by Blake Croft
“Hey,” Ashley, swallowed, her voice hoarse. She held Linda’s arm. “Now, we have matching bruises.” She pointed towards her own neck and Linda’s, making the first move towards reconciliation.
Linda burst into fresh tears. Not only because of the love her sister had for her, but also because she knew that they had to go back. She needed to figure out how to end this before it consumed her. She didn’t want to harm anyone; she didn’t want to die.
It hadn’t worked for Marisa; it hadn’t worked for the Irish peasant girl hundreds of years ago. Chances were it wouldn’t for her either. She would have to figure this out and end it before she decided anything else. Because this would end her.
She had a dire need to finish reading the rest of Colin Prim’s diary. And she had to go back to Blackburn Manor.
Chapter 25
… a strong wind started blowing through the trees. It carried the stench of putrid flesh; fire and brimstone; a hellish wind from the unwashed mouth of Satan himself.
My horse whinnied and skittered, its eyes rolling back in its head. The priest limped closer to me, standing a little behind me. We watched the shifting darkness, trying to keep our eyes open in the gale.
The song on the wind got louder, the voice getting higher, hysterical like a mad woman. I am afraid to say that it tore at me, forcing me to drop my guard to cower in fear, but the strength of God kept me upright. The priest, long having abandoned his faith for the devilish belief of the pagans was whimpering on his knees in the grass.
Then the wind stopped as suddenly as it had started. Leaves swayed on to the ground, and my horse screamed. I turned to the beast, intent on beating it for its insolence when I saw the little girl standing beside it.
Now that she was standing on her two dirty feet I could see that she was barely tall enough to reach my navel. Her spindly legs sprouted out of her tattered dress that was too short for her. Her face was hidden in the shadows made by her hair that had spilled out of her braid and swayed about her shoulders in a wind that was no longer there. Her long fingers were twisted in the horse’s mane.
“Stop it!” I ordered.
The girl laughed a shrill sound that grated on the ears.
With a mighty twist, she broke the horse’s neck.
The priest screamed and fainted.
I held my ground. It shocked me that such a small girl had the strength to twist a horse’s neck so; and what I had feared was finally confirmed. She was a witch, possessed by a demon that was lending her its strength.
“In the name of the Father, I invoke you to leave this girl!”
The girl skipped over the dead horse and crept closer. Her movements were stiff and fluid at the same time. I prepared to grab her around the wrists but she was too quick. She jumped like a leaping cat and her hair flew away from her face.
I have seen many terrible things in my life but I pray to God that I will never see a sight like that again.
Her skin was bone white and deep purple bruises under her eyes. The bruises on her neck shone red. Her teeth were bared, their pointed ends sharp and pricked with red blood. And her eyes… her eyes were the most terrible of all. Large and staring they shone bright as new pennies and filled with such malevolent hate that turned my bowels to water.
I lifted my knife wielding hand to strike her but she darted away, and landed on top of the priest. The old man’s prone body did not fidget when the girl started to strangle him but it twitched as the air was choked out of him.
“Stop it!” I lunged at her. The priest’s eyes began to bulge out of his skull. With the palm of my hand I used the handle of the knife to knock the girl away. She gave an awful scream and fell back.
The priest spluttered and spat. The girl sat where she had landed, the white pallor was gone, her cheeks were flushed now but her eyes had lost all luster and life. She stared ahead for a minute or so then collapsed like a puppet whose strings have been cut.
We watched the corpse for a long time, only approaching it once dawn light had burst through the night darkness. She was cold and stiff; long dead.
Linda sat at the dining table in the kitchen of Blackburn Manor, trying hard not to fall asleep. A mug of coffee grew cold beside her. She hadn’t slept a wink after the incident with Ashley; she didn’t trust herself to sleep anymore. They had arrived back at the house by eight in the morning, renting bikes from the motel owner.
She had dreaded coming back. Strangely, she had considered finished lining the markers in the vegetable garden. She told herself that she was supposed to work, but she knew that she was just avoiding entering Blackburn Manor. Standing in front of the manor, dominated by its brooding façade she had felt like a dwarf in the shadow of a monstrous giant. Every fiber of her being had wanted to run away but there was no choice. She had to figure out if there was any way of ending this.
She read more of Colin Prim’s account, how they buried the girl and the priest warned him that the curse had been transferred to them now. Linda bit her lip as she read Prim’s dismissal of the claim, fairly sure that the demon would not think to possess him.
He had gone back to his garrison only for things to get stranger. He would wake up in the morning to find blood and dirt in his sheets, having no memory of walking across the garrison and mutilating a horse. Then the nightmares went from bad to worse, and he finally accepted that the possession was indeed possible.
The last entry was just ramblings of a sleep deprived man trying desperately not to succumb to the exhaustion knowing that this last long sleep would be the predecessor of his end.
Linda sighed and turned the page. She could relate to Prim on a very personal level. The night had not been easy and her eyes were heavy from lack of sleep.
Colin Prim sought help at the village of Galash Talann where the villagers found the receptacle for the original banshee, the woman hung for her crime of stealing. The hangman’s post along with the village headman’s daughter’s ribbon were burnt to stop the curse. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to save Colin Prim. He was pronounced dead by exposure to the elements in the report submitted by his senior.
A rattling sigh escaped Linda’s lips. She was trembling from a cold that had settled inside her bones. Tracing one finger over the words of Colin Prim’s entries, Linda wondered what the final moments of this God-fearing man must have been like, all alone and friendless in the foreign woods so far away from home.
She was about to close the book, when she noticed the next heading started a page over; not directly behind where Colin Prim’s entries finished. Linda turned the page, eyebrows scrunched with curiosity.
It was more information on the legend of the banshee myth, how it had crossed the Irish seas and variations were found in other cultures. Linda lost more hope as the list went on and on till she reached the very end of the page.
Once a manifestation begins, it is very hard to control if the receptacle is not identified. The more time that passes between the initiation of a curse and the investigation for its source, the more likely it is that it will never be identified. Unfortunately, it is the only resource that is foolproof in ending a banshee and its curse. The receptacle is anything that the deceased placed great value on, or had emotional attachment to. Once the receptacle is destroyed the manifestation can end.
Hope tickled the back of Linda’s mind. She chewed her lip in thought and closed the book. She needed to discuss this with Grady.
She glanced at the clock. It was nine fifteen in the morning. Grady would be up. Getting up from the chair, she stretched her limbs. A big yawn escaped her lips and she had to slap her cheeks to stop from falling asleep.
She bit her nails and unbidden thoughts of last night came to her.
She had dreamt of a woman; not the miners, not Samuel Blackburn, but a woman. Maybe Grady was wrong; maybe a woman had been killed in the mines. Then there was Shannon and Tara, and their disappearances. Was it related to the haunting at Blackburn? Had they found out something; a clue, or the id
entity of the ghost? Did this discovery scare them so much that they left in hurry?
Her head throbbed.
Refusing to wait any longer, she climbed the stairs to check on Ashley and tell her where she was going.
Thunder rumbled outside. Dark billowy clouds hung low in the sky. A storm was brewing.
She was walking down the hall when she heard it, the skittering rustle of rats. It came from the ceiling, the attic that could only be accessed from Stewart’s apartment.
He should really look into his rodent problem.
“Ashley?” she called as she approached her door.
The office space was empty. The high ceilings highlighted the cavernous feeling of the house and the stained windows weren’t that cheerful this morning. The cheap modern furniture looked like an affront to the surroundings.
Linda frowned. Ashley had said she’d be in the offices looking at the accounts. Linda finally found her in a conference room sprawled in a chair, deep asleep. She was snoring lightly and drool pooled on the desk.
Part of Linda wanted to wake Ashley and let her know she was headed to Grady’s house; the other part of her wanted her sister to get some rest. Ashley experienced enough trauma to last her a lifetime.
She sprinted back down the stairs and retrieved the book from the kitchen. A thought struck her when she reached the front door and she pulled out her cellphone. She dialed the number as she climbed down the porch steps and crossed the street.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Scott. It’s Linda Green from Blackburn Manor.” Linda spoke very quickly. “I had some questions about the speakeasy you mentioned the other day.”
“Sure,” Scott said. She heard other voices in the background; she assumed he was at the station. “What do you want to know?”
“Could I get a map of the mines,” Linda asked. “Specifically, where the speakeasy was located.”
“Okay,” Scott sounded confused. “Why do you need them?”
“Just curious about a few things,” Linda said casually. She climbed Grady’s porch and knocked. “I thought I’d go exploring the mines.”
“Oh,” Scott was quiet for a few seconds. “Okay. I could get them to you in half an hour.”
“Wow,” Linda laughed. “That’s quick.” Grady’s feet shuffled beyond the door.
“There’s a reason.” Scott didn’t laugh. “I was looking at the files on the Blackburn mine myself. If you don’t mind, can I come along on the tour? I need to see some things myself.”
The door opened and Grady squinted up at her. She waved Linda inside.
“I’d be grateful for company,” Linda said into the phone. “See you soon.”
“Bye.”
Linda tucked the phone back in her jeans pocket as she walked inside Grady’s house. She placed the book on the table they had sat at yesterday.
“It won’t help if we leave,” she told Grady. “The thing latches on somehow and follows you. I nearly strangled Ashley to death last night. The nightmare was vivid; I was back in the house…”
Grady placed a hand on Linda’s arm. “Sit.” She went into the kitchen and brought a cookie jar. “Eat.”
Linda didn’t feel like it but she took an oatmeal raisin out of politeness.
“What did you find out from the book?”
“It’s not completely accurate but most of the things we’ve experienced are like the banshee lore in the book. There’s the lament, the dreams, the excessive sleeping, and then Marisa trying to strangle me when she had a knife.” Linda took a bite of cookie absentmindedly. “The lore in the book says that those possessed by this particular wraith only kill in the manner the original banshee was murdered. Marisa never made to stab me, she even threw the knife away at a crucial moment to strangle me.”
Grady rubbed her forefinger along her upper lip, deep in thought. “But the miners…”
“Were shot and left to die. We don’t know if they strangled each other as a more merciful end but I doubt it. Plus the banshee is female, and I saw a woman again last night.”
“You think it might be Shannon or Tara?” Grady asked, placing another cookie in Linda’s hand.
“I did at first,” Linda nodded. “But you mentioned Shannon was blonde, and Tara was chestnut.”
Grady looked surprised, clearly annoyed by the frivolousness of the comment.
“The woman I saw in my dreams is a brunette.” She chewed on her cookie thoughtfully. “Did Shannon or Tara wear a green pendant? Shaped like a clover.”
“If they did I never saw it, and Shannon was blonde and Tara had chestnut colored hair,” Grady shook her head. “You said it wasn’t completely accurate. What isn’t similar?”
“The phone calls for one,” Linda brushed the crumbs off the table. “And the miner in the dreams as well as the woman… and the burial…” Linda broke off, the memory of those dreams making her queasy.
“What burial?” Grady asked.
“The first few dreams always ended with someone burying me alive. So none of the deaths is consistent with the haunting. It’s very confusing.” Linda bit her lip but then smiled hopefully. “There is a way to end it though.”
Grady’s eyes shone. “How?”
“According to the book the banshee spirit resides in some object, a receptacle of some sort. If that is destroyed, the haunting can end. I’m going down to the mines with Scott to see if I can find something. If you’re right and this – thing is reacting to my sensitivity, then I should be able to find something.”
“That’s a good idea,” Grady agreed. “Let me know what you find, and I’ll do some more research on the house. Find this brunette woman you’ve been seeing.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Grady,” Linda said. “I was wrong to judge you.”
“I gave you reason,” Grady waved her hand dismissively. “Go. Let’s try to finish this.”
Linda nodded, and nabbed another cookie before leaving. Talking to Grady had been a good idea. She was nowhere near the answers she needed, but the talk had cleared her head a little and she was more determined and focused.
The manor stared at her across the street. She didn’t want to go back. She sat on Grady’s porch steps and waited for Scott to show up.
Chapter 26
“Sorry I’m late.” Scott locked the doors once Linda was in the passenger seat of his car. “I had to take a personal day and Milo started grilling me about it.”
“Milo?” Linda asked buckling herself in.
“Officer Carter,” Scott pulled away from the curb. Scott looked worse than Linda had ever seen him. There were dark smudges under his eyes, and he looked paler than usual. Even his lips were colorless. “I’m glad you called, though. I needed an excuse to get out.”
The car smelled of trapped sunrays, hot and humid. Linda shifted uncomfortably until Scott rolled the windows down. Once they were on their way, Linda felt a surge of relief which got stronger as the car put distance between the house and them.
“Are the mines very far?” Linda asked, sitting back in her seat.
“No.” Scott’s eyes were on the road, his face a blank mask. He was sweating slightly even though the breeze was cool. “Ten minutes, tops. Why are you suddenly so interested in them?”
“Why are you?” Linda asked.
Scott glanced at her, a pained expression on his face. “I just have a gut feeling. In fact, it started that day in the library when we couldn’t find anything on the bootlegging, and I said I’d look into police files. Milo says I’m crazy to pursue it, as it’s off the books, nothing official.”
“What did you find?”
Scott bit his lower lip. There was reluctance in his fidgeting limbs and Linda wasn’t entirely sure if he believed in whatever it was he was investigating. She could empathize because during lucid moments of panic she felt the same.
“The mines are a big deal around here,” he said, squaring his shoulders. “There are tours and guides to the mine shafts at the south of Keystone. Helen Lord
even opened an inn inside her family mines. It’s part of the town’s annual business. But no one makes it to this part of town, specifically this mine.”
The road took a turn. The sun was directly in front of them. Linda shaded her eyes. Scott leaned over and pulled down her visor. Linda suddenly felt hot and cold at the same time. She could see the large gaping mouth of the cave up ahead. Ancient winches and rusting machines stood abandoned outside like fallen sentries at the gates of a ruined castle.
“You’re not going to ask why?” Scott asked.
Linda stared at the cavernous opening in the mountain. Jagged rocks, like teeth, lined the ceiling. “I suspect you’re going to tell me either way.”
Scott cleared his throat. “Yes, well. That’s why we’re here. This mine has a very nasty history.”
“You mean about the Molly Maguires.”
“How did you know about that?” Scott asked, his surprise shifting his melancholy mood a little.
“Grady told me about them yesterday,” Linda said. “How some of the miners were shot and buried for their association with the outfit, and because Samuel Blackburn was paranoid and believed they were digging a tunnel underneath his house.”
“Yeah, the town doesn’t like to dwell on that, which is why there wasn’t much about the ‘accident’ in the library or the papers. But here’s the kicker,” Scott grimaced. “It wasn’t paranoia. There actually was a tunnel that opened somewhere beneath the house.”
Linda did a double take. “You’re kidding.”
“I wish I was. I kept going back to old files to figure out if there was a history of the house which could implicate the Blackburn family, and I found these.”
He gripped one hand on the steering and leaned back to retrieve something from the backseat. Linda’s heart leaped up in her throat.
“Scott, the road!”
“No worries,” Scott grunted, straightening back to his former position. He had two thick manila folders in his hand. He deposited them in Linda’s lap. “Take a look at the one on top first.”