The Ghosts and Hauntings Collection

by Cat Knight

  Then the footsteps; slow and shuffling. She moved back as the door opened and her father took her in for the first time in eight years.

  Claire went to speak but everything she had planned and rehearsed was gone. Her father’s eyes were wide, his mouth opening and closing. Then he stepped forward and hugged her and she hugged him back and wished she wasn’t crying.

  She didn’t know how long they stood like that. When her father finally let go and stepped back there were tears in his eyes as well and despite everything Claire knew she was smiling.

  “Come in,” he said, voice hoarse. She followed him through the front hall, looking around as she did at the photos and paintings on the wall, none changed or moved.

  Together they walked into the living room. The TV was playing and her mother sat watching.

  “Who was that?” she said, without looking back.

  “Hi Mum,” Claire said. Her mother seemed to stiffen. Then, slowly, she turned. Her hair was greyer and her face thinner than Claire remembered, but otherwise familiarity hit her like a punch to the gut.

  “Claire,” she said.

  Her mother stood slowly. Her expression was wary. “What are you doing here?”

  “It’s still my home. Isn’t it?” Claire asked, a little more defensive than she’d planned.

  “But you…” her mother seemed lost for words. “It’s been years. We haven’t heard from you in…”

  “A long time,” Claire said. “I’m sorry.”

  Her mother nodded. Her mouth twitched slightly, a smile or something else fighting against her always consummate control. She stepped forward. Then the smile won and they were hugging as well. For the first time since she had stepped off that train, maybe for the first time in years, Claire remembered what home had felt like.

  And then old routines took over. Her father set about making tea while her mother grilled her with questions; where was she living, where was she working, was she eating alright, did she have a boyfriend – the questions came thick and fast.

  For her part, Claire was just happy for this tiny, brief glimpse of normality, of a life that had not been eaten from the inside out by something that none of them had ever really understood.

  She sat and drank tea after tea as they talked and it was only as dinner time neared that the first question, the biggest question returned.

  “So why are you back?” her mother asked from her armchair. “You haven’t set foot here in so long. What changed?”

  Claire had planned several evasions and lies for this moment, but being here now, seeing them again made the futility of that clear. There was no point in lying when you might never see someone again. That, she now knew, was the time for honesty.

  “I’m here to find Sarah’s body,” she said.

  Her friend’s name, so often a forbidden word in her teenage years, seemed to make the room colder and dim the lights. Her mother’s mouth tightened and her father looked away.

  “Why?” he said quietly.

  “Because she’s been in there long enough,” Claire replied.

  “People tried to find her,” he said. “And–“

  “I know,” Claire said.

  “And they died.”

  For the first time since arriving home Claire felt a surge of something like anger.

  “Obviously I know that,” she said. “Nobody ever let me forget it.”

  “Claire…” Her mother looked around, as if trying to find the words. “It’s been… I think you might have forgotten. Having not been here. But that house is… there is something about it that we can’t understand. Something evil. A lot of people tried to find Sarah after what happened. And then to find the ones who tried to find her. Nobody ever came out.”

  “Somebody came out,” Claire said. “Me.”

  “Yes, you did,” her father said. “And I know that we did a terrible job of making sure you knew this, but we were so, so grateful that you survived. Have you any idea how that felt? To see Sarah’s parents, see what they were going through and to privately thank God that it was their child and not ours?”

  “I don’t Dad,” Claire said. “But do you have any idea how it felt to walk out of that house and wish that you hadn’t? Because God knows, this village spent a long time telling me that that was how they felt.”

  “What happened was unprecedented,” her mother said.

  “Nobody knew how to act. They settled on cruelty and that was wrong. But you don’t need to run in there chasing some kind of redemption.”

  “Actually, I think that’s exactly what I need to do,” Claire said. “That house was there for years and everyone knew it was bad, but the village was still fine, right? Everyone was happy, everything prospered.”

  She paused, remembering.

  “After Sarah went in there, after I came out… well, you see it every day, don’t you? That poison spreading. I think that when I walked out of that place and left Sarah in there, I took something with me. Something that settled on the village and has been destroying it ever since. And that makes me think that the only way to put an end to it, the only way that makes sense, is to go back in. If anybody stands a chance of surviving, it’s me.”

  “You don’t even remember how you did it last time,” her father said. “Or at least, you say you don’t.”

  There it was. That same tone she had heard so many times growing up. If it wasn’t outright accusations, it was clumsy attempts to gauge whether she had been lying.

  How could it be that she didn’t remember anything? She had learned to forgive her parents for their doubt; she would have wondered herself, if she hadn’t lived the amnesia. But it didn’t make it any less frustrating.

  “I say I don’t because I don’t,” Claire said. “I get that… I get that a lot of people think I hurt Sarah. But I was nowhere near the house when the others disappeared.

  Anybody with half a brain knows there is something wrong about that place, but for some reason it didn’t hurt me.”

  Not directly anyway. “I owe it to Sarah, to this village, to go in there and find out why. Because if I really am the one who started this, then it stands to reason that I might be able to finish it.”

  Her parents looked at each other. There was a silent communication passing between them, she knew, some debate about what to say or if there even was anything to say.

  “And what if you don’t end it?” her mother said. “What if you make it worse?”

  “Worse than what?” Claire said.

  “Think I can suffer more than I have in the past fifteen years? Think this village can lose any more of its life?” She shook her head. “The damage has been done. The only thing left is to see if it can be undone. And the only person who can do that is me.” She stood. “It’s been a long trip. I’m going to get some sleep.”

  “When?” her mother said. “When are you going to do this?”

  Briefly, Claire considered lying. It might go some way towards stopping them trying to convince her not to. But then, she had made her choice and she knew nothing would change her mind now. “Tomorrow,” she said, then turned and walked out of the room.

  Chapter Three

  Her childhood bedroom was the same as it had ever been. Preserved, like the rest of the village and the house. But the life of something could never be retained along with the look of it, and so the room felt more like a graveyard, a sad monument to the girl she had been. She sat up late that night, sifting through her old books and toys. She found a dusty diary from before she and Sarah had entered the house, and she lay there reading it for hours, laughing occasionally, pausing to fight back tears at other moments. The stories in here were so mundane – stories of boys and games, of fights with friends and the injustice of parental decisions.

  With her teenage years so overshadowed by Sarah, it had been easy to forget that at some point she had been a real kid who lived a completely unremarkable life.

  It was funny how, looking back from the other side, the unremarkable
could seem so very remarkable. Or at least it was funny until she remembered how sad it was.

  Sarah was everywhere.

  The name repeated in the diary again and again, the comic they had written together when they were eight, birthday cards with long, rambling, sincere messages that got harder to read as they filled the whole card and the writing had to become microscopic to fit.

  The betrayal had never felt keener than in the moments when the depth of their friendship was remembered.

  By the time Claire switched off the light and lay back on her bed she wondered if there was any chance of her sleeping tonight. It might be her last night alive and she was going to spend it tossing and turning. It made sense, but it seemed a shame, not to get to sleep one last time.

  It was funny to think about everything she was saying goodbye to. Sleep. Food. Television. All those mundane things. She hoped she wouldn’t have to say goodbye, she hoped that things would work out, but to make this choice she had to know that she was ready to face the consequences if she needed to. But being ready didn’t mean she wanted to.

  Kev had suggested what she was doing was suicidal, and maybe it was, but that didn’t mean Claire was doing it out of any desire to end her own life. Because facing the end made you face realities, and one of the hardest ones to swallow was the growing realisation that she didn’t really believe she deserved to die, no matter what everyone seemed to think.

  Kev was right; she had been an eleven-year-old girl doing the kind of things that other eleven year old girls did all the time. Usually there wasn’t any punishment. And that was the complicated thing; she was so, so angry at the way she had been treated by the people of this village, at the injustice of it.

  But, she had also seen first-hand their pain. Claire had come to realise the horrible truth.

  That grief makes monsters of the most reasonable people, and it takes a certain kind of patience to be able to swallow that.

  Part of her wanted them all to suffer and rot here forever. Part of her thought that what she was doing now came from a place of steely pragmatism more than anything else.

  Claire wanted to wrap up unfinished business, so that could move on. But below all the rationalisations and explanations the truth was simple. She knew she had to do this, and so she would do it.

  At some point sleep claimed her. She woke up before dawn, still in her clothes, lying on top of the bed surrounded by her old books and papers. Outside the window it was still dark. Perfect. She got to her feet and took her time replacing everything, leaving the room as if nobody had ever disturbed its impeccable little monument.

  Then she walked out into the hallway and down the stairs. She had almost reached the front door when her mother’s voice stopped her.

  “Claire.”

  She paused, briefly considered just hurrying on her way, then turned and walked into the living room. Her mother sat by herself in her usual armchair, wearing a dressing gown with a glass of wine in her hand. She looked as tired as Claire felt.

  “Did you sleep?” Claire asked.

  “No. Did you?”

  “A little.”

  Her mother grimaced. “You are going to do this, aren’t you? No matter what I say?” Claire nodded.

  “You know that…” Her mother faltered, closed her eyes, took a deep breath and fell silent.

  Claire waited for her speak again. Her mother started again. “Claire. You know that we always loved you, no matter what. And we never… we never blamed you for what happened.”

  Claire hadn’t known that. But it made no difference now.

  “Those days were… strange and confusing,” her mother went on. “None of us knew how to act and so none of us acted the right way. It’s no excuse, but every day you’ve been gone I’ve been realising how much we messed up. And if you thinking you have to do this is our fault then…”

  “It’s not,” Claire said.

  “But if we had tried harder–”

  “You did the best you knew how to do at the time,” Claire said, not unkindly. “That’s the best anyone can do. I don’t blame you or Dad for any of it. I really don’t.”

  They held each other’s gaze for a long time. But Claire didn’t walk over or hug her or anything else. She had prolonged the inevitable enough already.

  “I love you Mum,” Claire said. “Tell Dad the same.” She walked out the front door and into the cool, dark morning.

  Sometimes as a kid she had done the same; wandering her village before the sun came up or the people started to rise.

  Sometimes she had done it with Sarah but usually she was alone, doing something that belonged to her. It felt almost good to be here again.

  But she had one more stop before her final one. A house she had avoided for years, a house she had not seen, let alone been inside, since the night this had all begun.

  And walking to that house felt more like walking to the gallows than her last destination ever could.

  But she held her head high as she approached Sarah’s home and she let the memories wash over her and she knew that she had to do this. She was tired of waiting. So, she walked up to that front door the two of them had left through together so long ago and she knocked. She knocked again and again until the door opened and Sarah’s bleary-eyed father was there, looking ready to yell but freezing when he saw who had disturbed him.

  “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry,” Claire said. “And that I’m about to go to that house and do everything in my power to find Sarah and bring her home.”

  She didn’t need to hear the sneering or the attack or the slammed door. So, she just turned before Sarah’s father had even had a chance to react and she walked.

  He was calling her name, again and again, telling her to come back but whether forgiveness or blame was his intent she didn’t need to hear it. She just walked, taking in the dark again that same route from so long ago, leaving the village proper and reaching the long stretch of desolate road that led to the house on the hill.

  As she walked alongside the fences she could almost imagine that Sarah was here, walking alongside her and telling her to go back, that they could lie or come up with some excuse or just take the inevitable jeering and move on with their lives. She should have listened then and she would have listened now but there was no-one there to listen to and so she just kept walking. And then there it was, distant but clear against the slow rising sun.

  The house that she had always thought looked like a looming skull. Framed by blood red it seemed to be challenging her, taunting her.

  You’re back Claire Anderson. You couldn’t beat me last time, what makes you think you can now?

  She stopped. She had no reason to think she could. No reason at all. None but the barest sense of maybe. But that was more than she had had for years.

  She kept walking making herself look at the house as she did. It seemed to be trying to force her to avert her eyes, to show due deference to the place that had ruined her life and claimed so many others.

  But, perhaps absurdly, she wasn’t going to give it that victory over her. Not when it may be about to get the biggest one. She just kept looking at it as it grew and grew until finally she was standing at the foot of that sickeningly familiar hill, entirely in the shadow now cast by the half-risen sun.

  But she didn’t pause. She walked up the hill and towards that old gap in the fence. It was a little more difficult than it used to be to get through, but she managed it.

  Around her now was the tangle of overgrown garden no-one ever tended and the whisper of wind through it all. That voice she had once fancied was telling her to go back.

  She ignored all of it.

  Claire Anderson walked once more up to the house and on to the creaking, wooden porch. She stood in front of the peeling door and remembered the last time she had done this. The threshold she had crossed to the darkness that came after. She stood there and refused to look back or hesitate as she reached out, opened the door, and walked inside.


  Chapter Four

  Knoll House

  South Downs

  West Sussex

  United Kingdom

  December 2017

  A grey mist obscured her view, Claire took a tentative step forward when it happened, for an instant she felt she was falling.

  But then, it was so wonderful, so very wonderful indeed. The sun was out and the day was beautiful and she could not wait for Edward to take her walking along the river while the children played on the grass. For once no work or school to drag them away.

  For once the company of her family, the way it was supposed to be, the way it had been before life put this stranglehold on them and eked away their happiness until–No. She wasn’t to think about that. If she thought about that she might be sad and on this day of all days she could not allow herself to be sad.

  Not where they might see her.

  Because then Edward would worry and the children would ask what the matter was and somebody would suggest doing something else but she would beg them to go out nonetheless. And so, they would but it would all be so very tense and bitter and she did not want that. Not today. Not when everything was so very wonderful. So, she made herself smile in the mirror and when it didn’t look real she hit herself then again and again until there were tears in her eyes but her smile was oh so wonderful.

  The children would be so happy to see it. Then she ensured her clothes were immaculate. All the other husbands would look at Edward and be jealous; and then she walked out of her room and down those grand sweeping stairs to where her family waited, Edward at the door and the children in their Sunday best close by. Edward beamed at her and he opened the door and it was so wonderful but then someone was stepping through the door and–

  Claire felt like she had been doused in ice cold water. She staggered and reached out a hand, finding soft mould and a layer of dust over it. Everything was dark. She fumbled for her bag, pulling out a torch and all the while wondering what the hell had just happened.