A Haunting at Hensley Hall (A Ravynne Sisters Paranormal Mystery)

by Merabeth James

  “A real bad ass. It’s been three years since Paul. Is there any chance?” he asked softly, tipping up her chin so she was forced to meet his eyes.

  “I can’t think about anything, or anyone, but my sister right now. Maybe I can give you some sort of answer on the other side of all this. Let’s go check out the house, shall we?” His nod was her answer, though his eyes said more.

  With Freddie trailing in their wake, they checked out every ground floor room. Every window was locked, as was every exit door. There was no sign of forced entry anywhere. Whoever had taken Meg must have convinced her to open the door in the short time they were gone or, as Charlie told Zack, “She left the house for some reason despite what I told her."

  “Or because of what you told her if she is as stubborn as her sister,” he replied.

  “So it’s back to me again,” she began, then stopped. Freddie was acting strangely. He woofed….then woofed again, tilting his head from side to side and staring into the hall.

  “What’s got into him?” Zack asked and then they both saw it. A glowing ball that slowly took the form of a large fluffy white cat. Freddie barked excitedly and took off in pursuit.

  “It’s Cloud and I think he’s trying to lead us somewhere. He must know where Meg is! Come on!” Charlie called over her shoulder, as she sprinted after Freddie.

  Cloud melted easily through door after door, while Freddie was forced to wait till Charlie and Zack got there. But Cloud was always on the other side, flicking his fluffy tail impatiently.

  As they ran past the kitchen table, Charlie paused long enough to snatch up her gun. Opening the outside door, they stepped out into a moonlit night. Ahead of then, Cloud glowed eerily, yowled twice and Freddie took off again in full pursuit.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  It was as dark as it was ever likely to get when Meg’s eyes fluttered open again. Something had roused her from a not very nice dream…something to do with being devoured alive. She heard Tavish whine and then the front door opened. Please, please let it be Charlie, she begged silently. But it wasn’t. Devon was back. Quickly he removed Annie’s dress and extra padding, threw her glasses on the dresser and kicked off her shoes. Peeling off her support hose, he straightened and crossed to the bed. Turning on the lamp next to it, he looked at her intently, then checked her bonds to make sure they were still secure. He removed her gag and, gently, touched the red marks the duct tape had left on her face. She blinked up at him and worked her mouth to ease her aching jaws.

  “I’ve brought you a bite to eat, if you’re hungry. I haven’t much time, Meg. It’s later than I wanted it to be, but I couldn’t get here any sooner.”

  “Late for what? What do you mean?” she asked.

  “If I’m not there, he’ll come here. I can’t let him find you!”

  Somehow she knew the answer to the question she had to ask. “Who?”

  “My father. He made me take Brittany. He is too strong for me. I should never have released his malignancy into the world. In death, he is more powerful than ever. He followed me back here after the séance and poured his ugliness into me…his rotting soul…and I couldn’t stop him. Not entirely. Because I am his son and his blood courses through my veins. His evil is my inheritance. But also because of you. He said he would possess you, Meg, unless I did as he said and I could never allow that to happen.”

  “Devon, stop it! Fight him! You are your own person. You don’t have to let him manipulate you. Is Brittany still alive?” Meg asked fiercely.

  “Yes, at least for now. He wanted me to rape and kill her last night, but I fought him off. I won that once, but I can’t do it twice.”

  “We have to go to wherever you’re holding her, Devon, and release her. Maybe he isn’t there yet? Maybe he’s still in hell or wherever he hangs out during the day. We’ve got to try! She’s just a girl…an innocent girl. Please, Devon, let me go. I won’t scream…won’t run. I’ll help you get Brittany out of there.”

  He paced the room…back and forth…back and forth. “I can’t stop him! Don’t you hear me? Don’t you understand? I can’t stop him. Nobody can. He is the essence of evil and he cannot be destroyed!”

  Meg stuck out her chin in a gesture Charlie would have recognized. “Nonsense! We’ll find a way! Now let me go! Time’s awasting!”

  He smiled despite himself. “And Charlie thinks she’s the strong one. All right. Have it your own way. I can’t fight both him and you.” He sighed deeply and untied her from the bed. “You are walking into the pit of hell, Meg. I’ll do all I can to protect you, but it won't be enough.”

  Her head ached abominably and she felt like throwing up. “Okay, pit of hell here we come, but first I need a minute in the bathroom. Maybe you could find us a flashlight?”

  Moments later, they were on their way. Meg was shaking and had to stop once to vomit in a bush, but she refused to turn back. The early moon pushed through a bank of clouds and lend an additional surrealism to what was already way past that. The trail was nothing more than a tangle of treacherous vines, roots, rocks and brush that the flashlight barely illuminated. They hadn't gone far, when Meg fell hard and she cursed under her breath. Devon looked down at her, "It only gets worse, you know."

  "Let's go," she told him with grim determination, as she let him pull her to a standing position. "Every second counts!" Something rustled in the bushes and Meg refused to think about what it could be. One step in front of the other and as quickly as possible, she told herself, Brittany's life depended on it.

  An owl hooted somewhere close by. Wasn't that a bad omen, she asked herself? But then how much badder could it be? A tree root tripped her and she fell again. "I had to ask?" she muttered, but she pulled herself up and hurried after Devon who was moving much faster now. And he had the flashlight!

  She looked around worriedly. It was getting darker still…night was closing around them like a clenched fist, though the moon silvered the tree tops and cast puddles of light in their path. "Hello, up there! Slow down! I can't see a thing back here!" she called to Devon. Dear God, she thought, how much farther can it be? Not that she particularly wanted to get there, all things considered, but she had to get there…and quickly.

  As if reading her mind, Devon appeared suddenly from the shadows. "Almost there," he told her. The moon caught him squarely and he looked like a dark, fallen angel, but it was his smile that froze her soul. It was the sad, resigned smile of a man who knew the inevitability of his fate and had lost all hope. He was going to play out the last of it, but already knew the outcome.

  "Devon, please fight him. He can't win if you won't let him. Remember how much you hate him…what he did to your sister and those poor girls…."

  He laughed mockingly, and grabbed her hand. "Then we'd better hurry. It may already be way too late."

  ***

  Charlie and Zack pushed through the undergrowth and along trails only animals ever traveled. Freddie raced ahead, following the glowing Cloud who was forced to pause and wait for him from time to time. Freddie was slowing down…getting tired of the game. Finally, he stopped and trotted back to Charlie. "No, Freddie! Go find Cloud! You have to follow him or we'll never find Meg in all this," but Freddie yawned and sat down. "What are we going to do now, Zack? She could be anywhere!"

  He took her arm and pointed up the trail. Cloud had returned and was waiting for them. "There's your answer. Cloud has no intention of letting us down. Come on!"

  ***

  Between tripping over roots, running into low hanging branches and throwing up at several points, it seemed like forever before they landed in a clearing, where Devon pointed to a chimney silhouetted against the charcoal sky. “We’re here. The cellar entrance is just to the left of that chimney. Please, Meg, don’t do this,” he pleaded, grabbing her by the shoulders and looking into her moon washed eyes.

  His own eyes were in shadow, but she could feel their intensity. “She’s only seventeen, Devon. The same age as Breanna. How can you let her d
ie, too?” She tore herself free from his grasp and grabbed the flashlight from his hand. Sweeping the ground with its light as she ran, she reached the chimney and looked around.

  The cellar doors were almost hidden by brush and she found them more by accident than design, when one foot went through the rotting wood. Muttering to herself, she pulled her foot free and was struggling to open the doors, when Devon’s hand covered hers.

  She looked at him and he was smiling. The same sad, fatalistic smile, as before. “Be careful. The stairs are steep and as rotted as these doors in places. There’s a lantern on a hook down there. I’ll go first and light it. Wait here.”

  But she didn’t. She was on his heels, as he opened the doors and climbed down into the cellar. The smell was the first thing she noticed. Damp earth, decay, mold and something else that made her retch again. She swept the cellar with her flashlight, while he lit the lantern.

  On a makeshift table in the middle of the room, was a body. Brittany. Devon held up the lantern and she sprinted forward, desperately afraid they were too late.

  She was covered with a fragment of filthy blanket…mouth taped shut…hands and feet bound tightly, as only Devon knew how. She looked oh so dead! Then she opened her eyes. Terror lived there and Meg’s heart lurched. “Brittany, we’re here to save you. We’re going to take you home,” she told her, but Brittany’s eyes were on Devon.

  He looked down at her and smiled. “I’m back, just as I promised.”

  Meg looked up at Devon and the flashlight dropped from her nerveless fingers. In another era she would have swooned, but there was no time for that luxury now, she thought. Devon was becoming someone else. He was like a bottle slowly being filled with darkness. “Devon!” she cried. “Fight him! Fight him!” But Devon’s eyes were hot, like burning embers, like the eyes she had seen before….his father’s eyes. And he held a cane. The light glinted off its silver top, as he pulled out the hidden sword encased in its ebony length.

  But somewhere inside the horror in front of her, Devon was still there. “Run, Meg! For God’s sake, run!” he pleaded, hollowly. His face shifted…contorted….until she could see no vestige of Devon left, but still he called, “Meg!”

  And then she heard her name called again. This time from outside the evil in front of her. It was Charlie! “We’re in here,” she screamed as loudly as she could. “Old Thumper has control of Devon.”

  “Not quite,” he whispered as he grabbed her by the shoulders. He was panting heavily, face contorted, as though he was wrestling with the devil himself. “We’re going up there and you must promise to do just as I say.” She looked at him. Somehow he had managed to push back the darkness just enough…long enough… that he was Devon again. The man who loved her. “Keep moving, Meg. He’s curious. He doesn’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “What are….?” she began, but he wrapped his arm around her neck and choked off her words, then forced her up the stairs. At the top, he stood there and looked around. “I have a blade at your sister’s neck and I will cut her throat. There is only one way you can stop me. Shoot me. And aim well…you won’t have a second chance!”

  Meg struggled to speak, but he tightened his hold and she began to lose consciousness. She could feel the cold evilness churn and twist in the man who held her, as his father began to understand what he was up to. “Kill me or she’s dead,” Devon screamed.

  “Devon! Let Meg go! We can fix this!” Charlie shouted.

  He screamed again. “Shoot me…please shoot me! I can’t hold him off much longer!”

  A shot rang out and Meg felt his hold loosen, then he fell to the ground, pulling her down with him. She cradled him in her lap, as he whispered, “Let the cops think they got their man…easier that way for everyone. Do you think there's forgiveness for me, Meg?” he asked hoarsely.

  "You saved me from him and you gave up your life….

  "It really wasn't much of a life."

  "It was to me. You are my friend," Meg told him softly through her tears.

  He smiled then and gave one last shuddering breath.

  Then a lot of things seemed to happen at once. Devon began to glow and a black oily substance poured from his mouth and was sucked up into a huge shadow figure that came out of the darkness.

  Slowly, it took the shape of a man, far larger than life, with glowing red eyes. He looked around like a wild animal caught out in the open, then scooped up the sword that had fallen from Devon’s hand and pointed it at Meg, but she held her ground, unwilling to abandon Devon even in death..

  From somewhere close, she, she heard Charlie scream her name, just as a spire of blue light spun out of nowhere and morphed into Breanna…beautiful again, wearing her white dress with the blue sash.

  She drifted over Devon, then smiled and reached down, pulling his spirit free. They stood there together looking into each other's eyes, then laughed like children.

  Hovering above them, the black shadow writhed and seethed with anger and hate; his burning red eyes filled with malevolency, but Breanna told him fiercely, “We are one now as we should always have been. One soul separated at birth. You are no match for us together. You need to go to hell where you belong.”

  But the evil in front of them disagreed. Pulsing wildly, he raised the sword above his head. “I am your father. I made you! You belong to me. You will always belong to me!” he screamed at them. “I will destroy you both!”

  Suddenly, a glowing orb came out of the trees and sped their way. It grew larger and larger then morphed into the shape of a woman. Meg gasped. It was Nell…no longer frail and old, but young, angry and very determined.

  Shaking her fist, she thrust herself between the twins and the dark, evil being that threatened them. “Hold your horses, Lord Hensley," she shouted, "which is really kind of funny when you get the whole context. As far as all that crap you were spouting goes, let me tell you something. I was there when these two were born and heard their mama call their father’s name. It wasn’t you she called. Seems she was tired of your fumbling attempts. She let you think you had accomplished the deed on one of your drunken visits, then cuckolded you with George the stable master…the short, dark one, remember? Not being the sentimental kind, she waited till she was certain she'd conceived, then sacked him. Since the midwife was deaf as a post, that left only me to keep her secret. She made me promise I would not breathe a word of it on this side of the grave, which brings me here.

  "So now you know the truth. You have no hold on either Breanna or Devon. Be gone! You have done enough harm in your life and in your death. We will not suffer you here any more.”

  While Devon muttered to Breanna that he “should have been better in the saddle all things considered”, Nell joined them in a powerful circle of pure white light. Then Breanna lifted Cloud into her arms and smiled as, one by one, three young girls floated up from the cellar, chanting "We do condemn you in this world and the next…We do condemn you….."

  As each joined the circle of light, it grew stronger and stronger until it became so intense it tore through the center of the malignant being before them, shattering him into oily black fragments that were dispersed by a sudden wind that rose from nowhere and returned to the same place. The very last of Old Thumper was a long drawn out “No-o-o-o-o-o-o!” that faded into nothingness, as the three girls joined hands and spiraled upward. into a night sky now brilliant with light.

  Meg wasn't certain when Charlie joined her. In many ways, it felt like she'd always been there. "I'm here, Meg," she said softly, as she knelt next to her sister.

  Meg smiled and touched her cheek, then, gently, detached herself from Devon’s body and stood. She looked up at the shimmer of light that was now Devon and smiled. He was free and he was with Breanna. She couldn't have asked for a better outcome than that. He returned her smile and she felt the light brush of a phantom kiss

  Then Breanna and said, “Thank you, Meg and Charlie for everything. We will be leaving now…going into the light, wh
ere love heals all. My body is on the island inside the Folly. He didn’t know that was our favorite place.”

  “And please don’t tell anyone Breanna’s there. Scatter my ashes over her grave. Neither of us want to be in the family crypt. Cloud, too If you will. I love you, Meg,” Devon told her.

  “I love you, too,” she whispered back. Her hand found Charlie's and they both watched in awe as Breanna and Devon turned to each other. Smiling into each other's eyes they joined hands and became one…one perfect white flame…like an angel made of light. They were laughing….children again… as they spun up into the light and vanished into the night sky.

  Nell watched with the rest of them and sighed. “I was too ready to believe what I shouldn’t have, and not see what I should. But they have forgiven me for that. It wasn’t Devon that hurt Timmy. I met him on my way here, hanging about where the stable used to be. Kind of lost and lonely. Told me he hurt the kittens in the rattraps and beat the mare. She had her revenge later. Too bad I believed Devon capable of that. I will regret that to my dying day.” Then she laughed. “Seems I'm forgetting my dying day is over and done with. One minute I was breathing like an old steam engine on an upgrade and the next I was looking down at this old woman, lying in my bed. Then I came here. And just in the nick of time!

  "I always liked it at Hensley Hall, despite everything. I’d like to stay, if you don’t mind. There’s still children there…Toby for one. I’d like to haunt the schoolrooms and maybe make amends for my failings with Breanna and Devon. I promise I won’t be too much trouble. The little ones need me,” Nell told them wistfully.

  Charlie wrapped her arm around her sister and answered for both of them. “We’d love to have you, Nell. Welcome to the family.”

  Meg looked at Zack and then her sister. “Which one of you fired the shot?”

  Zack answered her, “I did. It was the coup de gras for someone who died years ago. I gave him what he wanted. His freedom. And her.”