13 Hauntings

by Clarice Black

  Just as she reached the door, she turned around, looking for Gilbert, and saw him standing face to face with the beast, the devil, the unnameable monster. He was emanating holy light from his body, and standing with his arms extended.

  She wanted to go back to him, she wanted to drag him out of there, out of the reach of the monstrosity. But before she could worry about that, the door from the other side opened and the undead residents of the morgue, having gained potency from the darkness of the new evil, barged inside. Their skins were pale and their eyes hollow. They screamed and crawled, grabbing for Carrie’s arms, legs, and torso.

  Adrenaline finally kicked in, and an immediate surge of energy ran through her. She shot at the undead, and ran for the exit.

  Before her feet could touch the wet gravel of the pavement outside, an implosion occurred, sending waves everywhere, and two screams resounded. One, she could identify as Gilbert’s, and the second belonged to the demon child.

  She ran forward, not looking behind her, but the sound of crashing and crumbling told her of the affair happening behind her. The building had collapsed. She paused her sprint, holding a hand over the stitch in her side and taking deep breaths, she looked around.

  There was no longer a hospital. Only a heap of broken plaster and bricks lay scattered where moments ago she had faced an unfathomable horror. She could see the front of the hospital now, since everything had collapsed. The policemen and the brigadiers were ogling at the destroyed building with their jaws hanging. Children clung to their mothers’ bosoms, and the patients, whose beds could not fit in the parking lot, called out the name of God, the name of Jesus, as they beheld this unnatural destruction.

  Carrie glanced sweepingly all around her, and finding no signs of the new-born monster or Gilbert, nor of the undead bodies from the morgue, she collapsed forwards and fainted.

  A lanky policeman saw her falling in a faint and came to her rescue immediately, with a medic who had a first aid kit.

  The torrential rain, which had been tormenting London for the better part of the day, finally subsided, and a cool wind began to blow in its stead. Evil had been hindered once more. Unsung heroes, one long dead and one recently dead, had sacrificed themselves for the greater good, hoping to keep the world free from the clutches of the wicked things that go bump in the night.

  ***

  Carrie woke in hospital—the Ave Maria Hospital on Seventh Road—and found herself feeling woozy. The same cop who had rescued her stood beside her. His shift had ended, and there was nothing much to do so, he decided to visit Carrie, for no apparent reason.

  “Hiya,” he said to her, when he finally saw that she had regained consciousness.

  “Hey,” she said, rubbing her eyes, raking her brain hard to remember what had happened.

  “Lucky we saved you when we did,” the cop said. She looked at him for the first time in proper detail. He had a clean-shaven face—a handsome face that would someday fit on the demeanour of a chief constable. Right now, he was just a beat cop.

  “Thank you. It feels so blurry, everything that had happened. Where did you find me?” she asked.

  The policeman filled her in on the details which she began to recall for herself once the effect of the morphine wore off. She discovered that she had ripped all the skin off her thighs and calves. They were heavily bandaged and aching.

  “You got yourself hurt really bad, huh?” the cop asked.

  “Yeah, no shit, Sherlock,” she muttered, but he had an astute sense of hearing, and upon catching what she had said, he broke his policeman character, threw his head back and laughed.

  “I’m sorry, you must think me an idiot!” he said. “Small talk is not one of my fortes.”

  She took a liking to him. And for her remaining three weeks stay at the hospital, he regularly came to visit her. When she finally got out, she went back to her hometown.

  After shaking off the effects of the events at her home for a month, she came back to London, headstrong and recovered, and applied as a clinical psychologist to all the vacant spots she could find. This time she did not have any trouble getting a job.

  Carrie dated that cop, Stephen Cowell, for six months, at which time they married. He was promoted like clockwork within five years, and she gained her status as a trustworthy psychologist in the London suburbs. They became a happy couple, a loving couple, and the effects of that dreary night slowly began to slip from Carrie’s mind.

  But try as they might to conceive a child, through natural methods and medical suggestions, they failed every time. On the night before her 48th birthday, three years after her menopause, she lay in her bed with Stephen fast asleep beside her, recalling the words Mungo had said to her. Had they come to fulfilment?

  You stay away from here, or by the devil, my lover, and my brother, I will curse you to a childless life if you touch mine!

  Sleep did not come to her that night, as on those nights when she recalled the demise of the Sacred Heights Hospital. Carrie got out of her bed silently, careful not to wake her husband, and went to the kitchen fridge. She grabbed a beer and sat down on her sofa, mindlessly skipping through channels on the muted television, hoping to find something to watch that would distract her from the recesses of her dark thoughts.

  But nothing did, as always.

  The Haunting of Darklands House

  Clarice Black

  CHAPTER NINETY-EIGHT

  Prologue

  Leeds, in the early eighteenth century, was a pristine place brimming with green lawns, dense botanical orchards, emerald hills sloping in and out, up and down the countryside, and monumental buildings, some of which would endure to become historical landmarks of England.

  Hard as it is to believe, in this era of industrial pollutants contaminating the air, what with coal and oil increasingly consumed at an alarming rate in factories without any thought of their repercussions, there remained a general tranquillity in the areas outside of the cities’ jurisdictions. The factories and industries did not venture far from the metropolises and, at that time, they were few. Leeds was untouched by such impurities and remained, for the duration of that era, a splendid location.

  Hemic Charnel Lane led like a tapestry out of the city to meet the highway in its course of a hundred miles. That stretch from the city to the highway was jotted irregularly by manors, abbeys and villas belonging to the wealthy. Just before the intersection that merged this Lane and the highway, was a cathedral; a spot for the weary traveller to rest and pray and confess to his Lord any misdemeanours committed on his journey. Be reminded that murder, adultery, and rape (if committed during the course of one’s expedition) were counted as misdemeanours by the priest, nothing more. So, it was not out of place, every now and then, for him to hear a traveller ask forgiveness for slicing a hitchhiker’s throat.

  “I was overcome by the devil, Father,” he’d confess and be pardoned, but mostly on account of the priest being afraid of the confessor. He was confessing for a murder, and this church was quite far from the city. If angered, this man might even kill the priest and proceed to another church to seek forgiveness for that.

  A few miles before the church, on a twisting cul-de-sac off the Lane, was a house that stood alone, much like all the other houses, with a thicket of trees covering its back and a domestic pond, with fish and ducks in its blue shallowness, on the front. This house was glamorous, with its 18th-century architecture, achieved aesthetically to the brick, by a highly-compensated draftsman. For this was the house of Lord George Darkland, commissioner of cultural export on behalf of the East India Trading Company. The nature of this Lord’s profession granted him a notable respect from the government, gave him access to plentiful funds for his own pleasures and accommodations, and allowed him free berth to travel all over the world (or wherever the ships of the Trading Company were headed.) After enjoying his fair share of travel, Lord Darkland, at the spritely age of thirty-three, decided to settle down, choosing a desk job which would allo
w him the same luxuries without the vexing travels. After the initial five voyages from continent to continent, the romantic value of adventure ceased, leaving only a burdensome responsibility. Once he had seen India, roamed the coastal towns of Japan, ventured just a little trot into Afghanistan, and played his part in the colonial monopolization, he asked for a promotion, acquired it, and settled down in Leeds. His residence was built with no expense spared. The passers-by called it Darkland house and so did the guests, and the name stuck. What made the name fitting was the fact that each evening, once the sun set behind the hills on the horizon, the trees behind the house would take on a macabre shape of abstraction and horror, with their branches curling vilely into luring fingers, and their trunks looking like the legs of trolls who had come out from under bridges for a good night time hunt. And the pond that looked so quaint in the morning, caught the reddish glow of the moonlight and turned crimson, like a pool of blood. Darkland house would become the set for a tale set in a dark land where demons dwelt.

  The interior of the house was a warm and cosy contrast to the deplorability of outside. Luminescent candlelight would illuminate the house at the turn of the day, and a hospitable fire would kindle in the grate whenever the temperatures turned cold. Thankfully, it was only in the throes of winter that it became unbearably freezing. Lord Darkland never had to worry about kindling the grate on his own, though, for he had a number of servants in the house, all of whom were delegated specific tasks. The staff assigned to the kitchen were employed to provide breakfast, dinner, and lunch in a non-repetitive, non-monotonous way, for the Lord and his Lady were avid admirers of good food. The stable boy tended to the carriage horses and the chickens in the shed behind the barn. A couple of sheep roamed in the lot behind the house and, even though they were strays, the boy had grown fond of them, as had Lord Darkland himself. He had named them Holly and Molly. A butler oversaw the entire household of servants and handled the affairs of Darkland. An old yet lively fellow, he had been the Lord’s attendant during his journeys overseas, and when Darkland retired, so too had the butler.

  Yes, George Darkland was married, but it was not an affair borne of love, or a relationship made to strengthen the bonds between two notable families. It was simply a plain old arranged marriage, and only with the intention of escaping the sheer scrutiny of society at large did Darkland marry Sarah Norsbury at the age of thirty-two. She was a year older than him, but she was a woman lovely in appearance who carried herself with a sophisticated finesse. She did not love her husband, and she knew that her husband did not love her. He had his heart for another woman, and it burned Sarah to her core whenever she saw that harlot.

  *

  Rose Chamberlain was a housemaid who served together with four others at the Darkland estate. Her job involved changing the sheets, cleaning the bedrooms, and ensuring that there were ample towels in the bathroom. The remaining three maids took care of the rest. She was no ordinary maid; from her looks you would think that she was a member of royalty, or an orchestra pianist, or a ballet dancer. But her luck had not been as bright as her looks. Unschooled due to family poverty, forced to labour as a handmaid for various wealthy men and women, she had quit one job and then another under the unbearable mistreatment she experienced from those wealthy snobs. At the very brink of retiring from this unfulfilling profession, she was hired by Lord Darkland. She found him a most pleasant and amiable man who never scolded her and never so much as objected to anything that she did. This was before his marriage, you should note. During those long nights alone confined in his home, he found himself drawn to Rose Chamberlain, and she to him, and the two became involved, not out of their own volition, but rather of an involuntary necessity that drew them to one other. At first it was nothing more than an intimate smile as one passed another in the corridor, but quickly, and may I say quite exponentially so, it snowballed into something beyond their control. It became a passionate affair which led to their continued lovemaking in any one of the many rooms of the house, oblivious to the rest of the staff. But the butler knew. And he meant to keep this secret, for he was a loyal man.

  Though Darkland loved Rose with all his heart, societal barriers prohibited his marrying her. People, he feared, would say things like “A Lord! A Lord marrying a common handmaid! How uncouth of him!” amongst other things. And he did not want to tarnish his reputation among the people. Rose understood that. She had grown so fond of George that she was willing for this relationship to remain unannounced and secret. They both kept it a secret, even after George Darkland’s marriage to Lady Sarah Norsbury. The wedding was a most public affair, with the entire town of Leeds invited. Following a month’s honeymoon away, the newlyweds arrived back at the Darkland house, and that is when things took a turn for the worse.

  *

  Directly after Darkland’s return with his new bride, Rose confronted him with a protruding belly, and announced to him that she was pregnant. There was no doubt that it was his child, of course, because she had stayed away from the touch of any man besides him.

  Lord Darkland found himself in a tough situation. On one hand, he loved his Rose and wanted to bring this child into the world with her. He wanted to give the baby, a bastard though it was, everything it would ever need in its life. And on the other hand, he wanted to start a new chapter with Lady Rose. A chapter where he would not have to scurry in rooms and conduct an affair hidden from the world.

  “But where am I to go? Who is to raise this child?” Rose cried when he explained his dilemma to her. His dilemma did not hold water in comparison to her problem, though. She had a legitimate issue. And thus, after much argument and bargaining, Lord Darkland came to a conclusion that he did not like: he was going to have to reveal this secret affair of his to his wife.

  She was outraged alright, but after she had calmed down and had started to look at things from a quieter perspective, she realized that in this household, as Darkland’s wife, she did not very much have a say in the matter. He was the head of the house, the breadwinner, and whatever he said was the law. She, as much as she was his wife, was not entitled to a decision-worthy opinion. Sadly, this was the situation of chauvinism and gender inequality back in the eighteenth century, and it would remain that way in the nineteenth century. Only in the twentieth century would equality and social justice begin to advent, and when it did, it would be for the better. Sarah knew that she had no say in this matter. So, she kept quiet. But she hated this arrangement very much. The maid was living in a room inside the house, like an equal, and not with the other servants in the servant quarters. That very fact disgusted Lady Sarah, but she remained solemn and quiet. And when the baby was born, she tried to make her peace with it. And when George showered his love and attention on the baby, Sarah locked herself in the bathroom and cried. The sad fact that they had to accept was that they were unable to conceive a child, which the doctor had said was a fault with her. And she knew that to be true. After all, Darkland did have a baby with another woman. The baby was a lovely girl, and he named her Beatrice, and everyone loved Beatrice; all the servants, the butler, and Darkland himself. There was no getting out of this for Sarah, and even though Darkland knew that he was being unjust, he could not help it. However, Rose, being a woman, saw the unsaid pain Sarah was going through, and she did everything she could to stay out of her way. Whenever Darkland would ask Rose in front of Sarah, whether had any needs for her and the baby, she’d always decline out of humbleness.

  *

  The matter became worse when Beatrice was nine years old. She was a plump child, healthy and delightful company, and everyone’s love only grew for her. Except for Sarah’s, of course. Darkland would seat her on his lap and tell her bedtime stories, and tales of when he had gone to India and had seen the Kohinoor diamond with his own eyes.

  Unfortunately, Beatrice’s mother, Rose, became afflicted with the worst of diseases of that time: consumption. No amount of hospitalization or advanced medical treatment was
able to save her. She died safe in the knowledge that her daughter was in safe hands; in the hands of the man she loved, and her last thoughts were of how that man loved Beatrice.

  Everyone who knew her attended Rose’s funeral, everyone but Sarah. She was not going to be present at that occasion, whatever anyone may think. She hated Rose, which was grounds enough for her not being there. Things had started turning for the better for her. Her rival was gone, and now she had her husband all to herself, thought Sarah with vile satisfaction as she watched the funeral progression in the backyard. It did not even bother her that the servant was being buried right next to their home. She can rot in there for all I care, Sarah said to herself. But there remained the fact that continued to be of bother to her, the matter of Beatrice. That child was still a thorn in Sarah’s side, and if she remained in this equation, it would mean that Sarah may never truly have her husband’s undivided attention.

  Though, of course, she did not mention any of this to George Darkland. For the better part of the year following Rose’s demise, he remained rigidly aloof and mourned in sadness in his study. He thought no one knew of this, because his study was a soundproof room. Little did he know, it was common knowledge among all those residing in the house, since whenever he would come out, Darkland’s eyes would be bloodshot red, his breath would stink of whiskey, and his hands would reek of tobacco. But this passed, as it was bound to pass, and Lord Darkland readapted to normality once again. He started going to his office again. He started giving his love and attention to Beatrice again. Every morning he would drive with her in his chariot to her school and drop her off before going to work. Every afternoon he would make a turn to pick her up, like clockwork.