Chillingworth Mews: A supernatural horror novel

by Anton Palmer

  “Daddy!” Ashlee ran up the drive to greet her father, Dan kneeling and opening his arms to hug her as she leapt towards him. He stood back up, the little girl hanging around his neck, and kissed his wife as she reached the front door.

  “So?” Dan’s face was lit with expectation, “What do you think?”

  Catherine recalled the exterior photo’s she had seen and mentally compared them to the building that now stood in front of her with its new roof tiles, modern double-glazing and freshly rendered walls.

  “It looks amazing, babe.”

  She stepped through the front door, “Now, where’s my new kitchen?”

  Dan chuckled, “I’ll give you the grand tour in a minute, but first, I think we should let this little one go and see her playroom…”

  Ashlee’s eyes lit up, “A playroom? Just for me?”

  “That’s right, sweetheart. A room for all your toys and paints and books. Come on, let’s go upstairs and take a look.”

  Dan led the way, carrying Ashlee up the staircase, Catherine following behind running her fingers admiringly over the ornate, varnished bannister.

  “I’ve not bothered with carpet in the playroom, babe – I figured it’ll be much easier to mop up paint spills from the bare floorboards.”

  Catherine nodded her agreement, thinking of the countless times she’d had to scrub the carpets in their old home to clean up paint, glue and ground-in play-dough.

  Putting Ashlee down at the top of the stairs, Dan pointed to the open door at the far end of the landing, the bright sunlight shining through the window giving it a glowing, warm ambience. The little girl ran excitedly towards the light, Catherine immediately spotting a shoelace flapping from her left foot.

  “Slow down, sweetheart – your lace in undone, you’ll-“

  Her warning was cut short as the four year old tripped, falling face first to the wooden floor, her cries immediately filling the empty playroom.

  Catherine ran to her daughter, picking her up gently. “Come here, sweetheart, let mummy take a look...oh no!”

  Blood was pouring from Ashlee’s nose, a puddle left on the knotty floorboard where her face had impacted.

  She turned to her husband, “Looks like you’ve got your first spill to mop up, babe. Where can I clean her up?”

  Dan led them into the bathroom.

  “This is your fault, Daniel Phelps,” joked Catherine as she carried her bawling daughter across the landing, trying not to drip blood on the new carpet, “you and your crappy nosebleed genes.”

  Dan frowned. It was true - the Phelps’s had always been prone to nosebleeds, just the slightest knock releasing a red tide from the nostrils.

  As his wife sat on the toilet seat, tipping Ashlee’s head back and pressing a wad of tissue over her nose, Dan pulled several sheets of toilet paper from the roll and headed back to the playroom to clean up the floor.

  Looking around the bare room, tissue at the ready, he couldn’t see a spot of blood anywhere.

  “Cath? Whereabouts is this blood?”

  “In the middle of the room, where she fell. Most of it was on a floorboard with two dark knots.”

  Dan looked again – the floor was spotless, the boards bone dry.

  Perhaps Catherine had imagined it, he mused.

  The seed of a headache was beginning to bloom and he massaged his temples as he spotted a chisel he’d left on the windowsill. He picked the tool up, intending to put it safely out of harm’s way – the chisel was razor-sharp and they didn’t need any more accidents today.

  As he headed back to the bathroom to check on Ashlee, a voice echoed through the house, Dan’s fingers, wrapped tight around the sharp chisel, twitching under its directive…

  MORE BLOOD!

  ***

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  http://www.antonpalmer.co.uk

  Also by Anton Palmer

  DADDY’S GIRL – A Psychological Horror

  “Something’s wrong!”

  The woman’s screams were loud enough to wake the dead, but the thick basement walls ensured that every agonised decibel remained cocooned within the small, underground room. Panting hard, the woman’s hair was matted with sweat, her face burning and sheathed in perspiration.

  “Please, Samuel, call an ambulance – let me go to the hospital.”

  Samuel stroked his wife’s hand and brought it up to his lips, planting a gentle kiss on her slender fingers. “There’s no necessity for a hospital, my darling. The Lord will take care of you.”

  The woman yelled again as another contraction hit her. Samuel watched, impassive, as a gush of bright red blood poured from his wife’s vagina, pooling in a shiny wet puddle before slowly soaking into the already saturated mattress beneath her. He remained calm, smiled, and dabbed at her brow with a damp sponge.

  “Samuel…at least call a doctor…” The woman was sobbing now, her tears mingling with the sweat of several hours’ fruitless labour. “Please! I’m begging you...something’s not right. I can feel it!”

  Her husband stood up from the small stool he had been squatting on and stretched, the bones of his spine cracking in a satisfying manner as he did so. He looked down at his wife, wet and glistening with sweat, on the blood-soaked mattress that had been lain on the dirt floor of the basement. He spoke slowly, carefully, “If something is not right - then it is God’s will. You are being punished for your sins.”

  “What sins? Have I not been a good and faithful wife to you?”

  Samuel bent down and angrily slapped her blood-splashed thighs. “The sin of fornication!”

  “What? I have only ever…fornicated…with you – my husband in the eyes of the Lord!”

  He slowly shook his head at her, as if in despair or disbelief, “Fornication for any purpose other than procreation is a sin. Yet you…you dirty slut! You fornicated even after you knew you were with child.”

  “With you, my love. With you… I didn’t do it on my own!” The tears flowed even faster, the woman now fully aware that she could never win this argument.

  “I am not to blame. “ Her husband continued, “You tempted me with your vile lust! But the Lord knows that I was just the innocent victim of your foul wantonness.”

  “Samuel…please…it wasn’t my fault. It was the hormones…”

  “Hormones are just God’s way of testing you! If you loved God enough he would have given you the strength to resist your filthy, disgusting urges. But you didn’t…and now the Lord is punishing you for it.”

  He bent down and mopped her brow once more, the anger suddenly leaving his voice. “But don’t worry my darling…the child will be safe. I’ll see to that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Samuel looked at his wrist-watch in the gloomy light of the weak bulb hanging from a joist above his head. “I’ll give you ten more minutes – any longer and I fear for the baby’s wellbeing. If the child isn’t out by then…” He held up a gleaming scalpel. His wife shuddered, knowing her husband fully intended to cut the baby out of her womb, if necessary. And also knowing that the unborn child was far more important to him than she was.

  Another, even stronger contraction gripped her and she shrieked long and hard, bearing down with all her remaining strength as she stared with wide eyes at the wooden crucifix attached to the wall opposite. The cross burned its image into her retinas as she prayed for Jesus, God…anyone, to give her the strength to deliver her baby safely.

  More blood, darker this time, oozed from between her gore-spattered thighs, followed by a spray of urine and a sloppy lump of reeking faecal matter. Samuel picked up the excrement with a paper towel and dumped it into a metal bucket behind him, before wiping the excess blood and piss from the mattress with a piece of old rag. The woman panted, breathless and exhausted, sweat flooding from every pore. Samuel again dabbed at her face gently with his sponge.

  “Please, my husband. Please call an ambulance…our child is
guaranteed to be delivered safely in the hospital. So much better than this dirty basement…”

  Samuel threw the sponge down onto the blood-soaked mattress, his face suddenly contorting into a mask of scarlet rage. “And what do you think all those doctors and midwives will say when they see the marks on your body?”

  He rolled her onto her flank and traced his fingers along the trails of angry red scars on her back and buttocks as if to remind her of their existence. Scars from the many floggings he had given her, down here in this very basement, to beat her sins from her body. Similar wounds adorned Samuel’s own body – his, self-inflicted, during regular bouts of purging his own sins.

  ”They won’t understand. They won’t understand our ways. They will lock us up! Take the child into care – to be raised by…heathens or paedophiles…”

  His wife rolled onto her back and turned her head to one side, attempting to bury her face into the filthy mattress – knowing her case was futile. Samuel grasped her hand and bent down to plant a gentle kiss on her wet forehead.

  “It’s time.”

  “Oh no, Samuel, please…no! Please give me more time, I can do this… I’m your wife for Christ’s sake!”

  The woman immediately clamped a hand over her mouth, terror filling her eyes, but she knew it was too late – the blasphemy had been uttered.

  Samuel stood above her, sucking in deep breaths, his face twitching as he tried to control his rage, a vein visibly throbbing at his temple. Kneeling down between her legs, he seemed oblivious to the blood and other bodily fluids that immediately began to soak into his trousers.

  “I’m sorry, my darling, but it is the Lord’s will…”

  The woman screamed as he plunged the razor-sharp scalpel into her abdomen, just below her navel and sliced downward towards her blood-matted pubis. She passed out at the sight of her taut, ripe belly opening up, a stream of blood running down her flanks into the mattress as a yellow layer of fat burst out of the gaping wound. Samuel pulled the fatty layer to one side as he carefully cut through the thin, shiny membrane beneath, revealing her abdominal muscles.

  He slashed in short, shallow bursts, over and over, tearing through the blocks of muscle while remaining conscious of not cutting so deep as to harm the child. Despite his care, the blade nicked his wife’s bowel, the stench making him retch as the liquid faeces within spilled out. Along with the excrement, deep red blood was quickly flooding the abdominal cavity, clearly, he had also opened an artery or another major vessel.

  Undeterred, he continued his slicing until, the womb, bloated with its precious cargo, was plainly visible, Samuel delicately slit open the uterine wall. Amniotic fluid gurgled out as the baby, in breach position, was revealed, and he gently pulled the child from its warm, watery bed.

  With the new-born wrapped, snug and warm, in a clean, white blanket, Samuel slapped his unconscious wife in the face until he roused her.

  “Look, my darling!”

  He held the swaddled child out towards her, “It’s a girl!”

  The woman began to weep, but her sobs were suddenly stifled as her tired lungs struggled for breath. She gasped desperately for air, her lips turning blue as her life-force continued to pour from the ruptured blood vessel in her butchered abdomen.

  Samuel observed without emotion as his wife’s eyes filled with fear, both of them knowing her death was imminent. He leant forward and placed a gentle kiss on her hot cheek before snatching the gold crucifix that hung around her throat.

  As he sat back on his stool, Samuel felt the child’s lungs fill with her first breaths and he held her close as they watched the mother she would never know, take her last.