The Haunting of Henderson Close

by Cavendish

  “Mairead, for God’s sake, help me.”

  Mairead’s voice issued from the creature’s mouth. “I don’t know how…I can’t get out.”

  “Try, please! You’re my only hope.”

  Mairead screamed. Her face contorted. Blood streamed from her forehead into her eyes. They grew black. Her head writhed and the creature lost its grip. Hannah snatched her hand back.

  Mairead’s face disintegrated. Horrified, Hannah clutched her wounded hand, red and swollen from the attack.

  “We’ve lost her,” George said. “It’s killed her.”

  “It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t been so stupid.”

  “It’s coming!”

  The creature resumed its reptilian face. Then Ailsa’s, contorted. Donald Bain’s frigid hard stare. Only Robbie seemed calm. His cold eyes stared out of the demon’s head before it switched back to the reptile.

  George must have understood what Hannah had been trying to do because he took up the call. “Come on, bastard. We’re ready for you. Come on.” He took a step forward.

  The creature also took a step forward. One more and it would be trapped.

  It took a step. Backward.

  Hannah’s heart sank. Anger swelled inside her. “You fucking coward.”

  The demon circled around them. Hannah and George stood back to back, never letting it out of their sight. It roared. It spat. Ailsa’s face reappeared. She opened her mouth to speak and her voice rang out. Hers. Not the contorted voice of the creature. “You cannot win. The Devil is in control here and I am his servant.”

  So now they knew, Ailsa wasn’t a victim of the creature. She had never been what she seemed to be and here lay the proof.

  George spat at her. “You evil bitch.”

  Ailsa laughed. Mirthless, harsh, grating laughter that chilled Hannah’s blood.

  The face morphed again. This time Robbie stared out at them.

  “Robbie McDonald?” Hannah asked. “Why has it got you?”

  Robbie said nothing. He stared at them, his face expressionless before fading and once again becoming the reptilian devil.

  The creature took another step. Forward this time. Its toe almost touched the outer edge of the circle.

  Hannah held her breath. Now. Please.

  It took another step. A white mist descended all around it, so dense Hannah couldn’t see George.

  “Jump. George! Jump out of the pentagram. Don’t touch the outer circle.”

  “I can’t see anything.”

  “Nor can I. Take the biggest jump you can manage.”

  The creature’s roars hurt her ears. Hannah took a deep breath and leaped. Instantly she was through the mist and out the other side. George appeared a second later. Behind them a rumbling started.

  “Oh God, now what?” George turned to see the source of the noise. Hannah was too preoccupied with the mist. The roars of the creature died down. The mist cleared.

  “Hannah.” George’s voice sounded a warning tone.

  “It’s gone. It worked. George it worked!”

  “Not so fast, Hannah. We have a problem.”

  “What?” She turned and looked in disbelief. A wall. Where the boards and the broken door had been. “What the hell…?”

  George pressed the bricks. “Solid. We’re bricked up in here. There’s no other way out. We’re trapped in here just as much as that…thing.” He pointed to the pentagram.

  “At least we’re safe from it. It’s trapped inside there.”

  “Oh, we’re safe all right. Until we die of thirst and starvation.”

  “There has to be a way out. I won’t accept this. After all we’ve been through.”

  “Come on then, let’s search. Feel along this wall. See if there are any cracks or holes.”

  They moved along in the dim glow from the emergency lights.

  Nothing. The brickwork was as solid as it had been since before the workmen knocked it down. They trudged over ancient broken crockery, rubble, plaster. Hannah was grateful that the place was relatively dry. Mold covered some walls but at least they weren’t ankle deep in water. Nor had she seen any rats, but that again could mean there was no way out. Or in.

  “One thing’s for sure,” George said as they scrambled into the next derelict house. “No one’s going to come looking for us. Oh, they’ll wonder how the wall got put back up but as for tearing it down again? I doubt it.”

  Something had been bugging Hannah and now she realized what it was. “The emergency lights. They’re connected to the electricity supply.”

  “Yes, of course. But when the power fails, they switch to battery. Goodness knows how long they’ll last.”

  “Yes, but couldn’t we at least trace the wiring? Maybe.…”

  “Sorry, Hannah. There’s no switch in here. They never got around to putting one in. It’s one of the ones on the wall at the bottom of the stairs. You’re on a hiding to nothing, I’m afraid.”

  “Indulge me. We’re getting nowhere here. There’s not even a breeze. No sign of any exit and we’re almost at the end of the excavated bit of the Close.”

  “If we had torches we could see the ceiling better. Maybe there’s a manhole cover or something.”

  “And how would we get up there even if there was? It’s a death trap down here.”

  George kicked a pile of rubble and it collapsed. “OK. But we have to do something. We’ve nothing to lose.”

  Hannah caught a movement out of the corner of her eye. “George.” She pointed over to the doorway. Isobel stood, clutching her doll. She had a face. Sad, tear-streaked, but it was her face.

  She half turned, then looked back.

  George gasped. “My God, it’s you.”

  “You know her? I didn’t know you’d seen her.”

  “We met once. A long time ago. A lifetime ago it seems now, when I was a child. Dougie they called me then. I switched to my middle name in my teens. She came into our garden. The garden of that house.…” He smacked the wall. “Damn! The landlord. How could I have forgotten? His name was McDonald. Robert McDonald. A relative? Coincidence?”

  “Is anything a coincidence here?” Hannah said. “She wants us to go with her.”

  George and Hannah followed the little girl as she glided over the rough terrain. Hannah stumbled a few times, cursing stubbed toes. Then the little girl stopped outside a house. She looked up at it and then at Hannah.

  “Was this your house?” Hannah asked. The little girl nodded, a tear tracking its way down her pretty face.

  Isobel made to open a nonexistent door and beckoned them to follow her inside.

  The room was wrecked, like all the others. Broken chairs, a worm-eaten table, moldy walls and plaster-covered floor. An ancient range with an old kettle. Besides that, a dust-covered rocking chair with a tattered cushion provided the only semi-intact furniture. In a shadowed corner, someone turned.

  Hannah breathed. “Robbie McDonald.”

  He was smartly dressed in keeping with his time. Tailored dark grey suit, stiff white collar. On his head a bowler hat. Every inch a city gentleman. When he spoke, his voice held the merest trace of an accent.

  “You don’t belong here.”

  That voice. Hannah recognized it instantly. It had said the same thing to her more than once.

  “So, where do I belong, Robbie?”

  “You know where you belong. In the kirkyard. With Kirsten.”

  “Who is Kirsten?” George asked.

  “She betrayed me. They all betrayed me. She knows.” He pointed at Hannah. “It was you. You returned to taunt me again. You – they – said I didn’t belong.”

  Now it all became clear. The strange feelings she had experienced. The sense of déjà vu at the house in the New Town. She had been there before. In a previous life. But that would mean.�
�� She pushed the thought away. “And this was your house?” Hannah asked.

  He shook his head. His gaze unnerved Hannah. It was as if he was invading her soul.

  “I cannot go back there. They’ve all gone.”

  “Everyone went a long time ago, Robbie,” George said. “Even you.”

  To her amazement Robbie threw back his head and laughed. That harsh and raucous noise he had made when he was imprisoned in the demon.

  “How did you escape?” Hannah asked. “From the devil’s trap?”

  “What makes you think I did?”

  Hannah exchanged glances with George.

  “Robbie,” Hannah began. “Do you know where you are?”

  “I am in Isobel’s house in Henderson Close. She’s the only one who still accepts me. She is an old spirit. Earthbound. She has walked these streets for centuries and became my friend when I still lived here.”

  “If you’re here,” Hannah said, “you can’t be in the devil’s trap. You escaped from the demon.”

  Robbie said nothing.

  George took a step closer to him. Robbie seemed to grow a couple of inches taller. Hannah noticed for the first time how thin he was. Tall and thin. Not unlike a scarecrow from a distance, in the shadows, and his eyes appeared oddly distorted as if he had been stretched somehow out of shape. He curled his lip.

  “Why do you stay here?” Hannah asked. “If you have the freedom to move.”

  “The bitch is here.”

  “The bitch? You can’t mean Miss Carmichael? She gave you every opportunity you could have wished for. An education. A comfortable home—”

  “She took away my identity. I was never good enough for the smart people in the New Town and too educated for the Old Town. My own parents told me not to come back. They said I wasn’t one of them anymore.”

  Hannah stared at him, aware that George was doing the same.

  “My God,” she said. “It was you. You killed Miss Carmichael.”

  “Donald Bain killed her.”

  George spoke. “He couldn’t have. He was in prison.”

  “Not after I stood bail for him. I paid him handsomely.”

  Hannah leaned against the wall, steadying herself. “How could you do that, Robbie? After all she did for you.”

  The ghost reared up, grew taller, thinner. Its lips parted over teeth which had outgrown their gums. “She stole my life, so I took hers.”

  “She gave you opportunities. Education, a future out of the slums.”

  “You know nothing about it. And now you are trapped here. As I am.”

  “You? Trapped?” Hannah’s anger drowned her fear. “Whatever happened to you in later life was your own doing. Did you never feel remorse? Wasn’t it you who paid for Miss Carmichael’s plaque?”

  “I know of no such thing. Why would I pay for a plaque? I wanted her forgotten, and now that woman…the one who looks exactly like her.”

  “Mairead.”

  “I believed the bitch to be dead and long ago buried but then she returned. Returned to taunt me.”

  “You killed Mairead too. You.…” Hannah couldn’t finish her sentence. The devil, Donald Bain and Robbie McDonald, joined as one, with whoever Ailsa really was.

  A movement caught Hannah’s attention.

  “Ye must awa’ now, Robbie.” Isobel’s tiny voice held surprising strength. “Your time is done.”

  “No!” Robbie’s features contorted, stretched. His teeth became pointed, blackened, his hair singed. The air filled with his tortured screams while Hannah and George watched, horrified. Unable to move. Others joined him. Demons like gargoyles and a serpent-like creature who swallowed them all.

  Then disappeared.

  Isobel tugged Hannah’s hand, her touch feather-light. “It’s done now. He is trapped with the Auld De’il.”

  Hannah looked down at her, relieved to see her face. “We have to find a way out. Please help us.”

  The little girl backed away, shaking her head. Her eyes widened. She clutched her doll more tightly to her and set off running.

  “No! Come back!” Hannah and George set off after her, but she had disappeared.

  “Now what the hell do we do?” Hannah peered through the gloom.

  “We turn this place upside down,” George said. “What else can we do? Maybe there’s still some other way out.”

  They searched. The dampness of the walls made Hannah shiver.

  “Hannah.” George’s call made her turn her head.

  Framed in the doorway, barely there but instantly recognizable. Miss Carmichael. Despite her own predicament, Hannah found the sadness in her eyes almost unbearable. She had given Robbie everything and to find out he was the instigator of her murder.…

  “Please, Miss Carmichael,” Hannah said. “Help us. We’re trapped here.”

  Miss Carmichael raised her arm and pointed behind Hannah. A shower of ancient plaster fell from the wall, cascading onto the floor in a snowfall. Bricks wobbled, released their mortar, then toppled. A hole formed. Through it, the emergency lights of Henderson Close cast their dim glow.

  “Thank you. Thank you so much,” Hannah said, but Miss Carmichael’s ghost was already fading into nothing. Hannah watched her disappear. “Rest in peace now, Miss Carmichael.”

  “Come on,” George said.

  Hannah scrambled through the hole, oblivious to the broken bricks that grazed her face and tangled her hair.

  She helped George through and they stood on the other side of the wall, watching it close up until there was no trace of the hole that had saved their lives.

  “I can hear voices,” George said. “They’re coming this way. It’s Morag.” He squeezed Hannah’s hand. “I’d begun to think I’d never hear another human voice.”

  Relief surged through Hannah as they waited for their colleague and her visitors to join them.

  “Hello, Mistress Ross,” Hannah said.

  She waited for Morag’s greeting. Nothing.

  Morag brought her group to a halt, ready to begin her tale. “Ladies and gentlemen, here we are at Isobel’s house. Isobel was a little girl in 1645 when the plague struck Edinburgh. I told you earlier about Eliza McTavish? Well, young Isobel was also walled up and just before they sealed her tomb, they threw in a little rag doll to keep her company. So, you see, they were all heart in those days.”

  One of the party shivered. “Is it me or is it extra cold just here?”

  “Aye,” Morag replied. “It can get a wee bit chillier here. It’s only recently been excavated and restored. About a year ago.”

  Hannah and George looked at each other. “A year ago?” Hannah whispered. “She hasn’t seen us. She’s standing four feet away and she hasn’t seen us.”

  The woman who had complained of the cold spun round and stared Hannah straight in the face.

  “Are you all right there?” Morag asked.

  “Yes,” she replied uncertainly. “I think so.”

  “Why can’t they see us?” Hannah asked. “Or hear us?”

  George shook his head.

  “Now, ladies and gentlemen,” Morag said. “If I could ask you step back a little, I want to show you something you all seem to have missed. One of you is even standing on it. Yes, the lady who felt suddenly cold.”

  She looked down and jumped back. “Oh, my goodness. I had no idea I was standing on that.”

  “If you look closely, you’ll see a five-pointed star in a circle. Anyone know what that’s called?”

  “A pentagram,” the woman replied.

  Hannah and George looked down. They were standing in the middle of it.

  “But how…?” Hannah’s earlier elation had evaporated, replaced by a growing nameless fear.

  Morag was in full flow now. “When we excavated here a year ago, we found it. This is
where Henderson Close meets Farquhars Close.…”

  Giggles sounded from some of the younger members of the group. Morag smiled. “Yes, we all have a little fun with that one from time to time. The poor man who owned the name grew to be a notable man of business and property here in Edinburgh. No doubt the challenge of having people snigger behind his back spurred him on. So, if you’d like to follow me, I’ll take you further into Farquhars Close and tell you about the legend of the Auld De’il.”

  Hannah made to follow them but her legs wouldn’t move. “George?”

  “No, I can’t move either.”

  Hannah sighed. It all became clear now. “We were all brought here, weren’t we?” she said. “I was right. There are no coincidences here. Some force we don’t understand brought us all together at this point in time. At exactly the moment when the Auld De’il was about to be released. All so that it could feed from hatred so strong it survived death.”

  “It seems that way. Released, the beast feeds and grows. We can only hope no one sets it free again.”

  A rustle sounded to the side of them. Isobel was back.

  “Please, will you help us?” Hannah asked.

  “Ye must stay. Keep watch.”

  Tears pricked Hannah’s eyes. “For how long? Are we to stay trapped here forever?”

  George spoke. “We’re dead, Hannah. We have nowhere to go but here. Don’t you see? We are the ones that will keep the Auld De’il trapped.”

  “Is that true, Isobel?” Hannah knew the answer before the girl nodded. Images flashed through her mind. Jenna, growing older, running a large, successful school. Happily married to Sean. The grandchildren she would never see, growing strong and healthy. Gradually the images faded and, instead of emptiness, they left pride. Her daughter would live a long and fulfilling life.

  George took her hand and drew her to him in their ethereal world of spirit. “We are where we are supposed to be,” he said.

  * * *

  In the kirkyard, the young woman stared at the damaged plaque. “Goodbye, Miss Carmichael,” she said.

  A small hand slipped into hers. Mairead Ferguson looked down at the little girl who cuddled her battered rag doll. Finally, her mind cleared and she had her answers. All the ones that mattered anyhow. So many illusions and false memories when all she needed to know was right there with her now.