13 Hauntings

by Clarice Black

  “It meant something to her. That’s what matters.”

  Sheila grabbed him by the arm. She said, “You’re right. You think it’s over now?”

  “I hope so. It still seems like a dream to me. Maybe now I’m only just waking up. Life is...a lot more complex and more wonderful than I ever imagined.”

  “And a lot scarier.”

  “Too right. Shall we get out here?”

  The Haunting of Grave’s End House

  Clarice Black

  CHAPTER NINE

  Prologue

  There were many old, historic houses in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire but there was something especially eerie about Grave’s End House. Built in 1875, it was a two-storey house with four bedrooms and a medieval flare. It was a cosy house; good for a winter get away, with wood-paned, encased windows and a great stone chimney. Nevertheless, it was always on the market. No one wanted to live there or stay longer than a few nights… Though at first glance it was simply a pretty and modest home, it was brimming with lore. For within the walls of this lovely house lay a deep, dark curse.

  The home’s original owner was a man named Clark Longman, a prominent barrister in Tewkesbury, a man of wealth and status. He lived there with his wife Leah Longman, their two small children and his brother-in-law. Leah’s brother was disabled after an accident at a factory, and he could not live on his own. The family all lived together in Grave’s End House, happy and peaceful in spite of any hardships they had faced along the way. However, there were growing rumblings about Clark around the town when it was revealed that he was likely to become a judge. It became clear that, even though everyone had more or less gotten along in the town up until that point, Clark had many enemies lurking there, too.

  One night, Clark Longman was found dead in that house. All of Gloucestershire shook with fear and unease while the police carried out their investigation. What could have possibly happened for the man to be found dead in his own house? Had the poor man been driven to suicide?

  The police eventually concluded that Clark Longman had been murdered.

  Who could have committed such a heinous deed while he was alone in his house? No one was ever able to figure that out…

  Leah Longman had spent the night out with her friends at a tavern in town. When she arrived home, she was horrified and had not known what to do. She was questioned about the murder, of course, but she couldn’t offer any hints as to who might have been behind it.

  Alone now, Leah fell into a depression. She had been able to manage things at the house while she had had her husband to provide for her and the children. Now, she had nothing. She did not know how she was meant to raise her two children alone, let alone take care of her poor invalid brother.

  As the weeks went by, she became more and more secluded. The people of Tewkesbury noticed the change in her. She would walk around with an empty look in her eyes, as if all of her life had fled from her and all that remained was a hollow shell of a person.

  Tragedy struck Grave’s End House a second time when the police were summoned by a concerned neighbour one night. They pushed the front door open and found the two children’s lifeless bodies in the bathtub. They had been drowned and left there. The police went into Leah’s brother’s room and discovered him bloodied and bludgeoned in his bed. A knife lay on the floor nearby.

  There was only one suspect. One person who could have done such a thing, though it was hard to believe.

  Leah Longman.

  But when the police went into her bedroom – the room that she had shared with her late husband – they found her hanging from the ceiling, one of Clark’s old belts serving as a noose.

  It is said that the restless ghosts of Leah, her children, and her brother walk the halls of Grave’s End to this very day. But no one knows for sure.

  No one has stayed long enough to find out.

  The house has been on the market ever since…

  CHAPTER TEN

  The House in Tewkesbury

  Amy Campbell popped her watermelon bubble-gum as she sat in the passenger seat of her mother, Jen’s red Mini Cooper. She looked to her right, regarding her mum with concern. She had been concerned for a while now. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Amy asked. “It just doesn’t seem like you’ve really thought this all through.”

  Jen smiled at her daughter, the smile of someone who was barely keeping things together. “Yes, Amy,” she replied as if there was nothing at all strange about suddenly uprooting one’s family to live in Gloucestershire. At least she had been kind enough to wait until Amy graduated from Woodside High School before planning her midlife crisis move.

  She smoothed back her long, brown ponytail, flipping the end of it over her shoulder as she often did when she was agitated by something. This time there was no question that the cause was Amy. “I am not going to change my mind on this. As I told you and Kelly, getting away from it all is for the best. I can’t keep living in that house where he… Where that man…” Jen broke off, unable to go on with that sentence because it hurt too much.

  Who wanted to sleep in the same room where their spouse cheated on them?

  Amy understood. The past few months had been so hard on her mother. It had been hard on all three of them. At least her sister Kelly didn’t actually live at home anymore. She was twenty-two and had her own flat. That was another thing that had struck Amy as odd. Why did Kelly have to be dragged into this new whim of their mother’s? She was a grown woman who should be able to live on her own.

  But Jen was adamant. And she would hear no complaints or arguments from either of her daughters.

  Amy was worried about her mother, and she wanted to go along with whatever Jen wanted. She needed time to heal and get over the awful things her husband Dave put her through. Amy understood that. She was willing to be patient.

  She was just sceptical that this move would fix anything.

  When Jen first made her announcement that they would be moving into an old Tudor house in Tewkesbury, Kelly thought her mother was joking. However, once the suitcases and movers arrived, it was clear that Jen meant business.

  “I’ll go with mum to check it out,” Amy had volunteered. “If the house is not to our liking, we can stay put until something better comes along.” She had meant, of course, that they could stay in London where they belonged.

  Their father still lived in London, not that it mattered to any of them. Kelly had briefly made attempts at keeping in touch with him, but she soon dropped it. It was clear that he had no interest in staying in his daughters’ lives. After cheating on Jen and remarrying, it wasn’t likely that Amy or Kelly would ever see him again.

  Good riddance, the three ladies agreed.

  “Let me know how it goes,” Kelly had told her sister before the journey. “Take pictures if there’s anything cool that you think I’d like.”

  As an intern at an advertising company, Kelly was all about pictures and descriptions. She would probably have a better eye for the kind of things that went into home buying, but alas she was busy working the day that Jen and Amy were scheduled to check out the house.

  Amy made sure to have her cell phone at the ready and charged to take photos and to text her sister. Throughout all of the trials that their little family had faced in the past few months, the two sisters had been close and supportive of each other. Amy firmly believed that she would not have been able to graduate had it not been for Kelly.

  But now she was going to see this new place without her. That felt weird.

  She brushed her blonde fringe from her eyes and pushed up her purple glasses when, swooping round a curve in the road, the house that her mother wanted came into view. At first glance, Amy did not think much of it. Sure, it was a nice house. It looked like something out of one of those calendars displaying the rolling green hills and castles in the northern England countryside. She just failed to see why her mum wanted it so badly. Why this house, and not any of the others they had passed along the way?<
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  “It’s old,” Jen explained as she found a place to park on the home’s dirt drive. There was space enough for three cars to park, which was more than she had expected. “It dates back to1875.”

  In the grand scheme of things, there were homes and places within England, especially Gloucestershire, that were far older than that. Still, compared to their little house in Haringey, it was certainly more historic and interesting. “Why is this place still on the market?” Amy asked as she got out of the car, swinging her owl purse’s strap onto her shoulder. She popped her gum again.

  Her mum shrugged. “That’s what I wanted to come and take a look at before we move in,” she admitted. “There’s a chance that something will need repairs. The agent was so eager to sell me the place, she didn’t even ask me to stop in. I had to insist that we check before we really move in…”

  “You bought the place without looking first?” Amy asked, surprised. Her mother was usually more scrupulous than that. As an accountant, Jen was not careless with her money. Perhaps she really was doing poorly in the healing process, as Kelly believed. It was one thing to allow her to grieve. It was another to let her make a mess of her life. And theirs.

  Jen sighed wistfully, admiring the large windows on the front of the house. “I didn’t want to lose this place to someone who didn’t deserve it. I saw its pictures online and I just… knew. I knew that it was the home for us. I have not accepted the offer yet, but I told them that we just needed one more look at things. It’s perfect, though, Amy. It’s just what we need. We can rebuild everything here. Start fresh.”

  Amy sighed, mostly out of annoyance. She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I hope this house doesn’t also need rebuilding.”

  Jen went up to the large, heavy front door, which was made of dark wood; the kind of door Amy usually only saw in movies; movies in which people were interested in keeping people out.

  With a jingle, Jen held up her set of keys and searched them for the one that matched this house’s lock. She unlocked the front door and pushed it open. It creaked rather eerily, which made Amy smirk a little. The two ladies stepped inside the house and Amy flipped a switch.

  The living room was just off the foyer. The fireplace was there, complete with a hearth and a mantle, which would probably have appeared quite cosy were it not for the layers of dust and the ominous white sheets over all of the furniture.

  “I didn’t expect that this place would be furnished,” Jen said, grinning. She grabbed one of the sheets and pulled it off to reveal a large, deep green wing chair. Along with a cloud of dust.

  Amy cringed a little. “I wonder if we can sell the furniture…”

  Jen glared at her and then laughed. “Well, we’ll be bringing in our own stuff, of course, so I suppose anything we don’t like we can give away or sell. Still, there’s something nice about owning the home’s old furniture. You never know who may have sat here by the fire, reading a book or stroking a cat…”

  Amy watched her mother, noticing how in love with this home she already was. The light in the room was not that bright; a dim, hanging overhead light which had an orange glass shade over it. It left something to be desired. There was something creepy about standing there in semi-darkness, surrounded by white shapes.

  “I’m going to turn on another light,” she told Jen. “You can keep imagining cats here if you like.”

  She left her mom in the dim living room and searched around for another light switch, feeling around on the walls, which was quite unpleasant as many of the walls seemed to be covered in cobwebs. This place had been on the market so long that there were cobwebs. That doesn’t bode well, Amy thought. Finally, her fingertips fell upon a switch and she flipped it.

  The room she had found herself in was the kitchen. It had nice, stone countertops and deep, cherry wood cabinets. As she stepped into the room to get a closer look at the stove, Amy suddenly had a weird sense that someone was watching her. She turned back towards the doorway she had just come through, but no one was there. There seemed to be a draft in this room, which was odd since it had neither a window nor a door to the outside. Instinctively, she checked that the refrigerator or the freezer was not open.

  They weren’t.

  But it felt colder and colder, almost like she was in the basement, not the main floor of the house.

  “What the hell?” Amy said under her breath, hugging herself and quickly leaving the kitchen.

  Something was not right about this place.

  “Mum, I don’t think we should do this,” she said as she approached her mother again. Jen was still standing in the living room, removing sheet after white sheet from the abandoned furniture. She seemed transfixed by everything she came across, which only served to bother Amy even more. “This is just a whim, a lapse in judgement. We don’t belong in Tewkesbury. We’re a London family. This place gives me the creeps.”

  Instead of taking Amy’s feelings into account, Jen frowned at her, taking offense at the mere idea that it might be a flight of fantasy and not a real desire to move someplace new. “How dare you speak to me like that?” she demanded. “This isn’t just a whim! I have given this place a lot of thought. I think it will be good for us to get away from the city. This is a beautiful home. I want this for us. Don’t be ungrateful.”

  Amy sighed, rubbing her arms as she continued to hug herself. “I get a weird vibe from this place, mum.” She felt like her voice was becoming whingey now, and she realized that it was because she was afraid… She didn’t know why, though. Nothing had really happened. “I don’t think this house is right for us. It doesn’t feel like a home.”

  “You’re just a spoiled brat,” her mother snapped. She immediately took out her cell phone and walked out of the house to get the best reception. It wasn’t like her to talk like that, Amy thought. Either her mother’s depression had really altered her mind, or there was something else going on… Something sinister that Amy couldn’t figure out at the moment.

  Remembering Kelly’s request, Amy half-heartedly lifted her cell phone and snapped a picture of the living room area in which her and her mother had just had their altercation. It was then that she realized that she should turn the lights off before leaving.

  Not wanting to linger to get swept up in that odd feeling all over again, Amy swiftly went to the light switch in the hallway near the kitchen, and turned it off. She didn’t give the kitchen another glance and quickly moved back to the living room area, turning off that light as well. She met her mom outside.

  “We’ll take it!” Jen said ecstatically into her phone.

  “You need to see this,” Amy texted to her sister, sending the picture she’d taken. Maybe Kelly would think nothing of the eerie furniture. Pictures didn’t usually do things justice. But still. The house didn’t look like it was on the market so much as it looked abandoned, waiting for someone…

  As soon as she hung up with the Estate Agent, Jen rounded on Amy again. All the glee at accepting the house was gone from her face. “We’re going back to London now, but only to pack our things. We’re moving here within the week and that’s final. You and Kelly will be here with me and we’ll have the sweet little house I’ve always wanted.”

  Amy doubted very much that this was anything her mum had always wanted, considering that she had never mentioned it until things went south with her dad. But she knew that she was not going to get anywhere with her mum while she was in this state. The wisest thing to do was to be quiet and go along with what her mother wanted, hoping that she would come to her senses sooner rather than later.

  Kelly had plenty of questions when they arrived back at their flat in London. Chief among them was, “Is this for real?”

  Amy nodded at her sister. “I wish I had thought to take more pictures, but I was so freaked out by the whole house that I didn’t think of it.”

  “It probably isn’t so bad,” Kelly reasoned. “It’s just old and different from the kind of place you’re used to.” She
sighed and shook her head a little bit. “I will try to talk some sense into her, but I think we might just have to indulge her.”

  “Pretty sure that is where we’re at currently,” Amy replied. “Because she’s already accepted the Agent’s price. We’re supposed to move in – both of us and Mum – by next week.”

  Suddenly Kelly did not seem quite so pacifistic. “She bought it already?!” she asked, incredulous. Clearly their mum was going through something awful. As an accountant, she shouldn’t have been so frivolous. “This is worse than I thought. Much worse.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Just a Phase?

  Kelly had been living apart from her mother and sister for two years at this point. She was an intern at an advertising company in the heart of London. For a while, things had been fine. She regularly checked in on her family to make sure that all was okay and her mother’s heart was healing. It had taken all of them by surprise – and rightly so – when Jen found her now ex-husband, Dave with another woman in their house. Kelly and Amy were at school at the time. Now that he was out of the picture, Kelly believed that they got along better and were closer than they’d been before, but there was clearly something wrong with her poor mum. She was having a hard time getting past this betrayal and heartbreak.

  Still, Kelly thought. That’s not really an excuse for purchasing a home without thinking about it.

  It was not like Jen to just jump into something like that. She was normally a meticulous planner, a wise decision-maker, all the things that made her such a good mum. This new, throwing-caution-to-the-wind thing was not a good sign.

  “Amy told me that you went for the house in Tewkesbury,” Kelly said to her mother as casually as possible. After conferring with her little sister in the living room, she had gone out to the kitchen to chat with her mum so they were all on the same page. Normally her visits to the flat were short, gossipy sessions, but she had a feeling that she would be there for the rest of the night. Possibly longer.