by Amy Cross
“But the photos of Emily flying across the room,” Michael replied after a moment, “and of a blur in the doorway... Aren't they, kind of, obviously fake? When you look at them today, I mean.”
“They look like something out of a really bad horror movie,” added another student.
“You need to see them in context,” Robert replied, as he realized he was starting to sweat. “There was no Photoshop back then, and there was a lot of evidence at the time that suggested -”
“Like the voices?” asked a student near the front, mimicking the distorted, demonic voice that had come from Emily's mouth all those years ago.
The students started laughing.
“I need an exorcist!” the student continued, his voice becoming more and more twisted. “Somebody help me! I'm possessed by a spirit!”
“That's enough,” Robert said, trying not to let them see that he was feeling extremely uncomfortable.
“But that name Drella,” Michael added, “was obviously just a bastardization of the title Cinderella, which was one of the books on the little girl's nightstand.”
“I...” Pausing, Robert stared at him for a moment. “What?”
“In one of the famous photos. There are some books on the nightstand. One of them's Cinderella. Isn't that obviously where the little girl got the name Drella from?”
“Well...” Pausing again, Robert thought back to the various images. How, he wondered, had he spent so many hours analyzing them, and he'd never made the most obvious connection? “I don't think there's much point going back into that whole thing now,” he said finally. “It was what it was, and it all happened a long time ago. It's in the past.”
“Unless it was real,” Julie suggested.
He turned to her.
“At the start, I mean.” She paused. “Wasn't there a suggestion by the mother, after it all got exposed, that the very first reports about the ghost were true?”
“I think she would probably have said anything at that point to save face,” Robert replied. “The woman had, after all, just been exposed as a scheming liar who was manipulating her daughter in order to make money. Let's not try rewriting history here, guys. The Emily Stone haunting was a hoax from start to finish. End of story.”
“But if the little girl -”
“Enough!” He clapped his hands together. “These little diversions can be fun, but I think we'd all like to get on with the work that's relevant to your upcoming essays, wouldn't we? Let's leave the story of Emily Stone and her hoaxed haunting in the past, where it belongs.”
***
Forty minutes later, with class having ended for the morning, Doctor Robert Slocombe was on his knees in the bathroom, throwing up.
Chapter Fourteen
“Have you been crying?”
“What?” Turning away from the cooker for a moment, Emily realized she didn't know how long Lizzie had been watching from the kitchen door. “No, of course not,” she continued, forcing a smile. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason.”
“Wash your hands, dinner's ready.”
Lizzie paused for a moment, before heading through to the bathroom.
Reaching up, Emily wiped her eyes, checking for any errant tears that might have been left behind.
“Get a grip,” she told herself, before glancing at the ceiling and imagining the bedroom directly above the kitchen. “There's nothing here. It's all a lie. It was always a lie.”
***
“Mummy! Mummy!”
“What?” Waking suddenly and opening her eyes, Emily looked around the dark room for a moment before realizing that Lizzie was nudging her shoulder. “What is it, sweetie?”
“It's in there again.”
She paused for a moment. “What are you talking about?”
“Listen.”
They lay in silence for a moment.
“Lizzie, there's -”
“I heard it!” she whispered.
“I think this time it was probably a dream, okay?” Reaching out through the darkness, she stroked the girl's head and then glanced at the clock by the bed. “Come on, it's the middle of the night, don't -”
Before she could finish, she heard a clear, solid bumping sound coming from the other side of the wall, from Lizzie's bedroom.
“It's in there again,” Lizzie whispered, gripping Emily's night-shirt and pulling her closer.
Emily stayed completely still, as she felt her heart starting to pound in her chest. She told herself that Lizzie was just a little girl with a strong imagination, that all little girls had night terrors now and again, but deep down she couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. A moment later, she heard another bump and turned back to look at the wall, as she felt Lizzie's arms tightening around her waist.
“Can we go and stay with Grandma?” the little girl whimpered. “I'm scared.”
“I don't think Grandma would be very helpful right now,” Emily replied, looking over at the door for a moment. More than anything, she wanted to suddenly realize what had caused the noise, to remember that she'd left a window open or to realize that the neighbor's cat had managed to sneak inside again. In fact, once she'd discounted those two possibilities, she even began to hope that there was a burglar, since at least that would be something grounded, something she could deal with in rational terms. A moment later, however, she heard another bump from Lizzie's room, and she realized with a cold sweat that she was going to have to go and take a look.
That's what parents did. They took charge.
“Mummy...”
“Wait here,” she told Lizzie. As she tried to get out of bed, however, she felt her daughter pulling her back.
“Don't go!” Lizzie whispered.
“It's nothing,” she replied, trying not to sound scared. “Just stay here, I'll be back in two seconds.”
Slipping free of Lizzie's grasp, she made her way cautiously across the dark room and then pulled the door open. Glancing back, she saw Lizzie's terrified face watching her with wide-open eyes.
“There's nothing to be scared of,” she continued. “Just wait right here.”
Slipping through the door and then pulling it shut, she made her way along to Lizzie's room, where the door was already partway open. Had she left it open earlier, or had it managed to open itself? She honestly couldn't remember, but as she got closer she realized she could hear a faint rustling sound from inside. Reaching out, she was about to take hold of the handle when she heard a faint bumping sound coming from inside the dark room, following by what seemed to be a whisper.
She froze for a moment.
Something was definitely talking on the other side of the door.
“No,” she said to herself quietly, trying to find some courage from somewhere. “Just... No!”
With her hand still almost on the handle, she took a half-step forward and leaned toward the door. Turning to one side, she stopped once her ear was almost touching the wood, and she listened.
Someone was in there, whispering furiously.
“Oh God,” Emily mouthed, not making a sound.
A moment later, she heard a creaking sound further along the landing. Looking back, she saw Lizzie leaning out of the main bedroom, and she quickly waved for her to go back inside.
“What is it?” Lizzie whispered. “Mummy, is there-”
“Go to bed!” Emily hissed.
As she watched Lizzie reluctantly going back into the other room, Emily realized the whispering sound had stopped. She waited, and a moment later there came a new noise: a faint creak from the floorboards on the other side of the door, followed by another, then another, getting closer. It was as if, whatever was in there, it knew Emily was listening.
She looked down at the handle, daring herself to push the door open.
On three, she told herself. One. Two.
She paused.
Three.
She paused again, still trying to find the courage as her heart raced in her chest.
<
br /> And then, slowly, the door began to creak open, inch by inch, revealing the darkness within until it was open all the way.
Emily stared ahead with terrified anticipation.
There was nothing in there.
She waited a moment longer, before taking a step forward. The bookcase was still overturned and the room was still a mess, just as she and Lizzie had left it a day earlier. They'd been putting off the big clean-up job, and even the bed was still messy. She flicked the light switch but found that it wasn't working; she tried a couple more times, and then she made her way to the window, hoping against hope that somehow it might be open, and that there'd be muddy paw prints on the sill, but it was closed and locked, just as she'd feared. Turning, she looked back across the room.
For a moment, just one brief moment, she thought she could see a figure standing right behind her. Something dark and tall, something staring straight at her.
Something she'd seen once before, when she was a child.
She blinked, and it was gone.
“Mummy?” Lizzie called out from the main bedroom. “Are you coming back?”
“Yeah,” she whispered, hurrying to the door before turning and looking across the room again. She waited, as if she expected something to make its presence known, and then she stepped out onto the landing and pulled the door shut.
***
By the time dawn arrived, Emily had quietly climbed out of bed and left Lizzie sleeping. Down in the front room, she'd fired up her laptop and begun to do some research, looking at images she'd spent the past twenty-four years trying to forget.
“Tortured by evil forces?” asked one headline, on a newspaper front-page that had been scanned and posted online. “A little girl and her mother from the north of England say their house is haunted by a terrifying poltergeist that has been making their lives miserable.”
Shuddering at the memory of those days, Emily clicked through to another image, this time showing a front-page from the day after the hoax was exposed.
“Liars!” the headline shouted. “Coltreath haunting exposed as clever hoax!”
She remembered those days like they were yesterday. The shame, the humiliation, and her mother's furious anger. Finding a link to a forum for ghost-hunters, she clicked through and found that even as recently as a year ago, people had been discussing the case.
“They were just after money,” one forum member had written. “No big mystery there.”
“The mother was a fucking liar,” replied another, “and the kid was a dumb little shit.”
“Once a liar, always a liar,” added yet another. “I used to feel sorry for the girl, but then I figured, she was old enough to know better.”
Scrolling down, she was shocked to see a photo of Doctor Robert Slocombe. He'd been handsome back in the old days, but the years clearly hadn't been kind. Now, he had the puffy, reddened, slightly bloated face of a man who drank too much, and she felt there was a hint of sadness in his eyes. According to one forum member, Slocombe had been asked at a conference about the Emily Stone hoax, and he'd responded “irascibly and with obvious anger”. She felt a shudder in her chest as she realized the hoax must have left him humiliated.
“Mummy?”
Turning, she saw that Lizzie was standing in the doorway.
“I woke up and you weren't there,” Lizzie said. “Why did you leave me?”
“I was only gone a minute or two,” Emily replied, closing the laptop lid before her daughter reached her for a hug. “It's okay. Everything's going to be fine. I'm going to fix it.”
***
“She's been outside a bit more,” added the nurse as they made their way along the corridor at the nursing home. “We're trying to get her to socialize a little more, but it's taking time. She's also very annoyed about the ban on smoking inside. She hates the nicotine gum, and she keeps setting off the smoke alarms by lighting up inside.”
“Sorry about that,” Emily muttered. Reaching the door to the common area, she immediately spotted her mother over on the far side, sitting alone in her wheelchair and looking out at the garden. All the other residents were at the main table, playing cribbage, but as usual Joyce Stone was excluding herself.
“I think it'd be good for her to join in,” the nurse continued. “If you could try to encourage her, that'd be great. Unfortunately, at the moment it seems like she prefers being by herself. If she'll just get talking to the rest of them, I'm sure she'll start to get a few friends.”
Making her way across the room, Emily said hello to a few of the other residents before reaching her mother, who didn't seem to have noticed her arrival.
“Hey, mum,” she said finally, setting a pot of flowers down on the table. “I brought you something.”
No reply.
“It's a nice day out there,” she continued, putting her coat on the back of a chair and then taking a seat. “If you like, I can take you into the garden for a while. Would you like that? It'd be better than sitting in here.”
She waited.
Nothing.
“I spoke to Stan, he said he'd be along to see you tomorrow.”
Again, no reply.
“I think...”
Taking a deep breath, Emily paused for a moment to check that no-one was close enough to overhear them. Turning back to her mother, she saw that the old woman was still staring out the window with pale, milky eyes.
“Lizzie's starting to say that she can see things in the house,” Emily continued finally. “I need you to tell me what it was like for me, when I first started to...” She paused again, trying to find the right words. “I know it's probably nothing, but I'm worried about her. Mum, please, can you just look at me for a moment? This is important!”
Joyce sniffed, but she made no effort to even acknowledge Emily's presence.
“Some of the things Lizzie is saying,” Emily continued, “remind me of things I remember from when I was her age. I can't talk to anyone about this, because they all just think I'm a liar, but I need you to help me work out what was real and what wasn't. It's all kind of muddled together in my head, and I can't sort it out. That's your fault, you know. You put so many lies in my mind, I don't even know what really happened.”
She waited.
Silence.
“Mum, please...”
Silence.
“The very start of it all,” Emily said with a sigh, “that was real, wasn't it? I remember it being real, but it's hard to really sort things out. There was something in that house, wasn't there? It stopped when we started with the hoax, I don't know why, but...”
She waited.
No reply.
“Is it possible,” she continued, “that it might have returned? That it might have, I don't know, woken up or stirred? Maybe after all these years, it's back, and this time it's going after Lizzie.”
Again, she waited.
Again, no reply.
“Or was it all bullshit?” she asked finally. “Come on, at least tell me that. I remember things happening, but is that a lie? Was any of it true?”
Sighing, she reached over and grabbed the side of her mother's wheelchair. Before she could turn the chair to face her, however, Joyce reached down and slapped her hand away.
“Mum!”
“Did you bring my ciggies?” Joyce asked.
“Mum, this is -”
“Where are they?”
“You're not allowed cigarettes here,” Emily reminded her. “Please, can we just -”
“Lot of fucking use you are, then,” Joyce replied, pointedly turning to look away. “Can't even bring me the one thing I actually enjoy.”
“Mum -”
“It's alright for you. I can see you're doing alright. You've put on weight, you know. Wouldn't be surprised if you get a double chin soon.”
“Can we talk about Lizzie and the house?”
“After everything I did for you, you can't even bring me some Marlboros.”
“Was it real?” she asked.
“Mum, I just need to know this one thing. The way I remember it, is that the very first few times, something actually happened. Everything after that was you trying to get a big payday from the papers, but right at the start...” She waited for a reply. “Please. Just tell me whether I'm right or not. If there was really something in the house back then, it might come back now and go after Lizzie.”
She waited.
“Or am I imagining things?” Emily asked. “Mum, I'm really struggling here, I don't even know what's real and what isn't. Am I mis-remembering what happened all those years ago? Was the whole thing a hoax, from start to finish? Please, I'm not angry, I just need to know the truth. I have so many memories knocking about in my head, and I don't know where to start telling the true ones from the lies. I know you remember, so please... Just this once, talk to me.”
Again, she waited.
“I should have had more kids,” Joyce said finally. “Then again, I didn't know you were gonna turn out like this, did I? Got a job yet?”
“Mum -”
“Course not. You were always a flaky kid. I don't know why anyone'd hire someone like you.” She sniffed again. “Never reliable, that's your problem. Even back then, I told you exactly what you had to do, but you never did it right. Cost us our big shot, you did, and now look at us. I'm not surprised Brad left you, he can do a lot better. You're getting frumpy. No-one likes frumpy.”
Emily opened her mouth to reply, before realizing that there was no point. Grabbing her coat, she got to her feet. “I can't stay today,” she explained. “I've got things to do.”
“Course you have,” Joyce muttered. “Don't let me keep you. God forbid you'd spend more than five minutes with your old mother, the woman who sacrificed everything to raise you.”
“I'll be back tomorrow or the day after. Lizzie's not well and I need to keep an eye on her.”
“Spoiled little brat, that girl. You won't do her any good by hovering all the time.”