by Phil Chard
There was nothing else here.
*
Juliet discovered several mini wine racks dotted around the kitchen and helped herself to a glass of Rune Valley. It didn’t taste all that great, but then she didn’t have the palate for alcohol, rarely touching the stuff, so it could have tasted swell to an aficionado. Hungry, she searched the fridge-freezer and pulled out a microwave meal. Two hours later―after another fruitless ghost hunt―she was sitting, feeling very alone, around the dining room table that could have housed eight people. A grandfather clock chimed; its hands semaphored six o’clock. The microwave meal lay half eaten before her, it was being washed down with a second glass of Rune Valley.
The evening raced by with little happening. Juliet consulted her watch several times.
7.27 p.m.
7.38 p.m.
7.53 p.m.
8.10 p.m.
8.27 p.m.
8.40 p.m.
8.43 p.m.
8.56 p.m.
9.01 p.m.
9.35 p.m.
Where was it? She had checked out the whole site and there was no sign. There seemed to be nothing here right now, so either it had never been here and the whole story had been a fabrication, or it had been here and since departed.
Hard to imagine how the damage to Emily’s face could have been attributed to a fanciful imagination, so she dismissed the former. It had since gone then? She had never encountered a spirit which had been able to call up the Light itself. But then she had stumbled upon this trick, so it wasn’t impossible that the spook had too. More likely though it was a ‘seasonal’ spook. She had experienced this before, having to make several visits to one exorcism before the spook eventually graced her with its presence. When she had questioned it on where it was during these absences, it hadn’t known. These ghostly blackouts didn’t seem common, but they did occur. If this was the case, she’d just have to sit it out and wait. If it was active in the house, this part-timer was sure to return.
It was late. She’d be staying the night here. Juliet looked around at her surroundings and decided there were worse places to be marooned.
Chapter VIII
She woke with a start.
The dream had been all too familiar...
Her mouth could almost feel the dirty rag that had been forced into it ― put there to muffle the screams; her eyes felt sticky from the tape which covered them. She rubbed her hands where moments earlier, in her dream world, they had been tightly bound. She instinctively felt at one of the scars on her arms. There were many more on her legs and back.
The physical reminders of the horrors she experienced at that house in Ludivico Street―the house where she had developed the condition―were permanently tattooed onto her skin. Her hands, feet, neck and face were the only places on her body not pock-marked by an instrument of pain. Her fear of intimacy was an understandable by-product of the scarring. With normal clothing, she was indistinguishable from what she considered to be normal society, but she was always careful; short sleeves were never an option. Neither were open neck tops. She’d heard people gossip and whisper and hated it. Still, she should be grateful. Things could have been a lot worse. She wasn’t long away from being victim number five...
DON’T―YOU―HURT―MY―BABY!
She shivered. The words―the last words her mother ever spoke―were as haunting as ever. She had been fifteen. She was walking down the street, daydreaming of her bright future as a doctor, or a scientist, or a pop star, or a famous inventor. The car that pulled up asked if she could give directions. Taught by society to be wary, but trusting by nature, when he brought out a map and made a pantomime of being late for his wife in hospital, her good nature won the battle; she approached the car. What happened next was an intense kaleidoscope of shifting imagery... he launched from the car...
Grabbed at her...
...screams from her...
...sudden pain...
...struggling...
...eyes seeing pavement and sky in quick jerky motions...
...sound of a car door opening...
...another SSCCCCCCRRREEEEAAAAMM from her then...
...hand over her face ― strong tobacco is what it smelt of ― she would never forget the smell, she would never stop hating that smell...
...pain...
...so much it overloaded her senses....
...it was in her head and she was losing sight of the world... images blurred... she was being placed on something soft... she heard a door shut, it echoed back and forth before consciousness left her and all sound and sight were gone.
When she came around, her feet and hands were tied down to a DIY torture rack. Her head was held in place by a metal bar which she felt every time she had to swallow. For a large part of her time in Ludivicio Street, she would remain in this position. She was there five days. Jack DeGrisse had a thing for torturing girls. He enjoyed burning her with cigarettes, or heated pokers on her arms, legs and stomach. But he really enjoyed puncturing skin with knives. It was his raison d’être. DeGrisse had casually told her that she would die on day five and, after a while, Juliet had accepted fate’s roll of the dice. What she didn’t know was that in the background, in the world that Juliet had known before she’d known pain and bleeding on the rack, things were happening. The police would later find four bodies buried in the house in Ludivico Street. They were all subsequently identified, missing girls from much further afield. With Juliet, Jack DeGrisse had gone too close to home. He’d seen a potential victim and simply couldn’t resist. Juliet’s mother Rachel, frantic with worry, was knocking on every door in the neighbourhood, driving around the whole area for any sign of her daughter.
No one knows how she found out where Juliet was; perhaps she found some clue, knocked on a door and found someone who had seen something they’d forgotten to tell the police? Either way, she found something. She was running to DeGrisse’s house when she called the police ― just gave them an address and told them that’s where her daughter was. When she got to the house, DeGrisse was in the basement where he kept Juliet, burning her arms with a heated knife. With strength Juliet would not have credited her with, Rachel Spiers managed to take the door off its hinges. DeGrisse heard nothing. His sadism in the basement was always played out to the loud tune of classical music ― Beethoven and Bach were background music for the screams and the pleas of mercy.
DeGrisse, eventually alerted to a presence, turned around and saw Rachel Spiers.
“DON’T−YOU−HURT−MY−BABY!”
Jack DeGrisse flinched at each screamed word ― as if they were accompanied by arrows.
Rachel Spiers charged at him. She must have seen the knife in his hand, but an animal’s maternal instinct won against the instinct for self-survival.
DeGrisse recovered his poise quickly and at the point that her hands were almost on him, he struck out with the knife; it entered her abdomen with a sickening noise.
Rachel Spiers recoiled; her eyes became wide and wild as she felt at the crimson stains and contemplated her condition. She stumbled and fell backwards, holding her punctured body.
DeGrisse stared at her for several compassionless moments as she squirmed on the ground and then, deciding she was no longer a threat, he turned his back to her. It was a fatal error. Minutes from death herself, Rachel Spiers managed to stand, pick herself a weapon from the array of polished torture implements that were kept in the basement, and struck the side of Jack’s neck with a wild swing of her arm. He staggered and, with her last remaining strength, she managed to pull him to the ground – screaming out from the pain of her own wounds. Rachel Spiers had a stranglehold of him; she struck again, then again, then again. She stopped only when her physical body was too exhausted to carry on.
Juliet, too emotional to enter the new condition she had discovered, was still tied to the rack and could still see only the ceiling. She heard her mother’s shortening breaths through a sea of tears which flowed uncontrollably as the shortening b
reaths of Rachel Spiers became longer and longer apart and eventually ceased.
A male police constable was the first on the scene. His name was Joe Miller. And perhaps Rachel Spiers was not the only one to die in Ludivicio Street that day. The fun loving, popular copper was not the same man after witnessing this scene. He joined Juliet Spiers as someone whose life would be changed forever by events in Ludivicio Street.
Juliet shivered again, eager for the memory to fade away. She tried to keep the memory caged. Only in her dreams did the memory ever break through the surface.
Chapter IX
Day 2
“Previous owners were an Anthony and Marilyn Stone.”
Balancing the phone between head and shoulder, Juliet wrote the names down onto a pad, saying them aloud as she did. “Anthony… and… Marilyn… Stone”
“They left the property two years ago. It’s been empty since then.” Joe confirmed.
“Any children?”
“No. Can’t see any history of ‘Incidents’ at the place either. Tony Stone is of interest though.”
“In what way?”
“Connections and convictions. Nothing outstanding, officially he has paid his society debts. He climbed the criminal ladder and got too high to dirty his own hands. Do me a favour; take a look around the house will you? It’s unlikely, but you never know; maybe there’s a forgotten log book, notepad or computer disk somewhere over there with some juicy details. A lot of people would like to see this guy in jail.”
“I’ll take a look.”
“Your spook still playing hide and seek?”
“Yeah and it’s winning the game.”
They both finished the call off with gossip and pleasantries. Juliet then ran three laps around the property and spent most of the rest of the day relaxing in an armchair that had quickly become a favourite. Television had become a bore and so she had raided one of the unopened boxes marked ‘books’ and pulled out the book she now read: Tess of the D’Urbervilles.
In the afternoon, she entered the condition and did another sweep of the house; she still found nothing.
By 10 p.m. she was tired and made her bed on the sofa downstairs. Only one of the bedrooms was in a state of health and it was the couple’s marital suite. It would be pretty creepy to sleep in there; besides the living room was fine, she could watch TV until she dropped off.
By 11 p.m. she was tired but still awake.
By 12 p.m. she was in a dreamland.
*
Day 3
3:36 a.m.
Juliet was catapulted upright in bed, her breath frenzied. As the fog of dreams slowly lifted, she realised she’d been evicted from another dream about Ludivicio Street.
DON’T−YOU−HURT−MY−BABY!
She’d heard the words again; those words often stalked her in dreams. Her mother’s face, his face, his knives, the dungeon in his basement...
Needing a distraction, she reached for the television remote and was soon surrounded by comforting stereo digital sounds and flicking images from a very late night film. She settled back, not wanting to return to dreams just yet, and lavished a small amount of tired attention on the film. It was about a corrupt cop who sold evidence, drugs and guns. He also used violence and was involved in wrongful convictions and such-like. Other members of the police were aware of his loose-cannon approach to police work and were intent on catching him in the act and putting an end to his renegade ways. Dirty cop’s aim was status quo ― continue being a dirty cop and avoid being caught and paying for his crimes. This dirty cop vs. non-dirty cops plot device was the glue keeping the film together. Her mind inevitably turned to Joe and whether he was under scrutiny. Was someone watching him closely like the guy in the film?
Juliet fell asleep again sometime after 5 a.m. and woke again at eight. She ran four laps of the property. The day went by with little happening. A games console in one of the unpacked crates was the top source of entertainment for the rest of the day. Controlling a cartoon mouse, she avoided traps and ate cheese all the way to level seven of ten.
Chapter X
Day 4
The power indicator on her phone was on its last bar and flashing a warning red signal. She hadn’t thought to bring a charger, believing that the job would be over within a few hours. There was no house phone, the new owners hadn’t gotten around to arranging one. There wasn’t a lot she could do about it, but Juliet would soon be cut off from the outside world. She rang Joe to inform him of the situation.
“I don’t like it.” Joe informed her.
“What’s to like? It’s the reality. Why are you edgy?”
Joe feared this was a plot by the spook, to leave her cut off. Juliet laughed this off. “Are you kidding me?”
“You can come back; you don’t have to go through with this.”
Yeah, I could stay in your debt forever Joe, she thought. She said, “Some nice people want to move into their nice new house Joe. And why shouldn’t they? Why should some scumbag spook be allowed to scare them away?”
“This isn’t Ludivicio Street and you’re not dealing with Jack DeGrisse. You don’t have anything to prove.”
Juliet ended the call, irritated. She ignored Joe’s follow up call. Within a few hours her phone was dead.
Lap after lap of the property, Juliet ran with Joe’s words ringing in her ears. She was here for a payday; this wasn’t anything to do with Ludivicio Street or Jack DeGrisse.
She wasn’t here because of Ludivicio Street...
She wasn’t...
Was she?
After showering she walked her aching muscles into the kitchen. She grabbed another bottle of wine from the cellar. It was French and white and a lot better than the first one she’d tried; that being the case, she tried more of it.
After she’d drunk three-quarters of the bottle, she rested on the floor for four hours.
The rest of the day slipped hazily by; Juliet progressed to level nine of ten on the game she had taken a liking to. Having finished Tess of the D’Urbervilles, she made a start on Wuthering Heights. It dropped into her sleeping lap just after midnight.
Chapter XI
Day 5
Ancestral voices fill the air…
Juliet’s eyes sprang open.
The forest strips your senses bare…
It was loud. Confused and still mentally elsewhere, she tried to make sense of the sound… music.
…visions from a higher world…
She looked at her watch: 1:23 a.m.
Juliet had not even seen a CD player or stereo system in the house, but the song was being played at an ear-splitting level from somewhere within the house.
Her heart rate was quickening ― it was showtime.
She shuffled from her makeshift bed onto the floor and switched on a light which momentarily dazzled her eyes. Her ears searched for the music’s origin; once tuned in, they led her to the foot of the staircase.
At the bottom of the staircase was a decadent three pane window which overlooked the garden outside. It was positioned with architectural precision, presenting anyone looking out with a picture-postcard view of the exterior garden. But at night, wonder became fear. The moonlight made sinister tree shadows on the grass. Where birds had rested during the day, now a madman could easily hide and lie in wait with an axe.
Juliet chided her imagination. There was work to do.
The song continued; it drew her in like a magnet. Her feet slowly thrust her forward. The music was amplified with every cautious step; it was accompanied by another beat; she could feel the quickening beat of her heart within her ribcage; her face was suddenly feeling flushed as images of Emily Houghton’s bludgeoned face entered her mind…
Stop.
She counselled herself and obeyed the voice. She was frozen on the staircase.
Deep breaths.
She took exaggerated breaths for a minute.
The music carried on, oblivious to her struggles.
Calmer – a
nd angry that she’d experienced fear – her steps resumed.
Ancestral voices fill the air…
The forest strips your senses bare…
Upon reaching the summit, she quickly reached for the light switch.
Click.
Nothing.
She retried, several times, all the time knowing the light was not going to come on. Damn it.
Juliet’s eyes tried to make sense of shapes in the darkness. As her eyes adjusted to the environment, familiar shapes started emerging from the fog of darkness. The upper floor was stately; the stairs led onto a square perimeter walkway surrounded by a guardrail balustrade. It was the kind of image that harked back to a thousand horror movie scenes where the hero or villain would crash through the guardrail and fall to their death; a twitching corpse on the ground floor, with legs twisted at unnatural angles.
The design was a pain, as well as eerie, you had to walk all the way around the perimeter to get to any of the rooms. At least the space was clutter free ― with the exception of the carved wooden sculpture of two Siamese cats entwined. On all sides of the perimeter walkway was a confusion of doors – ten in total.
Ancestral voices chant and plea…
The high volume easily identified the room of the song’s origin ― one of the empty bedrooms.
“I’m here to help.” Juliet tried to shout over the music, but her words were drowned out.
A dancing sibyl calls to me…
She walked towards the room, bypassing the tacky Siamese cats decoration.
Conscious mirage melts away…
Her bare feet were becoming icicles on the unforgiving wooden floor.
The secret rainbow covers me…
She stopped at the door; it was ajar by the smallest of margins. Her flat palm nudged it open another quarter inch. Encouraged by a view of emptiness inside, she nudged it open further. The room was still barren, exactly how she remembered it from the dozen or so reconnaissance trips of the house that she’d undertaken. Yet music was coming from somewhere in here.