Gillian’s eyes followed her mother’s finger. “Agnes and Alice…” she looked up at her mother. “Holy shit…”
“Where is he, Gillian?” she asked quietly. When she started to tell her, Maureen shushed her. “Whisper it to me,” she said softly. “The walls may have ears.”
“Now you’re sounding crazy.”
“Just do it.”
With a shrug, Gillian leaned across the table and whispered the name and address of the nursing home where Eamon lived. It was just two blocks away. Maureen rose, and picked up her purse. “I’ll be back right away. We’re going to have some company.” She took her coat and left by the front door.
Listening to the car leaving the driveway, Gillian shook her head. Mom was getting pretty weird, that was for sure. And the whole whisper stuff was just too much. She leaned back in her chair and looked up at the ceiling.
“Is there anyone there?” She looked around the room. “Can you give me a sign? Anything?” The room was still. Almost too still. “If you can hear me, I got some news for you.” She folded her hands behind her head and leaned her chair back on two legs. “We’re going to have some company, what do you think about that?” She looked around the room, feeling like an idiot. “And the guest who is coming over is—”
The door to the backyard slammed shut and Sarah came running into the house screaming. “Mommy! We have to open the wall to the twinses room! We have to open it now!!” She flew through the house to the staircase and began to scramble up on all fours like a puppy.
Chapter 49
While Maureen and Gillian were comparing notes in the dining room, Sarah was out in the backyard playing with Pearl. Suddenly, the puppy jumped up, and whimpering, ran to the back door with her tail between her legs. She stopped at the door and turned to look at Sarah, softly whining.
“I know you’re right behind me,” she said. “You always scare poor Pearl!” Hearing the twins’ giggles, she turned around. Agnes and Alice stood there, dressed as always, covering their mouths with their hands.
Alice’s hand dropped from her face. “I don’t know why your puppy is scared of us, Sarah. We’ve never done anything to her.”
Sarah looked from one Alice to Agnes. “I think it’s cos you’re not like regular kids,” she said quietly.
“What is that supposed to mean?” said Agnes, her lips were thin and eyebrows furrowed.
“I’m not trying to be mean,” Sarah replied. “It’s just that… you know…” she held her hands out, palms up.
“Know what?” Agnes crossed her arms over her chest.
Sarah sighed. “I like you! I like playing with you! But… my mommy and nana have never seen you, even though you’re here all the time! And…” she pointed at the twins one at a time, “and you wear the same dresses every day and they never, ever get dirty, no matter what game we play!” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “And you’re both afraid of Bridey, but won’t tell me why. And I’ve never seen your mother!” She turned her head from side to side, taking in the fenced-in yard. “I’ve never seen you come into the yard, and I’ve never seen you leave the yard, but you’re here every day to play with me!”
“Because we like you, Sarah!” Alice’s eyes filled with tears. “It’s been ever so long since we’ve had a friend to play with!”
Agnes stepped to her sister and put her arm around her shoulders, trying to shush her. “You don’t want to be our friend anymore? Is that it?” Her eyes were angry, but her chin was trembling a little.
Sarah blew out a puff of air. “No silly! We’ll be friends forever and ever! It’s just that…” She tilted her head at the twins. “It’s just that… you’re not really little girls.”
“Oh? We’re not?” Agnes picked at the skirt of her dress. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Sarah bit her lip and glanced to the house. “I mean… I think you’re ghosts.”
“Are not!” Agnes shoved Sarah, knocking her backward.
“Agnes Crawley!” said Alice. “Shame on you!” She went over to Sarah. “I’m sorry, Sarah, Agnes is just—” at that moment, Pearl the pug ran down the steps barking and yapping at the twins. She was snarling as she raced across the yard. With open jaws, she leapt at Agnes.
And passed right through her, landing on the other side. She stopped and blinked. With another growl, she snapped at Agnes’ ankle, but her snout passed right through. Like two images on a television screen, Pearl’s snout and Agnes’ foot passed through and over each other.
“Pearl! Be good!” cried Sarah, wagging a finger at the puppy.
Pearl sat down and cocked her head at each of the girls, her large eyes even wider in confusion. Sarah scooped the puppy up and held it in her arms.
“See?” she said.
The twins nodded, and Agnes burst into tears. Alice took her sister in her arms. Sarah set Pearl down and her arms rose to encircle both of her friends.
“I don’t want to think about it, Alice! It was so scary! She shouldn’t have said that!” hiccupped Agnes. She burrowed her face in her sister’s shoulder.
“What was scary, Agnes? I’m not scared of you. I should be… I mean, you’re ghosts! But you’re my friends!”
Alice was patting her sister on the back. “No… it’s not that, Sarah. Agnes is talking about…” Her eyes filled up with tears. “About when Mister Griffin hurt us.” She began to softly cry. “We don’t like to think about it. We never talk about it, because it was so scary.”
Sarah immediately understood. She put her hands on each of the girls’ shoulders. “Did it hurt? To die? Does it hurt?” She was getting kind of scared talking about that, not a lot, but a little bit.
Alice shook her head. “No. Mister Griffin hit us on the head, and we floated up in the air over him when he took us out to the lake and put us in the water.”
“Why did he do that?” asked Sarah.
Agnes yanked her head from Alice’s shoulder. “Because he’s mean! He’s bad and he’s mean and Bridey made him do it!” She pushed Alice’s soothing hand away and marched to the back door of the house. “Nasty, mean Bridey Walsh! Mean as mean can be! Bad, bad Bridey!” She stood at the back door shaking her chubby fists at the house, consumed with rage.
Sarah and Alice ran up to her. “I’m telling my mommy!” said Sarah. “She’ll tell on Bridey!” She opened the door, just as Maureen was whispering in Gillian’s ear at the dining room table.
“Sarah!” The twins spoke as one. “Sarah! Stop!” They each grabbed an arm and stopped her from crossing the threshold. They yanked her backwards onto the patio.
“Did you feel it, Agnes?” said Alice.
“Yes!”
“Feel what?” said Sarah. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh no!” They turned their heads, looking into the hallway and back to each other. The twins’ eyes grew huge in horror. “Oh no! Oh no! NO!” they said at once. They whipped around to Sarah. “Sarah!” screamed Alice. “You have to open the door!! Eamon’s coming! And if he comes here before we get back inside, Bridey will kill you all!! She wants the house for Eamon! Open the doorway, Sarah! We have to stop Bridey!”
“You can’t stop her, Sarah! If we get inside, we’ll be with our mummy! She can stop Bridey!” Alice was screeching now, her hands to her face. “Open the doorway Sarah! Now!!”
Sarah threw open the back door, and like a bullet from a rifle, shot for the staircase, screaming at the top of her lungs.
Chapter 50
Maureen parked her car right in front of the doors of Providence Care, ignoring the signs which promised all sorts of fines, penalties and doom from a wrathful bureaucracy. She wasn’t going to be parked long, just long enough to fetch Eamon. Her footsteps crunched on freshly fallen leaves as she strode to the front door. The evening breeze was chilly. Fall was coming early this year.
She found him almost immediately, sitting in the common room watching the evening news. She recognized him as the man who had watched the house since t
hey moved in. He was in one of those ‘old people chairs’ she had seen at nursing homes before. First Nan, then each of her parents had that type in their rooms. It was a large armchair, upholstered in a green vinyl. Eamon was sitting back on it, his cane between his knees, watching the TV screen intently.
She hesitated. What in the world would she say? ‘Hi, I just learned your mother was murdered by your father?’ She stood in the entranceway to the room; arms folded, chewing on a fingernail.
As if he woke up from a doze, Eamon’s head gave a small jerk, then tilted. He adjusted himself on the chair and slowly turned around to face her. He smiled and waved her over.
They had never met, but he acted like he was expecting her. Maureen nodded to herself; just another oddity in a lengthening list.
“Hello Eamon,” she said.
He looked up at her, smiling. God, he was old. It showed the most in his skin. It was paper thin, the surface crinkled and wrinkled with the passing years. His eyes had that watery—just finished crying look—so common among the aged. But behind the film, he was watching her intently.
And with a kindness she had never experienced before. It emanated from him like an invisible wave, a gentle pastoral sonnet she couldn’t hear, but felt. She squatted down to the floor, and knelt next to his chair and placed a hand on his arm. He covered it with his, and for a long, tender moment, they were just company.
“It’s been a long, long time that I’ve waited for this, Maureen,” he said, breaking the silence. “It is Maureen, right?”
She nodded.
“You’re the vision of Katie,” he said. “My dear, dear baby sister Katie. I can see so much of the woman she must have become in you, girl.” He lifted a hand and cradled her face. His touch was dry and gentle. Tears leaked from her eyes when he raised her chin to him.
“I’m so sorry for what Nan did to you after the war,” she said softly. “Did you ever see your sister again?”
He shook his head. “No, just that once, and she was but a sprout of five. The war had ended, and I stayed on during the occupation for a while. When I came home, Ma turned me away. She told me I wasn’t her son, only my father’s nephew.”
He shook his head with a sadness and grief she prayed to never, ever feel. A loss of a lifetime which never healed. “Before I left, I went to Katie and gave her my medal.” He raised his eyes staring off to his past. “I had worn it all my life, as a boy, and through the war. I loved that child with all my heart, Maureen. To me she was my sister, not my cousin…” He looked back to Maureen. “When I saw it on Sarah, I knew the circle will be closed.”
She took his hand in hers and kissed it, gently. “I’m here to take you back home, Eamon.”
“I know.” He moved forward in his chair and stood up smoothly. Bending, he offered his hand to Maureen. “We must hurry, dear. The circles need to be closed, and this is our only chance.” She took his hand and he lifted her to his feet. This fellow brought new meaning to the word ‘spry’!
She looked into his eyes. She saw determination borne of certainty which gave her comfort. Truth be known, she didn’t have the slightest idea what was going on. He broke their gaze and looked to the entranceway and sighed.
“Are you alright, Eamon?”
He began walking to the entrance. Keeping his voice low, he said, “Never better, but we must hurry. Sarah’s in danger!”
***
The car stopped with a jerk at the curb in front of Crawley House. She and Eamon got out at the same time and stared at each other over the roof of the car. It was so still! Not a leaf stirred on the trees and the street was empty and silent. The only lights on were those in the house before them. She watched as Eamon craned his neck, looking up and down the avenue taking it all in. He closed his eyes for a moment, inhaled deeply and looked to Maureen.
“It’s time.”
When he placed his foot on the first step going up to the veranda, lights as bright as the sun in every color of the rainbow erupted from the windows of Crawley house.
And the screaming began.
“Eaaaaamon!!”
Chapter 51
Gillian’s chair thudded to the floor when she leapt up.
“Sarah!” From the bottom of the stairs she saw her daughter scamper down the second floor hallway.
“We have to open the room!” Sarah was still crying out.
“Come down here! Right now! You scared the hell out of me!”
“No!”
She heard the sounds of a hammer beating and flew up the stairs.
Sarah was at the wall which had been closed off. In both hands, she was holding the hammer the carpenter had left, beating at the barrier. The guy Mom had hired had gotten as far as peeling away the drywall, exposing the plywood underlayment. Sarah was pounding on it with all the might a five-year-old could muster.
“Sarah McDougall, you stop that right now!” She marched down the hallway.
Her daughter looked over to her wild-eyed. “No!”
Oh dear God, her eyes had that funny look about them again, glittering and sparking like diamonds. She turned back to the sheet of wood, dropped the hammer and began to pull at the seam where the wood had been nestled into the adjoining wall. “Help me Mommy! Eamon’s coming and we have to close the circle!”
She had no sooner finished her sentence when the house—pulsed. The walls, floors, the air itself, suddenly expanded and contracted as if filled with a blast of air and emptied out. Light, coming from nowhere and everywhere burst and pulsed, almost blinding her.
A thick, hoarse grating whisper filled Gillian’s ears. Like two plates of thick, rusty steel grinding on each other.
“Eaaamon!!”
Gillian covered her ears as she stumbled down the hallway toward her daughter. Sarah shrieked in pain and covered her ears as well.
“Mommy! If we don’t open the door, Bridey will kill us! Just like she killed the twins! Help me, Mommy! Open the door!” Sarah turned back to the edge of the plywood, yanking on it. Her fingers were already bloody.
A…a pressure fell upon Gillian, knocking her to the floor. It wasn’t a wind; it was a shove. One that pushed every atom of her body and threw her down. She saw her daughter driven by the same force, flung down the hallway.
“Leave that be, ye wretch!” shrieked in her ears. It was followed by an animal panting, and at the same time the force vanished. Sarah jumped to her feet and ran back to the doorway, scrabbling at it with renewed fury.
“Sarah!” Gillian got to her feet. When she tried to pull her away, the child bit her forearm. Hard!
“Help me Mommy! I’m not strong enough! We have to close the circle!”
The panting sound picked up pace, like a wild dog about to leap. Gillian grabbed the hammer from the floor and jammed the claw into the crevice as deeply as she could. Once set, she heaved on the handle.
With a piercing squeal the board began to come away from the wall.
“Nnnoooo!!” They were again buffeted by the force. Again the light burst all around them, and again they heard the shriek, “Eaaammmon!!” Gillian was driven to her knees and Sarah was swatted flat to the floor, screeching in anger and fright.
“Screw you!!” yelled Gillian. She let go of the hammer, and with both hands, grasped the edge of the plywood. Splinters pierced her hand, but she didn’t let go. She braced her feet onto the wall beside it and heaved again. Another squeal and the opening widened.
The Haunting of Crawley House (The Hauntings Of Kingston Book 1) Page 25
