“Oh, where do I start?” Celine ran a hand through her light brown hair and heaved a heavy sigh. “I suppose the most pressing thing has been the dreams, nightmares really. They’ve been terrible. They are the reason we aren’t sleeping.”
Reverend Paul nodded, his face filled with understanding. “Laura said Evan was having nightmares? Is that true?”
“It’s not just Evan now.” Celine picked up her tea and drank deeply. She’d been living off tea of late. The caffeine was getting her through the day, but just barely.
“Are you having the nightmares as well?” he asked.
There was no trace of judgment in his voice, just curiosity and concern. He met her gaze and he waited patiently for her to reply to his question.
“I don’t know if it’s the same nightmare, but I’m having nightmares as well. Evan wakes up screaming almost every night. He says that a man is trying to hurt him.” She sipped at her tea again.
She remembered last night. She’d fallen asleep in bed with Evan after sitting up with him for three hours as he’d cried over his nightmare. They’d turned on every light in the room and they’d curled up in his small bed together. Eventually they’d both found sleep again, but it never came easily.
It was becoming quite the nightly routine for them. Marc had stopped getting up for the screams. She couldn’t really blame him. He needed to go to work in the morning. He needed to sleep. So she went and she dealt with the tears and the fear. And it broke her heart a little more each time.
“And your own dreams?” he asked, taking a sip of his tea as casually as if they were talking about the weather.
“In my dreams, I keep getting trapped in places. No one is trying to hurt me. I’m just shut up in a dark space with no way of escape. I pound and I scream, but no one helps me. And on the other side of the darkness, all I hear is someone saying, ‘you’re not her’. I don’t know what that means. But it’s terrifying. And it feels so bloody real.” She shivered at the recollection.
The dreams had only started in the last three nights. It was as though the fear was spreading in the house. First Evan and now her. She could only wonder if Marc had been experiencing anything recently. She wasn’t sure if he would say anything even if he had.
“Does Evan express feelings that his dreams seem real, as well?” he asked, his eyes considering.
“Yes,” she answered. “He really fears that the man in his dreams is going to hurt him. He genuinely believes that the man is a threat to him.”
She downed the rest of her tea and rubbed at her eyes. She was exhausted. Laura refilled her teacup and sent her a sympathetic smile. Celine responded with a nod in thanks.
“This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of things like this happening, especially when it comes to this house.” The Reverend looked around himself his eyes sombre. “This house has quite a dark history.”
“Laura was telling me about it.” Celine drank more tea. There was something about the Reverend’s expression that had her asking, “Do you know more about the house?”
He seemed to consider for a moment what he wanted to say, whether he wanted to say anything more. He sipped his tea again and cradled the cup in his hands. “Peter Blackmore was not a good man. He was a very troubled individual, for many reasons.”
“I know that his wife died and he neglected his son. And something about black magic.” Celine shook her head. It sounded ridiculous as she said it, but she said it anyway. She had a feeling that the Reverend wasn’t about to judge her.
“Yes, I suppose they would have just referred to it as black magic at the time.” He chuckled at the term.
“Was that not what it was?” Celine raised a brow and glanced at Laura who looked equally surprised at the information.
“Technically it was.” He shrugged. “He was holding séances in the house, contacting the dead and trying to find his wife. Everything he did was to find his wife. He took money from strangers, lied to them, played off their grief, and held séances just to find his wife. He did many very dark things during that time.”
“That’s terrible,” Celine muttered as she drank more tea. “He was basically a con artist.”
“Among other things. He did a lot of terrible things during his life, which is why it’s such a tragedy that he was never found.” The Reverend looked around himself again. “I’m inclined to believe he’s still in this house. Especially considering recent events with you and your son.”
Her face crumbled in confusion. “What do you mean? Do you think our nightmares have to do with Peter Blackmore?”
He chose his words carefully when he replied, “I think he is the one responsible for your dreams. I think he is trying to communicate with you somehow. I’m not certain how or what he’s trying to say, but he is using the dreams as his method of communication. It seems to echo many of his characteristics.”
“How so?” Celine didn’t understand.
“Peter was known for using people to achieve his goals. He would use their fear, their grief, basically whatever emotion he could access. Laura told me that your son has been seeing Henry around the house?”
He watched her nod.
“Don’t be too concerned about Henry. He’s a lost boy. Many people have said they’ve seen him over the years. But these dreams do concern me. Something about your family appeals to Peter. Perhaps it is your son’s condition and the level of vulnerability that comes along with that, I can’t say for sure. But for the first time in years, he is trying to reach out and I fear it’s not in a good way.”
“What can we do about it?” Celine’s voice shook a little as she spoke. She could feel the fear racing through her.
She thought of Evan sleeping peacefully upstairs. She thought of the number of times he’d screamed out in the night and cried in her arms. She thought of the footsteps and the whispering. She needed it to stop, because she couldn’t think of moving again. She couldn’t think of relocating her family again.
They needed this to work. And for that to happen she needed whatever this was, to stop. She looked at the Reverend Paul, her eyes pleading. She wasn’t certain if he was her only hope, but it sure as hell felt that way.
The Reverend seemed to consider things for a moment as he finished his tea. He had come over to talk to her. He hadn’t expected her to demand solutions, especially to a problem he’d just learned about.
He sighed and looked at her levelly. “Let me look into a few things and get back to you. That’s the best I can do right now.”
Celine nodded. That answer was better than no answer, considering the circumstances.
Chapter 7
Missing
* * *
It was a week before she heard from the Reverend again and it wasn’t because he called.
Celine had been going through her daily routine as usual. Everything had been going routinely, and perhaps that had been the problem. She wasn’t sure what her usual really was anymore.
She’d been sleep deprived for two weeks now, and she was still trying to function as normal. That was the trouble. Things were happening as they always had, so why should she continue to proceed as she always had? It didn’t make sense. And yet she still continued.
The problem had come just before dinnertime. Marc wasn’t home from work yet and she was just getting things on the table. The problem was, Evan was nowhere in sight. The last she’d seen, he’d been playing in the living room but he was no longer there. When she went to look for him, there was no sign of him.
“Evan!” she shouted from the doorway of the kitchen. But she got no response.
She checked every room and with each room that she found empty, her level of fear increased. Where the hell could he be? It wasn’t like him to just wander off. He knew better than to go anywhere without permission.
Yet, after searching the whole house, she found no trace of him. She was in full panic mode now. Her heart was racing and her palms were sweaty. She couldn’t stop the dread that was
creeping into her stomach and forming into a hard knot.
She didn’t know what to do. She knew that if she tried to call Marc, he wouldn’t pick up while he was driving. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to call the police and report him missing. She wasn’t even sure he was missing.
She had a terrible feeling this had more to do with what was happening in the house than any criminal element. She didn’t think anyone had taken Evan. She was more concerned that something in the house, something from the house had done something to her son.
She picked up the phone and called the one person she knew would believe her. She called Reverend Paul.
When Reverend Paul arrived at the Blackmore House, he knew something was wrong. There was a feeling about the house that didn’t sit well with him. Even with Celine’s phone call telling him what had happened, he would have suspected something was amiss regardless. There had been a shift in the energy of the house and it was not for the better.
Coming into the house, he found Celine and Marc sitting in the kitchen, their faces etched with worry. Marc seemed a little confused to see him there, but Celine smiled.
“I’m so glad you could come, Reverend. I don’t know what to do.” She took his hand and gave it a squeeze.
“You told me you called the police, not a priest!” Marc stared at her in surprise. He couldn’t even wrap his mind around what kind of logic had driven her to that decision.
“Reverend Paul can do more for us than a police officer can, Marc. Believe me. You haven’t been here for all that’s been going on. The Reverend knows what’s wrong.” Her voice pleaded with him but there was an undertone of firmness. It was clear that his decision didn’t matter at the moment. She had made up her mind and she was going to go through with it regardless of what he thought. “Time is of the essence, so can you just let him do his job?”
Marc nodded. Not because he agreed, but because he knew when to submit. He also knew that he was free to call the police if he really wanted to. There was nothing stopping him except for the feeling in his gut that his wife was right. There was something not normal about what was happening. There was something not normal about the house. So, he sat back down and looked to the Reverend for guidance.
Reverend Paul drew in a deep breath. “Which room was your son in last, before he went missing?” He looked at Celine for an answer.
“The living room.” She led them to it and they stood in the space for a moment.
Evan’s toys were on the floor, abandoned, but there was no sign of him other than that. The room was empty. And yet there was something about the space that had her skin crawling and had her looking around herself expecting someone else to be there.
“Marc,” Reverend Paul looked at the other man in the room. “Do you have an axe or a sledgehammer in the house?”
Marc’s brow furrowed at the question but he nodded. “I have an axe.”
“Can you get it for me? There is something I need to check.” He glanced at Celine. “I’m going to have to break into the walls. There is something that I need to find out.”
“What do you think is in the walls?” Celine’s heart sank. She didn’t want to think about what was hidden in the walls. After what she had learned about Peter Blackmore she didn’t want to think about what might be in the walls of the house.
“I’m hoping I’m wrong, but I found out some more about Peter and about what he was doing in this house.” His face was sober as he considered how he should word what he had to say. “He practiced necromancy as well as doing séances. It seemed that some of his clients died at the hands of the ghosts he summoned. He would try to reanimate these bodies with more ghosts.”
“That’s horrible.” Celine’s hands went to her mouth as she considered the practice. “How could a person even do that? What kind of person does that?”
“A desperate one,” he explained. “Thank you, Marc.” He accepted the axe. “I have a terrible feeling about what he did with the bodies after he was done with his reanimations, considering the fact that this property isn’t very big.”
“You think he put the bodies in the walls?” Celine’s eyes went wide.
Marc looked from one to the other. “What is this about bodies in the walls?”
“He thinks we have dead bodies in the walls.” Her voice squeaked as she said it and her hands shook. She grasped Marc’s hand for some form of connection.
“What do bodies in the walls have to do with Evan, or have you both forgotten that a six-year-old boy happens to be missing!” He raised his voice and looked at his wife, his eyes accusing. “What has any of this got to do with Evan?!”
“I think Evan is trapped somewhere in the house,” Reverend Paul explained. He heaved the axe over his shoulder and looked at the wall. “If I’m right about the bodies in the wall, we may have a major problem on our hands.”
Celine sobbed and squeezed Marc’s hand harder.
“Evan could be anywhere in this house.” He looked at Marc because he knew that Marc needed to be convinced. “And it’s a big house, Marc. There are a lot of walls to look behind.”
He swallowed visibly and looked from the axe to the wall and then back to the Reverend. “Do whatever you need to do.”
Reverend Paul nodded and then swung the axe.
Chapter 8
Ghosts and Fire
* * *
It took several axe swings to reveal the section of wall behind the panelling, and what fell down with the shards of wood had them all taking a step back.
The smell hit them first, this musty and gross smell that seemed to fill the room. Among the shards of wood on the floor were three skeletal figures. It was hard to determine who they had been in life, but it was clear that the bodies were human.
Celine covered her mouth with her hands and sobbed silently. Marc wrapped an arm around her shoulders and squeezed her tight to his side. Reverend Paul began to pray as he continued to break down the walls of the room.
More bodies fell to the floor. More poor souls who had been lost at the hands of a conman on a mission. The tragedy of it was not lost on them but there were more pressing matters at hand. Evan was still missing and there was a chance that he too was trapped in the walls.
Celine didn’t know how or why he would be, but it didn’t need to make sense. Nothing about any of this made any sense, so why would there be a reason for Evan to be in the walls? As far as she could gather, they were all at the mercy of some psychopathic ghost who had killed people for fun all in the pursuit of finding his already dead wife.
The room was filled with shards of wood and corpses by the time the Reverend was done with the one wall. He stepped back and stared at it for a moment, his heart racing, either from the activity or from the sight before him.
He’d known that Peter Blackmore had been capable of terrible things, but he had never imagined that it would be anywhere near this scale. He wasn’t even sure how this was possible. He wasn’t sure how in the 1940s and 50s someone successfully got away with the disappearance of this many bodies. It was completely unfathomable.
“There are so many of them,” he muttered more to himself than anyone else in the room.
“And there are more walls,” Marc offered, throwing the Reverend’s words back at him.
“Now if only we had some clear indication of which room Evan was even in.” Celine began before she was grabbed from behind and dragged across the living room.
She screamed as she crashed into the floor and was then dragged along the carpet. She looked around herself but her eyes found no explanation for the fact that she was being pulled across the floor.
She fought against the invisible entity that was dragging her, but to no avail. Reverend Paul recommenced his prayers and demanded that the spirits release Celine at once.
Still they continued to drag her around the room. Marc grabbed her ankles and fought against the invisible force that was pulling at his wife, but he was simply knocked out of the way as though he was a
ragdoll. He crashed to the floor and against the couch.
The ghost continued to drag Celine around the room. Whatever Reverend Paul had disturbed from within the walls was clearly not pleased with the current situation. And it was taking its anger out on Celine.
The Reverend continued to pray and order the ghosts to release Celine. As his voice rose, her trip around the room slowed and eventually she lay limp on the carpet.
Marc crawled towards her, his face drawn in concern. Blood dripped down the side of his face where it had been smashed against the coffee table. He could see that Celine was also injured. He cradled her head on his lap and stroked her hair. He didn’t know what to do for her.
She was still breathing, that much was clear. But her eyes were fluttering closed and her expression was filled with pain. She’d been flung around the room and it was clear that damage had been done. He checked for broken bones but she seemed to be in one piece. That was reassuring at least.
The Reverend continued to pray as he stood among the bodies. He looked at the couple on the floor and he knew that things would just get worse if they remained in the house.
“You need to take your wife and get outside. Now!” He ordered.
“What about Evan?” Marc asked as he scooped Celine up into his arms.
“I will find him. I promise you. But you need to leave. I cannot protect you and find your son!”
Marc nodded. He didn’t need to understand. He didn’t need to believe in ghosts. He simply knew that they were in danger and that they needed to get out of the house before that danger caused unspeakable damage.
And at this point in time he trusted the Reverend to get Evan. He wasn’t certain why, but he needed to believe that the Reverend would do that, that he would save his son. That was his only thought as he ran out of the house with his wife in his arms.
Haunted Happenings Page 40
