by Blake Croft
Her father’s abusive nature had been the talk of the neighborhood.
She hadn’t imagined that. She was a child at the time, so maybe her memory was sketchy, but she had a file full of her mother’s old medical reports that documented a litany of bruises, scrapes, and broken bones.
Nor had she imagined Jackson’s abuses. There were witnesses to some of the incidents. All of them had come forward during the trial. So she hadn’t been imagining that.
Then what had Ashley been talking about?
The monocle man… the girl in the sailor suit…
Linda remembered them all. She had always known they weren’t real, in the sense that they weren’t alive, but they were harmless; her medically defined sleep-deprived hallucinations.
She stopped suddenly. The road stretched ahead of her into unknown territory; all around her the deep woods watched like silent sentinels hiding secrets. Behind her were the two houses —Blackburn Manor and Grady’s house— staring at each other for an eternity, their insanity spilling out to taint everything around them.
What am I doing walking alone? The thought suddenly struck cold fear through her confusion. The town is miles away!
She doubled back, thinking to dawdle in the backyard to avoid Ashley. She had just crested the road when she saw Grady standing by her letterbox waiting patiently for someone. Cats milled about her feet, grazing their sleek backs against her calves.
Not in the mood for an old woman’s spite, Linda increased her pace.
“Miss Green.” Grady’s voice was surprisingly polite. “May I please have a word?”
Linda looked up at the house. Ashley was standing by the living room window waiting for her to come back in. Linda felt stuck between a rock and a hard place. Exasperated with her rotten luck, she turned away from Ashley.
“How may I help you, Mrs. Grady?” Linda asked, her tone civil but firm.
“No, Miss Green.” Mrs. Grady sighed. “It’s I who can help you. Come along.”
The old woman carved a way for herself through a sea of cats. Curious and needing an excuse to avoid Ashley, Linda followed her up the short porch steps and inside the house.
Chapter 21
To say that Linda had expected a house full of fur balls, scratching posts and kitty litters would be an understatement. Grady’s house was none of those things. It was neatly furnished in muted tones of apple green, brown, and cream. The living room was dominated by a book shelf perfectly arranged with potted plants situated in nooks and crannies to give it an aesthetic appeal. It looked like the home of an intellectual college professor; not the local crazy cat lady.
Speaking of cats, they all lined up at the door, none daring to come in. It was clear that Grady loved the stray cats, but none were allowed inside her home.
“You have a nice place,” Linda said.
“I didn’t call you in to exchange niceties.” Grady sniffed. “Sit down and listen, that’s all you have to do.”
Linda felt like a chastised student.
She took a seat at a small round table Grady indicated. It was covered with open books, printouts, and notebooks.
“You asked me about the house yesterday,” Grady said taking a seat opposite. “And then your sister had some astute observation about my less than charitable nature.”
Linda made to apologize, but Grady lifted a hand to stop her.
“I told you to listen,” Grady said, peering over the half-moon spectacles she had perched on her nose. “I don’t want to talk about my dislike of Evelyn, but you deserve to know the basics. She seduced and stole my husband when I was pregnant with my second daughter. Stewart’s their half-brother.”
“They lived across the street from you?” Linda couldn’t believe the nerve. Sympathy for the old woman flooded through her.
“No.” Grady sorted through papers. “After she fell pregnant, Evelyn Blackburn changed her tune. No, she wouldn’t like to get married. No, she didn’t want to keep the baby. It was never her intention to be with Brian for the long term. She just wanted to spite us for making a home on what she thought was Blackburn land. But her parents had had enough of that. They made her have the baby.”
“What about your husband?” Linda asked, fingering the whorls of wood on the smooth surface.
“Oh,” Grady laughed harshly. “She dumped him like a hot potato. Discovered feminism in college, and never looked back. He came slinking back of course, but I’d already changed the locks. He wasn’t welcome. Last I heard, he was in California or some other insufferable place. Here,” she slammed an open album in front of Linda. “You won’t find this in the archives. I had it especially delivered when I was teaching.”
Linda peered at the black and white photographs. A man sat in the foreground, his features bland and forgettable if it weren’t for the enormous muttonchops that framed his doughy face. His posture was rigid and pompous. In the background, stood a troop of men in peaked flat caps, faces streaked with grime. Their hands were black with dirt, their eyes boring into the lens, pouring out all of their discomforts.
Her body became rigid, and her heart skipped a beat.
Oisin. The dead boy from her nightmare.
The boy stared up at her, his face gaunt and drawn. The mustache man from the dreams stood beside him, equally despondent. She watched carefully. They were all of the faces in the crowd she had seen in her dreams.
“This was the crew working in the mines when Samuel Blackburn took over after his father’s death. They were the unfortunates who were killed over the whole Molly Maguire business. Mind you, only a handful were Mollies. The rest were innocent, but it didn’t make a difference to Blackburn.”
“The what?” Linda’s throat was dry.
“Molly Maguires.” Grady was in full teacher mode. “They were a secret society of sorts; got their name from a rural secret society in Ireland which dressed as women and pledged allegiance to a mythical woman named Mistress Molly Maguire. Sounds innocent enough but they slowly took over the Workingman’s Benevolent Association, a local union, and started instigating violence against mine owners; killing a few. They wanted better representation for the unskilled Irish workers who were more dispensable than the skilled English and Welsh workers. Since they were Mollies, they had no qualms in using aggression and violence to achieve their means. Didn’t work out too well for them.”
Sighing, Grady pulled a book towards them where Linda could see the print of an old article. “After the last strike was announced in January 1875, one of the detectives on the case suggested vigilante justice. Some people took the suggestion to heart. Three of the suspected Mollies were shot dead, including one of the Mollies’ wives. Some sadist broke into their home and killed her clean dead.”
Linda realized she was biting her lip very hard.
“The Blackburns had long suffered from strikes, and news of vigilante justice suited Samuel Blackburn just fine. He had his guards shoot the Irish laborers hindering activity at his mine. None of them died because of their injuries, but Samuel Blackburn offered no medical aid. He had the men dragged into an unused shaft to die.” Grady’s eyes sparkled with buried indignation. “They say he got really paranoid by the end. He would rave about the miners digging a tunnel under his house to come up through the basement to kill him in his sleep. He died in a sanatorium.”
He’s cold, and hungry, and DEAD!
Linda shuddered. “I saw him in my dreams,” she said. “I saw him dead.”
Grady stopped shuffling through papers. “You can’t have. No one has access to my private collection.”
“But I’m telling you I saw this boy in my dream… I…” Linda hesitated. “I even saw him in a painting in our living room.”
Grady’s eyes were as large as saucers, and her mouth a thin line. Linda flushed. “I know you think I’m making this up, but I’m not crazy!”
“I never called you that.” Grady’s voice was barely above a whisper, but it held the gravity of seriousness. She rubbed her m
outh and looked down at the table for a long time. Finally, she looked up and Linda saw a hint of concern in her eyes. “Is that the only dream you’ve had since you moved here?”
“No,” Linda said. She plucked on the hem of her shirt, recalling the dreams but dreading to go into too much detail. She didn’t want to relive them again. “There have been more. There was one where I was being buried alive, and a lake full of ice. There are many.”
“I need to know them all,” Grady said.
“I heard a song in my dream that was also one of the strange messages we got one night.”
“Do you have a recording of the message?” Grady asked, suddenly very alert.
“Yes,” Linda said. “It was all garbled at first but then Scott did something to it on his computer so we could make out the words.”
“Do you have it on your phone?” Grady extended a hand in anticipation.
“Scott gave me a CD. I don’t know if you can play it.”
“Of course I can,” Grady said. “I have a CD player. Can you go get it?”
“Now?” Linda asked.
Grady didn’t say anything, just gave her a hard stare.
“Okay; I can sprint over and get it for you.”
Grady waved her away.
Linda was full to bursting. There was too much information coming her way in a very short span of time. But this was proof wasn’t it, that Linda didn’t hallucinate? What she saw were people who had lived at some point in time but had never truly left. Now that she thought about it, this was much worse. When it had just been her dead mother warning her, she had felt comfort. But knowing she was some magnet for supernatural beings was alarming.
You can’t blame it on some ghost, you know.
Nobody would believe her anyway, but she knew something very wrong was going on in Blackburn Manor. It had dragged Marisa to the point of such insanity it had killed her. It was tearing her relationship with Ashley to smithereens. Both of them had changed drastically under the pressures of that house.
Marshaling her courage, she rushed down Grady’s porch and ran across the street. Riding on that momentum, she took the steps two at a time. But before she could get her keys out of her pocket, Ashley opened the door.
“Thank God,” she said. “Linda-”
“I don’t have time,” Linda snapped. She knew she should have been nicer, but she was in hurry and Ashley’s words still stung. She made a beeline for her handbag where she had left it on the sofa, retrieved the CD in its cover and bolted out the door, ignoring Ashley’s stricken face.
As she got further away from the shadow of Blackburn Manor, she felt much better. She felt like someone was watching her. It was probably Ashley, so she didn’t look back.
Grady had fixed two mugs of coffee by the time Linda got back. A sleek silver old-fashioned laptop was open at her table.
“This Molly Maguire thing,” Linda asked while Grady placed the CD in its tray. “Have you been inside the mineshaft where it happened?”
“No,” Grady peered at her over her glasses. “There’s an entrance to the mine in the hill beyond. It's a thirty minute walk. My daughters and I used to explore it often, and we found some artifacts related to the speakeasy, but never the shaft with the poor murdered miners.”
“Could you tell me more about the speakeasy?” Linda’s interest was piqued.
“They had to open it where the authorities wouldn’t find it. The mines were deep and large enough to accommodate everyone.” Grady held up a finger to stem the flow of Linda’s new set of questions. She pressed some keys on her laptop.
The keening warble filled the quaint living room. Linda wasn’t sure, but it seemed like the sun had suddenly gone behind a cloud. Her eyes felt heavy with sudden sleep.
The message ended, and she snapped back to attention.
Grady's eyes had narrowed to slits in concentration, but she had paled considerably. Linda could tell she was clenching her teeth. Once it ended, Grady replayed the audio. Linda’s hands started to tremble. She hadn’t had to listen to it twice in a row, and the feeling of heartbreak was overwhelming like a hook tugging sharply at her guts.
“That’s a very mesmerizing tune.” Grady nodded, her voice muted. Her words slurred slightly. She played it again but this time she didn’t sit still. She got up and walked leisurely to her bookshelf.
Linda watched her trace the spines of her books, her head swaying slowly from side to side looking for something.
The song ended. Linda shook her head to clear her head.
“I think I recognized some of the words. I might be wrong, but it’s better than nothing.”
“You do?” Linda was shocked. “That’s great!”
“There it is,” she said in whispered triumph. She pulled a heavy tome out of her collection and waddled back to the table.
“Another strange thing about the calls I forgot to mention,” Linda tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “The calls all come from Stewart’s part of the house, which is weird. Oh, and the mobile number belonged to one of Evelyn’s nurses, Shannon.” Linda swallowed. “Scott’s been trying to trace her but without luck.”
“I knew her.” Grady was frowning at the book. “Good-natured girl, blonde, slightly bulky. She was very sweet. Would come over to sit with the cats after her shifts.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t kick her off your property,” Linda said, as her mind registered the small detail of Shannon being blonde.
Grady pierced her with a look. Linda chewed on her bottom lip. “I’m not a monster,” Grady said. “I always wondered what happened to her. She didn’t seem flighty to me; but one day she was cleaning out the litter box, the next day she’d vanished.”
“Did you hear from her again?” Linda asked.
“No.”
Linda pressed her lips together. “What do you think Scott meant by the two women disappearing without a trace?” Linda asked.
“Well… I’ve seen every woman that has gone through the Blackburn house, and I can tell you who was flighty. Shannon wasn’t one of them. Tara on the other hand,” Grady lifted both her eyebrows and gave Linda a meaningful look. “She was trouble on legs. She had a temper. I have no qualms telling you that even I was wary of getting on her wrong side. Reminded me too much of Glen Close in Fatal Attraction. She had the same crazy glint in her eyes.”
“Was she the type to run away?” Linda asked, caressing her bruised neck.
“Oh, yes,” Grady nodded. “She looked like a twitchy rabbit jumping at shadows, not very different from you. But by the end of her stay, she actually looked quite content. I thought she would stay longer.”
Linda sipped her coffee deep in thought.
“Now, these dreams,” Grady said. “Have they always been this vivid or are these new?”
“New,” Linda shuddered. “They actually started-”
“Once you moved into the house,” Grady finished her sentence.
Linda’s jaw dropped slightly. “Yes,” she said. “How did you know?”
“I’m a very sensible woman,” Grady said folding her hands on top of the table. “Which is why I am a firm believer in the paranormal. I believe in more than just the human experience, yes.” “You believe in ghosts?” Linda was having a hard time wrapping her head around that. Serious, grouchy Grady, the strict high school teacher and historian believed in ghosts.
Grady shrugged. “I believe in an afterlife, in a soul. I find it ridiculous that a soul that can animate a body for decades will slink off quietly to the afterlife as if it had no will. Yes.” She gave Linda a hard glare. “I believe in ghosts.”
“So what are you saying?” Linda asked.
“I’m saying the Blackburn house is haunted,” Grady said. “You’re not the only one who had weird dreams. Shannon mentioned them once or twice. I didn’t pay much heed to them back then. I won’t make that mistake now.”
“What do you think is going on in the house?”
“I think it’s perfectl
y clear what’s going on.” Grady’s tone was tart. “Don’t pretend to be stupid. It’s unbecoming.” She picked up her mug but didn’t drink from it. “The spirits of the Irish laborers aren’t at rest. They are many in number and that contributes to their strength.”
“But why now?” Linda asked. This question had been bothering her for some time now. “From what I’ve heard of the retreat this is the first time anything like this is happening.”
Grady cleared her throat and shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “I hardly think this is the first. Something drove Samuel Blackburn mad. Evelyn was hale and hearty till the sudden stroke, and now Marisa. It might have amplified because of you, but I don’t think it’s new phenomenon.”
“Amplified?” Linda didn’t like the sound of that.
“If no one is listening, we give up talking till we find an audience. The spirits are just the same. You can see them; interact with their presence better than most people. They needed an audience to start talking.”
Linda let that sink in.
Everything she had thought she had known about her sleep paralysis and hallucinations was wrong. The gut feeling pinching at her that it went deeper had been true.
She was the reason the spirits were agitated again; the reason Marisa was attacked so ruthlessly till she was possessed and killed. If only she had never come. Marisa’s death would always haunt her, no matter where she was.
One question nagged at her still.
“You mentioned one of the wives of the mine workers was killed,” Linda said.
“Not on the Blackburn mine. That was in three towns over.”
Linda frowned. She had seen the miners in a dream, she had seen Oisin’s face in the painting but she had seen a woman too. The voice that sang the songs was a woman’s, the dark hair, the woman running down the stairs the first night she arrived, the pendant that hung from a cream-white neck.
If a woman hadn’t been killed with the miners, then who had she been seeing in her dreams? She had a sinking suspicion that Shannon hadn’t made it out of the house. It was a stretch, and Linda had no proof of this, but maybe Shannon had been sensitive to the phenomenon too and was now part of the Blackburn haunting. It made sense if Shannon’s old phone number kept calling the house and leaving eerie messages.