13 Hauntings

by Clarice Black

  *

  In the hospital, a beetlelike man was sitting across a table interviewing Elena with a very clinical professionalism. He did not smile at her, or ask her about the weather. He jumped right in and asked her about her deviating behaviour, and then asked her if she was taking any drugs.

  “No! what makes you think that?” she said angrily.

  “The behaviour that your father described over the phone and the testimony of the servants where you’re staying, all line up. And there’s only one answer. So, are you?” he said.

  “Screw you!” she said with quivering anger rising up in her head like mercury in a thermometer.

  “There’s no need to be mad. I am asking you a question. And if you say no, I will believe you,” he said.

  “Well, no! I am not taking anything. It’s the new woman who’s bothering me! Christina! My dad married her without thinking of the consequences…” she trailed off. Why the hell was she explaining it to him? But now that she’d begun, she did not feel like stopping.

  “And there’s this haunting in the castle. I know you are not supposed to believe in that stuff, but I swear, I’ve seen some shit. There’s a woman who jumped off the building with her child, and then there was blood. It came out of the shower, and once I woke up I was drenched in it!” she tried to explain her situation without sounding too much of a lunatic.

  “I see. You feel suicidal?”

  “No! Do you?”

  “That’s not going to help anyone,” the shrink said and wrote something on his pad. He stared at her from behind his spectacles and said, “I will be frank with you, since you are an adult. You are in the throes of clinical depression, and that is branching itself out in the form of depression induced psychosis, making you hallucinate these things you’re describing.”

  He explained to her how the psychosis worked, and then gave her a prescription for Haloperidol, a calming drug which would stop her hallucinating.

  She stormed out of his clinic, and did not bother to pick up the drug. She wanted to go home, pack her stuff, and leave for Oxford. But more than that, she had an inexplicable desire to murder Christina.

  *

  The castle was bedded down when she came home late that night. She’d coaxed the driver into taking her to an ice-cream shop before heading home, and being the persuasive person that she was, she succeeded. She settled into her vanilla cone and diet Coke and tried to put off going back as long as she could. Now that she was away from the place, and the dreary aura it spread, she was feeling normal. She did not feel the need to kill Christina anymore. She did not feel the vindictiveness or the rebelliousness she had been feeling half an hour before. So, the driver and her went back to the castle.

  It was pitch black, save for the light that Kenneth had left on in the entrance way, and the door was unlocked. The members of staff were all asleep, and no one moved about the corridors. Elena, as she walked in the castle, noticed someone sitting in a sofa in the living room. She went inside and saw that it was Christina, wearing a bathrobe, she had a vodka martini in her hand. Elena crept up to her and tapped her on the shoulder.

  “Oh!” said Christina, a trifle surprised. “I didn’t see you there.”

  Elena felt frustrated. She had meant to scare her, and to knock that drink from her hand by surprising her. But it failed. Whatever. “What are you doing awake so late?”

  “I was waiting for you, actually. Felt like we didn’t get off on the right foot,” Christina said. Elena stared at her for a long time, registering that Christina was prettier than her in so many ways. And that made her feel jealous all over again.

  “Yeah? What makes you think that? I think we got along just fine,” Elena said, with sarcasm dripping in her tone.

  “Come on, Elena. I knew you hated me from the start, and I think I know why,” she said. “It’s because I am an outsider in your family, not so? You think that I have taken by force the place which rightfully belonged to your mother. That I am a usurper,” Christina said.

  “Wow. Holy shit. Where did that come from? I didn’t take you to be a model with brains. But you’re right,” Elena felt surprised.

  “I wasn’t always a model, Girl. I have a bachelor’s degree in clinical psychology, and I know that’s hard to believe. My career as a therapist didn’t pan out. So, I became a model. Not the most satisfying career change, but you know, it pays. And I’ve never once been naked in front of a camera,” she said.

  In the midst of all the jealousy and hatred that she had been feeling for Christina, Elena suddenly felt a little respect for her. But only just a little.

  “The doc I went to, he tells me I’m psychotic,” she said.

  “Everyone’s psychotic. The moment we deviate from the normal and indulge in any uncanny thought, the shrinks dub us mad, crazy. In that light, you know who’d be the biggest psychotic? Einstein! Da Vinci! Picasso! They were different, but that didn’t make them mad,” Christina said.

  Elena wanted to talk more, but felt sleep calling her to go to bed, so she bid Christina adieu, and said sorry for being an asshole, and went to her room.

  Her eyes had gone foggy from tiredness, and as she walked the corridor to her room, she saw a lady draped in an elegant robe walking down the corridor towards Elena, with a knife in her hand. Elena did not feel scared by her. She walked onwards towards the ghost, and saw that it hovered towards her, and the knife was dripping blood. But as it fell to the ground, it did not smidge or cling to the carpet, but disappeared as soon as it fell. The ghost came too close to her face, so close that Elena could see through the translucent skin, and kissed Elena on the lips. It was a cold kiss, but Elena reciprocated in her drunken sleepy stupor.

  The next thing she knew, she was in her bed, heavily asleep. The door to her room creaked open and creaked shut. Some time during the night, her bed began to shake of its own accord. But she did not wake. The ghost lady who had kissed her stood by her bed with the dagger in her hand, and even though she was hollow and sceptre-like, the dagger that she held was real.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Chapter 4

  Elena saw in her dream, the woman she had seen when falling asleep, barge into a room where a couple were together in bed, hiding themselves with the blanket on the bed.

  “How could you betray me?” she said to the man, and when he did not reply, she rushed at him with the knife in her hand, and plunged the knife not in to him, but in to the woman who was lying in bed beside him. She drew the knife out and plunged it back in repeatedly, until the woman was screaming no more and lay dead, with blood drenching the sheets, the bed and her lifeless body.

  “What the hell have you done, you’re insane, Woman!” the man screamed. The woman went away with the bleeding knife. Elena watched all this like a live action movie was being played. Moments later the woman reappeared with a boy in her grasp, and she shouted at the man “this is your doing!”

  The next moment, before the man could do anything, she jumped out of the window, with the boy in her arms.

  Elena woke up with her head buzzing madly. It was as if a wasp nest had lodged itself in her brain and the sound it made inside her skull was unbearable. She opened her eyes and saw the same woman standing by her side. She had the knife in her hands.

  “Are you going to kill me?” Elena found herself asking.

  “No. But you are,” the sceptre said.

  “I don’t want to,” Elena cried.

  “You know you want to. You hate that slut who beds beside your father. You’d have her dead, wouldn’t you?” the ghost said and gave the knife to Elena.

  Elena, in a trance that she could not control, with her head buzzing, grabbed the knife and understood that the ghost was making sense. She had to kill the slut. She had to kill Christina. She had to kill her because of her perky blonde hair, and her mascaraed eyes, and her plump breasts, and her psychology degree. She had to kill her because Christina was everything that was wrong with the world; she was the seed of
contempt, of jealousy and of negative competition.

  Elena walked with the knife in her hands towards the second-floor bedroom where her father and Christina slept. The entire castle was in darkness, but the light emanating from the ghost that hovered beside her shone her path. She walked with a buzzing angriness rising in her head, the thirst of bloodlust and hatred drying her mouth and making her wet at the same time, the spirit of the castle had finally taken hold of her, and it would only let go after blood had been spilt.

  She barged the door open and found her father and that woman sleeping side by side, cuddling each other on the bed. Elena’s eyes were feral, and she breathed fumes out of her nostrils. The ghost and her, they were one. She pulled Christina from her bed, and sprawled her wide.

  “The hell!” Christina said as she woke up, and the last thing she saw was Elena stabbing her, Elena slicing her, Elena tearing at her like a Thanksgiving Turkey with the blunt cleaver in her hand.

  “Oh God!” Gilbert cried as he woke up to the sounds of his wife’s screams. He saw what Elena had done, and made a run for her. Elena ran to the third floor, and Gilbert gave chase. He had to subdue her before she did harm to herself. She ran and ran until she reached the left wing of the castle, where she climbed the tower to its highest point.

  “Elena! Stop!” her father cried and ran for her. She did not stop. The ghost and her were one. She was flying, she was running, she was hovering, she was passing through the walls, and violent images rushed through her brain.

  She reached the top and before her father could climb after her, she stood at the perch, and without a moment’s thought, she jumped down to her death.

  Gilbert saw as he finally climbed the tower, his daughter falling from the tower, and he could do nothing. He saw as her body hit the ground, and burst like a juicy grape beneath a thumb. Her face was etched with a manic smile that looked more and more like a grimace of horror the more you stared at it.

  Elena Odell had joined the ranks of the many who had died at the hands of Ravenscroft castle. At her funeral, her mother cried, her father sighed, and her brothers, no matter how much they tried, could not stop sobbing at the loss of their sister

  *

  Shortly after the death of his daughter and his wife, Gilbert Odell sold the castle back to the committee from whom he had brought it. The paparazzi hounded him and Susan and the twins for months to come, pestering them for details of the deaths, never caring for a second about the sensitive nature of their cruel questions.

  After he sold the castle, Gilbert saw the downfall of his entrepreneurial empire in a short time. At first his stocks fell, and then his businesses started closing one by one. Stakeholders and shareholders backed away one by one, leaving him alone, with nothing to show for his years of fame and success except for a Rolls Royce, a heavily indebted bank account, and a small apartment in London.

  As for the castle, it never did reopen. The committee decided that it was better for everyone’s safety for it to remain closed. Though, on the monthly occasions when the cleaners went inside to take care of the settled dust and the rot in the pipes, they reported seeing two more ghosts in addition to the many they’d seen before. Added to the existing were a girl with black hair, and a blonde girl. And even in death, they stared at one another with hatred and scorn.

  The Haunting of Crippleview House

  Clarice Black

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Prologue

  Canewdon, 1980

  A young boy of sixteen years ran down the street with three older boys chasing after. This was not the first time something like this had happened to him. For as long as he could remember, people had treated him differently to the other kids, labelling him with mean names, and excluding him from any activity he was deemed too slow for. He had a pretty bad limp in his left leg, and he had a developmental disability that left him reading at an eight-year-old’s level. The kids at school often called him names such as “retard” and “cripple”, but none of those kids were as bad as the three bullies who were chasing him. Those three were his biggest tormentors.

  As he struggled to breathe and keep up a pace which placed a good distance between him and the three bullies, he could hear them laughing and shouting cruel insults in his direction. “Get back here, spastic!” one of them taunted as they ran at him.

  The three of them were all physically fit – the boy imagined that they were all athletes, though it was only an inference as he did his best not to pay attention to them. He always tried to keep his head down and just focus on school, coming home at normal hours and keeping out of mischief. That’s what his mother always told him to do, and that’s what he was trying to do now.

  He practically soiled himself as he ran and ran. Finally, he found the old abandoned house at the end of the road. This house was known as Crippleview House, and it had been abandoned for a number of years. No one lived there. The boy didn’t pause to wonder about it, instead he found a cracked and broken window at the front. He climbed the steps onto the home’s porch and climbed inside through that window, cracking the glass a bit more in the process, but not injuring himself beyond a few scratches and some torn fabric.

  His mother was going to be terribly upset. But that didn’t matter to him at the moment. It mattered more that he got safely away from the hoodlums who seemed quite intent on hurting him.

  The bullies did not back down from the chase. They saw him go into the old house and they followed in after him, smashing the window completely in the process. They didn’t care; no one lived there and as far as they were concerned no one would ever want to live there. It would probably be demolished one of these days.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are, retard…” One of the boys called to him as they explored the inside of the house in search of him.

  “Yeah, what the hell do you think you’re doing trying to hide in this place?” another of them said, leering close by the boy’s hiding spot in the closet under the stairs.

  Trying to think quickly, the boy scurried out of the closet space, but he wasn’t fast enough to get away from the boys who lingered in the hall nearby. One of the bullies grabbed the boy by his arm and threw him down onto the ground. The scent of alcohol was heavy on all three of the bullies. The boy didn’t quite know what it was, only that it was a bad smell and usually carried by bad people.

  “No!” he cried out in fear as he lay helpless and completed vulnerable on the old hardwood floor, looking up at them as they all laughed and swore at him.

  Then they started to kick him.

  When kicking him stopped being fun, they hit and punched him in the chest and face.

  Eventually, the boy’s cries dissipated. Finally, he went silent altogether.

  The three bigger boys realized too late that the boy was dead.

  “Holy shit, he’s not breathing!” one of them shouted.

  Another of them tried CPR, pushing against the boy’s chest.

  He was beaten so badly that teeth fell out of his bloodied mouth. They had broken his arm, he had black eyes, his leg was broken in more than one place. When they looked down at him, his face was nearly unrecognizable; they’d punched it in that much.

  “Oh my god, he’s dead,” one of the boys said. “What do we do? What do we do??”

  A growing pool of blood spread across the rug underneath the younger boy’s head. If there was any question as to whether or not he was dead, this answered it.

  “He’s dead,” one boy repeated, crying now. “What have we done?”

  “No,” another of them said. “No, how could this have happened?”

  They all sank to their knees, crying over the dead boy’s body. They were suddenly quite terrified, and that terror sobered them immensely.

  This wasn’t supposed to happen. They never meant for this to happen.

  They were only having a bit of fun with him.

  What had they done?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  A Imaginary
Friend

  The house was built in the 1920s. It was located in the small town of Canewdon in Rayleigh, in the county of Essex. Ben Collins didn’t know what had drawn him to the old, run-down place. It was badly in need of repairs and renovations, and Ben believed that he was the man for the task. He worked as a self-employed builder, painter and decorator. Usually, he did such things for clients, but this home was a pet project of his. He wanted to live in the house which was veiled in mystery and seemingly of historic significance.

  Ben had grown up in London, and he was by and large a city fellow. He had never lived in a small town such as this one before, but the prospect excited him. He had worked for years as a builder and a construction worker in the city, and the large classical mansions in this town were ideal for him. He loved the idea of taking an old home and completely renovating it to be both old and new – lovely and practical for a modern family. As far as he could tell, the town of Canewdon was truly lovely. He was excited by the prospect of living in, and working on, the old house. It had been boarded up when they first bought it, with plywood fitted into all the windows and doors. No one else wanted it, so it was theirs without much of a problem or any need to haggle. They bought it for a song.

  The home had apparently not been lived in since the 1960s. It came to be known as the CrippleviewHouse because it sat alongside a tiny stretch of creek which was now almost entirely mud. Ben Collins, his wife Faith and their six-year-old daughter, Beth had lived there for about a year, and in that time Ben had slowly worked at making the house liveable. But he still had a lot of renovations to do, if he was ever to return the house to its former glory, whatever that may have been.