“Not by the woman in white. She’s just sad,” Grace shrugged and ate another forkful of lasagna. It beat the hell out of anything that she was going to make that evening. So she was going to make use of the nice meal while it was in front of her.
“It’s that cloud of smoke that is worrisome,” John admitted, also making quick work of the food in front of him. “That has been more of a recent phenomena.”
“Cloud of smoke?” Ben’s brow creased in confusion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve only ever seen the woman.”
“Well, just give it a little time, lad. You’ll see it. Everyone does.” John took a second piece of lasagna. “It creeps under your door and covers your ceiling. It fills you with the most oppressive sense of doom. And then it creeps down the wall and amasses into this indescribable shape.”
“And all you want to do is run from it,” Grace added. She shivered at the memory of the night it had come into her room and formed at the foot of her bed. She remembered wanting nothing more than to flee the room. But it had not hurt her. It had just stayed there, waiting, watching. And then it had slunk away as quickly as it had appeared.
Kate pursed her lips. This would not do. She could not have something terrorising her tenants. She could not have a sad woman wandering her halls. And yet, she didn’t have the first idea what to do about it.
She had never really believed in ghosts. She had entertained the idea of the unknown. She had entertained the idea of the paranormal. But she had never expected to find herself in a house where things like this were actually happening. She never expected to have to deal with it.
And then there was Barry. There was no way that he was going to go along with any of this. He would call the tenants superstitious. He would deny their claims. He was a businessman, but he wouldn’t indulge this nonsense. His logic would always be that there were always more tenants to be found if these ones had problems with the eccentricities of Fyfe Hall.
Kate looked at the faces around the table. She wasn’t going to abandon them the way that Barry would want to.
“I’ll get this sorted,” she promised, even as she felt the panic rise in her own throat. “I’m not certain how. But I’ll find a way. You have my word on that.”
Chapter 6
A Vision
* * *
Kate tried to broach the subject of the ghosts several times with Barry over the ensuing two weeks. Every time she brought it up, he would scoff and say that he wasn’t going to talk about such nonsense. After the sixth or seventh time of trying to get through to him, she gave up. It wasn’t worth the headache or the argument.
Eventually she took her search for answers to the Internet. She knew that it was a shot in the dark, but there was nowhere else for her to turn. She didn’t know anyone who was a specialist in these things. She didn’t have the time to scrounge through bookstores searching for all of the answers she needed.
She knew that the quickest way to solve any problem was to ask the Internet for the answers. It would still require some digging, but it would be quicker. And it wouldn’t require her to leave the house. She was reluctant to leave the tenants in their current state. It was already taking her longer than she was comfortable with to find the answers she needed.
She researched exorcists first. It seemed foolish to even be looking into them. She wasn’t living some horror movie. This was real life. She didn’t even realise that people actually worked as exorcists as an actual profession. But as her search progressed, she found several in her local area.
She doubted the legitimacy of their trade. After all, who really could make a profession from exorcising ghosts? Who could make a living off of that? But it seemed that, if enough people believed in something, it could be rather lucrative.
She didn’t think that an exorcist was what she really needed at the moment. She didn’t want to put a great deal of money into something that was likely to be a phony act. She doubted that any one of these so-called exorcists were the ‘real deal’. And she was certain that the reviews on their websites had been paid for.
Her research led her from exorcists to something called paranormal home evictors. Those sounded even less reliable than the exorcists. They sounded like some new age made up thing meant to scare people. What the hell was a paranormal home evictor?
As she continued to read up, she learned that it was simply an exorcist but under a different name. It was exactly what she’d thought originally, some new age mumbo-jumbo to scare people. The cost of it was unreasonable. The results were far from guaranteed. There was no way she was going to put her time and money into that.
Kate closed her laptop with a sigh. It seemed to be quite hopeless. It seemed as though, no matter where she turned, she was just hitting roadblock after roadblock about this phenomena.
She didn’t know who she was supposed to talk to about smoke on the ceiling or women in white floating through the hallways. Where did a person go with that kind of problem? It wasn’t the same as having termites or a leaking tap or unreliable plumbing. Those were normal problems. This was far from normal.
And Barry was of no assistance. He was doing whatever he could to ignore the subject. He’d even taken to working outside of the house over the last few days. It was infuriating, but there was nothing she could do about it. He was his own person. She had always understood that about him. Just like she was her own person. It was why their relationship had worked for so long.
Kate was in the kitchen making her second pot of tea for the day when she heard the doorbell sound. It was an unfamiliar sound in the house. Al those who usually came and went through the house used the back door or had a key. No one had been around ringing the doorbell in close to two months.
Kate turned off the stove and set her tea aside to steep. It would be fine until she got back to it. If it took a while to deal with the person at the door, she would just have strong tea, and there was nothing wrong with that.
It took her a few moments to make it from the kitchen to the front of the house. She was still getting used to the sheer size of Fyfe Hall, despite having been there for over three months now. She wasn’t certain that she would ever get used to it, not completely.
She opened the door just as the doorbell sounded again. She frowned in annoyance. She was on her way, damn it. Couldn’t they be patient? What was wrong with people?
She glared out at the person on her front step and her frown deepened. He was a young man, dressed in slacks and a jacket, with thick black hair. His eyes were equally as dark and he offered her a polite smile.
Despite her irritation, she felt compelled to return the smile. He had a handsome face. He was at least ten years younger than she was, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t appreciate his attractive features.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, ma’am.” He began, his voice holding a fine British accent. He’d clearly been schooled well.
“Oh, it’s not a problem.” Kate smiled again. She wasn’t certain why, but she couldn’t help it. “What can I help you with?”
The man chewed on his bottom lip thoughtfully, as if choosing his words carefully before speaking. “This is going to sound rather odd, I’m guessing.”
Kate chuckled. “You have no idea how odd my recent weeks have been. It might sound rather tame.”
His dark brows creased in confusion and he continued to chew on his bottom lip. “Well, in that case I suppose I should just say what I came here to say.”
“Would you like to come in and have some tea?” Kate shook her head. She was being a terrible host. “Here I am, keeping you out on the front step when you clearly came here to talk.” She ushered him into the house and he stepped over the threshold reluctantly. “My name is Kate Berkely, by the way.”
“You can call me Kayra, ma’am,” he introduced.
“What an unusual name,” she observed, even though it was a rather rude thing to point out.
“It’s Romany, ma’am. I come from a long line
of Romany settlers in this area,” he explained as he followed her into the kitchen. “It’s actually what’s brought me here today.”
She took teacups out of the cupboard as he settled at the counter. “Are you referring the curse?”
“So you know about it?” His brows raised in surprise. This was a turn he hadn’t been expecting.
“It’s my house, isn’t it? Do you think I wouldn’t know its history?” She chuckled at his bashful look. “It took me a little while, but eventually I dug it up.”
He accepted the tea gratefully. “I can’t say I’m overly familiar with the history of the home, ma’am. But I was drawn here.”
“Drawn here?” She joined him at the counter with her own cup of tea. This was going to be interesting.
“This is why I thought you might find this a little strange, ma’am.” He looked down at his hands.
“Please call me Kate,” she smiled sweetly.
“I had a dream about this house, Kate. A 'vision' would be more a accurate term, as I was wide-awake at the time it happened. I saw this house with its turrets and finials. I saw the pond that is behind it. And I saw a woman in white emerge from the pond, crying and tearing at her hair. And then I watched a cloud of black smoke engulf her.”
He picked up his cup of tea, his hands shaking slightly. “There is still a pond behind this house, correct?”
Kate nodded as she slowly worked over what he had told her in her mind.
“And you know of the woman in white, don’t you?” Kayra continued. His eyes were intense and bearing down on her and, despite his hands shaking slightly, his voice was steady.
“Yes,” she replied and nodded as if to add extra confirmation to the fact.
“Do you know about the black smoke?”
She nodded a third time and took a long sip of her tea. She wished she’d had the forethought to add some whiskey to it. The conversation seemed to require a little extra courage.
“I think you have a serious problem here, Kate.” He met her gaze levelly. He was glad that he had made the trip to Fyfe Hall. It had been out of his way. It had been completely on impulse. But as he’d said, he was drawn here. And his people had a long history with this building. He wanted at least some of that history to be good.
“I was starting to get that feeling as well,” she agreed solemnly.
He nodded. “I’d like to help.”
Chapter 7
A Price
* * *
“Help? How do you think you might be in a position to help?” Kate frowned as she sipped at her tea, which had begun to go cold.
“I think I know the cause of your apparitions. I am not an expert, by any means, but there is a great deal of knowledge amongst my people when it comes to paranormal occurences.” He chewed on his bottom lip thoughtfully. He knew that it would sound like superstitious mumbo jumbo to most people. But he had to try. He was certain that this was his mission. He was certain that he needed to see this to completion.
“Well, you seem to be quite good at laying curses at least,” she said, attempting at a joke. He chuckled, and she appreciated the effort.
“We have a flare for the dramatic at times,” he agreed. “It’s not as common nowadays, but our history is littered with curses and other such affairs. Some of them were legitimate and some of them were only as powerful as the belief of the people they were placed upon.”
“And what is the case with the curse on this Smythe family, the supposed curse on Fyfe Hall?” she questioned. There had been little documented about it beyond the fact that it did happen. She had found the documented quote of the curse from Gerald Smythe’s journal, but that still offered little validation to its impact on the family or its validity per se.
It had happened, sure, but was it just a figment of their imagination or was it really a powerful curse?
“It’s hard to say for sure. Considering how many deaths were involved, and in such close proximity to one another, I would assume it was a legitimate curse. I am not familiar with Django or his family line, but they would have to come from a long progeny of powerful people to call up that sort of a curse. Death curses take a great deal of force. The last tale I heard of someone able to wield a death curse, resulted in him being killed shortly after he cursed the family.”
“It’s that serious?” She said in wonder. She had never considered that such a thing could exist, let alone that such a thing could have happened in the house that she currently lived in.
“Oh yes,” he confirmed, nodding his head in earnest. “Death curses are serious business. They involve summoning some very dark powers to insure that your bidding is taken care of. And I think that is what you are dealing with here.”
“What do you mean?” Kate glanced around her as if she could see the darkness in the kitchen around her. Since learning about the happenings in the house, she certainly felt less at ease in the house now. She wasn’t certain how the tenants had lasted this long.
“I think that when the curse was placed on the family, it affected more than just the family.” Kayra chewed on his lower lip and drummed his fingers on the counter. “Family members inside and outside of this home died, which indicates that a very powerful energy was summoned to carry out Django's bidding.”
“Is that what this woman in white is? Is she some kind of reaper?” Kate thought back to the sites she read and the case studies she’d perused about possessions. She didn’t understand any of it, not really, but she had been able to string together a few concepts. There had been enough stories that were consistent for her to believe that themes existed for her to latch on to.
Kayra shook his head but a small smile pulled at his lips at the mention of a reaper. He wonder if she knew anything about reapers or if she had just heard the term somewhere. He doubted she would be throwing it out so freely if she understood what they really were.
“The woman in white is far from being a reaper. She is actually not even your concern in this matter.” He continued to drum his fingers on the counter. “If I had to guess, I would say the woman in white is Gloria Smythe, the mother. From the little research I did about the family she fits the description best. The other girls were rather young when they died.”
“Yes, that is what I’ve found out as well.” She agreed. The whole story had been rather sad. One dying of fever, one dying in an asylum, and the mother drowning – then there were the sons. One lost to war and one drowning – a father left with no heirs despite remarrying. “The whole thing was very tragic.”
“Such things are often rather tragic. They are meant to be tragic. That is the point.” Kayra seemed to consider his next words carefully. He didn’t know if she would go along with what he wanted to suggest but the only way to know was to suggest it.
“Kate, I believe that in order to make the death curse work Django had to summon a Shamanic demon. These are very dark and powerful demons. If Django survived after summoning it, I would be very surprised.”
“A shamanic demon?” She rolled over the term in her mind. If Barry wouldn’t believe ghost stories, he definitely wasn’t going to believe anything about a shamanic demon. But she was willing to believe just about anything at the moment. She wanted the house clear of whatever was going on in it. If they had any hopes of running a successful rental house and making back the money they’d put into renovations, they needed to take care of this issue.
“That is what I believe the black smoke is. It has all the common characteristics of a demon, including the ominous feeling that comes along with it. And I think it has latched onto the house permanently, despite the fact that all of the members of the Smythe family died a long time ago.”
He watched her reaction to his words closely. Her eyes didn’t go wide in surprise. Her mouth didn’t gape open. She simply sat and listened to what he said, considering the words carefully. She was not what he had expected. But, then again, people rarely were.
“And what am I supposed to do about it? What does one d
o about a shamanic demon exactly?” She threw up her hands in frustration.
“Well, it’s really hard to say for certain. But I would say the first step would be to put to rest the woman in white. It would seem that the shamanic demon is taking its job very seriously. It had latched onto even the spirits of the Smythe family. It will not lose its power until they have all left the house.” He gave a small shrug.
“All?” she inquired. She didn’t think that there were more ghosts hiding in the halls of her house, but she hadn’t really known about the first ones so it was hard to say for sure.
“The chances are that once you start to isolate the woman in white, any other spirits lingering in the house will appear. We need to ensure that they all get laid to rest before the demon can be sent away. It will continue to draw power from the Smythes, dead or alive, as long as they are in Fyfe Hall.” Kayra’s voice was sombre as he explained and he watched her nod in understanding.
“And is this something that you can do?” Her voice was serious now. All talk about the paranormal aside, what would come out of this conversation was a business deal. And she never went into any business deal without fully understanding the capabilities of the person she planned on employing.
Kayra looked uncertain for a moment. He hadn’t planned on coming to Fyfe Hall to help with the problem. He had originally aimed to show up and inform them that they had a problem and let them handle it. He hadn’t expected to be reined into helping out. But once he’d walked into the house, he knew that he had to help. He knew that this was his job, his mission.
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