The Demonic: A Supernatural Horror Novel

by Lee Mountford

  She shut and latched the window firmly and took herself back to bed, turning off all the lights as she went.

  The following morning, in the clear light of day, it all seemed beyond silly, and Izzy set about her cleaning, determined to not be so fluff-headed in future. The front parlour really was beautiful, and she suspected that the old furniture might, itself, be worth a fortune on the antiques market, but she loved the room, she wouldn’t sell it.

  After a few hours, it looked gorgeous, sitting in there was almost like stepping back in time. She sank to the couch, pleased when no puff of dust resulted, and looked up at the painting in front of her. Again, she was struck by how happy they looked. She wondered if they really had been that happy, or if the artist had simply made the painting flattering. She hoped they had been happy.

  Her musings were interrupted by a knock at the door – she jumped in surprise – she knew no one in the town, so who could it be?

  On the doorstep stood one of the staff from the legal office.

  “Ms Landers?”

  “Yes, how can I help you?”

  “Mr Felton asked me to bring you this.”

  He proffered a large cardboard carton.

  Izzy took it, carefully, looking at him with a raised eyebrow.

  “What is ‘this’?”

  “Ah, it’s some things from old Miss Winterford’s rooms at the retirement home. Apparently, she had things hidden away in every crevice she could find – you know how old people get as their minds start to wander. The ladies cleaning out the rooms found a couple of boxes and bits and pieces tucked right away at the back, way under the bed against the wall. As everything of hers goes to you, these do too. I have no idea if they have any value or interest to you, but I’m legally bound to give them to you.”

  Izzy nodded and smiled at the man – this could be interesting – she might get some better idea of what her great aunt had been like.

  “Well, thank you for bringing them.”

  “Not a problem Miss, good day to you then.”

  He took himself off, obviously glad to have the errand done with, and Izzy took the box inside, kicking the door closed behind her, and settled back in the parlour to examine what was in there.

  The box proved to contain a scatter of things – mostly predictable items like bits of jewellery, faded photos of unknown people, odd little bits of embroidery and more. But one item stood out. A small wooden chest – the sort of thing that people used to keep their personal keepsakes and precious items in. The chest was wooden, carved sandalwood if she wasn’t mistaken, probably made in China or Malaya and horribly expensive when her great aunt had been young.

  It was locked, and there seemed to be no key. Izzy blew the ever-escaping lock of hair out of her eyes and studied it. How could she open it? It had an odd metal lock on a pin and hasp closure – she had never seen anything quite like it. But maybe, just maybe, she could pick the lock. There was no obvious hole for a ‘normal’ key anyway – perhaps she just hadn’t worked out how the thing operated yet.

  Trying to be logical, she picked the cardboard carton up and upended it, just in case she had missed something, some other item, or even a key. A piece of paper fluttered out. She shook it. Something small dropped to the floor, and rolled to one side. In a flash, Beau was on it, batting it away and chasing it across the room.

  Izzy dropped the box and chased him.

  “Beau, give me that! No, you damn cat, it’s not a chasing game, give me that thing!”

  Five minutes, one scraped arm, and the grime from the underside of a sideboard that she obviously hadn’t cleaned well enough, and Izzy was the proud possessor of an odd little cylindrical thing, and a thoroughly unimpressed cat.

  She collapsed on the couch and studied the odd little object. Could it be a key? Maybe. A few minutes fiddling about proved that it was, indeed a key, fitting into the strange metal lock like a puzzle piece. She dropped the lock onto the small table beside the carved box and paused.

  For some reason, she was almost scared to open it – what might she find inside? Beau jumped up onto the table and sat, staring at the box. He sniffed at it, then shook his head with a loud cat sneeze. Izzy laughed and reached out to open the lid.

  As soon as she touched it, she felt cold – ice cold, her fingertips burning as if she really was touching ice. She made herself continue, lifting the lid carefully. Inside the box were two small necklaces, and a leather-bound book.

  She looked at the necklaces – they seemed ordinary enough – little lockets in an old-fashioned style, intricate gold work on thin gold chains. The book was more interesting – what might it tell her of her great aunt’s life?

  Chapter Five

  The book was a journal, a diary of sorts, and a quick flip of the pages showed a vast difference in the writing through the length of the book – it looked like this had been written in over many, many years. At the beginning, the hand was that of a very young child, all uneven and wobbly. But the words grabbed Izzy and shocked her deeply, dragging her in to read, unable to stop herself.

  ‘I hate myself. I’m supposed to. My mother hates me now too, but she should, given what I did. Father tries to be nice to me, but I know he must be just hiding how he feels. How could he not hate me too?’

  As she read, the air around her chilled even further, and she shook. Beau hissed at her, jumped off the table and went to the other side of the room. What could make a young child write such things? She read on, shaking from the cold, but unable to stop. Each page revealed more horror, from the tragic death that the child believed she was wholly responsible for, to the self-hatred that had consumed her.

  How could parents allow a child to suffer so, to believe such things? Yet, perhaps the child was right, perhaps the parents believed it too. Which was another layer of horror again. Was the child writing this her great aunt? Had she lived her whole life with this great guilt?

  Izzy found herself crying, unable to stop, and kept reading, heartsick at what was on the pages, colder and colder for every page she read and, steadily, more and more scared.

  A sound distracted her – she looked up, and dropped the book. The little necklaces were moving – rattling about in the sandalwood box, all by themselves. She leapt up and, as she did so, her eyes went to the portrait. The two little girls in the portrait were wearing necklaces identical to the ones in the box. And the faces in the portrait no longer looked happy…

  Izzy ran from the room, Beau scooting past her as she ran out the door, slamming it after her. She didn’t stop until she was in the kitchen, her heart racing, her face still wet with tears.

  She sank onto the chair, scooping up Beau and hugging him to her. He purred, and licked the tears off her face. She had never believed in all that supernatural stuff, but… What had just happened? Jewellery didn’t just move about by itself, and century or so old paintings didn’t change in front of you. But… they just had.

  Was she crazy? Or, scary, scary thought, was there actually really something to all that supernatural stuff after all? What was she going to do? Sure as hell, she didn’t want to go back into that room! She wasn’t even sure she wanted to be in this house right now. There wasn’t much choice though – where else could she go?

  She had very little actual cash, and no other options but here. OK then. She wouldn’t let this beat her. Izzy deposited the cat on the floor, wiped the last of the tears from her face, and got herself a coffee. Her brain was going around in circles – what had she seen? Was it real? How could she find out for sure?

  And, on top of all that, she wanted to read the rest of the journal. She had to know more about the life that was written in those pages, she wanted to know, for sure, if it was her great aunt Jemima who had written it. The terrible words of the young child echoed around and around in her thoughts, and she couldn’t let go of the sense of horrific despair they held. But reading more would mean going back into the parlour…

  Chapter Six

  She wok
e the next morning still tired. She hadn’t slept well, and had dreamed – terrible dreams where she floated through the empty house, surrounded by an eerie wailing cry that wouldn’t stop. The fog of the dream cleared slowly from her mind, and she only dragged herself up when Beau made it very clear that he needed to go outside… NOW!

  Izzy spent the morning exploring more – she walked through the upstairs rooms, where furniture was covered in dust sheets and everything looked like it hadn’t been touched for more than the 20 years the place had been empty. But the sun through the dirty windows was warm, and the light was enough to let her imagine what the place might look like, all cleaned up. It was enough to motivate her to keep cleaning.

  In the soft warm sunlight, her fears of the previous day seemed silly – surely she had imagined all that with the painting? Well, she decided, she wanted to read more of that journal, so there was nothing for it – she was going back into the parlour to do just that. On impulse, she grabbed one of the dust sheets and took it with her – there was one way to stop the sensation of the painting watching her. She was just going to cover it up!

  When she reached the top of the stairs, the sharp chill surrounded her again, and she shivered, wondering if the temperature in this house could ever be managed. The cold stayed with her, getting stronger as she reached the bottom of the stairs, and more so when she entered the parlour.

  She went immediately to drape the cloth over the painting, in which the people looked innocently happy again – had she imagined it all? Turning, she stopped, and a sharp knife of fear slid into her. The book, which she had dropped to the floor when she fled the room, was sitting in the box, leaning on the necklaces, neatly propped open at the last page she had read.

  How did it get there?

  Izzy stood, shaking, then forced herself forward. She was going to read it, no matter what.

  An hour later, shivering from the freezing cold, Izzy was still reading. So far nothing untoward had happened, apart from the unnatural cold. It was so heartbreaking to read! The child had a miserable life, was utterly consumed with her sense of guilt, and was ignored by the mother she so desperately wanted to feel loved by.

  She had reached the point where the girl described her mother’s death, and the aching emptiness it left in her, then, not long after that, her father’s rapid decline in health, and his eventual death. When she read the part where the girl described her last conversation with her father, she was overwhelmed with sorrow.

  ‘Father lay there, all thin, and pale and barely able to breath. He looked at me with his big sad eyes, and then forced himself to speak.

  “Mimi, I’m so sorry, I never wanted to leave you like this. I tried to make your life good, but I know I have failed you in so many ways. Your mother failed you too, but she didn’t know how to do anything else. Here, take this…”

  He held out a large sealed envelope. It had my name on it, written in Mother’s handwriting. I took it, not sure that I wanted it.

  “she wrote that for you, before she died. She told me to give it to you, once you were old enough to understand. I don’t know if that’s now, but this is the last chance I’ll have to give it to you. I love you Mimi, no matter what happened.”

  He closed his eyes, and drifted away. He never woke up again.

  I looked at the letter in my hand. I wasn’t going to read it. Ever. I have locked it away – what could she have to say, that I would want to hear? Anything would be too little to make a difference, and so many years too late.’

  Izzy was crying again, tears running down her face, her sobs echoing in the room. Wait… was that an echo… it sounded like… like someone else crying… in the hallway?

  The book dropped from her shaking hand, but somehow landed neatly beside her, still open at the page she had been reading. Izzy froze, for the first time truly terrified. She was too scared to read more, too scared to leave the room, for that would mean going into the hallway – the hallway where someone else was crying…

  Sitting there, unable to do anything, made it worse, frantic, Izzy paced about the room, still crying, from fear now, physically shaking, she glared at the book lying on the couch. It was as if it wanted to be read, as if it knew where she was up to, and made sure to be open at that page! The thought was the last straw, it tipped her over the edge and into action, suddenly the book seemed more sinister than even the crying in the hallway.

  She fled the room. The door slammed behind her, all by itself. As her feet touched the marble of the hall floor, the space around her filled with sound – three voices screamed and sobbed, intertwined, seeming to permeate the walls, the air, her every cell. What did they want?

  The elegantly curved staircase seemed the centre of a whirlwind of terrifying sound. She clapped her hands over her ears, sobbing helplessly herself, and, as she stared at the curving rise of steps, realised, with horror, that this staircase was the one described in the book – this was where the tragic death of the other child had happened – right here in her house!

  Later, Izzy had no memory of running, she just found herself outside, in the back garden, desperate for the warmth of the sun on her skin and the normal sounds of the world around her. What could she do? She had nowhere else to go, but how could she stay here, in a house that, it seemed, was very much occupied by ghosts?

  Chapter Seven

  Another night of little sleep and terrifying dreams left Izzy worn and still very scared. And no closer to a solution. She couldn’t live like this, but she had no other options. The last part of the book that she had read nagged at her thoughts – it was as if the ghosts, if that’s what they were, knew what she was reading, as if that was what had started the whole sobbing and wailing thing.

  She wondered why. She also, when she considered the way she was thinking, wondered about her sanity. Here she was, thinking as if ghosts were real, and in her house!

  But… what if they were? What did they want? Why were they still here, and not gone wherever most dead people went? Maybe she’d never know.

  The other thing that nagged at her thoughts, was the letter from Mimi’s mother, described in that last bit she’d read. Had Mimi ever read it? What did it say. Izzy wanted to know. And the only way she would maybe find out, was to read more of that damned journal!

  Which she was not going to do, in that room, again. No way. But – maybe if she took the book out into the garden – could ghosts come outside? She didn’t know. But it was worth a try. Izzy took a deep breath, spoke to herself sternly, and almost ran through the hallway, into the parlour, grabbed the book (which was, as expected, sitting there open at the last page she’d read, waiting for her…) and ran back out, all the way to the garden before stopping.

  In the garden, the icy chill from the book wasn’t so bad, and she found that she could handle reading it. By late afternoon, she had read almost to the end. It was, by then, very obvious that Mimi was her great aunt Jemima (it was a logical shortening of the name, when she thought about it), and that, sadly she had never read the letter.

  Izzy couldn’t imagine keeping something like that for 80 years or more and not reading it! But, apparently, the old woman had – her bitterness and guilt had run that deep. Sadly, towards the end of her life Jemima had decided that she would read the letter after all, but had been unable to find it. There were no clues in her diary as to where she had hidden it – only that she had put it away somewhere ‘safe’ when she had first moved to the retirement home, and then, with the failing memory of her last years, not known where it was anymore.

  A crazy idea occurred to her. What if she could find the letter? What if it was till somewhere at the retirement home, and they just hadn’t found it? Izzy picked up the book and went back inside.

  The dreams were less that night, as if having read more had somehow helped, but they were still there. If this kept up, she might never feel rested again.

  First thing in the morning, she rang the lawyers and got the name of the retirement home. Callin
g them, she felt a bit idiotic, but they seemed understanding about her concern that something of her great aunt’s may still be hidden somewhere – after all, the old woman had hidden things all over the place. They agreed to search the rooms again.

  Izzy sat in the sun on the garden bench, holding the book, and thinking about it. The last pages, whilst the writings were rather rambling, as was to be expected from a very old person, somehow conveyed the feeling that Jemima regretted everything in the end – not reading the letter, not reconnecting with her mother in any way, not having any way to get over her guilt about Ella’s death.

  There were even short sections of the writing where Jemima seemed to be talking to Ella, and to her mother, trying to tell them how she felt. Perhaps, just perhaps, that was what this was all about? Were the three of them – Mimi, Ella and their mother, her ghosts? Somehow, that thought made it a little less terrifying, for, through the book, Izzy felt like she had come to know them in a way.

  On impulse, and before she could think too much about it and get afraid, she picked up the book and went to stand at the foot of the stairs. Beau followed her, curious, and plopped down beside her, staring intently at the bottom stair. Izzy took a very deep breath, and feeling a bit ridiculous, started to speak.

  “Mimi, Ella, Mrs Winterford, are you here? Is it you who screamed and sobbed at me yesterday?”

  There was no sound, but the air around her chilled so fast that she was surprised her hair hadn’t got icicles on it. Izzy began to shake – it was one thing to think about the possibility of ghosts, it was another entirely to be talking to them.