The house had four bedrooms on the upper floor, two of which were kept as bedrooms while the remaining two mostly sat empty. Ben had sort of converted the one into an office and storage room; the other one was primarily used by Beth as a play area of sorts, as well as a thinking spot.
Beth reminded Ben a lot of himself. She was a pensive little girl, easily taken in by sentimentality and emotions. That was why, when she one day announced that she had made a new friend in the house, he and Faith had neither taken it too seriously nor concerned themselves too much about it.
“She’s six years old,” Faith said. “It makes perfect sense that she would have a few pretend friends.” Faith worked as an administrator at a school in town called Down Hall Primary School. She was quite experienced in taking care of children. Ben trusted that she knew what she was talking about.
Ever since the Collins family moved into this home, Beth had been acting odd in many ways. She would speak to herself, frequently mentioning her friend Jacob, and spend several hours in that little, empty room by herself. Her toy box and doll’s house were in that room, but Faith and Ben had noticed that her toys were never taken out… unless she had overnight become the best little girl and was packing al her toys away after playtime.
One afternoon, while Ben was working on refurbishing the upstairs bathroom, he heard loud giggling coming from Beth’s bedroom. At first he thought nothing of it. She was likely playing or watching a little telly show she enjoyed on the tablet that she’d been given last Christmas. What was abnormal was the volume of the giggles. Beth was always a quiet child.
Ben tried his best to ignore it, but it just felt too strange to him. He was quite certain he could hear another child in the room, not the voice of his daughter. Finally, he climbed down from his ladder and went into the hall.
Beth’s bedroom door was open. The little girl was inside the room, sitting on her bed with one leg neatly folded under herself.
“I know, I know,” she said at a volume of speaking that was not normal for someone talking to themselves. She sounded as if she was delivering hot gossip to a school friend or something. “He’s just shy like I am. Like you are. It’s going to take a lot more than me saying something to get him to believe.”
Ben stood there, watching her and not knowing what he could say to break her from this… whatever this was. It was disturbing, and he was worried that something might be wrong with Beth. Surely little kids did not normally carry on in this way, whatever teachers might say. There was imagination and then there was… this.
He worried that she might be manifesting signs of schizophrenia.
Suddenly, Beth leaned forward ever so slightly on her bed as if she was listening to someone whispering in her ear. Then she nodded. “Yes, I think so. I think you might have to show some proof.”
She then seemed to be listening again.
“I don’t think so at all,” she said to her invisible friend. Ben was now having a hard time believing that this was truly all that it was. “I think you’re very brave. I like having you here with me. I like your house, too.”
Ben was just about to leave the doorway to find his phone, so that he could record the rest of this conversation. Suddenly, she looked up and saw her father in the doorway. She appeared surprised to see him and maybe a little embarrassed.
“Oh, hi, Daddy,” she said.
“What’s going on in here?” Ben asked her, glancing quickly around the room in search of any reason behind the incite of such commotion from her.
“Nothing,” Beth replied. “Jacob came to visit me, but he’s gone now. He’s shy.”
She was so unnervingly matter-of-fact about this ‘Jacob.’ Ben was becoming rather cross.
“Right,” he said, looking at her bedroom window. The purple curtains didn’t move. The window was securely closed. The little girl wouldn’t be able to lift it open on her own; she was too young and small. Anyway, he would’ve heard if a kid had somehow managed to clamber inside. She was obviously telling stories, though the imagined friend was real enough to Beth for her to feel the need to protect him. “Well, can you keep it down, please?”
She nodded. “Yes, I’m sorry.”
“In fact, it’s such a nice afternoon, why don’t you go outside to play for a while?” he asked her. “Just make sure you don’t leave the yard.”
Beth got off her bed and strolled out of the room. She was wearing a yellow tank top with little white flowers on it, and cut-off denim shorts. She was even dressed for playing outdoors. Ben didn’t like to see her cooped up inside all the time. They had moved to the small town to give her the opportunity to experience more of nature, and fill her lungs with all it had to offer.
She patted her thigh as she walked past, summoning the family dog to her side. Sam was a black and white collie mix; a loyal dog adopted by the family from a shelter in London when Beth was a toddler. If anyone could keep her safe and happy, it was Sam. Ben smiled when he saw the pair go downstairs together. At least if she had the dog with her, she would be playing with a real friend for a while.
Ben went back into the bathroom and finished taking out the old light fixture before hanging up a new one. All the light fixtures in this old house had been made in such a way as not to conform well with the L.E.D. light bulbs that he preferred. He was all about using less energy, something which people in the ‘20s obviously didn’t give a damn about. The old lamp had also been so dim that he could hardly see when he was shaving in the morning, and that was just dangerous. Now the room was filled with light, making it that much more pleasant than the dim den it had been before. Who wanted to shower in the near-dark?
“How has she been getting on in school?” he asked Faith once he was done with his home refurbishing for the day. Summer’s grasp was still evident, but school had recently resumed. Soon it would be too chilly and overcast for Beth to play outside, which was part of the reason behind Ben’s insistence that she venture outdoors at least once every few days. It normally wasn’t like her to be inside for most of the days. She had always been a shy, studious child but this new self-imposed indoor isolation was just weird.
Faith was sitting in the living room, going through her notes and files for the next school day. As a school administrators, she had an awful lot of work to do at the start of the year. Sometimes it was like she was back in college all over again, with the amount of papers she still had to write up and file away.
“Beth?” Faith asked, surprised that he was asking such a thing. But then she just shrugged. “She’s been doing okay. The work has hardly begun so she should not have too much trouble getting going with things this year. She doesn’t get into any trouble. Why?”
“Has she been making any friends there?” Ben asked. “I worry that she’s lonely in this new place.”
Faith thought about it. “I think she gets on all right with the other kids. You know, they’re all just starting out the school term. I’m sure she’ll make some new friends in no time.”
Ben nodded slightly. He wondered if she ever talked about this ‘Jacob’ person when she was away from home and at school. He felt a bit unsettled about it, now that it had persisted for several weeks with no signs of letting up. She really took this imaginary friend quite seriously.
He relayed to Faith all that he had witnessed and heard from Beth’s room earlier. She cracked up before he could get through a sentence. “She’s a child,” Faith said. “She’s very imaginative, and she’s probably entertaining herself by making believe. Didn’t you do things like that when you were a kid?”
“I’m sure I did,” he replied. “I don’t quite remember, but I guess you’re right.”
He didn’t remember what things had been like when he was her age. Much of his early years had been marred by whatever illness had befallen him to make him leave this place.
Ben was quite content to trust his wife and chalk it all up to the wild and vivid imagination of youth. Beth seemed to be happy. She was not harming herself
or others. She was enjoying a perfectly idyllic childhood, as far as they were concerned.
“Jacob comes to play with me every day now,” Beth told her father and mother one evening while they were sitting down to dinner. “He didn’t used to come every day, but now he is here just about every afternoon. He greets me on the front porch. I think he’s lonely.”
Ben looked at his daughter. She spoke so matter-of-factly about this friend of hers, but this time he noticed that she was smiling. She was clearly thrilled to have a friend, even if she had entirely made him up. “Why is he lonely?” he asked, humouring her because Faith had repeatedly told him that was best.
“Well,” Beth said. “He lives in this house and it gets awfully quiet when he is alone here. It makes him sad. It makes him remember.”
Faith and Ben looked at each other.
“What does he remember, darling?” Faith asked her.
Beth gave her an almost pitying look in response.
“Are you sure you haven’t imagined this Jacob friend of yours?” Ben asked her, trying not to come across as judgmental or appear that she might be in trouble. “Why can’t Mummy and I see him?”
She looked at him completely seriously. “I haven’t made him up. He lives here in this house. Like I said, he’s shy. When he hears either of you coming, he goes away.”
Ben exchanged another glance with his wife. Didn’t she find this at all concerning?
But Faith just smiled at the little girl. “He sounds quite nice,” she said. “As long as you have fun with him and he doesn’t distract you from your schoolwork, I think it’s all right for you to play with him.”
She gave Ben a sort of glower. The mini-interrogation should be dropped.
That night, there was a sudden, high-pitched scream which woke Ben and Faith from their slumbers. Ben took a broom from the nearby cupboard and rushed to Beth’s room. The little girl was sitting bolt upright in bed, screaming and crying out. They rushed to her bedside and Ben dropped the broom at his feet before taking the shaking little girl into his arms.
“What’s the matter, darling?” he asked her. “Did you have a bad dream?”
“He needs help,” Beth said in a quaking voice. She stared straight ahead, as if seeing something that wasn’t supposed to be there, that neither of her parents could see.
Then, her eyes shifted and she looked at her father. “You must help him, please; you’re the only one who can help him!”
Ben was shaken, but soon Beth drifted back to a fitful sleep. He didn’t know what to make of this, or if there really was something he needed to help with. After all, Beth was clearly having some kind of a nightmare and what she was frightened of was imagined.
This happened again the following night. Ben was no less disturbed this time, she grabbed his arm and emphatically shouted, “He NEEDS you!”
“It’s nothing,” Faith told him as he lay awake in bed afterwards. “She’s just having recurring nightmares. I had them when I was little. It’s normal.”
“What did you have recurring nightmares about? An imaginary friend needing your dad’s help?”
Faith shrugged. “I mostly had nightmares about fire. It was during our fire safety program at school.”
“See, that makes some sense,” Ben said. He got out of bed and went into the bathroom to take sleeping pills.
The night after that, almost like clockwork at this point, Beth woke her parents at three in the morning with cries of “help him!” and “Daddy, he needs you!”
“It’s all right, honey,” Faith said to her soothingly. “No one is in danger. You just had a bad dream.”
Beth shook her head. “No!” she cried out, looking from her mum to her dad. “You must find him. You must find him and help him.”
As this was getting no better, for neither Beth nor Ben’s psyche, they started to look into getting her help from the local psychiatrists and psychologists. “She’s a bit young for such a thing, isn’t she?” Faith asked him. “I’m sure it’s just going to resolve itself on its own.”
“I’m not so sure,” Ben said with a sigh. “When I was little, I had nervous episodes like this, according to my parents. I had to move away to get help. I hope it’s like you say, but maybe it’s better to check?”
They agreed that, if it happened again, they’d take her to see a doctor on the fifteenth day.
It didn’t happen again.
Something more disturbing did.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Mystic Mary
Before Ben and Faith could make definite plans for a therapist for Beth, Faith was informed by a co-worker that a fair was to visit Canewdon. “This might be the answer we were looking for,” Faith told her husband brightly. “Little kids love fairs, and it will help to get all this nonsense out of her mind if we take her someplace new and fun.”
“Do you really think so?” he asked. “Won’t it just seem more like a reward after everything unusual she’s put us through lately?”
“I think she could use a distraction,” Faith reasoned. “She’s been cooped up in the house long enough. School couldn’t take her mind off of this Jacob she’s invented, but that’s because school probably bores her.”
Ben couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing, coming from a primary school administrator. “It seems to me that she should change her attitude about school, not be taken to every fair that comes to town.”
“Just trust me,” Faith said.
He knew that he would never hear the end of it if he did not go along with this new plan.
They drove with Beth to the fair at the centre of town, where colourful, glowing rides and games of all descriptions were arranged. Ben was pleased to see his daughter’s face light up at all the new sights. She wanted to ride just about everything, even the rollercoaster ride especially for little children. This surprised Ben because he had never been the sort to ride things like that, and Beth was so much like him – sensitive and shy.
Sure enough, after that ride, she’d had enough and wanted to stick to the games and other forms of entertainment.
A palm reader caught her eye. “Oooh,” she said excitedly. “Can you do that? Please, Daddy?”
He was chagrined. “Why specifically me?” he asked, not really taking it seriously; until he saw the look on his wife’s face.
Faith was laughing, but she was also nodding.
“Yes, Ben, I think you should,” she said. “I think you might find out some amazing things.”
Her eyes twinkled as she said it, which indicated both that she really meant for him to do it and that she thought it would be more funny than anything else. At least Faith didn’t think fortune tellers were real.
He sighed. There was no saying no to these two…
“Fine,” he said, rolling his eyes and leading them towards the purple tent where the supposed palm reader was. “But don’t be disappointed if she is completely full of it and doesn’t know anything. That’s usually how these things go.”
The name ‘Mystic Mary’ was painted on the side of the purple tent in gold, sparkly letters. Ben couldn’t help but laugh at that. This was completely cheesy.
Once inside, they found an old, wrinkled woman sitting on a pouf. She was dressed in silk robes of red and blue, and she wore lots of sparkling jewellery on her fingers and wrists and around her neck. She had long, silvery black hair under a red scarf. Her skin was coffee brown and Ben realized at once that she was a Romani woman, which elevated her legitimacy somewhat, he thought, but then he wondered if that was racist.
13 Hauntings Page 15