The wall appeared to bulge outward in several places, in a way impossible for stone to behave, then return. There was a sudden cracking sound as a split appeared at the top, the rent following a jagged course, like a lightning bolt, to the floor. The gap began to separate, fingers squeezing through the crack. Long, thin fingers, extended by red painted nails. Two hands were now visible. The skin was ashen grey, stretched tight across bone and sinews. Where the light from the candles caught it, it shone like moonlight. They strained to increase the opening.
There was a hiss as the crack gave way further, and a sweet, flowery smelling mist poured into the room, flowing across the floor. Gregory’s eyes were wide, fixed on the show before him.
A foot wiggled through the base of the crack - a ballet slipper - followed by a leg covered in a long white skirt of lace fabric. A body forced through sideways, eager to be through the opening, only just wide enough for the thin frame. Finally through, a woman stood before them, her hair waist length, straight and black. Her face was flawless, but with skin like her hands, shining bright. Her eyes were ovals of black and her mouth twisted into a wicked, red-lipped smile.
“Muse,” said the professor, beaming with delight at her success in entering the chamber.
“Matthew. My sweet mad scientist. Not totally insane yet?” She shook herself and smoothed back her hair. She looked at Gregory staring at her. “Surely you can’t mean to offer another?”
She wandered over to Gregory and trailed her nails over his bare chest, the razor sharp tips leaving dripping trails of red behind them. She looked back to Matthew.
“Your struggle against the inevitable is a delight. I love it when my creatives lose their senses. You know this can’t go on, Matthew. You can’t absorb anymore intellect, even though I adore the empty shells it leaves me. So... malleable.”
“But… but I need more. The things I have discovered from your gifts. I’m so close to unlocking such mysteries. Take this one. See what I’ll achieve, in your name.”
The muse looked back to Gregory and leant her face close to his. He felt her breath, smelt its faintly sweet scent. Her jet black eyes scanned across his forehead and cheeks. She sniffed his hair, puzzling at some unknown perception, then settled to stare deep into his eyes. Gregory’s body deflated, the muscles relieved of all tension, his eyes and face relaxing. The muse stood back slowly. She flicked her hand and the ropes binding Gregory to his seat burst into flames for an instant, then were ash.
“I like this one. He’s got potential.” Her head swung round, and she fixed the professor in her sight. “You’re done, Matthew. Time to move on.”
“No! I must-”
Another wave from the muse and the professor’s protestation was silenced. She held out both hands and a shaft of glowing light struck his forehead. The other hand raised, and an identical beam hit Gregory. Her eyes grew bright, shining with the same glow. The three figures stood transfixed until, abruptly, the display concluded. She pointed towards the wall and the professor walked forward in a trance, his body fading from view as he reached it.
“I’ll be seeing you,” said the muse, smiling and winking at Gregory, before walking to the wall herself.
Gregory completed his calculations with a smile, leaning back to enjoy the comfortable chair and his new offices. He closed a web page, heralding his award winning debut at the Cannes film festival, to answer an insistent video call.
“Hello, professor,” said the young woman on the screen, her red hair tied back. Behind her glasses, her green eyes exposed of her nervousness.
Gregory looked down at a manuscript on his desk and then back to the woman. “Thank you for sending me your work, Alice. I was very impressed with your screenplay. A unique insight into the human condition. Very innovative.”
The woman blushed visibly. “Thank you. That means a lot to me, coming from you. I’m such a fan of your work.”
“I’d really like to work with you. I wonder if you could fill out the online personal information form - just a formality for my lawyers - and then, perhaps, we could meet?”
About Norman Turrell:
Norman is a commercial writer/editor and best-selling Amazon author of science-fiction, fantasy, horror and just strange stories. He blogs on Huffington Post, produces printed local publications, runs live writers critique groups and is a member of many online writing communities.
He studied Mathematics at college, obtaining a 2.1 Hons and later a MSc (Merit) in Artificial Intelligence.
In his spare time he runs a ukulele group and reads as much as he can. He also has a full time job as a Software Department Manager, which includes programming systems in C++.
Full information on all his activities, including some dabbling in photography and art, can be found at www.normanturrell.com - with a free gift as thanks to all who register.
Publications:
Alice in Virtuality : An adventure in the real... and the not so real : myBook.to/AliceInVirtuality
Martin, an anti-social and reclusive computer programmer, is dragged into an adventure which spans the real world and the virtual when he loads an artificial intelligence program called 'Alice'. Pushed into action as the program attacks his life, he teams up with others who are affected in an attempt to defeat the menace - but how? Alice is everywhere.
Points Of Possibility : A collection of sci-fi, fantasy and horror short stories : myBook.to/PointsOfPossibility
Ranked #1 Best Seller in two categories (UK rankings Sept. 2016)
A collection of nine short stories from the imagination of best selling British author, Norman Turrell, ranging from science fiction, fantasy, horror and purely strange tales.
THE HAUNTING OF ELDERFIELD HALL
By Raven Blackwood
Prologue
1910, Elderfield Hall, Upper Merton, Berkshire.
The child fell, twisting, tangled in her skirts, and two screams echoed through the vaulted space of the grand entryway.
Mimi screamed in her mind, as well as with her voice ‘Nooooo’ – they always fought, always had, but this time, somehow, the push and shove had gone too far, and now Ella was gone from in front of her, tumbling helplessly down the long curving stairs.
The two screams intertwined, so sharp that they seemed to penetrate the whole space, saturating the air with terrible sound. Then, a harsh ‘thump’ and one scream stopped, cut off sharply, leaving the remaining sound somehow thinner, shredding into a wail of horrified despair.
Ella lay at the foot of the stairs, her skirts about her like the petals of some giant flower, her head at a grotesquely wrong angle. Rushing footsteps echoed on the marble floor. Then stopped. After a moment, a voice, flat and frightening, spoke.
“Oh Mimi, what have you done!” The long wailing scream went on, soaking into the house, seemingly unaware of the voice, almost as if detached from everything.
The woman dropped to her knees beside the fallen child, with a strangled sob.
“Ella, Ella, please, please be alright.” Even as she spoke, she knew it was not to be – the child’s neck was quite obviously broken, her heart and breathing stopped forever. She gathered the broken child in her arms, and walked from the hall, ignoring her other child and the still echoing wail of despair.
Within the week they were gone, the house closed up, her memories of those moments locked inside. She refused to speak of it, and her grief made her odd and detached. She refused to speak to Mimi, leaving her husband to deal with the girl. He hoped it might get better, given time, but it never did. Mimi, convinced that her mother hated her, hated herself as well, and no amount of loving care from her father could change that.
The mother faded away, her will to live gone, the father faded with her, his vitality drained by the double grief of the loss of his child, and of his wife. By the time she was fifteen, they were both gone, and Mimi was alone. She made a choice. She would stay alone. She would not marry, she would not bear a child – she would never again put another perso
n she cared about in a position where she could hurt them.
Chapter One
Izzie opened the door with the antiquated brass key, and stepped inside. Puffs of dust rose from the floor with each step. Sneezing, she deposited the cat carrier on the floor near the imposing staircase and looked around. Beaufort released an offended yowl, and batted at the door of the carrier.
“Not yet, Beau, not until I make a good place where you’ll be safe in this great monstrosity of a house!”
Monstrosity was right! She was still in shock at the size of it.
When she’d first received the letter from a legal firm, requesting her presence at the reading of a will, she’d been half inclined to think it some sort of scam – but a bit of investigation had proven that they were legitimate, so she’d gone. From there, it just got stranger – she hadn’t really believed in that Law of Attraction stuff, but in this case, it did seem like the universe was providing for her. She’d had, at that point, precisely a week’s worth of money in the bank, a lease on her ratty little flat that ran out in precisely that week, and no way to extend it, nowhere else to live either.
She couldn’t be in any way sorry that Ralph was out of her life, but she sure as hell was sorry that he’d emptied the bank accounts before he’d had the courtesy to leave the country. Her freelance job paid OK – when she had clients, which, right now, she didn’t – so, no money. When the lawyer explained that she had a great aunt, once removed, by the name of Jemima Winterford, she had been stunned. Izzy had vaguely known that her mother’s cousins’ family was called Winterford, but that was about it.
She had been even more stunned when she was told that she was the only female child in the extended family, in her generation, and that her great aunt’s will specified that everything go to her. Everything included a moderate amount of money, most of which was well invested, so not so easily accessible, and this house. A house that her great aunt had not lived in since she was a child, but which she had never sold. A house that hadn’t even been rented out for more than 20 years. The woman had been 96 when she died, and had spent the last 20 years in a retirement home. Apparently, there was some more money to come from the housing bond release on that – but that could take a while to arrive.
It looked like the place hadn’t been cleaned in that 20 years – what a job she had ahead of her! Still, what choice did she have? Until more cash arrived (if it actually did) she couldn’t afford anywhere else to live – she owned this, however run down it was, so it cost her nothing but patience and some cleaning effort to make it liveable.
She shivered, realising that it was very cold where she stood, as she thought about it all, which was odd, given it was midsummer, and quite hot outside. Izzy shook herself out of her musings, and picked up the cat carrier, to another disgruntled yowl from Beau, and set off to explore further. She shivered, but ignored the cold as she went past the stairs towards the back of the house – the most likely place for such critical things as a kitchen!
Once that was found, she would unload her pitiful collection of belongings from the car, and settle in.
Chapter Two
“Beau – no! That is not a toy for you to chase!”
Izzy retrieved the cleaning cloth from the ginger cat’s claws, and returned it to the pile on the sink. The cat huffed at her in typical cat fashion, and settled to sleep on the one decent chair at the table, with an expression which was meant to convey ‘I didn’t really want it anyway’. Izzy wasn’t fooled.
She blew an escaped strand of her red gold hair out of her eyes and surveyed the room. The kitchen now actually looked like a place where you might prepare food. The little microwave oven she’d bought looked outrageously modern and out of place in the classic country house style kitchen, but she didn’t care. Warm food was a necessity. For now, she only had a tiny bar fridge and the microwave to make meals possible – the original wood stove looked wonderful – but a careful chimney cleaning would be needed before she dared light it.
So, that made three rooms restored to useability – the kitchen, the downstairs bathroom (which was also antiquated – it could look good, in that ‘historic style’ but she wanted it to be more modern underneath that… And right now, it only just passed for useable – and the bedroom she was using – which she suspected had once been a housekeeper’s room, as it was close to the kitchen and fairly small. She had barely explored the rest of the house, she’d been so focused on making this small part liveable. That was tomorrow’s agenda – explore, and decide what to tackle next.
Wandering into the hallway, she looked around at the grand entry, the elegant curved stairs dominating the space, and tried to imagine it in its heyday, 100 years or more ago. She imagined so hard that, for a second, she could almost see a young girl, dressed in early 1900’s clothes, standing at the top of the stairs, looking down. She shook her head at the whimsy, and turned away to consider the doors to either side – perhaps she would start with one of the front rooms tomorrow – they seemed to be sort of parlour / lounge room type spaces – having a place to relax might be a good next step.
As she turned, she caught, again, that flicker of movement at the top of the stairs – crazy – there was nothing there. Moving forward to the parlour door, she stepped past the end of the stairs and a wave of chill enveloped her. She shivered, surprised, wondering if she was catching something – it was a warm day, and she’d felt almost overheated a minute ago. The sensation passed as she reached out to open the door, and she shrugged off the oddity.
The room behind the door was beautiful, half-timber panelled and wallpapered in an art deco type pattern that would cost a fortune to get today. The old furniture was, surprisingly, not so much coated in dust – in places it almost shone. Definitely the place to start tomorrow. She could just imagine herself relaxing in here with a nice warm fire in the hearth – once the chimney was cleaned…
There was a painting above the carved mantelpiece – a family portrait – a man and woman in their twenties or early thirties, with two young girls – maybe 4 and 5 in age. Their clothes suggested the Victorian era, and they looked so happy it made her smile. She wondered who they were – some far distant relatives of hers, perhaps? Was her great aunt Jemima one of those girls? She supposed she’d never actually know. Satisfied with her plan for the morning, Izzy headed back into the hallway, planning on a nice warm cup of tea before bed.
As she stepped through the door, it slammed behind her, before she could even touch it, and suddenly she was chilled all over again. Maybe there was a crack somewhere letting in a cold wind? Maybe that’s why the door had slammed? But where? She shivered, and hurried back to the kitchen, and the reassuring company of the cat.
Chapter Three
Izzy normally slept well – she wasn’t prone to insomnia, nor to bad dreams, and the daily effort in cleaning the place made sure that she was tired enough to sleep. Snuggled under her doona, with Beaufort curled up against her, she drifted off to sleep, looking forward to working on that delightful parlour in the morning.
She wasn’t sure, at first, why she was awake – for a few seconds she had no idea where she was, then memory returned – the house, the whole strange thing that was her life right now. Then it sunk in that she was hearing something - something odd. A high-pitched sound that grated on her, a faint wailing noise, almost like someone screaming in the distance.
She shivered, wondering what it was, suddenly deeply conscious of being alone in a very big old house, in a town she didn’t know, with no-one for company but a grumpy cat. The sound went on, and Beau sat up, staring into the darkness, his fur all ruffled, his ears laid back. He hissed.
Izzy was startled – he never hissed. Should she get up and investigate? But… she found that idea distinctly unappealing – part of her didn’t want to know…
Berating herself, she dragged herself up – she was a strong modern woman – what the hell was she doing? Waiting for some guy to come and deal with it for her? What a
load of rubbish! Time for her to get over herself and move.
Pulling a dressing gown around her, she headed in the direction of the sound, turning on every light as she went. She had been startled to discover that all of the electrics in the place worked – now she was very grateful that they did. Beau stalked along beside her, his tail all fluffed up, and a little rumbly growl in his throat. That did absolutely nothing to reassure her.
The sound seemed to be coming from the hall, the entry way area somewhere and her steps slowed as she got closer. Oddly, it didn’t seem to be getting any louder – there was just, somehow, a sense of direction about it.
She stepped into the hall, and, as she got closer to the entry way, to the foot of the stairs, the air became steadily colder. She shivered, feeling like the sound was penetrating her bones, reaching icy fingers deep into her.
Chapter Four
Izzy stood near the wall, looking around, as she reached out and turned on the main lights in the vaulted entryway space. As the lights came on, she saw, again, that flicker of movement at the top of the stairs, and the chill intensified.
But the second that the lights were on, the sound stopped – it was as if the light switch had turned it off, click, just like that, when it turned the lights on. The chill faded fast from that moment, and Izzy was left standing in the empty hall, staring at the empty stairs, and feeling a bit foolish.
Still – for the first time since Ralph had taken her for everything and run off with Jewel West to live in Thailand, she was not so keen on being alone. Having someone for company seemed, right at that moment, like a very good idea.
Beau had stopped growling, and was sitting at her feet, grooming, making sure that all of those tail hairs that had been fluffed up were laid back in EXACTLY the right place. Once sure that they were, he picked himself up and headed back down the hall, giving her a look over his shoulder that obviously said ‘Are you coming back to the bed?’.
All the damned cat cared about was having a warm human to snuggle up against. It was then that she noticed the little side window near the front door – it was ajar – and a breeze fluttered the ragged curtain as she watched. She let out her breath in a rush – there was the explanation, surely – a breeze through the window creating both the sound and the impression of movement. She felt like a complete idiot.
The Demonic: A Supernatural Horror Novel Page 19