“Hi, we’re here to view the house?” There was a man in a suit in his forties or so stood there. He held a cell phone in one hand, and a clipboard in the other. Standing behind him was a woman a good decade younger. She wore a tight-fitting yellow dress and had manicured red nails and freshly blow-dried hair.
“Sure,” Ashley said. She stood to one side to let them in.
“You’re not a real estate agent, are you?” The woman said, looking at Ashley’s casual attire.
“No, I’m the house sitter. The real estate agent should be here soon,” Ashley replied, but the woman wasn’t listening. She had already walked into the hallway and was busy looking around.
“This is nice, it would be good for parties,” the woman said as she walked upstairs.
“Where are you going? Don’t you want to see the downstairs?” The man shouted up the stairs.
“I want to see how big the wardrobes are first before I look at the rest of the house,” she said. The man looked to Ashley. She shrugged, not knowing what to say. She stood in the hallway and looked out of the window next to the front door and looked for the real estate agent.
“So this house then?” The man said. “It’s been on the market for a long time, do you think they will knock any money off?”
“I have no idea,” Ashley said. “Do you want to see the kitchen?” The man nodded, and she showed him the way. There was a scream from upstairs.
“Julia?” The man shouted. He came running into the hallway. The woman in the yellow dress came running down the stairs sobbing. “What on earth is going on?”
“I don’t like this house. I don’t like this house. I want to go.” She headed for the door and ran outside. The man followed.
“What happened?” Ashley shouted. She watched as the woman ran down the driveway and got into the BMW parked out front, closely followed by her husband. He started the car, and it drove off into the distance. Ashley stood there for a minute, unsure what to do. Then another car appeared and stopped out front. A woman with slicked-back short hair and a grey suit jumped out of it and walked briskly to the front door.
“Hi, I’m Christine the real estate agent. Sorry that I’m late. Where are the viewers?”
After Ashley had got rid of the real estate agent, she locked the door and stayed inside. She looked at the top of the stairs. What had scared the viewer? She hadn’t told the real estate woman what had happened. She told her they had looked around and had left in a rush. Ashley crept up the stairs and peered around each door. All of the rooms looked normal. She looked finally in the master bedroom and remembered the hole in the wall she had found earlier. She went up to the picture and took it off of the wall. Dust fell from the hole. She put her hand in again and reached in, determined to reach whatever it was that she could see. She felt something brush against her hand. It felt like hair. She screamed and pulled her hand out. There was something or someone in the wall. She jumped back. She couldn’t hear anything move. Could it be the cat? It would make sense why she couldn’t find her. She went back to the wall, but this time before putting her hand in she used the light from her phone to shine inside. She could see what was in there. It was a large box. She reached in again and this time managed to grab the box and lift it out. As she did so, it fell onto the floor, and its contents of old papers and newspaper cuttings fell onto the carpet. Ashley sat on the floor and looked at them. They were related to local history and went back many years. There were also pages torn out of history books and fairy tales. There was a drawing. Ashley picked it up. It showed a child surrounded by lots of adults. The adults were dressed all in black. The child in the middle looked like they were in pain. Ashley started to put the papers back in the box. She had no idea why they were there, but they didn’t seem to mean anything other than whoever collected them was a bit weird. Then Ashley noticed a newspaper article. The paper was yellowed, and the text was faded, but she recognized the headline. Local Boy Missing. Brodie Churchill from Sprucewood, New England has been missing for one week. He was last seen after school, on his bike. Please contact the police if you have seen him. It was a clipping of the article she had found online. Why had someone kept the article? She looked through the clippings and found more articles. She sat on the floor and read them. Brodie’s mother pleads for son to be returned home...Police close case of Brodie’s disappearance...Sprucewood shocked by Unsolved Crime. Ashley read the different articles, each saying the same thing. The boy went missing, and no one ever found him. Did the boy’s disappearance have something to do with the house? And if so was it safe for Ashley to be here? Ashley felt cold. She put everything back in the box and put it back inside the wall. She covered it up with the painting and straightened it. Maybe it was best to pretend it didn’t exist.
Jeremy
19:37
12th July 1993
Sprucewood
New England
“Hello Madam, can I spare a few minutes of your time to discuss Beautiful Blush cosmetics with you? I can show you how our products help to bring out your inner-”. The door was shut in his face before he had the chance to finish his sentence. Jeremy Fisher had once been a very important man in the world of banking. That was until he was sacked for someone else’s mistake. Being the scapegoat was not something he had been expecting. He still wore his work suit every day, although the material was as faded and worn as his soul was starting to feel. He walked down the drive back to the street, the weight of his silver suitcase of cosmetics starting to make his shoulder twinge. He walked along the sidewalk and looked at the last house on the street. The grass was overgrown, and the windows boarded up. He was about to turn away when he noticed a faint light coming from a crack in between the slats of wood. There was someone inside. He walked up the driveway and headed to the front door. He rang the bell. He waited. No one came. He turned away and started to walk away when he heard the creak of a door.
“Yes?” an old croaky voice said. Jeremy turned and flashed the same smile he used to show his clients.
“Hello Madam, can I spare a few minutes of your time to discuss Beautiful Blush cosmetics with you? I can show you how our products help to bring out your natural charm and accentuate your best features.” He waited for the woman to speak. She looked in her seventies or so, she was wearing a shawl around her shoulders and had long grey thinning hair worn loose. She didn’t look like she left the house, let alone wore make-up. She smelt of mothballs and lavender. She stared at him for a second, and then stood back as a gesture for him to come inside. He hesitated for a moment then stepped in.
“Thank you, Madam.” Jeremy looked at the hallway he had stepped into. The paint was coming off of the walls. There were cobwebs on the ceiling and hanging off of the lampshade. It smelt musty and damp. The woman walked into a room, and Jeremy followed. He felt that this woman didn’t need make-up. It was obvious that what she needed was some kind of help, but he also needed the sale. She had walked into a lounge and indicated for him to sit on a chair. He looked at it. It was covered in dust. He sat on it carefully and tried not to lean back. The woman shuffled out of the room. As soon as she was gone, he stood and shook the dust off of his clothes. He wiped the chair with his hand, causing a cloud of dust to go into the air. He saw a coffee table in front of him. He set his suitcase down on top of it, opened it up and started to arrange a selection of products to show her. He got out the lipsticks in rose hue and pink kiss. The eyeshadows in bluebell and bliss and the first blush powder. He looked around the room. There were portraits of people on the wall, they looked like family paintings, but they were faded and covered in dust. In the corner was a television and the floor was covered in piles of books. He looked at the boardered up windows and wondered why they were like that. The woman walked back into the room. She was carrying a silver tray with a tea set on it that clattered with each of her steps. He jumped up and took the tray from her shaking hands and set it down on the coffee table. The tea set looked clean enough in compariso
n to the rest of the room. The woman disappeared and came back with a jug of milk.
“No sugar for me,” he said as she poured two drinks. “Now, we have a large selection of products here you can choose from Mrs.?”
“Gerard,” the woman said.
“Well, Mrs. Gerard. Let us start with base products. Do you wear foundation?”
The woman shook her head.
“That’s fine. May I suggest then that we look at a light wear powder and a powdered blush?” He got out the pots and showed them to her. The woman was very strange. She took one of the pots and looked at it. He took a sip of the tea and wondered about what to show her next. He took another sip then put his cup down. “Would you like me to apply some of the products on you?” The woman nodded again. Jeremy stood and walked over to her. He bent down and selected a brush. He rubbed the brush onto the hard powder. His hands shook for a second, and then he dropped the pot of powder where it spilled over the carpet.
“Oh dear, I am sorry Mrs. Gerard, but don’t worry all of our products will wash off of…” The shakes started to consume his whole body. He fell to his knees. His eyes started to half close and flicker. He tried to speak, but his words were caught in his throat, his tongue feeling too big for his mouth. He lay on his back, twitching. Mrs. Gerard stood up and looked at him but made no attempt to help him. His eyes started to droop, the room getting darker. Another person came into his vision and stood next to Mrs. Gerard. But this person had a black hood hanging low over their face. That was the last thing he saw, as his eyes started to close slowly, then there was just darkness.
Morgan
Ashley was in a round room with exposed brick walls. It was unlit apart from a single bare bulb. There was a mirror in front of her. She walked over to it and looked at her reflection. She was wearing a long black robe. Her face was covered in black paint. She looked down at her hands. They were covered in blood.
Ashley sat up. She was in bed. Sunlight was coming in through the gap under the white curtains. She wasn’t sure of what she had dreamt, but she didn’t like it. She got her phone out and dialed her mom.
“Mom?” she said down the phone. “I don’t want to be here anymore; can you come and pick me up?”
There was a moment of silence at the end of the line before her mom answered. “What do you mean come and pick you up? You’ve only been there a few days.”
“I know, it’s just I don’t like this place. It’s spooky being here on my own and-”.
“I don’t want to hear it, Ashley. You gave up college, and you need to do something. This house-sitting gig is good. You’re getting paid to do next to nothing. Do you realize how lucky you are? You could use this time to think about what you are going to do in the future.”
Ashley felt tears run down her face. “But Mom, this place is weird, I don’t like it.”
“What’s weird about it?” Her mom’s voice was still stern, but there was an underlying sense of concern.
“The house is just very spooky. I had a bad dream about it, and one of the cats is missing, and a woman came around the house and got frightened and left.” She tried to think of more to say, but there really wasn’t anything else. It was just a feeling.
“No,” Mom said. “Everyone has said I have to start getting used to saying it to you, so I am going to say it now. No. You don’t sound like you are in any danger, and you certainly aren’t coming back here unless you have a job. I’ll call you in a couple of days and will check up on you.” The line went dead. Ashley sat and stared at her phone for a moment. Then she got up and dressed. She headed out of the door and walked down the street, not even bothering to have breakfast. She needed to get out of the house.
Ashley walked aimlessly around the streets. She had no idea what kind of place Sprucewood was, and she didn’t care, she just knew she had to get out of the house. As she walked, she crossed paths with a woman pushing a buggy. She didn’t think anything at first, but after a moment she had that strange feeling that she had seen the woman before. Then she realized it was the same woman who had walked past the house the other day. Ashley turned around and caught up with her.
“Excuse me,” she said.
“Yes?” The woman turned around. She didn’t give a look of recognition.
“I saw you the other day, and I have a question. It may sound weird, but I have to ask it.” The woman frowned. Ashley smiled to reassure her then quickly spoke on. “I am staying in this house, Sprucewood Mansion. Do you know anything about it?” The woman grabbed hold of the buggy as if she was steadying herself.
“You were the girl I saw there the other day, aren’t you?” The woman said in a voice barely louder than a whisper.
“Yes, I’m house sitting whilst the owner is away,” Ashley said. She looked at the woman’s face. Her lip was trembling.
“You shouldn’t stay there,” she said.
“Why? It’s a bit creepy, but it’s a beautiful house. Did a boy go missing there once?” The woman shook her head but couldn’t speak. “A boy didn’t go missing there?”
“No, I mean…maybe. It’s just a strange place. No one local will buy it.” Her baby started crying. She rocked the stroller back and forth to soothe him. “You just shouldn’t be staying there.” The woman turned to go. Ashley stood still for a moment. Her worst thoughts could be true. There was something wrong with the place.
“What were Mr. and Mrs. Gerard like?” Ashley said.
“No one saw them. Not for years. In their younger days though they were mean, wretched people. They would shout at anyone who came anywhere near their property. They would shout and scream at each other all day. Then they were total recluses.”
“Wait,” she said running after the woman who had already made a fair distance along the sidewalk. “What about the owner Miss Faye, what is she like?”
The woman scoffed. “Is that what she gets you to call her? She was a strange girl. Though she had the burden of looking after her parents for years, she dropped out of school to look after them. Then one day she married someone rich and moved away. Well, that’s what I heard.” The baby was really howling now, perhaps sensing her mother’s unease.
“Please, I just need to know if I am in any danger.”
“I think she tried to get as far away from the house and her parents as possible. Poor girl.”
“But what happened to the parents?”
“I assume she put them in a home. No one really knows. Anyway, I can’t talk about the house anymore. Please don’t speak to me again.” The woman moved away so fast it was almost at a running pace. She had left Ashley standing alone in the middle of the street, not sure what to do.
After walking around aimlessly for a while, Ashley had found a supermarket. She bought as much fresh food as she could carry and took it back to the house. She made herself some lunch and sat in the kitchen table. The cat Sissy joined her. Ashley fed her some more food, not that it was meal time but because she wanted the company. She took out her phone and opened Facebook. She scrawled through her newsfeed and saw all the status updates from the people she thought were her friends. One caught her eye. I can’t believe I have got the internship I wanted! So happy! It was her friend Brit. Ashley slammed her phone down on the table, causing Sissy to jump. Then she had a thought. She had to stop letting things in life get the better of her. She finished the rest of her food and went to the computer. She started to draw up a lost cat poster. She had to stop relying on the damn thing coming home by herself. She printed out twenty copies then spent the afternoon putting them up around the neighborhood. When she got back to the house, she decided she needed to tackle two more problems. The first was working out what had gone on in the house. The second one was working out what she was going to do in her life. She decided that investigating the house was the least scary of those options. She went back to the bedroom with the secret compartment in the wall and took out the box. She needed to work out what all of the contents meant. S
he spread them out on the kitchen table. She had worked out that the newspaper articles could have meant that the boy had gone missing in the house, but what else? She looked at some more. There was a catalog for a cosmetics company called Beautiful Blush cosmetics. There was a silver heart pendant necklace. They weren’t making much sense at the moment. She got out her phone and searched for Beautiful Blush. It was a door to door sales brand from the nineties, like Avon, but less popular. She scrawled through the articles about it. Why would anyone keep an old catalog? Ashley thought for a moment. Then she had an idea. She typed in Beautiful Blush missing person. There was a result. Salesman for Beautiful Blush Cosmetics Missing. Ashley read the article. In 1993 a salesman was out trying to sell his cosmetics door to door. That night he didn’t return home. Ashley looked again at the catalog. She turned to the back page where there was a name and contact phone number for Mr. Fisher written in ink. He had been to the house.
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