by Amy Cross
“We tested the master bedroom,” she says, as Charles carries more equipment out toward the van. “We tested the whole house.”
“And there was nothing? Really, truly nothing.”
“That's the lot!” Charles calls up to us.
“I'm sorry,” Heather says, stepping past me and following the others down to the van. “Maybe that's not the result you were hoping for. I don't know.”
I pause for a moment, before going to the front door and pulling it shut. I take a few seconds to turn the key in the lock, and then I head back down to the van.
“Blackforke House is quite possibly the quietest house I've ever been to,” Matheson says, as he climbs into the van. “Not a creak or a bump in the whole place.”
I head around to the driver's side and climb back into the van.
“It was strangely quiet,” Heather says as I start the engine and drive the van back toward the main gates. “You don't suppose that could be relevant, do you? Could a ghost hush a whole house?”
“I don't see how or why;” Matheson says. “Mr. Fisher, do you know much about this Abigail Lowe girl? Do you happen to know whether she had an irrational love of absolute silence?”
“Not that I'm aware of,” I reply, stopping the van once we're past the gates. “Wait here. I just need to put the chain back.”
“I'm sorry if we disappointed you,” Matheson says as I climb out.
I turn to him.
“Disappointed me?”
“By not finding any evidence of a ghost,” he continues. “By debunking the story of the horror of Blackforke House.”
I hesitate, trying to work out how I might respond, but then I turn and make my way toward the gates. Grabbing the chain, I haul it up and start feeding it into position, and as I do so I glance at the house and see those dark windows staring back at me.
Matheson's wrong.
He's so utterly and pathetically wrong, and he'll never understand why.
And as I finish putting the chain in place, I can't help watching the house. A shudder passes through me, because I know that Matheson and his team didn't debunk the horror of Blackforke House at all. My dear, darling wife Abigail died here in the most excruciating, degrading, painful manner imaginable. She was tortured and defiled. She was wronged in so many ways. Yet in the time since, despite fanciful stories imagined by fools, there has been no true sign that she might linger, that she might still be here. She simply died, and is gone. If anyone would ever come back as a ghost, for love or for hate, it would be Abigail. But she did not, because she cannot, because nobody can. If ghosts were real, there would be one in this place, of that I am certain.
I take a moment to double-check the chain, which is still wet from the night's storm.
There is nothing after this life. Ghost stories are just empty comfort for those who cannot face the truth. Nothing survives of any human spirit, in any form whatsoever. And that is the true horror of Blackforke House.