13 Hauntings

by Clarice Black

  Her mother nodded her head and watched her daughter leave the apartment.

  *

  Her journey was a swift one. She went to the train station and booked herself a ticket (a one-way ticket) to Oxfordshire, where the castle was. Her father had sent the address to her phone and expected her in a few hours. The journey was pristine, with varied landscapes coming and going. The clear blue sky, and the flowing greenery of the meadows and countryside were breath-taking. The green continuation would be punctuated by a lake, or a stream or a river every few miles, breaking the monotony. She enjoyed this display of nature, and found herself looking forward to visiting the castle. It was childish to think that she was a princess in the walls of her very own palace, but deep down she did think that, and she enjoyed this thought, even if others thought that it was cringe worthy.

  When the train stopped at its station, Elena, disembarked on her first solo trip, took her bag and phoned her father.

  She called but there was no answer from his line. Frustrated, she went to the benches in the waiting area and tried calling him again. On the fifth attempt, he answered her call, sounding very perplexed. “Dear, I am so very sorry that I could not be there. My wife, she’s not feeling well. At the moment, she’s admitted in the hospital and I cannot leave her side. I wanted to be there at the station myself to pick you up. I’m sorry. You’ll have to go to Ravenscroft yourself,” he said in a single sentence, not giving her a chance to interject. She said okay, and hung up. Personally, for her this was better, since she did not want to acquaint herself with Christina in the first place. And if her father had not lured her with the temptation of the castle, she would never have agreed.

  Smiling at the realization that she would have the whole place to herself for the day, she left the train station, hailed a taxi, and headed to the Ravenscroft castle.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Chapter 2

  “Holy shit!” she said as the taxi driver pulled to the curb. The path leading up to the castle traversed in a zig-zag manner up the hill, atop which perched the Ravenscroft Castle in all its glory. She could not help but stare wonderstruck at the giant display of magnificence in front of her. There were countless (actually there were twelve, but to her they seemed countless) towers that competed with each other in terms of height, and the front of the castle looked inviting and yet foreboding. She made a run for it in her excitement, noticing hastily the closed kiosks and abandoned restaurants and other buildings along the way. They had been closed for a while now. When Gilbert had bought, it was with the intention of making it a private home and not a tourist resort. It was only a matter of time before these buildings were razed. Right now, they stood as an eye sore in the path of the castle. Like haunting islets where life was once celebrated, it was knocked out cold again by the hands of whatever evil presence resided in the castle. Elena did not know this, of course.

  She approached the castled with quivering steps. Quivering from excitement. The perimeter wall surrounding the castle was roughly twenty feet high. This served as a means of privacy back in the day; privacy from prying eyes. She crossed the threshold of the wall through a wooden gate. It was open without anyone standing guard. Once inside, she saw a familiar sight. A chauffer was tending to her father’s cars: his Rolls Royce, his Ferrari, his Lambo, and his Audi. He had promised her an Audi, and he better keep that promise, thought Elena. The cars were parked in a semicircle around a big fountain which was pouting water from numerous orifices. She saw an expanse of gardens canopied by trees with vines hanging from them. Pathways led romantically to dense natural mazes, and flowers of different colours decorated the pavements and the grassy fields within the gardens. She resisted the urge to explore further, that would have to come later. Right now, she had to go inside and make herself home. She was photographing with her mobile’s camera as she went. She approached the entrance of the castle, and was unexpectedly halted by a man approaching her from behind. She did not see him, and when he grabbed her shoulder roughly, she was taken by surprise and screamed.

  “Don’t go about that castle, Missy!” the weird fellow said in a cockney accent. He wore shabby clothes and had gloves on his hand. Later, she’d find out that he was the gardener in charge of the grounds. She disgustedly pulled away from him. He was dripping with grime and dirt, and he had the nerve to cop a feel.

  “What the hell?” she asked, and tried to get her hands on her mace.

  “No. No. I mean you no harm. I wanted to warn ya. Please. Olaf sees bad things happening. Olaf tells true,” he said.

  “Does Olaf always speak in the third person?” she looked at him cowering against the hedge of the garden, scared by her mace.

  “Olaf does,” he grinned, showing numerous teeth missing.

  “Thank you for your concern, Olaf, I will make sure to call the cops if I see anything shady,” she said and went onwards, still feeling a little taken aback by this unsolicited tete-a-tete.

  “Don’t go in, Miss. You may not come out alive,” he crooned and went back inside.

  What a turd, she thought and knocked on the door. The chauffer tipped her his hat, and went about polishing an already gleaming car. The doors opened in front of her, by a butler whom she had seen many a times in her dad’s old home; the estate in London. Unlike her mother’s estate which was nothing more than an apartment and a shop, it was a bigger place. A home expanding over five acres, with the river Thames passing through its gardens.

  Elena tried her best to separate her name from her father’s. She did a good job of it at Oxford University, and so far no one knew that she was Gilbert Odell’s daughter. She did not want that kind of publicity in her life. Any other girl would have wanted it, but not her. She was the type who reads books with a hot cuppa cocoa on Friday nights when the rest of the world is out partying. She did not intermingle much with her peers from university except when it was unavoidable. In truth, people and their shenanigans disgusted her. She thought that being on her own was a better way to live her life, but her clinical depression made it impossible to do so. On one hand, she wanted to be left alone with a copy of The Shining in hand, and on the other, she wanted to go out on the town and get intimate with every person on the road. Not in a sexual way! In a ‘getting to know you’ way. Of late, the clawing feeling of suffocation crept up from her throat to her mouth whenever she pondered alone a little too long, and she’d find herself crying for no reason whatsoever. The shrink gave her meds, and added casually that there’s a ninety-percent chance that these might make her better, but there’s also a ten-percent chance that they might make things worse. Elena did not take those meds. Her depression worsened with those pills.

  “Welcome young Miss,” the butler said and smiled. She smiled back. The two knew each other well. He was one of those kindly old faces you could confide in had you committed murder, and he wouldn’t tell anyone. He was relatable, friendly, and downright cuddly.

  “Kenneth! I did not know you were going to be here. My stay just became ten times more bearable,” she said and hugged him. He hugged her back for a moment, and then resumed his professional demeanour.

  “The very best for our young Miss. You must be tired. I will show you to your bedroom promptly and then prepare a small afternoon tea for you,” he said and led her to her room.

  As he escorted her, she stared wide-eyed from one corner of the place to the other. It was so heavily redesigned and renovated that it looked as if it had never been abandoned in the first place. It looked fabulous, gleaming and glistening with brilliant lights all around. The floor was marble, the walls were stone decorated with wallpapers and warm lights. The ceilings were so high that she had to crane her neck to see them. Chandeliers hung in every passage that they visited. The marble floor gave way to a wooden floor as they exited the entrance hall, and a velvet carpet ran down the middle of the corridor.

  “This place is unbelievable!” she said.

  “Unbelievably painful! For my knees! But I should not
complain,” the butler joked.

  “Is there a library?” she asked as he led her to her room. The corridor seemed never ending. It was only after she was inside the castle that she really began to grasp the magnanimity of the place. It must have cost her father a shit ton of a fortune. At least half of it.

  “Of course, and the very best one at that. Take a bath or a quick wash, and when you come out, I’ll put the tea in the library. Does that sound okay?” Kenneth always knew what to say.

  “You’re the best Ken!” she said as they stopped in front of a giant door. Well, they were all giant doors, some more giant than others, but this one had an air of grandeur about it. He opened it, giving view to a big bedroom with an entire wall of window that displayed the countryside, the little rivers, lakes and gardens below. She gasped and ran into the room, forgetting that she was not a tween any more. She plopped on the bed and beheld the room. It looked perfect. Fit for a king, she wanted to say. Despite its ancient façade, everything in the room was modern, with electricity, a TV, a thermostat controller, and bedside lamps.

  “This used to be the Duke’s own chambers,” the butler said.

  “Holy shit, really?” she asked.

  The butler looked around to check if anyone was spying on them, then bent close to her face and said, ‘I shit you not.”

  The two of them burst into laughter. This was one of their inside jokes. He’d drop character and become a regular folk, just like you and me, upon instigation, and it would always be hilarious.

  He regained his character as quickly as he’d lost it, and went for Elena’s tea. In the meantime, she decided to take a bath.

  She undressed in the bathroom. The shower had warm water. She doused herself in it, already feeling the tiredness from the long journey leaving her body.

  Suddenly the water became hotter, and she opened her eyes in pain only to see that it was not water coming out of the showerhead, but a thick stream of black blood. She screamed and fell back on the slippery floor. She hurried from the shower and dressed, freaked out of her wits. The water in the shower was still running. Scared, she went inside to turn it off, and saw that there was no blood flowing, but normal water.

  The tiredness is making me hallucinate, she thought and closed the tap. She dressed promptly and went in search of the library, hoping the staff in the castle had not heard her scream.

  *

  The castle had a dozen staff members, Elena came to find out after she went wandering about the castle: kitchen staff, cooks, cleaners, chauffeurs, the butler and peripherals who helped about the castle. She found her way to the library after conducting a perimeter search. The rooms were bejewelled with chandeliers that looked like they had yet to see their better days. Every room, no matter how spick and span it looked, looked hollow and dead. It was something she could not pin, but a feeling was ever present. Twice she thought she saw a glimmer of a man walking in the shadows of the rooms. She shrugged her head and refocused her vision, and he was never there.

  The fact that she was getting spooked by the house already allured her, and made her want to stay even more. The building had character; it told a story, and that was something you did not find in the dingy apartments of London or Oxford, which had only been built in the last decade or so.

  She went to the library eventually, where she found a steaming pot of tea, a plate of biscuits, a couple of croissants and rolls. She devoured everything for she was hungry. She drank two cups of tea, which she had never done in her life before.

  Before she could get accustomed to the freedom that she was enjoying, Elena reminded herself to call her father and ask after his plans. He answered her call in a very apologetic manner, and begged her to stay on for two days more, because he and his wife would be arriving late. She was under the weather, and still in the hospital, he said. She hung up on him again, but was secretly glad that they were taking their time. This meant that she would get to stay in the castle all by her lonesome even longer.

  Truth be told, she was downright jealous of Christina. She hated that whore of a woman. Everything had been handed to her in a silver platter. All she had to do was look pretty for the cameras, smile and wear weird clothes to promote some or other fashion designer. And at twenty-two she had married a man from the top 10 richest list. You can’t dig that kind of gold with an English Literature Degree, thought Elena with envy. And that was the root cause of her hatred for Christina. While she would have to strive and struggle to get settled in her life, Christina had already done so without any effort. All she had to do was suck an old guy’s cock and ride him till his erection wore out. It was a cheap barter for the lavish life. She had her own personal fleet of cars, a private airplane, a house in the Welsh meadows, a New York apartment, and now her own line of designer clothes, all funded by her husband, the entrepreneur Gilbert Odell.

  Screw that bitch, thought Elena bitterly.

  *

  The first day passed without any further incident. Elena chatted with the butler, called her mother and told her everything was okay, and then decided to go to bed early, so she might roam the grounds around the castle in the morning. She undressed and put on her jammies, and went to bed.

  The sleep she had was troubled and disturbed. There were weird noises emanating from the walls of the room she was sleeping in. At first, she suspected rats. But rats did not make that kind of ruckus. It was like something was shifting in the walls, something big. Like a human stuck in there. She even said “hello?” three times at different intervals in the night but there came no reply.

  She slipped into sleep for a fourth time, never minding the fact that it was already four in the morning; the hour she had set her alarm intending to get up early and witness the dawning of the virgin sun against the fields and forests of the countryside. Shutting her alarm off, she went to sleep, only to be woken by shrill shrieking, the sound of a woman crying. She got up, and this time, more out of anger than out of fear, she said, “who’s there?”

  There was no one, of course. And one could easily blame this disturbed mindset on the internal conflict and the weariness from travel. But there was more to it. The shrieking had sounded so livid, so real. She could not sleep, and so she got out of her bed, and dressed in joggers and jeans and a t-shirt. It wasn’t cold out, being summer, so she did not bother with an overcoat.

  To her surprise, the butler was awake and in the kitchen prepping breakfast.

  “Jeeves, its four thirty. Who are you making that for?” she asked him.

  “Why, I heard sounds from your room. They woke me. I thought you’d waken so, naturally I made breakfast, didn’t I?” he said in a matter-of-fact tone.

  “You’re the best,” she said and sat down at the kitchen table.

  “What do you think of this place?” she asked as he poured her a cup of tea.

  “Not my style. I prefer mansions and bungalows. Castles are… well, castles,” he said and sat down by her side, something he’d never do in front of anyone else.

  “I love this place. But dear God, the sleep was horrible,” she said.

  “Was it not?” he nodded gravely.

  “You feel it too?” she sat upright.

  “I’ve been here for a week, and I say this not to scare you, but I’ve not had a good sleep in that time. Always, something’s waking me up. A scream, a door slam, or a violent prod in the ribs while I sleep…” he droned off. Now that he mentioned it, Elena did begin to see the effects of sleeplessness on his face. His eyes were bagged underneath, and tints of red patches swam among the whites. His face was lined heavily, and his breath smelled like that of a man who has not slept in a while: stale.

  “Did any of the others feel this?” she asked, a little scared.

  “The other servants? No. They live in the servant quarters in the back of the castle, away from it all. I reside in the basement chamber, next to the stove room.”

  Elena drank her tea, even though it was scalding her mouth, and got up from h
er seat. “This place is haunted.”

  “Like so many others, but this is the first time I’ve ever been in one,” the butler said, and took the empty tea cup to the wash basin.

  She went out for her walk, and found that the sun was shy that day, and did not want to come out from behind the clouds that had gathered sometime in the night. It was going to rain. Bollocks to that, Elena thought. Rain never left Englanders alone. It drizzled in London, in Oxford, in Manchester, and just about everywhere, with a relentless routine that made the denizens gloomy and sad. And now the rainclouds had followed her all the way out to the countryside.

  At eight in the morning her father called to let her know that he was to arrive with Christina in two hours. They were travelling by road, because Christina felt like it. Elena scoffed at this. Her father coming early meant that she’d have to leave here early, and she’d only just begun to appreciate its true nature, what with its fine architecture and its Harry Pottery feel.

  “You win some, you lose some,” she said and tried to catch some shut eye before her father’s arrival.

  *

  She woke up expecting to find her father and her step-mother in the castle, but the butler had other news for her. He was knocking on her door; that’s what woke her up, that and the horrible dream she had been having.

  “Yes?” she asked, and let him in.

  “Miss, the weather’s been very harsh all over Oxfordshire. Your father called me to let you know that he will be coming tomorrow instead, for the roads are in no state for travel,” he said and winked at her. He knew her feelings towards her father, and he knew her feelings towards Christina. If one were to ask his opinion, he would not say anything, but to a trusted confidante, he might say that this unholy matrimony was not a natural thing.

  Elena let a sigh of relief escape her. The more her father put off coming, the more time she had to herself. With this rejuvenating thought in mind, she got out of the bed, and went to the bathroom. She still remembered her last encounter there, blood in place of water spouting from the shower, so she took precaution, and only washed her face and her hands and left quickly.