“Grab your torch and let’s check it out,” he whispered back.
Sally nodded her agreement and they hastily threw on robes and walked through the hallway that led to the stairs that went downstairs. Despite their best professional efforts, it was impossible to move in complete silence along the corridor. Sally recalled the squeaking and creaking of the floor boards when Carver had originally shown them to their room and she grimaced and frowned with each of their steps as they crept along. It seemed that the noise from their steps must have seemed louder to them than it actually was, as the banging from the lower level continued. Tomasz stopped at the top of the stairs and leaned over to place his mouth close to Sally’s ear.
“Try and walk on the outer edges of the stairs as we go down. That will reduce our chances of making more noise in this old rat trap.” Tomasz whispered.
Sally nodded, recalling having heard this old adage about creaky wooden planks in houses from a training supervisor. Tomasz lead the way, heading down on the right side, and Sally followed a few steps behind him using the left side of the staircase. The banging continued unabated as they moved and Sally felt her heart pounding in her ears. Otherwise their progression seemed silent. Just as she joined Tomasz at the bottom of the stairs, the banging sounds suddenly ceased. They froze. All that Sally could hear now was the wind whipping around the edges and eaves of the inn as it seemed to have picked up in intensity since they had left their room.
She looked to Tomasz who just shrugged. They stood unmoving for a minute or so, but if you had asked either detective, it is likely they would have said it felt like hours. Tomasz clicked off his torch and Sally followed suit, both thinking perhaps they might have been spotted somehow. As soon as the beams went dark, the repetitive banging ensued. No louder or faster or slower in frequency than before…just the regular soft banging noise that had gotten them out of bed in the first place. Simultaneously, they re-illuminated their torches and eased their way through the bar moving in the direction of the noise. Other than their lights, the lower level was pitch dark and no one else in the place seemed to have heard the disturbance.
Tomasz cautiously aimed his light at a door that led from the main bar into the kitchen to see it opening and closing, over and over, apparently of its own accord. It was like someone was pushing it in and out of the door frame, but as his light clearly indicated, there was no one else around. Tomasz looked over at Sally who joined him to observe the flapping door in utter confusion and disbelief.
“You seeing what I am seeing?” Sally whispered.
“You mean the door slapping back and forth with no one there?”
“Uh-huh…”
Tomasz stepped ahead of Sally and caught the door on its next trip through the frame stopping the motion with his palm. Once the banging stopped, even though it had not been overly loud to begin with, the silence seemed overwhelming. Tomasz dropped his hand and they both stared at the door waiting to see what might happen next. A few seconds went by, then a minute and the door stood inert in its frame.
“Wind?” Tomasz asked as he turned from the door to look at Sally.
“Wind? Inside the building?”
Tomasz shrugged.
“You got another explanation?”
Sally did have one, but she knew better than to offer it up at the moment, pretty sure what her partner’s reaction might be.
“It’s an old building, Sally. You saw how Carver has neglected the upkeep here. What else?”
“But that door was flapping pretty good. Do you feel any wind in here now? Or even when we first got here?”
Tomasz just glared at her.
“Doors don’t move on their own, partner. It was wind. Had to be. Now it’s stopped. End of story. I’m going back to bed. See you in the morning.”
Sally had seen enough things in her life, including strange, inexplicable events on her grandparents’ farm to know that sometimes there was not always a logical, scientific answer to them all. However, she also knew to suggest such a thing to Tomasz was not an option. She just nodded and turned to follow him back through the bar to head back upstairs. Tomasz aimed his light at the floor to make sure he did not stumble into any of the furniture. Sally on the other hand, for reasons she could not explain later, let the beam of her torch scan around the interior of the bar. Maybe she just wanted to double-check that no one else had snuck into the inn without them knowing it. She was not sure. But when she did, she stopped dead in her tracks as her light illuminated the far wall, close to where they had been having dinner earlier.
The embers from the fireplace were still glowing, but there was no light given off in the room other than from her own torch. Sally stopped and rescanned her light on the far wall, sure that her eyes were just playing tricks on her. But as she slowed the movement of the beam, sure enough Sally saw the writing on the wall. In large uneven lettering, in a substance that seemed too glimmer in the reflection of her torch, Sally felt her skin go icy cold and her heart rate race as she saw the single word:
MURDER
She blinked several times, sure it was just her imagination, but the longer Sally stared the more real the word became. The lettering shimmered in a fresh, red tint that made Sally sure it was blood. She screamed and dropped her torch.
Carver’s Arms: Who You Gonna Call?
Herriard, United Kingdom
28 January, 2018, 4 AM
Sally dropped to her knees and frantically searched for her dropped torch. It must have rolled after she dropped it, for try as she might she could not locate it. Moments after she screamed, Tomasz came bounding down the stairs and across the bar to find her on her hands and knees desperately searching for her torch.
“Sally! What is it?” Tomasz asked as he dropped to the floor as well having no idea what had gotten into her.
Still unable to locate her own torch, Sally grabbed Tomasz by the arm and forced him to direct his own light to where she had seen the word on the far wall. However, when they both look at the wall it was blank. The embers in the fireplace were still glowing weakly, but the wall was blank. Carver had removed the old photo of him and his ex-wife and son, Jack to reveal a blank wall with just the faint outline of where the old framed photo had hung for many years.
“It’s blank, Tomasz….” Sally said weakly, wondering what they had stumbled into.
She was sure of what she had seen, but now how did she convince her partner without him thinking her mad.
“Yeah…blank wall…so what?” Tomasz asked as he located Sally’s torch and handed it to her.
“But…it…just a minute ago…”
Sally looked up to see the puzzled look on Tomasz’s face. She pulled out a chair from a table nearest to them and sat. Tomasz joined her and looked at her with real concern, maybe for the first time since they had been partners. Sally steeled herself for his ridicule and derision and told Tomasz what she had seen.
“Are you serious, Sally?”
She just stared him in the face without blinking. There were a number of things about Sally White that Tomasz did not care for. But never once since having been paired with her had he doubted her professionalism or character or sanity. He was sure she had seen something, but the word “murder” scrawled in blood on the wall?
“I know it sounds insane, Tomasz. But it was there just a moment ago, I swear!”
Despite going against his better judgement, Tomasz decided to hear her out.
“OK, Sally…I am sure you saw something. But now the wall is blank, right? What do you think it means? How do you explain it?”
Sally did not answer right away. She thought back to when she was about ten years old on the farm in Goring. Her grandmother had asked her to go down into the old root cellar that was just off the main house near the well pump to retrieve a can of beans she had put up the summer before. Sally could never explain it, but going into that old, dank, musty-smelling cellar had always given her the creeps. By the time she was ten though, she had convinced
herself that it was just a dark room and that here fears of it were childish and immature. The canned beans, unfortunately, were at the very back of the cellar and the only way to get the correct can was with a torch as the overhead bulb was way too dim to illuminate anything beyond the first few feet.
Sally grabbed the torch that her grandmother used when venturing into the earthen enclosure and slowly worked her way into the back of the room until she found the wax beans that she was looking for. As she turned to come back out, the torch died and the outer door blew shut. Sally cried out for help but her grandfather was out in the fields repairing some fencing and the root cellar was too far away from the kitchen in the main house for her grandmother to hear her. She dropped the torch and felt her way over to the door only to find it jammed against the opening and she was unable to work it free. She was sure someone would eventually come along to check on her, so with no other choice, Sally made herself comfortable on a few sacks of dried beans to wait.
No sooner than she had settled down to wait, then this faint light in the shape of an orb appeared near the back of the room where she had found the wax beans that her grandmother had wanted. Sally looked toward the growing light with the curiosity of a child as it grew in both size and intensity, morphing from a pale yellow to a blue much like that seen in the eggshell of a robin. Sally continued to stare at the growing orb until a figure began to materialize from the light. It was amorphous at first, with no real definite shape, but eventually the blob-like shape took form and the image that appeared before her was that of a young girl about her age. However, the girl was not solid in form but cottony or gauzy in make-up so that Sally could actually see through the image.
Sally felt her heart race as the girl-thing moved toward her. It did not speak, but reached out to her with withered, bony arms. She finally had the courage to look up to the apparition’s upper body and saw a face, but where eyes should have been were empty blackened sockets. As well, the mouth had been replaced with a sickening green slash. The girl-thing was draped with a shroud-like garment that was torn and tattered and moldy, as if it had been underground for a long time. Sally felt as if she was about to go mad, when the specter lifted the remnants of its decrepit arms as if to fold her into its embrace. With that, Sally tossed the jar of Wax beans aside and scrambled on all fours toward the door.
As the jar splintered on a jagged stone that was jutting out of the earthen floor, Sally threw herself against the wooden door. She threw herself against the rough planks of the door repeatedly to no avail and each time she dared to look back over her shoulder, the girl-thing with the bony arms and blackened eye sockets and claw-like fingers was drawing closer and closer. A low-level cackle began to emanate from the spirit, making Sally’s blood run cold. The closer the thing drew to her, the harder Sally pushed against the door until it finally gave way and she fell into the bright sunlight of the afternoon. In a near hysteria, and crying incessantly, Sally scooted backward on her rear as rapidly as she could, putting distance between herself and the root cellar entrance.
However, as the bright sunlight filled the entrance to the root cellar, there was nothing there anymore but shelves of canned fruits and vegetables, sacks of dried beans, and of course the shattered jar of wax beans that she had dropped. Sally wiped her eyes dry and took slow and cautious steps back toward the opening. On the dirt floor lying next to the broken jar of beans was an old, shredded coverlet, much like what Sally had seen the girl-thing wearing. When she reached out to pick it up the fabric disintegrated in her hands. She cleaned up the broken jar ad retrieved a replacement for her grandmother.
Sally never mentioned the incident to anyone, ever. However, from that day forward, Sally White was sure of one thing despite what all her teachers, church leaders, and all the other adults she knew would tell her to the contrary: ghosts did exist. When she was away at university, Sally did some research on the old property where her grandparents had lived and found that a young girl had indeed been murdered and buried in an unmarked grave just about where the root cellar had been erected. So, seeing the word on the wall of the inn made Sally reflect back. The inn was old and had been through many generations of owners. John Carver’s story about his lost family was not sitting well with her. She knew what she had seen and it was giving her cause to wonder if there was not more to Carver’s Arms than some simple burglaries. It would not be the first time Tomasz had ridiculed her, so Sally said the hell with it and plunged ahead.
“How about an explanation from another world, Tomasz?” Sally said as she looked at him directly.
“You cannot be serious, Sally.”
She did not reply. Tomasz had heard rumors about his partner and her belief in the supernatural, but this was the first time he had actual evidence that the rumors were true.
“You think this place has ghosts? That it is haunted?”
Again, Sally did not reply, but neither did she smile nor break her steely stare at him.
“Sally…I am not even going to consider that. Ghosts are not real. They are made up to scare little kids and such. You need to get a grip, partner. See you in the morning.”
Sally watched with disappointment as she watched Tomasz walk out of the bar and listened as his footsteps treaded back upstairs. As things between them had gone in the past, this was fairly minor in comparison. However, she was sure she would pay the price for her beliefs once they returned to headquarters in London. By the time Sally got back to their room, Tomasz was already fast asleep. Sally laid down on her bed, but she could not sleep. The more she thought about it, the more she wondered if Carver’s Arms had a discontented resident ghost. She rolled onto her side and tried to will herself to sleep, but it was no use. Sally was about to say the hell with it and just get up and rekindle the fire and sit in the bar when she heard the sound of approaching footsteps coming up the stairs and down the hallway toward their room.
Initially, she thought it might be John Carver taking a look around to see if anything needed attention, but then she recalled that it seemed as if he had not done much of this sort of thing to the inn in years. The footsteps got louder until they stopped just outside the door to the room. Sally felt her pulse quicken as the door to their room slowly opened with the unmistakable creak she had come to recognize since arriving. She sat up in her bed and looked at the open door, but there was no one there. Sally spun around to put her feet on the floor and quietly called out across the room.
“Hello? Is anyone there?”
No answer, though Sally hardly had expected one.
“Are you there? Can I help you?”
Still no answer. Sally rose cautiously to go to the door, but as soon as she made a move to get closer, the door slammed shut and she could hear footsteps thudding back down the corridor and then down the steps. The sudden slamming of the door woke Tomasz from a sound sleep.
“Goddamn it, Sally! Knock it off will you! We’ve got another long day tomorrow and I’ve already wasted enough of a good night’s sleep on you and your ghosts!”
Sally lay down once again. She was now thoroughly convinced that the Carver’s Arms was haunted. And somehow this was all tied into the break-ins…she was sure if it. Just exactly how, she was not sure, but with some thought and effort she was sure she could make the connection. And part of that connection had to be John Carver himself.
Carver’s Arms: The Ghost Burglar
Herriard, United Kingdom
29 - 30 January, 2018
Sally was already in the bar having breakfast when Tomasz appeared and joined her at her table. The man looked utterly exhausted, but more importantly the look on his face that was aimed toward Sally made her know better than to even say good morning. John Carver appeared from the kitchen with coffee for Tomasz and refilled Sally’s cup as well.
“Breakfast, sir?”
“Just some toast, please. John. We’ve got a long day and I did not sleep all that well.”
“Sorry to hear that, detective. Was the roo
m not to your liking?”
“Room was fine, John. My roommate was the issue.”
Carver knew when to step in and when to step away, and in this case, he definitely knew this was the time to make himself scarce so the detectives could clear the air. Sally again just let her partner’s passive aggressive immaturity roll off her back. She sipped at her coffee and finished off the delightful omelet and kippers that John’s Portuguese chef had prepared. If her partner wanted to punish himself by not eating, so be it. When Tomasz got into one of these snits, she had found it best to just let him stew for a while until he got the temper tantrum out of his system. He would either talk to her or not. Even on her own, if that was how the day panned out, she had a plan in mind to pursue her theory about the Carver’s Arms.
John returned with several servings of toast as well as a few rashers of bacon for Tomasz plus the same omelet that his chef had made for Sally.
“In case you change your mind about breakfast, detective.”
Sally smirked to herself as John retreated to the kitchen while she hid her face with her coffee cup. Tomasz reluctantly dug into the breakfast that John had brought him and it seemed to Sally that the food softened her partner’s animosity toward her from having had his beauty sleep disturbed. She nursed her coffee and looked back over her notes from the interviews in town as Tomasz ate. With each bite she could sense him slowly returning to his normal disdain for her.
“Want to do some follow up talks with our victims in town?” Tomasz asked as he polished of the last of his coffee.
“Sounds good,” Sally replied, knowing it had been important to Tomasz to feel as if he had made the effort to break the ice between them. It mattered little to her about his bruised ego. She just wanted to get to the bottom of the thefts and perhaps see if her theory on a ghostly presence at the Carver’s Arms was true as well.
Haunted House Tales Page 45