Haunted Happenings

by Lucrezia Black

  “So the building is definitely haunted,” Marc asserted, rubbing at his neck in an unconscious gesture. It still hurt a great deal from the night before but he was still having trouble wrapping his head around what had happened.

  A ghost had attacked him. No amount of drink had erased that fact and he was still reeling from it. Though it seemed he wasn’t completely alone, at least.

  “I would say you are right about that. Have there been any complaints from the other floors?” Jake looked at Rachel with a questioning expression.

  She simply shook her head and ran a hand over her eyes. “None that have been made to me at least. It seems everyone else is having a completely normal experience of the Dark Hallow Building.”

  “Then why are we being harassed? What did we do?” Jessica threw her hands up in frustration. She’d barely slept at all last night. Every time she’d closed her eyes, she’d seen the bloody man walking towards her. It had been so unnerving that she’d stayed awake watching television until it was time to get ready for work.

  “I don’t know,” Rachel muttered and rubbed at her eyes again. She was exhausted. She wasn’t even sure how she was keeping her eyes open as she sat at the table, but she dreaded what would happen when she closed them.

  “You look like you haven’t slept all week,” Marc observed, taking in her sunken eyes with the dark bruises underneath them. She looked paler than usual. It was rather disconcerting.

  Rachel held them all together. She kept the team going. If something happened to her, they didn’t know what they would do. And yet it was clear that she was going through something. They just needed to determine what.

  Jessica reached across the table and gave Rachel’s hand a squeeze. “Come on, Rache. Tell us what’s going on.”

  Rachel blinked owlishly and tried to pull herself out of her semi-conscious state and back to the conversation at hand. They were concerned about her. She needed to address their concerns. She needed to bring them into the loop. She needed to sleep more than anything else, but sleep would have to wait.

  “I haven’t really slept in a week,” she admitted, taking a long pull of her coffee. She’d caved and actually ordered coffee that morning. She’d needed something stronger than tea to get through the day; even adding a few shots of espresso for an added boost. At this point, she would be shocked if it had any affect at all.

  “And why haven’t you been sleeping?” Jake inquired. He sipped at his own coffee and was happy that his hands no longer shook. It had taken several hours after dropping Jessica off at her house for him to get his own nerves under control. He was glad that they remained at ease despite the topic of conversation.

  “Nightmares,” she muttered and groaned at how foolish it sounded. “In comparison to what you two went through, it really seems pointless to bring it up.”

  Jessica shook her head. “No, if they have anything to do with what’s going on here then it’s not pointless at all.”

  Rachel glanced down at her hand which Jessica still held in hers. She felt a little more reassured now, although she still felt silly. She still felt like her nightmares didn’t matter, but she knew that they wanted her to talk about them, so she would indulge them.

  “Well, they started about a week ago and they’ve been getting progressively worse and more vivid.” She drank more of her coffee in an effort to stay awake.

  “At first I was just having strange dreams about the building. Nothing was really happening in them but the dreams always took place here. And then things started to change about the dreams. Really bad things started to happen in the dreams.”

  “What happened?” Marc asked as he leaned forward in anticipation.

  “I started to dream about these men. They were never the same men. In every dream, they were different, yet they all wore bloodied clothing and they were all asking me to help them.”

  “Like the man I saw in the stairwell,” Jessica said with a nod. “Clearly something terrible happened to him here.”

  “Oh, something terrible did happen to him.” Rachel reassured as she drew in a deep breath and swallowed the fear that was rising in her throat. “That’s the thing. The dreams started out as just seeing these men, already bloodied, screaming for help. But then they changed again. Then I got to witness how each of them came to be in that bloodied state.”

  Jake’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

  Rachel turned her tired and hollowed eyes to him. “I dreamed about them killing themselves. I saw how they did it. Some of them, in this very building. Others in homes that I’ve never been to. But I saw them all die. Again and again and again. Every time I close my eyes.”

  “That’s terrible!” Jessica’s face had gone pale as she listened to her friend speak.

  “And then there is this woman. She stands and she smiles as the men die. She seems happy about it.” Rachel shook her head. It didn’t make any sense. None of it made any sense.

  “The woman from the elevator,” Marc added, his head nodding up and down.

  “You’re likely right about that,” Rachel agreed. “But she stands there and she smiles as they die. And then she turns to look at me with the most hate-filled eyes I’ve ever seen in my life. She looks at me and she points a finger in accusation. And then she just says the word YOU.”

  “Is she meaning that you’re next?” Jake could feel his hands begin to shake again and clasped them together to stop it.

  “I don’t know. It’s a dream. I don’t know what’s real and what’s made up.” Rachel shook her head. “All I know is that I’m terrified to fall asleep at night because I don’t want to watch someone else die. I don’t want to look into that woman’s eyes again and see her point at me. I don’t want to know what it means.”

  Rachel felt the tear slip from her eye and she pushed it away. She didn’t need to break down emotionally. They were at work. Sure, they were all friends and they had been friends for years now, but she wanted to retain some modicum of professionalism.

  “When was the last time you slept?” Jessica looked at her friend and the concern was clear in her voice.

  “I get maybe an hour each night before the dreams start.” Rachel shrugged and sipped at her coffee. “That’s why they invented espresso, isn’t it?”

  Marc chuckled but still shook his head. “True words, Rachel, but you need to sleep. Even if it’s just for an hour.”

  “Why don’t you just sleep at your desk? We’ll all be here. That way, if you have a nightmare again, we’re all here?” Jake suggested.

  Rachel nodded. “Thanks guys.”

  She got unsteadily to her feet and headed to her desk. She doubted that she was going to sleep much, but she figured that she could at least indulge them.

  She put her head down on her desk and let her eyes drift closed. She didn’t know what she expected to happen, but it was hours before she woke.

  Chapter 7

  All Are Doomed

  * * *

  The next day, Jake didn’t show up to work. They waited for him at their morning meeting, but after an hour he still hadn’t made an appearance. It took a few phone calls, but they found out that he’d been sent to the hospital during the night due to some strange illness.

  Rachel felt the chill creep up her spine. She had a bad feeling about this. She had a bad feeling about this strange illness.

  The next day it was Jessica who didn’t show up to work. And the day after that it was Marc.

  Within three days, all her friends had been hospitalised for some strange illness. Rachel went to see them but they were asleep and unresponsive. The doctors were baffled. They didn’t understand how three healthy adults in their mid-twenties could simply slip into a comatose state.

  Tests were being run and they were being monitored closely, but the doctors had no clue what they were looking for. They had never seen anything like this before.

  Rachel felt her sense of dread grow at their words. Perhaps they’d never seen anything like this
before because nothing like this had happened before. Perhaps the tests were coming back non-conclusive because there was something paranormal at work.

  She left the hospital and headed back to the Dark Hallow Building. She needed to be back where it all began. She needed to dig more to unearth details on what had happened there. She needed to look beyond what she’d already found.

  The fifth floor was eerily silent when she stepped out of the elevator. Very little about the floor worried her anymore. After her nightmares, very little evoked fear in her, but she needed answers.

  She settled down at her computer and ignored the flickering lights. She paid no attention to the persistent sound of sobbing or the fact that a door slammed. It was all background noise at the moment. She had a purpose and she needed to complete that purpose.

  She began her research much like she had the first time around. She began looking into the building and who had owned it in the past. It seemed that several members of the Dark-Hallow family had been owners of the building and, according to the newspaper articles, their businesses had fallen into bankruptcy and their lives had ended tragically.

  George Dark-Hallow, the builder and founder of the building, had met a similar end. It seemed that many people had advised him against building on this land. Many believed the land to be cursed, which was the supposed reason for it remaining vacant for so many years.

  But George was not going to be deterred by a few ghost stories, especially when there was a business opportunity available for him. He’d built the Dark Hallow Building and then died within a year of it opening.

  Some people said that he’d killed himself due to the stress of his unsuccessful business and others seemed to believe that there was something else at play. His death had been ruled a suicide, but there was much scepticism around it.

  As Rachel continued to dig, she switched focus between the building to the Dark-Hallow family, to her family.

  She knew nothing about her father’s family and she knew nothing about him, further than his name being Marc. She’d taken very little interest in his life or his family, but it seemed that she would now have to.

  She continued to look into the Dark-Hallows, and the further back she investigated, the more confused she became. Very few members of the family had not come to a tragic end, apparently. It seemed as though everyone had either died questionably or killed themselves.

  If her family was accomplished at anything, it was making headlines. There was no shortage of news articles about the Dark-Hallows. It seemed that every few years, a member of the family was newsworthy for one reason or another.

  They were either opening a business or dying. That seemed to be all that they were good at. Not that their businesses seemed to go anywhere. They all seemed to crash and burn either before or right after their deaths.

  Rachel shook her head as she continued to flip through the endless articles. The Dark-Hallow family also seemed to be adept at reproducing. They would have to be, she guessed, in order to counter the persistent familial suicides.

  Reading through the articles, one stood out from all the rest. This was clearly the oldest article among them, and the first not to reference either a business or a suicide. This one revolved around a woman.

  Anthony Dark-Hallow had sentenced a woman to death for witchcraft, it seemed. Rachel chuckled at that, but as she read further into the article, it was no longer a laughing matter.

  The woman, a Caroline Ellis had died on the very lot on which the building had been erected. The lot had been put to popular use to burn witches and execute criminals.

  Rachel knew that plenty of people had been burned for witchcraft. It was the picture accompanying the article that had her sitting in awe.

  Sure, it was a little bit grainy, but she would have recognized the woman anywhere. She was the woman from her nightmares, staring at her from the pages of an old news article; the very woman who haunted her dreams and told her that she was next.

  Rachel swallowed the lump in her throat and closed her computer. She was still not anywhere near having all the answers she needed, not by a long shot, but she had a feeling that she knew who might.

  She had a phone call to make and she knew that she’d have to pull some strings to find what she was looking for. She was more than comfortable with that.

  Chapter 8

  Family Ties

  * * *

  Rachel sat down in the small café and looked at Sally Butler with tired eyes. She was a little shocked that Sally had left so much out about the building when it had been offered to them, but the details about the past owners weren’t really relevant to the sale. Still, as a friend, she should have mentioned them.

  Rachel folded her hands on the table and looked at her long-time friend. “Did you not think it was important to tell us that every prior owner of the building had died a tragic death?”

  Sally frowned and sipped her tea. If she had expected this to be a friendly meeting, she didn’t show it. “It wasn’t pertinent to the sale. None of them died in the building.”

  “Oh, I’m aware of that, Sally. But they all died. They were all Dark-Hallows and they all died. And all their businesses failed. It may not have been important to the sale, but it was important to me.” Rachel sighed and shook her head. “How long have we been friends, Sally?”

  She seemed to ponder this for a moment. “I would say about ten years. Why?”

  “What were your reasons for keeping all this from me? The family connection, the strange history? What was your end game? Did you really just want to sell the building that badly?”

  Sally sighed and sipped at her tea as though they weren’t having an exasperated argument in the café. “It wasn’t about the sale. At least it wasn’t only about the sale, but I was under excessive pressure from the current owner. And when he found out a Dark-Hallow was interested in the building, he really pushed me to get you to buy it. I don’t know why.” She shrugged. “It was just business.”

  Rachel shook her head. It was more than just business now. Her friends were all in hospital; they could die for all she knew, and that building was somehow the cause of it all.

  It had something to do with whatever had happened on that lot. It had something to do with Caroline Ellis.

  She had some answers but she had way more questions at the moment. She needed to know more. She wasn’t quite certain how she was going to manage to learn more but an idea was brewing in her mind.

  “Who was the seller?” She looked at Sally across the table.

  “You know that he wanted to remain anonymous…” Sally began and cringed a little at the dark look she received from her friend.

  “I need a name, Sally. And I need a way to get in touch with him. This is of the greatest importance.” Rachel insisted.

  “Jeeze, you make it sound like people’s lives are on the line,” Sally joked.

  If only you knew, Rachel thought. But she didn’t say anything more. She just stared at Sally expectantly and waited for her answer.

  “Fine, his name is Warren Dark-Hallow. I’ll write down his contact info for you, but this could get me in plenty of trouble. As long as you know that.” Sally grumbled as she wrote down the information. “If I find out that you are harassing him or being problematic, it’s my ass on the line.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Rachel sent her friend a polite and sweet smile. “I just want to have a few words with the man.”

  Rachel knocked on the door to a small house and waited for someone to answer. She didn’t really know what to expect when the door swung open, but it wasn’t the man who filled the doorframe.

  Warren Dark-Hallow was a shorter man in his mid-forties with greying hair and a sad expression on his face. He glanced at her through the open door and didn’t seem surprised.

  “Sally told you I was coming, didn’t she?” Rachel asked and watched him nod. “Well it’s probably for the best. Do you mind if I come in?”

  “No, it’s likely time we had
a talk.” Warren stepped out of the doorframe so she could enter the house.

  When they were both settled at the dining room table with tea in hand, she began her inquiries. “So why did you want to sell the Dark Hallow Building?”

  Warren sipped at his tea with the same sad expression on his face. It seemed to be permanently there. “I take it you’re having some trouble with the building?”

  Rachel nodded. It seemed that she was going to have a hard time getting straight answers from this man. “Yes, you could say that. Currently three of my co-workers have taken ill with some unexplained sickness. The doctors are baffled. Add to that the strange happens that go on in that building.”

  He picked up his tea and sipped at it again. “Yes, it’s not a very pleasant place. And it is less pleasant for you. It’s because of you that all of this is happening.”

  “Because of me?” Rachel’s brows creased in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re a Dark-Hallow, are you not? We’re all cursed.” He shrugged as though it was the most normal thing ever to say to another human being. “We’ve been cursed for a long time, and we’ll be cursed until we die out entirely.”

  “What do you mean we’re all cursed?” She leaned forward and propped her chin up on her elbow. First there were ghosts, then mysterious illnesses, and now curses? She wasn’t sure how far down the rabbit hole she was going to have to go to get to the answers she needed.

  “Don’t you know anything about your family history, girl? Don’t you know anything about what Anthony did?” Warren searched her face and saw the flicker of recognition in her eyes at the mention of the name. “So, you know about Anthony.”

  “I’d appreciate if you told me why I’m cursed,” she replied, her tone serious.

  Warren leaned back in his chair and considered his tea. It had been a long time since he’d told anyone the story. And to some people, that’s all it was; just a story, a bit of folklore. But he knew for a fact that it was real. He knew that the curse actually haunted them. And he supposed he owed it to the girl to let her know what she was now involved in.