13 Hauntings

by Clarice Black

  “Oh, what good is that going to do you?” she purred. “But if you must know, my name is Aishe.”

  “That is a unique name, just like you.” Paul caressed his breast pocket. “I wonder how you got it.”

  “My mother gave it to me.” She was no longer smiling. “But enough of this. Come here now!”

  “No, I think I’ll stay in this seat, thank you.” Paul stopped smiling. “Why are you here, Aishe?”

  “I’m staying the night.”

  “No, you’re not.” Paul looked at her steadily. “I know what you are, Aishe. I could sense you before I saw you. That’s why you didn’t show yourself the first time I stayed here, isn’t that right.”

  She looked shocked to be found out, and a glitter in her eyes proved that she had suspected as much. She regained her composure and smiled wickedly. “So, you know and aren’t afraid. That’s commendable but it won’t save you. I will have you like I had the rest.”

  “Why?” Paul asked.

  She bristled with anger.

  “Why?” she repeated. “You want to know why? I was stolen by the physician. My mother told me after I died. He made my father give me away by claiming he could save my mother’s life. After he had me, he had no wish to be a father to me,” her claws raked at the bedsheet, leaving scorch marks.

  “I was a gypsy girl, see, nothing but a mutt to him. He experimented on me when I was little. Always prodding me with needles and shots. I would have tolerated that, I would have, but what he did next I can never forgive.”

  “What did he do?” Paul was holding his breath against the electric tension building in the room. It pressed on his eardrums and constricted his chest.

  “He had this patient, a sexual deviant who liked to lure young boys and have his way with them. He thought of a brilliant cure for that sodomite. Why have young boys when you can have a six-year-old girl? Sent me to him once a week because I had to take the rest of the week to recover from the tearing.”

  Her face was a ghastly mask. Her eyes stared out, demanding answers and retribution. “That was just the beginning. It was his greatest charitable contribution to the community,” she laughed, brittle and cruel. “Every sexual criminal had his way with me till I lost my youth at twenty-two. By the time I was twenty-three I was a body of sores and pustules. I was being eaten from the inside.”

  A tear fell from Paul’s staring eye. He was clutching the arms of the chair so hard he could feel splinters pricking his skin. Yet he couldn’t look away from the awful picture in front of him. Her body was elongating, her mouth was unhinged and gaping. She looked nothing like the sweet girl of two minutes before.

  “Then the bastard had a brilliant idea. Why waste the pig he had reared once it had stopped bringing in money? He dragged me to his operating room and cleaved my breast open to see what was inside. All in the name of science. That’s what I was, that’s what my life amounted to; an experiment.”

  She stepped off the bed, her limbs lithe. “And now I will destroy every man who crosses my threshold. Oh, yes, my threshold. This place is mine and no one else can have it!”

  Paul tried to scream but his voice had died. Pretty soon he would join it.

  CHAPTER NINETY

  Rescue

  Milly was cold all over. She was shivering like she had just stepped into an icy river.

  “Does she have a fever?” Bob asked.

  “No, but she’s shivering like it was the middle of winter.” Val said.

  Her parents crowded around her. Val rubbed her back while Bob pressed her feet. She wasn’t listening to them at all. Her concentration was focused on the room down one floor. She could hear every word clearly and it filled her with such mounting dread and rage that for a minute she thought she’d be torn in two by the conflicting emotions.

  Paul was in danger. She knew it. She needed to do something.

  She got out of bed and looked for her shoes.

  “Where are you going?” Val cried.

  “You can’t get out of bed when you’re sick.” Bob protested.

  “I forgot to put new towels in the guest bathroom,” Milly shouted the first excuse that came to mind and bolted out the door and down the stairs to the pub.

  “I told you we were working her too hard,” Val sniffed at Bob. “It’s stress about this place, I tell you, and we’ve just been going hard on her.”

  Bob grunted.

  Milly was completely unaware of her parents’ concern. She could feel the spiritual energy like an earthquake in her bones. She came out into the dark pub. Norman was standing still in the middle of stacking chairs on top of the tables. He looked at her meaningfully. He could hear her too.

  “We have to help him.” Milly darted towards the hall.

  She was halfway up the stairs when she noticed that Norman wasn’t behind her. She went back, half annoyed, half terrified. If they didn’t get there in time Paul would die!

  “Norman!”

  He was standing by the door as if about to leave.

  “What are you doing? He could get killed!” She pulled him back by the shoulder and got a look of his face.

  He was green with fear. Tears were streaming down his face and his eyes were looking past Milly as if he could see something so horrific it was killing him. Drool was running down his lips.

  “What is it?” Milly held his hand. “Norman, what is it?”

  “She knows.” He sobbed. “Only she knows.”

  He collapsed against her and began to cry like a baby.

  “We don’t have time for this, Norman. I am just as scared as you are but we have to be brave!”

  Norman howled, a hurt cry that resounded in the pub and Milly felt something miraculous. The spiritual pressure lessened a fraction as if the ghost had heard the cry and it had given her pause.

  “Norman, do you feel that?” she said. “Do you? I think she’s losing. Come on. We have to help.”

  She dragged him all the way up the stairs. It was tough and many times she wanted to kick him to get him to see reason but they finally reached Paul’s door. Blue light pulsated out of the crack at the bottom.

  Praying that she wasn’t too late, Milly pushed at the door. It was stuck. She pushed again till she was sure her shoulder was bruised.

  “A little help, Norman.” She snapped.

  Norman stepped forward and touched the knob and the door flew open. A nasty cold wind whipped into the hall. Milly covered her face against the bright light. Something blocked the light and she opened her eyes to see that it was Norman. Taking cover behind him, she walked into the room.

  CHAPTER NINETY-ONE

  Saviour

  Something in Paul snapped. Maybe it was the fear or his survival instinct gearing in, he would never be sure, but the fact was that when Aishe came within an inch of him, her lolling tongue about to caress his cheek, he removed the paralysis from one hand and took out her earring.

  The reaction was immediate. Aishe stepped back.

  “Where did you get that?” she screeched. “That’s mine!”

  “I know,” Paul stammered. “I found it in the mattress. It was cleverly hidden.”

  “I hid it a long time ago.” She spat. “He wouldn’t let me have pretty things. Give it to me!”

  “No,” Paul clutched the earring tighter. The glow around Aishe pulsed red. She screeched with rage.

  “You think you can dominate me?” she yelled. “I will never let a man push me around! Never!”

  “What happened to you was terrible,” Paul trembled. “But you can’t take it out on just any man. I am innocent of any of the crimes committed on you. Why take my life?”

  “You are a man, men never have to face what women do, they never have to endure what men make us endure!”

  The door flew open. A sandy haired man Paul recognised as the pub worker, Norman, stood in the doorframe, his face slack. Milly peeped from behind him

  Good girl, Paul thought, she came to rescue me.

  “I endur
ed it.” Norman’s voice came from far away. He looked beaten. There was no energy in him. He fell to his knees in front of Aishe. “I endured what you endured.”

  Aishe paused. “You lie. Men can never know-”

  “I couldn’t sit for days, it hurt so much,” Norman said, he was looking at the floor, shame writ on his face. “My father would laugh. He didn’t care about a big lummox like me. All he had cared about was my mother and when she died he just wanted to get rid of me. Blamed me for it, you see.”

  Aishe’s blue light subdued till it only radiated around her.

  “It didn’t end.” Norman howled. “It didn’t end till I was big enough to push my old man and he hit his head against the table.” Norman looked at his hands. “There was blood… so much blood… I killed my father and didn’t get punished for it. No one saved me from him, I saved myself but I wish I hadn’t. I didn’t hate him so much for renting me out to his friends as I hated him for making a murderer out of me. I didn’t deserve that.”

  He wiped his nose against his shirt and looked up at Aishe as if she were a normal girl standing in front of him.

  “Has it ended?” he asked. “Has your pain vanished now that you’ve killed so many of them?”

  Aishe bristled. “Of course it has.”

  “You’re lying,” Norman shook his head. “If it were to end, it would have ended when you killed the first. This reckless murder is because you seek the ones who did it to you. But they are long gone. They are dust beneath the earth.”

  “I can’t forgive!” Aishe screamed.

  “Where is your mother?” Norman asked. “Why isn’t she here with you?”

  The question made Aishe pause. She looked about her as if she had never noticed this before.

  “Because she forgave and moved on. She’s waiting for you in the beyond, Aishe; just like my mother is waiting. And I won’t dally here when I can be with her.”

  For a moment, it looked like Norman had won; that Aishe would see sense and move over to the other realm where she would be at peace. But then her face changed and it became apparent that it wasn’t in her nature to forgive.

  She charged at Norman, her claws out to rake his face.

  Paul screamed and threw the earring down. Aishe paused in her charge. She made to grab the earring but Paul crushed it under his boot.

  Aishe screamed. A wind whipped around them as her spiritual energy dissipated. She glowed blue, and red, and white, and green and the vanished like a twinkling star.

  CHAPTER NINETY-TWO

  Epilogue

  “Maybe we should cancel it.” Bob mused.

  “Oh, come on Dad.” Milly protested. “Karaoke will be a big draw. Trust me!”

  “If you say so,” Bob still looked sceptical but he wasn’t going to refuse his daughter again. The last few months had brought a great change in Milly. She was more involved in the pub and had come up with some great ideas to bring in customers during the weekday lull. The Freestone’s were making good on their loan instalments and things couldn’t have been better.

  Paul was a regular at the pub, swinging by every time he was in Kent. Sean had moved to Australia to handle a branch of his father’s business and Brian and Cullum looked short of an appendage but were still were regulars at the pub.

  Norman had become a full-time employee. Milly had never told his story to anyone and that made their bond stronger than before. She found him to be a friend she could trust with anything, and he often had stellar advice when he could be persuaded to say more than a word or two.

  Aishe had never returned, but Milly had persuaded Bob to change the name of the pub to The Gypsy, and mounted a plaque telling her story on the wall for patrons to read. It had trebled business as people from far and wide came just to see the plaque, and the more adventurous even stayed a night in the Aishe Room.

  The Haunting of Scared Heights

  Clarice Black

  CHAPTER NINETY-THREE

  Madam Mungo

  1917, Crouch End, London

  Midnight rain drenched Elder Avenue, as it did the rest of London, drowning the city and all outskirt towns in the bosom of a devilish storm. Above, thunder clapped and lightning crackled and below, the streets became rivers of muddy water. The trees, although scarce, lining this road in Crouch End, swivelled and swung like deranged lunatics, and lampposts danced like dervishes with the sways of the gust and drizzle. A wet dog barked in an alleyway, forlorn and miserable. Alleycats mocked him from their sheltered abodes underneath windowsills and emergency ladders. It howled, facing its snout towards the silhouette of the moon hidden behind dark clouds.

  A small door in the alleyway opened and a blank faced man, wearing a bowler hat and a long coat, limped out, holding an umbrella over his head with one hand, with a shotgun in the other.

  “Lousy mutt! Buggering us since time immemorial!” this man sneered and delivered a kick to the dog’s face, sending it staggering against the dustbins. It yelped a helpless cry and sat down in the wet trash, looking at the man apprehensively.

  “You’ve barked your last,” the man said and pulled the trigger of his shotgun in tandem with the sound of thunder, splattering the creature’s brain on the alley wall. No heads turned, no one suspected a thing. When the morning cleaning crew arrived, they would mindlessly pile the dead dog with the heap of municipal trash, and dispose of the lot in the incinerator. The cats watched all this with wide eyes and bared fangs. Yes, the dog was their inherent rival, their enemy, but their ill will was in no way so strong as to wish him dead. They hissed and scattered from their perches, fearful of the bowler-hat butcherer.

  Big Ben struck twelve.

  ***

  “Madam Mungo, miss, I’s done what you wanted,” the man whispered as he bowed in front of Madam Mungo.

  “It’s been barking at our door ever since you fed it that liver! It was your fault all along, Crowley!” she said, her voice stern, her tone menacing.

  “I’s sorry miss, Madam Mungo, ma’am,” the man cowered even lower, his hands slapped together, asking for forgiveness. He dared not look her in the eye. No one did.

  “And the blood! The sound of the gun! And the dead body! People will start to snoop about the dog killer of Crouch End! Do we need that publicity? Do we need any publicity of that sort?” she snapped.

  The man did not say a word. He could see the woman’s shadow start to change on the floor. “We is just starting out, ma’am. It’s only bin two days since we’s got here,” he finally managed to utter incoherently, begging, pleading.

  “Time in which you’ve caused me and my establishment harm more and good less!” Madam Mungo said, but this time her voice was definitive, subtle.

  “Stand up straight and look at me.”

  “Ma’am. I’s beg forgiveness…” the man’s voice tapered off into pitiful sobs.

  “Look at me,” she said again.

  And, for the first time in his tenure as Mungo Hospital’s security guard—a tenure which had spanned a hundred years—the man strained his neck upwards, against all his bodily impulses, observing the Madam. The hem of her white gown should have been black with dirt, because she walked all day on the dusty floors of the hospital, but it was white. Spotless. She had a splendid figure, the body of a young maiden, beautiful, seductive. Her hands, pallid and white, grasped the man’s face, digging long nails into his cheeks, forcing him to see into her eyes.

  Her face, creaseless and pristine, transfigured before the man, from that of a beautiful woman into that of a witch. Her skin started turning black, her hands searing hot, her eyes reddening with rage and bloodlust, and fangs took the place of her perfectly shaped teeth. Fangs that she dug in the neck of the man as he thrashed and whimpered.

  Blood gushed from his jugular into her mouth, and she drank it all deeply, quenching her thirst, feeling the testosteronal frenzy race through her feminine self. She hated drinking the blood of men, but what other choice did she have when resources were scarce? It tasted
like mud and moonshine liquor.

  The last dredge of life escaped the man as he fell limp onto the floor, paler than the Madam, and dead. He wouldn’t wake again. She was no vampire who bestowed her curse to others upon a bite, nor was she a werewolf who’d claw at someone and make them one of their own. She was timeless evil, the epitome of horror, the mother of monsters, the matron of death. She was Mungo the wet nurse, Mungo the doctor, and she fed on blood, souls, and human flesh. It was how she had lived these long ten centuries past, and it was how she intended to remain alive for a long time to come.

  “Alicia!” Mungo called, turning her visage normal, her bloodstained eyes into blue almond shaped ones, her dark skin into fair skin, her clawed hands tender.

  Alicia, her subservient—one of twelve—came rushing from the wardroom, the sides of her gown in her hands so as not to sweep along the floor. She saw the dead man lying in Mungo’s office, and knew at once what needed to be done.

  “Spare nothing, the bones go in the soup, the meat, feed it to the rest, and suckle him so no blood or semen’s left wasted,” Mungo said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. The blotches of blood shone like rubies under the light of the lamp. She licked them off.

  “What did he do, ma’am?” Alicia asked, looking at Mungo. She could look, as could the other eleven, for they were of her ilk, the nurses of death.

  “Unnecessary violence,” Madam Mungo said, her back turned to Alicia, she went to her desk, feeling ecstasy course through her system. She needed to sit down.

  Alicia dragged the man away, streaking a course of red across the wooden floor, and closed the door to the mother matron’s office.

  ***

  For the remaining week following the dog murder, and the disappearance of old man Crowley, trucks billowing smoke stopped in front of the newly rented building on Elder Avenue. Crew members would lift hospital beds, tables, wardroom partitions, operating tables, and mattresses, and heave them inside. They’d get tipped generously, and many of them left feeling as though they had fallen in love with the matron and her staff. In their incontrollable infatuation, they went above and beyond in helping the women, arranging the beds in the ward, setting up the operating theatre, mopping the floors, relocating heavy items from one part of the building to the other. Oddly enough, when they all had left, not one of them could remember what any of the women looked like. Their recollections of the matron’s and nurses’ beauty left them the moment they stepped out of the hospital doors.