Haunted Happenings

by Lucrezia Black

  “Fine. It’s really quite straight forward when you think about it.” He shrugged. “Anthony Dark-Hallow was a bit of a pompous ass. He believed the world should be handed to him and that anyone he showed interest in should be happy for his attention. But that’s not how the world works, not even back in those days. You can’t just make someone like you. You can’t just make someone want to spend time with you.”

  “Free-will sucks like that,” Rachel joked and for the first time saw a smile pull at the man’s face.

  “Yeah it does. Well, anyhow, Anthony took a fancy to one of his tenants. He thought she was a real looker and he wanted to make her his wife. But she was having none of that. She was having none of him. Sure, she indulged his courtship for a little while, but then she gave him the cold shoulder and it was ice queen level coldness.”

  Rachel nodded as she followed the story. “That would be Caroline Ellis, right?”

  He nodded. “You are right with that one, my dear. Caroline wanted nothing to do with Anthony and Anthony was not too happy about being rejected. So he kept pushing and pushing. And she kept ignoring him. I can’t blame her if he was being as persistent as the stories say.”

  “No, he sounds like an ass to me.” Rachel observed.

  “Sadly, many of the men in our family have been. But that is a completely different matter. Anthony figured that if he couldn’t have Caroline, then no one could have her, no one should have her. So he went to the magistrate and had her accused of witchcraft.”

  Warren shrugged his shoulders and sipped his tea. “It was his word against hers and no one was going to believe her. It didn’t matter how much she screamed or cried in protest. She was a witch, allegedly, so she had to be burned accordingly.”

  “He had her killed simply because she rejected him?” Rachel raised a brow. “That’s a little harsh.”

  “He was a harsh man. He was a man accustomed to getting his way in life. And he wasn’t going to let some woman change that for him, so he had her done away with.”

  “But I take it Caroline got the last word in?” Rachel sipped her own tea and considered the story.

  “You would be right about that. Caroline cursed the Dark-Hallow family to a lifetime of unsuccessful ventures. And it has escalated from there. It seems now, that she’s not happy unless those unsuccessful ventures drive the Dark-Hallows to kill themselves. It’s like she needs blood to appease her suffering.”

  Warren gave a heavy sigh and looked at the young girl across from him. “Not all the businesses were doomed to failure, but all the Dark-Hallows are doomed to die, it seems. And then the business crumbles in their absence. It has been this way for decades.”

  “You’re not dead.” She observed.

  “Ah, well that’s a bit of a fluke. You see, I went into business with my twin brother. And she seemed to be happy enough when he blew his brains out, not to care about me anymore.”

  He said it in such a matter of fact tone that Rachel was a little taken aback. “So, the only way out of this is if I die?”

  He took a moment to sip more of his tea. “Sadly, that’s the truth of it. Your friends may die before you otherwise. Our whole staff of 100 took ill and three of them died before my brother put a gun in his mouth. The rest recovered, rather miraculously, within days of his death. And only I ever knew the connection between the two events. And that has been my burden to bear all these years. He saved ninety-seven lives by taking his own. I’ll always view him as a brave hero for that.”

  Rachel swallowed the lump of fear lodged in her throat. She understood what this conversation meant. She knew what she was going to have to do, but her hands shook at the very idea.

  “There is no other way?” She asked, hoping that maybe he’d left out some part of the curse, maybe he’d forgotten to tell her something.

  Warren gave her a sympathetic smile. “Either they die or you die. The decision is yours. Caroline will not stop until she is happy that the scales are balanced again.”

  Rachel nodded and drank the rest of her tea. She had been worried that would be his answer.

  Chapter 9

  Sacrifice

  * * *

  Rachel made her way back to the Dark Hallow Building with the weight of the world on her shoulders. She knew what she had to do. There was no questioning that, but she wasn’t certain that she would be strong enough to do it.

  She’d called the hospital and they still had no news on Jake, Jessica, and Marc. The doctors were completely baffled by their situation. They seemed perfectly healthy according to all the tests, and yet their bodies were gradually shutting down.

  Rachel had thanked them for the update and hung up. Her heart was heavy with the news about her friends and the choice she knew that she was going to have to make.

  But was it really a choice? Was her life worth more than three of theirs? And would Caroline stop after the three of them or would she be next anyway?

  Rachel didn’t have the answers. But she knew that she couldn’t let her friends die. She knew that her life was not equal to three other lives. And she knew that she needed to go back to where this all started in order to see it to completion.

  So she made her way back to the Dark Hallow Building. It had been her dream. It had been her future. And now it would be the last place she ever took a breath. She hoped that her friends would see their project through. She hoped that they would continue in her absence, but it the history of the Dark-Hallows was any indication, she had a strong feeling that things would just fall apart without her.

  She entered the building and took a moment to just enjoy the fact that this could have been everything that she ever wanted. She could have been successful. She could have had a future. And it had all just begun. It was all still so shiny and new. And now she was saying goodbye to it. She had to say goodbye to it. There was no choice.

  She stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the fifth floor. It would be her last ride up in a conscious state.

  She walked out into the main room of the fifth floor and felt the air get heavier. It was almost as though the building had been waiting for her return. It was like it was welcoming her back.

  The lights overhead began to flicker and Rachel drew in a deep breath. She didn’t feel afraid of what came with the flickering lights. She felt afraid of what would come after them.

  The apparition of Caroline appeared in the middle of the room and it was exactly how Marc had described it. She looked exactly how Rachel had seen her in her dreams. The familiarity of the woman was unsettling, but Rachel held her ground.

  “You!” Caroline pointed at her with a shaky finger and a sick grin. She took a step forward and then another. “It is your turn.”

  Rachel nodded, her face sad. “So I’ve been told.”

  And she almost laughed because Caroline’s apparition seemed confused by her response. She didn’t seem to know whether she should continue to walk forward or whether she should fade away.

  “You must die,” she said after a long pause but there was something different in her voice now.

  “Yes, I know. And when I die, my friends will get better?” Rachel looked at Caroline for confirmation.

  The apparition seemed to consider this for a moment and then nodded her head. “I only want you.”

  “Alright.”

  Rachel walked purposefully over to her desk. Her legs felt stiff and heavy. Her movements felt jerky, but she made it to the desk eventually. All the while Caroline watched her in silence and the lights overhead continued to flicker.

  Rachel searched in her desk drawer for the bottle of sleeping pills. She knew that they were in there. She always kept them on hand, and in recent days they’d been her only hope of rest.

  Her hand clasped the bottle and it shook as she pulled it out of the drawer. She struggled to uncap the bottle and shake the pills into her hand. She knew that she would have to take every pill that was in the bottle for it to work. She knew that was her only option.


  She grabbed her bottle of water from her desk. She always had one on hand and she began to swallow the pills. She could only swallow two or three at a time but she slowly got them down. And when the bottle was completely empty, she simply sat down in her desk chair and stared at Caroline defiantly.

  “Will you be happy once I’m gone? Will you stop once I’m gone?” She asked the apparition.

  Caroline shook her head and looked sad. “I will never be done. I will never be happy.”

  Rachel shook her head as she felt the grogginess begin to press in on her. She knew that once she fell asleep, she would never wake up again. She knew that this would be her last sleep. Strangely enough, she was looking forward to the rest.

  “As long as my friends will be okay,” she mumbled and then her eyes closed for the last time. There was nothing but darkness.

  Epilogue

  Jake, Jessica, and Marc stood in the cemetery and watched at the casket bearing their good friend and business partner, was lowered into the ground. None of them understood why she had done it. They didn’t understand why she had taken her own life.

  She had left no note and given no explanation. She was simply gone when they left the hospital.

  That had also been quite strange; the doctors had seemed very surprised when they’d all woken up, perfectly recovered. Of course, none of them were fine once they were given the news that Rachel was dead.

  As they stood at her funeral and watched her body be lowered into the ground, they couldn’t understand any of it. They couldn’t understand the strange illness. They couldn’t understand the ghostly happenings before that. And they definitely couldn’t understand Rachel, who’d had more potential then all of them, taking her own life.

  It all made no sense at all. But that was one of the crazy things about life, it never really made sense.

  Jake looked from Marc to Jessica, his face solemn. “So, what do we do now?” he asked.

  Marc shrugged and pushed aside his own sadness for a moment. “We continue to work on the app. It’s what she would have wanted. We go back to work. We finish our project and then we decide what happens from there.”

  “You want to go back to work in the building where she died?” Jessica raised a brow. Her hands shook at the very thought of stepping foot in the Dark Hallow Building. She was still fairly traumatized by what had happened there. And now there was the added fact that Rachel had died on the very floor on which they worked.

  Marc nodded as though it was the most sensible part of all that was happening in their world. “We need to go back. If we give up on this, we are giving up on Rachel. Think of how hard she worked to make this come together. You want to just throw that all away?”

  Jake nodded in agreement. “I mean, I don’t like that building any more than you guys but we need to see this thing through. We have all put too much time and effort into it to give up now. And Rachel put too much into it for us to give up on her.”

  They all glanced at her grave and felt the sadness press down on them.

  “Maybe things won’t be so bad in the building now. Maybe it was just a weird phase,” Marc suggested.

  “Or maybe we’ll be haunted by Rachel’s ghost now and not the other ones.” Jessica looked at him pointedly. It seemed like a preposterous thing to be standing there discussing but it actually made them feel a little better.

  “At least Rachel’s ghost would likely just leave us notes and tell us how we are messing up on the project that she’d poured her heart and soul into.” Jake shrugged. “She might actually be a really useful ghost.”

  “Are you saying you want to be haunted, Jake?” Marc raised a brow. Jake had been the only one not to have any face-off with a ghost before the illness set in. But he’d been rather vocal about how much he wanted to avoid that.

  “Come on guys, it would be Rachel. Would we really be haunted by her or would she be the world’s bossiest and most helpful ghost?” Jake looked from one face to the next.

  “The man has a point,” Jessica observed.

  She didn’t know how she felt about the idea of going back to work at the Dark Hallow Building. She didn’t particularly like it, but she also knew that they’d come too far and devoted too much to the project to give up now.

  She had known Rachel for years and she knew that Rachel would smack them all for even considering giving up. It would dishonour her memory to quit now. It was just a matter of getting past their grief and their fear in order to be able to actually work again.

  “We need to go back and we need to finish,” Jessica said, her voice holding an air of confidence that she didn’t quite feel. But still the guys nodded in agreement.

  “Yes, we do,” Marc said. “And we need to find a way to make this project a tribute to Rachel. We have to work on that.” He watched them nod in agreement.

  They all glanced back at her grave. They still didn’t know why she’d done it. And they would have to accept that they would probably never know. But they weren’t about to let her dream die. They weren’t about to let her project die.

  They were going to see this through for her, if it was the last thing they did as a group. And they would be a success, they could just feel it.

  The Haunting of Willow Abbey

  Chapter 1

  Willow Abbey

  * * *

  Willow Abbey

  York, England

  Summer 1920

  * * *

  It was a good year. The war was over and change was in the air. Stanley Willow could sense it. This was going to be the year where things got better. This would be the year they found something truly for themselves.

  Stanley glanced at his wife, Delia. They had been married barely three months, but there was still a glow about her. She still looked as beautiful as she had on their wedding day and he believed that she would stay that way for ages, at least to him.

  He looked from his wife to the building before them. It didn’t look like much. Then again, nothing in his life had ever really looked like much. He hadn’t expected to get married, especially to such a beautiful woman, but there he was. And now they were looking at a home.

  He’d never thought he’d have a home after the war. He’d never thought that he would make it through the war. No one really had, but there he was, standing in front of an abandoned property that he now had the deed to, next to a lovely lady. Things couldn’t get better.

  “Is this really what you bought, Stanley?” Delia gave him a sceptical look as she stared at the building.

  She’d married him because it had been expected of her. He was a war hero. He had an inheritance. It made sense and her family had supported the coupling one hundred percent.

  Did she love him? She barely knew him. She could barely look at him sometimes without seeing the boy she’d actually wanted to marry. But this was her lot in life and she was going to make the most of it. That was her duty as his wife. To be there for him and to learn to love him. What other choice did she have?

  He chuckled at the scepticism. He had known she wouldn’t really understand his vision. He’d known that she would question him purchasing a property that they couldn’t live in right away, but he had a dream for the place. He’d had a dream for the place since he was ten years old, and now he could finally bring it to fruition.

  Between his inheritance and the money he’d earned as a soldier, he was set to make his dream a reality. And as he looked at the abandoned building, a piece of history that had once belonged to his family, he knew that this was what he had to do. He knew that restoring it and living there was his only option.

  “I know it doesn’t look like much, darling. But give it a few months and we’ll be able to move in. We’ll only have to stay with your family for a little while longer.” He offered her a reassuring smile and watched her nod.

  “Why this place?” Delia tried to not sound whiny when she said it, but she couldn’t masque it completely. She wasn’t impressed with the situation. She
wasn’t impressed with having to spend any more time in her family home.

  She loved her family, but she was a married woman now. She wanted to be able to live as a married woman lives. She wanted to be able to try and love her husband. She wanted to try and fulfil her duties as a wife. She wanted to build a family.

  But she wouldn’t be able to do any of that until they had a place to live, and it seemed that Stanley was dead set on this place.

  She looked at the old abbey, with its door handing askew and likely some wildlife residing inside. She didn’t believe that it would only take a few months to set it to rights, but she was willing to wait and see. She needed this to work out for them. She needed it for her family and for herself.

  Stanley shrugged his shoulders in a nonchalant manner. “Why this place? Because it’s been in my family for years. King Henry the first took it away from us, but I want it back. It’s time that it became Willow Abbey again. It’s time that I reclaimed it.”

  Delia could only nod. What was she supposed to say to that? She couldn’t tell him no. She didn’t have that kind of authority in their relationship. She could only accept that this was her fate now. All she could do was hope that it didn’t take forever for it all to come together.

  “Well, if that’s what you want.” She tried not to sound uncaring as she said it, but she was feeling her heart sink more and more as they stood there. This was not what she’d dreamed, this was not what she wanted, but this was her fate and she would have to accept it.

  Stanley searched her face for some emotion but it was a careful mask. She’d always been good at keeping her emotions hidden. He was hoping that in time she would trust him enough to be honest with him. He was hoping that one day she would love him as much as he loved her. But he could only hope.