Austin tossed the board and anything else he could find into the fireplace, not realizing that he was about to set fire to the only pieces of information left that gave insight into the history of Oakley house.
Spotting a bag on the floor, Austin rummaged through it looking for a lighter. He knew she had lit the candles earlier, so there had to be a lighter somewhere. In her bag, he found an old photo of a man, woman and little girl. The woman he recognized as the one he had seen in the house once before; the photo said her name was Sophia. Now he had a name for the face. The girl though, he could have sworn he had seen her as well.
“Witch!” Austin shouted, crumpling the picture up and tossing it into the fire as well. He found the lighter, grabbed a book off the closest shelf and lit it on fire. He tossed it into the fireplace not thinking twice. This night would simply look like one bad accident, no one needed to know that they were trying to summon the dead.
Once the fire was going, Austin left the house to look for Mariah, hoping she was still alive. He remembered that Ben had said something about a small grave site in the woods. That would be his first stop. He set off to the far side of the property and headed into the woods in search of the graves. He turned back to look at Oakley house before it was out of sight, only to see that woman, Sophia, was walking slowly, but in the other direction.
Austin left the woods and the graves for later and followed the Sophia. He stayed back so he wouldn’t draw attention to himself, but as they neared the pond, he saw that Mariah was sitting in a small decrepit boat in the middle of a small body of water. He watched as she pushed something into the water then sat solemnly. Austin jumped into the pond, swimming as fast as he could to reach whatever Mariah had just pushed in, only to find that it was an old Venetian mask and a bag of what felt like clothes.
The woman, Sophia, was now nowhere to be seen. Austin grabbed the mask and bag, tossed them into the small boat and began to pull Mariah back to shore. Water filled his lungs as he was ripped under water. His foot was caught on something. He pulled hard but nothing let loose. Austin felt a sharpness on his leg, followed by burning. He knew he had cut his leg on something.
Austin pushed the boat hard, hoping it would float the remainder of the way to shore, then he went under to help free his leg. His pants were stuck on something sharp. He pulled and pulled until the thing came loose from the mud on the bottom of the pond, then he swam the rest of the way with whatever it was still attached to his pant leg. He pulled the boat onto the grass and tried to get Mariah’s attention, but she was completely catatonic.
After a few moments, she began coughing. He sat back and waited for her to get herself together. As he sat there, watching her, thinking she was coming back to the present, she took something from her pockets and put it into her mouth. She chewed for mere moments before she fell over. Austin freaked out. He shook Mariah, listened for her breathing and when he heard nothing, he began CPR.
Austin couldn’t get her breathing, He searched her pockets for what she had eaten, but found only a small bean. He put the bean into his pocket just in case he would need it for the paramedics.
Mariah lay by the boat, vomit and white foam drying around her mouth. He wasn’t sure what the beans were, but they were just as deadly as the berries. Mariah was gone, but Austin still needed help, his leg was bleeding horribly.
“It’s going to be okay,” Austin whispered to Mariah’s body.
He pulled her over his shoulders and began to limp back towards the house, hoping her cellphone was inside to call 9-1-1 because his was soaked from his swim in the water.
The house in view, Austin laid Mariah down on the grass and ran inside to find her phone. He needed to call someone. They needed help.
He reached the Library in record time and found Mariah’s phone by the fireplace, right where he had seen it last. Glancing at the fireplace, he noticed that not only had nothing burned, but there were three small children sitting around it, watching him as he put the phone from to his ear.
Austin let out a shrill scream, similar to Ben’s earlier in the evening and then ran from the room tripping as he went through the door. The girl, the one from the attic, stood by the stairs blocking his path. Not caring, Austin ran right at her, he felt a rush of cold, followed by a deep sadness as he raced down the stairs and back out the door. Walking up the lawn, Sophia was slowly headed his way. Austin dialed 9-1-1 as he ran back to Mariah’s body, pulling her back into his arms and waiting.
He could hear the sirens of help coming, but something felt off. Austin stood, tears in his eyes as he felt himself leaving his body. It was as though he was watching himself go through the motions of walking. Back into the house, through the rooms, down the stairs, climbing the stairs from the basement to the attic. He felt he was watching a movie as he watched himself walk calmly to the window, shimmy out onto the siding, and pull himself up to the rooftop.
He saw Heather Litback, Mariah’s mom, screaming out from the yard. She must have come to check on Mariah. He tried to say something as their eyes met. She yelled to him but he couldn’t hear what she was saying. He saw her run frantically toward the house.
As if in a dream, Austin spread his arms and flew from the roof landing right on the ground in front of the firetruck with a loud smack. Olivia stood at the edge of the woods, near where Ben had walked out, watching. Moments later, Heather Litback fell from the attic window, where Olivette had once sat watching as Jacob fell from the roof, landing in that very spot.
“Goodbye doll,” Olivia said and smirked.
Mrs. Litback woke finding herself laying in a hospital bed, the sound of beeping all around her, and the familiar smell of hand sanitizer. She looked around, unable to remember what had happened. She closed her eyes and opened them up again hoping to remember something.
A nurse walked in moments later and screamed joyfully as she saw that Heather was awake. Soon the room was filled with doctors and nurses all checking her vitals and monitors. Heather assessed her condition as they went. She had a broken leg, three broken ribs and a fracture on her head. What happened? She thought. Then from around the door she saw the police, and then a woman poked her head into the room. She had light brown hair and beautiful blue eyes. She looked familiar. After a few minutes of chaos, the room cleared out and the woman came all the way in.
“Alice, darling,” she said softly. “I’m Alice.”
Alice could see Heather was holding back tears as she spoke,
“Dead, they are all dead,” Alice said.
Both women began to cry silently. After what seemed like hours of tears, there was a knock at the door and two officers entered.
“Ma’am, can we please have the room for a moment. We have some questions for Mrs. Litback. We won’t be long; the doctor insists she has memory loss from her head injury,” an ugly old officer said in a husky voice.
The officer closed the door. Heather thought hard and the memory began to come back in small pieces, but she couldn’t focus on anything other than the horrible truth that Mariah was dead. The officers waited until Mrs. Litback was calmer and then began asking questions.
“Mrs. Litback, you were found two weeks ago unconscious on the property of Mariah Litback. You had suffered severe injuries from some kind of accident, we think you fell from a considerable height, possibly the attic window. The body of your daughter’s friend, Austin Jackson, fell from the roof as the paramedics pulled into the driveway. The body of Mariah Litback was discovered near a small boat. She had eaten raw castor beans, which are extremely deadly. The body of Ben Seymore was located in the attic. He had ingested a large quantity of Pokeberries, which are also deadly. We found one burned book and a huge array of papers and photos in the fireplace with a Ouija Board. It appears as though someone tried to burn it all and failed. In a pile of clothes near your body, we discovered blood which matched Austin, and a bone. We do not yet know who’s bone but our coroner says it may be hundreds of years old.”
The
officer stopped and went to the sink, unwrapping a small plastic cup. He quickly drank some water. The other officer continued in his place.
“Does anything ring a bell? We are trying to piece together that night, and how three young people ended up dead.”
Heather shook her head. She remembered driving to Mariah’s house after speaking to the priest. She was going to talk to Mariah about letting the priest bless the house. The rest of that night was blank. Almost as though she had spaced out after parking her car. Though she knew the memory loss was likely due to her head injury.
“Okay, well if you remember anything.” The officers nodded to her, then left.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Weeks passed, slowly but surely. Heather spent all her time in recovery working hard on trying to bring back her memories and regain her leg strength. Doctors assured her that the memories would return, if not all at once then in pieces. In between therapies, she would visit Alice, trying to make sense of the piles of papers that the police had pulled from the fireplace inside Mariah’s library.
With help from local towns people, the church being the main point of contact, Heather was able to successfully track down some of the supposed ancestors that belonged to Oakley house. She had the bones of the family dug up from the woods on the property, and they were being tested for causes of death. She planned to have them reburied in a real cemetery.
Mariah was laid to rest next to her father, in a beautiful ceremony that paid homage to her love of historical places and things. Betty was parked for good in a car history museum, donated so she would live forever. Heather had not returned to Oakley, even with no recollection of what happened, she knew the house was evil and wanted to look into the it from farther away.
Austin was buried next to the love of his life, Ben. No one had established how or why Austin had fallen from the roof of Oakley. Rumors were circulating that the death of Ben drove him insane and he threw himself off the roof. He had also suffered a severe cut to his tibial artery, causing him to lose blood all over the house as he made his way to the rooftop. The house looked like a murder scene from a horror movie, according to the police.
Heather had no idea why she was found soaking wet, far from where she had allegedly fallen. Without the memories of that night, she may never know. The leg bone found with Austin’s clothing, though strange, led no one to search the pond. It was assumed that it belonged to someone hundreds of years ago, who had died in the woods and never been found. Sophia’s body lay undiscovered deep in the mud beneath the water at the Oakley house pond.
New contractors were brought to Oakley house in order to tear down the strange walls that once hid the attic. Once inside, work halted as rumors continued to spread about the deaths that took place there. No one knew the story behind the walls being built to hide the attic, so instead of tearing them all down, Heather had them sealed back up. The location to Oakley house’s attic becoming a secret once again.
Heather felt sure that the story of the family that knew Oakley as home would surface someday. Someone had gone to great lengths to hide it. That was not her story to tell however, and she wanted little to do with uncovering it. One thing was certain, the family had died, and so had anyone that spent too much time in that house. Heather could still recall the aura of the house and the creepy things that happened prior to that fateful night that Mariah had died. She knew only what her daughter had told her, which honestly was not very much.
With the attic stairs sealed once again, and all evidence of death removed once again, and the house somewhat clean, Mrs. Litback decided that it was time to try and sell the property. Knowing the pull that comes from a house that was once a part of your family, she decided to place an advertisement in national newspapers hoping someone might be interested in purchasing the house or know of the original family that had owned it. The effects of social media were far reaching nowadays. Someone had to know someone.
As she was reading through one of her daughter’s journals, she came across a page that Mariah had spoken of Oakley house, sometime after buying it.
“Walls do not forget. Floors do not forgive. Houses have long memories. They remember everything that happens within their rooms, long after the families are gone. And even though the house sits forgotten, it still remembers. Houses can learn. They can feel and eventually, like a child, they will repeat what they have seen. Like a mirror. Ghosts may exist; they may not. Maybe they are but drawings that the house makes to recreate what it once had. A loving family.”
Heather closed her daughter’s book and turned it over carefully in her hands before opening it on last time. On the last page before she had died Mariah had written,
“Olivia will be helping me solve the riddle of Oakley house today. The children we’ve seen, the woman and all the death will soon be solved.”
***
Alice received a call one evening, just before bed, from Mrs. Litback. She called to tell her about the results from the coroner and what was found in the bones of the children.
“They were poisoned, slowly over a length of time. It seems the main poison that was found was the Pokeberry, but traces of Ricin were also found in their bones.”
Alice listened intently. Unbeknownst to Mrs. Litback, she had already read the reports. She was interested to find out if the families buried on the property were victims of the same poisons as Mariah and Ben had ingested.
“Alice, do you know an Olivia? Mariah wrote about her in her journals. I’m her mother and I didn’t even know she kept journals. She called her a paramedic and wrote that she was helping research the house and was over often. They met when you all responded to the call about the recluse bite.”
Alice thought hard, but she and Austin rarely had anyone riding with them, and as far as she knew, they had been the only ones that had responded to calls at Oakley with the exception of the night of the poisonings.
“No, I can’t say I know anyone named Olivia,” Alice replied and then shivered, creeped out by the thought of someone masquerading as a paramedic in order to worm their way into someone’s house.
“She mentioned teenagers were breaking in. Maybe it was one of them. I would very much like to find and speak to this Olivia. Maybe she knows what really happened,” Heather said, tears filling her eyes.
Heather and Alice hung up soon after, having nothing more to discuss. Heather was crying again as she did often these days. Mariah was her only tie to the town. She had no one to pass her life onto. Her world ended that night at Oakley house.
Oakley house would someday be a distant memory, even if all the memories were not yet back in place for Heather Litback. Even if she were to recall that night completely, the story would die with her.
***
Olivia remained at Oakley. Olivette Oakley, Daughter of Mayor Oliver Oakley, stepdaughter of Sophia Oakley-Monet. She had nothing but hatred for her family and the house she was cursed to spend eternity in. When Mariah boosted the house, and reopened her room, she seized her chance to play. Mariah became a fun little game. A pet project if you will.
Before Mariah showed up, she had spent her days tormenting the children trapped in the house with her. Slowly poisoning Sophia’s children over many years had been entertaining. It was the perfect revenge for all the hate she had endured from Sophia. Taking her dolls, scarring her face and stealing her father, Sophia deserved all she got.
When Mariah bought the house, with intentions to tear things down and make the house “pretty” in order to sell it or worse, make it a museum of old Oakley town things, Olivia knew she had to stop her. Once Mariah was bitten by that spider, which would have surely been a death sentence when she was alive, she decided that was her in.
This silly girl was so drugged on venom she didn’t even realize she was seeing things. Olivette, now Olivia, had fun pretending to discover her own things around the house, and showing small things to Mariah to pique her interest more and more.
Luring that contractor boy t
o the roof, that was sad. He reminded her so much of Jacob. Too bad he had found the attic opening before she was ready. It needed to be Mariah to find it first. She had fun acting psychotic while wearing the clothes soaked in Johnny’s blood. She knew the mask creeped Mariah out, even if she denied being afraid of haunted houses.
Killing the nun was a great joy. She had expected the church to help her when she was young, but they didn’t. She wanted nothing more than to see Sophia burned as a witch, but nothing happened. When the nun was impaled by the rusty spoon, that priest, the fourth great grandson of the priest she knew as a young woman, got what he needed. Proof that Oakley was evil.
Inviting Ben and Austin over for a night of hell summoning was great fun. She enjoyed running through each of their minds and making them go slowly insane. It was almost too easy.
The best part was that no one once thought to question Mariah, who was walking around presumably talking to herself. Even her own mother had missed that Mariah was talking to a ghost that only she could see. Olivette smirked at her ingenuity. She really had put on a great show.
The night everyone died, after forcing Ben to eat the berries, she led Mariah to the pond, telling her she needed to get rid of the mask and bloody clothes to help get rid of the evil in the house. She watched Austin race into the water, slicing his leg wide open on one of Sophia’s leg bones that was sticking up from the pond floor. She giggled to herself as blood spewed everywhere.
She watched as Mariah ate the beans that would quickly release ricin into her body, killing her within moments. She could even remember seeing Mrs. Litback, Mariah’s mom arriving just in time to see her daughter lying dead in the grass. She had picked her lifeless body up and held her tight before seeing the boat and running to the pond to look for others.
The Secrets of Oakley House Page 14
