by Cat Knight
Julia looked from Ears to the hole.
“Now that I’ve seen her, I have to get her out. Once we’ve done that, we’ll be rid of the other stuff.”
“Think that over,” Ears said. “Maybe she doesn’t want to come out.”
Julia looked at the dark hole and wondered if he spoke the truth. Did the woman, the ‘presence’ really want to stay? That seemed impossible. Didn’t every spirit wish to rest in peace? Didn’t every spirit deserve a last spot that could be visited by relatives and friends?
She supposed there could be energies that would rather roam, and in fact, she did not want to meet them.
“She’s coming out,” Julia said. “It’s the least we can do.”
Julia drank tea before she headed back into the hole, the tunnel. It was cold tea, but it revived her. Armed with a certain knowledge that she was doing the right thing, she crawled inside. When she flashed the torch over the skeleton, she was no longer afraid, well, not totally afraid. As she scooted close, she played the light over the corpse.
“I don’t know your name,” Julia said. “Or why you happened to be here during a bombing raid. And it really doesn’t matter. I’m getting you out, and I would appreciate your cooperation. Together, this shouldn’t be too difficult.”
She paused and slowly pulled a leg free of some debris. The house shook, everything shook. Some pieces of bone rattled.
Construction. It’s just the construction.
Julia hoped she was right, and kept on talking.
“I know, I know, I shouldn’t be talking to a corpse. After all, it’s not like you’re going to talk back. And that’s a shame if you think about it. I’m sure you have some perfectly marvellous tales to tell.”
Julia didn’t know why but talking to the skeleton seemed the right thing to do. When Julia moved a leg here or an arm there, she told the corpse what was going to happen. It was as if she were in some extended care facility, carefully helping a patient out of bed. Seemed silly but felt right.
It took some minutes before Julia managed to free all the woman’s extremities. Then, she carefully moved the head and slid the entire skeleton past. Fortunately, the dress didn’t catch or snag or disintegrate before her eyes.
“All right,” Julia called to Ears. “I’m pushing her out. Grab her and lay her on the floor. And be gentle! After all this time, she’s not in the best of shape.”
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Ears called back.
“Just don’t jerk her, or she’ll fall apart.”
Julia sounded like some sort of museum curator working with an incredibly old and valuable artefact. And maybe the dead woman was something of an artefact, something from a former time, testament to those years when everyone thought civilization would end in a fireball of energy. As Julia gently fed the skeleton out, she wondered if perhaps the skeleton would solve a riddle or two or three. If the right experts could piece it all together…
She watched the last of the woman’s feet pass through the hole in the concrete, and Julia felt good.
All the fear had left her, replaced by a certain kind of understanding. She knew that had she been entombed as the woman had been, she would be thankful for rescue. Turning, Julia played the torch beam over the debris. She wasn’t sure why. She had found what she was looking for, hadn’t she? When her beam found it…
She stopped still. Her thoughts went blank. An eerie silence pervaded everything. Time ticked in her ears.
“JULIA!”
Julia didn’t turn from where the beam pointed. “I…I…I’m all right,” she called.
But she wasn’t all right.
The beam rested on a second skeleton, and while the first had been an obvious woman, this was obviously a man, his clothes laying over him in a sunken pile. The man seemed to smile at her, and that was scary enough, but not as scary as what he was resting against.
Julia had seen enough movies and documentaries to recognize the bomb. It was black and big and looked something like a rocket.
Unexploded.
That word wormed into her mind. It wasn’t that the bomb couldn’t explode. It wasn’t as if it were some training aid, a dummy. No, it was a real one, and while it hadn’t exploded in decades, it was still capable of doing that, wasn’t it?
She studied it, and she noticed the man’s hand on the top of it. What was it doing there?
It seemed to be at a peculiar angle, and his forefinger looked to be placed in some sort of hole at the top. Did that mean anything? She couldn’t tell, but she knew it was time to get out. Still staring, she backed away.
Her foot hit a rafter of some sort. The entire mountain of debris shifted and the man’s finger slipped off.
Julia sucked in her breath, almost choking on dust. Somehow, she knew that the slip of the finger was a very bad.
Had the bomb started to ‘tick’? Or was that just sheer panic bouncing around inside her head?
Sliding forward, she did the only thing she could think to do. and stretched as far as she could, but it wasn’t enough.
Her finger didn’t reach the top of the rocket-bomb, that place where the man’s finger had rested for how long?
She didn’t want to think about that. She scooted forward a tad more, and as she did, the debris seemed to shift more and shake as some trucks rumbled past.
OH NO!
Now she faced a choice. Close as she was, she could slide her finger into the spot vacated by the man, or she could haul her arse out of there and hope that the rocket-bomb didn’t explode before she and Ears got out of the building.
How much time did she have?
“Not enough”.
She heard the voice in her head, and she fought the scream building in her throat. Yet, she believed the voice.
There wasn’t enough time. Trying to escape would get them both killed. She pushed her hand up the side of the rocket-bomb and felt for the hole the man had used. After several ‘ticks’, she found the hole and put her own finger into it. She felt something.
What?
It was a switch or something, a switch she gently pushed to one side.
Did the ‘ticking’ stop?
She thought it did, but that she couldn’t be certain that it wasn’t her own wishful thinking. She let out her breath and closed her eyes.
“Are you all right?”
She opened her eyes. Ears had stuck his head through the wall.
“I think it’s time for the authorities,” she said.
“Come on out.”
“That’s not possible. So, please call them. And after you do, stay outside, far away from the studio.”
“I can’t leave you here all alone.”
“Do as I ask.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s an unexploded bomb here, and should my finger slip, it might well become an exploded one.”
“You’re joking.” Ears voice had risen to panic levels. “Jules, – it’s gonna be OK, it’s gonna be OK. Just don’t move!”
Julia wanted to scream at him, but instead she forced calm on her voice. “Go! Go now! And make sure to tell them about the bomb.”
“Right, ‘course I will Jules. I’ll stop ‘em. Don’t worry.”
“One more thing. See if you can scare the construction people to abandon their project for an hour or two. It would certainly ease my mind.”
“Absolutely.”
She heard him scramble away, and she hoped he took her seriously. If someone had to die, it would be her, not him. Well, her and the gent who had kept his finger on the trigger for more years than she could imagine. She looked at his smiling face.
“I don’t know who you are,” she said out loud. “But if we get out of this, I guarantee I’ll find out, and when I do, I’ll give you the proper grave you deserve. Do we have a deal?”
She thought she saw his head nod, but she knew that was her imagination or the subtle shaking of the house. As she settled down to wait, she suddenly realized that she
shouldn’t have had that last cup of tea.
Chapter Seventeen
Julia, Alden and Ears looked at the considerably large hole in the basement wall and debris that seemed to fill the entire room.
“They aren’t neat, are they?” Alden said irritably.
“It wasn’t us,” Ears said. “We tried to be neat and just made a tiny hole.” Julia shared a smile with him.
Alden stepped up and gazed into the debris under the studio. Julia was reminded that her clothes were beyond redemption. At least, they had served in a worthy cause.
“They had to get the bomb and skeleton out.”
“You don’t suppose there are any other skeletons under there, do you?”
Julia thought a moment before she called. “HELLO! IF THERE ARE ANY MORE OF YOU IN THE RUBBLE, SPEAK UP NOW!”
They were greeted by silence.
“I think that’s it,” Julia said. “It was all about the bomb.”
“They were warning you.” Alden put his arm around her.
“That’s what good people do. Know anyone who can clean up this mess?”
Ears nodded. “I have a cousin who can help.”
“Great. Call him. How about someone to patch the wall?”
Alden shook his head. “That will require an expert. Don’t worry, I’ll find someone.”
When Julia turned away from the hole, she felt a sudden chill. She spun back around, but the hole was just the hole.
“What?” Alden asked.
“I think we need to fix the hole right away.”
“Yeah, it’s spooky.” Ears was looking backwards towards the door. “Look kids, I’m gonna get out of here now. You’ll be in touch Jules? I’ll be back when you’re ready to start again.”
Julia and Alden watched him scarper up the basement stairs.
Alden raised his eyebrows, Julia shrugged "Well admit it, it is kinda spooky. We should get out of here too. And I need to do some research. There has to be someone who needs to know about the skeletons.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“The house originally belonged to Doris Taylor,” Fred said. “She was the one who never came back from Cornwall.”
Julia helped herself to more tea. “I think maybe she did. You heard about the skeletons?”
He nodded. “No wonder we heard voices. They were trapped with a bomb.”
“I think they wanted us out because of the bomb. They didn’t want it to explode. Do you know anything about the man?”
Fred pursed his lips a moment.
“Not really, but at the same time Doris disappeared, so did a chap named Eddie Bromwell. He was a block warden during the war. It was supposed that he was blown up by a bomb. He never made it to the bomb shelter the records say. If it turns out to be him, he’ll be a hero.”
“Did he leave children?”
“One. Edwina Bromwell.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The red brick care home stood far off the road, set in the midst of fully-leafed, old trees. As Julia drove along the curving drive, she wondered why she was making this trip. After all, she didn’t have a card in the game, did she? Well, in a way, she did. And she wanted to know the entire story. Why? Because she wanted to be able to sleep at night. She thought she owed it to the skeletons she had discovered under her studio, the skeletons who had terrorised her in an attempt to save her. She parked in the visitors’ lot and stepped out into the sunshine. At least, the weather was cooperating.
She was sitting in a wheelchair in the middle of the courtyard. Bright sunshine covered her, and with her eyes closed, Julia thought that perhaps the woman was asleep.
White hair, wrinkles, a shawl that really wasn’t needed, the woman resembled many of her generation.
Women who had successfully navigated life to end up being cared for.
If Julia hadn’t driven all this way, she might have simply turned around and waited for another day. But she had driven all this way.
“Edwina?” Julia asked.
The woman’s blue eyes popped open.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” Julia said. “But you’re Edwina Bromwell?”
The woman nodded. “May I help you?”
“I’m Julia. “It was me that found your father, under the house.”
The old woman peered into Julia’s eyes for a long moment until uncomfortable silence settled. Julia’s heart sank as a perturbed frown descended upon the face of Eddie Bromwell’s aged daughter.
“Yes, that was news wasn’t it. I was pleased at first, that he’d been found. Mother would be pleased to know he was found.” The old lady took a long breath. “I never knew my father, but some thought he might have run away on her, because he simply disappeared. There was talk even when I was growing up.”
Edwina raised her eyes and pierced Julia with a glare.
“Perhaps he did. When the police told me he’d been found they said there was another skeleton.
It was her you see, that woman Doris Taylor. And that’s what all the talk was about, when neither of them came back.”
For a brief moment the old lady seemed smaller, vulnerable. Edwina Bromwell had lived with her own ghosts all these years Julia realised. “May I?” she asked and pointed to a bench.
“By all means,” Edwina answered.
A moment passed as Julia searched for just the right way to open the conversation. “I had this all worked out in the car,” she began. “I mean, I knew exactly what I wanted to say to you.”
“Take your time,” the older woman said. “It seems that’s all I have left these days.”
“Yes, well, I guess the first thing I want to tell you is that your father really did die a hero.”
It’s hard to say how many lives he saved. That bomb didn’t explode because of your father who kept his finger on the bomb’s trigger for seventy-plus years. Would you like me to tell you what I think happened?”
“Please.”
“Well, I think your father was out checking to make sure everyone complied with the blackout rules. When the alarm came, he sheltered in the basement of the house of Doris Taylor. When I found them, they weren’t – together. I mean they weren’t huddled up together. There’s nothing at all to suggest anything but that it was war time and a bomb alarm sounded. They got trapped. That’s all.”
Edwina nodded and Julia fancied she saw a glint of happiness and relief in Edwina’s old eyes “He saved a lot of lives. He’s definitely my hero.”
The silence that followed for a moment wasn’t awkward, but Julia had one, actually two more tasks to accomplish before the matter was final for her.
“What will you do about a burial?”
“I’ve decided to have him cremated, and put into one of those bio degradable urns. My friend Elsie had one done for when she passes. They’re marvellous for the environment because you can plant a tree in them so Elsie said. It’s very ecological you know. I’ll think I’ll have one done for myself. It seems like a good thing to do. Don’t you think? I’m just not sure where to plant his pod.”
Julia hid a smile and nodded her approval.
Chapter Eighteen
Julia looked out from the window to the newly planted trees in the studio garden. They were just saplings right now, but would grow into striking birches, each with a plaque at their base, remembering Edward Bromwell and Doris Taylor for their service to the living, even in death. A bench had been placed between the trees so that when Edwina came to visit, there’d be a place for her to sit peacefully for a while. Turning back to her work she finished the proposal and emailed it just before Ears knocked and walked into her office.
Things were indeed going well. Mark Haggit had proven talented, and she had to admit, the publicity over the skeletons hadn’t hurt trade at all.
“Got a minute?” Ears asked.
“Sure.” Julia smiled, but her heart skipped a beat. Ears didn’t often come to her office—unless there was a problem.
“This isn’t about a ghost?” Julia asked.
> “No, no,” Ears assured. “Nothing like that. Oh god, no, no. The last thing I need is another ghost.”
“Great, so what?”
“It’s about Rattler.”
“What about him?”
“We shipped his ashes back to Baltimore, remember?”
Julia nodded.
“Well, I…I’d like to sort of have a little send off or something.”
“Send off?”
“You know. Maybe at a pub or some place. Hoist a pint and tell lies. That OK with you?”
“Absolutely. You’ll call the people who knew him?”
Ears nodded. “You’ll come?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
Ears walked backwards to the door. “Great, great, I’ll set it up and let you know.”
Julia watched Ears leave, and she knew that what he was doing was a good thing. Rattler deserved a send-off. In fact, everyone did. On a whim, she walked down into the basement and touched the wooden board that covered the hole in the basement wall.
She had arranged for the repair, but getting anything done quickly seemed an impossibility. For the time being, she would have to put up with the makeshift fix.
“I know your skeletons aren’t here anymore, and I did what I could for your remains” she said out loud. “But… are you still here?” She paused, listening, waiting for some response. Nothing happened. No voices.
She leaned forward and placed her forehead on the wood.
“I’m glad. I’m so glad.” She waited. Nothing happened.
Pushing off the wall, she smiled and fairly skipped up the steps. All was right in her studio.
No ghosts.
THE END
THE HAUNTING OF ROCHFORD HOUSE
CAT KNIGHT
©Copyright 2018 Cat Knight
All Rights Reserved
Prologue
November 2017
The Sly Fox Pub
Essex
UK
The bar was lined with the usual loud blokes who stood and pounded down pints as if beer was going to be banned the next day. Mia stood briefly in the doorway glancing around. She looked further along and spotted the small group in the far corner, close to the dart boards.