The Haunting Of Hartley House : A Novella

by Eve Evans

  Delectable variety of paranormal stories for the supernatural addict. Delve into the shadows and into a collection of stories so intriguing its bingeworthy.

  Treat yourselves to a haunted apartment that refuses to be inhabited in My Very Own Place. Ever been the new kid at school? Well, what about at a haunted school? Read more in New Kid, Old School. Never seek out antiques without researching the consequences first it never ends well. Learn more in The Collector.

  ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ “This book was a gift to my sister, and she said that it was good enough that she quit reading it at night!” – D.E.B

  ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ “This was a great, creepy book!!!” -S. R.

  ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ “Scary stuff. Well written. I recommend reading it. It will scare you. I don't believe in stuff like this. But it is a good read.” - Linda

  ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ “Eve Evans delves into the true "spirit" of things with this book. Collecting people's accounts of the paranormal. Evans does a great job in pulling in the reader with stories. Another must read for paranormal fans.” – Kevin Killen

  A delectable variety of REAL paranormal tales you are sure to binge...

  First responders are those that aid us in our time of need. But have you ever wondered that some of their calls may not be classified as "typical"?

  Ever wondered what happens when you mix ghosts with dispatchers? How about accident sites? I know I have. That is why this book came to be.

  After interviewing multiple types of first responders from 911 operators to police to firemen you will read the experiences they cannot quite explain as anything less than "ghostly".

  Blurb:

  My eyes pass over the window where I had first seen the foot and leg of the man who once lived here. From where I was standing it looked like two glowing eyes stared back at the two of us.

  I reached over and smacked Greg's arm. "Hey, do you see that?"

  He looks at me then back at the house. "What?"

  I point to where I'm looking. "There, in the window. It looks like two eyes."

  His body seems to jerk a little and I know he sees it too. We both stand there for a moment and stare, not sure what else to do.

  Everyone has had a nightmare at one point of their life. But what if that nightmare was crouched next to your bed watching you sleep? A figure so terrifyingly darker than the unlit surroundings of your room.

  On some occasion or another we all have seen something out of the corner of our eyes and turned to do a double take. But what if, upon second glance, you come face to face with a being so hideous your blood turns to ice and your veins scream out in shock?

  Some places contain secrets, others are local lore, but some have unimaginable truth behind the stories that echo throughout the world from their walls. If you delight in short stories that give you a case of the willies, then you will devour Chilling Ghost Stories in an instant.

  ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ “A masterpiece of Chilling Ghost Stories! I highly recommend this audiobook!” – Sylvester Murray

  ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ “Thoroughly enjoyed these ghostly tales...good bedtime stories!

  If you like reading of unexplained phenomena, you may enjoy this book also.” -P. D.

  ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ “Good book for ghost fans.” -Son

  Follow Eve and her books on Goodreads! And get notified of any new reads coming in 2021.

  The following story is fictional. Any resemblance to real persons, places, things, or events is merely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any means. This includes photocopying, electronic, mechanical, or by storage system (informational or otherwise), unless given written permission by the author.

  February © 2021 Eve S. Evans

  This book is dedicated to my mother. For all that you ARE and ever were in my life. You helped me become the woman I am today, and the strength to follow my dreams.

  The house was quiet. It was a strange sort of quiet; one that settled like dust against the bare skin of my arms.

  From the outside, I hadn’t seen any lights on. The windows had been dark and vacant, like peerless eyes, and something about them had made me feel uneasy as I walked up the driveway, past my dad’s old car.

  I’d been sleeping over at a friend’s house, but I’d started to feel nauseous and dizzy late in the afternoon. I tried to ignore it, thinking it would pass, but it only ended up getting worse, and I eventually asked to go home. Even now, as I stood in the doorway, listening to the silence, I had that same feeling of sickness in my stomach.

  I turned to look over my shoulder. A car was idling outside my house; my friend’s Mom was waiting to make sure I got inside okay. With slight reluctance, I lifted a hand and waved, and the car began to drive away. I watched it disappear down the street with that same lingering unease, then shut the door behind me.

  The hallway was thick with gloom. There were no windows, and no light peered out from beneath doorways, fragmenting the place into shadows. It was all one impenetrable darkness.

  I felt blindly along the wall for the hallway lamp, switching it on. The bulb stuttered to life, then immediately dimmed, flickering restlessly like a candle flame.

  I waited a moment. My backpack felt heavy on my shoulder, and I let it slide off, hitting the floor with a dull thud.

  Why was it so quiet? The front door had been unlocked, and my dad’s car was still in the drive. Yet the house felt distinctly empty. As though nobody was home.

  “Mom? Dad?” I said, keeping my voice low in case they had gone to bed early, though that seemed unlikely. “I came home early. Are you still up?”

  I heard no movement beyond the silence.

  A chill crawled along my bear arms. The air was cold, and I figured perhaps a window was open somewhere, blowing in a draught.

  I rubbed my arms absently as I reached the door of the sitting room, pushing it open with my fingertips.

  The smell struck me first. A wave of putrefied air washed over me, making me stumble back. The stench was dizzying, and the nausea from earlier returned ten-fold, wrenching at my stomach.

  “What-” The words died heavily in my throat as the light from the hallway permeated into the room, cutting a rectangle of tepid light across the front of the doorway.

  There was something on the floor. A figure shrouded in darkness.

  “M-Mom?” I rushed forward, my shoes slipping on something wet. I caught myself, looking down, and glimpsed a shadow darker than the rest. A pool of something dark. “N-no.”

  I staggered away from the blood, wrenching my eyes back towards the figure on the floor. Even with her face wrought with shadow and blood, I knew it was my mother. That was her hair splayed out around her head, pale and limp in the darkness.

  “Oh god,” I choked out, lifting a trembling hand to my face. Every muscle in my body began to seize up, and another spell of dizziness began to cloud the edges of my vision. I forced myself to move forward. “Mom?” I said weakly.

  She was lying on her back and her eyes were open, staring up at the ceiling. A pale veneer covered her pupils, making them seem small and far away. It didn’t seem real. It didn’t look like her. Not with her rheumy eyes and her lips hanging slack, pale gums shining beneath.

  Her chest wasn’t moving. She was dead.

  “No, no,” I whimpered softly, finally regaining enough sense to kneel beside her. I reached for her face, and my fingers found her cheek. Her skin was cold. She’d been dead a while.

  The smell was stronger now. I could almost taste it on my lips, dark and bitter, and it made my stomach twist with nausea.

  I reluctant
ly pulled away from my mother’s body.

  “Dad?” I called, my voice shaking. “Dad? Dad, please!”

  The silence seemed somehow heavier than before, even with the harsh thudding of my heart and the thick gasps spilling from my lips.

  My eyes landed on the kitchen door. There was blood there. Five long smears, as though someone had touched it with bloody fingers.

  I swallowed back a sudden surge of bile, my fingers finding the door handle before I could think about what I was doing.

  He was lying on the floor, curled on his side. Bloody footprints tracked across the tiles, gruesomely vivid in the shades of moonlight tiptoeing in through the window.

  “Dad?” I whispered. The word lingered in the air for a moment, before slowly fading back into silence.

  There was no movement. No breath stirred the air, other than my own shuddering gasps.

  I had to do something.

  I had to-

  The door slammed shut behind me, hitting the back of my heel and making me fall forwards. I landed hard on my knees, throwing out my hands to break the fall. Blood coated my fingers, wet and cold.

  My whole body convulsed as I wretched, bile filling the corners of my mouth.

  Shaking, I pushed myself to my feet.

  Police. I needed to call the police.

  There was a landline on the windowsill, and I reached for it, the cradle sliding against my blood-slicked hands.

  For a second, as I turned, I thought I glimpsed something in the window – a reflection, a flicker of shadow, not my own. But then I was already dialing 911, and my eyes refused to focus on anything, moving from the blood on the floor to the unnaturally pristine surface of the kitchen counter to the shadows dancing restlessly along the ceiling.

  A woman’s voice in my ear startled me, and I fumbled over my words.

  “My parents… they’re… they’re dead. There’s… so much blood and… and…”

  “Okay, calm down. I’ll get help to you. Please stay on the line, okay? Okay? Miss, are you still there? Hello…”

  The phone slipped through my fingers, my eyes staring at the darkness pooling around my father’s body.

  He had his hands clutched to his stomach. Between his fingers, the jagged handle of a kitchen knife protruded.

  Afterwards, they told me that he’d done it. This wasn’t the work of a stranger, or a killer. My father had stabbed my mother to death, before driving the knife into his own body.

  They called it a murder-suicide.

  I told them that they were mistaken. That they were wrong. My father would never do that. He didn’t have it in him.

  But there was no evidence to prove otherwise. No fingerprints, no DNA. Nobody’s but my father’s, on the handle of the knife, all over my mother’s body. Her blood under his fingernails, in his hair.

  The trajectory of the knife proved it was my father who had driven it into his stomach. That was it. Case closed.

  And then there was me.

  The daughter of a murderer.

  The only survivor.

  ELEVEN YEARS LATER

  Dawn was beginning to break across the rooftops, filling the room with a misty golden light. A flock of pigeons were startled from the opposite rooftop in a flurry of ash-grey wings, disappearing above the clouds.

  My head was pounding. A dull, heavy ache right behind my eyes that made the sudden glare of dawn light sting against my retina.

  I slumped forward at my desk, my fingers slipping away from the keyboard. I always, rather inconveniently, ended up with a migraine when a deadline was coming up. I had a feeling it was my body’s way of manifesting stress, just dumping it all at the forefront of my mind. Quite literally, it seemed.

  I pinched my fingers around the bridge of my nose, giving it a short, tight squeeze, then refocused on the screen. Most of the page was blank, except for a few hastily typed sentences that didn’t make much sense. I was perhaps a quarter of the way through the manuscript, and I had less than a fortnight until it was due to my editor.

  Without giving it a second thought, I switched off the monitor and swerved my chair away from the desk. I couldn’t focus like this. Anything I wrote now would just end up scrapped in the long run.

  Sluggishly rising from the chair, I went down to the kitchen to make some hot tea, drizzling in some honey and lemon, and then took it to the front room. Yesterday’s paper was still lying on my armchair. I hadn’t gotten the chance to read it yesterday, so I grabbed it now, unfolding it across my lap as I sat down. You’d be surprised at how much inspiration you could draw from the news as a crime novelist. Sometimes even reality could be worse than fiction.

  Sipping the tea, I began browsing through the pages, skipping over articles about sports and politics. There wasn’t much in the way of local crime. An appeal for information about a robbery and something about a brutal dog attack…

  Something caught my eye at the bottom of the page, and I almost choked on my tea.

  OPEN INVESTIGATION OF REAL HAUNTED HOUSE

  A team of paranormal investigators are seeking information about the mysterious Hartley House, which has long rumored to be haunted by a dark and tragic history…

  I dragged my eyes away from the text, staring at the photograph next to it. It was black and white, not very well printed on the thin sheafs of paper, but I would recognize it anywhere. It was my house. Where I’d grown up. My childhood home.

  I snapped the newspaper shut, feeling suddenly nauseous. My head was still thudding, and my eyes were sore from staring at the small print.

  Haunted house? Paranormal investigators? What the hell?

  I abandoned the newspaper to the side, massaging my temples. Maybe I’d read it wrong. Maybe it wasn’t the same Hartley House as the one I knew. I wasn’t thinking straight with this horrible headache.

  Leaving the paper on the side, I trudged back to bed and curled up beneath the covers.

  Maybe some sleep would help clear my head.

  I knew I was dreaming.

  I’d been here enough times to know that what I was seeing wasn’t real. Not the blood, or the bodies, or the horrible faces grinning at me from the dark.

  None of it was real. It was all in my head. Just a memory, twisted into a nightmare.

  I was standing in the living room of my old house. I was twelve again, clad in my grey bunny pajamas, my hair fluffed up from sleep.

  My parents were lying on the floor, dead. There was blood too. Lots of it. I knew it wasn’t real, but that didn’t stop it from feeling like it wasn’t. Sometimes I felt like I could still smell the blood, feel the thudding of my heart beneath my ribs.

  The only thing I knew for certain weren’t real were the faces.

  They weren’t part of the memory. They were the part of the dream conjured by my mind, hovering in my subconscious.

  I didn’t recognize the faces. There wasn’t anything distinct about their features. They were just… there. Pale and thin, staring at me with their wolfish smiles.

  But they weren’t real.

  I knew they weren’t-

  My eyes blinked open, and immediately fluttered against the sudden glare of light. I was laying on my side, my fists scrunched up around the covers. I didn’t remember clenching my hands in the dream. I let go, wiping away the sweat that had accumulated in my palm.

  It had been a while since I’d had that dream. Maybe even a few months. It must have been that newspaper article that brought it back…

  The paper was exactly where I’d left it, sitting on the side of the armchair. Swallowing back a sudden feeling of apprehension, I rifled through the pages until I found the article again, and tucked it beneath my arm, heading back to my office. Slumping into the chair, I unfolded the page across my desk and began reading.

  From the outside, Hartley House looks like any other mid-19th century building. But within hides a dark and sinister history.

  Built in the early 1800s by a promising young entrepreneur, the house has seen
a number of owners take its succession after the original Hartleys, and during this time, has borne witness to seven different crimes. Beginning with the murder of the house’s original Hartley by a jealous relation, it seems the house’s history was destined to be stained with blood. In the ensuing years, the house has seen more murder and suicide victims than any other of its period, giving it a gruesome reputation.

  The house’s dark history has recently drawn the attention of established paranormal investigators, who hope to cleanse the house of its dark energy…

  I stopped reading, biting hard enough on my lower lip that the skin tore.

  The house’s history had never been something I knew about when growing up there. Seven different crimes… murder and suicide… It seemed as though whatever curse hung over the house hadn’t spared my family either. We were a part of its dark and gruesome history as the rest of them.

  At the bottom of the page was a phone number, urging anyone with information to get in contact with the team. I wondered briefly if they were legitimate, or just a bunch of amateurs trying to get some recognition. I bet they’d jump at the chance to interview me. The Only Survivor.

  A faint chill touched the back of my neck. The house had never really left me, even after all these years. As much as I tried to tell myself I’d put everything behind me, it still crept up on me when I was least expecting it. Darkness always brought with it the memories of blood. My dreams were always tinged with shadow. The uncertainty of what happened that night haunted me just as much as my parent’s death. Why had he done it? What had driven my father to murder his wife and them himself? None of it made sense, even now.