The Haunting of Blackburn Manor

by Blake Croft

  Linda blinked. She hadn’t known the Polly Pocket had meant so much to Ashley. “You know what,” she said. “You can keep it. I have other things to remind me of Mom. It’s only fair you have this.”

  “Really?” there were tears in Ashley’s eyes. Linda had never seen her tough-as-nails sister so emotional before. She squeezed Ashley’s hand in consent.

  Ashley grinned at her then got up and cleared the dishes and took them to the tiny sink in the tiny kitchenette area. Linda took a quick trip to the bathroom to brush her teeth. It was small and yellow; paint stains at the bottom of the mirror above the sink. Linda looked at herself; her skin was pale and stretched, there were black bruises under her eyes from lack of restful sleep.

  At least I’ll get some rest tonight, she thought drying her hands on a paper towel and shutting off the lights.

  They had opted for a room with twin beds rather than two rooms. It was economical and worked out for the moment. Linda took the bed closest to the window and opened up the book Grady had given her earlier.

  “I’m going to bed,” Ashley fell on her bed, arms outstretched. “Set the alarm for six-thirty, will you?”

  “Hmmm,” Linda said, busy looking for the page she was on. The toothpick she used to bookmark the page had fallen out at some point from the manor to the motel.

  Ashley shut off her bedside lamp. The room was half plunged in darkness; Linda’s bedside lamp the only halo of light.

  By the time Linda was deeply engrossed in the book, Ashley was snoring lightly under the covers. Linda rubbed the bridge of her nose as she read.

  24th September 1651

  They came back again today, the peasants from Glasha Talann; I suspect they never went home. Their talk is tedious and bores me to death. I allowed their village headman an audience but the man spoke no sense; all gibberish and heathen blabbering about some witch that has taken up residence in their village, infecting the populace with bad dreams.

  Cromwell no doubt meant well when he tightened the leash on Ireland’s despotic Catholic blasphemers, but they hold on to their archaic beliefs; fairies and witches, as reluctant to let them go as the heretic Charles was of the throne; that it makes me wonder if it was truly wise to spare any of their villages or lives.

  Mathews has reported that it is indeed true that a woman was hanged in Glasha Talann a fortnight ago for stealing eggs and pheasants from the village pantry. She died instantly, when her neck broke. Now the villagers are convinced the woman is seeking her revenge from beyond the grave.

  I fear I will know no peace till I have shown a modicum of effort. I have proposed a day trip to the village tomorrow to scout the area, deem it safe and return to the barracks by nightfall.

  25th September 1651

  We never made it back to the barracks. The Irish have surpassed in their devil worship, seeking the darkness above the light of God’s truth.

  We arrived well before afternoon. The sun was out and the air balmy but the woods reeked of oppression. I suspect as a representative of the Commonwealth I will never feel entirely safe in this land.

  The villagers greeted us with a wild frenzy of happiness. It is unknown for an Irishman to be so happy at the sight of an armed British contingent. The headman began a heated conversation with a woman I assume was his wife. Something she said upset him and he struck her hard, forcing her to her knees.

  On enquiry I was told by the local priest, no less, that the witch had possessed the headman’s daughter who was now living in the hovel the witch had previously occupied. The priest looked like a decent man, even though he is Catholic, and I persuaded him to show me where this hovel was.

  I have always maintained that the woods in Ireland have a malignancy about them, a sickness in the very roots that is unlike the wholesome fertility of England’s green pastures. Even though the sun shone down on our heads the cool shade of the woods was sinister.

  A mile or so from the village is a patch of rotting wood. The trees are twisted in various states of agony, their bark black and blistered from an ancient fire. Bugs twisted in the hollows of these monstrosities but nothing compared to the largest tree in the clearing, an ancient oak with a large hollow in its center eaten away over the years by industrious termites.

  Within the hollow sat a peasant girl of no more than ten; her malnourished limbs stuck out from her thin dress. She was sleeping.

  At the sight of her, the village headman lost his calm. He charged the hovel, screaming obscenities, his cudgel raised to bash in the head of the poor innocent. At my command my soldiers apprehended him before he could do much harm. The man was chained and made to sit down.

  In all this commotion the girl had not stirred. None of the villagers would go near the hovel so it was left to me to crouch down and enter the horrid place. There was a pile of tattered clothes in one corner, amidst small bones and rocks. The girl slept on even as I picked her up and brought her out into the clearing. She was a limp straw doll in my hands and I wondered if she were alive. The tree groaned, no doubt on its last limb. I suspect a strong wind would blow it down and turn it to dust.

  The girl had bruises around the neck and wrists, and her lips were blue despite her body being warm. I tried waking her but her sleep was deep. Her chest barely moved and when I felt her wrist I could discern no pulse.

  “She is dead,” the cry went up amongst the villagers. “We must bury her.”

  I told them that was nonsense; the girl looked dead, I grant them that, but there was something alive about her nonetheless.

  They surged forward to take her. “We will break the curse; we will release her!”

  My guards made to stop them but were overwhelmed. It was all I could do to place the girl on my saddle and gallop away.

  Night has fallen and I am alone. The girl still sleeps and I suspect she suffers from the sleeping sickness but how an illness only seen in Africa could reach the shores of Ireland is something I cannot explain. Her bruises disturb me and I am now sure that the villagers lied. They had tried to hang the girl; probably abused by her father; and they had failed in hiding their village shame.

  The night grows long and I must get some rest to continue on back to Doon in the morning. I will issue a request to Nester Brown in Galway for reinforcements. If there is more of this in the villages around Doon, I fear we have no other recourse than to take their lands and force them in to hard labor in the colonies as was done in Northern Ireland.

  26th September 1651

  There is much that my faith asks of me, the belief in an unseen God paramount in its instructions. But what of the things that I have seen and heard in these past hours? It expresses belief in them as heretic and tantamount to blasphemy yet how can I deny my eyes and ears?

  I was suffering from a nightmare of hanging corpses when my sleep was disturbed by the sound of feet approaching my fireside. I promptly slipped out of the rug with which I had covered myself to retrieve the knife my wife had gifted me before my departure to this God forsaken place.

  Out of the sentinel trees came a thin figure dressed in white. The man held up his hands in surrender and I saw by the dying firelight that it was the priest I had met in Glasha Talann. He had no weapons but I did not lower my blade.

  “I mean no harm, Master Prim,” he said. “I have just come to retrieve the girl.”

  I told him I would not let his villagers continue their barbaric rituals while I was Governor.

  “You do not understand,” the man protested. “She is not dead, indeed, but she is no longer herself. The banshee has her now. We must guide her soul back to her body. We must bury her and destroy the banshee.”

  “What nonsense,” I spat. I made it clear that I thought his Catholic leanings had muddied the waters of his faith, which is why he believed these savage myths.

  “On the contrary,” he said. “I am not a catholic priest. I am a Protestant.”

  This shocked me.

  “I only wear my liturgical vesture when I fulfill eccle
siastical tasks, but I am a pastor. Your refusal to let us bury her has endangered her life,” he continued. “We could have saved her then but now I fear her soul is too lost for it to ever return. We must end the cycle so the curse does not spread.”

  There was no moon that night and the woods were choked with shadows. I could see that the man was insane and would do anything to harm the girl. I scouted out escape routes only to realize that the girl had gone.

  “What have you done to her?” I demanded.

  The man only looked fearful. “She has escaped. All is lost.”

  At that moment a low keening song rose up from the dark depths of the woods around us. It was so faint, yet loud enough to be heard, but I could not determine from whence it came. It was all around us, wrapping us up in its tendril thin curls.

  My mind became hazy; a grey gloom invaded my eyes and they fell heavy. The pastor began to moan in terrible fear. “What have you done!” he cried.

  I wasn’t sure what he meant by it but in that moment, God forgive me, I felt mortal fear.

  Chapter 24

  The book fell with a deafening thud.

  Linda startled awake.

  She wiped the drool from her chin, and yawned, blinking against the sharp lamp light by her bedside. Her eyes were still heavy with sleep as she leaned over her bed and retrieved the book.

  Her stomach groaned. The soup dinner hadn’t been enough.

  Leaning back in her pillow, Linda flipped through the pages till she got to the chapter she had been on when sleep had claimed her.

  Colin Prim had come across as the epitome of the Commonwealth of England’s short-lived Puritan regime. He had no patience for the people he governed and his contempt dripped off the page. But his fear of the unknown was palpable as the events in Galash Talann unfolded.

  Linda rubbed her eyes under her glasses. The small text strained them something terrible. Her mind grasped at the straws of the day. From the unexpected face in the painting, and the information Grady had given her, Linda’s mind was stuffed with information overload that she needed to dissect and organize before she could make heads or tails of what was going on here.

  It was a tangled mess and even she wasn’t sure what she was looking for, only that if she cleared the mess, the truth would find her.

  She traced a finger down the page to find where she had left off. She was eager to find out what had happened to the Governor and the priest.

  Yet as she started reading, her eyes drooped again as if she were under some strange trance that made it so hard to concentrate because nothing was more important than closing her eyes for just one second.

  A loud clattering from down the hall made her eyes fly open.

  All vestiges of sleep left her. She was on high alert.

  “Ashley?” she called, hoping to hear her sister’s voice reassuring her.

  Nothing.

  It was only then she noticed she was back in her room in Blackburn Manor.

  Panic arrested her. She let the book slide down on the bed.

  Getting up slowly, Linda tiptoed to the door. The hall was empty and dark, but a faint light shone from under the bathroom door.

  Linda stepped out into the hall. Icicles of alarm slid down her spine.

  How is this possible? We left! We left this house!

  “Ashley? Ashley!” she cried.

  Her sister didn’t respond.

  Hysteria was building in her chest. The events of the previous evening loomed to the forefront of her mind and she couldn’t shake the image of Marisa twisted and bent on Ashley’s bed, staring at her with that insane grin.

  She retreated to her room and grabbed the closest thing to a weapon she owned, her bedside lamp. Removing the shade and holding it tight she ventured back into the dark hall, dread nestling like a heavy rock in her gut.

  “Ashley, please,” she pleaded. “Answer me.”

  The bathroom door remained closed. Shadows flitted amongst the light through the crack at the bottom of the bathroom door. Someone was inside.

  Linda knocked on the door, hoping whoever was in there would leave, or respond somehow. The shadow underneath the door surged. Linda twisted the knob and pushed the door open.

  The bathroom was empty.

  The lights were on.

  The window was open.

  The shower curtains rustled in the wind coming through the window, the hooks skittering lightly against the rail.

  Linda took a rattling breath. She put the lamp down in the sink.

  If someone had just jumped out the window she needed to see, she needed to make sure.

  You’re crazy, Linda.

  Ashley’s words echoed in her mind.

  Flexing her toes to get a better grip on the porcelain, Linda pulled herself up so her head was leaning out of the window. Wind howled against her face, making her eyes water. The moon hung low on the horizon and the trees cast long shadows on the back garden. Nothing moved at the base of the house.

  How was any of this happening? How had she come back to the house? Did the entity here have such power?

  Pulling back, she swung the window closed.

  The clear glass glistened under the overhead light and reflected her face for a brief second.

  It also showed a figure behind her.

  Long dark hair obscured the face, but something silver glittered through the dark tresses along the neck, and thin arms stretched out claw-like hands.

  Linda whipped around, her feet losing balance. She screamed and grabbed at the shower curtains, ripping them as she fell in the tub. Her head hit the rim. Pain burst across her mind.

  Hands reached down and pinned the curtain down over her head cutting off her air supply.

  Linda gasped, her lungs burning in her chest. Her fingers clawed at the hands, her nails dug into cold flesh but the grip never loosened. Stars and black spots burst in front of her eyes. Her head was pounding, her feet stuck awkwardly underneath her.

  She was spinning down a dark hole.

  Her hands loosened and fell by her side.

  She slipped into unconsciousness.

  She was suspended in that oily darkness for what felt like an eternity. Like a child in its mother’s womb she could hear fragments of the outside world. Someone was coughing. A choking noise was followed by a high whistling moan.

  The world was upside down, there was no way to know which side was up. Linda pushed against the darkness, she swam the black pool of her subconscious, fighting against an invisible current to make it to the surface.

  Something hard struck her forehead. She looked about in the water to see what it was but now an invisible force was lifting her up and out of the water. She felt lighter, airy.

  Sounds became clearer. She could hear the scrabbling of feet on a slick tiled floor. She was rising, a dim red light shone in front of her. Just when she thought her lungs wouldn’t be able to hold out any longer she burst through the surface.

  Her mouth opened wide to suck in greedy air; her eyes opened next.

  Ashley was in front of her, her face blue.

  “Ashley?” Linda stammered.

  Then she saw her own hands. Wrapped around her sister’s throat, squeezing, squeezing, nails grazing tender skin.

  Crying out, she pulled her hands away.

  Ashley coughed and spluttered. Color drained from her face, suddenly only to return in blotches.

  “What happened?” Linda cried, tears streaked down her face in torrents. She looked down at her hands. Blood dripped onto her palm. Horrified, Linda looked to see if she had cut Ashley but there was no bloody gash on her.

  She looked around at their surroundings. They were still in the bathroom, but it was the motel bathroom. The shower curtains were in a heaped mess on the tiled floor. Ashley was lying in the tub, while Linda towered over her.

  She had seen a figure, a dark haired figure behind her. It hadn’t been Ashley. Then how come now… and her sister had taken her place… was she dreaming, was this st
ill a dream?

  Linda sobbed and ran her fingers over her face. Something warm and slippery smeared across her cheek. More blood. It was only then she realized she was bleeding. There was a cut on her forehead.

  Her mind was in chaotic turmoil, unable to distinguish what was happening.

  “Ashley,” she whimpered. “Ashley, please speak to me.”

  “What the hell, Linda?” Ashley choked out. “Why the hell did you attack me?”

  “I didn’t,” Linda hiccoughed. “I… I had a dream I was back in Blackburn Manor… I dreamt someone attacked me…”

  Ashley struggled up on her feet. “I came to use the bathroom and next thing I know you were behind me and you just went cra…” Ashley broke off. Linda guessed she didn’t want to use the crazy word again.

  “I can’t explain it.” Linda’s tears were still flowing, but she had stopped weeping. “I saw myself doing all the things you’ve just said. I have a vivid memory of someone strangling me.”

  Ashley looked perturbed. “When you were standing by the bathroom door… you reminded me of Marisa,” she said stepping out of the tub. “I had to hit you with the toothbrush stand to try and get you off me,” Ashley sounded just as horrified as Linda felt.

  Marisa… Linda’s heart constricted. Marisa had done exactly these things before… before she’d dropped dead. Was Linda going to suffer the same end? She had thought the haunting was restricted to Blackburn Manor, but she had been wrong. The malevolent spirit followed, it infected you till you were so far gone you no longer had control over the situation. The clock had just started for Linda and if she didn’t figure out how to stop the possessions, soon she would go the same way as Marisa and the poor girl in Colin Prim’s diary. Hysteria obscured all other thoughts. She had nearly killed her sister. Ashley had been there for her in her most trying times, and she had nearly strangled the life out of her.

  More sobs rocked her body. Ashley stared at her, still rubbing her neck. Linda could see that Ashley was horrified and not yet able to register what had happened. A part of her was just as skeptical as Ashley, and understood that her sister probably thought she was a dangerous threat. This broke her heart.