“Jeez fuck!” Dan cried out and held his profusely bleeding hand as far from himself as he could, as if it was some stranger’s hand given to him to take care of. Forgetting his perverted carnality, he rushed to his room downstairs. He did not realize this until later, when his hand was under the constant stream of cool tap water, that he had seen a face. An angry grimacing face etched in the door like a sceptre’s shadow. It was that ghost (if you believed in those sort of things) who had injured his hand. And his eyes, even though they were dimmed in the wood, were menacing.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED
Ghost Eye's
The trail of thick blood oozed from the top flight of stairs all the way to the bedroom. Splitter. Splatter. The botched and blotted droplets had smeared all over the hardwood. It was like a slaughterhouse trail; the grotesque path created by a beheaded cow as it is dragged from the slaughter ground. Jean Green’s eyes became wider and wider as she followed that trail. She had come back inside from seeing to the hen pen out back, having heard somewhat of a commotion and the sound of Dan screaming. Preparing for the worst, being that she suffered from anxiety and depression of the worst kind, she followed that blood trail to her bedroom. And inside her bedroom, she followed the trail to the bathroom where, innocently enough, Dan was wiping his hands like nothing was the matter.
“Dan! What happened?” she asked, aghast.
“Splinter on the door. Cut me bad,” he muttered. He did not intend to show her what the splinter had really done. He did not have the heart to see it for himself. It was lodged in one side of his hand and protruding out the other side, forming a sheesh-kebab of his hand. A throbbing sheesh kebab. As if that hypothetic slaughterhouse cow was not properly killed.
“You need medical attention!” she said.
“You don’t tell me what to do!” he snapped back at her, ditching all niceties, not that he had a lot of them, “I just came back from town. You want me to go again?”
“Fine. You want tetanus and maybe your hand gone for good, it’s fine. You’ll have to work with one hand for the rest of your life, I guess. Sure, you will write slower. But you know how they say Beethoven did his best work after going deaf,” Jean was losing it. She did not handle herself well in stressful situations.
“The fuck you say to me?” Dan began, realizing the part truth to her delirious statement halfway through his rant. She was right. The home was old. Centuries old. And in its oldness, it had gathered dust and a colonization of germs and all manner of cryptic unknowns. It had never been properly cleaned. When he last opened the attic door, trapped air from the early nineteenth century greeted him, sending him teetering down the stairs, coughing, spitting, wheezing. “You drive. Please,” he said.
“Bea honey, we’re off to the hospital. You make sure the doors are locked,” Jean called out from below.
“Or what? The hens will get in and rob me at beak-point?” Bea retorted from her room. She had seen what had happened to Dan. And even though it was bad, she could not help but snigger. She had opened the door to the screaming of that vile man, and seen him running off like a wounded dog. Serves that a-hole right, she’d thought.
And now, for the first time in her stay at this house, she was alone. What does one do when alone in a house, she wandered and roamed about the corridors. Many of the rooms were locked, and Dan held the keys. He was clumsy. His keys were bound to be in the drawer next to his manuscripts. The world had gone on and evolved, and yet he still wrote in longhand on paper. It made the job more tedious, in Bea’s opinion. She had started writing too, more to spite Dan than anything else. She had written her latest poem in bouts of anger and helplessness when she had moved here against her will, it went something like this
Crush the lilies and make hot soup of out of their crumbled-up wings
You will be held responsible for botanical extinction vile cretin
There is no overseer of reason, only a madman with marionette strings
And he’s cackling as he conducts this comedy; laughing, letting
Why, oh why, are the pilgrims of morrow sad with the bereavements of today?
There is a fu---
That’s where she had stopped writing, overcome with emotions she did not understand, barred by barriers she could not see. She knew her poem did not rhyme, or balance the meter, whatever that meant. It was a shit poem. But it was her shit poem. And it was better than her step-father’s writings. She had stopped where she did because she wanted to use the F-word, and God forbid she did. If her mother found out about her potty mouth, she would say nothing. She would send Dan to have ‘the talk’ with Bea. And that scared her. It would give him a chance to be in the same room with her with the door locked.
This was the first time she was truly alone in the house: no mom, no douche dad. Bea had a wonderful idea; an idea practically everyone has when they are alone in their homes: she should go buck naked. Giggling at the outrageousness of her thought, she went back to her room to ditch her t-shirt and jeans. The door was ajar.
She had remembered closing it. It unnerved her, but just a little. Perhaps the lock was creaky and old, like the rest of the house. She made to go in, but the door closed abruptly of its own accord. Bang! This suddenness shocked Bea. She yelped and stepped back. And then, fire.
The whole house was engulfed in flames. The air was thick with unbreathable smoke.
“Does Miss Bea need some tea?” the same whisper asked. Except, the house was on fire which was no occasion to ask about anything as trivial as tea. She ran for the door below, staggering and slipping on the stairs, on the blots of blood. They were not bloodstains anymore. They were islets of lava. And the floor was sweltering. Everything burned her. She screamed but no sound escaped her. Or if they did, they were masked by the roars of the goliath dancing fire serpents.
“What is happening!?” she screamed as she made for the door.
“Miss Bea? Lady Bea?” the same whispery voice asked. She had her back to the source of this voice, trying to pull on the door with all her might to get it to open. The door handle was red. Her hands were singed.
“Miss Bea? Lady Bea?”
If this is to be my end, so be it, thought Bea as she turned to face the demon. Twisting in her steps, the fire simmered down at once and only ashes remained. In the centre of the room stood a burnt-up man, with flesh showing beneath his suit, holding in his hands a tray of tea. “Miss Bea?”
“It’s me,” she found herself saying. This was not her. Something had come over her. “It’s me, Bea, Javier.”
“I made tea. Should I pour?”
“Here? In the midst of these flames? When we’re dead?” Bea was possessed by another entity. A being from the dead, she presumed, who had taken a hold of her. Whatever she was saying, she was not in control of herself. The butler’s face upon hearing what Bea had just said grimaced with guilt and sadness.
“It’s my fault,” he said and a single tear trickled down his ashen face. And at once, Bea felt that alien entity leave her. She said, in her own cognisance and her own voice, “I don’t know what this is. Who are you? Why is the house burning? I am Bea, but not the one you think! What is happening?”
The butler’s eyes became maniacal, glaring red. “My fault!”
“Listen, you look like a decent guy. I’m pretty sure whatever you think, it’s not your fault,” she said. The house was returning to normal. Ash and soot and burned down beams disappeared, replaced with the old regularity and mundaneness.
The ghost of the butler did not understand what she had just said. He rushed at her as if hoping to consume her or embrace her, and before she could scream, she realized that she was unconscious, floating in the opalescent shores of nothingness.
*
“Who knew it would be necessary for us to go to the hospital twice in a row?” Bea heard her mother say. When she opened her eyes, she saw that she was in a hospital bed.
Jean was talking to Dan, of course. He sat grumpily in the chair,
holding his bandaged hand in his good hand. He nodded.
“Mom!” Bea said.
“Sweetie, you’re awake. We were darn worried about you. The moment we came into the house, we saw you sprawled in the doorway. What happened?” Jean serenaded her daughter with questions.
“I… felt woozy. Tried to make for the kitchen for some water. Fell down,” Bea lied. This was an easier explanation than the actual one; that the house had burned and butler’s ghost had haunted her…and…that she had been overcome by some entity. Now that she was awake and away from the house, those recollections began growing hazy, as if they had not actually happened. And seconds later, Bea herself believed her own lie.
“I’m glad you’re okay. The doctor said there might be a concussion, but the nurse says you’re fine,” Jean said.
“Let’s go home. Shall we?” Dan wailed like a brat.
“Dan, we can’t yet. Not until the doctor discharges her,” Jean said. She was being more serene than usual which only meant one thing. The doctors must have given her a sedative too. Something to put her nerves at ease.
“Ah. I understand. Can you be a dear and fetch each of us a soda from the machine?” he said. Jean began to get up but Bea grabbed the hem of her shirt. She shook her head, ushering her mother not to leave her with this man. But her mother, in her sedated frame of mind, swayed away and out of the room. The two were alone now.
Dan immediately got up and approached Bea, letting his injured hand hang limp at his side, and lifting his good hand towards Bea’s thigh. But before he could so much as near her, the kindly nurse walked into the room, and Dan had to resume his place on the chair, dejected. His eyes spit malice. He was the real demon here. And he had possessed her mother, Bea thought. She had to do something. Anything. If things got worse, she might even consider moving back to London on her own. She had family there. Her paternal aunts lived in downtown and her grandmother was still alive. They would listen to her.
With this reassurance in mind, she turned her back to Dan and asked the nurse how long it would take. Jean came back with a Mountain Dew and a Coke. She handed Bea the Coke while the nurse explained that it should only take a minute longer.
With the Coke can spent and discarded in the waste bin, the three left the hospital. Dusk had prevailed. It was completely dark, no stars. Bea felt a calmness as the car pulled up to the driveway, but a fear rose in her heart too. It would rise in yours too, were you to come to the full realisation that your home was very definitely haunted.
*
That bout of unconsciousness proved to be the catalyst for change for Bea. She received preferential treatment, for starters. Her mother served her dinner in bed and stayed beside her until Bea fell asleep. That night it was just the two of them. No Dan. No ghosts. And they talked about how, in fall, leaves would swim across the Thames and how, on stormy nights, Big Ben looked like the staff of Gandalf in the mines of Moria. It was a fun night, and a rare one at that. When her mother’s sedative started wearing off, she kissed Bea and tucked her in bed, and went downstairs where she was assaulted by Dan’s rants.
Bea fell asleep, with her head spinning from the medicine that the doctor had given her, and she slept in a blink. However, it was not a deep sleep. She twisted and turned as nightmare after nightmare morphed into demonic shapes, and she dreamt of burning houses and a little girl ablaze in the basement. Was there a basement in this house? She found herself wondering in her sleep. And then, a brush.
It was a slither across her face, not sexual, not perverted, but it was there alright. She turned in her bed and pulled her sheets over her face. And a second time, a hand caressed her cheek with the lightest touch. This pulled her from her slumber, and she rubbed her eyes as she groped for the lamp switch in the darkness. The touch which she had felt was not a manly one, nothing like the one she had grown to fear. It was a feminine hand, small, childlike, and littler than her own. She found the switch and turned the lamp on. In the dim hue of the light she saw nothing. She thought she had mistaken her sheets as a human touch, but she was wrong. There was something distinctly human about that slither; five fingers had crooned on her cheeks, and secondly, there was something inhuman about that touch for it was not a warm hand but a cold one.
Worried but tired, she fell asleep for a second time. And this time, the dreams were clearer. Like flashes of brief lucidness. There was a grave out by the back of the house. Beside that grave sat a child crying. There was a woman, vile looking, standing behind the child, and she began to beat the child. The child cried. The woman locked her in the basement. The headmaster came. The child banged on the door. The headmaster left. A fire was lit. The house was on fire. The child was burning to death. There was another man. He rushed inside. He tried to open the basement door. He failed.
In her surreal and fast paced nightmare, Bea saw as the child and the man burned separately. Their clothes caught fire first. Their skin began to turn golden brown, textured like the sun. And then their skin began peeling off, red and crusty. The child was swallowed up by fire, and it had cooked her brain and her skull. In one grotesque explosion, her skull boiled and splattered on the burning walls, spewing her brain everywhere. She was a black piece of burnt bones and charred meat now. As was the butler. His clothes had burnt away, leaving only a naked man, crying, dying, writhing in pain.
And on the front lawn, closest to the fire, stood the same woman who had punished the child. She was smiling. Bea, in her dream, knew that even though the fire was not that woman’s plan, she was nevertheless glad that it happened. And in her dream, she saw the unholy glimmer of Satan’s eyes in the woman’s. And the next she knew; the woman’s eyes were black. And then she turned into smoke and everything else did too. Her dream had ended.
She had wet the bed. After only fifteen minutes asleep, there was sweat everywhere, mixed with the stench of her own urine. She needed to change the sheets and her pyjamas. Trembling, quavering, she climbed out her bed and made for the closet. Each step she took made the floor creak, adding to her fearfulness. The same sound that she had heard so many times now came to her ears again, “Miss Bea, Lady Bea…”
As if her nightmares had not been fitful enough, the sceptre of the old butler reappeared and stood between Bea and the closet. “Bea… Is it not my fault?”
From this statement, Bea gathered two things: he meant her no harm and he certainly did mistake her for someone else.
“My name is Bea Green. Not whomever you think I might be,” she said, standing her ground, trying to look brave. Her heart’s hammering, she was sure, could be heard all over the house.
“You died,” the ghost said. “And I didn’t save you. After the promise I made to both your mother and your father. I’m sorry. I failed you. I failed them,” the remorseful ghost of the butler began to bawl.
She did not know if she could touch him, so she resisted the urge to reach out and pat his shoulder. She said, in an attempt to compensate for the lack of empathic touch, “There, there. Don’t cry. Did you touch me when I slept?”
“I didn’t. It was Miss Bea. She wouldn’t talk to me. It’s been centuries. She wouldn’t talk to me, except through you,” the ghost had very abruptly gained a semblance to that of a real man, in terms of appearance and in terms of dialogue. She found it odd; a ghost communing with the living as if they were sitting side by side on a tea break.
“Please. I beg of you. Leave me alone. There’s enough bad people intent on harming me as it is,” she said, thinking of Dan.
“He will mend his ways or he will die,” the ghost’s eyes became red again, and vindictiveness took hold of him. He disappeared without saying anything more, leaving Bea both perplexed and scared.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED ONE
Darklands's Grave
Monday brought with it a fair share of menial mundanities. The most morbid of which being the prospect of going to school and signing up. Bea was in no mood to do this. Signing up at the school would mean that she was resolv
ed to staying here. Indefinitely. Maybe forever. So, when her mother pestered her to get out of bed and go with her to town to enrol, Bea feigned sickness and chose to stay in bed instead. She knew Dan had to escort Jean to town anyway. They needed to stock up on household necessities: washcloths, dishwashing liquid, towels, and they’d be gone for quite a long time. When it came to shopping, they were both remarkably attention deficit. It was going to take them a long while indeed.
For now, Bea remained in bed, mulling over the events that had transpired last night. It was the eeriest thing; twice now she had encountered paranormality and on both occasions, she found herself forgetting the details of the events with Alzheimer-like amnesia. Her stomach growled. The last time she had eaten was the day before yesterday. She got out of her bed and, in her pyjamas, went downstairs, warily (it was a luxury she’d have to give up when her parents put her in school).
Once in the kitchen, she spotted the cereal box lying on the counter. Dan was so messy. He’d evolved from a teenager to a man-child and had not matured any since. She took the cereal, poured milk in the bowl and began eating with hurried swallows. Someone was standing outside her house. A woman, by the looks of it. And Bea was curious. She finished her breakfast, chugged a glass of orange juice, checked her reflection in the kitchen mirror, unruffled her hair, and headed out of the door, locking it behind her. She had a key in her jammy pockets. The woman on the sidewalk had a giant Labrador with her. And it was pissing on the honeysuckle vine that crept all the way up to the wall.
“Hi,” Bea said timidly. The woman had her back turned to her, and was caught off guard. She jumped in shock and turned around, dropping the cigarette in her hand on the grass, and said, “Oh shit. I’m sorry.”
“Huh? For what?” Bea asked, confused.
“Oh, my dog’s pissing on your vine and I’m smoking under your tree, kinda makes me want to be apologetic, I don’t know,” the woman said. She had dark blonde hair, bordering on brown, and wore a decent pair of studious spectacles. She looked aged about her face, with frown creases permanently set on her forehead. Bea estimated her to be around thirty.
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