Careful not to step on the pool, I turned the knob and pushed the door open. The room was dark, and a metallic stench of blood stung my nasal paths. My insides pitched and roiled. Pinching my nose, I caught glimpse of the sickly blue light stealing from the window, only dimly illuminating the room. There were boxes upon boxes covered in heaps of dust and cobwebs, sitting about the floor. Pulling the jumper away from sweaty chest, I traced the blood on the ground.
Drops of maroon changed in to a fine streak vanishing behind one of the boxes.
With my hands numb and my legs trembling, I scuffed on the carpet and into the room. I could feel the stickiness beneath my shoes as if the whole place was drenched in blood. For a split second, I thought I saw someone move near the fireplace but it was my shadow as it got bigger when I approached the window. Slowly, I crept towards the set of boxes lying against the wall and sneaked a peak on its invisible side.
A gut-wrenching shudder racked my body.
A man was sitting on the floor with his back leaning against the boxes. His head was ducked towards his lap. I bent down and felt my breath froze in my lungs. A round bullet-hole went deep inside his forehead, from where blood trickled down to his nose and from there dribbled, drop by drop into a dark, silent pool between his sprawled legs. Just ahead of the mess, a Fedora cap lay as lifeless as its rightful owner.
PHILIP WAS DEAD!
I swung around in terror, falling over one of the crates and then got up roughly. Clinging dearly to Philip’s phone and his gun, and not caring anymore if I stepped on the blood or not, I stormed out of the room, banging the door shut behind me.
I threw myself up against the wall, crying and panting as breath whistled in and out of my chest. My heart was racing like a mouse caught in a deadly trap.
The lodge is playing tricks on you, Alfred.I tried to calm myself.But it all seemed so real! All this while I’ve been talking to a ghost.
A draft brushed the left side of my head.
Clutching my knees, I glanced upwards towards the room on my left.
The rusty, engraved initials looked upon me with an ominous stare.
I was standing outside room forty- at last.
Not wasting another moment, I took out the cold, twisted key from my trousers, thrust it in and kicked the door with all my strength.
It opened with a loud creak and a whirl of dust met my eyes, stinging the conjunctive. I waved my hand in front my face, trying to clear my vision. As it did, my heart skipped a beat as I gazed at a sea of dead mice on the floor. Some were completely missing the lower half of their bodies while others were missing their heads.
Someone was living on dead rats!
I gulped down the large amount saliva that had built in my throat and walked in. The bones crunched loudly beneath my shoes, and I tried to ignore the lumpy feeling under my feet.
It was nearly an empty room except a white fabric covering what looked like furniture. Philip’s cell phone beeped. I glanced on the screen. The signals were back. As I tore my eyes away from the screen, my feet hit something solid and I bent down.
My laptop and my phone lay under heaps of dead mice!
“Help me!”
A low moan issued from a corner.
I twirled on the spot and the door banged shut.
“W-who’s there?” I asked, blood flopping in my temples. The hair at the back of my neck prickled.
A sob answered me.
Someone was crying!
Brandishing Philip’s phone in the corner from where the voice came, I began to tiptoe towards the commotion. Thunder clapped outside as rain began to fall. It was louder than in the room where I’d stayed, and I could hear the water collecting on the ceiling.
“Help me!” Another suppressed moan fell on my ears.
“W-who’s there? I’m warning you… I’m armed!” I tried to sound brave but my voice was shaking uncontrollably.
As I drew nearer, the carpet became clearer of the bodies of dead mice. The gleam of light illuminated the corner and my stomach twisted into a firm knot.
A man of about forty was lying on a piece of rag. He was only wearing a blotched pair of underpants. My eyes moved from his overgrown beard and unkempt nails to the grisly scratches on his chest. He scrunched his eyes against the blinding light of Philip’s camera.
“Who are you?” I lowered my phone as I dropped on my knees beside him.
The man looked at me as if dazed, opened his mouth but no words came out. His eyes bulged in surprise. He raised his arm and pointed behind my back. I jerked my head backwards but the room was empty!
He clutched my arm tightly and I saw that his eyes were still fixed on something behind me. He was trying to say something but I couldn’t make out anything amidst his hitched, raspy breathing.
“What are you trying to say?” I asked timidly but then I understood. He was pointing at the furniture.
Patting him on his bare shoulder, I said, “It’s going to be all right. Don’t worry.”
I got up and plodded on the heaps of bodies once again, cursing under my breath.
“You’re talking about this?” I called out to the man.
“Yes,” the man’s voice called back sharply.
I pulled the cloth which slithered off its ward revealing a smooth opulent mirror beneath.
“It’s just a mirror,” I said loudly. “Nothing dangerous.”
The voice didn’t answer back.
Staring suspiciously in the corner, I stepped in front of the mirror.
“What’s wro-” I stopped dead. My mouth dropped open at the reflection as my heart trip-hammered against my ribs.
A woman with a hideous scar running from her right parietal bone to her left ear, stood appalled as if thunderstruck. Her jaw was wide open in shock or fear, I couldn’t tell. Her left bruised eye was half-closed and swollen, while the other one was big and round, gaping back at me with the cunningness of a wolf through the cracked glass of the steel-rimmed spectacles.
Mrs. Henderson was trapped inside the mirror!
I lifted my hand and so did the woman. I brought it closer to my head where the scar ran. I could feel the crudeness of the stitches beneath my fingertips.
Edging closer to the mirror, in the left corner, I could make out a dense, dark shadow reaching as high as the ceiling, floating in air just behind the woman.
There was a dreadful flutter of wings followed by silence.
A chill nipped at my core.
“S-sulorac?” I whispered hoarsely. Mucous seemed to have plugged my throat.
The tiniest of the clicks tore my attention away from the mirror, and I turned my head towards the noise. A cocked gun pointed at my face, and standing behind it was the half-naked man. A sly grin plastered across his unshaven face.
The grin of redemption!
“GO TO HELL BITC-.”
I never heard him complete the sentence for an earsplitting crash filled the whole room, and something warm spurt forward from my neck, drenching the left half of my body. I stood there looking at him in shock, supporting my carotids in hope that it would stop the bleeding. He lifted the gun once more. But before he could fire again, I fell face-forward on the floor, not caring if my face got the full blast of the thick wooden plank beneath my trembling feet. He snatched the bloody cell phone from my twitching hand. In a flash my vision turned into a gray haze. I couldn’t see him anymore. But my ears could still pick up the sound of his distraught yelling:
“HELLO… HELLO… POLICE…YES… THIS IS ALFRED…I’M ABDUCTED…DAMN IT! ...POLICE-”
And then I heard no more.
Epilogue
“Your husband’s a very lucky man, ma’am,” said a smiling officer, sipping his coffee as he shook his head in the direction of the paneled glass. “Still in shock. But yes…he’s very lucky to be still alive.”
A middle aged man lay in hospital robes, eyes closed, his chest moving up and down smoothly as he slept. Ellen observed his unshaved beard, the dark circl
es beneath his eyes, faint pink lines of the oxygen mask around the corners of his mouth and three drips running at a swift speed through an I.V cannula in his left arm.
Weak and Savage! That’s what he’d become!
Warm tears of pity and gratitude flowed across her face as she glanced on the television screen where a blonde woman, wearing red coat with matching heels, stood in front of the very lodge from where they had received her husband’s call.
“Well, aside from few visits by friends at Barry’s Lodge who were here to pay their tribute to the two of the most well-known owners, it has been a fairly quiet day. As the chain of events unfold, we have learnt that at least four bodies have been retrieved until now, while the search for the fifth one is still on going. Two of the bodies belong to the former caretakers Mr. and Mrs. Barry, 88 and 76, respectively, who were found hanging inside their own room…while the third one belongs to one of the infamous killer couple of the Skiddaw Mental Asylum, Mr. Henderson, who like the Barrys’ met a similar disdainful end. While the police has failed to provide an official statement on the whereabouts of Mrs. Henderson, they’ve just informed us that the fourth body retrieved yesterday has been identified as Mr. Philip Lombard, a private investigator-”
“Only God knows what the hell happened there,” said the officer shaking his head.
“Did you have the chance to talk to my husband?” she asked him curiously.
She still wasn’t allowed to meet him. The doctors were adamant that their policy was in the best interest of her husband despite her frequent protests. Being as gentle as possible, they had explained to her the importance of emotional deprivation. It nearly always helped the healing process. But she wouldn’t understand. After all, it wasn’t her fault that their medicines weren’t working on her husband.
Bunch of weirdos that’s what they are, she thought shrewdly.
She couldn’t find anything about it on the internet. For all she knew, her husband was in Bristol and if it wasn’t for the evening news, she wouldn’t have had the faintest idea about her husband’s whereabouts. Frank nearly collapsed when he heard about it. She was waiting eagerly for him to return so that she could go home and prepare a quick meal for the kids. The police had called him in for some questioning. They didn’t look too pleased.
“Well, ma’am, we did get the chance to conduct a small enquiry on the night we received your husband’s call,” said the officer giving her a frown. “But that was before the doctors ushered us away. He told us that there was a woman who was going to kill him if he didn’t kill her first. I don’t think that the description matches any of the bodies that we’ve found.”
“You don’t suspect him, do you?” she asked in a stern voice.
“We’re analyzing everything ma’am. For all we know is that there’s only one woman missing and that’s Mrs. Henderson. Your husband claims that he shot a woman. We are still unsure if his description truly matches her. There are missing links. But I’m positive that once your husband comes round--a lot of things will clear up. We’re backing him up to solve this one. His testimony is the most important right now!”
She looked back at Alfred, blinking away the tears.
The officer gave her a piece of cloth and patted her shoulder sympathetically.
“T-thank you,” Her breath hitched on a sob as she took it and blew her nose.
“Does she have a name?” she asked hoarsely.
“Who?”
“The woman my husband shot?”
“Oh- yes- her…well …err…we did hear him screaming her name when we were transporting him out of the lodge on a stretcher…mad something…Oh, now I remember…he calls her --Mad Martha. Very unusual name, if you ask me.” The officer shrugged uncertainly but for some unknown reason, a cold shiver crawled up her spine.
THE END
Author’s note
A big thank you!
If you’re reading this I’d like to thank you! Without you it would never have been possible. I hope you enjoyed reading Barry’s Lodge as much I did writing it.
Your reviews are indispensable to me. So kindly leave one whenever you’ve a chance to write it. Your reviews will inspire me to continue writing the way I am.
So keep a look out for all the monsters lurking in the dark… and oh yes!
You can contact Annie via her Facebook page: OfficialAnnieWaltersAuthor
She would love to hear from you.
About the Author
Annie Walter is an upcoming British Author who has grown up listening to stories like the Fall of the House of Usher and The Tell-tale heart. She is a huge fan of Sir Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King and what not and is a doctor by profession. When she’s not diagnosing her patients, you would find her in the local library, buried under tons of books, digging out tales of the macabre and horror. Currently she is living in a crooked little house in Wales with a crooked little cat called George who’s always preoccupied with sinister thoughts of murdering her.
The Haunting At Barry's Lodge (Gripping Paranormal Private Investigator Suspense Novel): Unexplained Eerie Story of the Supernatural and A Dark Disturbing Psychological Thriller with a Killer Twist Page 13