by Carrie King
Chapter 48
The spirit disappeared as quickly as it arrived and despite trying to talk and communicate there was nothing more. When her heart finally calmed down, they carried on setting up the equipment.
By the time the two of them got finished, daylight had given way to the early dusk of evening, then twilight.
They had set up three full spectrum cameras on tripods; one in the corner of the sitting room downstairs, one on the landing next to a thermal imaging camera, and one upstairs at the end of the hallway. It all connected to a DVR system with built-in audio monitoring with automatic motion and audio detection.
Fortunately, they had brought a small generator with which to charge their battery-operated equipment. While Mindy had gone upstairs to the attic space to conduct an EVP session up there, Jessica was going to do the same down in the sitting room.
She couldn't help but pause for a few moments as she stepped to the front door and opened it. Leaning against the door, she admired the view toward the ocean. The first stars were appearing, twinkling softly and the moon gave enough light for her to see what a beautiful place this really was. The ocean disappeared into the night sky.
The only sounds were those of nature; the slight bending of the long, knee-high grass in the field between the house and the cliffside rustled softly. The sound of the waves lapping at the shoreline in the distance. The scree of a seagull flying overhead, perhaps seeking one more morsel before it nested for the night. The distant croak of a frog from somewhere along the side or behind the house, announcing day's end. All were comforting, natural sounds. It was so beautiful, so peaceful. Standing here, she could …
He stood in the doorway, feet planted shoulder width apart, arms crossed over his chest. A self-satisfied smile lifting the corners of his mouth. He never failed to feel a sense of intense pride when he looked out the door, making it a point to do so at dawn and dusk every day. His hard work, his dedication, and his focus had paid off. He had done what everyone else said was impossible.
Her voice from behind prompted him to stiffen his back as she approached. Though he couldn't see her face and didn't want to, her very presence spoiled his solitude and gratification. She seemed to take a perverse pleasure in spoiling his brief moments of joy.
"I don't know why you seem so captivated by the view every day. It doesn't change. It never changes."
He didn't deign to respond, nor even to glance down at her. He already knew what he would see: her face pinched with displeasure, her scowl, her tight lips as she too stared out into the distance. She didn't like living so far away from town, from people, from the social life she had enjoyed before they married. Until she had come here after their marriage a year ago, she had not complained about anything. She had accepted his gifts, the exquisite and expensive gowns, the jewelry, pretending affection for the sake of his coffers.
She had played the part of the dutiful wife in London while this place on Solway Firth was built, much of it under his immediate direction, and some of it even under his own hand. She had assumed that this would be their summer home only, though he had never given her that impression.
Tired of the crowds, the dirty air, the distractions, he had sought solitude, building on the property that had belonged to his family for generations of ancestors, most were of Scottish descent. Perhaps that was why no one had ever actually built on this property, those tiresome feuds between the English and the Scottish, but he didn't care. He loved it here, and would stay here forever, regardless of how many times Beatrice complained …
Jessica jarred to awareness to find herself still standing in the doorway. Night had fallen. Contemplating her vision, she stepped back inside and softly closed the door, locking it before she turned toward the sitting room.
That had been intense and interesting. Was it real or what the spirit wanted her to see? Time would tell.
With her small handheld tape recorder and her K2/EMF reader… she often relied on her K2 meter with its row of colored lights. The tiny colored bulbs of the K2 would light up when electromagnetic energy was detected, mainly in spikes, giving her an indication that some type of activity or potential communication from the other side was likely.
She had already completed base readings in this room with her Mel meter, which measured air temperature and electromagnetic fields. With no electric lines around, the baseline was nearly zero. When a spirit was present, the air temperature in the room or in an area of a room could often drop precipitously. When that happened, the digital readout would increase from zero to whatever, some readings strong, others weak, depending on the 'strength' of the spirit's ability to communicate. She placed the EMF meter on the floor in the middle of the room while she held her Mel meter in her left hand, the tape recorder in her right.
She hadn't turned on any lights before sitting down comfortably on the old-fashioned settee, prepared to start her first session. She started with simple questions.
"Who are you?" Pause. "Why are you still here?"
She felt positive that the spirit was here, and based on her vision earlier, she had no doubt that it was the original owner of the property, the man who had built the place. Why else would she be told to get out? As the owner, he wouldn't like anyone entering his home without permission. Naturally.
"I don't mean you any harm," she said, her eyes continually gazing around the room and through the doorway beyond. "Did you used to live here?" Pause. "Did you die here?"
The lights on the EMF meter lit up, pulsed for several seconds, and then went out.
"What is your name?"
Nothing. It could have been an anomaly, but she was sure that she had gotten a response, triggered by the word "die." She decided to follow that vein. Sometimes, spirits didn't actually know that they were dead. Maybe this one didn't. "What year is it?"
She continued the discussion for another ten minutes, but nothing else happened. The lights on the EMF meter didn't light up again; the temperature in the room remained stable, and she decided to conclude the session. After all, it had been a long day, and—
She glanced down at her Mel Meter. The reading increased. The base reading of 0.1 steadily increased. 0.8, 1.5, 2.3 … Her heart skipped a beat. Finally!
"If you're here with me, tell me your name."
The lights on the EMF reader lit up again. Whoever was here was trying to communicate, or at least had expressed curiosity about her presence.
"Is there something I can do for you?"
She sensed movement out of the corner of her eye and glanced toward the corner of the room between the fireplace and the outside wall. She blinked. Was that a moving shadow? It seemed to undulate, like a dark mass, barely discernible, but darker than the environment and with enough movement to attract the eye.
"Who are—"
Everything shut down all at once. The lights on the K2 meter faded. The red light on her Mel meter shut off, as did the recording light on her tape recorder. Jessica sighed.
"Okay, I get it."
Sometimes, a spirit could drain batteries in an attempt to absorb energy for some type of activity, mainly communication. "Thank you for…”
"Leave!"
She sat upright, staring into the corner of the room. The shadow was gone. Only a powerful spirit could manipulate sound enough to be heard by the human ear. Despite her experience, despite her familiarity with spirits, she felt unsettled. Heart pounding, she tried to calm her nerves.
She heard footsteps upstairs and then on the stairway. Mindy had finished her session in the attic. A coincidence or perfect timing?
She appeared in the doorway.
"You get anything up there?"
"I thought I heard the sound of a woman's voice, but I'll need to play back the tape. What about you?"
"Definitely a male voice and my equipment shut down."
"The thermal camera on the landing is still on, but I'm too tired right now to play any of this back tonight." Mindy glanced at her watch. "It's nearly fou
r o'clock in the morning. What say we get some sleep? We'll get up in a few hours, playback our recorders and check the thermal, then proceed from there."
"Sounds like a plan," Jessica sighed, exhausted as well. This was going to be a challenging investigation. Only a few things had happened since they arrived, which of course pleased her, but at the same time, she knew that reviewing even what little they'd recorded so far would require hours and hours of follow-up.
"I'll take the bedroom to the right of the landing. You can have the left."
Jessica nodded as she glanced around the room. "I think we just might get more than we bargained for with this place." At the same time, she could not allow the house to unsettle her, or the spirit. She would take her laptop and her tape recorder up to her room and review what she could while she waited for sleep. She had no doubt that something was here, but who that something was, she had no idea. She knew nothing about the place. She would have loved to do a quick Internet search before she went to bed, but without Wi-Fi that, of course, was impossible.
She visited the loo and took care of business and then quickly settled into bed without turning on the light, ready for sleep. She placed her tape recorder on the bedside table, setting it to record. It wasn't but a couple of minutes before her eyelids grew heavy and she fell asleep.
She half-woke, confused and struggled to force herself awake. She couldn't breathe … it felt like someone's hands were wrapped around her throat, thumbs pressing deep into her trachea at the base of her throat. She gasped, trying to push the oppressive weight off her; she couldn't move. Paralyzed, unable to move, not even a hand, she jolted awake, eyes wide, trying to breathe. Her head pounded and her eyes felt like they would pop out of their sockets any second now. Panic surged through her. What was happening? Why couldn't she breathe?
Her ears buzzed loudly. White starbursts flashed in her vision. Her tongue protruded from her mouth as she gagged.
Stop it! Stop it!
As suddenly as it had started, the pressure around her neck disappeared. She lunged upward, coughing, gagging, and inhaling deep, scratchy breaths that filled her lungs. Heart pounding and shoulders heaving with her efforts, she finally felt her lungs expand.
Her hands trembled as she clutched the bedding beneath her, peering into the darkness around her bed. Trembling took over her body, but she forced herself to move. She didn't bother reaching for the lantern on the bedside table. It was all too much effort.
Jessica sat for several minutes, calming her shattered nerves, her breath gradually slowing. She hadn't dreamt it. That much she knew. Finally, able to throw the covers off her and clamber out of bed, she stepped toward her suitcase, fumbled among the clothes there, and stepped toward the door. Cautiously, she opened it and peered outside, up and down the hallway.
Nothing was there. Mindy's door was closed. She stepped toward the window of her room, overlooking the woods behind the house. To the east, the sky slowly brightened, bringing with it a new day. She padded into the bathroom and peered into the mirror over the sink. A frightened woman stared back at her as she gasped.
Red marks encircled her throat.
Chapter 49
"Oh my God," Mindy gasped after Jessica showed her the marks on her neck.
It wasn't the first time she had been scratched or attacked by a spirit, but this was one of the worse she had ever seen. The ferocity of the attack was evident in the severity of the bruising, which although it had happened a couple of hours ago, displayed purple and red. Showing full well the angry spirit's attempt to choke the living daylights out of her.
"You didn't experience anything?" Jessica asked, wincing at her raspy voice.
Mindy shook her head, eyes wide as her gaze swept from Jessica's neck to take in the bedroom. "Is this what you meant yesterday? About having a bad feeling about this place?"
Mindy shook her head. "No …"
She knew better than to keep her premonitions to herself and looked up at Jessica. All she had to do was wait.
Finally, Mindy explained.
"What I saw was … it was someone falling."
Jessica lifted an eyebrow. "One of us?"
Mindy shrugged. "I couldn't tell. It could've been something that happened to the spirit here or one of the spirits; we know there are two, at least. One male, one female."
Mindy could sense things that might happen in the future, while Jessica’s gift as a physical medium was to discern what had happened in the past. "Falling …" Other than the cliffside, there was nowhere to fall, except from the stairs. She thought about that and then…
"… down …"
"I just heard a voice. Did you hear it?"
Mindy shook her head. "What did it say?"
"Down," Jessica said. "And something's compelling me to look for something under the house …"
"A basement?"
She shook her head. "There isn't one."
Nevertheless, something was pulling at her. "Wait … I've got a feeling …" she mumbled, then headed downstairs, Mindy following close behind. At the bottom of the stairs, Jessica turned down the hallway, trailing her hand against the wall as she did so. Suddenly, she stopped. "There."
They both stepped back, examining the wood-paneled wall. It looked solid and perfectly normal. The narrow width paneling had been common back in the 1940s.
Mindy began to knock on the wall. About halfway between the base of the stairs and the dining room, they noticed a distinct difference in tone. She glanced over her shoulder at Jessica.
"There's a hidden doorway here."
Jessica smiled. "Ah … a mystery. Let's get our flashlights. You get the digital tape recorder; I'll get the camera; let's go exploring."
Both of them were excited and eager. Maybe they would find their resolution quickly. They gathered handheld equipment and returned to the hidden door.
Jessica nodded, her camera running and pointed to the wall. "Open it."
Mindy pushed against the wall. Sure enough, a portion moved outward. It was a narrow opening, maybe a little over a meter wide, but wide enough for them to squeeze through. Jessica heard the distinct click of the tape recorder as Mindy set it to record.
"Anybody down here?" Mindy asked, swinging her flashlight around the space. There wasn’t much of it actually, simply a set of stone steps descending into what looked to be a tunnel of sorts.
"I wonder what this is," Jessica said, listening for any unusual sounds. It was silent down there. The air smelled stale and somewhat damp. The narrow beams of their flashlights swept over the hard-packed dirt walls, shored up occasionally with thick timbers, each and every one of them dripping with thick, grayish-white cobwebs. In a matter of seconds, she felt them pulling at her hair and grimaced. She knew they weren't even touching her, but once she saw them, that's all she could think about.
The further they walked the more claustrophobic she felt, and the urge to bat at the webs was overwhelming. Taking long deep breaths to calm her heart she just kept moving. All that was down here was a few spirits and the spiders. There was no real danger… the bruise on her throat throbbed.
About halfway down the stairs, they spied a cubbyhole of sorts that had been dug into the wall. Both pausing on the steps they shone their flashlights in it. On a shelf stood an oblong box made of wood. There was no lid and inside were a number of books and smaller containers. Jessica pulled it off the shelf and placed it on the hard-packed sand of the tunnels base. She picked up the books for she felt this was important. It was always prudent to listen to such feelings. The books were old and slightly damp, she pulled them out and at the bottom was what looked to be old paper scrolls flattened by the books.
"What is it?" Mindy asked.
"Let's take it upstairs and find out," Jessica said, excited by their find. She tucked her flashlight into her back pocket, the light moved and almost blinded her as she put everything back and picked up the box again.
This time it felt dusty, and her fingers struggled to grip. Fo
r a moment she got the urge to drop it and run, but she shook it away. Just because the box was covered in a thick layer of dust didn't mean anything. With all the dirt in the passageway, it could've been sitting here for a couple of months or 100 years, either way, it would still look just as dirty.
Chapter 50
They carried the box back upstairs to the hallway. Mindy closed the hidden door behind them as Jessica continued into the sitting room, grunting softly as she set the box on the floor. They sat on the settee and stared at the contents for a moment before Mindy gingerly reached out for one of the books. But it wasn't a book; it was a journal.
"Look at this!" she gasped, showing Jessica. As she did the writing on the first page was clearly legible.
Jessica's eyes widened in surprise. "Lady Beatrice Cornwall Greyfield … 1732 … Impossible!” Jessica was shaking her head with disbelief. “That box couldn't possibly have sat down there for centuries without someone finding it. We found that door easily enough."
Mindy shrugged, quickly scanning the first couple of pages, then skipping through to the middle and then toward the end. The writing stopped approximately three-quarters of the way through the journal.
Jessica rifled through the other contents of the box, finding a couple of old books and rolls of parchment looking paper filled with numbers. Accounts?
"Oh my God," Mandy exclaimed. "She hated him. Lord Angus Greyfield was her husband… and she despised living here. Hated being so isolated. According to her, Lord Greyfield was not affectionate, nor particularly fond of her. Wait … there's more. She wished he was dead so that she could leave this place."
Jessica sat stunned, then glanced at Mindy.
Mindy nodded. "It's possible," Mindy said. "What happened to you last night … that's one angry spirit."
"I think we should try to make contact with the woman, and if it is Lady Beatrice, maybe we can find out why she's still here."