“But no one knows what leads them here. Every year it is the Devil himself that unlocks the doors and leads this horde into our world. He doesn’t take the form of a demon or a spirit, but he comes to you as the very thing you desire most. He takes the form of a person who can grant you your deepest wish, but at a cost.
“An eternity of servitude is all he asks for making your dreams a reality. And you know, every year someone falls for his tricks. One such man was Norman Gill. He was once a great soldier, but lost everything he had after he was sent home. Norman was living on the street when a tall man appeared to him – on Old Hollow’s Eve.”
Emily continued with her story, giving it her all as she told of what the devil had promised him, and what the cost would be. She told how he became a rich and beloved man in the community. And how, years later, the Devil returned to him to claim what he was owed.
When her story was finished and she sat back in her chair, she realized how quiet the room suddenly was. She stood up and turned on the lights.
Kate was alone on the couch, clutching her knees close to her chest. Joshua stood behind her – with hopes of escaping Kate’s clutches – trying to hide a small, innocent grin. Chris was sitting on the floor with a deep frown and his arms crossed, while his two damsels in distress were holding each other tight and shacking on the couch.
“Come on,” Emily chuckled. “It wasn’t that scary.”
“We wanted ghost stories,” Carol complained. “Not a reason never to sleep again.”
“You’re over exaggerating,” Joshua laughed.
They broke out in a playful argument which escalated to the edge of screaming, when Father Bolton and Mrs. Galpin marched into the room. Both were already in their pyjamas.
“What’s going on here?” Father Bolton asked.
“We’re just having a little disagreement, Father,” Chris said, shrugging the question off.
“Seems to me like it was far from little,” Mrs. Galpin snapped. “I think it is high time you were all secured in your rooms.”
“I agree,” Father Bolton added. “It’s almost lights-out anyway.”
They knew there was no point in arguing. They said their goodnights and headed upstairs to their rooms. Emily changed into her pyjamas and collapsed on her bed with her book.
She had barely finished the page when she heard Mrs. Galpin wailing, “Lights-out!”
Emily got up with a sigh and flipped the switch. The light died and Emily had to feel her way through the room back to her bed. She had barely touched the pillow before she was sound asleep.
* * *
In her deep sleep, she became partly aware of the swelling sensation of the supernatural growing around, coming closer and closer. The long, cold, spectral fingers clawing at her back seemed a lot more solid all of a sudden.
She started dreaming. She was walking through the house. The house was baking in the early afternoon light, which flooded in through every window. Emily wanted to leave, but she kept walking up the stairs. At the top of the stairs, she passed a young woman on her way to the kitchen.
Emily continued to walk through the hallway to a room where another young woman was weeping on her bed. She was lying face down on the bed with her pillow clutched against her head.
Emily stood in the doorway, staring at her as she cried. She wanted to hear what was wrong, but she found she couldn’t move anymore. She could only look.
The young woman kept sobbing for what felt like an eternity, until she sprang up and started pacing the room, still letting out sobs every few seconds. She then moved to her closet and started throwing her clothes out onto the floor.
She stopped sobbing when she saw her thick scarf on the floor at her feet. Emily knew what she was planning and started screaming at her to stop. She begged the woman to stop, but she couldn’t hear her. Emily screamed for help, but no one answered.
All Emily could do was watch as the young woman in front of her prepared to take her own life. She tied the scarf to the ceiling a short distance from her bed.
Emily tried to look away from the woman as she climbed on the bed, wrapped the scarf a few times around her neck and jumped.
Emily sat up in bed with tears rolling down her cheeks as she tried to blink the vivid dream from her vision. She eventually calmed down and tried to get back to sleep. She closed her eyes hoping to forget about her dream.
Then the earthquake came. Everything was shaking. She opened her eyes and saw that it wasn’t the world around her that was shaking. It was only her bed. The bed was alive and shaking a metre off the floor, suspended in the air.
Emily tried getting off the bed, but the covers had wrapped around her like the bandages of a mummified Pharaoh, covering all but her head. Then she heard the movement to her right. The lights snapped on and she saw where the sound came from.
Next to her bed stood a fuzzy young man in blue overalls and gardening boots. He seemed to be looking straight at her, but she couldn’t be sure. He was too unfocused to be sure.
Then, with a sickening comprehension, she realised that he wasn’t fuzzy; his face was deformed and swollen to the extent that she couldn’t distinguish his features.
She saw him move his arm, lifting it up into the air, and she let out a loud scream. She yanked the blanket over her head and kept screaming. She could feel his presence next to her. He didn’t move, he was frozen in place next to her and she kept screaming.
People rushing in the hall sounded from under the door. Someone burst through the door and raced to Emily. Mrs. Galpin and Ms. Dodge were towering over her while Father Bolton followed them into the room a moment later.
Emily looked around to find that the man had gone.
She wiped another tear from her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Ms. Dodge asked. “What happened?”
“There was a man in my room? He was standing right beside my bed. He was…” her voice died away. Then she realised she was sitting on the ground.
If she told them the truth, she knew they wouldn’t believe her.
Father Bolton went to the closet. He checked inside but found nothing. Then he went to her bed and checked underneath it.
“I don’t see anything,” he said. “Where was he?”
“Right where you are now, Father,” she said, her voice still shaking.
“Well, dear,” Ms. Dodge said. “There’s no one in here now. Maybe it was just a bad dream. Try to go back to sleep.”
Then they left, turning off the light as they walked out the door.
Chapter 4
A Prank Gone Wrong
They were right. There was nothing in her room. Nothing they could see.
Every night she had to endure seeing the young lady cry and sob until she convinced herself to take her own life. Each time she would yell for help and beg the woman not to hang herself. The woman never heard her screams and pleas, and died in front of Emily.
The man came to her every night, right after the dream.
You never get used to seeing a ghost like that. She had seen the ghosts of war veterans, ones with their wounds still visible in death. There had been ghosts of children who had scarcely learned to crawl.
They were all sad cases. Things she wished she had never seen or heard. But this was worse. This ghost was as tortured in death as he had been in the last minutes of his life. Emily couldn’t stand to look at him.
And since she had been screaming ghost every night since they arrived, Kate had taken to calling her Ghost Girl. She couldn’t even defend herself.
What was she going to do?
Tell them that the house is haunted?
They would never believe her. No matter what she did.
* * *
“Are you okay?” Joshua asked.
They were back on the bus, returning from a planned event the teachers had taken them to on the retreat. She couldn’t remember much of it. She was always tired; it had been a week since she’d had a proper night’s sleep.
He would have been the first in her room on the first night the man had appeared to her, if Father Bolton hadn’t stopped him and sent him back to his room. He was in the room on the farthest end of the hall. He was already by her door, ready to break it down and storm in when Father Bolton ordered him to stop and go back to his room.
“Yeah,” Emily yawned. “I’m just tired.”
“I was serious when I told you to switch rooms with me,” he said, his voice calming. “And the offer is still open. You don’t have to sleep in that room.”
“I’ll be alright,” she gave him a weak smile. “It’s just one more day. I’ll survive.”
“You deserve at least one good night’s rest in that house. How you’re not constantly napping everywhere is a mystery. You look exhausted all the time.”
“Thank you for the compliment,” she said.
“Look at that,” Andrea suddenly blurted. “The two love birds are getting back together again.”
“Why don’t you shut up?” Joshua exclaimed over his shoulder, then added softly as he turned back, “Little bitch.”
He turned to Emily, who had gone back to the window, and sighed. “I’m sorry.”
She was only just aware of him apologising to her. She turned back to him. “Come again?” she frowned at him.
“The other day,” he explained. “They made a similar comment, and I didn’t do anything about it. I should just have told them to bugger off, but I didn’t.”
Emily shook her head and reassured him that it was alright. “You don’t have to apologise for their actions. They’re just jerks.”
“We heard that,” Carol said behind them.
Joshua and Emily ignored them and continued to talk as they headed to the house.
* * *
Back at the house Father Bolton, Ms. Dodge, and Mrs. Galpin told them to start getting their things packed up. They were leaving early the following tomorrow, just after breakfast, and didn’t want anything left behind.
No one was as eager to go home as Emily. She couldn’t stand the house, especially once night fell. Her things had been packed to go for some days already.
Emily went to the living room while everyone was packing and decided to rest there for a while. She got out her book and started reading again, finishing the last chapter as she sat there.
After she had finished her book, she made herself comfortable and took a short nap. Even then she dreamt of the woman weeping in her room. But this time she saw a little more.
Emily walked into the house and up the stairs, but this time the first woman was nowhere to be seen. Emily looked for her as she kept walking to the second woman’s room. She found the first woman outside the bedroom. She unlocked the door and Emily saw the other woman emerging from the room.
Emily saw them talking for a while, only just able to hear what the first lady had to say. She told the second that a man named Harry had been beaten to death by an unknown party in the garden outside their house.
After hearing this, the second woman started crying again and was led back into her room. Emily followed and saw the first lady leave the room, promising to bring her sister something to eat.
They were sisters, Emily thought: How didn’t I see it before?
Then the dream continued as usual. She tried to look away, but her body was still frozen to the spot.
* * *
When she woke up, she was glad to see that there was no one in the living room with her. She was alone with her book clutched to her chest. A single teardrop rolled down her cheek, to her ear and dropped to the couch.
“What was that?” she asked herself, wondering about the dream.
She got off of the couch and headed to her room. She was walking up the stairs, passing Mrs. Galpin on the way up. Neither said a word to each other and both kept walking.
Emily walked to her room and found her door closed, but remembered leaving it open earlier when she had been in there to get her book. She pushed the door open. Something was blocking the door from the other side and Emily had to force it to move.
Suddenly the door flew open and she stumbled inside to find a body hanging from the ceiling, just out of arms reach.
She screamed and made to run from the room, only to have the door slam shut in front of her.
Then the lights in the room came on, blinding her as they did, and she heard people laughing around her.
Kate and Chris were standing in the corners across from her, both holding their phones pointed towards her. Carol was behind her, crouched against the door, with one hand covering her mouth and the other pointing a phone at her. Andrea was standing beside the bookshelf, holding the rope that led to a pillow hanging from the ceiling fan. The pillow had a shirt over the top half and a pair of sweatpants around the bottom, making it look like a body.
Emily was furious. She walked right up to Kate and shoved her against the wall. Joshua barged into the room, sending Carol flying into the wall with the force of opening the door.
“You inconsiderate little bitch!” Emily yelled. “What did you have to do that for?” She shoved her again.
Kate’s phone fell to the ground and shattered. Suddenly everyone was standing in the corner. Chris was standing next to Kate with the other girls behind them. Emily and Joshua were standing next to each other.
“Why can’t you just leave her alone?”
“What the hell is your problem?”
It was suddenly a sea of swearing and insults as everyone tried to scream louder than the next.
“What’s going on here?” Mrs. Galpin suddenly yelled from the doorway.
She stomped into the room, clearly enraged.
“They started it,” Kate began.
“Excuse me?” Joshua frowned. “Who’s been starting every argument since we arrived here?”
“I don’t care who started it!” Mrs. Galpin barked. “I don’t care how you’re going to figure it out, but you’ll have a full day to do it tomorrow.” She glared at Emily, then she saw the pillow dressed in the shirt and sweatpants lying on the floor. “Since you all love it here, why don’t we let you stay an extra day? It’ll give you some time to grow closer. Maybe you can learn to get along?”
There was a chorus of complaints, but it all fell on deaf ears. Mrs. Galpin left the room without another word, leaving them alone in the room.
“Look what you’ve done,” Kate said, shaking her head with a frown. “Thanks to you, we’re stuck here another night.”
“Thanks to us?” Emily retorted. “If you would just have left me alone, then maybe we could have avoided all this.”
“You mean if you could only take a joke?”
With that Emily started shoving them all out of her room, with Joshua helping her. He left the room too, apologising before he closed the door.
* * *
She had the dream again that night, as if once a day was no longer enough. She woke after the dream, but this time the bed wasn’t shaking a metre in the air. Everything was quiet outside.
Everything was quiet inside the room as well, she noticed.
She didn’t want to look, but she had to make sure the man wasn’t there. She didn’t feel his presence.
Emily looked to the side. The man was definitely not there. Beside her bed, floating a couple of centimetres above the floor was a woman. Her eyes were puffy as if she had been crying, and her hair clung to her face in patches. She looked so sad.
She was heartbroken. Emily could feel it.
Emily could only watch as the ghost started to fade in front of her until she vanished completely.
Chapter 5
Ghost Hunt
They were all seated in the living room. Kate, Carol, and Andrea on the largest of the couches. Chris and Joshua were on the couch across from them, while Emily took her usual
place.
They had left the house earlier to have breakfast with the rest of their class, but after that they returned to the house while the rest carried on home. Joshua and Chris had made coffee, being the only two to have made peace with one another after the happenings of the previous week, and they all went to sit in the living room.
No one said a word, but the anger was tangible in the air. None of them wanted to be here and everyone blamed someone other than themselves. They drank their coffee and waited for the other to apologise.
Later the afternoon, Father Bolton found them in the sitting room, and looked at Emily. Emily looked at him, asking the silent question.
“Yes,” Father Bolton said, his face neutral, but his voice grim.
“Yes?” Chris asked. “Yes, what?”
Father Bolton sighed. “Emily asked me about the history of the house and I told her I would find out.”
“Can you be more specific, Father?” Kate asked.
“I asked Father Bolton whether anyone had died in the house,” Emily said like it was quite a normal enquiry.
“And according to Mr. Jackson and some other sources, there seems to have been three deaths in this house.”
“Three?” Chris exclaimed. “You make it sound like that’s nothing. There has never been a death in my house.”
Father Bolton ignored him. “It’s quite simple actually. The first was a young gardener, Harry Rowe, who had raped a young girl. Her father was so enraged that he had ordered his staff to beat the man to death.
“The second was Harry’s rape victim, Dorothy Sculthorpe. Apparently, she couldn’t live with the shame of what he had done to her. She killed herself in one of the open rooms on the second floor.
“Lastly was Marianne Sculthorpe, Dorothy’s older sister. After her father and mother left the house, she inherited it and lived here till the day she peacefully died in her sleep. But there have never been any reports of the building being haunted. Just a few complaints about strange occurrences, but never anything supernatural, I assure you.”
Haunted Happenings Page 12
