The Galston House

by Marc Layton

  "What can I do for you tonight, Mrs. Potter? Is it the dogs again?"

  “Clarence, it's Galston Place! The couple who moved in there”. Clarence sat bolt upright, shocked back to attention.

  “The couple, what about the couple? What’s happened?"

  “Nothing yet, but there isn’t much time, you must go to them! Clarence, they’re in danger!”

  Adrien recoiled, snapping her hand back as if it had rested on hot coals, with a force that almost made her fall. She stumbled backward toward where she thought the bed might be, hoping instinctively that if she could reach it, she could use it as a barrier between her and whoever had touched her.

  She reached with her foot hoping to find the edge. Where was it? It should be there. Why wasn't it there? Disoriented, she once again groped into the darkness with her hands, terrified of what she might touch. Terrified of what might touch her, she turned, first one way then the other, hoping to find some purchase, some notion of the room's layout and her position in it. Instead, there was only void, only black. She stood stock-still. The door, she thought. She had been moving toward the door, so it must be straight ahead of her, and whoever or whatever had touched her, was somewhere in the space between.

  She clenched her fists and raised them, readying herself to lash out blindly at anyone.

  “Who’s there?” she cried. Panic rising in her chest and throat, shattering the joins between words like glass so that they came out jarred and fragmented, the very act of speech feeling jagged and labored.

  "Who the fuck is there!" she screamed to the dark. She began to pace slowly backward, hoping to find the edge of the room, a wall against which to put her back, to close off her blindspot. To find some way of knowing her position. Somehow, in a room only a dozen feet wide, she was lost. Lost in the dark, like a sailor adrift in the sea at night. She called again for Clive. The room answered with silence.

  Yet, she knew, could feel, someone else's presence. Eyes, somehow seeing through the dark, dark that seemed solid, covering everything, were watching her. She held her breath, her ears straining to the very edge of sound, probing the borders, the fringes for any whispered hint of movement. She listened and felt a wash of icy panic flow over her insides, as with a squealing creak from somewhere behind her, the closet door opened.

  "Slow down, Mabel," said Clarence, softly. On hearing her words, his mouth had gone dry and now felt as if it were full of cotton wool. "Tell me what you mean."

  "The frog coffins." She declared, " How many were there?" Clarence felt the hair on his forearms and neck stand on end.

  “How do you…”? He began before being interrupted

  “That idiot Din Perkins was parading one around your office earlier this evening. Never mind that Clarence, there is no time for this, how many were there?”

  "Er...Six. There were six," Clarence stuttered.

  “Were any of them empty?” Clarence paused, trying as best he could to process the questions he was being asked, to line up the events with his understanding of reality, was this really happening?

  “I...erm…” he stumbled. Mable Potter’s voice, already sharpened by an urgency bordering on crazed, became even more pointed. "For god's sake, Clarence! Were any of them empty?"

  "Yes." Clarence finally managed. "Yes, two, two were empty." Now it was Mabel's turn to pause. When she spoke again, the volume and force had been taken from her voice. She spoke instead in muted whispers and yet what she said carried with it more weight than he could have imagined.

  "He wants them, Clarence, he needs two more. Go to them, Clarence." She whispered. "Go to them now!"

  Clarence Lamb didn’t even hang up the phone.

  "Clive! Clive!" Adrien screamed. She turned in place to face the sound, after the creak was the low muffled, shifting, the wooden panels inside the closet, thumping and knocking as an object moved against them in heavy shambling gestures.

  “Who’s there? What do you want?" Adrien screamed, childhood nightmares of spidermen and ghosts clawing their way up from long-buried pits of memory.

  Before her, only blackness, a sheet of dark in which something was moving. A pause in which the sound and the movement seemed to teeter and sway on the edge of being real. Then the cushioned thud as a foot landed on boards. Adrien turned and ran. Ran headlong into the black, ran, it seemed to her, for miles, minutes away from the sound, away from whatever had crept from that space.

  She screamed as her shoulder careened with a thud into the door frame, and she spilled onto the floor. She kicked and freewheeled her legs, searching for footing as unseen fingers, cold and steely, clamped around her leg, and a sweet soft voice dripping with sibilance and glee, hissed from the dark. "Ssssnatch you up and pin yewww down."

  In all of his years in the force, Clarence had never driven at such speed, nor had ever been so frightened. The town of Moreton had sped past in a blur, his hands on the steering wheel were moist with sweat as he screeched onto the road out of town toward The Galston place. From the moment he had dropped the phone until now, Clarence had been focused, fixed on the singular goal of getting to the house. For the more he focused on the rescue, the less he had to think about where he was heading and what he might find when he got there.

  Adrien screamed, a wretched sobbing scream

  “Clive! Clive, it's got me! Clive, for christ's sake, it's got me!" Tears filled her eyes as she kicked wildly backward like a mule, trying in vain to free her leg while, with the other, she tried to connect, to land a blow on whoever, whatever, was holding her. The grip only tightened. She screamed again, this time without words. Instead, it was a primal, curdling noise that rose from the pit of her stomach.

  The sound tore from her throat in tattered, ragged anguish as she clawed at the ground, trying to find a hold, to find some leverage. The clamp on her ankle tightened, and slowly, deliberately, she began to be dragged backward, along the floor, a bitter malicious snickering, like the giddy yammering calls of hyenas oozed from somewhere behind her.

  “You can be Albert's good girl," the voice said. Suddenly, from downstairs, she heard Clive's voice.

  "Adey? Adey, are you okay.=?"

  "Help me, Clive, for God's sake help me!" by her side, she heard the tinkling clatter of metal and knew immediately. It was the sound of pins being dropped on the ground. "Pins and needles, quick, quick, quick," said the voice in thick viscous syllables that seemed more liquid than sound.

  She heard the clamor from below, of Clive approaching the stairs. Adrian felt a white-hot point of pressure in the flesh at the back of her knee, then the blistering explosion of pain, as sharp point was thrust into the skin. "Here froggy froggy" drooled the voice behind her.

  Adrian again reached, trying, grasping for anything. The sound of Clive bounding the stairs as again the voice hissed, laughing through the black "pin yewww daown." Then, a hand. Another firm grip around her wrist, still she heard Clive ascending the stairs, above her a flash of light, and a glimpse of a woman's face.

  "Not this time, you bastard," said the voice from above.

  "Adey, where are you?" Clive's voice. Adrien tried to raise her head as consciousness faded and the blackness overcame her.

  When she awoke, Adrien was slumped in an armchair in the drawing-room. Kneeling beside her, holding her hand, was Clive. To his right were Clarence Lamb and a woman she had never seen before. In her hands, she was holding what looked to Adrien like a glass jar. Disoriented, Adrien looked around the faces and then sat upright as the memories washed over her.

  "What happened? What happened? Where is he"? She cried. The woman fixed her stare on Adrien. It was a grey look, a dry expression that spoke of a world with the color washed out, of days that melted into nights that melted into days. The teeth were gritted, the hair greasy and grey, and the eyes circled and dark. The woman looked as if she hadn't slept in years. She tightened her grip on the jar.

  "He's in here," she said and without another word, she turned and left.

 
Clarence attempted a smile and, with an apologetic manner, explained: "I'm sorry but erm...I'm going to need you folks to come down to the station with me and file a report." There was a pause as, confused, Adrien looked, with bewilderment to Clive, who nodded reassuringly and tightened his grip on her hand.

  Clarence coughed with deliberate volume before adding, "We can er...we can discuss what will be in that report on the way." Clive wrapped a blanket around Adrien's shoulders and led her out of the house to the waiting car. The woman with the jar was already in the passenger seat.

  The report filed by Clarence Lamb sheriff of Moreton county made national news and is now on record with the state. It has been the subject of much discussion in some circles, particularly by those interested in strange cases and so-called 'paranormal' incidents, though no mention of ghosts, black magic, or hauntings appears in the document itself.

  Instead, the report documents how a young couple, who recently arrived in the area, moved into a dilapidated house, which up to that point had been unopened for decades. It goes on to detail how the evening after moving in, the couple had stumbled across the bodies of three men, later identified to be missing persons, Judge John Tate and Sheriff’s deputies Rodger Lamb and Tony Meredith.

  The report explains that the bodies were discovered in the cellar, though this has been disputed as state officials found the bodies in the dining room. Each body was pierced at strategic points with large needles, attached to which were scraps of red satin, such as one might find in an expensive coffin. The report is presented as entirely factual and implies no wrongdoing on the part of the couple who were only children back when the men were reported missing.

  The report became of particular interest because of its connection to another curious incident that occurred the same evening. The body of the town's former Sheriff John Macky, missing for decades, was found prostrate across a desk in the town's police station, sporting the same strange mutilations.

  It has been rumored that the bodies of these gentlemen were hastily cremated in an effort to conceal the fact that when discovered, they seemed not to show any signs of decomposition with each of the subjects appearing exactly as they did upon going missing decades earlier. This, of course, is speculation, and for those outside Moreton seeking to investigate these occurrences, this is where the trail usually ends.

  For those of us who live in town, however, there is more to the story.

  There is, for example, the article written by resident Mabel Potter, which was featured in the National Journal of Folklore Studies. In the article, Mrs. Potter, whose family is originally from Finland and whose maiden name was Pakse, explores the myths surrounding the Finnish practice of using 'frog coffins.'

  She explains that these artifacts, which have been discovered in buildings, particularly churches, all over Finland, and in infrequent occasions in the United States, were used for both black magic and counter magical purposes. When used maliciously, they were thought to allow practitioners to use the frog to symbolically 'pin' or trap the souls of his or her victims.

  Some practitioners of dark arts believed that if six souls could be pinned in this way and offered as tribute, the person responsible could escape death by feeding off these souls and could, in essence, live on indefinitely. Her article also outlines how, in echoes of scenarios seen in some Nordic fairy tales, it is said once a pinioned soul is released, the frog pinned to represent the victim would return to human form. Though, of course, these are just fanciful tales.

  There are also stories, closer to home, about the woman who is said to have saved the couple from the ghost of Albert Knewl. Mary Seawell, a local woman, whose daughter was almost abducted by the murderous Knewl, is said to have waited decades for retribution against him, even after his death. Upon learning of the couple’s intention to move into the Galston place, she saw an opportunity for vengeance.

  It is said that to this day, she keeps a jar filled with iron nails, hair and urine with her at all times. Specimens of similar 'charms' have been found all over the British Isles and North America, their purpose allegedly being to ensnare evil spirits, snagging them on the nails, and sealing them within the bottle or jar. Whether any of this is true, whether Mary Seawell used this couple as bait to capture the man in the hat and whether the bottle she carries really does contain the spirit of Albert Knewl depends on who you ask.

  If you ask Clarence Lamb, our former sheriff, who retired not long after these incidents took place, he will tell you to read the report and refuse to say anything more. Ask Clive and Adrien Done, and they'll say it was a long time ago, that they don't believe houses retain memories and that they have been lucky enough to start a new life, and a family in the Galston Place, beginning a new chapter for the building in the process.

  Ask Mary Seawell herself, and she will just smile, saying that she sleeps better nowadays and no longer owns a gun.

  Ask me, and I'll tell you it's all true. That I've heard the story first hand from the people mentioned above and that to me, they were far more honest than they'd ever be to you. I'd also tell you that I saw Albert Knewl, both before and after he died, and I can believe what they say. I'd tell you that I see the jar filled with nails every day, and also the strange light that squirms and struggles, pinned inside it. Most of all, I'd tell you that I see the grin on Mary Seawell's face.

  Mother always did know how to hold a grudge.

  Lynn Seawell, Moreton, October 2019

  Also by Marc Layton

  The Evergreen Motel: Sleepless (Part One)

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