“Darling?” He rested his hand more firmly on her shoulder. “Are you alright?”
Oh, what a question to ask? She laughed and could hear the hint of hysteria in it. She bit firmly down on her bottom lip to keep it from bubbling up again. That’s just what she needed right now, was for him to think her mad. But alright? She was far from alright.
“Andrew…” She kept her voice as calm as she could manage. Her teeth still set in her bottom lip and her hands still clenched together. To her own ear her voice sounded rusty and strained. “Can you look at my neck, love?”
She watched his eyes narrow with confusion. She was getting used to seeing that expression over the past two days, but still he moved his hand from her shoulder towards her neck. He lifted her hair out of the way.
His hand dropped away quickly as he hissed in a breath. She couldn’t help but think of the creature’s snake tongue and it made her cringe. His eyes went from her neck to her face then back to her neck.
“What the hell, Laura!?”
“What’s on my neck, Andrew?” She held eye contact with him because she knew that he was real. At this point in time that was all she was certain of. She knew he was real. She knew the light was the only thing keeping the creature away. And she knew that perhaps, just maybe, he would believe her this time.
He reached his hand out slowly again, as if touching her might hurt him in some way. He hesitated before pushing her hair out of the way again. He drew in a slow breath as his eyes tracked the marks that were slowly darkening on her skin.
Two distinct hand prints, slowly transitioning from red to purple bruising.
“What’s on my neck, Andrew?” She repeated slowly. Her voice shook a little as her calm began to wear off.
This wasn’t like the nightmare. This hadn’t been some strange force able to hurt her in the realm of her dreams. This had been tactile. She had felt it, smelt it, touched it. It had been as real to her as he was sitting there next to her. She wasn’t certain if that made it more or less terrifying.
“It looks like someone tried to choke you.” The words sounded strange as he said them. They sounded preposterous. He’d been lying right beside her. He would have known if someone had tried to choke her.
His eyes went wide. He didn’t want to say the words. He barely wanted to think them, but after the marks on her wrists, he needed to. Someone needed to ask. “Did you do this?”
She raised a brow. She couldn’t even work up the energy to be angry at the suggestion. Her mind was in a state of shock, numb, and mildly oxygen deprived.
“I’m not even going to justify that with an answer, Andrew.”
“Well what the hell am I supposed to think? What with your wrists and those scratches and now this? What, really, am I going to think?”
“Well clearly you don’t think I’m all that stable,” she scoffed. She held out her wrists, prying her hands apart from their death grip on each other. “I didn’t do these either.”
“Well then what the bloody hell did, Laura?” Andrew ran a hand through his hair in frustration. He rarely lost his temper. He rarely got frustrated. But he couldn’t make sense of her at the moment.
He’d never seen her like this. She was usually chomping at the bit for an argument with him, but there she sat, calm and reassured that she knew what was what. He couldn’t wrap his head around it. And mixed with the unease that crept up his spine from the darkness around them and the marks that scarred her body, he was quite disturbed.
It took a lot to shake his foundation. The events in the living room had made him unsteady, but he’d almost forgot about them by now. His night out and fun on the town with Laura had pushed them out of his mind.
They crept back now, like the chill up his spine, to remind him that not all was right in the world. And, as he looked into his wife’s calm, tired eyes he felt no reassurance. All he felt was his solid footing slipping out from underneath him.
He did the only thing he could, he lashed out for purchase, with anger and logic.
“If I was desperate enough to harm myself, this wouldn’t be the way I’d do it.” She glanced down at her wrists. They still hurt, as did her ankles, as the memory of the nightmare was still fresh in her mind. But nothing compared to the pain that was sinking into her senses now, the ache around her neck.
“Then tell me what is going on, Laura.” His voice pleaded with her. “If this isn’t you, then what is happening?”
“It did it.” She looked past him into the shadows of the room. Part of her sensed that it was still in the room, watching, waiting for them to shut off the light so that it could emerge again.
“What do you mean, ‘it’ did it?”
She brought her eyes back level with his. She knew how it sounded, but she also knew what she’d seen. “I suppose it would be more accurate to say, she did it. But calling that thing a she seems wrong.”
Laura cringed.
“There is something in this house, Andrew. Someone, some creature, that is not too pleased with us being here.” She tilted her head in consideration. “Or perhaps it’s overjoyed at the prospect of a new plaything. It’s hard to tell.”
“Are you being sarcastic right now?” Andrew’s voice shook.
“It’s really all I have left.” She reached over and took his hand. “I have been tortured in my dreams. I have been strangled in my sleep. All after coming here to escape from my own demons.”
“Laura, I –”
“We’re leaving in the morning, Andrew.” She drew in a breath as she braced herself for her next words. “But not before I find out what’s hiding in this house.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” He wasn’t certain he believed her, but he knew that look in her eyes. He knew that she believed every word that she said to him.
“Whether it’s a good idea or not, it’s something I have to do.” She lay back down and pulled the covers up. “Now get whatever sleep you can manage.”
She heard him lie back down beside him, felt him reach for the lamp. She grabbed his wrist before he could flick it off.
“Don’t turn off the light.” Her voice was hushed as she looked, not at him, but into the shadows. “Or it’ll come back.”
Chapter 7
Shackles
* * *
Laura didn’t sleep. After an hour, she heard Andrew’s soft snores beside her, but she found no more rest that evening. Her mind wouldn’t settle. There were too many shadows in the room. Too many places for figures to hide. And the whole while she thought she could hear it laughing. That disembodied laughter that haunted her dreams.
When dawn finally came and the daylight removed the shadows from the room, she wasn’t sure how long she’d been staring at the same spot on the ceiling. She felt Andrew stir beside her. She glanced over at him, her eyes sore from lack of sleep and she watched his gaze meet hers.
His eyes searched her face as his mind went over the events that were still hazy with sleep. Had last night really happened? He reached over and slowly moved the hair away from her neck.
The angry hand print all but screamed at him. He hissed in a breath, much like he had the first time, and slowly let her hair fall back into place.
“So, it wasn’t a dream,” he mumbled, not quite meeting her gaze.
“No, Andrew, not this time.” She knew the irony of the statement would be lost on him, but she made it anyway.
“What the hell is even going on here?”
Laura gave his hand a squeeze. She could understand his frustration. He hadn’t experienced anything that she had gone through. His brain was trying to logic its way out of what she had told him. It always did.
Andrew tried to find the sense in things. But she had realized after looking into the face of the creature, that there was no sense in this. There was just terror and darkness.
And while she had a little bit of light in her favour, she was going to make use of it.
“I don’t know, but we sure as hell bette
r find out.”
It took her almost an hour to move herself to the main floor of the house. Her body screamed in protest at the very idea of movement after the lack of sleep and the strain of struggling against the creature.
Andrew offered to carry her down the stairs a half dozen times before she finally gave in to his offer. She hated to have to do it. But her legs would not hold her up any longer.
She sat in the kitchen, catching her breath and regaining her energy while Andrew made tea. It seemed like any other morning. It seemed normal. And she would have almost believed it if it hadn’t been for the fact that all of her was in pain. The marks on her neck radiated heat. Her wrists ached. Her ankles ached. Her body craved sleep, but she knew that it wouldn’t happen.
She needed answers.
They needed to leave.
“Here you go, darling.”
Andrew set the tea down in front of her. Laura wrapped her hands around it and felt the warmth sink into her body. It was nice to have some source of warmth. She still felt the chill of unease, the tendrils of terror from the events of the night.
The sunshine that streamed in through the window did nothing to lighten her mood either. She wanted to be out of the house. The feeling was overwhelming, but she also wanted answers. Part of her needed to know more about what was happening. And at the moment her curiosity was outweighing her common sense.
She sipped her tea thoughtfully as Andrew sat down across from her at the breakfast nook. It was like every other morning they had spent there. It seemed so simple, but she knew that there was nothing simple about what was happening.
“I think we need to start in the basement.”
Andrew looked up from his tea with the familiar confused expression on his face. “The basement?”
“Yeah.” Laura glanced towards the hallway. “This place definitely has one, a house this old.”
“There’s a doorway under the stairs,” he said absently, still trying to process where she was going with this.
“Good. After tea, we’ll go down there.”
“Go down there!?” Andrew’s voice rose a little louder than he’d intended it to and she jolted in her seat. “Are you crazy? We’re leaving.”
“I need to know what’s down there, Andrew.” She stared at her wrists, running her fingers over the markings there. “I need to know what happened.”
“We need to leave.”
“You can leave.” Her voice was soft, but she knew that he heard her from the way in which he went still in his seat. “I’m going to stay and see what’s down there.”
He drew in a deep breath. He knew that look in her eyes. He’d married her because she was a stubborn woman, because she was driven. Never would he have imagined that he’d be in this position. He wanted nothing more than to drag her out of the house, but he knew that she would hate him for it. Despite all that she had been through, she would resent him making the choice to run away for her. He had to let her do this. He had to go with her.
As the realization fully sank in, he nodded. He was barely aware of the fact that his head moved, but he could see the reaction in her eyes.
“What do you need me to do?”
Laura took a sip of her tea and set the cup slowly down on the table, weighing the words before she said them. “Help me get down there.”
The basement was exactly what she would have expected in a house that age. She’d been in similarly aged homes. The basements all seemed the same. Stone walls with dirt or stone floors and a perpetual air of damp and dreary.
This was no exception. The floor was poured concrete with grooves for water drainage. The air was stale and heavy. It was evident that no one had been down in this room for a long time.
Laura leaned heavily against the stair railing as Andrew went to switch on the light. The room flooded with a dull glow and illuminated stacks of boxes and furniture. Years of items that had been tossed in this space, discarded by people who had either left them behind or deemed them unwanted.
“Look at all this stuff,” Andrew muttered walking towards the piles; his earlier fear disregarded.
Laura used whatever handholds she could find to support herself as she moved through the room. She wasn’t interested in the items that littered the space. Certainly, there was enough stuff down there to furnish the house twice over, but she knew what she needed to see. She was being draw towards it with each step she took.
Andrew continued to paw through items in the basement. He watched Laura out of the corner of his eye, but he didn’t really notice that she moved with a singular intent. It looked as though she was exploring, much like he was. Her hands touched items. She stepped around boxes. His concern for her at that moment was minimal. His curiosity had the better of him.
She couldn’t explain why she wanted to go into the back room of the basement. The light bulb in there dangled and swung precariously. The shadows danced. It was the least inviting of all of the spaces, and yet that was where her feet were leading her. She had very little control over it. It was as though she was back in her dream, walking in a trance. One foot just went in front of the other until she was inside the room.
The chill of unease crept up her spine. It was a familiar chill. She almost welcomed it. She almost expected it. After being led to the room, she expected to find it there. She expected to find something there.
The shadows hugged the corners of the room. Despite the swinging light, they refused to dissipate. This room, despite the clutter of the rest of the basement, was surprisingly empty. The floor was covered in a thick layer of dust and dirt, but she could see the concrete underneath.
She clutched onto the doorframe for purchase. Her legs wobbled beneath her. She wanted to enter the room but she wasn’t certain if she could make it without her legs giving out.
She took one step before crashing to her knees. She bit back the cry that fought to escape her lips. Her hands, that had shot forward to break her fall, had disturbed the grime on the floor beneath her. She stared at the concrete, her hands brushing more dirt and dust aside to get a better view of what lay beneath.
Scratches.
Her mind jumped back to her dream, the growling and the clawing.
She cleared more grime away and pulled her hand back from the stained concrete. The reddish-brown mark extended back towards the centre of the room.
Blood.
Her eyes followed the buried pool of it to the centre of the room. There they were, the shackles that had plagued her dreams. They barely rose above the floor, but she could see the ends of the rope that still remained, frayed from where they had been cut away from the individual who’d been strung up.
Laura’s heart raced as she stared at the reality of her dream, and from the shadows floated that familiar laughter.
She choked back a sob. What the hell had happened here?
She couldn’t move. She wanted to. Every inch of her being told her that she had to leave that room, leave the basement, leave the house. But she was frozen in place.
She felt the hand drop down on her shoulder.
And she screamed.
Chapter 8
Escape
* * *
“Laura, it’s me!” Andrew crouched down beside her and turned her face towards him. He could see the fear in her eyes. It was much the same expression as he’d seen the first night she’d woken up screaming.
She gasped for breath, searching his face and fixating on the familiar features. She bit down on her bottom lip to stop the sob from bubbling up.
“We need to get out of here.” Andrew glanced around the room. He didn’t like the look of it. Not one bit.
She nodded weakly. She knew they needed to leave. She knew that there was nothing left for them in this house. There would be no peace found in this house. There had only been suffering here.
She let him help her to her feet, but she already knew things were going wrong. She couldn’t explain it. It was like the air around them changed. The tem
perature plummeted. She saw her breath as her gasp escaped her lips. The shaky sobs broke free despite her best efforts to restrain them.
Andrew seemed oblivious to the change. She wasn’t sure how he couldn’t see it, sense it. But when boxes began to tumble over, she felt him jolt.
They barely ducked in time to miss the porcelain doll that was thrown across the room at their heads. It was followed by others. Children’s toys floated above the boxes and whipped through the air at their faces. Furniture tumbled from its carefully stacked piles. Boxes crashed to the floor.
Andrew tried his best to duck the objects that hurtled across the room at them, but more than one bit him in the back. He heard Laura’s cries of pain as objects made contact with her as they hurried to the stairs.
He could have been there in a few minutes on his own. But assisting her from one end of the basement to the other was long and laborious. He was all but carrying her by the time they made it to the base of the stairs. He knew that he would have to carry her up.
“Put your arms around my neck and hold on tight,” he instructed as he swung her up into his arms. She didn’t protest this time. They were both past pride at the moment. There were now more important matters.
His eyes fixated on the open door above them. They just had to make it to the door and then they could leave. At this point in time he didn’t even care about their things. Everything they had with them could be replaced. He just wanted to be out of the house.
They were five steps away. Almost there. He took one more step and watched the door swing firmly closed. Then the world went dark.
“No,” he whispered. He hurried up the last few steps and tried the doorknob. It wouldn’t budge. “No, no, no, no.”
Haunted Happenings Page 4
