by Blake Croft
Mud streaked her pajamas.
Linda’s heart fell into the pit of her stomach. Her breathing became labored. She got up slowly from the bed and gingerly pulled back the sheets.
The covers were full of clods of earth. Worms slithered aimlessly across the expanse of her bed.
Hands trembling Linda removed the covers steadily.
As long as the bed needed cleaning, Linda wouldn’t think about the implications of all that dirt in her sheets. It was a dream. It had to be.
Linda had no memory of what happened after she fainted last night. It was possible, no, very probable, that she had tracked the dirt inside. She had no shoes on when the call came and Marisa had the sleepwalking attack. Linda had stood in the front yard. She must have fainted in the dirt. Her pajamas must have been coated in the stuff and all of it got on her sheets.
Yes. Of course. That’s what happened.
The panic at the back of her mind receded a little, but it didn’t vanish completely. Something strange was going on in Blackburn Manor; the figure darting down the stairs on her first night there, the strange phone calls, the dreams, and just the atmosphere about the house was odd.
Maybe we should leave, Linda thought, pulling the pillow covers off. I’ll talk to Ashley about it.
Once the bed sheets were in a neat heap in the laundry basket by the bedroom door, Linda removed her pajamas and added them to the pile. She wrapped a towel around herself, grabbed her toilet bag, and she tiptoed down the hall to the bathroom.
Soft murmuring came from behind Ashley’s closed door. Linda heard her name. She ignored it. She needed to shower desperately.
The bathroom was as cold as ever, but Linda’s mind was preoccupied with her dream, the dirty mess in her bed and the implications of the phenomenon she had experienced since she had arrived. Day by day, she was convinced something in the manor had reactivated her long gone hallucinations.
Once the water started sluicing down her back she was both relieved and appalled at the amount of dirt washing down the drain. She had to shampoo twice before the water ran clear.
How much dirt had she gotten on herself just by standing in the front yard?
Stepping gingerly out of the shower, Linda grabbed her towel and promptly washed her face. The water had been cold but refreshing. Goosebumps trailed her arms as she put on her glasses and stared at herself in the mirror.
Bags hung beneath her eyes, and her skin looked sallow and sickly. Linda pulled the towel tighter around her and left the bathroom.
Ashley’s door was wide open, but she wasn’t inside.
Once in her room, Linda avoided looking at the bare bed as she pulled on an old T-shirt and a pair of jeans. Each action was precise and efficient. Stuffing her towel in the laundry basket, she picked it up with a sense of purpose and went out into the hall.
She stopped on the landing.
Her limbs stood at a standstill allowing the dark thoughts lurking in the back of her mind to surge forward.
Images of Marisa on the steep porch stairs came rushing back to her, and Linda grew weak in the knees. She couldn’t shake away Marisa’s white desperate knuckles clutching the railing, saving herself from the fall, and the flitting grey shadow rising up in the air like some deformed bird of prey before it crashed down on Marisa’s poor shoulders.
Had the grey shadow been the same as the apparition she had seen earlier that night outside the kitchen? Her hallucinations were becoming more and more prevalent and that scared her.
This shadow reminded Linda of the terrifying hallucinations she experienced when she suffered from sleep paralysis years ago, the ghostly things that weighted on her chest. The very idea of it made her shudder; it was so real… but the doctor who treated her had been right: when Linda and her mother moved away, the situation calmed down, and the hallucinations just stopped.
Linda shook her head. She never wanted to go back to being terrorized by her own mind.
What happened here was definitely different: she wasn’t the victim of her hallucination, like in her late childhood. This time, the victim was someone else. Marisa. And yet, Linda saw that ghostly bird of prey. Her mind probably just invented it to ‘explain’ why Marisa acted like that. It was another side effect of her PTSD following what Jackson had done to her over the past months.
It came to her suddenly how it was a mercy that Marisa had fallen down the seven porch steps and not this steep dark shaft. Linda was sure she would have broken her neck on these. Her own feet were reluctant to go down the stairs now.
She swallowed and took the first step, then the next, and the next. Tension sat heavy on her shoulders like a vulture, talons digging into her flesh.
“Linda, is that you?”
Ashley’s voice from the kitchen eased some of dread that gripped her insides in a vise.
“Yeah,” she took the last few steps down and went to find Ashley.
Cheery sunlight bathed the kitchen as if last night had not happened. A sweet-scented breeze was blowing in through the open windows. Ashley was beating eggs at the counter. She looked just as haggard as Linda felt.
“Morning,” Ashley mumbled.
“I’m going to get some laundry done.” Linda forced a casual tone. “Do you have any clothes you need to throw in?”
“Mmm,” Ashley mumbled, clearly distracted. Linda didn’t blame her. She didn’t feel quite there herself.
“Any news on Marisa?” Linda asked.
Ashley nodded. “I called the hospital only a few minutes ago. Marisa is finally conscious, but they want to keep her to figure out what really happened. They think it’s some kind of sleeping sickness, and maybe she experienced an episode of temporary mania because she was woken from her sleep state.” She rubbed the bridge of her nose. “It was a little too complicated for me to understand all of it. I’m just glad she’s okay. You’re doing laundry?” Ashley finally noticed the basket in Linda’s hands.
Linda nodded. She was relieved that Marisa was conscious and might be able to recover soon. She still couldn’t get the image of her terrified face out of her mind. Or the sort of shadow that swooped down like a hawk on her shoulders.
“I’ll give you a few of my clothes after I shower.” Ashley said interrupting Linda’s train of thought.
Linda was crossing the living room to the basement door when something along the side wall caught her eye. The oil painting of the hill seemed different somehow. Setting her basket on the coffee table, Linda peered closer. Green trees and grass rolled up the hill. A few clouds dotted the sky. Everything was the same except…
She couldn’t put her finger on it at first, but then it struck her. There was a black blot at the bottom right corner. It was perfectly rounded as if someone had taken a black Sharpie and colored in a section of the painting.
“Hey, Ashley,” Linda called over her shoulder. “Was this painting always like this?”
“What?” She sounded annoyed. “What are you talking about?” Her voice got closer and within seconds, Ashley was standing behind her.
“This black blot,” Linda pointed. “I’m not sure, but I think that’s new.”
Ashley stood arms akimbo, frowning. She clicked her tongue and turned her irritation towards her sister. “I don’t know. Does it matter?”
“No.” Linda shrugged feeling foolish to have made a big deal out of nothing. “I was just curious, since the last time I saw the painting that wasn’t there.”
“Who cares?” Ashley spread her hands.
Linda blinked back sudden tears.
“Oh, God.” Ashley sighed. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap.”
“It’s okay.” Linda tucked her wet hair behind her ear. “This entire trip hasn’t been easy, and last night was just…”
“Yeah, and no.” Ashley shook her head. “Last night was horrible, but it’s not that. I was on the phone with the mechanic and the truck needs a new engine. I don’t know how I’m going to keep my
head out of water if I’m going to start this job drowning in debt.”
“That’s terrible news,” Linda swallowed her disappointment. She’d hoped to convince Ashley to leave but the truck was in a state and Ashley really needed the job. Yet Linda was afraid. Her hopes of getting better with Marisa’s help had taken a serious back seat. There was no knowing when Marisa would be back and how soon she could start counseling again. She made a mental note to ask Stewart what could he propose, and what should she do till the rest of the counselors returned. “Don’t worry about the truck. I’ll pay for half of it.”
Relief crossed Ashley’s face. “Thanks, Lin. You don’t have to, but I’m so broke I’m not going to refuse your help.”
“Don’t mention it,” Linda smiled. “I’ll be in the basement.”
“We’ve only been here a day how come you have so much to clean?” Ashley asked.
Linda considered telling Ashley about her suspicions and her fears about her sleep paralysis and hallucinations returning but dismissed it quickly. It wasn’t the right time. Ashley was already very stressed and she wouldn’t believe her any way. She had always thought Linda’s claims that she was sensitive to spirits was an attention seeking tactic, until the doctor had explained what Linda was experiencing in medical terms.
“I got some dirt on the sheets after last night,” she said. “I don’t want to leave in any stains.”
Ashley nodded and went back to the kitchen. Linda opened the basement door and stood at the edge of the stairs. Cold radiated out of the basement doorway, rich with the smell of detergent, whitewash, and mud. Linda leaned forward in the patch of darkness, balancing the basket in one hand while the other reached along the wall, feeling for the light switch.
She imagined her hand finding something else entirely in that notch of black—something cold, clammy, and dead. She shook the thought away. She was acting worse than a child.
Light switch found, she flipped it on and the dark receded to an orange gloom. She took the stairs carefully, very aware of the empty open spaces between the slats. Her ankles felt exposed and vulnerable.
The smell of damp earth intensified as she reached the basement floor. What was it with this house and its smells? It reminded Linda of the nightmare and the congregation of men holding that dead boy, Oisin.
Linda set up station at the far wall, opposite the stairs and the darkness underneath it. She placed her basket on the floor and sorted out the whites and the colored clothes. While she worked, the back of her neck prickled like someone had splashed the smooth expanse of her skin with ice cold water.
She tried to ignore the pressure building between her shoulder blades. She knew this feeling well. It only manifested when someone was staring at your back with intense malice. Jackson had subjected her to many of those, but this wasn’t Jackson; she had a feeling it wasn’t even human.
Rubbing the back of her neck, she put the whites in first, shaking the dirt off her sheets as much as she could before adding them to the load.
She closed the lid on the washing machine and started a cycle.
A soft thud from the back of the room made her stop cold.
Her back seized.
For a moment, she was paralyzed.
Her breath came in small jerks, and she was trembling from head to foot.
Infinitely slowly, she turned, her insides roiling painfully.
The basement was empty, but Linda didn’t feel alone.
Serves you right for thinking of that boy, Linda thought.
The sound came again, much clearer than before. A low shuffle and a thud. Linda tried to pinpoint the location of the sound.
It was coming from under the stairs.
The first step was the hardest. The dream was still fresh in her mind. The horde of angry men could be waiting in the dark, their fingers hooked in claws to tear her from limb to limb.
No light illuminated the space under the stairs. It was colder here than it was anywhere else in the basement, and the smell of stagnant water dripped from the walls. Patches of sunlight streamed through the narrow windows along the ceiling, but none penetrated the darkness.
Scrape.
Thud.
A longer scrape.
Thud.
Linda’s breath was stuck in her throat. She stumbled forward, her knees trembling. The shadows enveloped her in a frost of cold as she walked beneath the stairs. The wall was slick with moisture. Small beads of frozen ice peppered the surface like murky stars. Linda blinked. She’d seen this somewhere before.
Scrape.
Thud.
She touched the wall. Before she realized what she was doing, her ear was pressed against it, listening.
More sounds reached her.
The scrape and thud sounded like a tool, but now she also heard panting, like someone was breathing hard. The voices were faint. A thin, high sound like mic distortion drowned everything else out. Linda pressed closer trying to get the original sounds back.
The noise cut out.
There was silence.
Linda…
A snatch of whisper; a voice she would recognize anywhere.
“Mom?” Linda whispered.
A sudden booming thundered in rapid succession, gaining in intensity.
Boom
Boom
BOOM
BOOM
Linda cried out and stumbled back. Her heart raced, and bile choked her. She clutched her neck, her hands wet and clammy from the wall.
“Linda?”
She whirled around to face the far wall. Ashley stood near the washing machine, her arms loaded with a few T-shirts and pair of jeans. She looked startled and pale, like she’d seen a ghost.
“What are you doing under the stairs?”
“I thought I heard something.” Linda licked her dry lips. “Someone called my name.”
“I did.” Ashley was looking at her weird. “I called you when I was coming down the stairs just now.”
Linda stared at her sister, not comprehending for a moment. Then it dawned on her. The voice she’d heard had been Ashley calling her. The boom of thunder was just her sister coming down the stairs.
Placing her hand on her forehead, Linda actually laughed. What was wrong with her?
“I think you should go lie down,” Ashley said dumping her clothes in the basket. “I’ll take care of this.”
“No, I can handle it,” Linda said.
“I insist.” Ashley folded her arms across her chest. “You look tired.”
“So do you.”
“Please don’t argue with me,” Ashley snapped. “Just… please.”
Linda nodded.
She looked back once she’d reached the landing.
Ashley’s wet hair trailed down behind her like a dirty mop. Her shoulders were hunched as she sorted through her clothes. Linda couldn’t help but feel a little relief to be let out of the basement.
There were a lot of things she did not understand at this point in time, but she was now convinced there was something wrong in Blackburn manor, more than met the eye, and it certainly wasn’t a trick of her mind.
Chapter 12
Linda stood in the living room, observing the painting.
She wasn’t mistaken. The blot on the lower right side of the painting seemed to be bigger than before.
“Have you been standing here this whole time?”
Linda turned, albeit reluctantly, to face her sister. Ashley stood by the basement door with a basket of freshly folded laundry in her arms. Linda blinked and looked at the carriage clock on the opposite wall above the TV.
Half past eleven.
“I can’t have been standing here for an hour.” Linda slapped her forehead. “I swear I just got up here.”
Ashley looked concerned. “It’s probably stress from last night. Did you get any sleep?”
Linda bit her lip. “A little.” Rubbing the back of her neck she decided to share some of her reservations with her sister. “I think it’
s this place. It’s very strange.”
“How do you mean?” Ashley tilted her head.
“The weird phone calls,” Linda spread her hands. “What happened to Marisa and Evelyn.” She clutched her hand involuntarily. “I don’t know. It gives me the creeps.”
Ashley wasn’t stupid. She pursed her lips and smoothed her face into relaxed lines but Linda had seen the flash of annoyance in her eyes.
“Hey.” Ashley shrugged, smiling gently. “It’s an old manor; it’s bound to be creepy. The phone calls could be some teenager in town playing a prank. As far as Marisa is concerned we’ll find out what happened to her this afternoon. Don’t think about it too much. Let’s dig in and get started on some work. It’ll take your mind off these things.”
Linda knew what she meant by ‘these things’. Ashley had always detested any talk of Linda’s hallucinations due to her sleep paralysis, and even more of anything that could be considered as supernatural.
“Sure.” Linda smiled wearily. “I’m going to go for a walk. I’m collecting stones to use as dividers in the vegetable garden. There’s some nice variety beyond the estate.”
“Okay.” Ashley yawned walking towards the stairs. “I’m going to the main office to look at the books. I should have some idea about the accounts before I get down to bookkeeping.”
Linda grabbed a tote bag from the kitchen pantry, folded it up and stuffed it in the pocket of her jacket, and walked out the front door. Clouds had scudded along the sky covering up the harsh sunlight. A wet wind was blowing, slapping her in the face as she climbed down the steps.
She stood a moment at the spot where Marisa had fallen, examining the shifted gravel, the bits of grass and earth that had been torn up in the front yard. It must have rained sometime in the early dawn because there wasn’t any significant disturbance to warrant the amount of dirt in her sheets, but the yard was full of muddy puddles.
Stewart’s car was still in the driveway, so he must be home though she hadn’t seen him. She didn’t blame him after the night they’d had.
Linda walked across the street to stand in front of Grady’s house and looked back at Blackburn Manor. It was odd but when she was inside, she couldn’t wait to get away. But standing on the outside the house had an almost haunting allure inviting her inside.