13 Hauntings

by Clarice Black

  Sheila said, “I don’t know. This has all happened too quickly. The door, the scream, the painting. If we triggered something-”

  Michael interrupted her. He said, “I assure you, there’s nothing to be triggered. Geoffrey and I are the only ones who have keys to this house. I have no reason to ruin or rig a property I’m trying to sell. Geoffrey, you wouldn’t set a trap like this, would you?”

  Geoffrey said, “Of course not! What are you even saying? That I - that I turned this wonderful historical monument into some sort of pithy Halloween attraction? How absurd. Young man, I’ve done no such thing. Someone - someone will answer for this!”

  Bryce said, “Well fine. Answer all you want. Can we figure out a way to get out of here first?”

  That question brought Geoffrey back to reality. He said, “Yes, yes, a way out. There’s a back door. It’s hardly ever used, of course, but I still have the key for it. Let us see what we can see.”

  Bryce gladly followed the old man past the painting, into a parlor, and through a small area that might have once been a kitchen. He glanced at a strange metal contraption that he reckoned was a very primitive oven. He listened for anything he could. The sound of his breathing was louder than he expected. He was sure that, whether there was a ghost or not in the house, he wasn’t alone. No amount of money or business potential could pay for him to remain in a place he had never been before with people he had barely met, in a house that might or might not have something or someone dangerous in it. At the very least, he was already turned off the idea of buying the house. He was sure that he wouldn’t go through with it. It probably would have been best had he just made a fool of himself at the outset, and turned and run before all of this had happened.

  The historian fumbled with his keys until he realized that the back door didn’t lock from the inside. He tried turning the doorknob. It didn’t budge. He pushed his shoulder against it once, then winced in pain.

  When he spoke again, he sounded uncertain, “That’s not supposed to do that. This door is supposed to open.”

  Bryce said, “Doors can’t refuse to open on their own, can they?”

  “I don’t know - I should have thought not, but I - this is - I don’t understand.” He peered through the door’s window, trying to get a good look outside. He called out, “Whoever is out there, this is no longer amusing! If you don’t open this door at once, I shall phone the police!”

  The door didn’t open at once, or at all. Bryce took a turn trying to budge it open. He felt more than a usual resistance from it. He might as well have been trying to move a thick steel wall. He said, “It’s not moving.”

  Geoffrey pulled out his phone. He said, “Right, I’ve had enough of this. Someone is going pay very severely for this prank.”

  Bryce waited for the historian to make the call. When that didn’t happen, he said, “Is something wrong?”

  “This phone, it must have broken. I can’t get a signal.”

  Bryce pulled out his own phone, one that he had purchased at Heathrow Airport. A small red X appeared where he expected to see bars. Two large words appeared over his screen: NO SERVICE.

  “We’re out of the service area, it says.”

  Sheila tried hers as well. When she couldn’t make a call, she said, “But that’s impossible. It was working when I checked it on the highway coming in. I was playing chess while you had the music on, remember?”

  Bryce gulped. He said, “This is...this is something completely different. Weird sounds and property damage is one thing. Setting up an interference field that prevents anyone inside the house from connecting to a cell tower, that takes a great deal of skill and preparation.”

  Michael grew worried. He said, “What...what does that mean?”

  Bryce wished he could have avoided telling the truth. He just didn’t see that he had any possible option, “It means whoever has us trapped, wants us to stay here.”

  Sheila tried messing with her phone to make it work. She said, “Why would anyone do that? What’s the point? We’re not - we’ve never harmed anyone.”

  Bryce said, “The point is to prevent us from ringing the police before we get ourselves knocked about the head.”

  Geoffrey tried the door again, this time with increased desperation. He said, “Murder? I refuse to believe that anyone would ever murder us. No one would bother. No one, unless…”

  Silence hung in the air until Bryce was forced to break it. He said, “Unless what?”

  The historian stopped fiddling with the door. He turned around to face Bryce. He seemed to have aged five years in the short time since realising that the door would not open for him. He said, “Perhaps I’d better tell you how the brew witch died.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Four

  “I told you before that witchcraft was put to an end by reasoning and skepticism. Like most movements, it didn’t go away quickly or quietly. Isobel was one of the last women to be prosecuted and executed for witchcraft.”

  The house creaked again, as if in protest. Bryce worried that the house might collapse on him quite suddenly. He envisioned an implosion with him and his wife inside, crushed to death. He could feel malevolence all around him. He didn’t know what the house had against him, or why it should even care. Had he been there before, at some point in the distant past, that might have made it easier to understand.

  Sheila said, “She was burned at the stake, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes, she was. Not just once, but twice. The first time, she survived. I don’t know how. That’s just what history tells us. She was burned horribly. She was given a day to repent of her sins while her charred body smoked. She could only manage to groan in pain. She didn’t even cry; I suspect her tear ducts were all dried up by then. The next morning, they hauled her out and burned her again. This time, she died, good and proper.”

  Sheila put her hands over her mouth and gasped, “She was burned at the stake twice?”

  “That’s true, at least from what I’ve read.”

  Bryce shook his head. He said, “No wonder she’s angry.”

  Geoffrey looked aghast. “Mr. Price, surely you don’t mean to say that Isobel is here with us? Such a thing could not be countenanced.”

  Bryce said, “Whether you countenance it or not, we have to assume that this is the case. I mean, I don’t believe in ghosts or anything, you know?”

  “Hmm, yes, I believe you have said that already. Are you saying that you have changed your mind?”

  “Not exactly. Ghosts aren’t real. But, as long as we’re in here, we have to work as though they are. Someone has gone to a great deal of trouble to make us think that this is a haunting. I don’t know why. I mean, it seems like an awful waste of time and money to me. That’s just the reality of our situation, though. We’re stuck here in the middle of a prank. So if we want to get out of here, we have to assume that this is a game and that there are rules we have to observe.”

  Michael picked up a hammer that he’d found laying around. The hammer was old and rusted; it didn’t look like it would last long if it was set to the purpose for which it had been designed. He said, “Normally, I’d be the last one to suggest this, but...why don’t we just break our way out?”

  Geoffrey looked aghast. “Absolutely not! Young man, I won’t have you destroying anything in this house. Everything in here is the property of the Gloucester County Historical Society. I speak for that society. I won’t allow you to do what you’re suggesting!”

  Michael shot back, “So what? We’re just going to stay here until somebody misses us and comes looking? You heard that scream. We’re not alone here. We have to get out of here as soon as possible. Now I’m sorry, I really am. I’m not here because I want to destroy anything. But if all the doors are barred or locked against us, then we have to break them down. The doors can be replaced later. Honestly, this is a matter for the police now. We have no business here any longer.”

  The histori
an blubbered, “But- but, surely you’re not serious!”

  “I’d like you to move aside, Mr. Ruggins. I’m going to take this hammer, and I’m going to break the door down. We can replace the door later. The house’s value won’t suffer, I guarantee you. What’s important is that we get ourselves out of here. I don’t want to spend another minute in here.”

  Geoffrey put up his hands. He said, “I won’t allow you to do that. I don’t really know what is going on, but-”

  Michael advanced on the historian and grabbed him by the shoulder. Geoffrey shouted in surprise as he was pushed to one side. He bumped into a cupboard, then fell to the floor. Michael didn’t appear to notice. He went straight for the door with his hammer. The head of the hammer struck the window of the door straight on. A loud sound resonated through the kitchen.

  Bryce closed his eyes for a moment. He expected to hear the sound of shattering glass. He expected to see glass shards fall all over the floor. That didn’t happen. When he opened his eyes, he saw something inexplicable. The door was still there, still intact, the same as before. The window wasn’t broken. There wasn’t even an indentation on it to suggest that it had been struck with a hammer.

  Michael looked at the hammer as though it had suddenly changed into a flower. He said, “What? That’s not supposed to happen.”

  Sheila had apparently not closed her eyes. She had seen the whole thing. She said, “That’s impossible. Glass doesn’t resist like that. The hammer is made of metal, isn’t it?”

  “You can see it’s made of metal. It’s rusted over. Is that glass really made of glass? Not some kind of transparent polymer or something?”

  Sheila said, “Try breaking the doorknob.”

  Geoffrey managed to get back to his feet. He leaned against the ancient oven, gathering his strength. He said, “No, you mustn’t! You can’t!”

  Michael sized up the doorknob. He took a mighty swing at it. To Bryce’s surprise, the doorknob fell right off. It clattered to the floor, along with bits and pieces of the door’s lock mechanism. Michael said, “All right, now we’re getting somewhere.”

  Yet when he pushed on the door, nothing happened. The lock had fallen away. Nothing should have prevented the door from moving. Yet, something did. Michael grunted, then pushed harder at the door.

  Bryce said, “Clear out, mate. Let me have a try at it.”

  Michael stepped away from the door. He said, “Go ahead, help yourself.”

  Bryce took the measure of the door. He tensed up his leg. He rushed at the door and kicked it right next the empty doorknob. There was a loud crash. The door didn’t budge a centimeter. When it was done, Bryce wasn’t sure that he had even kicked at the door at all. He let out an exasperated breath.

  He said, “That’s not possible.”

  Michael tilted his head sideways. He said, “That’s not possible at all. There’s nothing left there to keep the door locked. It should give way now.”

  “The glass should have shattered too.”

  Geoffrey said between breaths, “That is...exceptionally peculiar.”

  Sheila’s voice betrayed her fear. She said, “Someone’s there.”

  Bryce turned. His foot ached just enough to be noticeable. He had kicked the door as hard as he could. When he turned, he saw something he never would have expected ever to see. In the distance, just in front of the painting, he saw a shimmering figure. The figure was pale yellow and translucent. He could see through it, whatever it was. The figure had the slim, slender shape of a woman. It had a long scythe in one hand. Upon its head rested a ridiculous stovepipe hat.

  Ghostly, writhing insects moved around the figure’s eye sockets. Its cheeks were hollow. Some of its teeth were broken or missing. He couldn’t see any feet sticking out from the figure’s dress. It floated in mid-air. Bryce stared at it, mesmerized. He heard the word hologram used before, he just didn’t think he would ever see one.

  Unless he had been wrong all along. Unless ghosts really did exist, and this was one right before his eyes.

  He didn’t want to think about that. He just couldn’t help it. He had a rough idea of how much power would have to be generated to produce an interference field, and a holographic generator- assuming that such things could actually exist. There was no way that an old house like the one he was in would be able to handle the power requirements for those two devices running simultaneously. The circuits would overload. The entire house would go dark - unless it was hooked up to some external power source. He hadn’t seen any evidence of that.

  The figure’s voice was haunting when he heard it. The words reached his ears perfectly synchronized with the movement of the figure’s lips. That was too difficult to replicate. The voice chilled every part of him. He could hardly move when he heard it in his ears.

  “You will leave…”

  Bryce blinked. When the voice stopped speaking, he felt as though he had been unfrozen. He had difficulty believing that he had heard anything at all. He said, “I’m sorry, what? Did you say something?”

  The figure did not answer. It just hovered there in the distance, silent and unmoving.

  Sheila said, “She asked us to leave. But how do we leave? We’ve already tried to leave, and we can’t. It’s not like we want to stay here.”

  Bryce said, “Too right. You open up that door whenever you want. We’ll go, sure enough. Just open up that door.”

  He didn’t actually think that the ghost, if that's what it was, had any control over the doors. He didn’t believe it was possible for a spirit to change the thickness of a substance so that it couldn’t be damaged by a direct blow. No scientific process he knew could do that. That was in the province of magic- something that could not be explained.

  In fact, the more he thought about it, the more his mind presented supernatural, magical events that he had seen. Nothing that he had seen since he stepped foot into the house made any sense; it was as though he had entered an alternate universe where the natural laws of the universe no longer applied.

  Geoffrey pointed a finger towards the figure. He said, “That’s her! That’s Isobel! The brew witch!”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Five

  Bryce could not believe what he had just heard. When he first entered the house, the historian had told him that Isobel Gilmartin had been killed over four hundred years ago. Burned at the stake twice over. No person who had been dead that long could come back to life. For that matter, no one could ever come back to life under any circumstances. Once a person was dead, they stayed dead. That was how the world worked. If the dead could come back to life, they would do so more often, wouldn’t they?

  The ghost of the brew witch, an impossible thought, yet one he had to consider, floated towards him. He looked around for something to grab onto. Any implement would do. The closest thing he saw was the broken doorknob on the floor. Michael tried pushing the door open again. The door still didn’t budge.

  Bryce said, “Give me that hammer.”

  Fear peeled away Michael’s assumed mask of confidence. His eyes widened. He looked ready to bolt in whatever direction suited him. He said, “No- no, I won’t.”

  “Come on, now’s not the time for that mate. I don’t claim to know what’s happening here, but I know enough to trust what my eyes are seeing. We’re in danger here. If you don’t want to give me that hammer, then you go and kill that - whatever that is. Give me the hammer, or take care of it yourself. Hurry up and make up your mind. Time’s a-wastin’ here.”

  Michael considered taking the rusty hammer at the ghost. Then he passed it over to Bryce as though it was a hot potato. Bryce almost dropped it. When he had it in hand, he saw that the ghost had advanced two or three steps forward. It moved slowly, yet it continued moving forward - slow and steady.

  Sheila grabbed Bryce by the arm. She said, “Don’t do this, Bryce. Everything’s gone nutballs in here. They just - they want you to be a part of it. Don’t give them the satisf
action.”

  Bryce responded, “The people who set all this up for us, eh? Might be you’re right. Only, if you’re wrong, we could really be in for it. I don’t want to take that chance.”

  “Bryce, look at me. Look at me.”

  Bryce looked at his wife. She was worried, just as much as he was. He couldn’t blame her for that. They had barely been in the house an hour, and already so much had happened. He would have been disconcerted if she showed no signs of worry at all.

  She continued, “You can’t do this. That’s not real, whatever that is. We’re in the middle of an elaborate production. I don’t know, maybe someone wanted to turn this place into a haunted house attraction and didn’t tell anyone about it. Maybe we’re beta testers, you know?”

  “It’s a nice thought. I just don’t believe it. There’s too much, I don’t know how to say it, malice. Something evil. I know, you’re going to say it’s a switcheroo. I’m the believer now and you’re the skeptic. I just can’t deny what I’m seeing in front of me.”

  She let go of his arm. He was glad that he didn’t have to pry it off. He advanced on the pale yellow figure. His stomach turned as he got closer. The detail in her appearance sickened him. Not only were the insects incredibly lifelike, he could see scorch marks all over her face and hands as well. The scythe that she carried looked like it could separate his head from his body at a single stroke. When he looked closer, he saw what appeared to be blood upon the blade.

  He raised the hammer, ready to strike at the ghost’s head. Before he could do so, the ghost’s mouth opened wide. A scream came out of it, so loud, so mind-numbing that he could hardly believe his own ears. He put his hands over them, though that did no good. There was pain in the scream, and heartache. Bryce had the sense of being exposed to a wound that had been open and festering for some time.

  When the scream ended, he didn’t wait around for an encore. He swung the hammer sideways at the ghost’s head. Instead of hitting a solid object as he expected, the hammer passed through the air as though nothing was there. The pale yellow substance of the ghost’s head dissipated for a moment, then reformed when Bryce drew the hammer back for a second strike.