“One too many movies, Lizzy…” she said to herself. “Better get it together before your crew arrives. Having a director of a horror movie being freaked out at every little feeling will not exactly instill confidence…”
She hefted her pack again and took one last look at the river before heading back to the front of the mansion. But as she was about to tear her gaze away from the rippling water, Liz again squinted into the sun as it was in and out of the thickening clouds. There on the far side of the river…was that someone? She focused her eyes against the whipping wind. Standing well into the wide bend of the river was what looked to her like someone wading through the lapping whitecaps, carrying a bundle of some undefined mass wrapped in cloths that were blowing in the breeze. The closer the figure moved toward her the less she could see of it as it sank in deeper water. Maybe her feeling of being watched was not just in her head after all, she pondered. But why would anyone in their right mind be out in chilled river water in weather like this?
A sudden gust of wind rushed at her blowing some dust and dirt into her eyes, and Liz turned away to protect her face and clear her vision. When she looked back, the figure was no longer visible. Had she really seen someone? Now she was not so sure. Perhaps she had imagined it based on her feelings of being watched or maybe it was all this talk of a cursed mansion and that she was here to film a horror story. She shook her head as rain began to fall and broke into a jog to gather her things out front and avoid getting soaked.
Time to Get Down to Work
Lake District
The Carroway Mansion, Threlkeld
Cumbria, England
November 2017
Just as Liz ducked inside the massive oaken front doors, the rain came with a vengeance. The thunder that had been rumbling in the distance grew in volume, shaking the loose panes of glass in the windows as some accompanying flashes of lightning illuminated the dim foyer as Liz secured the doors against the wind behind her. The dark and vacant foyer opened up into a long hallway that seemed to vanish into nothingness based on the fading light of the day and the storm outside. Liz set her things down and hauled out the portable lights she had brought for herself to help light the interior until Emily arrived with the bulk of the real lighting equipment for the project.
Liz had been well-aware that due to the long absence of residents in the mansion that there would be no electricity, but as the storm howled outside her few lanterns and flashlights seemed weak and ineffective. She panned her flashlight around the foyer and indeed the interior so far felt as appropriate for a spooky film site as the exterior had. The walls, while still fully intact and solid, were dingy with age and neglect. There seemed to be no real furnishings save an old table off to the side and a very threadbare area rug just ahead. Her beam of light down the hallway revealed nothing more other than some abandoned pictures on one wall. The paintings, like the rest of the hallway, seemed to have a heavy coating of dust and unfortunately a nasty-looking growth of some greenish-black mossy fungus creeping along the frame.
There were several rooms off to each side of the long corridor, but as with the foyer, all that was in any of them was a lone wooden chair or an ancient sofa that had obviously been the home to a family or two of field mice or pack rats based on how the old upholstery had been ravaged to shreds. Liz made her way further down the hallway to find herself in a small kitchen area—at least small for a house of this size, she thought. The back wall was dominated by a large open hearth where she assumed the cooking had been done based on when the Carroway had been built as was in regular use. Oddly enough, there were still remnant ashes along the bottom of the fireplace, and the swinging iron bar which had been used to move various cooking pots in and out over the flames was still intact.
Other than that, the kitchen seemed to have been scavenged as thoroughly as all the other rooms she had seen so far. Even the heavy coating of dust here, like elsewhere, seemed completely undisturbed. Not even a hint of rodent footprints was anywhere to be seen on the floor or along the solitary counter to her left. What did it say, Liz wondered, when even rats had abandoned ship, so to speak? She headed back to the foyer to retrieve her bag for the night and to begin setting up some candlelight. The afternoon was now growing late, and the light was nearly shot as well. The candlelight had initially been for atmosphere in filming her story inside the Carroway, but now it seemed as if the practicality of having them was going to be just as important.
Liz got some candles set up on the lower level and then returned to a staircase that was adjacent to the kitchen to explore the upper levels. She stashed her flashlight in a hip pocket to preserve the batteries and used a large candle to light her way up the stairs. The flickering flame was giving her enough light to walk slowly, but was not showing much more than a few feet ahead of her at any time. It was only when a prolonged and incredibly bright strike of lightning flashed again that Liz got a brief but clear vision of the stairs that led upward. The sight surprised her, but not knowing the intricacies of the time in which structures of this type had been built, Liz was not completely shocked. Just to confirm what the flash had seemed to reveal she withdrew her flashlight and shone it up over her head.
Liz had known the mansion had multiple levels from looking it over outside, but the dizzying stairs as they went up steeply and went back and forth, like a switchback design of a hiking trail in the mountains, made her stare in amazement. The staircase was narrow, but as far as she could tell, all the steps seemed well-preserved, a feat that seemed incredible to her based on the age of the mansion. Liz doused her light and made her way carefully and cautiously up just in case her evaluation of the stairs had been off. She paused briefly on each level to take a quick survey of each floor, but as had been the case with the ground level, there was nothing much to see. There was just more dust and dirt and neglect, but no furnishings to speak of other than an occasional damaged chair or table. Whoever had cleaned this place out—whenever that might have been—they had done a thorough job, Liz thought.
And still no sign of recent rodent or other animal life anywhere. To Liz, this was as strange as anything she had come across so far. And as she went higher up and listened carefully, the old echoey mansion seemed completely silent. It was just her footsteps, the sound of her pulse pounding in her ears as she exerted herself on the climb upward, and the storm outside. Perfect for my film, Liz noted, but certainly not what I might have expected. She set about placing candles on each level to give off just the look she wanted to create for the film, and some interior shots before everyone else arrived and then retreated to the foyer to do the same for the ground level. Once Liz was satisfied with her setup, she pulled out a camera she often used for low to no light and did a thorough filming of the interior to go along with her exterior shots.
As she had done outside, she left the recording feature on as she filmed as the storm that was still battering the windows and roof was adding a nice touch of creep to what she was seeing through her viewer. As night began to set in for good, and the storm outside faded away to just the constant and gentle misty drizzle Liz had assumed was never-ending in England, she took all her gear and made the long schlep again upward to the top floor to make a temporary bed for herself for the night. Liz brushed away as much of the filth and grime from the floor of a small room where she rolled out a sleeping pad and sleeping bag and then went back downstairs to review her filming from the day and dig into the packed meal she had gotten from the inn in Penrith, her only real meal of the day since that brief snack of toast and coffee earlier.
After tossing the containers her food had been in, Liz set up her camera on the portable reviewer she had brought along so she could take a look at what she had shot during the day to see what to keep and what was not going to be useful. She laid out her outlines and notes as well so she could coordinate her storyline with footage in preparation for the arrival of Clara, her actress, and her partners from America. However, as Liz began to go through what she had s
hot, she was utterly baffled at what came across on the small review screen. At first, she assumed she must have attached some of the cables incorrectly or perhaps had a setting programmed wrong as everything she looked over was either out of focus or very grainy and cloudy in quality. Thinking it was just a few of her efforts, Liz fast-forwarded through the material, but no matter what portion of the material she brought up, the results were the same.
Liz knew she was no expert at this, but nothing during her filming had seemed to indicate that any of her exposure or other settings had been out of range or set incorrectly. But regardless, no matter what she looked at, either from the exterior shots or just recently here inside the mansion, the results were the same. The sound seemed to have come through crystal clear, but the video feed was totally unusable. She went back to her camera and double-checked all the settings she had used, based on the memory function of her gear which told her what selections she had used, and all indications were that she had set everything perfectly.
She pondered all of this to no avail, as it seemed impossible for her banked recordings to have the results they did. Just as an experiment, Liz grabbed her camera and went down to the floor just below her and shot some quick footage to see what would happen. All looked well when she shot it, and upon running the film through the reviewer just seconds later, the quality was perfect. Liz scratched her head, figuratively, but in the end, could not ascertain what had gone wrong earlier. It was annoying, and she felt as if she had wasted a day, but there seemed to be no logical explanation. She had been hoping to have some extra film already done before her crew arrived to give her a head start, but now due to time constraints and budgetary issues, she would just have to go with what she could generate live.
The long day, plus the unnerving feedback she had gotten from the locals on the so-called “cursed mansion” plus a wasted day of filming added up to exhaustion and disappointment for Liz’s first actual day as an independent film director. She supposed even famous filmmakers went through this sort of thing when they began, but it still did not help much. With no other choice, other than staying up and feeling sorry for herself and continuing to beat up on herself for issues that had no apparent solution, Liz finally threw in the towel, doused the candles in the cold, empty mansion and called it a day. In her excitement over getting started, the last thing Liz had prepared herself for was this type of inexplicable technical glitch. The last thought that crossed her mind as she finally dozed off, after much tossing and turning, was “I wonder if Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg went through this when they got started…”
……….
Liz slept on and off as a new round of heavy rain began to fall somewhere in the dark of the night. In one of her fragments of deep sleep, Liz saw herself outside. In her vision, she was wandering alone along the banks of a lake as the sun shone warmly on her shoulders. The day seemed bright and cheery, and Liz ran her hands along the tops of tall, wavy wild grasses, much like she had when she had roamed the alfalfa fields of her childhood home in Iowa years ago. Then without warning, the sun got blotted out behind a massive influx of angry-looking black clouds and the temperature of the day fell precipitously. A storm seemed to be brewing, but in every direction that Liz looked, there seemed to be no place in which she might take refuge. In any other case, Liz might not have been so concerned over a simple bout of rain, but in this dream, she was carrying a baby wrapped in a light, but beautiful flannel blanket.
If she could not find some shelter soon, she was afraid the child would be at the mercy of the storm. As the wind suddenly sprang up to gale force, Liz bent her head into the blast and without knowing where she was going or how to protect both herself and the child, she picked up her pace, hurrying with no plan in mind across the field along the perimeter of the lake. Just as she felt her progress being forced to a near standstill from the headwind, Liz looked down, and the baby was gone! She was still holding the blanket as it flapped wildly in the wind, but otherwise, her hands were empty.
She looked around frantically as the storm rose to a crescendo and then without warning or logic just went silent. The clouds disappeared as dramatically as they appeared, and the sun was revealed again as the chilly day once again grew warm and comfortable. However, with her hands empty, sans the little blanket, Liz felt utterly panicky and consumed with a depression the likes of which she had never experienced before. Liz had never been one of these women consumed with the burning desire to have and attend to children that many of her friends did, but all the same, it was like she had been responsible for this child and now it was just gone. No explanation, no sign of where it had gone…nothing. And despite her low level of a mothering instinct, Liz felt completely responsible and totally disconsolate.
Without knowing why, she simply turned toward the lake, dropped the blanket to her side and began to walk toward the water. She stood at the edge of the lake and looked across the wide expanse in desperation for the child. She had no idea why she thought it might be there, but something inside her told her to look. She put her hand to her brow, guarding her eyes against the glare of the sun, and as she stared out across the lake, she spied a small form bobbing in the water. She gasped in horror as she saw the sight and without thinking dove in to rescue the child. Liz was a strong swimmer, but the harder she swam, the smaller and smaller the bobbing figure seemed to appear, as if it was moving away from her even though the surface of the lake was calm.
Liz felt her heart near breaking as she began to wonder if she could reach the figure in time, when she stopped her strokes to get her bearings. Now when she took a closer look, the bobbing form was not a child, but merely a duck that was rising and falling with the gentle movement of the lake’s natural movement. Liz treaded water trying to understand how she could have imagined that a duck could have been anything else. Fatigued and confused, Liz turned to swim back to the shore from which she had come, but as she looked in that direction, the shoreline seemed miles away. She was sure she had come just a few dozen yards, but that was not the situation at the moment.
Then once again, much as before, the sun got obscured by a rapid influx of thick rain clouds, and the wind rose up to transform the calm, flat surface of the lake into a raging, frothing nightmare. Small waves came up and began to wash over Liz’s head, causing her to swallow some lake water as she struggled to keep her head above the surface. Despite being tired from the swim out, Liz was sure she could make it back if she just took her time and did not panic. But with each stroke, the shoreline just seemed to move further and further away. Then from the depths of the lake, Liz felt a force seize her around the ankles and begin to pull her under. It was not exactly a physical force, but more of a nondescript pull.
Liz kicked and fought against it, but soon it was no use, and she went under the water as her body was dragged, foot by foot, deeper and deeper into the icy depths of the lake. Just as her last breath ran out, Liz gulped a huge volume of water into her lungs, and her vision went black. Liz sat up with a start gasping and wheezing for air uncertain where she was or what had happened. The memory of nearly drowning in a lake was still vivid and to add to that confusion, she found herself covered in cold, icy water. It took her a few minutes to gain her senses before she realized the drowning experience had been just a dream.
But even then, she had no idea why she was soaked to the skin, until she looked up to see that the recent storm had apparently blown off some roof tiles and rain was leaking down on her from above. With her heart still pounding as if it wanted to exit her chest and all her bodily systems on full alert, Liz crawled from her now soggy sleeping bag and braced herself into the far corner of the room to calm herself down. As her breathing returned to normal, Liz got into dry clothes and tried to recall all the details her nightmare and why it had come to her. However, as is often the case with dreams, the longer Liz was up and alert, the more the fragments of the dream faded from her memory.
It was still dark out as Liz got back under co
mplete control, but after the trauma of her nightmare, she knew without a doubt that she would not sleep any more that night. With shaky hands, Liz brought the mansion up to full light and went to the kitchen to make coffee as she tried to understand what had happened to her.
The Crew from America Arrives
Lake District
The Carroway Mansion, Threlkeld
Cumbria, England
November 2017
Liz did not think anyone in the history of time had even been more relieved and comforted by the arrival of dawn than she was as she looked out through the kitchen window to see the sun rise over the forests behind Carroway the next day. Over what had become a long series of cups of coffee, in order to stay awake—Liz had lost count hours ago—the ragged fragments of her nightmare flitted across her brain. But none of them seemed to align with one another nor did any of them on their own seem to make any sense. The near drowning? The baby? What did it all mean and where in the hell had any of it come from? It was all a whirl of confusion and was just making her head hurt.
As the sun peaked fully over the trees, Liz sighed with resignation as she finally just let all the semi-images go as she heard the faint, but growing sounds of the arrival of a vehicle trundling up the narrow path toward the mansion. She dumped the last of the dregs of a cold cup of coffee out the back door and made her way around the side of Carroway to greet what she assumed was the arrival of Emily and Sam based on the loud sound of the approaching truck. Liz pushed her night out of her mind knowing she had to focus on her crew, showing a façade of confidence, even if it might not be fully accurate. The last thing she needed at this moment was to appear weak or shaken, even if deep down that might be the case.
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