Cumbrian Ghost Stories

by Tony Walker

  John’s family had been Catholic, but his father was a doctor too and only paid lip service to the Faith. Neither he nor John’s mother had done much to instil a belief in the boy - though John wouldn’t have listened, anyway. In fact, John hadn’t been to church in years - the last time was his dad’s funeral. But tonight he still rang the parish priest. The man sounded slightly put out to be called so late, but he soon adopted a kinder tone.

  “How can I help you?” From the web page John saw he was called Father Cusack.

  “Hi, I’m John Eliot. I live in Mosedale — at Thorgill Farm.”

  The priest said, “Are you one of my parishioners?”

  John said he was; just that he’d never visited the church.

  “But there’s something urgent tonight?” the priest asked, clearly disbelieving it.

  John began, “I’m a doctor. So I’m scientifically minded. I don’t have time for superstition.”

  “So this explains why you’ve never been to church?” said the priest. John could hear the gentle teasing in his voice.

  “I suppose; I don’t know exactly.” He could feel himself starting to get rattled. “There’s something in our house,” he said suddenly.

  “What kind of something?” asked the priest in a measured voice.

  “A spirit. I don’t know; an evil thing.”

  “A ghost?” said the priest. “I didn’t think you’d believe in those.”

  John cut him off. “Not a ghost. I don’t know - a demon?”

  “Ah,” said the priest. “A demon.” He said it like he was closing a book.

  John guessed Father Cusack thought he was just another crank. “I’m serious,” he said. “It killed our cat.”

  “Your cat may be dead, but don’t you think there’s another explanation for that?”

  “I’m not here to argue with you, Father. You can either help us or not.”

  “I don’t want to turn you away. Perhaps we should meet to talk?”

  “Please, Father, I am a psychiatrist. I know when things are only in the mind. This thing has killed my cat and possessed my daughter.”

  The priest sounded concerned for the first time. “What do you mean possessed?”

  “I mean it spoke through her - her voice changed, her posture changed. It wasn’t Jessica. It moved her and put her in the clock.”

  “Put her in the clock?” Father Cusack sounded like he didn’t know what to think. John realised that it must be at least half on his mind to call Social Services.

  John said, “Can you come to meet me at the Mill at Mungrisdale?”

  There was a pause. “I’m not experienced in this. If it’s true what you say, then there is the Diocesan Exorcist. He’d be better qualified to talk to you. Can I give him your number and he’ll ring you tomorrow?”

  John felt that while they were away from the house, they’d be safe enough. He would call in sick tomorrow and meet this Exorcist. “Yes, ok. What time will he ring?”

  Father Cusack said, “I don’t know. I’ll tell him it’s urgent.” And then he asked hesitantly, “Is your daughter ok now?”

  “I think so,” and then he said, “thank you for not just dismissing me.”

  Father Cusack said, “The Church has a duty to protect its children from the power of the Evil One.”

  Whether the Priest believed John’s story or not, it sounded like he would do something. John hoped it wouldn’t be something that made things worse. When John ended the call, he sat a while by the fire and sipped his beer. He didn’t like to think of what he’d seen and heard. He didn’t want his mind to return to the images of dead Timmy and Jessica’s grotesque face. The landlord came back through. “Want another drink?” he said.

  John shook his head. “Time for bed, I think. It’s been a hell of an evening.”

  “Yes, sorry about the flood. I hope your insurance can sort it out for you. Full breakfast in the morning?”

  “Yes,” said John. “Not sure if my wife or daughter will manage to get up; they’re exhausted.”

  He made his way up the old wooden stairs of the inn with its irregular whitewashed walls with old prints of country scenes. He opened the door to their room quietly so as not to wake the girls. He didn’t switch on the light. As he entered the room, he heard Sarah’s regular breathing. He looked at the bed and realised something was amiss. He stopped and looked harder; where was Jess?

  In rising panic, he switched on the light. Jessica was not there. “Sarah!” he shouted, and she woke, sitting up groggily. She instantly realised that Jess was gone. She jumped out of bed. She rushed through into the en-suite bathroom.

  “Where is she?”

  A dreadful intuition formed in his heart. “I’m going back to the house,” he said.

  “What?” said Sarah. “She must be here. How could she have walked to the house?”

  “She didn’t walk. She didn’t come past me downstairs while I was in the bar.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “You know what I’m saying; you stay here. I’ll go to the house.”

  “I’m not letting you go on your own. What if she’s just wandered out of the room? What if she’s in this inn somewhere?”

  John said, “You stay. I’ll go.”

  She was already pulling on her clothes. As they hurried out to the car, John could feel his heart thumping. He was on his phone to Father Cusack in seconds. The priest answered sleepily.

  “This exorcist,” said John. “I need him now.”

  “Now? It’s late.”

  “It’s midnight.”

  “Why now?”

  “Because it’s taken my daughter back to the house.”

  “How could that be?”

  John snapped. “You tell me, Father. I thought the supernatural was your specialty.”

  “It’s ok John, I understand. Listen, I’ll come.”

  “I thought you weren’t an expert?”

  “I’m not. But the other man is miles away. It sounds like you need help now.”

  “Ok, you know where Thorgill is?”

  “Vaguely.”

  John gave him exact directions. “My wife and I are going there straight away.”

  “I’ll meet you there,” said Father Cusack.

  John started the engine. Sarah was quiet. He put his hand on her knee. “I won’t let anything harm her,” he said.

  “I’m scared you might not stop it; look what it did to Timmy.”

  “That doesn’t help us Sarah. We need to have hope.”

  And they drove - faster than was safe. Their headlights devoured the dark countryside. Illuminating the rain that fell on their windscreen, the wipers struggling to keep their view clear. They were at the house within five minutes. John parked some way away from the dark building.

  “Why don’t you go closer?” asked Sarah.

  “Because it can cut the power in the car if we go closer.”

  “Do you think it has a certain radius of power - like a Wi-Fi router?” she said sarcastically.

  “I don’t know anything. I just need to get Jess.”

  “I hope she’s not in there. I hope she’s just got up and wandered round the inn and has come back to find us not there.”

  “You know that’s not true, Sarah,” he said.

  John walked up to the door, the rain beating down on him. It was dark, but he had pulled an electric torch from the glove compartment of the car and he shone that on the door.

  Sarah was by his side. “God, I’m so scared,” she said.

  He turned the handle of the door and pushed it open. The house was again quiet apart from the iron ticking of the clock. He listened for Jess — to see if he could hear her crying as he had before, but there was no sound. He stepped into the house. He could hear his heartbeat. Sarah was still outside, coming through the door behind him. He turned to speak to her and the door closed suddenly, with enormous force. He tried the handle, but it was as something had nailed up the door. He pulled it, but it
wouldn’t budge. And then he felt something behind him. He whirled round, striking out with the rubber torch, but he met only air.

  “What are you?” he snarled. “Where’s my daughter?”

  And he felt a malevolent mirth in the heavy darkness around him; a darkness heavier than a mere absence of light; a darkness filled with a presence that used it like a cloak. He sensed its wickedness. In the dark, he tried to move and stumbled. He felt the corpse of the cat under his foot. He shone his light on it; Timmy lay there glassy eyed in death, his ragged red flesh looking gnawed and chewed.

  John heard Sarah hammering on the door behind him. He shouted back that he was all right.

  As he approached the clock, he could feel its ticking filling his head, loud, rhythmic, almost hypnotic, wanting him to open his mind to it.

  He tried to steel himself against its influence, but it whispered to him without words. It tried to lay eggs in his soul like some parasitic worm wanting to infest him with larvae. He shook his head clear, but it was hard not to succumb. He pulled open the cabinet door of the clock where he had seen Jess before, but she was not there.

  The strange copper seal was still in place. He was about to touch it when he felt something behind him and he spun round. There was Jess standing there in her nightdress. Her chin was covered in blood as if she’d been feasting on something raw and newly dead. Her eyes were white like those of boiled fish. Her jaw chattered, the teeth clattering together. As he stood there horrified, she spoke in the voice of something not used to talking with a human mouth.

  “Submit to me,” it said.

  He said, “In the name of God and all his angels, leave my daughter.”

  And Jess’s mouth laughed a cruel laugh. “You don’t believe in those ideas, John. They won’t protect you.”

  And then outside, he saw a splash of car headlights and the sound of a car pulling up heavily on gravel.

  “But he does,” he said. John’s heart jumped in sudden hope. Father Cusack had come

  “Should I let him in?” said the demon.

  John knew that no appeal to pity or mercy would avail him. The thing would let the priest in, only if it suited its own purposes. And it did. The door flew open. Sarah and Fr Cusack rushed in. The priest was a portly man of about 55. He wore a purple surplice and carried a Bible in one hand and a crucifix in the other.

  Jessica slumped to the floor and her mother went to grab her. Then, when they were all in the house, the door slammed again. Sarah went to open it. John said, “It’s no use.”

  Fr Cusack felt the presence in the room. He didn’t know where it was and he whirled round and round, trying to face it.

  “It comes from the clock,” said John.

  Cusack turned to face the clock and then, hesitantly, nervously, as if he hardly knew what he was doing he began. “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti…”

  There was an enormous blast of energy and the priest was knocked over; he fell sprawling against the wall. A voice came, not from Jessica this time, but from nowhere and everywhere. It said, “Your time has gone priest. Your religion is broken; Christianity has ebbed in this land. It has no power to bind me.”

  Cusack was struggling to get up. He had dropped the Bible, but he still held onto the crucifix. He held it out in front of him as a protection, but then his head snapped back as if it had kicked him in the face. He screamed and crumpled; the cross falling from his fingers.

  John ran over to him. Cusack’s face was bleeding - he looked as if his nose was broken, but he was still alive. Sarah held Jessica, who was screaming and screaming, struggling against her mother’s grip.

  John turned and saw in the darkest corner a shape lurking - a shape that looked like it was drawn from the twisted imagination of a sickly child. It had the head of a horse and folded at its back seemed to be the leather wings of a bat. Its bottom half was that of a man. There, between its legs were a huge penis and testicles.

  “What are you?” shouted John. He stooped to pick up the crucifix, but an unseen power knocked it from his hands. The thing said, “That is not for you, Dr Eliot. You have renounced things of the soul.”

  And the thing came out from its corner and it wrapped itself around Sarah and Jessica, who struggled as if they were being bound with whips and wrapped in a rotting funeral shroud.

  John ran at it, but it knocked him back with its power and it held him, helpless as a child.

  “What do you want?” he sobbed. “Let them go.”

  The thing said, “Submit to me.”

  “I don’t know how to submit to you. I don’t know what you are.”

  As he watched, the blackness around Sarah and Jess thickened. The thing sucked them into the clock body.

  Fr Cusack had got up. He said, “It is a demon of Solomon. Imprisoned by him in a brass vessel. But someone has let it out.”

  And then the front door blasted open behind them. An unholy wind began to blow, and it pushed John and Fr Cusack towards the door. The thing said, “When you will let me enter you and open you for he who comes after me, I will let your wife and child go.”

  “Then come now,” said John. Cusack put his hand over John’s mouth — both hands, stopping him speaking. “No,” he said. “Don’t trust it. It will take you and take them as well. It will damn you all.”

  John broke free. He was about to tell the demon that he would submit to it; that he would open himself up, but Cusack begged him. “No, there must be another way. Don’t damn yourself.”

  His wife and daughter were in the clock.

  “Let them go!” shouted John at the demon.

  The demon roared. “You do not give orders; you submit to them.”

  The wind grew so strong they could not resist it and it pushed them towards the door.

  “Let them go!” shouted John again.

  But the demon shoved John and the priest out of the door and the door closed in John’s face. He hammered on it, but he could not open it.

  Cusack stood by him.

  “Let me go back in,” shouted John. “I will willingly sacrifice my life for theirs.”

  The priest said, “Believe me, the Evil One and his minions do not keep their bargains. They will take all of you. I beg you to let me help.”

  John was punching the closed front door. “It said that your Christianity is not strong enough. How can you help?”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll get the exorcist.”

  “When?”

  Cusack shrugged helplessly. “As soon as I can.”

  John stared at him. “I just hope it’s not too late.”

  John watched Cusack drive away. Then he was alone standing outside the house. He watched it and listened to it move and groan as if it was living, being tormented by what it contained inside it. Then he realised the futility of getting soaked in the rain. He sat in his own car and he watched the house again; the car window wound down. The night was long, and he didn’t sleep.

  Around three in the morning, John decided he couldn’t wait for anyone else. His wife and daughter were in the clutches of that evil thing in the house, somehow sucked into the clock as if into another dimension.

  The only place he could think of going was his Uncle Max’s house in Penrith.

  Nobody was moving on the rain-drenched streets when he arrived. He parked up on Beacon Edge and remembered stories his grandmother told him of how Beacon Edge was an unlucky place, where in olden times women would leave unwanted children to die. Forest clad Beacon Hill above the town was also the site of weird occurrences. He wondered whether that was why Uncle Max had wanted to live here.

  He got out of the car and walked over to the house. A cat ran across the street further down and rain slanted in pools of yellow street light. He pushed open the rusty iron gate and stepped onto the stone flagstones that were fighting a losing battle against the encroachment of weeds.

  He didn’t have a key.

  The front door was locked, so he walked round the overgrown garden to
the back. He walked through the rank grass. There was half an old plastic coffee cup in the grass and a broken child’s doll near it; blue plastic eyes and torn cotton dress. The back door was locked too. There was no time to mess about. He booted it open. It took two blows then broke inwards. He stepped round it, into the dark house.

  It smelled damp. A pigeon flapped in alarm somewhere within.

  John flicked on the light switch and the bare bulb hanging from a wire lit up.

  He walked through the hall and stood in the kitchen. There was a dirty plate in the sink that looked like it had been there months. A stained newspaper lay on the floor. There was ill-matched furniture in the room — a table, two chairs, one broken.

  He didn’t know where to start. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but this is where the clock came from. It was something to do with Max and if there wasn’t something here that could help, John didn’t know where it would be.

  He mounted the stairs in the empty house, stepping upwards on flight after flight, until he came to the attic. The door was locked again but opened easily. There were skylights, but they were covered in bird shit and cobwebs. The light worked here too. The place smelled of old creosote and damp. John scanned the room. There was something weird on the floor. The floorboards were black and a circle with words in Hebrew and Greek was inscribed around it. Near it was a triangle which had different but similar words along its side. John felt his skin crawl.

  There was also a bookshelf. On the shelf were a series of books:

  The Book of the Goetia by Aleister Crowley was the first. His heart jumped. This was only the second time he’d ever heard the word. His patient at the hospital told him that the Goetia had been messing around with him when he said that something had moved into his house. The second was The Lesser Key of Solomon, and like the first seemed to be concerned with magical rites for summoning demons. There was another The Tree of the Qlipoth and yet more, but none of the titles made sense to John.

  He picked up the Book of the Goetia and tried to speed read it. It said there were seventy-two demons imprisoned by King Solomon in this brass vessel. Each had a seal and a name. Crowley’s book had little illustrations of them all. They were grotesque things with heads and feet of different animals. All the demons had different powers, and he magician summoned them to help him with little tasks and witcheries.