea of it only having the company of those that brought its destruction to it, watching it in its ever-repeatable damnation in these crumbling halls, whispering their horrid twisted words to it from the darkness and the shadows surrounding it.
Sarah looked up again at the silhouette of the spirit as she noticed its sudden disappearance from the wall beside it. Sensing that it had gone down the staircase, she frantically followed, desperate to catch up with it and somehow take it into her own care. The poor thing was so alone and frightened.
Sarah ran the palm of her hand delicately across the banister of the staircase as she ran to keep herself from falling. As she went, she couldn’t help but notice the crumbling and decaying walls around her, falling into miserable disrepair and great cakes of dust. The once surprisingly pleasant wallpaper now hung loosely and limply downward, splits and tears had appeared within its now strangely faded dark green appearance. Large portions of animal hair and feathers had long ago began to grow on its surface and fall to the staircase below, bringing with it a ghastly stench of death and corruption. Sarah wretched at the sight and smell of it as she ran, immediately holding up her hand to cover her nose and mouth.
My god, you poor spirit. it’s a crime against god that you’re still in this terrible place.
Sarah continued her frantic search for the spirit child, hoping to see or hear it soon and hopefully take it somewhere that it would be safe and she could possibly somehow perform a ritual to save it from this hellish domain. She had to admit, though, that performing such a task to save its soul would be very difficult. Even in other cases, such as this one where a spirit would long to leave its tortuous surroundings, the power and terrible tragedy that had rooted their soul to the spot was too strong to break free of. On more than one occasion, she had to admit defeat and abandon the spirit, damning it to its eternal purgatory. While she hated to admit it, not every battle in life could be won, regardless of what you did to prevent it.
Well, I’m not going to abandon you, she thought strongly to herself. I’m going to rescue you and save the rest of your friends. I’m going to take these bastards by the throat and throw them into the eternal roiling abyss. You just watch me.
The stench of decay, rust, rotted flesh and decaying plant life filled the air that surrounded her, ensnaring her in a giant net filled with decaying fish corpses and refusing to let go. Eventually, she couldn’t take it anymore, it was just too strong. She reached into her pocket with her free hand and hurriedly took out a small handkerchief and thrust it into her nose and mouth, holding it in place with her shaking hand. Her fingers danced delicately as they ran across the hard, rough surface of the banister to the left of her, desperate not to touch it as much as she could. Then, her trembling, freezing fingers caught hold of handfuls of loose, rotted flakes of the wood shavings that had gathered up like dust from the result of the banister’s irredeemable decay that had started a full century ago. She quickly, and revoltingly, threw them down to the bottomless darkness of the floor below in disgust, quickly wiping her hand roughly across her skirt. She stopped her frantic descent for a moment as she suddenly heard the despairing creak of rotted floorboards beneath her feet. She hated the thought of having to slow while the poor spirit child was running off somewhere, but the thought that the stairs beneath her feet could suddenly give way and she would fall headlong into a sea of crumbling wood and who knew what else was enough to make her think twice.
She stood rigid and totally silent for a moment as she waited for something to happen, waiting for a possible further weakness in the joists, or something similar to happen so she could have a chance of jumping away before it happened. She listened intently for the spirit, its footsteps, its echoing voice or the sound of an object it could be manipulating to let her know that it was there. But, there was nothing, nothing but the deep dank unending silence around, the haunting echo of the breeze that eternally played out its unceasing rhythm around this diseased, decaying fortress. Although, while she couldn’t find the spirit in any conventional way, she could still sense it in her thoughts. She probed her senses closer to pick up on more details, feeling her way along the dull, fuzzy like sensation within her brain. As far as she could tell, it was within close proximity, possibly twenty-yards away, at most. She sensed that it didn’t seem to be moving, in her own way, she could tell that wherever it was, it was holding steady to its position.
At least it won’t desert me here, she thought, forcing the tissue clamped on her face even tighter as she caught a whiff of the death-like air again.
She took her final fragments of time that she had left before she would set off again to take a look at her surroundings and get her bearings. She looked forward and straight ahead of her and stared as open-mouthed as she could manage without breathing the air around her at three separate corridors running in opposite directions. One travelled off to the left, the other straight ahead, the other to the right and slightly more of a distance from the others. The entrances to each were shaped like the doorway of a church, angled into a sharp point at the head of the doorway with a large, thick ridge made of wood and stone running along the outside. They were large and looked as if they would be high enough for someone well-over six-feet to enter them. Piles of ash, pieces of wood and wood shavings formed large piles at each side of all three corridors.
The shape of the walls above the corridors rose high into the air above her, at first straight vertical walls that suddenly altered into an arch. Sarah followed the arching walls surrounding the church-like corridors with her eyes high up into the air, going so high that she had to bend her neck backwards to see it all. She almost dropped the handkerchief she was holding down to the floor in mute amazement and shock as she beheld the size of the area she now stood. It rose higher and higher into the darkness, forming what she could only guess at was a central point or some kind of dome. The underside of this huge unseen spike, dome whatever it was that formed the centre of this suddenly immense room, a room that now seemed to be almost the exact size and shape of a cathedral, filled with architecture unique to a place of worship. A slow moving mass collection of dust gathered up a mere few feet from the underside of the spike, swirling and tumbling silently in a powerful breeze round and round, as if suddenly christening the area with atmosphere and untold importance. She gazed at the whole repulsive magnificence of it, allowing her eyes to unconsciously peer closer and closer, feeling as though she could stare for eternity into its unending abyss.
Then, it hit her, suddenly and inexplicably like something grabbing her heart and pulling it downwards into her stomach, her intestines turning and twisting in a sudden shocking realisation.
But, how . . .how could this happen. Oh, my god, its all . . .its all . . She knew it had happened, she had to accept the sheer madness of it all, it was right in front of her eyes. But, at the same time, how could she accept it, it just wasn’t possible. She had only walked through this area and up this staircase with Father Heathers and Dr. Furlong a mere few hours ago and she swore as sure as she was there that this area was just like everywhere else. She remembered that the entrances to the three corridors were not shaped like cathedral doors, the walls above them did not form arches and end immensely high into the air and form the underside of an unseen spike or dome. And no way in hell did the others mention anything like that while they made their way up here.
She had to think it, she had to hear the words inside her head that this whole area, somehow in the space of a few hours had dramatically altered its appearance, becoming even more degraded and collapsed, altering its physical structure to resemble some kind of dark, twisted church from the original decaying corridors and passageways of a mansion.
Finally, her muscles tensed, forgetting completely about the threat of the stairs collapsing beneath her. Her fingers clenched and froze into place, the handkerchief fell silently to the floor, carried for the smallest fraction of a second by the stagnant, sepulchral breeze that flew invisibly around her before landing amidst the dust and decay at her feet.
My god, with what these dark spirits can do to either our minds or their house itself, how are we ever going to get out of here?
A sudden knock of something hard and strong striking against some unseen stone surface snapped her back out of her frigid fear and dragged her conscious mind back to the matter in hand. She looked down with her mouth hanging open slightly at the discarded tissue lying against her feet and decided to ignore it not for any special reason, despite the fact that it had become almost completely covered in dust and foul-smelling decay, but simply because her mind was somewhere else right now. Her eyes registered the fact that the tissue was lying beside her, but the simple matter of bending down to pick it up barely registered inside her brain as even a mere flicker.
Still open-mouthed, she looked back at the immense, church-like interior standing impossibly before her, the madness and sheer insanity of it all still rang like enormous brass church-bells in her head. The knocking of something against stone came again, still only a small distance from where she stood. Gradually, she summoned up the strength needed for her leg muscles to react to the silent to her, yet internally screaming orders directed to them from her brain and get them to move forward. Finally, they reacted to her will and followed her instructions and she began to briskly move forward. She took a few moments to get her bearings and try to work out from where the knocking sound was coming from before she began to descend down the decaying staircase.
She ignored the absolute madness of the twisted and radically altered interiors that now completely surrounded her, almost as if they threatened to engulf her in total insanity, forcing her to lose her grip on reality. She stopped for a moment to look up at the underside of the dome that hung so high up toward the ceiling from her that it had almost disappeared into total darkness. She watched with fearful fascination at the mass of dead leaves and dust that had gathered underneath the dome, now swirling, tumbling and roiling over and over in a strange and disquieting kind of surreal ballet. A faint stream of a strangely light blue light from some unknown source shone down at her from the direction of the dome, as if some unseen figure had suddenly caught her within the powerful beam of light from a searchlight and was watching her silently from its safe location.
With a quick slightly dry and painful swallow of a tiny amount of saliva down her throat, she retraced her steps to her destination.
It wasn’t as though she was completely unaware of it all anymore, of the impossible interiors, sheer scale walls and total transformation of the whole area, on the contrary, it hit her hard and powerful, like reacting to a sledgehammer that had just been buried into her head, but had not caused enough damage to instantly kill, merely leaving her in a mixture of stunned shock and pain that had become so great that it had almost become to much to register. She ignored the total lack of sanity that it all seemed to posses out of sheer survival and a quick instinctive effort at dexterity. If she dwelt on it all too much, there was a good chance that she could snap.
The strange knocking sound came again, this time it was much more prominent and very difficult to ignore, as if whatever was causing it was getting very impatient. Sarah followed the sound down toward the middle church door-like passageway, her fingers fumbling nervously together, collecting large handfuls of loose sweat, her long sharp fingernails being dragged hard with an uncomfortable sensation across her skin. She could feel the sweat gathering like an oncoming storm from within her skin, soaking through her clothes and making them very uncomfortable to wear, her armpits began to smell with a nauseating stench.
She had walked a few metres down the corridor when she suddenly looked up and stared ahead of her as she caught sight of the shadowy, silhouetted figure once again, this time parts of the shadowy areas had disappeared around it, as though it were a cloak that had exposed the thing beneath. It was standing with its back to a wall, its whole body hunched up tightly as though it were hiding from something, its blackened hands and arms held tightly to the shadow-streaked walls. All fear had left Sarah by this time. The fear of seeing a ghost in front of her was something she had got over many years ago, whereas, the fear of just recently being face with some physical abhorrence that surrounded her like a silent demon ready to pounce had become nothing more than a dull background noise, like feedback from a microphone.
“Can I . . .help you?” She tentatively asked the small shadowy figure. Her right hand held out toward it, imploring for its trust in her. “Do you, um, need some help?”
Through pure instinct and a very faint use of her spiritual training, she dragged her eyes up towards the figure’s virtually unseen face and stared imploringly into its own. She felt a twinge of pity and sorrow when she caught its sight, saw the heartbreaking tiny little blackened eyes, almost like a doll’s eyes, that stared back at her, fixed into a permanent image of pain, sorrow and a multitude of other typical childhood fears and terrors. A tiny pinprick of light shone like a distant torchlight out from its puppy-dog-like eyes, as if its very soul shone with divine light.
Like an angel trapped in hell, she thought bitterly.
She looked down at its left hand that was pressed against the wall behind it as it slowly began to move. She watched almost mesmerised as the tightly clenched fingers slowly began to uncurl themselves to reveal one tiny, stubby little finger out from the pack and point down to the corridor that lay behind it. Sarah regarded the outstretched finger with curiosity and confused interpretation as she tried to work out what it meant.
Be careful, came the crystal clear, unadulterated voice of the child that came only a few feet from her. It was peculiar, rising to a extremely high tone, too high even for a tiny child, then suddenly drop to a deep, almost devilish tone. As though it were a mixture of many voices. He watches . . .watches from resting place. Tired and bored. Has many enemies . . Looks out for me . .Rob good hider.
The child’s statement was much too cryptic, even with all of Sarah’s training and experience. Understanding the outstretched finger and the warning she was given, she tentatively stepped forward toward the figure until she was at the very edge of the opening of the corridor that veered off to the right. She silently cursed herself as her right foot shuffled loudly against the dust-streaked concrete floor and kicked a pile of accumulated dust out into the corridor. She quickly drew herself up into a fairly comfortable posture against the stone wall, mimicking that of the child’s. Taking a firm grip of the wall and its crumbling stonework, she slowly pushed her out to peer down the corridor. She drew in a sudden gasp and wildly opened her eyes as she caught sight of a small human figure resting silently in a ratty old armchair, a long dark, horizontal screen of shadow lying across it. The figure sat almost as if it were half asleep, its arms hanging limply across the armrests and its hands completely open and almost brushing across the floor, as if they had lost all strength. The armchair it rested in pushed slowly backwards and forwards as the almost unseen figure rocked back and forth in a slow, unending rhythm.
Its long legs hung at an awkward angle against the floor, its head falling downward as if drooping down and staring at the large long abandoned simple stone fireplace sitting in front of it. The whistle of wind sounded around it like ethereal singing, dragging sheets of dust and leaves like passengers as it played out its ghostly purpose in life, the strange sound of its almost unearthly circling journey broken only by the occasional creak of the armchair. It seemed strange to her, but she could swear that the armchair was exactly the same, or as close as possible, to her father’s armchair.
Father . . .you . .
Swallowing deeply and quickly flickering her eyes, Sarah slowly returned her gaze back to the spirit child and looked into its pitch-black face. Slowly it raised its outstretched finger toward its mouth and again uttered a soft hush to keep quiet.
With a long slow, almost unusual way of moving, the spirit child turned round on the spot and began to walk further on down the corridor, its legs moving almost in slow motion in a strange kind of military manner, the legs being brought up toward its stomach before being slowly placed back down. Sarah ignored this unusual behaviour somewhat, she had seen it many times before. With a strong sense of determination in hand, she began to follow the child to its undisclosed location.
The corridor seemed to grow more and more decayed and dilapidated as she walked, paint and pieces of stone had fallen from their initial placements and had long ago been defiled and abandoned to the harsh encroachment of time. Large piles of dirt, dust, rotted paint and crumbling pieces of stonework littered the way down the tunnel-like structure. The piles moved only when a strong breeze blew across them, gathering great chunks of it under its whistling wings and carrying them off into the immensities of outer structure.
What a god forsaken hideous place, Sarah thought as she beheld these hideous details. I hope to god that the people who built this place are suffering here, I hope they spend their deathless eternities wandering its sterile sanctums, longing for peace and release and never get it. Sarah smiled a gloating smile as she heard her own thoughts, her eyes narrowing into an almost hateful stare. She wasn’t usually someone who was vindictive about people, never in her life had she been cruel or unkind for any insubstantial reason. The spirits she had dealt with had always thought very highly of her. But, after witnessing the squalid interiors of an equally hideous building that rightly belonged in Hell, the place and its occupants deserved a slice of her merciless retribution, even if it was only harsh words spoken against them. For once, they needed someone who had the courage to face off against them, someone who wasn’t afraid to stand up and fight against evil. She almost felt a new sense of confidence and courage with her brave words.
Sarah tightened her thin blouse tightly around her chest suddenly as she felt a sudden coldness in the air, as if something nameless and unseen wrapped its icy chill around her small fragile body. She looked down in awe at her breath as it fell like steam out of her mouth, the frigid cold giving it ample strength to possess a physical appearance. Quickly, she crossed her arms over her chest and held onto her shoulders with a powerful vice-like grip, the ends of her fingers trembling with her lips, digging hard into the soft flesh of her shoulders. She looked ahead of her, she could still see the shadowy spectre of the child as it continued its slow, militaristic journey down the seemingly endless tunnel. Gradually, Sarah could make something at the end of the tunnel, something that looked like a small room with things inside it. Stopping in her trembling tracks for a moment, she narrowed her eyes and peered as hard as she could, but could only make out vague shapes and silhouettes that may or may not be furniture or other objects.
Her body began to shake almost violently as it struggled to regain some warmth inside the furnace of the shell that constructed her body, but constantly finding resistance against the unnatural chill that had suddenly descended.
She looked again at the spectre of the child. The thought crossed her mind as to whether she should leave the child now to its seemingly endless and pointless journey, just apologise and turn round and go back to her room to wait for Doctor Furlong and to keep an eye on Father Heathers. She hated to even consider the possibility that she could just abandon this poor child to the unseen demons that watched it from the walls, the ceiling and the floor. But, after all, the child was already dead, dead in the sense that it had died a physical life and had now blossomed into another form. She could take some small comfort in the fact that if she left it here by itself, it couldn’t actually be physically harmed and it would have the company of other spirits of its age that undoubtedly roamed these halls and corridors too. After all, she was a deep believer, Christ in all his glory would come for all those lost, eventually and take them to his eternal kingdom. The child would just have to be patient. Good times would come.
As the thoughts of turning back or continuing on swam around in her mind, her puppy-dog eyes were fixed on the small, fragile spectre as it continued down the corridor alone, her face filled with a sense of woe and sadness.
She broke her concentration on her thoughts suddenly as the spectre stopped in its silent tracks, its left leg still bent in a militaristic manner, as though waiting to be deployed. Slowly, the spirit turned its small silhouetted figure towards her, its small blackened eyes staring hard at her, hard enough to see into her soul. In here, the child said with a whooshing, whispering tone. Chairs in here . . .sit down . .nice and comfortable. Its raised its left arm into an arch-like shape and circled it in the air, signalling for her to follow it. With a short, silent skip, it made its way into the room, found a large ornate chair that was almost totally obscured by shadow and waited for her.
Sarah stood her ground for a moment, the time passed almost like millenniums as she continued her relentless, yet undefined conclusion. She stood with her shaking hands gently massaging her shoulders, her eyes glued to the partly obscured ghost child before her. It seemed that, regardless of what she thought was right, what was right and what was wrong, she couldn’t just leave this poor child to the darkness that surrounded it. True, there was possibly ample danger surrounding it that it had to summon up an incredible amount of strength just to materialise before her for this short time and ask her for her help. She wasn’t the kind of person who abandons those who desperately need help, her intense training for her profession dictated that as the golden rule.
Heaving a deep sigh, she followed the child to the end of the corridor and into the small room beyond.
The room was quite small, about the size of a typical living room in a small council house. The wallpaper was faded a little, but still very much retained its deep blood-red colour, patterned with a regular series of indentations and spirals shaped like concentric circle’ s, eclipsing each other. A large shabby looking wooden case rested against the far wall, its front covered with a rectangular piece of glass covered in finger marks and streaks of grease. Behind the glass were a series of small shelves with several small plates sat on top of them, their intricately and surprisingly pleasant decorations of complex golden spiral patterns in full view. Beside that was a small decaying cupboard made of oak with small golden handles hanging limply from the front. Sarah studied the fine details of the room in a relaxed and concentrated manner. It seemed very hard to believe that while the rest of this place descends into decay and disorder, this room almost appears to be thriving in its silent, unfaltering beauty, aside from the slight decay that appeared to be only recently attacking it. Perhaps, this was just in one of the farthest wings of the house and the decay had only just begun to reach it. Still, regardless of the reason, she felt almost at home in here. The thought made her wretch a little, not from the realisation of being in another damned room of this place, but the idea that something that seemed almost perfect could exist in a place like this.
She looked around again with a smile at the room, almost totally ignoring the cold chill that snapped at her frozen body. It was strange, but, the room almost seemed to be like a room in her mother’s house a few years before she died, it was almost uncanny.
Sarah found the child sat where she saw it last, slouched down and completely unseen almost in the thick contours of the deep red coloured cushioning of the ornate and intricately decorated wooden chair that sat in the centre of the room. The chair was seemingly clean of dust, grime and decay and almost seemed to have been recently varnished by someone. She laughed slightly at the thought of this, the idea that ghosts could undertake spring cleaning. She found a small chair that was almost identical to the child’s and moved it with across the floor to sit in front if. The chair made a loud squeaking sound as it was pushed across the hardwood floor, Sarah clenched her teeth together as it ran uncomfortably through her. She took her place up inside the almost engulfing chair and rested her back against its soft reddened cushion, still feeling slightly strange at the comfort at it all. She brought her right leg over her left one and held her hands together with her fingers, looking hard with a caring, silent expression at the void of darkness that completely covered the seat of the child’s chair. After a few moments of unending silence, she began to rub herself with her hands.
“It’s cold in here, isn’t it, she said to the child, desperate for anything that would break the ice. “Are you cold? Would you like me to make a fire, or something? I could easily make one for you, I’m sure there’s a fireplace in this room somewhere. Could you tell me where it is, please?”
A darkened arm outstretched from the blackened void in front of her and pointed a small stubby finger to her right where a small, stone fireplace sat, a large collection of wood and timber filled the inside, apparently just recently. “Oh, good, thank you, she said again to the spirit with a bright smile. “it’s a good thing I have some firelighters in pocket.” She took out the firelighters and got down on her knees to make the fire, pushing clumps of paper underneath the wood and lighting it with a small flame. After only a few moments, the fire was raging with a snapping, crackling sound, throwing an eerie glow of orange, yellow and red across the room, lighting up the deep red of the wallpaper into an even deeper tone. Large, overpowering silhouettes and shadows danced ghostly and menacingly around the still interiors, melting and twisting and burning in fierce majesty. The whole of the room had suddenly become the scene of a great battle, armaments and spears dancing and thrusting into the air, the deep red of the spilt blood of the dying and injured covering the walls. Sarah watched the dark silence of it for a moment before settling back into her chair.
It seemed, strangely enough, that while a fierce light had lit up the room powerfully, the void of darkness that covered the child remained, glowing and shining its black light within the confines of the soft, red cushion where it now sat. Only the child’s feet could be seen, playfully dancing backwards and forwards in a unending rhythm against the hard, shiny surface of the underside of the chair. Its shoes seemed to be like old-fashioned clogs, hard, large and made of wood, decorated with a regular pattern of small circular holes fixed into the centre of a long three-dimensional, rectangular shape that ran from one side of the shoes, around the back and around the other side. Sarah sucked in her breath, suddenly and stretched out her hands with tense fingers till they gripped the armrests of her chair as she beheld another, more bizarre and shocking image. Its legs were long, short-width pieces of wood, almost like handles of a wooden broom protruding out from the hollows of the shoes and up unseen into the small void of darkness that covered it.
“My god,” Sarah exclaimed, her body frozen with shock and a deep intense coldness. “What’s happened to your legs, they’re made of wood, they’re . . .they’re . .like the handles of a broom. What have they done to you in here?!”
The spirit child continued with its eerily playful dancing of its feet, ceaselessly moving backwards and forwards with a regular dull thud of the wooden shoes against the wood of the chair.
‘Didn’t have legs anymore,’ the spirit said finally in the same whooshing, whispering tone. ‘Gave me legs so I can walk . .hard to walk on. They whisper to me from the dark spaces in the walls . . .tell me to ‘call them, ’ to say the funny words they whisper to me. They say, ‘only with these words can the beginning come about.’’
The spirit child stopped its ethereal-like speaking for a few moments, giving Sarah the time to mull over what it had said. Apparently, the child had been used in some kind of forbidden ritual to make something happen. Presumably, to raise some kind of evil spirit, or demon from the Hellish depths. To have the child as a wandering spirit would somehow give them the power they needed to do this. How horrible it was to hear these things being spoken by a child, someone that should never have to deal with anything like this. With a disgusted expression, she roughly rubbed her forehead with her hand, allowing a few thick strands of hair to fall over her hand. She shook her before returning her hand to its original place in her lap before awkwardly waiting for the child to continue.
‘Played with toys in secret place downstairs. Toys are made of wood . . .give me splinters. Play with footballs made of wood. Make funny noise when rolled across floor. I’m happy today . . .made tower of wood toys, has turrets and big door in middle. Made it too high . . .fall on top of me, hurt me a lot. Saw funny man behind tower when fell . . .dark and scary . .can’t see face or hands. Couldn’t feel anything after that . . .didn’t hurt anymore. I’m sad today. .can’t play with favourite toy. Tom breaks toys . . .angry . .upset. Take him to small, secret room. . .lock door on rest of us. Hit him and make him hurt and cry. Comes back a long, long time later with marks and cuts. He’d been crying but not allowed to show rest of us. Sits on his own in corner and reads big black book. Has funny name on it like ‘Brotherhood.’
‘Tom or the others won’t talk to me anymore. Go up to them when they play with each other . . .ignore me . .I’m not there. Miss mummy and father. Bessie . . .patted and played with her. Here her bark . .can’t see her anymore. Mummy please look after her!’
Quite obviously, the spirits last statement had been a pet dog they had at home before they were taken away. Maybe the dog had died before the poor child had died, presumably, how it had described it, because the tower it had made out of the wooden toys had collapsed on it, killing it instantly. Though, from the exact way the child had described it, it was cold blooded murder.
Those bastard’s deserve everything that the Dark one’s Inferno has to offer them. I hope they all burn in hell.
She conceived the possibility of trying to ask the child to relay something of its short, tragic life before it had come here. Presumably, even in the rough, poverty-stricken world of the mid-nineteenth century, it must have had some special memories, birthdays and such. But, while it was painful to hear, she had to let it continue an d try to learn more about it and hopefully find some clue of freeing it from here.
‘Nobody would talk to me after that,’ the child continued. ‘They can’t see me . . .try to hit them, make them see me . .scaring me, can’t touch them, hands go through them. The scary men and ladies dress in black in big, dark scary room . . .fire in middle. .can’t get warm. They stand round it and talk funny words in scary voice. They can’t see me . . .run through them . .can’t feel me. They ask me things . . .ask me what I see . . .ask where I am, what I’m doing. They can’t see me . . .ask me if I see Beelzebub. Show me pictures where I’m not standing. Picture of scary monster with horns and hair and goat feet and scary eyes. Tell me ‘time is near, ’ want to go home . . .can’t get outside . .unseen thing keeping me here.’
Sarah had heard enough as it stopped speaking a second time. It tortured her to hear its words, its kidnapping from its family, its imprisonment here and the cult’s twisted dogma of religious values and teachings. They had murdered it, pushed a tower it had obviously made completely on its own with no help from others and had been proud of it. It didn’t even have time to appreciate its work before its creation was pushed on top of it by one of the cowardly, cold-blooded killers, cutting of its short life before it had had the chance to experience life first hand, to experience love, adulthood, children and the simple joys of the world. Then, forcing it to speak to them through its pain and being totally alone after it died, performing a ritual in the black arts to contact it, believing they could raise an evil demon by using the power of its own death against it.
A powerful sense of anger began to well up inside her like a pressurised boiler building up incredible amounts of power, powerful feelings of hatred, resentment, loathing, loss and betrayal for what the child had suffered, so powerful that it seemed as though she would tear down the entire house around her with her own bare hands. She quickly suppressed the feelings inside her, forcing them inside her heart. The spirit didn’t need anger and revenge right now, it had experienced too much of that in the many decades that it lingered here, desperate for escape from its torment.
“Can you tell me of anything else of what happened to you in your life,” Sarah asked the spirit in as calm and relaxing tone as she could muster, trying her best to hold back the sorrowful tears that constantly leaked from her eyes and down her cheeks. It seemed silly to hide her painful emotions from something that didn’t have a body anymore, didn’t have a physical body anymore. But, as she often believed, regardless of what form you existed in, you could always feel and experience emotions and other intangible things. After all, you were still Human at the core of your being.
‘You cry, ’ the spirit said. ’ . . .can’t cry. Have no body. Feel . . .emotion, but . . .tears, no tears. Mummy always said . . .crying is good . . .feel things more . . .live only once. Daddy not say that . . .crying for weaklings . . .must be strong. Grow strong . . .be in military . . .serve king . .country. Mummy . . .daddy . .have fight. Don’t like them anymore . . .nice people with funny eyes and teeth . . .come to house in night. They tell me . . .come with them . .play . . .them in big scary house . . .high up, take long time getting there. Take me . . . others on horses, some . . .have to walk. Horses are nice, stroke them, but make funny scary noise. Other children . . Orphans or parents fight . . .took from streets. Some scared . . .tell them it’s alright. We’ll be able to play . . .give us rooms to play . . .don’t have to go to bed. . .tell us behave, play nice . . .pray with funny words . . .read the book.’
It seemed that the poor, ill-fated spirit child was divulging more information on its past, and the past of those it came here with. Apparently, these poor children were taken from their homes in the night and either taken by horse and carriage and even made to walk up the steep slopes of the horizon up toward the house where the cult lodged. Sarah couldn’t figure out any of the clues as to how the children were convinced to go with them, had they not been told on numerous occasions not to talk or mix with strangers? Although, unfortunately, many people were more trusting of others than they were today. The filthy souls that the world of men had churned out from its horrid womb of thieves, the mafia and other organised crime syndicates, child molesters and . . . Many people did not know of the existence of these people, many only saw the rich and the poor. The rich merely flashed their wealth and idiotic importance, while the poor were forced to work like slaves for a pittance and that was their true calling in life. Everyone’s view’s was merely black and white, completely two-sided.
Also, it seemed that many of the children were orphans as the spirit said and had no-one in the world to care for them. Even the owners of the orphanages were no ideal substitute for a real parent, if works of literature such as Charles Dickens’s ‘Oliver Twist’ were to be believed. All it would have taken to get the children from the orphanages and into their terrible grasp would have been a satisfactory amount of money for each of them.
Thirty pieces of silver, Sarah thought bitterly to herself.
Even those little children that had a parent or parent’s wouldn’t have been safe. It seemed that some of the had parents who constantly battled with each other and either their attention on their children was tenuous for a few crucial moments, or they simply didn’t care for them and left them to fend for themselves.
But, in the end, did the poor mites have any chance at all? She already knew that the cult were very powerful and very prevalent in this area, perhaps even wider what with their seemingly endless supply of ill-gotten wealth and their ability to influence locals into doing anything they wished, or if necessary, scare them into doing what they wanted. These twisted people were not merely a typical cult that one would see practicing their warped religions in a dusty, crumbling alleyway or boarding house in the centre of London, these knew how to manipulate and coarse their victims enough to gain crucial power and profit, enough to put sufficient fear into those they wished. They were just too powerful and to adept at gaining what they wanted to be fought.
Sarah sniffed up a large globule of snot inside her nose and half-heartedly wiped the tears from her face with the side of her hand. Trying her hardest to appear and feel strong again and take charge of the situation, she recomposed her posture and sat back up straight in her chair, her back stretched out completely vertically against the soft padding behind her, her fingers stretched out almost painfully as she gripped the edges of the armrests. She looked at the void of blackness that covered the child in front of her and looked down at it with a fiery, powerful gaze, watching the incessant and eerily playful motion of its wooden boots moving backwards and forwards against the hard wood of the chair. Her lips were tightened together as if they had been sewn shut, her eyes staring fixedly. It was time to end this, right here and right now. She had heard enough of the terrible things that this poor child and the others were forced the play in this terrible place. It and the rest needed to be saved, now.
“I need you to listen to me, now, Sarah said to spirit in a calm, protective voice. I need you to listen hard. You don’t need to face another day in this horrible place, anymore, you nor any of your friends. I have the power that will free you of the grip that the house has on you and you’ll be free, you’ll all be able to go up to heaven.
‘Can’t go . . .heaven, the spirit said in a frightened, miserable tone. They won’t let us. Keep us here . . .too powerful . .us . . .too weak. They . . .rough, hit us . . .no body, bruises, can’t be hurt . .can hit us all the time Have pieces of things attached . . .us. Keep us here . . .can’t exist without them.’
Sarah didn’t understand its last sentence, but nor did she care. Woeful talking was over, it . . .they all had to be freed. It needed to be convinced.
Sarah leant forward in her chair toward the darkened spirit and held out her open hands to it in an imploring manner, her eyes changing to a pitying expression. I know what you’re all going through, she said. I know only too well what its like to be hit and beaten up and hurt all the time. Because, you see . . .my father used to hit me when I was a little girl. He used to hit me on the arms and legs, throw things at me, bruise my neck and used to shout at me all the time. He did it because he could, he knew that no-one knew that he was doing it. People used to ask me how I got the bruises and I was made to say that I was being bullied at school. Even my sweet and gentle mother, whom I adored so much couldn’t help me. She tried to stop my father, but it was hopeless, he was too strong. Eventually, she gave up and used to pretend it wasn’t happening. But, I don’t blame her, it wasn’t her fault, she was just a victim like me.” She stopped for a few moments as she recomposed herself, staring at the floor with an expression of a mixture of sadness and quiet defiance. She forced the pain back inside her where it came from.
Oh, help me, help me, God, she thought with an almost summoning statement, desperate for some divine intervention to help her in this almost impossible job.
Suddenly, she looked up as she noticed the spirit’s feet that were banging against the chair were now moving violently, shaking with such a force and power that it was completely impossible for any human to do such a thing. After only a few moments, the speed of the feet made them faze out of clear vision as they moved faster and faster with an inhuman speed. In a matter of moments, they began to blur with the force of incredible speeds as their hurried motion increased and they began to flutter silently backwards and forwards like the fluttering wings of a moth dancing in the darkness.
Sarah began to grow more and more agitated as she watched, almost mesmerised by the ghostly, frantic movements of the spirit’s feet, banging hard, noisily and roughly against the bare wood. Something was wrong, something was happening, something only the spirit knew.
“Please,” said Sarah frantically, filled with feelings of resentment and fear. “What is going on, what’s happening to you, is something coming that you’re afraid of? Please, tell me so I can take you away from here!”
Then she heard it, advancing behind her like a silent, observing assassin sitting and waiting in the shadows, ready to make its move on her unsuspecting position. She turned her head slowly behind her, her body fixed into an unmoving, frozen statue-like posture as she heard the slow-moving, heavy footsteps echo down the long, stone corridor behind her, carrying with them a slight squelching sound as they dragged themselves closer and closer toward her. Something was coming, she knew that. Something that wasn’t human.
She quickly turned back to the silhouetted, darkness-covered spirit in front of her, its legs still moving in an inhuman way. She pushed herself down onto the floor and balanced herself on her knees. “Please,” she said in a hurried, agitated, whispered tone. “We have to leave, now. He’s coming for us, he’s walking towards us, now, and I can’t stop him. I have to take you away, please hurry!”
‘Can’t go, the spirit said in a strangely relaxed tone. ‘ . . .know him. Take care . . .me.’
Sarah couldn’t understand what it was saying. Just a few moments ago, it admitted its utter fear of these ‘people’ and now it wanted to go with them, that they’ll somehow take of it and nurture it. Sarah shook her head, her eyes darting from one end of the room to the other, seeing the silhouetted battle-like glowing images of the reflected firelight against the walls, the slow, heavy thud of the footsteps behind her that now almost seemed to be close enough to touch her, her ears trained onto the terrifying sound as it grew steadily worse in tone. Out of instinct, she stretched out her hand towards the spirit till it was tight and stretched out to its maximum limit, half-engulfing it in the spirits darkness. She slowly retracted it and dropped it dejectedly in her lap. It was a spirit, it didn’t have a body, she couldn’t take it by the hand and take it away. There was nothing she could do.
She began to grow as the hollow, painful feeling of loss of hope welled up in her like a dam about to burst, releasing its torrent overflow merely in a shed of tears. She made no attempt in concealing them from the spirit as they dropped onto her hands, her face twisted into an expression of utter failure and pain. She barely recognised it when the slow-moving dark spirit behind her finally made its way into the room, its footsteps echoing back down the corridor, reverberating and bouncing off against the walls of the tiny, room she sat within. It began to utter a strange sound, a sound like that of a distorted voice, twisted and altered out of shape and turned down to a very quiet level, a voice that almost sounded like a animal or unknown creature, growling quietly with its inhuman tongue.
‘Oh,’ came the wraiths ghostly words, words that seemed to recognise something, an exclamation of something found. ‘Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.’
Finally, Sarah could take no more of it. Her lack of hope, her inability to help against an invisible, inhuman adversary. Her anger and rage seethed inside, turning and twisting itself into tight, painful knots. She felt like a hot steam pipe ready to burst and explode its flesh-melting contents onto whatever was stupid enough to be near, friend or foe. She tightened her fists and tightened her face, feeling the sweet ecstasy of insatiable hatred as she quickly stood up, forced her feet into the floor, turned into the direction of the unseen spectre and shouted: GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE, NOW! She screamed, spit and saliva shooting from her acidic tongue, the rage flowing through her veins like fire. I WILL FUCKING DESTROY YOU. YOU ARE NOTHING, YOU’RE JUST A FUCKING BODILESS MONSTER. I AM THE MONSTER. I WILL TAKE YOU AND I WILL MAKE YOU PAY. YOU WILL SUFFER UNIMAGINABLY IN MY HANDS. NEXT TO ME, YOU ARE NOTHING!”
Then, with that final word, she shot round and stared hard at the spirits chair as she heard a loud, ear-piercing screech fill the air, the screech of the child being snatched from her sight by the dark spirit. She stared with wide-open, totally aware eyes at the empty chair in front of her, mixed feelings of rage, anger, sorrow and pain filled her mind, so much so that it seemed that she would just destroy the room around her in an outburst of pure rage.
Where has it gone? She thought to herself as she desperately tried to keep her mind focused on one thing, her head moving quickly from side to side. Its gone, I have to find I . . .have to . . .have to . .find it, I have to find it? Séance . . .séance . .the only way. I need help . . .can’t do it alone . . .take me to . . .so what? Ernest . . .he’ll help me . . .give me support, be my anchor. Have to find him . . .have to find him!.
Chapter Fourteen
After an unknown amount of time, Ernest finally regained consciousness, still fazed by the warm haziness that still hung onto his body and even his senses like a parasite. He blinked his eyes as he struggled to rid his sight of the blurriness all around him, still only managing to open his eyes part of the way. He tried to stand back onto his feet, but was met with only weak legs that seemed to posses hardly any strength at all, almost like the flailing legs of a dummy. He tried his arms, but found the same problem. It was as if someone had given him some kind of sleeping pill that he couldn’t fight against.
“What is it,” he mumbled still sheepish from his drowsiness. “What’s going on, I can’t move.”
Gradually, the mist and blurriness that impeded his sight now began to lift like a veil up into the air above him, revealing an image of distorted figures, shadows and shapes. Constantly blinking his eyes and distorted his face to get a clearer view, he gradually began to pick out little details. It looked as if on both sides of where he lay were ragged old beds, elongated out as if stretched into an unnatural length.
He rubbed his eyes with his limp, tired hand to alleviate the tiredness and looked harder.
Covering the moth-eaten beds were long dusty old white sheets that spilled up over the sides and brushed against the floor. Poking out from underneath the sheets was a large bulge, as if something small was sitting underneath them, the sheets covering their unresponsive, unseen faces.
Turning his half-unconscious head limply to see directly in front of him, he could make out a group of almost indistinguishable figures, large and small and dressed in long white robes or bedclothes, silhouetted against the surreal landscape. They were unmoving, unflinching, making no movement whatsoever, just frozen into odd positions to make them appear as though they were in the middle of a dance routine, skipping and jumping like enormous crickets in the air holding what looked like badly-beaten pillows filled with feathers, a large collection of them having been ripped out from their cases and now hanging motionless in mid-air like a great cascade of snowflakes fixed into position halfway from the ground, some of them already landed at the feet of whatever sat-up underneath the sheets on the beds.
What is this . . .a pillow fight? What . . .does this mean?”
Ernest had barely enough strength or will inside him to force himself to stay awake, let alone comprehend what he was seeing and allow the reality of that to sink in.
Gradually, his senses began to comprehend what was happening to him, right now. Slowly, but as quickly as his sleepiness would allow, he began to slide himself backwards across the floor, desperate to find something like a door, window, or any way out of this place as fast as he could. But, with the fragile strength he had in his body, he frantic attempts at escape were nothing but a few pointless slouches of a few inches across the hard stone floor.
“What’s going on . . .here?” He spoke out loud to himself, his dazedness and fatigue only allowing him to speak in a mumble.
“I . . . have to, um . .get out of here . . . .now.”
But, before he could even summon up enough strength to attempt to get himself on his feet, he stopped in mid-motion, his eyes glued to the figures before him. He couldn’t believe it, he didn’t want to believe it, didn’t want to see. The figures were beginning to move. Slowly they began to move their arms and legs, they were strained and looked as if they were difficult to move, their bodies began to move across the floor awkwardly like rusted old mechanical parts, struggling to move against the decay. Eventually, they started to move with a little increased speed across the floor, their legs slowly moving backwards and forwards just a few inches above the floor.
Ernest peered a little closer, trying to stave off his growing fear for the time being and try to figure out just what he was looking at. He looked underneath their awkward, cardboard like figures from where he sat, peering closer and closer. Something wasn’t right about them, they didn’t move like people, or even spirits. Finally, he discovered what it was, realising it with wide open eyes, instantly taken aback by the sight of what looked like a metallic girder attached underneath each figure, dragging them through long narrow gaps in the floor like horses fixed into position on a moving carousel, the feathers falling silently and eerily down to the floor as they slowly emptied out from the pillowcases.
No, he thought to himself, hesitating at the unnatural creeping unease that climbed up his body and closer to his face. No, I have to get out of here, now. Please, oh god, please, let me out of here, now.
Then it hit him, the same dazedness and tiredness he had felt before, only now much more powerful. He tried to lift his hand and move his head, the best he could do to try and escape this incredible sensation that gripped him. But, it was pointless, within moments he was asleep again, taking in his final image of the pillow-fighting figures move silently and ghostly across the floor, their blank faces staring off into the darkness around them.
He groaned with the pain he felt all down his body as he slid down to the ground, landing amid the myraid number of long abandoned cobwebs and enormous collections of dust that seemed to have been deposited here in one great amount. He sat where he was for a moment, feeling nothing but the throbbing pain that ached throughout his whole nervous system, for a moment, remembering nothing of the strange, vivid dream he just had. His legs lay scattered and uneven in front of him, his right hand pressed soflty against his aching head that banged hard with an incredible headache.
What’s the cause of that? Crashing into here or a hangover?
Stumbling back to his feet as slowly and relatively painless as he could manage, he eventually stood tall and relaxed, his right hand gripping hard against the small of his back as he felt a stab of pain shoot through his spine. He forced himself backwards in one quick sharp move as he quickly drew himself to his full height, groaning loudly as the sudden shot of tingling pain ran like a bolt of electricity throughout his spine. He checked his glasses with intense scrutiny for any breakages as he picked them carefully from the floor, staring as hard as he could through his distorted, frosted-glass like sight. As far as he could tell they were fine, no sign of any obvious damage or broken glass.
Only one way to find out.
He tentatively placed them back in front of his eyes, relieved to see the haziness and fogginess of his vision quickly replaced by crystal clear eyesight, vivid details in the dusty, crooked, decaying staircase that surrounded him, then frowning slightly as he caught sight of a slight crack in the right-hand frame.
Well, I don’t think it’ll cause me any difficulties.
His legs quivered suddenly as they awkwardly struggled to manage and support his weight, a brief threat that they might collapse again at any moment.
My god, he thought worryingly. I hope that isn’t permanent, otherwise I’m in deep trouble.
He quickly dusted himself off as he shook and scrubbed the thick layers of dust and wood grains that had collected on his clothes.
He turned around to get his bearings and immediately noticed the oddly decorated door beside him. It was a door like any other, wood, grainy and slightly dilapidated after being left to its own devices after a hundred years or more, except that this one had the image of a peculiar woman painted onto its surface. The woman was tall in stature and seemed to dominate the whole frame that possessed her. She was leant back deeper into the door, her hands open-palmed, appealing to him as he looked. A long blood-red, black veil covered her body and seemed to stretch forever as it remained fixed into a eerily wavering motion from some unknown wind, joined by the silent ringing of the metallic necklaces that hung round her neck. Her hair was long and free to blow in the invisible silent wind. The whole image of her was cracked as the paint had long ago began to disintegrate and fall away, allowing a faint colour of grey to begin usurping the whole image and wipe it completely away.
Ernest stared into her eyes with a quiet, slightly unnerved expression. He knew all the time that this was a painting, just an image painted onto a piece of wood using oils and readily-available materials that were used all over the world. And yet, her eyes almost seemed to stare right at him, piercing his defences with their smug, half-closed appearance, sitting above a sharp-pointed nose and a smug, cocky grin. He hated to admit it, but it almost seemed as though she were staring right at him, knew he was there and revelled in it.
Ernest gathered a little strength back and rubbed his lips tightly together, refusing to be fazed by this bizarre effigy he couldn’t take his eyes off. With a few slightly shuffles of his feet across the dust-streaked wooden floor, he crept closer to the image and stared deep into the woman’s eyes, trying his best to ignore the unshakeable feeling that he was being watched intently from all corners. He jumped out of his skin almost when he felt something soft and feather-like brush the skin of his hands just in front of the painting. He leaped back with a slight yell before he noticed that he had stepped into the path of three separate strands of thread stretched from one side of the painting to another, each on top of the other. As he peered down to look at them, he noticed a tiny, almost indecipherable passage of script etched into the painting, long ago a victim of the dust and decay that now threatened to engulf everything. He looked closer and fiddled with his glasses as he tried to read it:
Light And Dark
The Angel And The Demon
Balancing On Life’s Thread
The Path Is problematic For The Two
A Unified Accomplishment Can Only Be Found With Deceit
Tip The Scales Of Favour
One Will Fall Into The Pit
One Will Continue To The Light
Look Deep Into Demon’s Eyes And See Which You Are
What? He thought puzzled to himself. What on earth does that mean? ‘Life’s thread?’ He looked at the pieces of thread stretched across the painting and back at the cryptic writing, trying to fit the pieces together.
He had always hated puzzles, especially one’s like this, word puzzles and ones that required almost a philosophical approach to solving. And trying to solve one in a place like this, a place that was built by undoubtedly insane, mentally unstable people. How was one ever going to understand their ways of thinking in order to solve this? He sighed deeply while lightly tugging on a strand of thread in a despairing, empty manner until he heard a soft squeak emanating from the door as he pulled the thread a little more towards him.
What!? He thought alarmed. What did I do, what was it? Was that it, did I do it. Wait, wait, wait, I think I have it. ‘Life’s thread, tip the scales of favour, one will fall.’ Yes, that’s it. Both of them try to cross each other to get across, but they can’t, because it’s a path of thread. One has to push the other off by sabotaging the thread. But, which thread, the top one? The bottom one? All if them together? Which, I don’t know. Could it be . . .the strongest wins, the strongest thread? The top one looks like the strongest, it’s the thickest by far. Oh, my god. Well, there’s only one way to find out.
With a tiny grain of hope and uncomfortable faith in himself, he pulled tightly and slowly on the top and strongest thread, fearful that if he pulled it to hard, it would snap, or something altogether more terrible and unknown would come his way if he was wrong. But, despite the fact that he was pulling it rather gently, it seemed very strong, almost like thread made of steel. The thread squeaked and grinded as it was pulled out more and more, still nothing happening to show that he was right, but thankfully, still nothing creeping up out of the darkness to take him.
He was almost beginning to contemplate stopping and starting again with the puzzle before he heard a gentle thud from somewhere on the other side of the painted door and let go of the thread, barely noticing it returning to its original position like a crawling snake, his eyes fixed onto the door as he patiently waited for it to open.
With a sudden gasp of dust-filled air spilling out from the other side, the door slowly creaked open as it shifted to the left into a tiny gap in the wall before finally showing him his reward of the rustik-looking wooden staircase that lay before him. Great thick splinters and deep gouges like cracks in a skull had long ago started to appear in the worryingly thin planks of wood that formed it. A sheet of dust collected in the swirling air around him, carrying it up like a eerily flowig phantom up the steps that eventually gave way to total and complete darkness after 6-feet of the stairs. A deep hollow sound like the dull sound of a human voice crept down the stairs from the blackness suddenly as the wind of dust went out of sight, echoing its haunting human-like groan out towards him, as though beckoning to him with its uncomfortable cry of pain.
Ignore it, he thought to himself as he tried to keep himself together, desperately trying to ignore the facts that his own profession screamed at him. Its nothing its just dust and wind, there’s nothing there.
He looked up at the darkness ahead of him, instantly becoming totally aware of how alone he was right now, just him staring blankly into an abyss of blackness that may or may not yield who he was looking for. He tried to turn his sight away from the darkness, avert his gaze back to his own control, but it was impossible, it was as if the darkness had a face of its own, a face he couldn’t see but one that stared back toward him, right into his eyes, deep into his soul.
“Stop it, stop it, right now!” He shouted to himself, tearing his sight away from the abyss of blackness. But, no matter how terrified he was of what may or may not be up there, staring back at him from the void, he couldn’t stand here forever just looking in abject terror at the blackness of mystery before him, he had to do something. Doctor Stephonson was up there, at least in all probability he was. Then, he remembered something, something he used to do in those myriad number of haunted places he used to go, as well as what he used to do as a child.
It could work, it used to work for me. In any place, at my age there shouldn’t be much to fear anymore.
Cranking his head back toward the shadows and the darkness that seemed to yawn in triumph at its impossibly easy defeat over him, he looked back out toward it, taunting it with his stubborn inability to be afraid anymore and his rising anger and hatred towards it. His fists clenched tightly up into rough, solid shapes. He tightened the muscles in his arms and legs, preparing himself for what was to come.
Come on then, you sonofabitch. I’m ready for you. I don’t care what you are, I’m no longer afraid of you, pitiful darkness. You are the one who is afraid of me, aren’t you? Yes, of course you are. You can’t hurt me because you’re dead. But, I don’t give a damn that your dead and you’re a wandering spirit. I am a thousand times more powerful and dangerous than you, ha!
It was working, what he had remembered after all those years back from when he was a small child and been so afraid to be alone in the dark. He would imagine himself to be a million times more powerful, stronger, determined and more dangerous than the thing he feared. He would strike back at it with deep, unrelenting hatred, back when he was young and had been so afraid of many irrational things. Finally, he had had enough of being afraid and wanted to take his revenge. Slowly, he had learned to fight back against an unseen and completely unreal entity and it had worked.
“You can’t scare me!” He shouted and laughed aloud to the darkness ahead of him, taunting and mocking it with his quivering outstretched arm, pointing firecly with his index finger, gritting his teeth so hard they felt as though they would grind themselves up into dust.
“Come and get me!” He quickly uttered as he darted up the creaky, dust and grime choked staircase, launching himself with his bent and shaking legs like a cricket. Quickly and as fast as he could manage, he shot up the staircase, running extreme ferocity as his arms and legs fired through the air like pistons, moving backwarda and forwards in quick, sharp, unrelenting motions. His eyes were closed tight as he desperately tried to stave off his ever growing terrible fear that constantly tried to gain a foothold back into his consciousness. He gritted his teeth hard, cruching them together as he tried to fight it, filling his head with thoughts of vengeange against whatever was in here, mentally reducing it to a mere childhood nightmare, breaking his permanent rhythm only to tear down the endless entanglements of cobwebs that hung down from the ceiling and fell across his face.
Finally, after much hard work and fierce determination, he reached the next level as he felt his earth-shattering frantic feet fall against a straight vertical walkway, still feeling the rusted heads of nails against his feet that were burrowed hard into the floorboards. Quickly, he opened his eyes and left then wide open, fearing he would once again crash against some hard surface, still in tune with his quick and steady rhythm of running, totally ignoring his rising wheezy breathing and his shuddering glasses as they bounced wildly in front of his eyes. Ahead of him, he could still see the darkness that almost engulfed him completely, seeing only the vauge details of the grimy wooden walls and cobweb covered ceiling as they dashed blurringly past him.
God, I hope to god he’s somewhere around here, otherwise, this has been for nothing.
Finally, he hit pay dirt as he began to make out something that looked like a door appearing ahead of the corridor in front of him as the shadows that obscured it now melted away. He began to slow down his pace, allowing his aching lungs to once again ensnare their deserved gasps of oxygen. He held out his open-palmed hands in front of him, just in case he was going to quickly. He stopped at the door and gradually began to catch his strength and his air as he steadily began to realise that what now lay in front of him didn’t look any door he had seen before.
It was the same shape and size of a door, but lacked any of the obvious details. It was a door-shaped vertical painting that depicted the inside of the human body as it would look without skin. It was painted in a mixture of dark brown and the very lightest of brown. The features of the muscles on the chest area, the waist, the beginning of the neck and the torso itself were all prominent, except of us course for the area where the intestines would normally be, leaving nothing but an obvious gap, a hole where the opposite side of the inner torso was painted with acute detail. He affixed his glasses back comfortably on his nose and looked closer at the gap as he noticed a small, shadow covered object within it. It looked a human heart, hanging from a tiny piece of wire suspended inside the now apparent 3-d painting.
“ Oh, my god!” Ernest uttered in a shocked manner as he beheld the hideous object, immediately recoiling and holding his trembling hand in a clasped manner over his open mouth.
My god, why the hell did we have to come to this terrible place. We have to get out of here, somehow. How on earth has it been prevented from rotting away? Desperate to avoid fainting or losing his strong grip on keeping calm, he peered closer at the heart through half-closed crinkling eyes with his hand still protecting his mouth, nervously watching it sway from side to side as the ever-present breeze that ran rampant throughout every corridor gave it some form of life again. He looked at intently, hoping not to vomit everywhere as he saw it. He could see its horrific features shining and reflecting its watery, glossy light back toward him, its many parts still looking as though they could still pump blood around this painted body it inhabited.
Of course, he thought with a spark of memory, half forgetting his revulsion and frigid fear of such a horrible object. They must have preserved it with something, applying particular liquids to flesh can allow them to remain as they are for years.
He brought down his hand from his mouth and reached and touched the heart, feeling it hard aginast his clammy hand as if it were made of stone. The wire it was suspended from was fixed into it with a small rounded, brass coloured lock
But, what is it, what is it for, I don’t . . .
He looked up suddenly as he heard the dull humming and felt the vibrations of the organ music again pierce the silent air and bath him in its ghostly sounds. This time it was much louder than before as it rang its familiar sounds down the slim corridor, almost causing the floorboards to shake out of their moorings and the rusted nails that held them down and spring up inti the air. He froze for a moment as he got his bearings of where it originated from, staring at the air in front of him as he concentrated, attuning his ears to its location.
It’s coming from behind this painting, he must be in there, but how do I . . .
He pulled back from his hunched position, standing back on his feet and unneringly pulling the petrified heart back with him, pulling it out attached to the long wire from underneath the gap in the painting until it came to a stop and he could pull it no further. His head shot to the right as he heard the dull click of some kind of lock deep inside the painting. A rush of foul-smeling sepulchral air emanated from underneath the painting and caressed against his ankles, moaning ghostly in its final freedom from its prison. Ernest stepped back with his hand held against his chest as he watched the painting rise up from the floor and up toward the ceiling, pulling the preserved heart with it as the sound of a loud clockwork gong sounded through the air like the gongs of the great clock Big Ben.
The painting that once barred his progress and prevented him from going further was now raised up, leaving behing a door-shaped hollow in the wall through which he could make out vague shapes and deep colours. The organ music was definitely coming from in here, obviously from something very big and powerful to make such sounds at such a ferocious level of pitch. Brushing down his hands with a slight shiver as what he had just touched suddenly appeared in his mind and taking one great lungful of air, he steadily collected his nerves, then slowly stepped inside the hollow.
The moment his right foot stepped across the threshold of the doorway, the organ music that once made the walls hum with fierce intensity, suddenly stopped leaving nothing but dead silence, switching itself off in the fraction of a moment as if from the press of a switch.
The interior of the room he now stood within was awash with blackness from the floor, the ceiling and the surrounding walls. Everywhere he turned as he desperately sought for even a minor light source, the room was steeped completely in unfaltering darkness that didn’t appear to lift at all anywhere in the immediate vicinity.
Like walking into a deep cave and forgetting to bring a torch. He thought to himself, desperately trying to arouse a little humour into his situation.
For what seemed like an uncomfortable and seemingly endless amount of time, he shuffled around a few mere steps across the smooth rough stone floor, always keeping within a few comfortable feet of the doorway he passed through. Silence reigned supreme in this area, bellowing out its strong power and utter dominance over its small insignificant visitor with a low, dull hissing in the background, the unmistakable disquieting sound of silence.
Ernest couldn’t tell just how big this room was, he looked all around him, turning round over and over as he sought in vain for a light source, a recogniseable object, or something at least to find out where he now stood. Standing squarely in the middle of a room steeped in darkness, totally alone and with nothing to get his bearings, he felt totally on show, as if brought here and being led by the nose to somewhere where something wanted him, as if being led into a trap.
My god, don’t think of that, whatever you do, don’t let that thought be a whisper in your mind.
Then, as if some unseen presence was adhering to his wish, the inky-black darkness around him began to dissipate, a little at a time, leaving behind ever growing faint signs of light and creating surreal, disjointed, sharp shadows in their wake. Gradually, he could make out the smallest signs of detail around him, the bumps and roughness of the stone floor beneath him, the cracks, gaps and depressions that had gouged their way through the tough stonework. Patches of light began to shine and reflect against the stone as if rain had settled across its surface, creating a shine of quiet, eerie light.
He stepped back a few paces and remained steadfast where he stood as he began to make out large silhouetted objects lying strewn around him. He hardly had the time to catch his breath and prepare himself to run as the veil of shadows was further lifted, revealing the objects that lay scattered like bones around him. They appeared to be seats of some kind, seats that seemed to serve as couches, enough seating for up to three people. They were a deep blue colour with a myraid number of cracks, scratches and gouged out holes scattered across their facades. A long narrow, ponytail shaped ridge ran along the outer edges of the seats, outlining it completely in a faded pure white colour. They were scattered all around him, some in pieces, some intact. Some now merely a few small pieces of stone, long planks of wood or tiny scattered stones.
Ernest looked closer at them as he suddenly noticed an unusual detail about them, shifting his feet a mere few comfortable inches across the floor. He studied them, analysing their shapes, their contours and appearances before he realised it. They were all in the shape of coffins, the unmistakable and easily recogniseable framework know to all. The parts of the seats that rested a sitters back seemed to bear the resemblance of the lid of a coffin, as if the sordid contents of each were open for all to see.
Ernest felt merely a little surprise from this sudden revelation. Not a revelation, really, merely a slight surprise for him, a tiny piece of newly discovered knowledge that slightly interested him.
Some would class this as barbaric, he thought to himself in a superior tone. But, I suppose the cult had a sense of humour.
He had seen enough of coffins from his youth from working part-time for an undertaker to not be afraid of them. Most would considor the sight of them ghastly, something that no-one in their right mind would want to see anytime, not even at the time of their burial. But, to him, they were merely various pieces of wood nailed together into a specific shape. Hardly something to worry yourself over.
He had just managed to shape out a little humour from himself and wrestled away some of the nervousness and fear that had so gripped him, when a light from the other side of the room suddenly flicked itself on, causing him to spin his head to the right, instantly piling back the fear and apprehension he had so recently fought back.
How the . . .how the hell can that light come? There’s no damn power!
He turned to the right with a single motion of his right foot, his back arched downwards as his body instinctively prepared itself for a possible quick exit. He darted his head from left to right, up and down as he vainly sought for whatever had switched the light on, something he hoped to god was human and alive. He scanned every new crevice and area of the room that the recent dissipation of darkness had revealed to him for any sign, a person anything to explain it away. But, he saw nothing but intently cracked and roughened stone of the walls, the almost perfect smoothness of the floor and the destroyed remnants of the coffin seats.
Dear, god don’t let it be what I hope it isn’t.
Another light appeared in front of him in the space of only a few moments, his heart fluttering inside his rapidly expanding and contracting chest with intense excitement and terror as he watched it flick itself on with no obvious sign of human cause from the now apparent high arched ceiling that was shaped like that of a churche’s ceiling. He looked up at the light, staring through scared, unblinking eyes at its ghostly magnificence high above him, clearing away the blackness that had barred his sight from the details of what lay above him, now exposing the fine, yet clearly satanic effigies decorating the ceiling.
Angels flying in their ghostly, otherworldly majesty filled the outer contours of the arched ceiling as they formed a long tapering chain of heavenly figures all along the inner edges of the ceiling. Long ethereal trails of white light emanated from underneath them as they flew, their long white tapering garments fixed forever into a shape that seemed to blow in some unseen wind. Their hands were held in front of their faces, completely covering their angelic beauty with cracked, faded fingers. Their heads appeared to be buried into their hands, as though they were crying, weeping at some unknown tragedy or disaster.
Filling the whole centre of the ceiling were large, obviously satanic, evil figures that seemed to bellow and tear their way out of a large gap or tear where a deep light of red, orange and yellow shone out like a great subterranean sunset. The figures appeared to be many, countless small and large figures ranging from small, almost pigmy-like to huge, almost god-like. The pygmy-like figures seemed to have a deep dark skin with large open, almost child-like eyes. Their fingers were small and stumpy like the hands of a frightened child. Many of the larger figures were dressed from head to toe in a long thick black bandage that almost completely covered their whole body and almost the entirety of their heads, leaving only a sharp nose, bright yellow eyes that seemed even now to possess a kind of sentience and a large grim smile filled with tiny sharp teeth that pierced the soft flesh of their lips.
A flicker of movement emanating from the faded base of the large, canopy-like light hanging from the ceiling suddenly grabbed Ernest’s attention from the grotesque visage above him and down to a small, almost completely unseen figure seated almost a hundred feet from the floor. Ernest stepped back and held his mouth partly open as his mind reeled at the physics of how this could be, then he saw it, stretching at an almost vertical angle out from the floor a mere few feet ahead of him and up toward the ceiling, leaving only about ten feet between the figure and the ceiling. Ernest tentatively raised his torch up the enormous silhouetted object, half of his mind screaming at him to turn and run.
It was a tall elongated staircase made of stone, the small steps possessed a faded silvery, watery shine that shone in his torchlight. His eyelids began to flicker nervously as the torchlight slowly made its silent journey up the staircase, his heart beating like a powerful drum in his chest, echoing its fierce intensity against his fragile eardrums. Finally, the torchlight reached its destination at the head of the stairs and met with the tall, hideously twisted and deformed cylindrical brass-work that formed the haunting voice of the organ, an organ not unlike ones seen inside churches. Large sharpened holes resembling large toothless grins were carved into each cylindrical pipe at specific points, the same type of holes one would see in a small whistle to ensure the sound was not trapped inside when forced through.
A great mist, almost a fog suddenly melted into the room as though forcing its way through the tiny myriad number of cracks in the stonework of the walls, encapsulating everything in the room that it came to, wrapping and choking itself around everything it could find, as if it had some kind of sentience.
Leave, Ernest, come on you can do it. Leave right now!
But, he couldn’t leave, he was rooted to the spot, transfixed by the elaborate, haunting, ghostly ballet that was happening in front of him as the mist danced some unknown choreography and flowed silently across the room and right up toward the ceiling. A watery shine reflected across the cylindrical organs as the mist passed across them, crawling like a curious entity into the cylinders and oozing out of the elongated empty grins that seemed to silently laugh in reverie at this surreal, yet grotesque ballet.
The disquieting silence and stillness of the surrounding room was suddenly and sharply shattered as a great dull noise filled the air, stinging furiously at the silence like an angry bee. Ernest fell backwards in shock, uttering a small frightened moan as he fell, landing painfully into the rotted and decaying fragments of the coffin sears behind him. He immediately held up his torch as far as his arm would reach and shone it as hard as he could across every part of the room as he sought for the source of the sound that was now bouncing from one side to another, screaming its whistled tone as it went. His head darted from side to side, his breath panting in short regular intervals as his almost shredded nerves could take no more.
The organ, he thought suddenly to himself. it’s the organ, that’s were its coming from!
He dragged the torchlight back to the familiar watery shine of the organ at the other side of the room, hoping at last to see the catalyst of whoever had caused it to bellow out its remorseless hymn. And finally, he did as his torchlight stopped just a few feet beneath the organ as he saw the same hunched, silhouetted figure seated at the very zenith of the staircase. Its unseen hands played the deep, haunting tune that once again gave life to these long dead walls.
Ernest was too deeply ingrained in his own shock to respond in any way to this frightening image, his right foot fixed rigidly to the floor behind his left foot, trembling fiercely. His wide open terrified eyes were fixed on the playing figure, his lips quivering beneath them. The torch shook noisily in his trembling hand, flickering its strong bright light against the blackened back of the figure. The small part of his conscious mind that could still maintain rational thought deliberated with itself over the nature of this figure. Was it alive, was it dead? Was it Doctor Stephenson, or was it some spirit that dwelt within this hideous building? Thoughts that a mere mortal couldn’t conceive stretched out their own particular line of thought like sharpened barb wire across his mind, tearing at the frigid fear that held him like glue to the spot he stood.
“I am glad you’re here, Doctor Furlong.” The quiet and rather subdued comforting voice of Doctor Stephenson echoed out from the seated figure which had now rested from its slow paced playing and now rested its hands on its lap, its head hanging down as if it possessed no weight. Ernest listened again to the sentence he had just heard in his head, relaying it over and over as he analysed it, searching and searching for any sign that it was not anything other than it said it was.
Its him, he thought finally to himself with a great comforting relief. Its Stephenson, its definitely him!
“You didn’t need to follow me here, Doctor Furlong, I am quite alright.”
Ernest relaxed his feet as he began to calm down, allowing a great breath of nerves and fear to escape from his wide open mouth as he felt the stiffness leave his legs. He allowed his whole upper torso to fall down to the floor as he allowed the fear to leave his painful back, shaking his head in the pleasure of realising the truth behind his pointless fear, placing his slipped glasses comfortably back into position. The torch he held in his hand almost slipped to the floor as his fingers began to relax.
“Oh, Doctor Stephenson, I am so glad you’re alright. I thought something had happened to you. I’ve been looking for you since I found your shirt lying on the floor downstairs. Thank god, you’re alright.”
“I told you,” Doctor Stephenson said again in the same quiet and subdued tone he had used before. “I am perfectly alright, there’s no need to worry. I was behaving very inappropriately in the main hall by smashing the glass in the window and screaming for help. Now I know that there was nothing to fear, except for my own maniacal behaviour. I had no idea that this house could be so interesting, there is so much to learn about the previous owners, so many beliefs, so many wonderful ideas and practices that the pitiful world outside could never hope to dream about. This organ especially, I had no idea I had the knowledge within me to know how the play it. But when, I do . . .oh, when I do play it, this house comes alive again, giving it back its voice and its soul, filling the walls with blood again and to hear it be reborn, to hear the blood pumping throughout the stonework. Can you hear it, Doctor Furlong, can you hear the squeel of new life in every room?”
Ernest stood where he was with his hands on his sides as he listened to the bizarre words that Doctor Stepephonson muttered, curious at the surreal-ness of it all. But, he didn’t listen for long, it didn’t matter he said at the moment, he was just glad that he was safe and well, his fear were groundless. But, he still wanted to get him back downstairs and somewhere safe that he could get an eye on him.
“Why don’t you come with me downstairs, Doctor, you’ll feel much better in one the bedroom we’ve made comfortable for you.”
“No that is perfectly alright, Doctor Furlong. I’m quite comfortable where I am. Here I can listen to the whispers of this place as it speaks to me, listening to its majesty.”
“Well, I understand,” Ernest said again, rather hesitantly. “But, I think I would feel better if-”
Ernest was interrupted suddenly as Doctor Stephonson raised his hands up into the air and forced them hard down onto the keys of the organ, causing a deep strong bellow of air to rush out like a sweeping wind out from the brass pipes and again fill the room with unsettling music, the mist gathering like a silent storm above him as though silently threatening him with its enormous appearance.
Ernest shouted out loud suddenly in shock as he felt a small hand gently caress his right shoulder, causing him to spin on the spot and hold the torchlight up to Sarah Tuttle’s small pleasant face, her left hand hanging in front of her eyes as she shielded them from the intense light.
“Oh, god, I’m sorry, Sarah.” He said as apologetically as he could, immediately turning off the torch. Sarah returned her hand to her side “I’m sorry, I thought you were . . .”
“Ernest, please listen, “ she said in her usual calm tone, apparently completely unaware of the great, cathedral-like music that filled the air all around her. “I have to perform a séance downstairs and I don’t care what you say, because I’m going to perform one, I don’t care how dangerous it is. There are spirits in here that need rest and relase from their prison.”
Ernest bit his lip and turned his head around, looking in a confused way at Doctor Stephenson’s shadowy figure as he played furiously at the organ. He wanted to get him away from here, downstairs with the rest of them was the best that he could achieve at keeping him safe. God knows, he didn’t want anyone else to wander off, it could be dangerous. But, no matter what he said to him, he didn’t seem to be listening, he just cut him off with his frantic playing. Finally, he decided, Doctor Stephenson would just have to look after himself, he couldn’t be a wet-nurse to him, he was a full grown man. At the moment, he couldn’t care less for the spirits that Sarah claimed were trapped inside here. They were dead and him and the others he was trying so desperately to protect were alive. And right now, alive was the most important. But, how worse could their problems get?
“Alright,” he finally said to Sarah with a deep sigh. “Let’s find somewhere downstairs, you can perform your séance.”
She turned to walk back down the decaying corridor they had both took to get here. Ernest turned his head to look back at Doctor Stephenson as he walked before looking back to Sarah who was now ahead of him causing to catch up to her.
Doctor Stephenson ceased his devilish playing and returned to his original relaxed position with his head hanging down as he listened to the few final drawn out notes echo across the room, drowning themselves out as they gradually lost their strength to be heard, the mist hovering like a distorted spectre above the midly shaking brass organ pipes. Ernest slowly reached out with his right hand and gently pressed his index finger against a single key, listening to the tiny, dull sound he had produced before it faded to nothingness, looking in awe and fascination at the metallic, brass coloured apparatus that covered his arms and hands, legs and feet, smelling his breath against the cold hard steel of the mask that covered his head.
Chapter Fifteen
Father Donald Heathers awoke with a sudden start and a great, long intake of foul, stale air of shock and surprise from his long uninterrupted, yet tortured sleep. His long bony, hairy fingers digging, grasping and tearing like long, steel claws into what pathetic little remants there remained of the tattered bed sheets he lay on. His eyes opened in less than half a second as his mind finally snapped him back into a conscious state, opening fully and completely aware to take in all relevant information his mind began to send to him and use to discern the whereabouts of whatever unseen prescence lurked in his viscinity.
As fast as he could, he carried himself up the tattered, decayed and moth-eaten sheets of his rusted, iron-sprung bed with his hands and up toward the musty old pillows behind him, his fingers outstretched as far as they could go until they were white and painful, moving and scurrying across the bed with the speed of a frightened rabbit. He began to breath heavily as shock and blind terror began to fill his senses, drowning out all logical conceptions of where he was exactly, whether he was alone or not and for a few slight moments, his own identity. He began to in great lungfuls of stale and possibly polluted oxygen mixed with nitrogen from the air, then disallowing the natural process of body converting and filleting out the carbond dioxide before choosing his own times for breathing it back out into the surrounding atmosphere. He started to hyperventilate, feeling the pain and pressure in his chest as the control he had over his breathing began to disspate. Very quickly, he reached with his trembling right hand into his jacket pocket and took a tight hold of an overused paper bag with a few holes in it and began to remove it forcibly. His hand became stuck in the lining of his pocket and he began to feel worse as his throat began to grow sore, he pulled and pulled, but his hand remained firmly tight.
Calm down, calm down, for God’s sake, man! He thought hurriedly, yet calmly to himself as tried to diffuse his overwhelming panic. Slowly, he began to calm down as forced comforting images into his mind. The image of his church on top of the hill with its seven-hundred years old stonework that was chipped in places from mortar-fire from the second-world war. The comforting sight of the crucified Christ sitting atop his alter. The mental image of his office built inside his vestry, the terribly silly looking appearance of thirteenth-century attachments and designs with a small old-fashioned wood desk pushed up into the corner stacked with papers skewered with a spike. His thick pair of reading glasses resting beside the tattered old copy of his Bible, the same one he’d had since leaving seminar and taking his first position as a small-time priest. And, the most relaxing and pleasing of all his hurried mental images, the sight of a hot cup of cocoa in his small white mug stained with cocoa powder with the handle broken off and the phrase ‘Gods Greatest Botherer’ imprinted on the side.
He began to laugh as the memory sat comfortably in his mind as if he were sitting in a large, red leather armchair beside a great roaring fire. The fear, apprehension and stiffened muscles began to dissiapte as a fresh, calming sensation filled his nervous system and worked its magic throughout his whole body. Finally, he was rested completely and began to relax. Feeling his hand come free from inside his pocket, he slowly retracted it, carrying the tattered old paper bag with him and began to to breath calmly and normally into it, his eyelids fell to around halfway. He thought of how pointless it was to use it now that he had calmed himself down and he felt fine, but his panic attacks were frequent and could happen anytime from even the smallest sign of panic and frustration, ever since he was a child, ever since he was frightened by something one day in his house. A sound, like a dragging sound, coming from his room . . .something. He wished he could remember what it was, maybe at last, that would alleviate his panic attacks somewhat, or even dispell them completely. He had visited his doctor many a time over the years for him to give him medicine, information or anything to stop them. But, as the doctor always told him, they could only ever completely go away if he remembered what childhood memory he had surpressed had triggered it off. But, then, at the same time, he didn’t want to remember. God only knew what had happened to him or what he had seen to trigger off a lifetime of unrelenting panic.
He slowly withdrew the bag from his mouth as his whole body began to fill with a newfound sense of calm and relaxation as if he had experienced a full-body massage. The hand that held the bag feel limply and lifelessly onto the bed with a small cloud of dust as all its strength faded away, leaving it feeling empty of all energy and an effort will like a dea man’s arm. Donald Heathers closed his eyes and uttered a deep relaxing sigh that left his lips liker an unseen intruder.
In the fraction of a single moment and out of sheer silence, the whole of the room that he was resting inside suddenly fell away and dropped downward into a straight, super-speeded rythmn like that of an elevator being cut from its wires and metallic supports and being allowed to fall like a speeding bullet flying vertically down its long, cylindrical muzzle. Father Heathers was left falling through the air with his arms and legs sprawling everywhere around him as they struggled desperately and in vain to grab hold of something, anything that could stop his almost unbearable descent. A ferocious, almost inhuman and ear-shattering scream, like the scream of a terrified and torture animal remained fixed into his throat, trapped like a prisoner encased in chains in the thick, muscular entanglements of his vocal chords. His mind refused to allow the scream to run free and voice his borderless terror. The whole thing was impossible, it wasn’t even in the furthest, most extreme regions of reality or possibility, he was falling through the air, through nothing inside a room that had simply fallen from its place inside a dilapidated mansion, as it suddenly torn from reality by some unseen force.
He looked all around him as tried to see something that would explain this sudden inescapable madness. He saw the myriad collection of ghastly objects from the room falling with him, gathered around him and falling and tumbling as if they had all been thrown down a bottomless pit with him. He saw the cracked and horrific small statues of the cult’s gods, goddesses and demons tumbling and twisting beside the large, ornate fireplace, the faded vases, the carpet, even the faded and dilapidated walls falling with the door to the room itself. Everything had come apart from the solid structure of the room he was in and had broken up into a myriad of pieces. Looking past the falling objects, he saw something else, something even more terrifying that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up and his eyes to open wildly. He saw nothing, nothing at all but an endless, borderless void of darkness, inky-black nothingness surrounding him. He looked up and below him and saw the same thing. It seemed absolute madness to think it, but it was the only thing he could allow his mind to imagine. He was falling through nothing, an endless bottomless pit of total unrelenting darkness with nothing but the terrible, ghastly faded collections of objects the cultists had left behind, feeling nothing but an icy-cold wind rush up from under him and caress his skin with an uncomfortable chill like the touch of the Devil. Perhaps this was what he had spent so many hours pondering throughout his whole career and through his whole life. This right now was what it was like as you descended into hell, falling for eternity into nothing with nothing but the few possessions you had within arms-reach and a cold, unfeeling breeze. His stomach twisted as the notion filled his mind like cancer, squeezing his heart with a fiery, painful grip. He closed his eyes and tightened his face muscles as a faint tear fell from his eye.
He could feel the bed close behind him as it occasionally came within touching distance of his back as it turned and twisted around in its seemingly endless spiralling fall. Donald streuggled in vain to reach down and grab the bed with his rampant, blurry fingers, to reach it, hold it and hopefully find something sold to hold onto if he and everything else came crashing to some unseen surface deep below him. But, then again, did it make any difference if he was holding onto something, or not? If this was really happening and it wasn’t some mental trickery or a dream but was actually happening, then he was going to die regardless of what he did and there wouldn’t be much left of him to even recognise of having been human. Scurrying his hand into his breast pocket, he found the slight comforting cold feel of his small golden crucifix tied with a small gold chain and took a tight hold of it, close his eyes and began to pray, desperately trying to block out all images of what was happening to him, even as he felt the ice-cold embrace of the cold wind rushing past him at incredible speeds. He closed his eyes again and concentrated hard on his words, stopping for nothing and no-one.
Our Father who art in Heaven. Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom done, thy will be done on Earth as it is in-
Time and all manner of ways of counting the passing seconds were all but lost to him as he incessantly quoted the lines of the prayer over and over again in spoken words and in his mind, desperate for his release from this seemingly unending torment. Seconds passed, then minutes, maybe hours, days, weeks. All concept of the awareness of the passing of time was beyond him, leaving him with nothing but the same tumbling cycle of darkness, the cold, rushing wind around him and the constant presence of the many dilapidated objects that fell with him.
Perhaps he had been falling through this pitch-black bottomless pit for weeks, months, or god forbid, years, even. He had absolutely no idea. Perhaps his friends and colleagues back home had shed their tears over him and were learning to get on with their lives without him. The years had possibly passed longer than he imagined and his church was now steadily crumbling back into the dust, rubble and decay of the material’s that it formally was. Perhaps his colleagues back in Vautusceen House had conducted their studies of the place and had searched for him in every room of the house before admitting their defeat and getting out of their before the house claimed them and forced them to share his torment. God knows, while it was terrible for him to even imagine it, he wished to the bottom of his soul that at least one other person would join him here, someone who, if he had to endure this pit for all of eternity, he would have at least one other person to share his damnation.
His heart sank in his chest as time, empty, pointless and eternally endless gathered up above him and around him like being buried under the soil in the ground and left to watch it slowly gather in height as the yearsa and decades passed. Depression, foreboding and terrible sadness burrowed its way into his fragile, ill-defended mind, filling him with an intense feeling of total ignorance and hatred, filling his mind with ideas of negative thoughts.
Maybe this is it, then. This is death. To fall through an endless, bottomless, darkness-filled pit of nothingness with only things within arm reach of you when you died to remind you of the life that you once had. We all go through life trying to help others, learning that being nice and fulfilling your human side and serving a purpose to help your fellow man and go out of your damn way to help those who need it, give them a sodding shoulder to cry on and help them through their pitiful problems. But, what’s the point. If your going to die anyway and it isn’t heaven, no angels, no god, no paradise, no nothing. The only thing that’s important is you and your own life and your own problems and dreams and sod everyone else. Life is all that there is . . . . Fucking devoting myself to a damned Gpd that doesn’t even exist. I should have gone out their, drinking till I threw up, sleeping with women, taking drugs, doing everything I should have done. What the hell was I thinking. I had one chance and now I’ve let it slip away.
He closed his eyes tigher along with his tightly pursed lips. This sudden revelation shattered his soul, shattered his spirit. To face the reality of the truth of a life after death before he had the chance to grab back anything he could had almost destroyed him.
At last and with an excited and relieved deep breath of air, Donald felt an end to his eternal purgatory as something large, almost massive appeared below him and prevented him from falling any further. He felt the sensation of something hard and strong against his back as they came together and felt himself dip downward for a considerable distance before bouncing back up again and finally settling in whatever it was that seemed to be moving violently from side to side. It felt to him as though he had fallen in some kind of immense trampoline or something similar and that had caused him to bounce. But, where the hell would a trampoline come from in the middle of nothingness.
Without wasting a moment of his precious time in figuring it out, he scrambled to a safe position and pressed his shaking feet hard into his safety net, fumbling around hurriedly with his fingers until he locked them tight into whatever was supporting him. Here he stayed for several minutes without moving an eyebrow before calculating firmly that he was finally safe, that he was free of whatever had been happening to him for so long. He felt a little calm and and at ease as he felt the almost soundless swinging of the net swing quickly from left to right with a quiet rush of wind, almost like the sensation of being swung gently by your mother when you’re a baby.
He began to cry as the mixture of his last thought, his very recent endless journey into purgatory and many other things began to well up inside him and spill from his eyes. He fell back onto his right side and allowed the tears to flow, along with his intense feelings of fear and joy mixed together like the ingredients of an immense tornado, his hands still frimly gripped into his as yet invisible support.
Gradually, he began to regain control over himself as his intense emotions left him. Come on, he thought with a small amount of command in his words. Come on, you’re alright now, you’re alright, you’re safe now. Now get up and find out where you are, take it one step at a time.
He cleared his throat and wiped away his tears before slowly pulling himself up and looking hard and scrutinising at his fingers as they were locked in tightly to whatever he was so intensely gripping to prevent from falling. He could see that his fingers were holding tight to small, diamond-shaped holes that spanned the length of the object he rested in. Forming the bulky and tough material that made up the majority of it was an intricate collection of varnished, roughened sticks of wood all bound together by large, bulbous knots of string. Donald looked up and around him quickly as he surveyed the rest of the object. He was sitting right in the middle of whatever it was as it continued to swing from left to right. It seemed to be the slightly unusual shape of a very large rowing boat or a barge, but seemed to be made of many pieces of branches and rope and was held up in position and kept from falling by two separately placed long strands of powerful looking rope on either side of its pointed edges that stretched a considerable distance before disappearing into the furthermost unseen depths of darkness above him. The countless pieces of branches creaked and squeeked their constant pull of tension as the barge swunbg eerily from side to side.
The sudden uncomfortable thought flickered like a bright light bulb In his mind as he watched it swing. If it had been here all along, right below him when he was falling and it had been swinging from one side to the other, then it was purely a stroke of good luck that it had been in the absoloute centre of its swinging motions when he fell into it. If it had been swinging to the left or the right and he misssed it and kept falling . . . It was too terrible to imagine. He simply wiped his sweaty hand across his face and his open and alert eyes before reaffirming his situation.
‘You are here at last.’ Donald snapped out of his slight agitated manner and quickly scanned the surrounding area as the big booming voice echoed out around him like a megaphone from some unseen location.
What the hell’s going on, he thought, his eyes bloodshot from constant tear-fall. I can’t take much more of this. Who the hell is it?
The palms of his hands began to perspire, his heart began to beat rapidly and his lungs began to hurt as his breathing became more and more laboured. Countless unfamiliar and unusual shapes and silhouettes appeared in front of him as his mind struggled to make sense of what was happening, creating vast illusions of supernatural fool’s gold before him. His hands scurried around like a frightened animal at the crucifix that was dangling from his pocket.
The bodiless voice sounded again from the darkness, scaring him almost to a full-blown heart attack. ‘We were wondering how long it would take for you to come to your senses and find us here. You are such a pathetic little man, do you know that. How like a child you pull at the apron strings of your invisible, silent god when you feel afraid, afraid of when the world doesn’t meet with your wishes or your perception. And what is your sensible course of action of being a good little Christian? You destroy those who oppose your vision of the world, tear them to pieces, reuce them to flayed discarded pieces of flesh and call yourself a holy warrior, so convinced of your true allegiance to ‘God,’ the so-called Prince of Peace.’
The condoning, heretic-filled voice seemed to bellow out like the roar of a lion at him, terrifying any intruders that dared to venture towards the mouth of a seemingly endless cave. Convincing its intruder to leave by attacking its weakest mental aspect.
Donald felt worthless and full of shame as he remained on his trembling knees, the roughened pieces of wood that constructed the barge dug into the flesh of his legs, bringing about constant irritating pain. He hung his head in a pathetic manner down to face the darkness below him, his heart and mind refusing to keep us the fight of continuing to defie the voice. It burned him to relate it so much to the countless occasions he was bullied and harassed at school for being daring enough to admit to his fellow classmates that he believed in god and that only his word was true, only his vision, his guiding light and the words he had given us all in the blessed Bible was what every man, woman and child must serve and follow to the letter. Then, to have to face the one’s who would not simply attack him with harsh words, but would reinforce their point of view, their own vision of the world onto their fists and feet and imprint their quite obvious message onto his flesh, a message he would remember for a long time. It was happening all over again, he was allowing those stronger than him to win, without a fight and he was listening to them. He remained rooted to the floor as the disembodied voice continued to taunt him, only half listening to its unavoidable poisonous words. Finally, he summoned enough will-powert for his tongue and vocal words to work in conjunction and utter a single phrase. “Where am I.” He said flatly, almost falling to the ground with exhaustion “Where have you brought me?”
The eerie voice laughed a little, seemingly quite amused.’Oh, you mean you haven’t realised it yet? I would have thought that that was one of the more obvious things for you to work out. Why don’t you tell us where you think you are. Allow your dutiful, unquestioning mind to ask itself an important question.’
He wasn’t in the mood for games and he never had been. But, he didn’t have the strength or the patience to continue defying it or infuriate it. His small mind could never fight against anything so powerful. He sighed before speaking. “Hell, he said, tiredly. I’m in hell.”
Silence for a few moments before the rasping voice returned. ‘Well, perhaps you are right, but then perhaps you are completely wrong, or even only half-right. But, what exactly did you imagine hell to be, hmn? Did you imagine it to be fire and brimstone, the wailing of tortured souls, desperately trying to escape the endless purgatory and pain of their damnation? Would it not be much more terrifying to imagine that Hell would be the disintigration of reality, or what you believe to be true, or in your case . . .the reality of your unfaltering faith in a non-existant deity? Just look around you, look at the shadows that surround you, look at the primitive safety-net you so cowardly reside in, unwilling to raise your head to reality and total truth. The darkness is everything that exists outside of your pathetic and limited clarity of reality. Every day of your life, you fall through the madness, the mystery and the darkness of your ignorance and there is no respite from this hellish domain. And the barge that you strongly grip to with your shivering hands.This is your safety net, your slim, tiny little spark of your vision of what is real, what you deem to be physical existence. But, it is very tenuous and can only hold you for so long before that spark collapses into dust. Its incessant swinging is the doubt you have of the truth of it all. So, come on, do it now. Rise up onto your feet, face the reality of what is around you and take it like a man.’
Without skipping a single beat of his heart, Donald immediately rose to his feet, took the crucifix tight in his right hand and spun round and stared hard at the void of blackness before him, totally ignoring the swinging of the barge and the rush of the breeze around him. “You are not real!” He screamed at the voice, pushing the crucific out in front of him, the small chain that fixed it to his pocket almost snapping under the force. “You are just in my head, you don’t exist. You are the devil himself, you’re trying to destroy my belief in the one true god. I will never relent, never, do you hear me? I will happily spend an eternity rotting in hell to serve my creator. You have nothing, heretic. You do not exist!”
The voice simply chuckled a litrle before replying. Well, I could be in your head and I suppose I could be the ‘Devil himself,’ couldn’t I? Perhaps I and everything that surrounds you is nothing but an illusion designed to help you through your doubts of what you believe, created by your mind that is screaming at you, screaming for you to awaken from your torment, awaken from the lie that you have told yourself all your life and convinced yourself to be true. But, the truth is, you will never know for certain. I am merely here to help you, whether you listen to my words is completely up to you. Only you can free yourself from the chains of lies that bind you, awaken you from your unending nightmare.
Donald slowly retracted his hand, the chain of the crucifix rattling slightly as it dangled down from his sweaty grasp. His lips were soaked in saliva due to the ferocity of his words of defiance, his cheeks puffed up considerably, as if he had spent many weeks in a very cold environment. No matter how much he wanted to believe his own thoughts, his own ideas of what to believe and what not to believe, he could not deny the truth that ran through the voice’s words, however harsh they may be. He would be lying to himself if he said that he had unfaltering belief in his god, his religion and everything he had been taught to believe after so many years. Perhaps what he had been told was right. Perhaps he was trapped in some kind of hellish nightmare, created by his unwillingness to accept reality. He looked hard at the crucifix in his hand, watching the liquid glow that swept across it like a watery wave. He didn’t know what to believe anymore. For all he knew, he was asleep in his bed, right now, dreaming that he was in a supposed haunted hause, a house that only existed in his head. Its cold, stone surfaces could represent his inability to stray away from his ignorance, keeping him trapped permanently in an unending dungeon-like maze of his own doubts and fears. He could have had an accident on the way to the church one morning and now he was lying unconscious in a hospital bed, mentally walking the pandemonium and confusion in his head as he desperately tried to find his way out from his endless, purgatorial nightmare. But, as the voice stated, he would never actually know for sure. He tore the chain from his pocket and discarded the crucifix, throwing it over the edge of swinging barge and into the void of blackness. Holding his now calm, dry right hand over his heart, he closed his eyes and awaited whatever he would wake up to.
Chapter Sixteen
The next thing he knew, he was sitting down somewhere rather awkwardly, sitting on something hard, rough and not very comfortable, almost like a large piece of stone. He could sense that his upper body was hunched over and pointed towards the floor. His arms were crossed limply across his seemingly hollow and empty chest, his heartbeat weak and thumping against his rib-bones only with very limited strength. He could sense that he was now wearing something that was of a different material and design to his original Christian attire and was not a very thick material. It covered him from head to toe with what felt like a small hood covering his head and a crudely cropped edge that allowed only his more prominent toes to protrude. He shuffled his legs and arms a little from side to side and felt the strange new clothing brush delicately against his skin, instantly making him realise that he was wearing some sort of religious robe and not much else, the type of robes he had often seen hanging in a disused old wardrobe covered in dust and cobwebs in a back room of a cathedral.
An ice-cold breeze drifted endlessly around him like the sensation of a phantom ceaselessly moving around him. He felt the goose pimples and the outstretched hairs on his skin react fiercely to the cold making the stone object he rested on seem all the more uncomfortable as its great quantity of bumps and roughened edges on its surface dug harshly into his skin.
Through his dazed, tired, half-open eyes, he could make out the vague appearance of a large wooden table in front of him, its surface was long ago beset with age and decay with large gouges, cuts and marks covering it like the horrific aftermath of a ravaging war. Reaching out carefully with his pale, shivering right hand, he slowly took hold of the table and pressed his fingers as hard as he could against its uneven surface. He watched mesmerised at the large collection of short hairs covering the skin of his hand as they danced in an eerie and ghostly way as the unrelenting breeze washed invisibly across it. He thought briefly at his imminent situation and was surprised to find that he wasn’t in the least bit afraid, afraid of where he might be, what happened to him while he was unconscious or why his clothes had been changed. He felt calm, relaxed and in the mood to simply rest and relax, enjoy his newfound peace and not think any more about it.
The sound of clinking cutlry from the other side of the table roused him quietly from his rest and he slowly opened his eyes and looked lazily in front of him. There he saw two short figures seated beside each other with small grey, dull plates in front of them that were heavily chipped and weared and half-filled with some unknown food that looked something like mashed potatoe’s. The figures were dressed in the same robes as he was, only that they were old and had obviously been used for quite some time. A thick layer of dust, tiny specks of dirt and the occasional stray piece of hair covered them completely all over, collecting in great quantitie’s underneath the various folds and ridges that hung like tired, unelasticated skin. The figure’s hands were very pale, almost white and covered in wrinkles, scabs and degrading skin as they occasionaly slowly emerged from outside the dark, shadowy interios of their long, black sleeves to pick up their grey, withered old spoons from the table and dig quickly and forcibly at the unattractive slop they both ate. Their cracked, wrinkled lips greedily devouring every last morsel, tasting it with their long, red, lizard-like tongues.
Donald had now found a comfortable position on his roughly designed seat and both his hands now lay flat across the table, barely registering the fact that an icy-chill crept like a silent phantom across them. Slowly, he raised his head up completely to be able to take in the full image of his companions features, as well as the features of the strangely familiar place he now resided.
His companions heads were both strangely distorted and awkwardly designed. They were shaped like rotten oranges or apples, a shape that was once well-rounded but had long since shrivelled up into a rough, degenerate inversion of their former beauty. As if their physical features had once been a congratulatory bust of someones head and upper body, but had at one stage been reduced to a uneven, beaten-up pulp pf clay and human features, something in similarity to the Elephant Man. Their eyes were small and barely noticeable as they peeped from underneath their large, heavy eyelids like a frightened rabbit in a hole, waiting for the right time to safely emerge from the darkness. Their noses were large and bulbous like a pig’s or a boxer that had taken repeated beatings in his time. Their mouths were large and gaping and unnaturaly human as they opened repeatedly to take in another morsel of food allowing Donald to see into the gaping abyss filled around its edges with the occasional small, blackened tooth. Some were bald and made no attempt to hide the fact from him by covering ot with their hoods. Others had long, shaggy, black hair that fell down to their shoulders looking as though it had been recently washed, yet still bore numerous entanglements and an uncombed appearance.
Donald allowed his eyes to roam the interior of the room he was resided in, scanning it with a half-hearted interest.
The room was plunged into an almost complete darkness that barely gave away any kind of hint to what lay behind it, aside from the few places that a small candle or two lit up its surrounding features with a ghostly glow, its melted wax forming a small mound up around its base. The room appeared to be a large cellar or dungeon that was made completely of stone. Four separate, perfectly horizontal stone towers sat at each corner of the table, stretching from the low-down ceiling that was covered in rough, well-chipped wooden beams down to the cold, stone floor beneath were numerous puddles of cold, odourless water formed in small slopes in the stone from trickles of water that were falling in the same quiet rhythm from the ceiling. From where he sat, Donald could see that there were numerous tunnels and corridors running out from this room and down to unknown locations, each giving way to blackness before they gave away too much of where they went.
He looked back to his greedy and equally hungry companions and rubbed his stomach eagerly with his right hand before speaking. “Mmmm, mashed potatoe, my favourite.” He said enthusiastically as a large ice-cold breath emerged from his lips.
He plunged his rusted and crudely made spoon deep into the congealed mass of mashed potato and brought it slowly to his mouth with his eyes fixed squarely onto it, as though preparing himself for an unprecedented, heavenly taste. Finally, he placed the spoon over his tongue and covered it completely with his greedy lips, keeping them tightly closed as he slowly withdrew the spoon, his eyes closed relaxedly into a quiet state of perpetual ecstasy. The two other mysterious shrouded figures on the other side of the table watched him intently through the whole long process, watching every single step with acute fascination. The one closest to Donald leaned forward towards him with its head bent awkwardly to the right with a sly smile on his face and his eyes half-closed, as though he possessed some knowledge that only himself knew the full implication of it all and revelled and being alone in that regard. Donald made no obvious sign of the figure as it brought its head closer as he was deep into his seemingly inhuman delight of the taste of simple mashed potato.
“What did you dream, Donald?” Came the figures mysterious and cryptic words from its ancient looking mouth. Its voice was deep and hoarse and was almost difficult to understand, as though it hadn’t spoken aloud to anyone in many years.
Donald opened his eyes and looked silently at the figures as he slowly chewed away at the mouthful of mashed potato he had. He glanced quickly at the third figure that had appeared from the shadows underneath the opposite side of the table and was now sat up at shoulder length, peering at him through blackened empty eye sockets that formed the whole structure of its hideous head which was a cold, grey human skull. All of its black and grey bony teeth were still in position, fixed solidly into a dubious bony grin of a smile. A few stray hairs that were dark brown in colour still covered its head, combed straight and growing from the back of the skull to the top of the forehead. Tiny little childlike ears were still in place on each side, but no obvious clues as to whether or not they still operated. It silently placed its ocean grey human hand flat onto the table as the three of them waited patiently and silently for an answer to the figures question.
“Well, my friends, I dreamed I was alive.” Replied Donald, finally with a smirk on his face after swallowing his food. He placed the dish back in its now empty bowl, crossed his arms and drew closer to the others. “I dreamt I was a man of God, a man who bore the appearance of a holy minister, dedicated to the continuation of a place of worship. I was sent to scout out the intestines of a house of ill-repute, a house of menace, of dark sorcery, of darkness, shadows, fleeting figures and watching walls. But, I wasn’t alone in my crusade, in my halls of dark, restful fantasy. There were three others with me, following me in my journey. There was a man known as a Mr Ernest who led us through the dark halls . . .head had something troubling him, behind his eyes, burning his senses. There was a fiendish, frightening character known as Mr Daniel, the Scientist, the man of facts, the man who must touch before he sees. He destroyed a part of a wall to escape his horrird prison, smashing his bare hands through its cold, stone surface, waving his hands fleetingly into the cold, ghostly icy-winds of the outside world, screaming his madness to all within distance.”
“And the third one, my friend,” whispered the skull-headed figure in a cold, rasping voice. “Tell us, who was the third one to join you?”
Donald smiled with anticipation and quickly peered round behind him, seeing nothing but a seemingly endless expanse of unrelenting darkness and a few tall, crumbling stone pillars with water dripping down their surfaces. He turned back and opened his mouth a little before he spoke.
“A woman, my dear fellow. It was a human female. Living, breathing, warm, blood pumping hard and noisily around her veins, keeping her precious soul fed with everlasting life. Young, beautiful and tortured.”
The grin on the skull-face widened, a faint twinkle of light appeared in its empty sockets. The others merely watched Donald in their same unfaltering, hideous expressions, their blackened, lump lips turning upwards fiercely.
“What was her name?” The skull-faced one rasped again in an impatient tone.
“Her name was Sarah . . .the One Who Sees. She saw the dead, she saw their horrid faces, their pale, white hands, their cold, dead eyes and heard their terrible pleas for salvation and release from their prison of death.”
The figure sat opposite from Donald shook its head and pensively clinked its spoon against the side of its bowl, producing an eerie, echoing tinkling sound that reverberated throughout the shadowy chamber before escaping down an unseen corridor with a long drawn-out whine that steadily faded out to silence.
“You do indeed have a most rampant imagination, my friend,” the figure said. “Such dreams of the living, the breathing ones, the warm ones, the un-lonely ones. How you see the dead, your own kind reduced to a few flittering phantoms desperate for release from their endless purgatory, tortured by their memories, their inability to feel, to touch and to eat. Your mind would do well here, teaching us a new life, a new direction in our existence.” The figure paused for a few moments as it quietly mulled over a few thoughts to itself before speaking again, as though its eyes saw beyond the hazy confines of the strong, solid stone ceiling and out toward an unknown world. “My, my, the sheer mystery of the living ones. Who knows what they dream, what they see through their sleeping eye, how they taste, how they look into the sunlight. And, oh, for us, the dead. To share in the pleasure, the excitement and the ecstasy of sharing the secrets and mysteries of the universe, of the shadows, the hidden chambers, the thoughts and dreams of the quiet ones. Who knows which of us has the better bargain, the better life. Return to the void of sleep, my friend and enjoy your limitless dreams and when you are ready, awaken from your journey and regail us with more stories of the secrets of the breathing ones.”
Donald smiled and half-closed his eyes, staring down at the roughened, splintered surface of the table in a quiet, thoughtful manner. He crossed his arms tightly over his chest and rested his head down into the hollow in-between them before slowly closing his eyes and returning again to his deep sleep and the void of silence.
Chapter Seventeen
Was that a dream? Was it in my head? Where was I?
The deep, solitary thought emanated from the semi-darkness of a small, dilapidated bedroom filled with a small number of rotting, decaying chairs covered with dust and sheets. A few moments after the thought passed through the shadows, the silence was broken by the slight movement of something being dragged across a bed sheet, filling the air with an almost deafening crackle of fibres and powerful electric currants. The noise began to grow more and more intense as a small, frightened figure flailed around on a bed, desperate to break free of its own personal mental imprisonment and back into the nightmare that existed all the time around them.
Feeling the gentle, silent approach to consciousness, Donald Heathers quickly blinked his eyes as he tried to rouse himself back to full-consciousness. He instantly realised that he was lying on his back against a soft bed, his legs stretching out to the opposite end and his hands lying flat and contented on his stomach with the fingers interlocked.
What was that? He thought in a confused, drowsy and agitated manner as the memories of his ‘dream’ began to come back to him. Was I dreaming? It must have been a dream, but . . .it felt so real. I could smell the earth around me, the moisture of the room, the foul smell of the food and . . .the others. I could smell their sickening stench. God, they were hideous, but who were they?
He brought himself up to a sitting position on the bed, totally forgetting the fact that Sarah had gone from the room and was nowhere in sight. He began to gently scratch his chin as he pondered the meaning of his recent experience, taking a small note of the thick bristles that had begun to grow. He didn’t have any idea of how he long he had been in here, though it felt like an eternity. It could only have been about half a day, though the bristles under his chin and his great hunger and physical weakness made it seem as though he had languished inside this decrepit building for almost a month.
A myriad of thoughts passed through his mind, some reasonable, some improbable or impossible. Some relieving, some terrifying. Though, no matter how hard he tried to remember it, let alone make sense of it, the same undeniable feeling of terror beyond imagination still gripped him tightly around the throat, constantly threatening to choke out every last ounce of breath in him until he lost his internal strength completely. The images still remained fixed in his mind; falling into an unfathomable, infinite gulf of absolute darkness, the strange, wooden swing suspended in this darkness, the terrible voice that almost seemed to scream its terrible, vindictive words out in an almost merciless tone, the terrible thought that he might never be released from that terrible fate.
His head began to hurt as he pushed his senses further and further to try and understand it all and immediately stopped and rested his throbbing forehead in his hand. Lord knows, he should know better than that to keep pursuing something so unattainable that it was beyond human intervention. But, in the end, he couldn’t help it. He was a man of God, committed to God’s word and his teachings, but he was also a great scholar, committed also to the workings of the religious and putting his half scientific mind to understanding its complexities. He felt a little strange to have such a mindscape that seemed to be forever waging a silent, bloodless civil war with itself. One half of his mind was committed to God, the other committed to the science world. To have both beliefs occupying the same space was a sure warrant for disaster, he had seen it happen so many times in the world in his life. Even he himself had sometimes found it hard to decide which side he was allied with. Neither would allow the others existence and neither would exist without the other. It was a viscous circle that could never be resolved in the world or in his own troubled mind.
He began to gently lie back against the bed and relax a little to give himself a little peace before he heard a noise outside, quickly drawing him back up to a bolt upright sitting position with wide open eyes, staring into the semi-darkness that covered the door. For a moment, he took the sound to be Sarah coming back to the room which made him feel momentarily calm again and take in a restful gasp of air. He began to open his mouth to allow her in and ask where she had been when he suddenly heard the second sound approaching much closer this time. It was the sound of heavy breathing, deep, unnatural heavy breathing that almost sounded like the breath of a large, dangerous animal with a great hunger in its eyes, its teeth and tongue begging for human flesh to enter its maw. The first sound began to grow louder again, so much that Donald could tell that they were footsteps, slow and heavy, so heavy that they could almost cause the weak, rotten floorboards beneath them to give way and collapse. Donald made that thought stick in his head for a few moments as he begged it to actually happen. Though, he never heard a creak from the floorboards.
His terror began to grow more and more in strength, tightening his muscles so much that he could hardly move. He remained stationary on the bed in a sitting position, his legs bent and held tightly around the knees by his shaking hand, the other stuck firmly in his mouth as he bit down firmly on the soft flesh, the acute pain meaning nothing to him right now. There he sat on the bed as the terrible, nightmarish sounds from outside began to grow louder and louder until they were right outside the door and watched with terrified, wide-open eyes as the door handle began to slowly twitch with movement as something outside tried to enter. He couldn’t move, couldn’t think as the terrible drama was oppressing right before him. He would still be sat in this spot, unable to move as whatever it was outside would eventually come in, see him and . . .
He couldn’t bear it, he had to move, he had to. But where? Whatever it was had him trapped in here, he had nowhere to go. This room was small, they would easily find him. He had nowhere, nowhere to go. The sounds began to grow louder, the door handle began to shake wildly. They were close to getting inside.
Summoning up a small amount of free will, he slowly jerked his head to the side as he desperately sought for somewhere to hide, anywhere they couldn’t see him. He saw nothing but his bed, a few meagre pieces of furniture and a few small piles of rotten, decaying wallpaper gathering around the room.
Oh, God, please. My God, please help me! He quickly grabbed his rosary beads and held on tightly to them as he prayed with every effort of his will to be freed from this nightmare, his eyes darting backwards and forwards in an agitated state of total fear and paranoia.
Then he saw it, to the left right in the corner of the room. His eyes were filled with an overwhelming feeling of glee and satisfaction, so much that he almost shouted out loud before he quickly stopped himself. It was a large, dusty sheet draped across a small wooden chair in the corner beside his bed. Surely, that would be enough to hide him in this darkness? The room was dark enough, right? He had no idea what was waiting for him out there, but hopefully, they had no idea he was actually inside here. Hopefully, whatever it was presumed this room to be empty.
Quickly stuffing the rosary beads in his breast pocket, he jumped across the bed over to the sheet and took hold of it tightly with one hand. With scurrying footsteps, he picked up the chair and quietly moved it to the other side of the room. Kicking it across was too dangerous, they would hear him. Even putting it under the door to stop them getting in, it was a tempting idea, but equally dangerous for the same reason. They would know someone was inside. He found a comfortable and big enough space in the furthermost corner of the room where it was darkest and brought himself down to a squatting position before throwing the sheet completely over him and blocking his view of the rattling door handle and the rest of the room, creating an unyielding screen of darkness. Here now he sat in complete darkness praying for his life, his eyes filling with tears of terror, his hands and feet shaking violently.
Not a second was spared as he suddenly heard the click of the door once it had been opened, his heart stopped in the same moment and sank down into his throat. His bottom lip quivered and his eyes remained firmly shut as he painfully heard the slow, steady creak of the door as it was slowly pushed open, the deep, inhuman breathing was much louder now, almost close enough to feel it violently caressing his cheek.
The slow, heavy footsteps began again as they made their way into the room. Through the pain and sheer terror, Donald could make out that there was a set of footsteps from probably around three people, or . . .
He couldn’t bear the thought of it. Something definitely inhuman, evil and not at rest was walking around the room while he sat here in the corner, terrified, all the while, his persecutors were totally ignorant to his presence here. He held the rosary beads close to his heart and gripped them tightly and painfully. His eyes were fixed into a state of permanent, terrified gaze as he stared at nothing but darkness from the thin, dusty sheet covering his sight, his head and his whole trembling, shaking body, his mind concocting countless terrible, frightening images that tormented every fibre of his being as the faceless interlopers continued to aimlessly wander around the room turning chairs over, moving objects as they searched for someone, constantly mocking him with their deep, laboured breathing and their large, shuffling feet.
It seemed as though an eternity passed for him as he sat terrified in the darkness, seeing nothing but blackness, feeling nothing but the feeble embrace and safety of the dust-choked sheet. His skin perspired continually with sweat, the grip on his rosary beads becoming more and more slack, his eyes open and staring into the eternal shadows that surrounded him, impossible to close and hide in the shelter of his mind.
It was useless hiding here, they would find him eventually, despite the thought being so terrible. For the briefest of a moment, his mind considered abandoning his hiding place and showing himself, submitting and surrendering to whatever they had in store for him. But, his conscious mind immediately tore up that idea. But, the fact was still there. One way or another, no matter how much time would pass, they would find him. He had to lift up the sheet and see what was happening in order to plan his escape. He detested the idea as it sat uncomfortably in his thoughts, continually plunging spears of terror deep into his veins and nervous system. His heart seemed to stop for a moment along with his breathing, for a brief moment, it felt as though he were dead. He buried his head in-between his knees and wept, despair completely overwhelming him as this terrible duty was about to be fulfilled.
Holding back his sorrow as best he could, though still feeling the trickle of tears run against his damp cheeks, he rubbed his hands and fingers together, feeling the large amount of sweat covering his skin, the trembling in his muscles and coldness in his soul. He gathered his breath and carefully and silently began to lift the sheet up from over his eyes. What he saw next chilled him to the bone.
There was no-one there, absolutely no-one. His room was empty, devoid of any people or activity, except for the loose, wrinkled bed sheets on the mattress moving down the length of the bed completely unaided as a slow, deep regular sound of breathing filled his ears, followed by the constant heavy movement of feet being dragged across the floor. He watched in a state of mute terror as something picked up a chair and held it in mid-air before throwing it across the room and breaking into pieces. Finally, the bed sheet was pulled forcibly from the mattress and thrown across the room, along with his mattress that was torn to pieces right in front of his eyes before finally being thrown against the wall and a ghastly, deep and demonic voice filled his ears.
‘He isn’t in here. He is hiding.’
‘We have checked everywhere, he is nowhere.’
‘The one who believes . . . .come out, come out, wherever you are.’
Donald immediately closed his eyes as tightly as they would close, he couldn’t take anymore, he was going to scream.
‘He is hiding in the darkness. We must search.’
‘The sheet in the corner, the strange sheet. I see a movement.’
His whole body trembled and his blood ran like raging waterfalls throughout his veins as they summoned the strength needed to run and escape as he heard their footsteps approach him, their laboured breathing becoming stronger and more fierce, bringing with it now a horrid, death-like stench. He closed his eyes even tighter. He could feel the gentle tugging of the sheet around his shaking feet, the prodding of fingers against the sheet all over it and coming against nothing but empty space until one of them finally hit flesh, the flesh at the side of his head. The prodding and tugging stopped, as did the breathing and the footsteps, replaced only by nightmarish, demonic words.
‘We’ve found you now . . .’
With that final, terrible confirmation, Donald leaped from his now destroyed hiding place and sprung high and screaming into the air with gigantic, wild animalistic eyes, his terrible ear-piercing screeches filling the blackened, tainted air around him. Time seemed to stand still as he ran for the door, keeping him forever trapped inside this room, like a nightmare that won’t let you go. He could feel their attention and shock at having found him as he ran, feeling their eyes burn into his flesh and deep into his soul, so much that it felt as though they would rip it from its moorings. He heard a terrible, high-pitched screech from one of his persecutors as he opened the door that almost seemed to keep him rooted to the spot in total fear before he summoned up enough will to beat it and run into the partial safety of the corridor outside, still feeling their eyes and their presence all around him, creeping up on his back and clawing at his legs. As he ran down the corridor, he could see twisted, nightmarish, pain-filled faces strewn across the walls that seemed to scream and shout at some horrible, personal agony. Their eyes were wild and white, full of unimaginable pain. Their faces were elongated, their mouths open wide and screaming silently into the permanent night air. He saw shadows stepping out from alcoves and small hiding places, beckoning to him with their silhouetted hands. Madness engulfed his mind as his gigantic stride became larger and larger, carrying his tired, exhausted body with them. All sense of time, self and everything else seemed to melt away leaving nothing behind but the undeniable instinct of survival. He had to escape, he had to escape right now.
Then, suddenly without warning, everything fell and rushed by him as he felt himself fall down some kind of large hole or shaft in the floor, his arms flailing wildly and desperately above him as he tumbled deeper and deeper into the darkness below him, his mind carrying one final thought of escape before blanking out completely.
Chapter Eighteen
Sarah sat comfortabley and perfectly straight in the smooth, soft red leather of the splintered ornately decorated chair in the corner of the room, her head and chin raised high and proud with her eyes closed and her lips softly pressed together. Her hands covered the edges of the wooden armrests quite tightly, her long, tapering fingers spilling out like a waterfall over and across the other sides. A single tall lighted candle and a slightly worn copy of the Bible sat on a small wooden table beside her, the bright flickering flame of the candle casting a bright, ghostly, dancing light of orange, red and yellow across her smooth, unblemished face with the same glow one would find cast on the lifeless, eerie porcelain face of a doll if a torch was pointed towards it.
Draped all around her was a long, black cotton sheet that was fixed with strong clips from the ceiling and fell around her in the shape of a phonebox as it rested against the floor. Sewn into the fabric of the cloth were numerous small objects consisting of small animal bones and skulls, beads, dried flowers and a small creased and slightly torn black and white photograph of an unknown man in a suit and tie with balding hair and a serious expression on his face.
Not much could be seen through the thick, unbreakable curtain of darkness that almost completely filled the room, aside from the small patch that the candle light exposed to view. To the right of where Sarah sat were the familiar dark, panelled walls with the regular pattern of large squares deeply set in perfect order around themselves. Further on was a large, stone fireplace that almost seemed it could be made of ivory. It was tall and elongated and had a regular pattern of small indentations on each side running from the base and up toward the very top. A small, almost lethal-looking blackened piece of metal sat in the very centre inside the fireplace, long ago rusted and bent crudely out of shape from years of large powerful fires. Numerous long rotted embers and fossilised chunks of wood lay like cremated corpses within it.
A brief flurry of movement and a scraping of feet across the floor suddenly occurred a few feet from Sarah somewhere in the darkness before a large, slumped, lumbering black shape slowly emerged from the shadows and into the soft glow of the candlelight before sitting silently in front of the fireplace. The figure fumbled with an unknown set of small objects in its hands before preparing to light a fire. After a few moments, tiny, flittering sparks and sharp scrapes festered in the dull light before a large, fierce glow of a fire finally appeared and the slightly wrinkled, pensive, middle-aged face of Ernest came into view as the bright roar of the fire danced magically and eerily across it.
Even being so close to something so, large and fierce, something so powerful that held such heat within its seemingly, unearthly form, he could still feel little to no heat from it, as though some invisible and untouchable object lay in-between both, completely blocking the heat from all around. It was strange to think about it, but he couldn’t recall a single memory of him being warm ever since he and the others had allowed themselves to be prisoners inside this pesthole. But, then again, it wasn’t as if it was something he was totally foreign to and hadn’t encountered anywhere in his life. God knows, he was almost totally used to it what with the number of haunted buildings he had the misfortune to find himself in down the years and had felt the same icy chill wherever he went, regardless of which room or corridor or whether he brought a small oil lamp with him or had used one that was already there. It was a phenomenon that was quite common in many haunted places, something which many had encountered coupled with the sudden failure of torch’s or tape-recorder’s or anything that possessed a battery. Many had attributed this to a spirit materialising or using its energies to interact with its enivornment, but to do this, it had to use other forms of eneriges in its location and the electrical power of a small household battery was almost identical to its own psychokinetic energy.
And yet, somehow in this place, that explanation just didn’t seem to add up, it seemed almost to friendly, to orderly and commonly scientific to be given breathing space. It almost seemed as though, whatever inhabited this house was doing it out of pure spite and a kind of mocking, sadistic pleasure and joy.
Ernest folded his arms tight around his chest and dropped his head squarely and restfully on top of them, his eyes quickly glancing over to Sarah to his right.
“It won’t work, you know.” Ernest said to Sarah, his eyes fixed reservedly and in a deep concentrated manner at the fire before him. “It doesn’t want you to find whoever it is you’re looking for, doing so will put yours and my life in danger and who knows about the others in the building somewhere.”
“Yours is not to reason why,” Sarah said with a slight grin with her eyes still closed. “I’ve done this thousands of times by myself, with others, at home, in other peoples homes and numerous other buildings. The most dangerous response I’ve ever got is from a spirit that said I shouldn’t be in its room when its changing its clothes.”
“But, those are ordinary, everyday spirits,” Ernest pointed out. “They’re people who have led sane, ordinary lives like the rest of us. They haven’t been the vil, murderous spirits of religious zealots who torture and maim others for there own sick, sadistic pleasure. If it were up to me, I’d tear down that damned cloth and take you out of here, then we can get to something more practical like finding a way out of here. Those bastards at The Brotherhood aren’t going to come looking for us.”
Sarah sighed and gently massaged the wood of the armrests with the ends of her fingers. “I agree with you on some points, the money they offered us isn’t important to me anymore, I mean it wasn’t as if I actually needed it all that much. My talents bring me enough money for me to retire tomorrow if I so wished.”
Ernest turned his head toward her in confusion. “Well, why on earth did you agree to come here in the first place. Don’t you remember me telling everyone the sordid history of this place. You could have simply walked out of there and never had to set eyes on this place again.”
“It’s my job,” she replied. “I’m here to help those spirits who have difficulty crossing over, those who are sometimes held here by overly-powerful, demonic spirits. They need people like me to give them the strength to cross over. I can’t just abandon them.”
Ernest opened his mouth as he attempted to contradict her, but decided not to. After all, it had been similar reasons that had brought him here, too, but mainly on a pure scientific basis. He had been drawn here with the promise of learning something about a completely unknown and untouched portion of the spirit world as it existed on earth. Throwing all his experties and technologies at it could herald at some new, spectacular chapter in EVP research. But, as he felt the icy chillness crawl up his spine like long, sharpened nails, did any of that really matter anymore?
“And, anyway,” Sarah pointed out. If you tear down this cloth, I’ll kick you somewhere very painful.” Ernest couldn’t help but utter a tiny smile, despite the enormities of danger and solitude that screamed out everywhere from the shadows everywhere around them. But, the present situation and everything locked deep inside it forbade any kind of intense, deep humour from him. That would have to wait for a more relaxed, earthly moment. “My mother made it for me.” She continued. “She told me that it was something that she had read about in a magazine, somewhere, a column I think written by a physic lady, something about the woven fabric in the cloth acting as a kind of net to draw the spirits in, lock onto their energies and keep them here until the medium decides to let them go. Rather like catching fish, really.”
Ernest shook his head as she explained it to him. The whole notion of what she was saying, how she described it, the very way she hung on every word as it poured out from her lips, believing absoloute gibberish. His pure scientific mind refused to let go of physical facts and blindly follow age-old scribblings by soothsayers and the like who had tried to put a more religious, almost heavenly slant on the explanation behind it all.
“Yes, right, fine, okay,” he said rising to his feet and turning to face her. “Well, we haven’t got time for idle chit-chat, have we? You told me yourself that this spirit that you want to find is in dire need of our help. And we’re not going to help it by discussing spiritual techniques. So, let’s just get on, shall we?” Ernest turned his back to Sarah as he quickly checked the surrounding area in case of unseen intruders before walking up and taking the Bible from beside Sarah.
While he wasn’t looking for a moment, Sarah briefly opened her eyes and gave him a slightly annoyed expression, but, deep down she knew he was right. Time was wasting while they sat here. Work had to be done to save this poor child’s spirit from the clutches of these demonic entities.
Ernest idly pattered around the candlelit area of the room with his slightly sleepy eyes mildly studying the pages of Bible as he quickly skimmed through them, not really noticing the passages inside. “So, which passage is it you want me to read from, again?” Sarah tutted slightly, not loud enough for him to hear. She remained silent for a few moments before answering him. “It’s just a basic prayer, there are plenty scattered around inside, look near the beginning of the book, in the Genesis section.”
Ernest continued to vaguely scan every page in the Genesis section, as well as other continuing pages, but still found nothing. The strong tiredness and jadedness mixed in with feelings of fear, dread and irritation began to grow and have a profound effect on him, so much so that it was difficult enough even to keep his eyes open. Sarah began to grow tiresome of how long he took. “Oh, its been years since I’ve read this book.” He scoffed. “I don’t know where anything is.”
Sarah sighed an irritated sigh, lowered and shook her head. But, then again, she couldn’t really blame him. Now wasn’t the best of times to sit around studying the Bible while they were irrevocably locked up inside this hellhole. She could tell that that was his strongest desire; to escape and get out of here, away from this place. She could almost see his point of view of not taking faith in reading the Bible, after all, she hadn’t taken much comfort in its words since being in here. It was almost as if God’s sight was barred by the horrid black stone and bars forever fixed into place. She almost felt it was worthless to use prayers from the Bible even now.
“It’s alright,” she said in a calmer, much softer tone while relaxing herself again. “I can remember hundreds, just give me a moment.” She began to plunge her subconscious into her memories to find a suitable prayer, searching out memories of her being a child in church with her mother stood in the pews, reading aloud prayers from their small, brown books with the rest of the congragation, listening to her mother read from the Bible back home in the sitting room, remembering catching a glimpse of her father watching her, his knuckles bruised and sore . . .my ribs hurt . .I ache.
No, no, come back. She shouted to herself. Find the prayers, you’re strong, find the prayers. Then, finally, one appeared, right in front of her minds eye.
“It’s alright, now,” she said. “I’ve found one. We just need a prayer to bless the surrounding area and make contact with the spirit, just like an ordinary telephone call. Right, here we go.” Ernest remained stood in front of her, his eyes open and fixed squarely on her, his body rigid and steadfast. He had seen and participated in hundreds of sittings in his professional career, but none like this. This was a totally alien environment and he had absolutely no clue as to what, if anything, would happen. Hopefully, nothing would and they could get back to finding a way out of here.
“I bless this room and everything and everyone within it,” she began. “Let God and his Angels see this place in their Heavenly sight and shine their light upon it. Lord God, let thee in thine eternal grace take this place back from the powers of darkness and bring it back into thy domain, oh Lord. May you bring thine tortured child’s soul away from terrible grasp and away from his eternal wandering and bring him, oh Lord into your majesty. Amen” The prayer was finished, the basic ’hello’ was done. Ernest heaved a deep sigh of relief and allowed some of his muscles to relax a little. And now came the job of forming a strong spiritual bond with the ghost she wished to contact, something which no doubt involved strange and unusual bodily movements, something he seen many times in the past. Sarah began to slowly rotate her head in long, protracted circles, her breathing becoming a little louder but still sounding calm and relaxed, as if she was settling into a deep sleep. Ernest couldn’t help but curiously watch the strange spectacle of it all before him, the bizarreness and weirdness of whatn was involved and necessary from a medium to establish a connection with a spirit. It was something that no matter how many times he had seen it already, it never ceased to mystify him.
Sarah’s breathing then began to grow much more stronger now, more laboured, more intense, as though she was suffering from a nightmare. Her gently closed eyes began to look more and more intense, more terrified, her head began to shake violently from side to side. Ernest looked in mute amazement as her fingers began to clench and tighten, her sharp fingernails digging and cutting into the wooden armrests and making long, deep gashes. Her breathing now sounded more and more agitated, much more forceful, Ernest could do nothing but watch. Her head and upper body slowly started to shake and fall steadily downwards toward the floor, as if all her strength were just draining away from her. Then, the terrible thought came to mind. Oh, my god. She’s choking, she can’t breath!
Ernest wasted no time in running towards her and under the terrible brunt of only having a mre few seconds before it was probably too late to help her for him to think what he should do, all the time watching her slowly grow weaker and weaker. He looked in all directions, constantly biting his nails and taking tight hold of his jacket and trousers, hearing nothing but the tortured responses from his weakening patient. Then, in the space of only a single milisecond, Sarah’s frightening symptoms disappeared completely, leaving her sat silently and perfectly still in her chair, her whole upper body completely covering her legs and her head spilling out over her knees down to the floor. Ernest quickly looked her over and made sure she was alright. She was definitely still breathing, this time back to normal and much steadier, her heart was still beating normally, a little faster than normal, but still within safe guidelines.
“Sarah?” He said as softly as he could in an almost inaudible whisper, gently taking hold of her head. “Sarah can you hear me?” He began to gently ease her head back up when he suddenly stopped as he heard strange, unfamiliar words in the form of a whisper being uttered from her mouth in a voice that was deep and almost cruel sounding, a voice that was definitely not her own.
“Reality is nothing but a point of view.” She said in an eerie, almost strangely professional manner that sounded like static, as if she was speaking over the air-band of an old radio. Her blank, empty eyes staring down at the floor. “It is habit. The reality of driving to work every morning, taking your children to School, saying your prayers when you go to Church, when you kiss your lover goodnight when you go to bed. Your tape recorder is where you left it, on the table. It is all habitual, taking the same journeys each day, knowing the paths intimately. You could walk them in your sleep. You only see the doors that leade to these paths ahead of you, or, perhaps you only see the doors you want to see. You try to ignore the ones which beckon to you, call out from the darkness, from the shadows, the edges of your being. You decided to walk through them and the door shuts behind you, abandoning you on a path which leaves you to ferret your own mind for the way out. But, then again, once you are inside this gloom-filled abyss of nothingness, it is then difficult to say exactly whether you are locked up inside this place, or that you are locked outside, away from the maelstrom. Life, as well as this place, Dr Furlong, is an endless labyrinth of doors. It is up to you which one you must take, the one which leads to despair and eternal dissasociation with your own reality, or the one which leaves your troubled past, the distorted path behind you. Choose, my friend. Dum, dum, dum, do, do, do, de, de.” A bizarre and surreal small set of distorted hummings followed the dubious and complex unearthly statement that was uttered from her lips. Ernest was left in total amazement over the whole thing, his mouth open and hanging down, his wild, glazed eyes staring down at Sarah’s unresponsive figure as she remained staring down absently at the floor. Who was it that was speaking? The child she was trying to contact, one of the many dark spirits that could possibly haunt this place, or was it Sarah’s own mind taking possesion of her, a split-personality that had emerged from the ill-effects that this building produced, taking on the persona of a dark, mysterious entity. Ernest turned his head slightly to the right away from Sarah and down toward the floor in front of the fireplace, his mind reeling and mulling over the endless and seemingly limitless answers to it all. But, it was all too much for him, too much for his simple mind to handle. This place, this haunted, diseased, insane, void, illusion, whatever anyone wanted to call it, it was a totally foreign landscape that any human ion the world had no chance of understanding. There are too many levels, too many complexities to it that take it beyond a simple haunted house.
It was beyond anything Ernest had ever encountered and he thought he had seen it all during his unique and colourful life. But, none of that was important right now, journeys of the mind and philosophical ramblings were not Ernes’ts strong point, that would be the task of the world’s greatest philosophers. He mentally pulled himself back to the here and now and reaffirmed his position. He returned his attention back to Sarah and delicately reached out his hands out toward her to somehow snap her back into reality.
“Sarah,” he said delicately, licking his lips and remaining as steady as he could. “Sarah, are you alright? Please, please wake up.” As his trembling, cold fingers reached out and made contact with Sarah’s shoulder, she immediately snapped back out of her frozen silence, flinging her body back up into the air with her arms raised high above her, screaming out a high shrill, agonised cry out into the surrounding room. Ernest’s heart shot out like a bullet from his chest in absolute shock and terror, holding out his shaking, rigid hands out in front of him in a defensive posture as he fell backwards to the floor banging his head against a tall, metallic pillar. He quickly dragged himself back up into an upright position and stared directly at Sarah in her frightening, pain-filled performance as still she sat in her chair, frozen into a fixed, unflinching posture of pain and terror with her arms raised up high, her fingers reaching and grabbing at the air above her, her face an agonised expression filled with mortal dread and unimaginable pain. Ernest grunted as he felt a sharp pain at the back of his hand and reached toward it with his hand, feeling the deep gash he had and seeing the dark red blood on his fingers. His head jerked upward suddenly as he watched in horror as Sarah broke free of her tormented, statuesque position and fell hard and noisily on her knees against the floor. She began to cry and sob loudly and painfully as a child would when it is severly injured, her tears streaming down her face and chaning her make-up into streaks of black around her eyes. She reached out toward the floor with her hands and clawed and gouged at the hard, concrete stone, banging against it with her fists as she yelled slightly inaudible words of pain, grief, torment, madness and imprisonment.
Ernest ignored the by-now increased sharp pain in his head and jumped toward Sarah across the floor, grabbing her arms tightly as she flung them in all directions in her dessperation to break free, constantly attempting to crudely gouge out a hole in the solid floor, her shrill, agonised cries drowning out Ernest’s shouts as he tried desperately to calm her down.
It took many minutes to free her from her seemingly unending cries as she was locked into an impenetrable cage of self-hypnosis.. Finally, Sarah snap out of it as in the space of a single second, she ceased and fell lifelessly into Ernest’s arms, her face only a few seconds ago filled with pain and despair was now peaceful and totally untroubled. Ernest stared down at this abhorrent transformation in total amazement and confusion. He quickly checked her pulse and her breathing and determine that she was still alive and well, her pulse amazingly was perfectly steady and rhythmic. He gently patted Sarah on her cheeks and rubbed her hands warmly as he gently roused her back to consciousness.
Sarah began to groan and screwed up her eyes, slowly moving her head from side to side. She flickered her eyes as she became accustomed to the level of lighting and looked up at Ernest’s relieved face. She reached toward her face and moved the side of her away from her eyes before sitting up and taking a look around, all the time Ernest stared at her as he waited for any change in her behaviour, her left hand sitting comfortably inside his. She turned her head and looked questioningly at him, briefly looking down him holding her hand and immediately retracting it. Ernest mad eno attempt to stop her.
“What happened?” She asked him in the calmest voice of all. “Did we make contact? Did the child speak through me? What did it say, please, I jave to know, we have to help it before it’s late.”
Ernest remained sat beside her, his mouth partly open and his eyes looking all over as he tried to convey to her in words exactly what happened. “I don’t know what happened.” He said. “You starting uttering some strange words that looked as they weren’t being spoken by you. It was . . .it was as if it was a voice speaking out through an old, battered radio, taking about there being many paths in life, or something. Then you went silent and I tried to wake you up. You raised your arms high into the air and screamed, then you pounded at the ground, looking as if you wanted to get through ti to somewhere.”
Sarah listened to him absently, her eyes half closed and her mouth slightly hanging open as she tried to make sense of what he was saying to her. She suddenly screwed up her eyes and uttered a sign of pain as she took a comforting hold of her right hand and gently massaged it, instantly noticing the large bruises that had appeared all across her knuckles.
“We’ve got to get that dealt with.” Ernest said. “I’ve got a small first-aid kit in my bag, I’ll just-”
“No,” Sarah said cutting him off. “That’s unimportant. The child is what’s important, I have to help it cross over. Otherwise, It’ll remain trapped her forever.” She slowly brought herself up on her feet and looked down at Ernest in deeply serious way.
Ernest looked up at her and sighed, allowing his arms to absently fall at his sides. “And I don’t suppose me telling you that we need to escape this place right now will change your mind?”
“You can try to get out of here if you wish,” she said, “but I’m going to try to help the child, with or without you. I’d prefer it if you was with me, the I’d stand a better chance of gaining its trust. We can help it together, you and me.”
Ernest wasted no time in making up his mind, taking only the time he used to stand up to think about it. “No,” he said. “I’m coming with you. I’m not going to allow you to roam round this place all alone. You need someone with you to make sure you’ll be alright. From now on, we stick together, always. This place is too dangerous to go anywhere alone.”
“What about the others, though?” Sarah asked. “They’re around here somewhere, they might not have found each other in these rooms and corridors. What do we do about them?”
Ernest hated to admit that he had simply forgetten about Father Heathers and Dr Stephenson and hadn’t the faintest idea where they were or what could have happenbed to them. But, he also had to admit that wherever they were, they had stay there, there was simply not enough time to look for them in this immense structure and get himself and everyone else out into the world and away from this nightmare. The forces that lived in here were already well on there way to swallowing all of them up completely, even there minds judging from the things he had experienced already.. He ignored Sarah’s question and began to walk in front of her toward the door that led into the corridor. “Come on,” he said “We’ll try and find the child, wherever it could be.”
Sarah watched him go and sighed before turning round and blowing out the candle in front of her, returning the room once again to a void of darkness.
Chapter Nineteen
The corridor outside was dank and musty as they stepped out of the room, like the inside of a wardrobe that hadn’t been opened in years. The door behind them seemed to slam loudly as they closed and locked it, despite the fact that they had closed it as quietly and slowly as they could, as if it had been made of some strong metal. The sound echoed for a few moments in the walls all around them before quickly disappearing off into total silence, leaving them to bear witness to the claustrophobic, repulsive and yet strangely charming décor of the corridor.
The corridor was long in size as they looked at, like the sheer length of an anaconda’s body, but it also bore the creatures tiny, pipe-like width making Ernest and Sarah uncomfortable to be standing inside it, almost as if they were trapped alive in the frightening bowels of a sleeping beast as it waited for its digestive juices to consume them.
A large sheet of accumulated dust had gathered like the remains of a large, long-decayed creature all across the dark red carpet beneath their feet. The intricate gold lace running along the sides was almost completely unseen underneath the choking grimy decay that steadily, but surely consumed it. The walls were made of stone and appeared severely jagged as sharpened edges of the stonework began to force their way through the torn and faded dark green wallpaper above.
A very thin layer of cold, colourless, odourless water was collected in pools in various places where the floor had sunken in down into the earth, reducing the bottom layers of the dark wood panelled floor to crumbling fibres. In the right hand corner of them, a small chair with a deep-green cushioned seat sewn into it had fallen on its side and water trickled around it forming a tiny stream onwards down into the darkness of the corridor where the torchlight could not reach.
Ernest shook his head a little and sighed before fumbling around in his jacket pocket for the map until he found it wet and soggy in his hand before he unfolded it and began to study it, passing the torch over to Sarah for her to hold up and shine at the map. Both of them gasped in shock as the two of them noticed the same bizarre image before them, confused at the sheer weirdness of it all, Sarah almost dropped the torch in surprise and fear. Over half of the map had completely disappeared for them sheet, leaving behind only the outer corridors and small insignificant rooms behind. The long horizontal and vertical black lines that represented the solid walls suddenly stopped to a dead-end where they should have continued on to form the rest of the map, including the area where they now stood.
“I just . . .I just don’t understand it.” Ernest said under a laboured breath. “How could this happen, I mean , how could . . .This isn’t possible.”
“Perhaps it was the water,” Sarah suggested as she tried to imagine a simple, more earthly possibility. “I mean, the map got damp when we used deep down in the cellar, remember? It froze up, we had to peel it apart and dry it off on the stove. I don’t think we looked at it very much during that time, so perhaps the water made the ink wet and it all ran away. It’s possible isn’t it?”
Ernest remained still looking at the map in-between his hands, his mouth closed and his eyes screwed up into an expression of deep concentration. “Oh, yes, its possible.” He said finally. “Its possible for somewhere other than this place. You know as well as I do that when the map was wet, it wasn’t just wqet, it was absolutely soaking, the water would have erased the entire drawing and left us with nothing but a blank piece of paper. This looks as though it has been deliberately erased, or . .or that it had only originally been printed with half the original blueprints. I mean, this is just going against the laws of reality, its just disappeared. But, how do we find our way, now? How do we get out of here?”
Sarah panned the torch in his face for a moment before panning it round and moving it along the walls around them and down towards the darkness of the other end of the corridor to the right of them where she saw a small alcove with a high arch and a small staircase. For a moment, Ernest thought he caught a glimpse of a tall, shrouded figure standing on the staircase and staring at him, but after briefly panning the torch over, he saw that there was nothing there.
“Its alright,” she said as calmly and absently as possible. “I’ll get us out of here, I know the way. You just follow me, alright?” She turned to him and gave him a small, slightly unsual smile before turning to the right and heading down the corridor toward the staircase, the torchlight shining in front of her. Ernest simply remained where he stood and watched her go with a deeply confused and anxious expression on his face. How did she know where to go of all people? How could she possibly know the layout of the areas they needed to go when both of them had only looked at the map on a few occasions? Did she know something he didn’t, something about this place? Was it her quirky and unusual gifts that allowed to sense some kind of a beacon sent by friendly spirits that someone normal like him couldn’t pick up on? How is that in a matter of only a few seconds she had been as confused and frightened as he had over the map and had suddenly changed and became confident and untroubled again? Was she quite herself, had this place somehow altered her mind or had something malevolent took hold of her soul and was now controlling her? After all, he had seen it a small amount of times before.
His mind swam with doubt, distrust and confusion. But, no matter what the reason, he had to follow her, even if she was wrong. There was no way in hell he was going to go it alone in this place. He ran forward a little until he caught up with her and walked by her side, their footsteps squelching noisily as they waded through the puddles of water and moist carpeted floor.
They reached the staircase and stopped just in front of the alcove. Sarah shined the torch into it and exposed the staircase inside. The staircase, like the floor of the corridor was covered with a long, dark-red sheet with intricate gold stitchwork woven into its sides. The sheet was nailed down crudely into the steps which appeared to be made of whitewashed pieces of wood nailed together to form each individual step, not stone as it was with much of the house. The staircase ran downward a little for around four feet before coming up against a white, cracked stone wall and being forced to form a slightly longer horizontal step before it continued its downward descent into a blackened, mysterious abyss.
Sarah stood pointing at the staircase until the light could reach no more, Ernest stood beside her with an unashamed look of intense fear and agitation on his face. Must we go down here? He thought, not wanting to speak it aloud and pour hot water on the matter that was in hand. Why can’t these damned spirits ever linger in places where there’s light and somewhere for all to see, instead of lingering in the deepest, darkest shadows?
“Its down their.” Sarah said flatly with her eyes fixed on the darkening staircase. “The spirit is waiting for me down their, I know it.”
She began to walk toward the staircase and prepared to make her way down before Ernest grabbed her by the shoulders, stopping her in her tracks. “What is it?” Sarah asked in a slightly annoyed tone. “Are you afraid to go down here? I told you before, It is not necessary for you to come with me. I can do this alone perfectly well.” Ernest tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come out. He held a fist in front of his mouth and coughed hard, clearing his throat. “I just . . .I just don’t trust this spirit child of yours or its intentions. I mean, you obviously have been communing with it for a considerable time now and you know its ways, but I haven’t, I’ve been cursed with a suspicious mind. But, how do you know that this spirit isn’t just one of the many dark souls that haunts this place and its using the persona and disguise of a frightened child to get us down there?”
Sarah smiled a pitying smile and turned her toward him a little. She put her hand on his left hand that still gripped like a frightened child to her shoulder. “It’s alright,” she said calmly. “I know you’re afraid. After all, I would be too if I hadn’t had the same experience in spirits that I’ve had already. You are ignorant to the powers of these souls, you haven’t studied it as intently as I have because you didn’t need to. But, its alright, you know. Its normal to be afraid, to be afraid of the truth if you can’t see it. But, just stock with me and I will guide you. The truth is down there for us both to discover.”
Ernest slowly let go of her shoulders and allowed his arms to fall by his sides. Sarah turned her head back to the staircase and began to follow it down.” “What truth?” Ernest asked. But, she didn’t answer him as she made considerable progress down the steps, the square pieces of wood that formed each step creaked noisily and worryingly as she rested her weight on them. Ernest quickly followed her until he was right behind and they both descended further into the deep blackness that yawned blackly back at them.
The journey seemed to take forever as they walked, guided only by the torchlight in front of them shining out like a guiding beacon. Through the glowing light of the torch, they could see the makings of the seemingly endless, sloping staircase they traversed. It was made of white stone with a considerably roughened surface, each individual stone being around the size of a large house brick. The steadily decaying stonework had formed two separate elongated streams of white chalk down both sides of the staircase, filling the air with an almost invisible layer of dust that made both of them cough and grunt occasionally.
The two of them listened intently to everything around them as they descended as they desperately tried to hear anything to shake off the unnerving, deafening , dank silence.
Neither of them said a word as they walked, nothing to each other that would even ligthen the mood, releave the anxiety and lift their spirits. They were too tired to anything anymore, but search for a way out. To Sarah, her way out meant saving the soul of the poor spirit child that was trapped in here almost as if it had been nailed up tight into a small wooden box. It was her job after all, her profession, her career, as well as her master passion. Though, off the record, it was also personal, after admitting her deep, secret, own personal demon to the child as she tried to gain its trust. Hopefully, helping the child cross over and claim its deserved eternal peace would lay her own ghosts to rest, allow her own past to wither and die, along with all the pain that was tightly woven around it. Then, if all went well and she felt a breathtaking tranquillity within herself, she would escape with Ernest. The thought crossed her mind of whether Ernest was himself searching for something within the dank, sordid, musty confines of Vautusceen House. She felt slightly embarrassed for not asking. Perhaps that was their purpose here, to fight the inner demons that so tormented them in a final last stand and either subdue and cast them out, or allow them to totally comsume them, destroying their minds as well as their futures. Hopefully, whatever Ernest was looking for in here, he would eventually find it.
They had both been walking for what seemed like an hour down into the ever-deepening silent abyss when they both stopped in their tracks and held their arms, gripping the surrounding, claustrophobic surroundings as well as each other and listened hard. From out of the yawning black abyss came a low, deep cavernous bellow that rushed out and rushed past invisibly past them up the steps like a bodiless ghost unnerving those it rushed by with its feather-like touch. Neither of them could tell whether the bellowing was human, or otherwise. It was like nothing either of them had encountered before.
The unnatural occurance ceased after only a few seconds, plunging them both back into the same inky-black still silence. They hardly had time to catch their breaths and look at each other in a frightened but calming way before it began again, this time sounding as though it was slightly louder and even more closer. Ernest held his head in his palm and gritted his teeth as he felt a strong migraine coming on.
“Are you alright?” Sarah asked reaching out with her long, dexterous fingers.
“I’m alright,” he said with a gentle nod. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, it just came on all of a sudden. Maybe it’s the air in here, its filled with dust and chalk, that’s liable to give anyone a bad headache. Actually, I don’t even know whether or not it’s safe for us to be in here if the air is so bad. Perhaps we should leave and find something to cover our noses and mouth with.”
Sarah looked at him sharply as she tightly gripped hold of the torch. “No,” she said. “We have to keep going, the child needs me, it needs my help. If I just leave it here, even for a few minutes, then the dark spirits will be able to increase their stranglehold of him, maybe it harder for me to release from this purgatory. The sound from below us, the polluted air, it’s all there to give us incentive to turn back. And I’ve turned my back for far too long. I’ll see this through to the bitter end. Come on.”
Suddenly, she took a tight hold of his hand and pulled him sharply as she raced down the steps even further into the growing darkness, almost making him slip and fall on the dusty, rotting steps before he quickly found his footing. Ernest’s headache seemed to quickly grow in strength and ever increasing pain as they went further and further, deeper and deeper into the looming question mark that lay before them, becoming so powerful that it almost felt as though his cranium would suddenly split open and his brains would explode. He gritted his teeth together evn more as the agonising pain began to grow more and more intense, biting down so hard that he prepared himself for his teeth dislodging.
The bellowing continued around them, first in slow, steady rhythm’s of around six seconds between each cavernous exhale, then louder and louder with even shorter amounts silence between each, giving away the indication that they were heading down to something important.
On and on they went down the infinite number of creaking, wooden steps. Sarah taking the leade with a hardened, determined expression on her face, followed half-heartedly by Ernest who was by now gripping his forehead so tightly that his nails dug into the skin of his forehead and trickles of blood began to perspire. The bellowing was now powerful enough for them to shield their ears from its disco-like volume and try their best to ignore it. Now, their were no pauses between each succession as the bellowing simply continued without stopping or relenting as though it were a void that desperately tried in vain to keep them from advancing further.
Then, a small sense of relief fell on Ernest’s shoulders as he quickly scrambled back on his own two feet and found that the steps had ceased and he was now standing on what felt like a horizontal floor. “We’ve made it!” Sarah said excitedly. Ernest barely heard hear as he struggled to fend off the few final streaks of pain that shot like bullets through his brain, releasing a deep sigh and feeling a weight lift from his shoulders as he felt the pain finally subside and returned to his half-awake, drowsy state.
“Where are we?” He asked gently rubbing his head and blinking his eyes as he tried to clearly see what was before him.
Through his slightly distorted vision, he saw Sarah carefully studying what looked like a solid wall in front of her with the torchlight. Slowly, she ran the light across every inch of the wall before she finally stopped and kept it still halfway up from the floor. “I’ve got it.” She said as he heard an intense, deep grinding sound and then a long drawn-out, ear-shattering creak and realised that it was a door that she had found, opening it to yet another void of a blackened abyss. She panned the torch down to the floor of the other side of the door before turning back to him.
“It looks as though the floor on the other side is at least a few inches below the bottom of the door, so be careful.”
What? Ernest failed to see the sense of building a door above the floor level, but then again, he failed to understand even the basic logic of the demonic devils that built this place. But then, he didn’t really care the reason for it at all, all he cared about was finding a way to escape this place. Slowly and carefully, they began to make their way through and carefully find their footing on the other side.
The faint sound of trickling water grabbed both their attention as their feet hit the floor on the opposite side. Sarah panned the torch downwards and saw that the entire level of the floor was filled with water around a few inches deep. She pulled up her heeled shoes a little higher above her ankle as the thought of walking in putrid, dirty water that had been allowed to remain for over a century running across her skin suddenly came to mind and instantly sickened her.
Running the torchlight across their immediate surroundings, they saw that they were inside a long dark tunnel that was made completely of stone. As it was inside the staircase leading down here, fragments of the stonework had long since fell down to the watery floor below and had created small piles of dust all over the water. Both of them listened intently to the near-complete silence of the tunnel, broken only by the gentle lapping and dripping of the cloudy, dirty water that swelled around their feet. Ernest held his breath suddenly as he heard a small buzzing sound somewhere close by. He jerked backward suddenly with a start as he heard it coming from right behind him, knocking into Sarah as he went. Sarah quickly panned the torch up to where he looked and both of them relaxed as they saw that the buzzing came from a small number of flies congregating near the ceiling. They both collected themselves and began to make their way down the tunnel, wading the water as they went.
At least something normal and earthbound exists down here. Ernest thought as he imagined the flies living down in this squalid environment. Strangely, he felt slightly more at ease with the knowledge of their presence. At least it was something recognisably ordinary in the twisted confines of this place.
The air around them was thick with an intense odour that smelled like earth or fertilizer that had long been left to rot in the open air, stale, rotten and filled with the numerous corpses of insects and small animals with their putrifying flesh sinking deeper and deeper into the dirt. The powerful distaste of it in their mouths and nostrils forced them to cover them up with their hands, almost choking on the horrid, death-like quality of it. The whole experience felt like walking through a morgue with the air-conditioning switched off and the corpses had been left to decay for months in the middle of the summer.
Then, suddenly, Ernest heard something pierce the surrounding silence and hit his eardrums like a misguided flying insect, instantly drawing up pleasant and terrible memories from his past.
Amy! He thought agonisingly. It was a voice, a voice that was calling to him, calling his name softly, a voice that was unmistakably hers and hers alone. It sounded sweet, at least, as sweet as a the voice of a dead girl can be in an otherwise silent, yet, unnaturally silent place. It was soft and gentle, like the feeling of rose petals against his skin, bringing nothing but beauty and perfection his way. He began to walk slower as he became more and more caught up in the sweet-sounding voice, his eyes staring child-like up at the ceiling, but only half-aware of what he was seeing. A bright smile appeared on his face as the voice seemed to grow louder. It wasn’t in his head, it wasn’t his imagination, he was sure of it. But, then, why couldn’t Sarah hear it? She had the gift, surely she could pick up on it? Was she not paying attention?
“Can’t you hear it?” He asked her appealingly. “Can’t you hear that?”
Sarah stopped and turned around, panning the torch in his face, curious to see him in mixture of intense anticipated pleasure and extreme puzzlement. “What do you mean,” she asked. “Hear what? I can’t hear anything.”
“But, you must do.” He said, his eyes glazed and wide-open with great tension. “It’s her voice, calling to me from the darkness. She’s around here somewhere, I know it. It’s clear as a bell, don’t tell me you can’t hear it. You have the gift.”
Sarah remained silent for a moment as the two of them stared at each other, Ernest’s eyes full of great intention and hope while Sarah’s were deep, concentrated and curious. The sound of the ceaselessly buzzing insects nearby was the only sound audible for several minutes. “It’s true,” she said finally. “I have the gift to hear the dead, but whoever it is that you’re talking about, I can’t hear them and can’t even sense anybody down here except for the child, but I can also sense that they’re not someone you would know. They died a hundred years ago. I am sorry I cannot be any help to you, obviously you’ve lost someone close to you and you want to reach them, but whatever it is that you’re hearing, it can’t be the voice of the dead. I’m sorry.”
Ernest didn’t say anything and merely looked down dejectedly at the floor, watched as the putrid, cloudy water gathered around his ankles like invisible snakes, coiling and twisting around him and bringing loose dirt and gravel and dead insects in their wake.
“It’s alright,” he said emptily. It doesn’t matter. Let’s get going, we have work to do.”
He walked hurriedly past Sarah as he waded through the water. Sarah reached out to him with her hand, but he ignored it, keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the darkness before them. Something was hurting him deep inside, Sarah could tell that, something that undoubtedly ripped at his soul so much that he couldn’t talk about it. Whoever he had lost that he so fiercely believed was speaking to him she couldn’t hear and validate it for him. For the first time in her life, she felt like so many others who she had tried to console when she had tried to reach their loved ones. She could hear so many voice, while they heard nothing and it tormented them. For all of them, and for Ernest as well, she could be nothing but sorry for them.
Further and further they walked on down the pitch-black tunnel, the darkness broken only by the small, almost insignificant amount of light beaming from the torch and on down into the mysterious depths ahead. The water splashed loudly as they slowly waded through it and gently bounced and reflected against the cold, hard stone of the walls on either side, the sound accompanied by the gentle constant buzzing of the immense number of unseen flies around them. Terrible thoughts of countless unknown virus’s and diseases living in immense colonies within the murkiness of the water finding their way onto them and into their bloodstream burrowed deep into their minds, attacking them with fears that were invisible and yet terribly real, fears of catching something which needed immediate treatment that otherwise could lead to terrible pain or even death. The true horror’s that existed in the world outside existed right here in the murky, sordid depths of a diseased, almost maniacal structure.
After nearly ten minutes of slowly following the tunnel straight ahead, they found a dead end in front of them and the tunnel continuing to the left. Both of them stopped for a moment as Sarah used the torchlight to scan ahead a little way and ensure that it was safe, all the while the terrible water lapped against their feet and legs, bringing with it terrible worries of their own mortality that they tried desperately to fight. In a strange way, trying to fight off the possible risk of contamination from the water or even the air they breathed seemed the most worrying of their troubles right now, making the idea of vengeful, murderous, evil spirits returning from the dead to destroy them something they could almost laugh at, shrug off their shoulders as being nothing more than a mediocre horror film shown in the late-night BBC horror slot.
After a moment, Sarah stepped backwards and grabbed Ernest by his sleeve and gently pulled him forwards as she walked on. Ernest was too infuriated with his present situation to even care what might or might not be ahead of them, waiting in the darkness to attack them, despite his previous thoughts of their being nothing to worry about,. He had studied this for long enough to know the dire consequences of laughing away the powers of darkness that hid in the outskirts of human awareness. He had been on the front lines of the scientific study of this phenomenon and had seen first-hand evidence of it’s power. Deep down, he knew that simply ignoring it was of no use whatsoever. He thought of the reasons that had brought him here to this terrible place, his greed for the thousands of pounds promised to him by the damn Brotherhood, his irresistible desire to uncover the hidden secrets of this building and be the first to put his unique testing methods to a previously unknown area in the field of scientific study of the dead. His pointless selfish desires had brought him to this place,a hopeless decrepit building that was no better than a parasite as it burrowed its way deeper and deeper into the contaminated earth beneath its foundations, poisoning the land with its unspeakable darkness.
God damn me, he thought scoldingly. Why do I never learn, stay away, stay away from something that is completely untouched. This damn decision has probably brought me to an early grave.
Ernest was so caught up in his tormented thoughts that he failed to notice that both of them had stopped and were now standing in front of a seemingly impassable stone wall. Sarah felt the wall with her hands and realised that there was something metallic and very cold within the wall. Throwing the bright beam of the torchlight across it, she realised that it was a large metallic door with a tiny grille in the upper part of it. She pointed the torchlight as far as she could into the grille, but could see nothing on the other side. She tried the small metallic doorknob and felt a strong sense of hope and relief when she saw that it was unlocked. She didn’t know what she would have done if it was locked, forcing her to maybe abandon any hopes of saving the poor spirit child. She thought of Ernest, how he was a man who was strong and could have aimed his strong shoulders at the door until it came free. But, what with it being metal and all. But, after all, it didn’t matter, it was unlocked and hopefully they wouldn’t have to go much further from here.
“It’s a door,” she said enthusiastically without turning her head. “I can’t see what’s on the other side from here, but just stay close to me and we’ll be alright. I can feel the child more strongly now, it’s definitely deep inside here somewhere. The poor thing must be trapped.”
But Sarah’s words were lost to Ernest as he fell deeper and deeper into his fragmented and tortured thoughts, despair overwhelming him, his eyes looking blankly and emptily at the dark, muddy water around his feet.
Sarah swiftly turned the doorknob over to the right and a loud, intense metallic griding escaped from the door and echoed out down the tunnel behind them. Slowly, she began to open the door, feeling very uncomfortable at the gripping, squeaking, griding sound that the door made as it was forcibly pulled out of its century-long position.
The door finally came open completely as she rested it against the wall and allowed her to point the torchlight ahead of her. Annoyance, irritation and crossed words filled her thoughts as she saw that what she hoped was another tunnel was just a dead-end just six-feet in front of her. Nothing was behind this door except for a small, almost tiny empty room that yielded no doors or windows of any kind that would allow further passage. With a strong grunt of frustration, she banged the wall hard with her fist and threw the torch down to the floor, instantly recoiling back into the tunnel behind her and holding as much as she could to the doors when she saw that instead of the torch banging against the cold, stone floor beneath, it continued to fall down into a seemingly limitless black hole beneath her that covered the entire floor level of the small room, the small beam of light twirling round and round as it made its seemingly endless spiralling descent down into the darkness below.
With her mouth half-open in mute shock, she slowly turned and tightly pulled on Ernest’s collar and sleeves as she brought him to look at the hole before the final trickle of light from the falling torch finally disappeared. The shock and surprise of it snapped Ernest back out of his tortured mental wanderings and back to the present situation.
“How deep do you think it is?” Sarah asked him with a slightly quivering voice.
For a few moments, Ernest didn’t asnwer, the sheer depthness of the hole was too much to consider as he stared blankly and open-mouthed at it for a good few minutes.
“I don’t know,” he said flatly, still trying to comprehend what he was looking at. The quickly fading torchlight had by now completely disappeared beneath the canopy of blackness above it. Ernest tried his best to listen out for it crashing against something hard like stone or brick, anything that hinted that it wasn’t just a bottomless pit, but that it had an end to it. But, the harder he listened, the more he became convinced that there was nothing down there but darkness.
He pulled himself back up to a straightened position, felt a slight ache in his back and massaged it for a few moments with his hands. “I don’t understand how this could be here,” he said to Sarah. “Back before the map lost over half of its details, I studied it intently quite a few times, I remember scanning every inch of thi splace, the walls, the doors and details about each room, but I don’t remember seeing anything that looked like a hole in the basement anywhere.”
“Perhaps it was something the Brotherhood didn’t know about when they drew up the map.” Sarah said helpfully. “After all, they themselves said that they hadn’t ventured in here for more than a century. Perhaps they didn’t explore everywhere part of the house, or they simply forgot this simple detail.”
Ernest looked at the hole before him in a sideways glance with a sly smile on his face. “Yes, well, remember that it was them that trapped us here in the first and told us themselves that they have no intention of helping us. We can’t hang on their every word and trutst their point of view. All I know is that here we have a deep, dark hole that as far as I know isn’t supposed to exist. I have no idea how far it stretches or whether or not we survive the fall I we jumped down and left it up to fate. Anyway, this may the only way down there. Even if we achieve what we’ve set out to do or one of us breaks a leg, or something, there may be now way to get back. We could be trapped down there and slowly starve to death.”
Sarah tightened her fists and looked at him with a slight annoyed expression. “But, the child is down there, Ernest. We have to help it. We’ve come this far and we can’t turn back now.”
“Look,” Ernest said holding up his hands. “I don’t care, it’s too dangerous for anyone to go down there. We’ll just have to return back upstairs and pray to god that the spirit of this child will find its peace.”
Sarah tightened her fists even more till they were white and took a step toward him. “You don’t care,” She said shouting loudly. “What do you mean you don’t care!?” She pointed down to the hole with her index finger till it was long and stiff. “That poor child is down there, you monster and it needs our help. Don’t you want to help me, or do you only want to care about yourself all the time, self, self, always, others last!”
Ernest was shocked at this sudden outburst, but equally full of shame. He tried to tell her that regardless of what she said, it was still very dangerous to go down there when neither of them knew what was awaiting them. He thought it slightly silly to pour so much resources and efforts to save someone who was already dead, but he neglected to tell her that.
“You’re suppose to help me,” Sarah said to him in a strong, emotional voice with a slight tear falling from her cheek. She took a slightly strong grip of his hand with of her hers and looked pleadingly into his eyes. “I know that it seems as though that rescuing the soul of a poor child who died a long, long time ago isn’t something that you would normally go out of your way for, but this poor child is in definite pain. I know , I’ve felt it. Plus . . .I’ve also felt it within my own body, in my own rocky past. This is a chance for me to put those dark days to rest, for good, as well as helping someone who is still feeling their great pain while I have been able to keep it at bay for so long. But, I need you with me to help you and take care of me. You’re my guiding light and I need you.
Countless thoughts of what he should and shouldn’t do passed through the by now overworked brain of his, his thoughts becoming so bunched up, tied up and knotted together that he found it difficult to know ehere he was anymore. But, finally, he knew that there was only one thign he had to do which was agree with her, go with her on her further descent into the bowles of this horrird building. He still thought that venturing down this hole was suicide and that they should turn back right now. But, he also knew that regardless of what he said, Sarah was going to continue with what she had set out to do, with or without him, regardless of the possible dangers that lay in wait for her deep inside the madness of this place. And, he knew also that he wasn’t going to allow her to proceed along tuis path alone. Too much had happened to them so far that he was going to allow something to happen again. If something happened to them down there or not, at least they would be together, much better than being alone.
“Alright, then,” he said optimistically. “Let’s get down there.”
Sarah smiled and wiped away the last traces of the tear from her face before both of them stepped as close as they could to the very edge of the hole. They took a tight hold of each others hands and jumped down together into the mysterious depths beneath them.
The journey down the seemingly endless blackened void was brief at that, despite the horrifying sight they had when the torch fell into its murky depths. Only a couple of minutes at least had passed before they ceased falling through the air and landed in a sore crumpled heap on a hard, yet unfamiliar feeling floor. But, the latter was something that they ignored for now. The experience of falling down the hole was frightening at best since they had absolutely no idea what , if anything they would come against when they eventually stopped. They could have broken their necks and lay bleeding to death, eyes open and staring at the darkness before them with no hope of rescue or escape from their nightmare. Their hands had been gripped tightly together during this experience and both of them had probably become very dehydrated from sweating perspiring a great deal. But, at least, for now the free-falling journey was over.
Both of them groaned as they felt the dull, throbbing pain from landing on a hard floor running through their backs, their arms and legs, but both of them refused flatly to waste any amount of time on it and simply carry on with the matter in hand. Before long, both of them were up and ready for anything, their eyes and ears open, their senses fully alert. Quickly scrambling back on his feet, Ernest made note of where the torch was lying just a few feet away from him and immediately picked it up, looking at it in amazement at how such a seemingly fragile object could survive falling down a considerable distance to wind up here on such a hard surface, logically it should have smashed to pieces, or at the very least simply refused to work or have a weak light. Although, logic or anything similar was nonexistent here. But, anyway, the fact that the torch was still in one piece was something to be thankful for.
Thank heaven’s for small mercy’s. Ernest thought gladly.
He thumbed the switch on the side of the torch and the light flashed on and off as he checked to make sure that it was still working fine. Every time, the light was perfect and bright. Good. The torch was their lifeline, without it they wouldn’t be able to see their hands in front of their faces and have no chance of getting out of their present surroundings.
Ernest helped Sarah up from the floor and gave her a quick check as he made sure that she was okay. No cuts, no bruises or anything of the kind, not even a slight mistake in her make-up. She was fine, better than fine in fact, she was perfect, something else he was rather surprised at.
Starting to walk forward, Ernest noticed an unusual sound whenever he dragged his soles across the floor. A strange scraping sound, a sound that was something like gravel covering the floor, or a mass collection of dead leaves that were brushed noisly across the floor whenever his feet pushed them away. Panning the torch downward, both of them noticed that the floor was completely covered in ash, countless torn pieces of dead leaves and small pieces of burnt wood. Both of them handled a few small clumps before deciding to ignore it and study the rest of their surroundings.
Running the torch across the walls around them, they saw that they were inside a very short corridor, eight-feet long at least and around four-feet in width. Fixed into position with long, bent, rusted nails in key positions along each wall were long planks of wood stretching from the ceiling that was only two-feet above them and straight down to the floor. Each plank was moist and almost seemed brittle and strangely, each of them were shaped into minture gallows, forming the infamous inverted ‘L’ shape as they stretched up and partly across the ceiling.
The strangeness and almost grotesqueness of this architectural oddity, coupled with the fact that both of them suddenly realising the similarity of the ash and burnt wood to cremated corpses and the hole they fell through to a disposal chute hit them hard with the same force as a sledgehammer striking against a cold, concrete wall, forcing them react quickly and immediately find their way forward in a brisk run.
Reaching the end of the mini-corridor, they found another possible barrier, yet another large steel door with a small grille and covered in dirt, water and grime, much dirtier than the other doors they had passed. Quite obviously, this part they now occupied hadn’t been entered in even more time than the upper levels. Ernest tried the doorknob, it wouldn’t budge, but he could tell that it wasn’t locked, merely jammed. Gently placing his open palm on the door and resting his weight against it, he pushed harder and harder until the door eventually came free and immediately swung open to reveal another gaping chasm of blackness beneath them, this one much larger than the last and seemingly much deeper. Ernest gasped in shock as his wide, glazed eyes caught sight of it, instantly pulling himself back into the corridor with the aid of Sarah as she pulled tightly on his jacket.
Ernest slowly slid down to the floor on his knees, his weakend hands still holding into the doorknob, his head resting disparingly on the cold hard steel of the door. “Oh, my god,” he said exhausted and distraught. “I can’t do it, I can’t go on any further. I mean, how many of these goddamn holes are there, we could be falling forever, straight down into hell for all we know.”
Sarah could do nothing but stand by his side with her arms limp, her face an image of defeat and hopelessness. It was pointless to try and coax him to continue, to fight on because now she could see his point. It did seem hopeless, they didn’t appear to be going anywhere, merely falling deeper and deeper into and ever darkening abyss of madness with no hope of escape. It almost seemed as if the black spirits of this diseased place were creating all of this for them, turning and twisting the rooms and corridors of this place or even of their own minds to watch in sadistic amusement at their folly.
But then, when hope and rational thought seemed lost, a sudden inexorable truth entered Ernest’s mind. If they stayed, they would mnost surely die. There was no way back up from where they now where and there were no other doors either side of them back to the upper levels or to anywhere else. The only way to go was down and there was nothing to do but carry on.
With a deep, defeatist sigh, Ernest slowly raised himself back up to his feet and the two of them stepped as close as they could to the edge of the hole, staring down into its empty, infinite void of darkness. Absolutely no light was penetrated from anywhere above or below, the only features they saw of the hole from where they stood was a perfectly smooth, cold stone wall, spanning from right above them to directly below them as far as the eye could see.
Ernest took hold of Sarah’s hand and the two of them gave each other a half-hearted smile before jumping down again into a gaping, yawning abyss of total mystery.
They again fell through the hole in a few minutes, their minds racing at the prospect of what awaited them below until finally they landed on a cold, smooth metallic floor. Ernest felt it strange that neither of them had sustained in getting any major injuries from landing hard against something equally hard and strong. By rights, they should have a broken leg or arm. He couldn’t understand it, but all of that was trivial right now. Wasting no more time, Ernest grabbed the torch from his pocket and panned it around to see just lay in waiting around them and immediately both of them caught a familiar sight.
Sitting in the corner in a dishevelled manner was Father Donald Heathers, slouched awkwardly against a grey, mud-streaked wall with his hands partly open and lying lifelessly on his dirty stretched-out legs. His clothes were dirty and ragged, torn in places as though he had recently been engaged in a vicious fight with someone. His mouth was partly open and occasionally breathing out long, slow exhales of air. Sleepy, almost dying eyes were just visible behind his near-completely closed eyelids.
A massive feeling of relief came over Ernest when he saw him, relieved that he was alive at least, that this place had swallowed him up in its seething, unbreakable darkness. He heaved a deep sigh and began to walk over to him, keeping the torchlight fixed on him as he went,a happy and delighted Sarah following behind him.
“Thank god you’re alive,” Ernest said happily. “We thought something had happened to you, we thought you’d been hurt, or something. Are you alright? Are you thirsty or hungry? Are you hurt?”
Father Heathers made not a sound as they approached, his glazed, absent, half-dead expression yielding nothing of any understanding beyond his own thoughts. His only gesture that he was aware of what was oppressing before him was him absently raising his arm to shield his eyes from the bright torchlight, his small chubby fingers hanging downward dejectedly toward the floor. “I . . .am . . .lost.” He uttered finally in a series of barely audible words as he stared emptily at the darkness and the dirty, eroding room around him. The surprise of it made Ernest and Sarah stop in their tracks and regard him with curiosity and puzzlement.
“What do you mean? Ernest asked him as he sat down a few feet in front of him. He chose not to seat himself right beside him, doing so could be dangerous given his present state. If he muscled in on his safety zone and shocked him out of his seemingly shellshocked state, he could create a very dangerous situation and one or more could get hurt, perhaps seriously.
“There is no place for me anymore.” He said again in a dejected, hopeless voice. He spoke in a way that he wasn‘t aware that Ernest and Sarah were right in front of him, seeming as though he was simply speaking the words to himself.
“My place in this world, it is no longer needed. What I had believed was all lies, I had built my life upon them they made up who I was. They were my body, my cells, my veins, my brain, my heart and my soul. But, in the end, that’s all I was really wasn’t it in the end, just and idea, a mirage. Just a part of something that was much great than myself. It needed me for its belief, for its desperate bid to believe in something more than itself, its need to create a place for itself in this deeply mysterious universe. But, that’s all over now, none of that is needed anymore. I have served the lies and the simple pleasant happiness I gave, now it’s simply time . . .to fade away.”
Ernest couldn’t understand a word of what he was saying and didn’t wish to know its meaning. He slowly and subtly took hold of his wrist and checked his pulse to ensure that it was strong and regular. It was a little slow, but still within the safety line. He gently placed his fingertips on the sides of his head and checked his eyes over, gently lifting up each eyelid and making a close examination of both. They were glazed and absent looking and strangely a little grey, almost as if he was or was on the way to going blind. He waved his flat palm slowly over his field of vision, but he didn’t follow it. It didn’t look as though he was blind, it seemed that he was simply absent, detached a little from reality. Hopefully it would only be tempory.
Ernest gently took hold of his head and turned round to face him. He didn’t whether or not he could see him or even hear, but he had to do something. “Father,” he said in a slightly loud tone. “Father Heathers, can you hear me? It’s me its Doctor Ernest Furlong, remember? We came here to this place, this old house called Vautusceen House, we’ve been trapped inside it.” He quickly had a look at his eyes to see whether he was making any kind of progress, but could still find no acute responses to his words. “Listen to me Father,” he said again, more forcibly this time. “You have to wake up, now. Do you hear me. Can you give me some kind of indication that you’re still with me, here in this room. You’re name is Father Donald Heathers, you came here with us. Can you tell me your name?”
But his words were lost as he spoke them to him, disappearing into the ther as they fell unheard and completely undiscovered against his ears. Ernest lowered his down defeatedly toward the floor, staring down at the streaks of mud and dirt that covered the smooth, concrete floor. He kicked his foot down hard against it, grunting in irritation his inability to help. He thought back to the memory of his daugther . . .falling. He couldn’t help her. He shed a tear and uttered a defeated whisper “I’m sorry.”
Shaking his head, he brought himself up from his knees and stood to his full height, just in time to see Father Heathers, slowly and absently move his head from side to side, his hands hanging lifelessly in the air and wavering above his knees, as though he was making some desperate attempt to bring himself back from the vpid of darkness and silence that he was so obviously trapped within. Ernest merely looked at him pathetically, feeling defeated and lost, cheated almost. There was nothing he could for him, just like before. He had lost again.
Father Heathers slowly brought his hands up toward Ernest in a yearning manner, as if he was pleading with him, asking him for help, his glazed, half-open eyes staring deathly at him. He formed his hands into a weak, miserable attempt at a prayer and shook his hands angrily in the air in front of him, his breathing becoming more and more laboured, growing distant and quiter with each breath.
Both Ernest and Sarah remained stood watching him like parents watching helplessly and hopelessly at the sheer alien behaviour of their mentally disabled child. Neither of them noticed the immense, metallic, shining blade that silently lowered itself from the darkness of the ceiling above, held in an almost gentle and uncompromising grasp by hands covered in a dull, brass, metallic armour casing. The blade hung silently and completely unseen in the air before it finally came swooping down in a circular arch down towards Father Heather’s neck, cleanly slicing and chopping through it like a knife through butter without any kind of effort. His head fell in a bloody pool on the floor, his body quivering momentarily at the sudden shock before it finally came crashing to the floor beside its severed head with a loud thud.
Ernest and Sarah could do nothing but watch with open gaping mouths at the terrible, nightmarish drama unfolding before them as they stood, frozen in place, powerless to help. Sarah slowly dropped to her knees and held up her head high, her eyes closed and her mouth open, transforming her angelic, virginal face into an expression of agonising woe. She held out her hands and her hands ope-palmed as though silently imploring to the intervention of a higher force.
Ernest held his slightly unstable standing posture beside her, the torch he held in his hand clattered noisily to the floor, his eyes wild and alert as he took in the whole terrible scene. He watched in silence as the armour-clad murderer slowly and silently descended from above, carried by four long separate chains made of black metal that hung down slightly as his feet finally met the floor.
The figure was tall and covered from head to toe in some kind of strange, masochistic metallic casings, almost like the armour worn by knights in the middle-ages. The head piece was rounded and perfectly shaped to fit over the whole head. The part were the face would be possessed two separate small circular holes with wire-like gauze stretched across. The rest of the armour was bulky and formed into simpler shaped body casings and seemed as though it was designed for someone with a bulkier body shape. Small quantities of blood ran out from long, horizontal empty slits in the forearms and lower legs, indicating that something sharp was embedded deep into the flesh, yet the faceless attacker made no sign or hint of pain or discomfort.
Ernest’s heart and intestines were ablaze with the fire of hatred and intense desires for revenge, the blood in his veins fired through like bullets, feeding him ample amounts of energy to fulfill his imminent desires. But, bizarrely, no matter how much he tried to lift himself from the ground, run over to the faceless killer and tear him apart, he couldn’t move with every effort of his will. He was rooted to the spot, as if some invisible force had hypnotised him to stand his ground. He couldn’t even speak or utter any kind of sound, he was merely forced to stand in complete, uninterrupted silence at the cryptic monster before him as it stood in equal total silence with the large, axe-like blade resting comfortable in its hands. Its invisible, unseen eyes peering deep into his mind. Sarah remained leaning against the floor with her arms outstretched and her eyes closed, her lips forming silent unfamiliar words to an unseen deity, her mind and conscious thought lost to what was happening around her.
The room grew dark all of a sudden as in the space of a fraction of a moment was plunged into total, unrelenting darkness as all light immediately dissipated from the room. For a few silent moments, it was just the two of them, nothing but Ernest and the silent killer together in their own empty universe, staring at each other in a blank, almost lifeless manner. Then, from out of the blackened void a shape slowly emerged as if it were forcing itself through the pitch-black canopy of the world outside and into their field of vision. It was a small child’s bed built low to the ground. The pipe-shaped pieces of metal that made up the basics were made of a strong kind of steel, long-ago subjected to the cruel signs of time and heavy rust. The headboard was formed from the same material with two, plump, roughened pillows leaning against it, covered in unfamiliar marks and beset with large gaping holes and crude tears. Draped across the matress of the bed was a large, thick blanket with a pattern of many squares dotted all across it, one eclipsing another and another.. The blanket was a very dull orange in colour and was covered in dust and a long, thick, intricately created cobweb. The blanket was lumpy as Ernest saw it through the only part of his body that he still had the freedom to move. It was bulging in various places and seemed as though there were something beneath.
He knew what this was, he recognised it the instant it came into view, but he refused to accept. It was simply another lie from the makers of this damned place, a lie designed to soften his mind and force his fierce self-control to quickly crumble to make him easier to subdue. But he wouldn’t let them in, he never allow them to gain a foothold, never-ever. Though, while his strong, reasoning mind forced him to ignore this abhorrent illusion, a part of him couldn’t resist the curiosity to peer closer, despite his every warning and wise position forcing it not to.
He looked closer as far as his frozen body would allow. He could make out parts of what was causing the bulge beneath the blanket. It was something large and hideous, something that seemed as though it had heavily-tanned skin, or skin that had gone well into the state of rotting and decaying after death. It was a very dark brown in colour, almost black. It was twisted and stretched in places, wrenched out of place with long, tightened folds covering its glossy surface. In other parts of the hideous organism were large, bulbous spheres, collected and clumped together like a mass concentration of a cancerous tumour.
Then he saw it, sticking out like a splintered, burnt piece of wood on the other side of the bed. It was a hand, small in size with long, crude, sharp-pointed fingers. His eyes widened in shock and he began to perspire heavily when he saw what was hanging pathetically down from the tiny, skeletal wrist. It was a small, gold-plated piece of jewellery, decorated with many tiny sapphires. The jewellery, though heavily stained and covered dirt and grime, still managed to glint in some unseen light as it blew eerily from side to side, pushed on from a silent, unseen breeze.
The bracelet, he thought suddenly to himself. Her bracelet. The one I gave her . . . .
The armoured figure in front of him slowly raised its right arm out fro its side and out towards him and pointed its long, bony, blackened, crudely-clawed index finger towards the hideous, ramshackle image of the child’s bed, its finger shaking with an intense, silent ferocity and it send out some unknown command.
Through his great fear, anger, nervousness and confusion, Ernest took note of the antagonist’s actions, instantly recognising its silent order as he beheld its demonic form before his eyes. His eyes quivered and shook violently in all directions as he tried to make sense of it all, struggling to keep his mind fixed on the here and now, desperately trying to stop it wandering into the territory of absolute madness. He beheld the darkness enshrouded all around him, blanketing him in his own personal hell, plaguing him with nightmarish visions of the terrible mistakes of his past, masked demons and vengeful spirits mocking him with their silence and their twisted methods of accusations.
I’m sorry, he shouted to himself deep in his mind, repeating it over and over again through his terrible efforts of self-punishment. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . .
Feeling the strength returning to his arms, legs and the rest of his body, he sank down onto his knees and held his head in his hands, crying a great flood as terrible emotions of grief, anger, resentment and the pains of the soul fell like a raging torrent from his securely locked-up mind, his emotions confessing to terrible unknown sins and fatal mistakes.
As he slowly regained control of himself again and wiped away hyis tears, feeling the roughness of the skin under his eyes as he wiped them with the sleeve of his jacket, he glanced back at the ever-silent oppresser before him, its long, tapering, clawed finger still intently pointing at the musty, cobwebbed bed before him, the grey-brown skin of the twisted arm still poking out from underneath the sheet.
Through an almost complete lack of self-control and a world-weary attitude, Ernest slowly drew himself back up to his feet, standing with a low stoop and his arms hanging limply by his sides. He looked up at his oppresser through old, tired and nodded a half-hearted, defeated nod before slowly stretching out his left arm out toward the bed with his fingers barely stretched out as he prepared to lift the blanket away and reveal the terrible, twisted image waiting beneath it. His arm and his hairy, wrinkled fingers quivered and shook in fear more and more as they slowly moved cautiously further and further toward their target, every muscle in his body and every small voice of reason in his mind screamed at him to hold back, resist his tormentor and refuse to do its bidding and think for himself. Hide the terrible memories that so painfully and continually stabbed at his heart and soul, constantly drawing blood and incessant pian with every attack they forced upon him. Yet, while the audible part of his mind pushed these orders upon, there was still one tiny, almost completely unheard voice deep in his subconscious that told him quietly to listen to the figure, follow its commands, remove the sheet quickly and behold for his own good what terrible sight awaited him beneath. It was a voice that was new to him, one he hadn’t encountered before, one that seemed to be giving him the right answers.
His hand hovered mere inches away from the musty, dust-choked blanket and remained hanging there in the air, his fingers shaking so violently it was as if he suffered from a terrible strain of Parkinsons’s disease. He stared intently, almost murderously at his hand as two opposite forces deep inside himself repeatedly screamed opposing orders out to it, Ernest feeling nothing more than a puppet, a host for both of these commanding forces to play out their own miniture little war. He grinded his teeth tightly, the concentration in his eyes becoming so powerful as to have the appearance of a demon’s eyes. He began to sweat greatly from every pore in his skin as the seething, seemingly impossible victory of both hemispheres of his mind struggled play out each of their own particular desires.
Finally, he felt the control return to his hand as he allowed it to slowly fall away from the target and final conclusion that was within a mere few centimetres until his limp, exhausted hand fell back to his side as he admitted total, unconditional defeat. He began to cry again, tears from yet another failure, yet another life-turning point where he was powerless to play out the right decision.
“I can’t do it,” he said, speaking aloud to the silent, armoured figure standing before him. “I just can’t do it. I . . .would, I would do it if I could. But . . .but I don’t have the damned power. Do you hear me? I don’t have the goddamned power in me. Leave me alone, stop persecuting me, leave me be!!!”
With that final word of defeat from him, the oppresser slowly allowed its finger to fall from its rigid, accusing posture and merge back into a fist before its arm fell in a perfect positioon by its side. After a few moments, the figure stepped out from the tiny, claustrophobic space each of them had occupied and stepped back out into the enshrouding darkness before disappearing completely from view. Ernest gave a brief, apologetic glance towards the ramshackle child’s bed before it vanished into thin air and the blackness that surrounded him quickly melted away, returning him back to the dingy, dirty subterranean room he occupied with Sarah and the corpse of Father Donald Heathers.
Ernest quickly wiped his face all over with his sweaty, itching hand as he tried to make sense of what just happened to him. Turning to his right, he saw Sarah stood back on her feet and staring sadly and pityingly at Father Heathers beheaded corpse, her expression giving the indication the the recent events he had just terribly experienced she was completely totally oblivious to.
“Did you see it?!” He asked her in a state of panic, looking at her wide-open, yearning eyes. Sarah shuffled her body a little toward him as if she was making a great, laborious attempt to face him while trying to tear her, hopeless eyes away from Father Heathers terrible corpse. She made a slight sound of awareness to him as he waited impatiently for her reply. He couldn’t wait anymore, everybody and everything seemed to be crumbling to dust and decay all around the further and deeper they traversed inside this hellhole. With a great, sharp intake of air, he roughly grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her back and forth, as if trying to wake her from some half-awake coma.
“Please,” he shouted desperately to her. “You have to tell me that you saw it, you saw it come from the ceiling and decapitate him. It was there, standing there in a suit of armour with a damned giant axe in its hands!”
Sarah blinked her eyes as her head swayed a little from side to side as she struggled to understand what was happening. Sje took hold of Ernest’s wrists and blinked her eyes constantly until they were wide open and staring in disbelief at Ernest’s tortured, crying face.
“What is it?” She asked him in a calming, soothing. A voice that almost reminded him of the way his daughter used to speak to him whenever he was stressed or anxious. “Are you alright? What happened to you?”
Ernest’s eyes widened even more as an expression of total shock and surprise washed over his face. “You mean . . .you didn’t see it? It was . .it was right there standing in front of us. It chopped his head clean off. The whole room went black, you disappeared, he showed me the bed with the horrible corpse beneath the blanket. Are you telling me that you saw none of that? You didn’t see anything?”
Sarah looked downward a little as she tried her best to summon up the memories of what he was talking about before looking back up at him with a worried expression.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I saw you talking to Father Heathers, he seemed unwell. I saw the room go black but only for an instant. When the light reappeared, Father Heathers was as he is now and you were right beside me. I didn’t see a bed or a figure in armour. I . . .I’m sorry.”
Ernest slowly released his grip of her arms and slowly backed away from her with slow, occasionally slipping footsteps that constantly threatened to cause him to fall over. He steadily and drunkenly walked backwards until his back met the opposite wall and he slouched down to the floor, all the while his eyes darting from direction to the next as his mind struggled to comprehend the information he had just been given, every fibre of his being upholding a series of facts that had been swiftly discounted by a concrete witness. He couldn’t bear it. He was going mad, that was the only logical answer, though madness in itself is hardly anything logical at all. Was everything he had witnessed simply a conjuration of his mind, pushed as it was by the fierce opposition he had come up against in this hellish place? Was he locked up inside a padded cell deep inside some terrible asylum wrapped up in the tight, constricting claustrophobia of a straightjacket, his whole life nothing more than a long drawn-out, intricate delusion. God knows, he indeed come close to the edge when she died, he had almost given up on the world around him, where it not for the perseverance of his work. There was still so much to know. But then, he did deserve his pain, it was his fault after all, he allowed her to die as he stood by and did nothing. Perhaps his pain had pushed him further than he though, imprisoning him inside his own mind while his body languished and rotted inside some horrid padded cell while his mind continued to play out the severe delusions of a life where he was becoming stronger.
But, it had all felt so real to him, horribly real. He had watched as the large, shining blade of the axe effortlessly cut through his neck, stealing his life away so cruelly. He had smelled the blood as it gushed like a torrent from his open wound. He had seen the bracelet on its wrist, dangling and swaying in the breeze. He had even smelled her sweet perfume in his nostrils, even though he couldn’t bring himself to admit it, even to his own soul. Was that nothing more than a simple illusion?
There was a sudden, sharp feeling of pain against his cheek, awakening him from his tortuous mental wanderings. He looked round as he tried to gain his bearings and reached up to comfort his ailing cheek. Looking up, he saw Sarah knelt in front of him, her eyes staring determinadly at him with a strong expression in her face telling him to wake up and keep ahold of where he was.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just . . .couldn’t handle what you was telling me. I saw him standing there and you didn’t see him. I was stood there in the darkness with him for quite a while and you said it was nothing but a instant. I . . .I must have drifted a little, slipped into some kind of waking sleep, or something. Though, how I . . .”
Sarah quickly got back on her feet and stood with her left side facing Ernest, her left hand open and beckoning to him to take hold. He looked up at her for a moment while he thought about before finally taking her hand and returning to his feet, recoiling a little as he caught sight of Father Heathers stricken body.
“We have to do something about him.” He said. “We can’t just leave him here like this.”
“We can’t help him.” Sarah replied with her head bent down in a slight angle. “He’s already dead and I don’t feel his presence around here anywhere. I think he’s passed on. Remember, he’s at peace now.”
Ernest sighed and nodded, though found it difficult to believe that, not because of his own personal beliefs, but what he had seen of the power of this place. His soul could have been snatched from the terrible spirits that seemed to shadow their every move throught this building. He could be screaming for help as blackened hands pulled him further and further into the darkness, forver imprisoning him within the walls of this . . ..
It was best not to think about, just believe what she had said and hopefully if he believed it enough it would be true. He was gone, that was the terrible thing, but at the same time, it was also the best thing. At least he was free of whatever nightmares awaited the two of them and the poor lost soul of Daniel Stephenson.
Goodbye . . .Father Heathers. He thought to himself as he mentally bowed to the meory of him.
Sarah jerked his attention back to her as she gripped a tighter hold of his hand, bringing his attention to a large, rectangular hole in the wall. He stepped back in surprise while Sarah stood her ground as she stared fiercely at the hole as if some invisible entity stood inside it. The hole wasn’t there before, it had simply appeared from nowhere as if by magic. Was this some trick, some kind of test they had to pass before they could advance further? He didn’t have the answer, nor any of the answers to the cryptic questions that had been put before him and lord knows, he didn’t want the answers, they could go to hell.
“It’s in here.” Sarah said in a flat, emotionless tone as still she continued to stare into the yawning darkness before her. “The spirit child’s body is in there. We’ve made it. I’m going to release it, break the chains which bind it to this nightmarish abode. Because of me, it will ascend to heaven while those that keep it here will rot. Come on.”
Ernest kept a tight hold of her hand as she pulled him with her as the two of them ran into the darkness. Her attitudre surprised, in the short time he had know her, he had never seen her so fierce, so determined, so cold, even. It was as though some strange transformation huad come over her, taking away her soul and her heart and leaving behind nothing but a blank, empty husk. But then, he could see something in her eyes, something that yearned for whatever was in here, some kind of pain that she had grown tired of and was ready to face down. He had no idea what that was and did not wish to ask, but whatever the reason, he was going to with her all the way.
They quickly stepped into the darkened chamber with the semi-light of the room before them shining its weak power around where they stood, lifting some of the darkness from their eyes. From the small parts they could make out and from what they felt beneath their shoes, they were stood on some kind of hard, concrete floor that seemed to be covered by a thick layer of grey-coloured dust, dust that now began to move and float around the room from the sudden intake of sepulchral air that wafted from the outside corridor. Ernest quickly fished the torch out of his wrinkled, soggy pocket, flicked it on and shone it in front of them. What they saw horrified them both.
Sitting in the centre of the torchlight was a small, heavily decayed corpse dressed in torn, ragged clothes that were beset with holes. Long, rusted, blackened chains were attached to manacles fixed around the corpse’s wrists and ankles while the other ends were attached to a rough, black stone supporting pillar behind it. The few, rotten pieces of flesh that still hung futily onto the various decayed bones were wet and greasy and hung down toward the floor, gathering the dust that now continually swept across it.
A small clump of hair was still attached to the dome of the skull and blew eerily in the breeze.
The corpse was sat in a hunched position and its upper body was bent down toward the floor, its skeletal arms hanging lifelessly by its sides like the arms of a ventriliquist doll, its tapering bony fingers outstretched and open-palmed. Were it not for the chains still attached to it, the corpse would fall against the floor flat on its face.
Sarah dropped to her knees in shock with her right hand over her mouth as a strong scream attempted to break through her gullet and be heard, her eyes wide-open and staring in sheer horror at this horrible sight. Ernest merely stood his ground and looked in disgust at the body, the torch in his hand shaking a little along with his hand, the torchlight flickering against the opposite wall.
Without skipping a beat of her heart, Sarah immediately jumped to her feet and began to violently kick and punch the wall beside her as she shouted in anger and hatred, picking up loose stones scattered across the floor with her white, outstretched fingers and threw them across the room, wailing in a strong, resentful, embittered voice.
Ernest merely watched her play out this tempory anger, knowing full well that it was pointless and a little dangerous to try and stop her. Though, he had no reason to stop her, she had every right to be angry. This, he deduced, this terrible, decayed, pathetic-looking corpse before him was the badly-decayed body of the spirit-child she had come into contact with. He had seen her devotion to this child, her determination to free it from this place, seemingly unfazed and uncaring at the idea of uncovering the secret, hidden chambers of this place and facing its dark, terrible inhabitants. In such short a time, she had acquired a fondness for this child, a motherly devotion to it, one that he could never understand.
Sarah eventaully finished with her raving and now walked slowly and exhaustidly toward the child’s body before falling like a sack on her knees by its side. She began to cry a great deal, forcing her to purse and tighten her lips and screw up her eyes to prevent the spirit child from seeing her. It wouldn’t do to see her so weak right now, not when it needed her at this crucial time..
She began to massage the dead, greasy clump of hair on the child’s skull, curling each individual strand around her fingers, showing no inkling or idea of how disgusting the hair had now become. She looked deep into its empty eye sockets, watching the slight movement of the torchlight that poured into them like light penetrating the blackened interiors of the mouth of a cave.
“They did this to you, didn’t they those bastards?” Sarah said in a low, almost whispering tone. “They took you, just a poor, poor child away from their family, took them to this horrible place and imprisoned you inside it, didn’t they? You were forced to believe in sickening, revolting passages and twisted beliefs they had and they took you down here and locked you up in here, didn’t they? They walled you up . . .in the darkness all on your own . .no friends no . .no-one here but you and chained you up like an animal and left you here all alone to die.” She looked deeper into the eye sockets of the body before shaking her head in disgust, still trying to hold back her tears. “Just a poor child left to die totally alone in the dark with no-one to comfort them or give them the strength they need to cross over and still they hold you here like a damned rat! But, don’t worry, my sweet. Your time has come. I’m going to get you out of here, right now.”
‘Oh, no, Gurk.’ The sudden surprise of the strange, child-like voice echoing out across the walls around them surprised both of them, causing them to look round in quick movements as they searched for the source.
“It’s alright,” Sarah shouted in a calm, persuasive voice as she looked around. “I’m going to get you out of here, you’re going to be alright.”
Ernest panned the torch suddenly over to the right as both of them heard a low gasp and slight scraping of a shoe or boot across the floor from just a few feet away. Sarah immediately turned her head to where the torchlight was pointing and both of them caught sight of a small alcove in the wall that ran along into a long, dark corridor.
“I can see you there.” Sarah said in a deep, menacing tone, her eyes staring angrily at some invisible figure standing in the arch of the alcove. “You’re not going to get away from me anymore, do you hear me? You are not going to harm or frighten this poor child anymore, do you hear me?! You’re going to pay for what you did, you’re going to answer for your crimes at long last and there’s nowhere for you to run.”
Ernest watched in nervous anticipation as Sarah slowly walked over towards the alcove, her arms bent and her fingers outstretched forming the shape of a predator’s flexed claws as it prepares to attack. He raised his arm a little towards her and slowly began to open his mouth to try to warn her not to antagonise the spirit, but he it was pointless. She wasn’t listening to him, she was too consumed with rage to even know he was there. He felt nervous to be here with this invisible spirit and from Sarah’s behaviour, possibly two spirits right here with them both. He felt naked not having his technology and equipment with him, nothing to scientifically analyse the chaotic hell that was unfolding before them. But, he wasn’t chained here like the poor child, he had a mind and will of his own. He could turn round and somehow find his way back upstairs, get out of here now while he still had the chance. If only that were possible.
But, he didn’t mind admitting it, he was too afraid to back alone, even if there were somewhere he could hide and wait till all of this were over. The best place for him was here now and watch Sarah fight her demons. At least they were together.
“Here I am!” Sarah shouted to her invisible antagonist, her arms outstretched by her sides. “I’m here right in front of you, unarmed. Destroy me if you have the power to do so. Both of us are here, so just kill me, right here right now! Don’t leave your job unfinished, just kill us all!!!”
Ernest held back a little as he prepared himself for what might happen next, ready for whatever attack the ghost would throw at them. But, after a few silent, agonising moments, nothing happened. Ernest slowly began to relax before Sarah summoned up her anger and hatred once more.
“Do you like living here in the shadows?” She said sarcastically. “Do you like languishing here, far from God’s divine light, skulking in the shadows while you torture innocent children before and past death? You thin you’re so powerful with everything you have, with your spiritual power that you have perverted and used to your own advantage. Your terrible house that you sit inside, wallowing in your pathetic pains, playing out your stupid little religious passages, shouting to your so-called God. No-one had the courage or the strength to fight you all those years ago, you were too powerful back then, I’ll give you that. But, now I’m here and you’ve never encountered anyone like me before. And I have a fire, deep inside me, a fire you work so hard to diminish in your victims hearts and souls. But, mine is strong, it’s a fire I’ve harnessed and fed all these years as I’ve grown and it can’t be so easily extinguished. And I have the perfect weapon against you, unlike these poor spirits you keep prisoner here. I’m alive, I have a body with which to fight you with. And I’m going to use it.
Well, let me tell you this. You’re alone, you’re all totally alone here! You’re not talking to anyone, there’s no one up there!” She continued to scream and rant and rave at her invisible victim, pointing upwards towards the ceiling, her eyes filled with rage and she rolled off more terrible words off her tongue. You’re all bastards, you are all fucking bastards do you hear me?!! You are all complete fucking bastards!!!!”
With that final word, Sarah clambered back down to the child’s body and embraced it, holding it tightly against her, her eyes closed tightly, her arms holding a vice-like grip around the bare bones of the skeleton, the skull falling lifelessly against her shoulder.
“You’re not alone now, my child!” She shouted. “While I’m with you, they can’t hurt you anymore!”
Then, before they could prepare themselves, a immense, overpowering, agonised scream filled the entire room and the empty corridor behind them, a scream powerful enough to cause the walls and floor to shake violently as if a powerful earthquake were ravaging the earth beneath their feet. Soot, dust and grime shook itself loose from the brickwork and stonework around them, falling in large clumps and piles all across the floor. Ernest tried his best to hang onto something as the terrible dram unfolded around them, his arms outstretched as he tried his best to hold onto something quickly. Sarah remained where she sat, still holding fiercely to the skeleton in her arms, her face a mixture of great inner pain and inner joy as some major, unfathomable emotions were engaged in a heated between each other inside her mind.
The scream began to dissipate after a few moments before disappearing completely into the ether, leaving behind bothing but a total, vault-like silence in its wake. Sarah slowly began to lift her head away from the skeleton, blinking her eyes repeatedly as she tried to stem the flow of tears that ran like a burst dam across her cheeks. Her face was a perfect image of peace, tranquillity and freedom, as if some great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. A face like that of a child having found its parents after being lost in some great, faceless crowd.
“Are you alright.” Ernest asked her as he stepped forwards and put his hand on her shoulder. She looked at him a little open-mouthed, breathing in a regualr, quiet succession. The two of them turned suddenly as a loud, clunking and scraping sound behind them got their attention. Ernest panned the torch and saw a large, sqaure-shaped opening in the opposite wall with a musty, cobweb-covered staircase inside leading upwards.
“It’s there,” Sarah said excitedly as she quickly wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “This leads back up to the upper levels where we come from. We can get back.”
Ernest looked at her and gave her a half-decent attempt at a smile. He had hoped it had led outside somewhere, a way to escape this place once and for all. But, a way back to the upper levels back on the surface where they could at least feel the wind on their faces as it wafted through the barred windows. It was better than nothing. Ernest took her hand and helped her up.
Chapter Twenty
It was a welcome hike for the two of them as they slowly and exhaustedly made their way up the dust-streaked stone staircase, a welcome release from the nightmarish things they had both witnessed and experienced down in the terrible dungeons, the dank, sickening guts of this building that was nothing but a crime against anything in nature. The things both of them had experienced, the spectres they had seen, the emotions and terrible memories they had to face to fight off the cryptic demons before their eyes and force them back into their original dormant states. But, whatever they were, haunting’s, evil spirits, recordings from the past etched into the stonework that constantly replay themselves over and over, devoid of life or conscience or merely demons of the mind that repeatedly bewitched them, they were glad that, for the moment at least, their trials were over.
The air seemed to become clearer as they ascended the stairs toward the upper levels, it started to smell of the outside, the dew on the leaves, the bark decaying on the ground, the smell of the grass blowing in the breeze. It was almost intoxicating, like a prisoner smelling fresh air for the first time after just being released from a prolonged prison sentence. For a brief moment, Ernest thought he could feel the gentle, ghost-like caress of a soft breeze against his skin, before he realised that it was nothing but a loose cobweb hanging down from the ceiling that was covered with numerous mummified insect corpses. He grimaced and quickly pulled it away, the sudden realisation prematurely jerked him back from his pleasant fantasies and back into his terrible reality.
There was not a sound as they walked the now seemingly endless staircase, only the slightly comforting presence of the torchlight streaming ahead of them and bringing the distant steps into view reminded them that they were indeed walking a staircase and it was indeed going up. Wihtout it, it seemed as though they were walking through nothing but an unending abyss of blackness. Sarah spent the endless silent moments pondering and mumbling to herself while occasionally wiping away a few stray tears. From where he was, Ernest could hear her speaking quick sentences to the spirit child she had helped to cross over, quoting short Biblical verses and prayers to it while quickly crossing herself. He kept a close eye on her as he walked beside her, constantly resisting the urge to put his hand on her shoulder to comfort her. He realised now that, after seeing her incredible, powerful performance back downstairs, that she didn’t really need him at all. She could easily take care of herself. After all, her profession was the more ‘hands-on’ approach, whereas his own was the ‘keep out of the way, keep a safe distance approach.’
She’s the manual worker, I’m the pen-pusher. He thought amusingly to himself.
He quickly looked back behind him at the darkness before them while keeping the torchlight fixed ahead of them. He could see a myriad of tiny insects and tiny clumps of dust gathering in the air and swirling and dancing around in some kind of bizarre, silent ballet before him. He thought of how they had to leave Father Heathers body back downstairs, left him lying in the dust, beheaded without even a decent attempt at making him decent. He had tried to tell Sarah how important it was to take him with them, he could easily carry him over his shoulders, no trouble, then they could find a room to place him and leave flowers for him, she could say a prayer. But, it didn’t really matter. He was dead, that’s all that it was and they were alive. While it sounded a little cold to think it, the need’s of the living certainly did outweigh the needs of the dead. They were both exhausted, weary, almost completely run-down making it very difficult for them even to climb this eyternal staircase, carrying a body along with his head would be impossible. The best thing to do would be to make sure that these stairs did indeed lead back up the surface levels, get some rest, perhaps find something to eat among the scraps of the food they had foraged earlier and then when they were at full strength, go back for the body and bring him upstairs with them. After all, Father Heathers was a priest, his unending strong grip he had of his crucifix and his constant mumbling of prayers proved that he was indebted to his God. The best they could do for him would be to homour his beliefs by giving him decency in death.
Finally, they found their way to the top of the staircase, the smell of the air outside and the soft caress of it as it gently brushed their skin was overwhelming, almost giving them impression that they were outside, free of this place and walking through the woods down the long, narrow country path outside. The two of them stretched their bodies as much as they could to release the tension pent up in their muscles. Ernest placed his hands flat against his back and pushed against them, feeling great relief when he felt the stiffness in his back cease and the gentle crick his spine made. Sarah wiped away the last of her tears and smiled before knotting her fingers tightly together and stretching out her arms, groaning in a quiet state of bodily freedom before allowing her arms to fall limply by her sides.
They looked up and around at where they now stood. It was a very large room, a room almost the size of a dining room in an immense mansion. The ceiling was just about visible behind a thick canopy of shadows and was angled into a large triangular shape, rather like the shape of the inside of a church tower. Almost exactly opposite from them was a small wooden staircase leading upwards, much of it rotted down to a few stray bits and pieces gathered in piles across the floor, next to one of those was a small wooden chair, still in decent shape. To the right was a small corridor leading off somewhere and almost directly behind them was a large stone fireplace, gothic in appearance, but thankfully, not in the twisted cultish style of the other’s they had seen. Inside the fireplace was a small, metallic gauze filled with numerous large pieces of what looked like freshly cut blocks of wood. Two large, comfortable wooden chairs and a small wooly rug were positioned neatly in front of the fireplace.
Ernest viewed this sight with great suspicion. The whole room while, like everywhere else in this place was dark, gothic and bore an unnatural atmosphere, was strangely appealing, comfortable even. The fireplace, the chairs in front of it, the small rug, everything looked as though it had been prepared for them, everything neatly arranged and available for them to rest and enjoy a large, comforting fire. The whole idea was both genuinely creepy and extremely disturbing. The idea that someone or something was in here preparing for their arrival before they came here possibly when they were climbing the stairs just a few moments ago. Whatever it was could still be in here with them, standing invisible against a wall no more than a few feet from them and staring deep into their, deep into their souls and they had absolutely no idea that they were being watched. But, that just wasn’t possible, was it . . .?
Ernest immediately grimaced and quickly shook off the hideous, discomforting thought. It was better not to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially not this horse. Quickly looking around for something to take his mind off these unnerving thoughts, he quickly looked around for something cheerful, something even slightly happy to concentrate on until he noticed the small horizontal twin pair of barred windows in the cold stone wall to the left. He immediately ran over to them and jumped as high as he could to take hold of the bars and press his face against them as much as he could to feel the cold, constant night air wafting in from outside. He could taste the air on his tongue, feel the coldness, the wetness and the complete freedom of it on his face as he yearned for more. He opened his mouth to take in as much air as possible and closed his eyes, allowing his mind to drift off to somewhere else in his mind, drifting off back home to his office, his things strewn around in chaotic order around him as he worked on some strange, haunting case, feeling the almost invisible ecstasy of freedom in his heart, that freedom he and everyone else took for granted.
If we ever get out of here, he thought desperately to himself, I’ll never touch a case of a haunting or a ghost ever again.
He heard the sound of clonking wood and movement behind him and looked round and saw Sarah carefully arranging the pieces of wood to make a fire. Ernest couldn’t imagine why she wasn’t taking in a great lungful of air from outside as he was, making the most of the semi-freedom that had earned after skulking around in the shadows down in the basement. Perhaps, because she was just stronger than him, more strong-willed and pure of heart, probably more pure than he was. She had to deal with difficult spirits from the beyond in the more raw, realistic way and that probably toughened her up. But he decided not to pursue the reason, it wasn’t important. What was important now was getting some rest.
He watched her as she carefully laid out the few blocks of wood and arranged them carefully. She carefully shifted the chairs surrounding the fire in a comfortable position and gently dragged her foot across the rug as she evened out the few wrinkles and creases.
She looked much better now, better than she had before. Ernest could easily tell from her expressions and body language that something was bothering her, deep inside some hidden trauma was eating away at her. He neglected not to ask so as not to stir up any kind of agression from her or open up old wounds. It tore him up to see her crying, her heart breaking into pieces as she exposed her soul and tue feelings out to the venomous spirit she hounded down in the dungeon. But, thankfully, now, it looked as if whatever was eating away at her within her soul was finally lifted, freeing her from her pain. He was happy to see that, after all, it was at least some kind of victory against the forces at work inside this place.
Sarah sensed that he was looking and turned to look at him standing beside the window, her eyes open wide and appealingly, her lips partly separated. Ernest smiled and nodded, she responded the same way.
“I, um, I think the fire should be ready now,” she said. “I just have to light it then we can rest in front of it.”
Ernest smiled again and climbed down from the windows and walked towards her. “That’s good,” he said softly. He resisited the urge to offer to help with the fire and light it, make her sit down while he did everything, but he knew that that wasn’t the right thing to do. It would have been easier that way after what she had been through, but it was the same principle as caring for someone who is recently disabled. It would hurt them more for someone to do everything for them and make them sit and do nothing, that merely served to highten their awareness of their disability and making them believe that they couldn’t do anything for themselves. It was best to let them get on with themselves, allow them to help themselves.
Cruel to be kind. Ernest thought. Better that way.
Sarah finished in arranging the logs and pieces of wood and lit them with a match and gave birth to a large burning, twisting fire, taking away the spoilt, bleak, hopeless almost noirish quality away from the room and brining them both back to something they could actually enjoy with the pleasant and strangely uncorrupted objects and interiors surrounding them. The two of them wasted no time in taking their places on the large, wooden chairs angled in front of it, taking in a small amount of deserved pleasure from the soft, unspoiled cushioning of their seats as they rested their backs and released a deep, contented sigh. Ernest picked up a long, black poker fixed into a silver clip at the side of the fireplace and used it on the fire, encouraging the flames deep inside to flourish and the colours to run riot as the heat became more intensified. Happy, he replaced the poker back before resting again.
He turned to look at Sarah who was a million miles away, staring deep and pensively at the roaring firelight, the glow emanating from it awash all across her face, creating a clear, translucent quality in her deep, limitless eyes. Her hands were open-palmed and held tightly to the armrests, but not gripping. Ernest studied her closely as he silently read her, reading her body language and her overall appearance and state of mind based on what he could see. He wanted to talk to her, to talk to her about anything, preferabley something that existed outside of here somewhere and back in the real, human world. Anywhere, anytime, back home, her pets, her neighbours or her family. He didn’t want to sit here in silence in a room that was disturbingly very comfortable and quite pleasant. It was something to savour while they were here, a chance to catch their breath and plan what they would do next and somehow lighten their spirits after recent occurrences. They needed something to encourage their minds to think more positively before they both permanently descend into madness, doubt and uncertainty.
A taste of heaven in the midst of hell. He thought amusingly to himself.
“So,” he said finally while taking a deep breath. “Do you think the spirit of that child is gone now. Is it free?”
It was a question he didn’t really want to ask, mainly for herself more than having nothing else in his mind to talk about, but perhaps it would break the ice and help her to come back to the here and now. She stretched out her arms and flexed her fingers before answering in a quiet, almost saddened tone. “Yes, they’re gone. I can’t sense anything anymore, no sadness, no dampness on the atmosphere. But, the thing is, I can’t actually sense anything anymore, not since we first stumbled into this room.”
Ernest couldn’t understand her worry. He merely shrugged and said “Isn’t that a good thing? That way you can keep to yourself for the time being.”
“But, you don’t understand,” she said as she constantly rubbed her neck with her hands in a worried, insecure way. “This gift . . .I’ve always had it, ever since I was a little girl. For as long as I can remember, the spirits have always been able to contact, I’ve always been able to pick up on some kind of energy around me, wherever I was. But, now that I can sense nothing, it’s like losing a limb.”
Ernest could neither do or say anything that would help her through this problem she had, he could merely look down at the floor with a saddened, troubled expression on his face, just try to join her in her sorrow while the two of them sit there in silence.
So much for lightening the load. He thought irritated to himself. He had wanted this present experience and scenario to be a good thing, or at least as near to a good thing as possible. He as well as her had absolutely no idea how the room looked so clean and tidy and bereft of anything corrupting or diseased-ridden like the rest of the building, but at the moment, after everything they had been through, he didn’t much care. All that wanted was to settle in an environment with which both of them could find some sort of peace, at least for the moment. But, now it seemed as though their problems were right here with them. He almost believed trhat it wasn’t Vautusceen House that was doing this to them, it was merely themselves as they persisted in wallowing in their own misfortunes.
He wanted to blame her fro dragging her troubles out of the darkness and into the light with them, dampening the comfortable atmosphere in the place, but, deep down, he knew he couldn’t do that, it wasn’t in him to be so callous to somebody.
“Can we talk about something, please?” Sarah asked with a worried look on her face, her fingers twisted and interlocking constantly with each other.
“How exactly do you mean?” He replied.
“Just anything, let’s talk about anything. I can’t bare this state of not being able to pick up on anything, it’s unnatural for me. Can we talk something to take my mind off it, please.”
Ernest smiled and quickly picked himself up to an alert, sitting position in his chair. This was what he was waiting for, a chance to take their minds out of here and into their memories, their more pleasant surroundings. He had hoped that she began talking because she wanted to, not because she wanted to keep her mind off of something else, but beggars couldn‘t be choosers. “Well, yes,” he replied. “Yes of course, we can talk about anything you like. Um, do you want to start off, or . . ?”
“Oh, um, yes, yes if you like.” She smiled as her eyes darted from side to the next as she struggled to think of something to begin with.
“Have you . . .have been your job for long?”
Ernest knelt back and clasped his hands together before he spoke. “Oh, phew, well for about almost fifteen years I think now. Since then I’ve visited over a hundred houses that are supposed to be haunted and I’ve spent many a night in them all on my own in the middle of the night in the dark, no lights, no kind of light at all in a room or a corridor with nothing to protect me but my equipment, my knowledge and my wits. I’ve recorded many, many, many different voice samples, quite a number of them very interesting. Although, I don’t suppose I have to tell you that, you’ve probably heard quite a number of interesting things from them yourself.”
She began to calm down and become more relaxed by now, settling more in her chair and starting to take an interest in the conversation. “Oh, well yes, I suppose I’ve heard some interesting things from some, but most of the things they tell me are personal things they sometimes want told to their relatives or friends. Nothing ever interesting enough to tell the scientific community, not that they’d believe me anyway.”
“Ah, well that is the problem with our line of work, isn’t it. People are quite happy to believe ins omething that they can’t see or hear, but bring it up close to them and they don’t want to know. But, it’s early days yet, perhaps sometime in the future they’ll believe us.”
Sarah smiled and looked down at her hands as she twiddled around with her thumbs. There was a few moments of silence before Ernest began to speak.
“So, how did you start on your mission to help those who needed most?”
“Oh, it was my priest back home actually, he was the one who helped me to understand the gift and when and where to give me strength. But, the bulk of my learning came from my mother, she was a soothsayer, a clairvoyant. She was well aware of the gift that already existed within me and helped me to draw it out. Her only worry being that it was often dangerous and sometimes unrewarding.
Ernest sat close to her with his hands in his lap, keenly interested in what she was saying. “And how old were you when you began your training?”
“Oh, I was around thirteen or fourteen when I initially began. Since then I’ve honed my skills and looked for ways to better improve it. After all, the world is filled with countless numbers of wandering spirits who are looking for someone to hear them when they call.”
Ernest nodded as her words struck an unnerving nerve inside him. The thought of all those spirits wandering right by you when you have no idea they’re there is nothing new to him, but the way she said it was enough to make him feel a little uncomfortable.
“So, did your father give you any help in your teachings, or had he died, or something?”
Sarah suddenly began to look a little distraught and taken off guard. She again looked down at her hands with her mouth open, struggling to speak. “Um, no, he, um . . .he didn’t help me. As a matter of fact, he used to hit me almost all the time, usually for no reason at all. My mother tried my best to help me, but most of the time, I was just left to fend for myself. It wasn’t her fault, she did her best.”
Ernest was in a sudden state of shock. He buried his head in his hands as a great feeling of despair and total embarressment suddenly came over him. “Oh, my god, I’m so sorry,” he said in an over apologetic manner. “I din’t mean to ask you that, I . . .I had no idea.”
Sarah simply smiled in a way that she seemed amused by his behaviour. She took his hand before consoling him. “It’s alright,” she said. “It’s not your fault, it was a simple mistake. It was his fault, my father’s, not yours.”
“Good,” he said. “So, where is your father now. Is he still . . .?”
“Oh, no, he died quite a number of years ago, now. A heart attack. And before you ask, I haven’t had any kind of message from him since then. I don’t think he wants to talk to me.”
“And I suppose you don’t want to talk to him either, do you?”
Sarah merely slowly shook her head in response with a blank, pale expression before returning the room once again back to total silence as Ernest looked on absently at the sharp, twisted shadows before him with his head hanging down, held in place by his index fingers. The two of them sat staring at the fire as it roiled, cascaded and twisted before their eyes like some haunting, bodiless spectre, its unearthly, bright glow splashing its strange majesty over everything in sight.
“So, what about you?” Sarah asked suddenly as she turned to look at Ernest who turned to her in response, seeing her sat with her hands open flat against her lap with the fingers interlocked, a pleasant yet suspicious smile on her face. “What is it that brought you to this rancid place?”
Ernest smiled as he slowly brought his head back up, amused by her unusual choice of words. He slowly and awkwardly wiped his hands together and gathered his breath before answering.
“Well, like everyone else in this world, I search for the truth, wherever that may be and whatever it may be. There are times when when I have to risk my own safety or state of mind even to find the answers to the questions I want. And, while sometimes I might be in a situation where my safety is questioned, I stand my ground until I’ve found what it is I’m looking for. Hmn, it makes me sound kind of like a brave soldier going off to battle, doesn’t it? Or some kind of adventurer or explorer? That is something I definitely am not.”
Sarah merely grinned a little in response.
“Are you sure that there isn’t something else?” She asked curtiously.
Ernest looked at her puzzled while feeling slightly unnerved by her question. “What do you mean ‘what else?’ He asked.
Sarah left him hanging in the air for a moment before she answered, staring at him slightly absently for a few moments. “Some kind of family tradegedy, perhaps? The loss of a loved one? Someone who is screaming out your name and you can’t hear it?”
Ernest began to grow angry as she pushed him more and more. He didn’t know what she was trying to do to him, or whether this was some kind of ruse or trickery bestowed on him by the dark powers resident in this place, but he didn’t care either way. He had had enough, much too much. Whatever was going on, he was going to put a stop to it, tear himself free from this nightmare and back into reality. He clenched his fists tightly, ground his teeth and pressed his feet firmly into the floor before standing up suddenly and banging his right fist against the wall.
“Alright!” He shouted fiercely at her, the pain in his fist of crashing against a stone wall served only to feed his anger more. “You want to know my personal tragedy, you have to push me so much to know? Then, I’ll tell you. It’s my daughter, dammit! My daugther, Amy, when she was only five years old, she became ill, seriously ill and then she died. I did nothing to help her because I was that kind of person back then, I cared for no one but myself. I killed her, as sure as it was my own hand that gave her that disease. I watched her . . .die. I watched my own daughter die and did nothing to save her.”
He collapsed back in his chair with his head rested against his right hand as a torrent of flood-like tears wained their way down his face and settled in his palm, the sweet, perfect face of his daughter sitting in his mind. An image of perfect innocence, an image any parent would be happy to have of their own child, but one he couldn’t for the life of him erase from memory as if it were intentionally placed their to punish him forever more. But, at the same time, because it punished him for his actions, he sometimes allowed it to remain where it was. It was the nearest he could get to serving his punishment and allowing his soul to be redeemed.
“But, what are you talking about?” Sarah asked him, seemingly unfazed or strangely unaware of his overpowering emotion. “How can it be your fault when-”
“Oh, shut . . .just shut up, will you!” Ernest rasped at her. “I don’t know if that’s you or someone else talking, but I don’t care, I don’t care about any of it. Just leave me alone! It was my fault that she died, that’s all there is to it.”
“But, that’s what I mean, Ernest. How can it be your fault that she died when she isn’t even dead?”
Ernest stopped his crying suddenly as he slowly opened his eyes, quickly darting them in all directions as his mind struggled to make sense of what she just said. Lowering his hand away from his face and slowly gripping the armrest, he looked up at her with a cautious, anxious expression on his face. “What are you talking about?” He asked in a very low whisper.
“I am telling you that your daughter isn’t dead. I told you that she’s been trying to talk to you for years, we all have, but you haven’t been listening. You’ve only been listening to yourself and your own pain. Pain has distorted your vision, your heart and your soul. Reality for you is crumbling before you, creating vivid apparitions of guilt, shame and pain. To exorcise them completely from your mind, you must see past the delusions, know the truth, then you will be free.”
Slowly, she raised her right arm and moved it behind her, as if welcoming some unknown visitor. “Don’t you see her?” She asked. “She’s right here, waiting to see you.”
With an intense look of total shock and terror on his face and his heart thundering a thousand beats a minute in his chest, he slowly turned to look at where she was beckoning to. Then he saw her, standing like a statue beside Sarah with her back to him, looking as though there was nothing even remotely alive in her whole body as she stood rigid and unmoving like a statue. It was her, without a doubt, it was her. Amy, his daughter dressed in a pretty light pink dress with buckles and a small pleated skirt, the same dress his wife had picked out for her when she was only a baby. Even the hat to match was there, resting comfortabely on her head with her long, curly blonde hair hanging down over her back, her babyish, plump arms hanging limply by her sides.
What the hell is going on here? He asked himself as his mind slowly began to degrade and come apart, as his own sense of physical reality began to melt away like wax before his eyes. Could it be true, was everything that he was seeing some kind of haunting, twisting series of lies and delusions fed to him from his own tortured mind, or was it all simply a set of intricate lies and deceits set upon him like wild dogs, bewitching him with their sights and sounds while those that mastered them watched in wild amusement, mocking him with their serene smiles and maniacal behaviour? Was everything he was seeing and hearing right now merely his own personal demons, the frantic, tortuous voices of his own subconscious adopting the identity of the demons twisted charade of vocals as they screamed and echoed their way down the dank, twisting corridors of his mental landscape?
He couldn’t bear the whole magnitude of everything as it swam like a raging ocean in the centre of a grotesque storm inside his mind, tearing apart the fragile walls of reality as they were replaced by horrific, bizarre and distorted barriers. He gripped the sides of his head as his nails dug deeply into his skin as he summoned all available strength to fight his internal war, struggling to gain a foothold back onto reality, whatever that may be.
He watched in a strong mixture of horror and confusion as Sarah looked at them both with a serene, unnatural smile across her face. He tried to fight back, get up from his seat and face whatever it was that had been brought to him, to see for himself the face of what had stole the appearance of his beloved daughter and mocked him with the memory that he held so dear. But, whatever he tried to do, he found a wall of resistance keeping him in the form of intense and uncontrollable drowsiness that had suddenly sweeped over him like a blanket, the same drowsiness he had felt upstairs when he crashed into the bottom of the staircase. He knew what was coming, how this was being done to keep him from getting closer to the truth and seeing past the delusions and lies that was a gauze over his eyes by throwing him deeper into the world of delusions and mental landscape of Hell. It was a fact, the truth, the truth that he had so often painfully tried to find for himself. But, that truth failed to sustain him as the weapon of sleep finally began to take its toll and return him to the familiar state of unconciousness and darkness. Sarah looked on dejectedly at his slumbering body in the chair and slowly shook her head as the silent, haunting, mysterious figure of his daughter slowly began to turn her head to face her.
Chapter Twenty-One
It was only mere seconds before he awoke again with a sudden start and desperate attempt to get his bearings, finding himself lying on his back completely subdued and unable to move. He felt pain all over his body, crawling over every inch of his flesh like biting, stabbing insects. The pain coursed frantically through his veins, bones and nervous system like speeding bullets, tearing and shearing everything in their path into bloody, splintered pieces. His clothes felt clammy and uncomfortable as he felt them almost creep over his own equally clammy skin. Slowly and a little painfully, he licked his lips with his dry tongue, wincing and screwing his face up as he felt the tiny uncomfortable flakes of loose skin hanging like torn patches of paper from his dry, stale lips.. He blinked constantly as he struggled to focus his eyes and pay attention to the increasingly blurred, unfamiliar surroundings around him, but found only dazed and distorted shapes and colours through his aching, tired eyes. He shook his head a little from side to side as he tried to ascertain whether or not he was wearing his glasses, surely that would be the obvious reason why he couldn’t see well enough? But, sure enough, he was still wearing them. They felt strangely uncomfortable and full of weight as they hung over his eyes.
What in the hell is going on? He thought desperately while in a great, uncontrollable state of fatigue, drowsiness and semi-consciousness. No matter what he tried, his body failed to react to any stimulus. He could hardly move his arms or legs, let alone sit up and move around. He was too much only partly-conscious to tell whether or not he was tied up, bound in some way or whether he was just run-down, drained of energy and strength to even move from this hell. He felt like he was ill, unbearably ill, or dying,. The whole terrible experience reminded him of the countless times in his life he had tried to get to sleep and had come against an unbreakable wall of semi-consciousness, his mind only half-aware, imaginging things that didn’t exist, blurring his sense of reality so much that he started to forget who he even was anymore. And to have that experience again this disgusting, putrid building under the control of its dark inhabitants, fill him with so much dread that he wanted to cry. He couldn’t bear it anymore. He wanted out, a release from this nightmare before he went totally insane.
“It’s alright Daddy.” The voice could only have come from a few feet away, yet with his blurred, fatigued sense of mind, it sounded as though it were a million miles away, nothing more than a fractured, distorted relfection of a memory from long past. He recognised it as a young female voice, but nothing more than that.
“Daddy, can you hear me?” This time the voice was clearer and sounded a lot closer, almost as it the voice itself were breaking through his hazy, personal reality.
With a greeat effort of will and great pain, he lifted up his head as much as he could and continually blinked his eyes as he forced them to see who or what it was that was speaking to him. After a time, his sight became clearer, now only a vague, watery gauze over his eyes, enough to make out almost crystal-clear details.
There was a small figure sat on a small, wooden chair beside him a couple of feet away. A dim, soft orange light from somewhere above shined down on the two of them, so much that Ernest could see the floor made of a number of slightly dirty-looking tiles that were a little cracked in places and that he was lying down on some sort of bed with a thick, warm, woolen blanket bundled up tightly covering his legs, the sheet covering the thin matress underneath him messed up considerably with numerous patches of dirt. He could smell powerful aromas of unknown medicines, of tablets, liquid medicines and rubbing powders and ointments. The whole experience was overwhelming, trapping him irrevocably in some half-catatonic state with nothing but the images and smells of his sudden illness to keep him company.
Ernest looked across the mysterious figure sat before him and saw that it was a small female figure, a little girl with bright, blonde hair in pigtails and braids with a pleasant, country-style, chequered dress of red and white, her shiny shoes hanging down underneath her and tapping against each other contunally, her hands sitting restfully in her lap.
Amy? No, it couldn’t be her. But, it looks like her, a little. But . . .No, . .looks like her, but it isn’t her. Oh, why these games?
“Please try to rest, daddy. You’re very ill, do you remember?”
Ernest struggled to say that she wasn’t his daughter, but found only more pain, confusion and torment and simply chose to end the fight for now. Better to play their games and see them through to the end rather than fight them and try to understand them. But, the way she called him daddy while having the vague appearance of his treasure, late daughter still managed to burn him deeply in his soul.
“How long have I been like this?” He asked withn a great exhale of air while moving his head from to side.
“For a few months, now.” She said. “You were struck down with a sudden illness while you were working. You’ve been this way ever since. The doctor doesn’t know exactly what’s wrong with you and they don’t know how long you’ll be like this.”
“Am I in the hospital?” He asked as a sudden surge of pain shot through his chest.
“Oh, no, daddy,” she answered. “They wanted to take you to hospital, they said that it was the best place for you to be, put we both told them that no matter what, you were going to stay home with me. You told them that there was no-one else who could look after me and that you wouldn’t let me be looked after by strangers because you love me too much for that.” She giggled a little before carrying on. “Do you remember that, daddy? I love you.”
From the way she was speaking, Ernest could tell that she was desperately trying to hold back a flood of tears that she obviously wanted to release. Evn though she wasn’t his daughter and he didn’t know or what she was, he hated to disallow her to show her true feelings, but he didn’t know whether allowing her to cry would actually be the best thing. He didn’t know anything anymore, everything was lost to him.
“Have you seen a Miss Sarah Tuttle around here,” he asked, “or a Mr Doctor Daniel Stephenson, It’s important that I find them.”
Silence for a few agonising moments before she answered. “Don’t say their names, please daddy. I don’t like it when you don’t know who you are anymore. Please remember what I keep telling you, they aren’t real. They’re just a figment of your imagination, the doctor’s said so. You keep talking to them in your sleep, you scream when you say you’ve a ghost, that you’re in a scary building that you have to get out of before it’s too late. It’s just the fever, daddy. The doctor said that you’re stuck inside your own mind, you have to be free. You have to se epast the lies and the things that aren’t real to see the truth, to see me.”
This sudden realisation was too much for him to bear. Had his whole life over the many, many past years been nothing but a delusion brought about by an intense fever dream, keeping him locked up inside his head while reality played out around him, his loved ones keeping a vigil by his side? Was his daughter still alive? Was she trying to help him fight the fever, fight the illness? What was real? What was the delusion?
“Release me,” he screamed as he flailed around on his bed, desperately trying to fight his way out of this nightmare and back into reality, his weak , almost lifeless hands grabbing for physical reality.
“What are you doing!?” The girl shouted to him as she leaped from her chair and took a tight hold of his wrists as she desperately tried to keep him calm. “Please, daddy, stop! You have to listen to me, you’re ill, you’re sick. You’re chasing a dream, dream’s aren’t real, I’m real. Why aren’t you listening to me!“ She was strong as a bull as she forced him more and more to listen to her, much too strong for someone of her age, if indeed she was who she appeared to be. But, it didn’t matter in the slightest to Ernest as he fought for the world and reality he knew and tried to fight and shake off this bizarre, dream-like reality. The strength of a god wouldn’t stop him from achieving what he wanted.
“I’m not your daddy!” Ernest shouted to her in a viscious voice, his teeth grating and scraping against each other. The fever was getting worse now, enough to almost make him feel like he was dying. The muscles in every part of his body ached and groaned and screamed their pain, firing their signals of agony throughout his nervous system and up to his brain like bolts of lightening. He could tell that he was getter weaker and weaker, unable to keep up the fight with this peculiar little girl much more, but it would not have to matter. He had to fight, he had to. It was all he had left to do in this place, in his life.
Then, in the blink of an eye, as if everything around him was also the dream he had almost been forced to believe was his life, it completely disappeared, as if it were never there, leaving Ernest still struggling for his sanity, his arms wavering all over against his now seemingly imaginative antagonist. His whole body still contorting and flailing around as he continued to fight his now defunct oppressor. He stopped suddenly as he realised what had happened, noticing immediately that the intense, spell-like fever inflicted on him had completely disappeared, leaving him totally healthy as he was before.
He blinked his eyes constantly and painfully and rubbed them tightly with his palms as he struggled to make out his surrounding details, the vagueness and blurriness of his sight still there like a milestone around his neck. His vision began to clear, allowing him to quickly scan the area as he desperately longed to see something recognisable, even something within Vautusceen House, a chair, a table, a staircase, or even his office back home, even the sight of Sarah sat in front of him in her chair, telling him that it was all in his head then he could put this nightmarish experience down to that, just a simple, yet terrifying nightmare. But, no matter where he looked, no matter how far he stretched his sight, he could see nothing but an unyielding thick blanket of total darkness, without light, without substance, without anything.
What’s going on? He thought frantically, almost maniacally. Where the hell am I? Am I dying, is this death? Am I going mad? Am I already mad?”
For the moment, or probably for the rest of eternity, this seemed like his life, to be trapped here in complete blackness without any hope of escape. He tightened his muscles in his arms and hands, feeling the tendons and arteries ache as he stretched them as far as they would go and totally ignoring the pain. He gritted his teeth, narrowed his eyes until they hurt and threw his head backwards and stared violently into the darkness above him and shouted. “Please . . .get me the hell out of here!!!!”
Feeling the sudden weakness in his legs and the tiredness in his eyes, he collapsed in a crumple on the equally black, void-like floor, only half of his mind giving thought to the possibility of whether or not he would fall into this darkness below him and into a gigantic bottomless pit, falling further and further into total chaos, confusion, torment and an eternal questionable reality. He sat there dejected, lost from all reason and hope, unwillingly giving in to the shadows that surrounded and taunted him with their constant silence and bleakness.
‘Are you done dreaming?’ The voice was sudden and sinister, snapping Ernest back out of his terrible thoughts. He didn’t recognise it, it didn’t sound like a voice of anyone he knew or had spoken too, at least, none that he could remember. And yet, this voice while being ghostly, frightening and probably not coming from a human source, he clinged to it with all his senses. It was, after all, the nearest thing to getting out of here, whether it be dubious in nature or otherwise.
“Who are you!?” He demanded with a sharp tongue. “What are you? What am I doing here?”
‘How should I know?’ It answered. ‘This hell is none of my doing, only yours. This is the place you have created for yourself to hide in, a coccoon of reality for you to cower from your guilt where you can wallow in self-pity. You have been given numerous opportunities with which to break free of this torment, but always you fight against it, preffering to stay here and languish. You believe that your antagonists are there simply to haunt you, rattle their chains and torment you forever more because you only see their skin, their outward face, you never look past that, past the delusions, past the lies and stare into the truth.’
“I don’t want to hear anymore of this crap. I want answers. I want to know how to get out of here and who you are.”
‘Who I am? That makes no difference, I’m nobody, only the voice that tries to guide you back to the surface, back to the light outside this hell, but it seems as though you have no desire for my help, only to stay here where you have sat morosed all these years. You spend your whole life trying your best to feel the pain that your daughter felt so much, wishing it upon yourself in order to punish yourself, becoming your own executionor. You’ve worked hard on this oppressor for so many years until it is so much stronger than you and then buried it deep in your mind until it cannot be freed, forever putting you in a permanent rat-race with your own, horribly disfigured face, twisted and horribly altered by your own machinations until you can’t recognise what it is anymore or what purpose it serves. A creature of pain, of flesh, of guilt and of intense, self-hatred and anger. Now, that ghost continues to persecute you, chasing you round the corridors of your mind, forever locking you within your own personal hell, deep in the darkness. You have hidden from this antagonist for so long that it has become a splinter in your mind. Well, now, it is time to face down that anger and resentment that you have. You must face the personification of your pain, the executioner of your own misguided misdeeds. The battle must be won, or you will forever remain here and will never be free.’
In the few seconds that proceeded the strange, surrounding voice before Ernest could even make sense of it, a light began to appear above Ernest’s head and shine down onto the ground, falling like water droplets suspended in the air and falling in slow motion. A deep red light that seemed to emanate down from a tiny, completely unseen source from the ceiling and spill out like a canopy all around him. As the light streamed its way down, details of a room began to appear, giving Ernest back some sense of security and stability in this otherwise totally chaotic landscape.
The room was metallic it seemed. Large, steel girders ran the length of the floor, the walls and the ceiling, fixed in place with numerous metal bolts. Uncountable thick, metallic strands of what looked like chicken wire formed the bulk of the room in-between the girders, spreading out everywhere and shining a silvery light like a thick, clean thread. Hesitant, yet curious, he slowly placed his left foot against a large portion of the wire and recoiling slightly when he felt the wire bend down a little under his weight and quickly pulling his foot back. Staring down past the wire, he could still see the darkness extend for eternity below it. He felt an immediate sense of panic as he looked back up and around at the room around him, quickly taking note of the fact that the brittle, tenuous wire formed much of the room’s structure, putting his sense of danger up quite considerably. He didn’t know how the wire would fare if he put all his weight on top of it, but it had too, otherwise, he could never move from this spot. He carefully balanced himself onto two separate metallic girders and took a slight strong grasp of two girders behind him and began to feel a little safer, for now anyway.
Ernest looked ahead of him suddenly as he began to make out a shape appearing at the other end of the room, a shape that looked like a figure slowly crawling out of the darkness. He kept his eyes fixed on it as it moved, unwilling to move away even for a split second lest whatever it was caught him unawares. The figure seemed to be that of a human, at least in the basic shape with its arms and legs and head and strangely covered in what looked like armour or shields or some kind of metallic suit. The figure began to move, slowly. A loud, grating, metallic sound echoed out from it and bounced across the room as it awkwardly dragged its surreal-shaped body mass into the dim, red light, its large, metallic feet and hands clanging and crashing against the floor and surrounding walls as it struggled to pick itself up and draw itself to its full height. Ernest looked as hard as he could, but still could not make out what exactly it was he was looking at as the strange, distorted shape slowly began to bring itself up to stand upright, all the while the loud, creaking, grinding sounds rang out like bells from its strange, metallic body, as if it were completely composed of metal and forming itself out of the metal and steel pieces of the room around it.
Then, he realised it in the blink of an eye as his memory quickly caught up with him like a smack in the face. It was him, that creature. The very thing that had so brutally stole the life of poor Father Donald Heathers away deep in the basement levels of this atrocious building. How he had despised it’s sickening nature and appearance as the terrible picture of it suddenly appeared in his mind, standing there totally proud, cold and unsympathetic before him with the decapitated body of its defenceless victim lying like a sack of trash behind it, staring deep into its deep, shadow-overcast eyes with an intense boiling hatred that threatened to totally obscure his soul and his strong standards and turn him into a killing machine, blinded of all humanity. How it had burned him so deep inside when it forced him to behold what lay beneath that terrible blanket in the void of darkness imprisoning him in the moment, filling his mind and soul with deep emotions of anger, self-hatred, sorrow and disgust. It had forced him to confront that very thing he had tried so hard to fight against to lock away deep inside his mind and completely forget about it, return that pain back into the shadows. It had taken that pain from within him and thrown it in his face, defiling him with its effortless way of seeing right into his soul, everything he held deep inside him, all the secrets he thought were his own were nothing but easily accessible information to this degraded entity. It had stolen that what was so very precious to him, that once heaven-sent beauty that was his daughter, now deformed, twisted and monstrous in an agonising posture of silent agony.
His blood boiled throughout his veins as he stared intently at his persecutor with his back arched, his arms and legs tensed up and his hands clasped tightly into fists, great beads of sweat running down his forehead as the anger slowly began to take control. The oppressor simply stood its ground calmly and unmoving with the large, metallic axe resting seemingly weightless in its armour-clad hands, its masked face still able to taunt him greatly with its self-superiorority, waiting for him to make the first move.
A sudden slight knock against his left foot made Ernest look down and see a large steel pipe gently rolling backwards and forwards against the cold, hard steel and razor-wire of the floor with a sharp grating sound. It was covered in scrapes and scratches with a few black paint flecks dotted around one end of it. Ernest stared intently at it, for a moment completely forgetting about the danger standing right in front of him. His breathing was becoming a strong hiss, his eyes narrowed, huge washes of sweat ran like a burst lake down his forehead and dripped down his cheeks and onto the floor.
This was his chance, his one chance to put that pain behind him forever, to take his revenge, to punish that thing that had for so many years torn his soul into pieces so many times as the terrible memories he had harboured for so many years continually reared their ugly head, constantly threatening to engulf him.
I can do this, he thought. I can finally put an end to the lies, the illusions. I’m sick of the pain, it continued to punish me because I believed that it was my fault, my fault that she died. But it wasn’t my fault, she was ill, it was nothing to do with me. I know the truth, now. And now, I must end it.
Slowly, he bent down to pick up the steel pipe and slowly drew himself back up to his full height as he beheld his oppressor firmly in his sight, gripping the pipe tightly in his right hand. He stared calm and aloof at the motionless figure, joining it in it’s own similar posture. Then, slowly the figure began to walk toward him, the clank of the metallic armour adorning it’s body resonating throughout the tiny room before disappearing off into the black gulf beyond the razor-wire. In one quick movement, Ernest gripped the pipe with both hands and brought it to the side of his face, his steely eyes keeping a firm stare at his enemy. With a fierce growl, Ernest charged at it and swung the pipe fiercely at it’s head with a strong, resounding metallic clank. The oppressor stumbled a little in response, but quickly recovered as if nothing had happened. Ernest wasted no time in hesitation before he struck it continually, more and more, feeling the adrenaline rush through his veins, feeding him the strength to fight and to win, the joy, rapture and twisted amusement of his actions delighted him greatly as his assailant cowered from him and knelt toward the floor, its raised right arm hanging desperately in the air as it continually received terrible bursts of pain and power from the cold, steel metal pipe. Ernest began to smile as he sensed his ultimate victory drawing near.
Suddenly, the oppressor threw its left arm out into the air and knocked the steel pipe down onto the floor before grabbing him by the neck with a single hand and throwing him through the air until he crashed against the opposite wall and landed in a heap on the floor, coughing fiercely as he struggled to get his breath back. He hardly had any time to recover before the oppressor was right on top of him, its arms raised high above it with the heavy-looking axe hanging in the air in its powerful grasp, ready to swing down at any moment. The moment was going to fast for his mind to calculate and prepare him for the next move as he simply sat where he was staring up the axe that was slowly coming towards him, his mouth half-open in shock. The axe came down in a swinging motion, like a judges gavel slowly crashing down to sentence a poor unfortunate to a terrible price.
The axe was inches away from his head before his mind finally snapped into place and him back to the here and now, allowing him the freedom to jump out of the way and avoid his terrible execution. The axe struck against the bare metal of the wall with a harsh, metallic scraping and grinding sound, bringing with it a shower of sparks. The oppressor seemed to growl a little from inside its steel cage-like mask as it stood its ground and stared at him, its arms by its sides, arched and ready for action, moving in response to its silent, yet powerful breath. Then, it raised its left arm and tightly gripped the front of its mask as it swayed gently from side to side with a low, prolonged, deep growl, seemingly in some sort of pain. Ernest stared at it with acute interest and confusion, though still keeping a close eye on the axe that was now in a tenuous grip in its hand. For a brief moment, he contemplated grabbing the axe from it and turning it against it, but thought better of it. He was an old man and that would never work. He stood up and slowly walked toward it as it gently lowered its head and stared down at the floor almost in a sleeping state with its hand still gripping its head, its body now moving very slowly as its breathing became much more deep and controlled. Ernest walked right up to it and looked hard and deep into the reflective metal of its mask, seeing his reflection in the watery reflective glow. He stood in perfect silence staring at the being, seeing its tall posture now bent slightly down to the floor, its eyes and attention for the moment elsewhere. He was reminded of the image of a lion he had saw as a child in the zoo, how he had watched it sleeping, its head tucked tightly in between its great and powerful paws. Yet, while everyone else was foiled by its seemingly fully asleep state, he alone could see the awareness in its eyes, how it was biding its time as it waited for its prey to come nearer as they took it at face value, ready to pounce on the unwary.
Carefully, he approached the strange, metallic-clad being, still remembering the picture of the lion in his mind. He spoke softly to it, while still carefully standing his ground. “Who are you?” He whispered and received nothing but a still, motionless silence.
Without warning, the oppressor suddenly raised its head back up and howled and roared like a wild animal right in his face, his heart fluttering like the wings of a frightened bird in his chest. It again gripped him tightly by the neck with a much more stronger, choking grip and raised him off the ground, keeping him there with a vice-like grip around his throat with his spindly, old legs flailing around beneath him, his trembling, weak fingers desperately fumbling around to try and loosen the grip, but it was futile. With his breath failing him, unconsciousness quickly overwhelming him and his life ebbing away, only one single thought remained fixed in his mind as he stared in great anger and fury at the blackened eye holes of the metallic mask that seemed to silently revel in his pain and eventual destruction. You haven’t won, he thought. I know the truth, now. No more lies. You’ve done your job, now it’s time to end it.
With that final thought echoing like a distant scream throughout the walls and corridors of his mind, the oppressor suddenly released its grip around his neck, dropping him painfully to the floor as he collapsed into a painful heap coughing and spluttering, clutching his stomach and quickly massaging his neck. He quickly turned round and shuffled across the floor with his hands as he watched the oppressor stop in it’s tracks, seemingly looking down at the floor in a lost, dejected manner, its arms hanging pathetically by its sides in defeat, the axe in its hand crashing down to the floor and smashing into a thousand pieces. Suddenly, it turned round and began to walk toward the center of the room in a simple, defeated manner before it stopped. It took hold of its mask with both hands and violently pushed against it until the whole front of the mask suddenly came away and retracted to a hinge at the back where it hung limply against the back of the neck, revealing the interiors of the main mask where the head would be. It retracted its arms back horizontally behind its back and froze into place, almost as if a switch on it had suddenly been flicked off, in a millisecond, taking the life it had so fiercely used away from it in one quick movement, suspending it in a state almost like that of a mannequin. Ernest hissed and laughed in triumph as he quickly drew himself back onto his feet and rushed over to see what was inside, just who exactly this now defunked persecutor of his was. He looked with a deep yearning and longing at what was inside and saw . . .nothing.
He stood staring in great shock at a deep hollow where the face and whole head should have been but stared at nothing but the inside of an empty suit, totally devoid of anything at all that could have caused it to move. Feeling a great faintness suddenly come over him, he began to back away from the empty metallic suit with slow, awkward, child-like steps, struggling to keep his eyes open as well as his sense of reality. The room suddenly began to morph and twist and spiral around him like water rushing down a plughole. His head began to swim with tiredness and fatigue, his arms and legs filling with some unknown solution as they brought his adrenaline charged veins and muscles down to the strength of feathers, all of his strength ebbing away piece by piece. He tried to fight it, to keep his mind active and awake and find the answers to the questions which so burned fiercely inside him as they begged for answers. But it was useless, the power of it was just too strong for him to fight.
Not . . .again. He thought, as the last ounces of consciousness still clung on for dear life. I need . . .to know, please. Is . . .she . . .free . . .now.
He stumbled awkwardly to the floor, his arms draped lifelessly over his chest, the last few moments of conscious sight still coming through the steadily closing slits of his eyes. A faint of a small shadow in the corner of the room caught his eye in the final few seconds. A shadow not unlike that of a child, watching him. His fingers twitched slightly as he desperately tried to fight the tiredness and take a closer look at the shadow, all of his hopes clinging to that one person he so desperately wanted it to be.
Amy. He whispered before the heavy burdern of sleep finally took control.
Chapter Twenty-Two
He began to feel the soft, unusually pleasant feel of the armchair he was sitting in as he slowly began to awaken, his fingers caressing the soft leather of the armrests and listening to the dull zip-like sound they made as he dragged his nails across them. He felt the softness of the slightly worn rug beneath his feet and the comfortableness of the leather surrounding his back like still, welcoming hands. He immediately sensed the stillness and emptiness of the room around him as his senses began to become fully aware as his consciousness began to take full hold. He could feel the coldness of the air against his skin as it gently brushed against him, causing the faint hairs on his skin to stand on end. Through his nostrils, he could smell the faint odour of decay and wooden rot, yet still the knowledge of where exactly he should be still didn’t come to mind as he simply quietly enjoyed the still, silent, empty tranquillity of his present surroundings. So, there he sat in the armchair, taking in the atmosphere of the place, the faint smell he could detect reminded him of a warm, still bright-orange afternoon at his grandmother’s cottage in the countryside, that same still, atmosphere and the same pleasant smell of wooden rot from the trees outside in the fields, decaying in the hot sun, sitting in her white, splintered rocking chair and taking it all in. Moments passed as he remained in this state, still keeping his eyes restfully closed, still totally ignorant of his actual surroundings, the memories of his only-too recent experiences completely lost to him, as where all memories of everything that had ever been since he had first been headhunted by The Brotherhood of Mystery for their strange assignment.
Then it hit him, suddenly coming to him in faint, regular intervals, the memories clambering for his notice. His small, contented smile now reduced to a slight frown of worry and anxiousness, his eyes still closed, this time out of fear. He remembered where he had been and what exactly was happening just before he had gone to sleep. He was sat in this very same chair in the strangely comfortable room with Sarah sat in silence right in front of him in her chair as she watched the flames of the fire flickering in-between them. He remained calm and quiet for the moment with his eyes hiding behind the blackened screen of his eyelids as they moved from side to side as he tried to feel the fire by his side. He could feel nothing, no heat, no calming embrace of something mysterious, but at the same time familiar. He could smell no burning or the smell of burned ambers left after a large fire. The only thing he could smell now was a faint aroma of dampness, dampness in the walls, something he hadn’t noticed before. If the fire had gone out, it would have happened a long time ago. How long have I been asleep?
Desperately, he tried to sense the presence of Sarah in the room, her soft, relaxing human presence anywhere within ten-feet of where he sat. Still nothing, though he was slightly relieved to not feel any other presence besides Sarah’s, the idea that something was in here keeping him company while he sat here with his eyes closed while being totally ignorant of it, staring at him, coming closer to him . . .
He quickly broke off that chain of thought before he screamed in mortal terror, though still terrified and unable to open his eyes and see once and for all just exactly where he was and whether or not he was alone.
My god, Sarah. Where the hell are you. Please . . .I need you.
He clenched his fists and gripped the leather of the armrests as he fought to open his eyes, while his survival instincts fought to keep them closed. He gritted his teeth and fidgeted in his seat before he finally saw tiny slithers of the outside through the gap of his eyelids. After a little fighting, his eyes were now open wide and staring fiercely at his surroundings, taking some small comfort in the knowledge that he as still sat in the same room he was in before he fell asleep, then recoiling in horror and fear as he saw the empty chair sitting in front of him where Sarah had been sitting.
“Oh, my God.” He spluttered once he saw this frightening image. He was alone, totally alone in this terrible, nightmarish place. She had disappeared, she had left him here to suffer alone. Using his hands as leverage, he jumped out of his chair and straight onto his shaking feet. He turned round and round in small, regular circles as he searched high and low for Sarah, looking in every small shadow, every corner of the room. He looked up at the top of the small staircase at the other side of the room as well as looking outside through the rusted iron bars and the windows that were covered with patches of dried mud and dirt and out through the myriad number of trees and tall, elongated blades of grass. Had she gone outside, had she found some way out and left him here while she made a bid for freedom? He couldn’t believe that of her, even though he had only known her a few hours. Deep down, he knew she would never do that to him.
He heaved a deep sigh and rested the side of his head against the cold, stone of the wall, only half noticing the faint trickles of water that ran over its surface. He stared dejected and full of sorrow out through the barred window and out toward the perfect darkness of the endlessness of the forest outside, his heart yearning for freedom as his tongue suddenly became aware of the atrocious stench and foul taste of the dust-filled sepulchral air that continually found their way into his lungs, filling them with its ghastly, slow-acting posion.
“Ernest, are you alright?”
Ernest’s heart jumped out of his chest as the small female voice suddenly spoke softly from out of the shadows behind him, scaring him so much he honestly believed that he was going to die. He spun round in one quick movement and stared hard at the image of Sarah sat in her armchair, looking at him suspiciously with her hands resting in her lap.
“Where the hell did you come from?! He shouted to her as he spluttered saliva. He motioned toward his armchair. “I awoke in that chair, right there and you were nowhere to be seen! I looked for you all around, then I walked over to the window and you suddenly appeared from out of nowhere. Where the hell where you?!”
Sarah looked around her and back at him as she struggled to make sense of what exactly he was talking about. “What do you mean?” She said. “I was here when you awoke, you wouldn’t open your eyes when I spoke to you. Then when you did, you jumped up out of the chair and looked around calling for me like I wasn’t here, but I was calling to you and you didn’t answer. You only heard me when you were by the window and now this. What’s happening to you?”
A great expression of total despair, confusion and dejection suddenly came over Ernest, his hands open-palmed and raised appealingly out toward Sarah. She looked down at them and held them softly until Ernest slowly walked away and stopped right against the opposite wall, his face pressed against the cold stonework, his fists softly banging against it.
“It doesn’t matter anymore.” He spluttered. “It’d done now. We can leave. Let’s get out of here.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The air was soft and relatively pleasant around Ernest as he stood on the outer narrow walkway of the first floor in the main hall, his wrists hanging above the sharp, metallic, chain-like guard stretched all around the edge of the walkway, his hands cupped together and shivering slightly in the moderate breeze.
The mist that carried out its pointless, endless twisting and turning, roiling and cascading in the pitch-black darkness in the empty air above the hall staircase was still present in the surrounding darkness, seemingly playing out some kind of pointless, personal ritual that only it had the true secrets to. Ernest watched it with acute fascination as he stood in a semi-absent minded state while he waited for Sarah to collect her belongings. His eyes were glazed as he stared at the milky-white, ghostly apparition gathering like storm clouds right above him, staring at it as though sensing some invisible, unknown truth it locked deep within it’s unearthly body and willing it to show that truth, to empty out all of the secrets of this utterly evil and bizarre place. He watched with a calm, untroubled face as the mist reached out with an elongated, tail-like appendage and reached out silently toward him then slowly dragged itself across the bare skin of his hands with a feathery, silent touch that made him shiver inside deeply. For a brief moment, he thought he could sense something inside the mist, something alive that seemed to be reaching out to him in some strange way. He dismissed it immediately. Though anything was possible, given what he had seen here tonight. But, all of that was unimportant. If he had been brought here for some special reason, tailored only for him, then he had faced it and come through it, faced his demons and came out the other side ready to start a fresh.
He felt a little humbled at that thought, so much so that he rewarded himself with a slight grin, almost a smirk on the side of his mouth. He brought himself back up to a vertical position for a few moments before the pain in his bad-back became any worse and quickly rubbed his hands to shake off the chill in the air. He looked behind him for a second to see if Sarah was coming before kneeling back across the metallic walkway guard, almost completely ignoring the cold steel of the spikes as they pressed a little against his arms.
He passed the next few moments staring at the tall, elongated, stone pillars circling the walkway and around the main hall in a very large open circle. The pillars were sinister to look at, like still, silent sentries positioned in perfect order and in equal postures, simply standing there, staring at him with unseen eyes as the ghostly white mist slowly cascaded and draped itself over them like a spider’s web.
Ernest sighed, fidgeted slightly and rubbed his hands together before breathing a lungful of warm breath inside the hollow fists he made.
Normally, in the seemingly endless hours they had spent in this place, it would have been extremely dangerous to stand here all by yourself in the main hall, without anyone to stand by you and keep you safe. The whole atmosphere of this place seemed to envoke a permanent feeling of unease for everyone unfortunate enough to find themselves here. Everywhere they went, it was there, like sinister, unseen eyes watching you, invisible talons of unseen hands gripping you, forever filling you with a strong sense of foreboding, imminent danger, death even.
But, strangely, not anymore, at least not to Ernest. Ever since his downward spiral into madness, into his personal tortured mindscape that he had experienced downstairs, something had changed for him. The sense of foreboding was gone, the apprehension was gone. The pain of losing his daughter, the pain of believing that he was the cause of her sudden death even, thankfully, the endlessly staring image of his daughter’s sad, broken face that dwelled so heavily in his mind and refused to let go was gone. Finally, it had left him, all of it. No longer did it haunt him, torment him behind his eyes while his face hid the pain of it all. He felt like a new man, a man who had left his past behind him, locked the demons up forever and thrown away the key and not felt any sense of loss or despair.
Though, despite his victory of breaking free of his emotional shackles, something still niggled at him. His demons were gone now, but in the years before, they were always present, always there. In some strange way, he was a little anxious to see them gone after living with them for so long. It had become the norm to ceaselessly try to fight them, block them out to little avail. The fight kept him going a little. He had fought this endless battle for so long, he didn’t know how to function without it.
To hell with that. He thought contemptibly to himself. He had spent way too long morose and depressed, wallowing in self-pity over his unfair plight. Now was the time to move on, to look ahead to the future and not behind him anymore. Tomorrow was a new day, a new beginning.
His eyes widened in awareness as he slowly turned round and stood upright as he heard footsteps coming from the darkness of the open hallway behind him. Narrowing his eyes a little, he stared intently at the pitch-black shadows as he tried to make out who or what was coming, feeling only a slight, cold breeze emanating from the silent corridor that washed over him like invisible water.
“Sarah?” He shouted, calling to whoever might be listening.
Whoever? What am I talking about?
There was no reply, nothing but the ceaseless echoing footsteps that came closer and closer through the unyielding darkness until the fair and slightly nervous face of Sarah Tuttle appeared in front of him, her hands moving quickly like a fan as she rummaged around in her small, cotton shoulder-bag for something, her face white and her eyes wide open in apprehension. She seemed to be out of breath, though hardly surprising since she had virtually run around the whole house looking for her belongings while he waited here. He felt a little guilty not going with her, especially when he had told her that it was safe for her to go alone now, that it was all over and there was no need to worry. Even she had sensed the change in the atmosphere too, sensed that the dampness, the heavy air that clung to everything in this place like steel talons was gone, all of it was gone, leaving behind nothing but an empty, silent, possibly liveable environment. Yet, with all these facts facing the two of them, she still suffered the nagging fear that something wasn‘t right, that this place shouldn‘t be so calm, given that the gloomy, unsettled atmosphere was here in the mist, the peculiar shadows and the wind that howled like an endlessly roaming phantom throughout the deserted corridors and empty rooms. But, in the end, he had been able to convince. For strange reason, ever since they met, they had been able to trust each other, as if they had known each other for years. Ernest smiled pleasantly at her as he watched her quickly regain her breath and collect herself as she stood half-aware in front of him with a face like a surprised child, her hands moving slowly and unconsciously throughout her overflowing bag. He was pleased at finally seeing her at last and her slightly amusing appearance, he couldn‘t help but snigger slightly.
“Have you collected everything?” He asked glancing at her bag.
She nodded and waited a few moments before answering as she gathered her breath. “I think so,” she said finally. “I can’t find all of the candles that I brought with me, but that’s hardly surprising since I lit them in so many rooms, but they’re not important. I have my lighter, my séance materials, I don’t think that their’s anything else I might have left lying around.”
Ernest’s face suddenly became glum as he looked momentarily at the floor. “Except for Dr Stephenson.” He said absently. Sarah joined him in his absentness. “I know,” she said. “But, I’ve tried and I’ve tried, all the time I was searching for my things, I tried to sense him somewhere, anywhere he could be, but I found nothing. Even the atmosphere, the haziness, the noise of this place is gone, just gone. What happened? The house is clear, but how?”
Ernest couldn’t help but laugh slightly. Sarah was meant to be the expert in these matters while he was just a bystander, an innocently ignorant person to her gifts while he watched her perform her ‘magic’ and use her gifts while he watched her like a paying customer and here she was as ignorant as he was, well, practically. He couldn’t completely understand it himself, all he knew was that he was free, all of them were free and that was what was important. The question of what would happen to Father Heathers still managed to gain a foothold in his mind, as did the terrible image of his lifeless, decapitated body lying pushed up against a cold, stone wall deep in the basement level, surrounded with blood. Was he free, now, free of this Hell? Was he floating above their heads in spirit form, shouting down his triumphant ascension? Was he trapped here, forever languishing with whatever else loomed it’s presence? Was he in some unknown, peaceful place, happiness and serenity the likes of which no living being could ever know? He had absolutely no idea, the only thing he could do was hope and believe in the change of this place, that the evil, the corruption was gone now, as well as believe in what the world accepted as an ‘afterlife‘. He simply shook his head with a deep breath and shrugged his shoulders. Sarah seemed slightly happy with his simple answer
“Well, come on.” He said. “We’d better leave now, we’ve done everything we have to do. There‘s no need to stay here anymore”
He started to turn and walk away before Sarah lightly grabbed him by the arm and looked at him with a curious expression. “Are you alright?” She asked. “A change has come over you, you seem happier, if you don’t mind me saying. Like a great weight has been lifted from your shoulders. And . . .anyway, what do you mean ‘we‘d better leave.’ The tree trunk is blocking the entrance and there are bars on the window’s. How are we to get outside?”
Ernest merely patted her hand, smiled and walked away, leaving her to silently mull over a few thoughts before following him.
As they walked down the long, carpeted staircase, joined only by the dull, soft thud their feet made as they met the carpeted steps there was another change both of them noticed, not a change in the atmosphere this time, but a change in the physical surroundings. The wallpaper had become much more frayed, degraded and rotted than usual. The paper that had fallen from the wall was wet and soggy and fell apart when he touched it or tried to pick it up. The wood of the stairs and the wood of the dado rail’s was cracked and splintered, long trickles of dust fell like a mini-cascading waterfall down to the floor from numerous sources. Ernest looked closer at the wall and noticed a dampness to it, a dampness that seemed to come from somewhere deep within the wall’s themselves. Reaching out with his hand, he felt cold trickles of water dripping down the bare plaster, over the wallpaper and across the rotten wood. He peeled some of the wallpaper away and saw large, terrible burns scorching every part of the wall that they could. Everywhere the two of them looked, it seemed as if the whole room, even the whole house itself was degrading and falling apart like burnt wood at an unprecedented, utterly impossible rate, right in front of their eyes.
What is this? He thought curiously. This wasn’t here when we first arrived and there’s no way it could have happened in the time we were here. It’s as if there’s subsidence in the ground. The whole place is falling apart into ruin. What’s going on?
He looked up suddenly toward the ceiling which was blanketed by darkness as he heard a long, drawn-out, powerfully strong creak of something high above them toward the ceiling as something very large and powerful had suddenly shifted out of place and was beginning to fall away from its supports. The intense creaking was followed by a strange, almost ghostly moan or groan emanating from the darkness, like a groan of pain, or of release. After a few agonising moments of waiting in silence, a tiny slither of dust that fell all the way down from the ceiling and toward the floor fell across Ernest‘s face causing him to quickly wipe it away, immediately filling his heart with a newfound sense of danger, danger this time of the physical and earthly kind.
“Ernest?” Sarah asked cautiously, not wanting to move in case it caused a major disturbance. “What is happening? What was that?”
“I don’t know,” he said with hard, staring eyes, his hands gripping the stair banisters, feeling the water ooze up out of them and across his skin, feeling the weakness in the wood, so much that it seemed as though they would collapse into dust at any moment leaving behind nothing but drooping splinters in his hands. “I just don’t know, but we have to get out of here, now. Come on!!”
The two of them lunged away from their shackled positions halfway down the staircase before finally finding their smacking hard and pleasantly at the cold, black stone of the floor, just in time to hear the loud, ear-shattering cracking and splintering of the stairs behind them, joined in intense cocophony by the wood and immensely tall wallpaper begin to degraded and fall toward the floor. Ernest and Sarah didn’t look back once, wanting only to reach the main doors and get out of here before everything collapse on top of them, leaving them trapped and buried alive beneath the jagged bones of this immense place. The thought was too horrendous for the two of them to bare.
Finally, they reached the main doors, only partly feeling the great shock of seeing that the large tree trunk that had fallen in front of the doors, pinning them in was now gone. The splintered wood where the roots had broken through with a force only nature could bestow had disappeared. In fact, the doors looked better now than they had when they first arrived, as if this was meant to be, as if something was guiding them back here to freedom.
Neither of them wasted a beat of their hearts before they pulled together at the doors, expecting to excert fierce strength to pull open the large, powerful, oak panels, but instead found them as light as a feather in their grasp, allowing them to easily pull them open and throw them hard against the cold stone of the walls behind them, immediately stopping the cacophony of noise of the collapsing building to a sudden stop and immediate silence.
Epilogue
The soft afternoon light that permeated through the now much smaller number of leaveless trees was a welcome relief to the both of them as they sat comfortably on an old, rotten log outside of Vautusceen House, staring up and around them at the light as it slowly gathered around them like silent, early morning mist, enveloping them in its cold, yet earthly, recognisable presence. A slight chill in the air caused them both to huddle up tightly to each other and wrap themselves up tightly and snugly inside their jackets, warming themselves with gentle pats and rubs over their shoulders and chests from their shaking arms. For a moment, Sarah became engrossed in the sight of a small, healthy green leaf hanging from an otherwise bare branch on a tree, watching carefully as a tiny trickle of dew gathered within its tiny pouch-like surface like a pool and gently and silently fell from the leaf as it drooped downward and the water fell like a trickling waterfall down to the ground and right onto a blossoming Orchid as it nourished it with its life-giving properties, the water splashing silently into the air for a moment like falling ice crystals. Sarah narrowed her eyes and smiled in silent rapture for this otherwise trivial, yet beautiful sight. It had seemed like so long since they had both seen something so beautiful, so natural. Something that existed to add beauty and merriment to peoples lives while suckling the young that were constantly birthed from the earth. For so long, they had been trapped inside that terrible building, digging deep into the atrocious horror that dwelled like an awaiting parasite deep inside its cavernous, silent corridors and cave-like rooms. For so long, they had breathed in the foul air that eternally drifted silently into their lungs, unseen and odourless, filling their bodies with who knew what ghastly crimes against nature hid within it, waiting to ensnare a poor, unfortunate victim. The place was squalid filthy, diseased and that was all there was to it. Now that they were finally both outside in God’s green earth, they could once again sample the delights that the Creator in all his majesty had bestowed upon the earth. Ernest paused to smell in the air deeply, relishing the odour of the morning dew, the wet grass beneath their feet, the sound of approaching birds in the distance, the feel of a strong breeze against his skin, like being blind all of your life and finally being able to open your eyes and see the gorgeous, eye-watering beauty of it all once the veil of darkness is finally lifted. It was all too much to handle in the space of a few moments, but it didn’t matter. He has the rest of his life to experience it, the rapture of nature and the sheer pleasure of being alive and able to sense the world alive and breathing around you.
Here the two of them sat in silence and watched the pleasant, natural sights unfolding before them, not registering for a moment how this was an utterly dramatic and impossible transformation from the hopeless, bleak thick entanglement of the bare, threatening trees of the forest they were forced to traverse only a small number of hours ago. As is some higher unknown power had finally released them from their shackles and granted them their freedom. They had served their time and it was time to move on, now. In fact, it was as though almost all of the memories they had of that terrible place were gone, dissipated and deleted from their minds as if it had never happened, leaving them to suddenly find themselves in this pleasant spot where they were granted the time to gather their thoughts with only a twinkle of acknowledgement of their recent past. Only peace and well-being filled their consciousness now and the sudden appreciation of the simple pleasures in life. For a brief moment, a slight flicker of memory of the previous few hours passed between them, causing them to momentarily look at each other in puzzlement before returning to their contented expressions.
Ernest shuffled and turned round to see Vautusceen House behind them and was met by the sight of a large, hollowed-out, stone structure, something that to anyone ignorant of his knowledge would never know what horrors lay within it before now. Only a fraction of an instant ago, it was a tall, looming threatening structure, seemingly not of this Earth and somehow constructed by unknown forces of evil. Like a giant, silent silhouetted figure, waiting in the eternal silence and hopelessness of the thick, unyielding darkness and imprisonment of the forest surrounding it, eternally awaiting ignorant, hapless victims to its dark domain. But, now it resembled nothing more than a broken tooth, a gaping open wound occupying a rotten, diseased portion of flesh that was covered in septic sores, blisters and vermin-like bacteria that fed on the rotting flesh that still hung tenuously onto its moorings.
The pleasant soft glow of the surrounding light ethereally shone its pleasant majesty deep into the gaping wound of the dilapidated structure, lighting up its empty interiors with a heavenly glow, as if casting out the mad devils which stagnated deep within it and allowing Heaven’s Angel’s to now inhabit it with their eternal majesty.
With a final look at the now defunked structure with a deep, heaving contented sigh, Ernest patted his knees and sat up from the log. Sarah barely noticed him as she was caught in the grip of the pleasing sounds of nature unfolding before her. The air, the freedom to breath deeply. The moist, cold, early-morning dew settling on the trees, the grass and the flowers. The gentle trickling sound of a nearby brook. It was magnificent, like being born again, born again into a world without trouble or strife and the limitless freedom to enjoy life to the limit.
Ernest watched her pleasantly for a moment before slowly extending his hand out towards her. For a few moments she ignored him, her mouth partly open and formed into a pleasant slight smile, her eyes glazed and staring happily at the wonders that it seemed only she knew the true beauty of.
Eventually, she noticed his hand and looked up at him with a bright, happy grin before taking his hand and walking with him down a small, dirt path that led from the log and down towards the end of what looked like a small hill before it disappeared into a haze of light and mist. The trees that had so recently gripped this place into a suffocating embrace with their intricately entangled branches and large, shadowy bulks had now been completely cleared away, leaving behind nothing but a regular series of bare trees formed into regular straight lines on either side of the path. Sarah quickly glanced toward one of the trees for a moment as she thought she caught the sight of a small grey squirrell quickly climbing the immense structure of the tree carrying a large hazelnut in its small, scampering arms. But, the sight was too fleeting to be absolutely sure. She quickly turned her head back.
The two of them continued to walk in silence down the path, exchanging casual glances at each other with bright, happy smiles on their faces before disappearing completely into the soft afternoon light and chilly mist at the end of the path. As they disappeared, a low, dull echoing sound suddenly emanated from deep within the fractured structure that had once been Vautusceen House. The sound was almost like a groan or moan as it rang out its unnatural tone right across the small expanse of the radically altered forest, signalling its defeat, its enemies victory and screaming its sudden, painful death to anyone or anything that may be listening before disappearing off completely into the ether and again returning the whole place to silence. But, its cries of pain sounded out unheard as they futiley called out to no-one, finally, at long last, returning the place to deserved, restful, eternal peace.
The End
