13 Hauntings

by Clarice Black

  But then, no one knew that he had witnessed the murder. They only knew that he had been running through the woods, possibly playing, and he had fallen and hit his head. There had never been any reason to suspect that he might have seen anything, because surely he would have said something, right?

  Ben rubbed the palms of his hands against his face. This was all so complicated, and confusing enough for him, but now he was going to have a hell of a time explaining it to the police and law enforcement. Eventually a judge, a jury, defence lawyers…

  He hoped that, when all was said and done, he would be able to give Janice the peace of mind that she deserved. No, her son would not be coming home ever again. But his murderers would be behind bars and his memory would be alive and well in everyone’s hearts. There was something to be said for knowing what had happened. Knowing would not be easy, but it would be better than never knowing the truth. And definitely better than letting the three guilty hooligans go free.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Epilogue

  The trial was long and brutal on Ben’s psyche. He told authorities everything that he remembered from the fateful night in the abandoned house. He did not tell them that much of the memories had been recalled through revelations from ghostly visions and dreams, but it did not matter. Jacob knew that he had helped to convict the three bullies. Beth was kept out of the process because she was such a small child, and any evidence she could provide was identical to that which Ben provided. Only the three of them – Ben, Beth and Jacob – needed to know about the dreams and the ghostly visions.

  The three boys were now men, though it was hard for Ben to think of them as such despite them all having grown up over the thirty years. They all had a fancy defence lawyer who cost them a fortune. He had of course been hired by Paul Stevens’s father, Mike. It would figure that the only father still alive and well was Mike Stevens, former MP to Canewdon. He just could not believe that his smart and gifted son would have anything to do with the murder of ‘that retarded boy.’

  There had been an audible gasp in the chamber when Mr. Stevens made that remark.

  Nevertheless, the trial continued and seemed to be moving in the boys-turned-men’s favour. Ben was incredulous.

  “How old were you on the night in question?” the boys’ defence lawyer asked Ben when he had taken the stand to lay out his story so that everyone in the courtroom could hear his evidence and testimony.

  Ben blanched slightly. He should have known that his age would come into question. “Ten,” he said.

  “And what business did a ten-year-old like you have playing in a forest late at night?”

  “Objection,” Ben said. “Sir, it wasn’t late at night. It was in the early evening. About seven o’clock at the latest.”

  “You don’t have to say objection, son,” the judge said with a chuckle. He was a shrewd man, but Ben believed that he had taken a liking to him, since he was generally regarding him with good natured retorts and corrections. He made Ben feel a bit more at ease, thank goodness. At least someone in this case did.

  “Sorry,” Ben added.

  The lawyer blinked at him and paced the front of the room for a moment. He cast a glance at the three middle-aged men at his table. He had obviously been told that the murder had occurred later at night, at a time when they couldn’t POSSIBLY have been present to have committed it.

  “The question still stands,” the lawyer then said. “What was a ten-year-old doing playing in the woods at seven o’clock at night? Alone?”

  Ben shrugged. He suddenly felt quite cool under the pressure. He knew this story. He had lived it, so there was no reason for him to become defensive over it. The lawyer’s feathers may have been ruffled, but Ben knew what had happened better than the lawyer was being paid to pretend he did. “My parents always let me play outside until dinnertime,” he said. “This town was a peaceful place, and the people here were all good. How was anyone to know that we had three bad seeds in our midst? We all knew that they were bullying that boy, but I was a kid and did not think it would ever get as bad as it did.”

  Gasps and murmurs rose up throughout the courthouse. Members of the jury looked at the three men with more condemnation than Ben had noticed before.

  How dare these three ruin their sacred little town?

  “I tell you,” Ben went on, feeling triumphant even though there was a long way to go yet. “Those three were always rotten to people who were less fortunate than they were. Disabled people, poor people, people one might consider ‘ugly’. They made people miserable. And you did not have to be in school to know it. News travels fast around here. And they knew it. I remember them, cackling and cursing at him as he lay there, bleeding on the ground. They were so proud of themselves. I tried to run, tried to tell my parents what I had seen. If it hadn’t been for that rock tripping me, I just know that these three would already have been in jail, instead of lying to all of you for thirty years.”

  His voice rose as he spoke. All eyes were on him. He felt urgent, powerful.

  Suddenly, a cry came up from amongst the three defendants. Harry was wailing and raising both his hands in apparent surrender. “It’s true, it’s true!” he cried. “The boy saw everything! I tried so hard to forget it, but I couldn’t… We were there that night, all three of us. We beat that boy… We beat him until he stopped moving and then we realized he was dead.” He let out a shaky gasp. “We were so scared, we just left. I knew it was bad. It was the most awful thing I ever did in my life, I swear it. Oh God, please don’t judge me too badly!”

  With that, he placed his head on the table and resumed his sobbing and wailing.

  For a moment, all was silent in the courthouse, apart from Harry’s crying. Everyone looked at everyone else. Ben felt a bit awkward, still sitting up there on the witness stand, but he felt a huge weight lift from his shoulders. His job had been finished for him, without too much struggle at all.

  The judge asked the jury for their verdict. Of course, the men were guilty.

  Not long after Harry’s tearful confession, the other two confessed. They were sentenced to fifteen years in prison.

  When the trial ended at long last, Janice Black found Ben in the crowd. She embraced him and thanked him for coming forward to serve the best interests of her son as best as he could have. She could now live the rest of her years knowing that her poor Jacob was at rest.

  Now that all was said and done, Ben could move on with his life in Canewdon. Things went back to normal for him and his family. Crippleview House was restored to the way it had been in the 1920s; beautiful and worth a good deal more than Ben and Faith had paid for it.

  Beth never spoke to Jacob again after the trial. The nightmares also stopped, for her and for Ben.

  The Haunting of Rose Mansion

  Clarice Black

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Prologue

  5th May 1888

  Rose Mansion,

  Tunbridge Wells,

  Kent,

  England

  02:15 PM

  It was just a game of hide and seek. Nurse had said so.

  Four-year-old Eveline Abbot sank deeper into the cocoon of her stuffed dolls, clutching Princess Amana close with one hand, sucking the thumb of the other. The dust coloured doll was her favourite, which was why Nurse had placed it in Eveline’s thin arms. She watched the swirls of dust motes in the single beam of sunlight she could see through the thin crack in the lid of the toy chest. Eveline rubbed her watery eyes, alternating the slit of view she got of her room between dark and light; rose pink wallpaper above the small bed, a beech wood rocking chair beside the dresser, Eveline’s drawings tacked to the back of her bedroom door. She tightened her thighs, holding off the need to go to the water closet till Nurse came for her.

  “Be very quiet, my love,” Nurse had said in frantic whispers, sweat glinting on her upper lip. “Not a sound, do you understand? No matter what happens, don’t come out.”

  Eveline h
ad sat in the toy chest when the shouting had started. She had clutched Princess Amana’s sawdust filled body closer with the sound of every crash. But then Nurse had cried out, her howls of agony had reached Eveline’s ears, and it had been harder to sit still.

  “It’s just a game of hide and seek,” Eveline whispered to the dolls that surrounded her. “It’s just a game. Nurse will be here any minute now, you’ll see.”

  Her toys stared at her with mute pity.

  “Philip!”

  Eveline’s teeth sunk into the flesh of her thumb at the sound of her father’s voice down the hall.

  “I know you’re in here, boy. Don’t make me look for you!”

  “I’m here, Papa.”

  Eveline wanted to scream for her big brother to hide. Papa had never liked Philip, and Eveline even less. She tasted blood as her sharp teeth pierced her soft skin.

  “Where is she?”

  “Who, Pa –“

  The sick sound of wood smacking against bones was followed by a dull thud.

  “Don’t test me, boy. Where are Daniella and my son?”

  “I don’t know, Sir.”

  Tears streaked down Eveline’s face to hear Philip wheeze as if he were out of breath.

  “You don’t know.”

  Smack!

  “You don’t know.”

  Crash!

  “YOU DON’T KNOW!”

  Eveline stuffed her fists in her ears to drown out the choked cries of her brother. A screech of horror rose to her lips when Philip’s cries were suddenly replaced with deafening silence. Eveline scrambled back till her back touched the solid wood of the chest. Dolls cascaded around her to make room for her.

  It’s just a game. Just a game.

  Something was dragging on the stone floor. It grew closer to Eveline’s room, and she shrunk tighter within herself as the door to her bedroom opened with a hair-raising creak.

  Her father, Joshua Abbot, towered in the doorframe, holding a bloody cricket bat in his right hand. His heavy signet ring gleamed a dull gold.

  Wet warmth pooled beneath her as she lost control of her bladder.

  “Eveline,” Joshua crooned, raising gooseflesh on her cold arms. “Come out, come out wherever you are. Papa only wants to play.”

  She watched in dumb terror as he slid towards her bed, checking underneath. The bat in his hands dripped blood on the rug, bits of dark hair clung to the bottom.

  Philip’s hair, Eveline’s mind screamed.

  “Come now, pet,” Joshua said, his voice dripped relished savagery. “Papa won’t bite. Come out you misbegotten rat!”

  Darkness was invading Eveline’s vision but she knew from countless hide and seek games with her brother that she needed to stay perfectly still if she were to remain undetected. A sob rose in her throat at the thought of Philip, the brother she had loved best.

  She watched with bated breath as Joshua’s dark figure lumbered off the floor, and searched the closet. All the pretty dresses Nurse had sewn and mended for her were thrown out, piling in a heap on the floor. A handkerchief fell on the drops of blood; red roses bloomed on the white fabric.

  Having tired of his search, Joshua kicked the rocking chair in the corner. Eveline flinched, a squeak of fright escaping her lips. Her heart hammered into her chest, hoping he hadn’t heard her. Joshua turned towards the door, his bat dragging behind him. Eveline closed her eyes in relief.

  She opened them to see darkness where the slit of light had been before. Someone was standing beside the toy chest.

  “I can smell you,” Joshua growled.

  Eveline screamed as the lid was lifted. The last thing she saw before the cricket bat fell were the crazed, bloodshot eyes of her father.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Rose Mansion

  25th July 2015

  Hildenborough, near Tunbridge Wells

  Kent

  England

  3:15 PM

  “Shit!”

  Ashley Ridley stuck her burnt tongue out to sooth it. She placed the takeaway coffee back in the cup-holder, regretting the impatient sip. She had been driving for the past five hours with a single twenty-minute break, and had needed the caffeine badly.

  “Hope this Rose place shows up soon,” she muttered. “I need sleep.”

  She slowed the car down to read the road sign and took the left turn to Tunbridge Wells. The appointment letter from Abbot Child Care Home had included a map, but lines on paper were hardly true to the real thing. Thick trees and foliage were a constant distraction for a city girl like Ashley. Add to that the sudden realization that Rose Mansion was at least a twenty-minute drive from any form of civilization and Ashley was nursing a simmering panic attack.

  But Ashley was also desperate. She needed this job; she needed the monthly income, as well as a roof over her head. Before Duke Abbot had called with the lucrative job offer as manager at Abbot Child Care Home, Ashley had been on her last few pounds and debating whether to pay for another few nights at the hostel or buy groceries.

  Ashley “Brutus” Ridley was what they called her in the Social Services circles after she had helped sue the care home she had been working with. Having lost her family in a tragic house fire, Ashley had been in the care system since she was eight, and knew the inner workings of care homes very well. Sent from foster home to foster home, Ashley had finally been adopted at the age of twelve, only to find that the adoptive parents were abusive. Running away at sixteen, Ashley had been taken in by her last care home manager, Whitney Price, who had built Ashley back to her former self, and helped her get the academic qualifications needed to be a social service worker.

  “If it hadn’t been for Whitney I would have been where you are now.” This was Ashley’s common statement to coked-up mothers refusing to give up their neglected children, or young boys and girls willing to live in squalor rather than seek help. The reason it was so effective was because it was true, and Ashley meant it. She remembered her parents and her older brother Spencer fondly, but Whitney Price meant more to her because she had given Ashley love and a shoulder to lean on without the obligation of blood relation. When she had passed away in her sleep two years ago, Ashley had felt like she had been orphaned a second time.

  After Whitney had passed, Ashley had tried her best to maintain the standard of her former mentor when vetting potential adoptive families and foster homes, but the hedge-fund that owned the care home had insisted on fast adoptions, and pressured the care home staff on certain families adopting without background checks. When the police had arrested one of the adoptive parents on charges of sexual abuse, Ashley had testified against her care home, revealing the lack of background checks and loose security protocols.

  She had been promptly fired, black-listed and shamed. Ashley still felt hot in the face when she thought of the proceedings and how the defence lawyer had used her own adoptive history to discredit her.

  Henry and Penelope Thorpe.

  When her adoptive parents had walked into the courtroom, Ashley had felt the ground vanish beneath her. It had taken all her strength not to bolt from the stand in fear.

  Ashley cleared her mind of unpleasant thoughts and concentrated on the road. It never did well to dwell on the past, it made her grumpy for hours, and she’d need her best face if she wanted to make a winning impression on her first day. The small town of Tunbridge Wells looked pleasant enough, and Ashley made mental notes to visit the book stores and bakeries on her lunch break in the following weeks. Now that she had the opportunity, she really wanted to cement her place in the community.

  The road went ahead for another two miles before it turned, revealing the open wrought iron gates of Abbot Child Care Home. Ashley whistled through her teeth at the sheer size of the place. The driveway was half a mile long, bordered by manicured gardens and flower hedges; a marble fountain gushed water that sparkled like diamonds under the summer sun. Yet none of this was as impressive as the dominating structure of the mansion itself.


  The mansion was built of pale yellow bricks, and the east gables were covered in charming ivy; the large windows reflected the blue sky, winking back at the sun cheerfully. Ashley parked her car on the gravel drive and stared at the place for a full minute.

  “Holy hell,” she whispered, opening the car door and stepping out. The smell of freshly cut grass greeted her, as well as the sound of children at play. “Am I at the right place?”

  “Hello!”

  A young man came running down the front porch, his coat flapping around his tall, thin frame. He had a flop of red hair over his long face and wore a wide grin.

  “Ashley Ridley?” he asked. “I’m Duke Abbot.”

  “I hadn’t expected to be greeted by the owner himself,” Ashley said, shaking Duke’s hand.

  “I like to greet all my staff on their first day,” Duke said, his cheeks turning pink. “My grandfather always said it left a favourable impression on the employees, and they didn’t quit as often.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about me on that account,” Ashley laughed. “This is a very impressive place you have here.”