by Eve Evans
“J-Joe?” Amie asked gently.
“It’s… it’s me,” he said in between each breath. “It’s me. I’m back.”
We all visibly relaxed, and I threw a glance over the room. Whatever had been here seemed to have gone. I no longer felt its heavy presence.
“I’m now… closing the session. Spirits can no longer reach out to me.”
With that, he let go of the table and reached up to wipe the sweat from his brow. “Whatever it was that I contacted,” he said, his voice still wheezy. “I’m pretty sure it wanted to get inside me.”
Nobody spoke. The six of us were sitting in the kitchen, staring at the monitors. It was almost three in the morning, but I was too unsettled to bother trying to sleep.
“You sure you’re alright?” Sam whispered to Joe, who was sat cradling a glass of water in his hands, staring down at his reflection.
He nodded wordlessly.
“It’s been a long night,” Amie spoke up. She’d finally taken her beanie off, and somehow, she looked older for it, her skin marred by the shadows of fatigue. “How about we all try and get some sleep? I’ll keep watch for a bit. In the morning, we’ll finish up and cleanse the house. There’s a lot of bad energy here to get rid of.”
“How do you cleanse it?” I asked, finally regaining my voice.
“Most of the time, it can be a case of removing an object that bad energy has attached itself to. But here, there is no single object. In this case, we clear the air by burning herbs like cedar and sage to remove any of the unwanted energy. This can take some time, as we need to be thorough and do the whole house. Prayers help too, so we’ll call for the local priest in the morning to say some rites.”
“And that will get rid of the… the entity too?”
“It should,” Amie said with a wry smile. “At least, with the bad energy gone, it will be more difficult for the entity to manifest and cause harm.”
“I see. So, this… this curse or whatever it is will finally end? No more people will have to die here.”
“Yes.”
“And my parents, if they are still here, can finally move on too.”
Joe looked up finally. His eyes were hooded, and his cheeks seemed pale and haggard, his skin sunken. “I’m sorry I couldn’t contact them,” he said, his voice quiet. “The entity was too powerful to see past. I couldn’t sense anyone here but him.”
“I see. Thank you for trying,” I said. “At least now, I know it wasn’t my dad who killed my mom. Not really.”
“No, that wasn’t your father,” Amie said. “Given the history of the place, and the fate of the original owner, I’d say the entity takes on the identity of Thomas Hartley’s cousin. The original murderer. Every owner who has lived here succumbs to the same fate, exactly as Thomas and his cousin did all those years ago. Somehow, the bad energies from that night have become part of the house itself. But from tomorrow, the place won’t be able to hurt anyone any longer.”
The others sighed with quiet relief, and I cradled my arms to my chest. It was a relief, knowing that these guys would be able to drive out the bad energy that lingered here and bring some peace to Hartley House. Blood and death had stained its history for far too long. I wanted my parents to be its last victim.
“I’m going to get some shut-eye,” Max said, breaking the thoughtful silence. “Wake me up when it’s my turn to watch the monitors.”
Amie nodded, and he turned over in his chair, resting his head against his hands. I didn’t know how someone could fall asleep like that, but in a matter of minutes, I heard his breathing even out.
“You should try and get some rest too,” Amie said, throwing a pointed glance to the rest of us.
“I’ll stay awake with you,” Sam said, shaking her head. “I’m past being tired now.”
I was about to protest too, but I couldn’t deny the fatigue itching at my bones, and before I knew it, I was also slipping down my chair, and into a restless slumber.
There were faces in the dark. Staring at me with their too-wide smiles and the smell of blood heavy on the air. I felt like I’d seen them before, but I didn’t know who they were.
“Nadia.”
I turned around. My name echoed in the darkness around me, but there was nobody there. “Nadia. We’re here.”
I looked back at the faces and recoiled. Two new ones had appeared, ones that I recognized this time. My mom and dad. Their faces were thin and pale, their eyes glazed, and they didn’t look like the people they were supposed to be.
“Nadia. You came back.” Their mouths didn’t move, but it was their voice, echoing in the shadows around me. “Now stay, stay with us. Don’t ever le-”
“Nadia?”
I jerked upright, feeling something touch my arm. Trish was crouched over me, her features twisted with concern. “You okay?”
“Yeah, just dreaming,” I said sleepily, pushing myself up. There was a horrible ache in my shoulders from sleeping on the hard chair, and I tried to stretch out the cricks in my back. “What time is it?”
“Six o’clock,” she said with a grimace. “Amie woke us all up; said she saw something.”
I glanced over her shoulder. The others were in similar states of grogginess. Amie was nowhere to be seen.
“Where is she?”
“She went upstairs to check it out.”
I stood up; my shirt crumpled from where I’d slept on it. “I’ll go and see what it is,” I suggested, leaving before anyone could say otherwise.
Dawn was peering over the horizon, and the sky was starting to lighten outside, but the house was still stuck in its melancholy gloom.
“Amie?” I called as I reached the landing. “You up here?”
She didn’t respond. Only one door was open, right at the end of the hallway: my parents’ old room. I started towards it, but I couldn’t hear any movement from inside.
As I neared the doorway, I felt something stir the air behind me. I spun around, my breath catching in my throat. The motion sensor we’d set in the hallway was flashing, but there was nobody there.
“Nadia?”
Startled, I looked behind me. Amie was stood in the doorway, holding a torch down by her feet.
“Amie,” I said in relief, pressing a hand to my chest. “I… I felt something behind me.”
She lifted the torch, shining it down the hallway, but there was nothing there.
“Trish said you saw something up here.”
Amie nodded, gesturing for me to follow her into the room. It looked strange and unfamiliar in the dark, without any of the furniture. A single mirror was hung on the wall, but there was a crack in the glass that had not been there before, distorting the reflection.
“I think this is the room where Thomas Hartley was killed,” she said suddenly. “This is where we captured the EVP of the man moaning in distress, and I’ve seen shadows moving in here. It would make sense for his cousin to have killed him while he was sleeping.”
I glanced around. This was where it all started then. Where the original Hartley was murdered by his own kin, setting of a curse that would last centuries.
“I think we should concentrate most of our cleansing in here, and downstairs. This seems to be where the worst of the energy is.”
I nodded. “Can I help? With the cleansing, I mean?”
“Of course.” Amie smiled at me, and for a moment, as her face was cast into shadow and the light from the torch distorted her features, she looked just like those faces from my dream.
Hartley House was put back up for sale in the weeks following our investigation. We spent a long two days cleansing the house of its residual energy and banishing the spirits that lingered there. On the third day, once the rooms had been cleansed and a priest had spoken rites, I could already tell that the house felt different. It had been difficult to notice before, the heaviness of the atmosphere, like a tomb steadily filling with dirt. I was surprised we had lasted as long as we did, living under the house’s oppressive
presence for so long.
The evidence that Amie and her team collected was further reviewed by peers in the field of paranormal research and given a stamp of authenticity. They were one step closer to proving that which most people didn’t believe; that death wasn’t always the end.
No matter what others believed, I knew that what I experienced that night was real. I knew that Hartley House was haunted not only by a gruesome history, but by a dark entity that had fed off the energy that lingered there after death, to continue the curse of murder and suicide.
Even if I hadn’t been able to contact my parents, I had finally faced the house that had haunted my dreams for so many years, and maybe now I would be able to put those lingering memories to rest. My parents had died suddenly and tragically, but at least now I could rest knowing that wherever they were, they were together, and that my father was not the murderer everyone had believed him to be.
I went back to my writing shortly after and made the decision to leave behind my success as a crime writer to pursue the more enigmatic world of paranormal fiction. The first book I put out was one documenting my experiences at Hartley House. I put into words the truth of the unlawful murder of Thomas Hartley, and all of the tragedies that followed, ending at last with my parents. Thanks to Amie and her team, Hartley House would be haunted no longer.
Sneak Peak:
The Haunting of Emily Blake
(A Novel - Coming 2021)
Chapter 1
Arrival
The SUV eased around the corner through a gap in the trees barely wide enough for it to fit through. It had taken them almost twenty minutes to find this road if you could call it that. Out here it was hard to tell the difference between a path and just a place where a tree wasn't growing. Finally, Emily had found a small cut through the thick trunks and had been crawling along what she hoped was the driveway for the past ten minutes. A little unsure of her decision, Emily nursed her bottom lip with light nibbles. If she had been mistaken it was going to be near impossible to turn around without hitting something.
Emily leaned forward nearly pressing herself against the steering wheel. "I think it's starting to thin out."
This being the third time she'd said the same exact words and only uncomfortable silence greeted her. Joy, who usually was the loquacious one, remained silent. This time however, the words proved to be accurate. They emerged from the trees into a meadow covered in wild grasses. They bent and swayed in the wind making it seem as if the ground itself was golden body of water.
"See, I told you it was clearing up." Emily said.
James leaned forward between the gap in the front seats. "You were bound to be right eventually, Em.”
Emily narrowed her eyes at him in mock anger. "With that attitude I should have left you behind."
"You wouldn't have left me. Besides, you two would be bored by yourselves with only each other to talk to."
Joy looked up from her laptop. "So, I've been trying to find some information on this place... what?"
James fell back into his seat in the rear of the car laughing. "See what I mean? My sis, always the life of the party."
Joy spun back to face him. "What? You mean I'm boring? Just because I want to know..."
"Dear lord." At the sound of Emily's voice, they both crossed their arms and veered out their separate windows.
They stopped on the crest of a small rise giving them a panoramic view of house and the grounds surrounding it. It stood two stories tall with two windows jutting out of the front of its second story. Even in the midday light the windows were dim making the structure look pale in comparison.
Vines and weeds had fled their boundaries and intermixed with grass that had intruded from the field overtaking what had once been the front of the home. Most of the vegetation appeared to be in the throes of death, starved of life-giving nutrients upon a spoiled tract of land.
The paint that at one time had coated the outside had flaked away, scored from the walls by wind driven dust and rain. The corrugated roof was more rust than anything that resembled metal leaving questions as to what protection it offered. If this place had been welcoming to visitors those days were in the past. Now it served as a stark reminder of the irrevocable pursuit of nature to reclaim and return the land to what once was.
"We're staying there?" James tapped lightly on the glass. This was far from the country getaway that he had expected when Emily and his sister offered to let him come with them. "Where did you two find this place?"
Lost in the moment Emily appeared not to hear what he had said. "It's perfect."
James however heard her perfectly and stuck his head between the seats once more. "Um, what? This place is a complete dump, it doesn't even seem like it has power. Joy, how do you plan on using your laptop?"
"The place has a generator out back, at least that's what the information I could find out about it before we rented it said." Joy told him.
James looked back and forth between them and collapsed back into his seat. "You two have lost it. Completely mental."
The road leading to the house became increasingly rough and the truck bounced and vibrated as the tires rolled over the washboards and pits that littered the surface. They rounded one final corner and pulled to a stop. The building seemed to loom above them in silent challenge. The deterioration on the outside was even more apparent from this distance as even the smaller blemishes became visible. Up close the house drew them in, it was as if the harder they tried to gaze away the more they had to stare it.
"Well, how about we go check out the inside?" Emily asked them both as she pulled the keys from the ignition.
James craned his neck to see the building out the front of the truck windshield. "Or we could go back and find a hotel to stay in."
Joy rolled her eyes and shut her laptop. "Oh, I'm sure glad we brought along a big strong man to keep us womenfolk safe." she said in her best southern accent.
Emily laughed at the offended look James gave his sister. "Come on James, where's your sense of adventure?"
With that Emily opened her door and got out of the SUV. She stretched trying to ease the stiffness of driving from her limbs. "I mean look at this place. It's freaking awesome!"
James looked down the length of the building unconvinced of really what to think. "What kind of person would want to live in a place like this?"
Joy walked by her brother and patted him gently on the back. "Obviously, someone rugged and tough, something that you know nothing about."
"Hey what's that supposed to mean?"
Joy glanced over her shoulder at her older sibling with her lip stuck out in an exaggerated pout. "Oh, did I offend your delicate sensibilities?"
"Are you going to just stand there or are we going to check this place out?" Emily began picking her way through the dense ground cover towards the front door. Halfway there she spun around and beckoned them to join her. "Come on you two."
Joy captured the front of her brother's shirt and dragged him forward, he didn’t fight her, but a look of reservation clouded his face.
Emily and Joy climbed the two wood steps leading to the small landing where the front door stood. Joy reached into her pocket and produced a key. Surprisingly, it is modern rather than something that would more suit a home of its age.
Sliding the key into the cylinder Emily paused and looked back at her two friends. "Are we ready?"
The key turned smoothly in the lock and the door swung open silently on its hinges revealing the first few feet of a darkened room. Emily was the first to pass the threshold into the house followed by Joy. The room was dim, but the windows let in enough light to for them to see the general layout. Dust floated about the place on unseen currents, the tiny bits of the past that had lain dormant upon every surface and in every corner until life was present once more. Emily thought of it as the house finally drawing in a long-awaited breath now that the door was finally open.
A set of wooden plank stairs rose in the center
of the room leading to the upper floor of the building. To their right was a primitive kitchen complete with a woodfire stove against one wall. A few cupboards had been hung above the counter for storage. Near one of the windows where a family could look out while enjoying their meal a small round table stood with four chairs.
To the left was a room that probably once was a living room. A few chairs had been arranged haphazardly around the room. They were all straight-back and made of wood, more for utility than comfort. A large worn rug, the original color long since faded covered the center of the floor. On the wall hung a large cross about two feet tall and half as much wide between two oval frames that contained yellowing portraits of an elderly man and woman that appeared to be staring at each other.
James stepped into the room next to Emily and took in the scene. "I'm going to have to find out who their decorator is."
Emily elbowed him in the ribs for the sarcastic remark. "Just go start bringing in our stuff."
He shook his head and strode back out the door leaving Emily and Joy standing just inside the doorway by themselves.
"So how about you check out the rooms upstairs and I see what else is down here?" Joy asked Emily.
"That works, when you see James can you have him drop my stuff upstairs so I can get set up?" Emily responded still admiring the interior.
"Yup, when I see him, I'll send him up." Joy waved and took off down the hallway.