There was silence and Matron pointed to the door. For a moment Rosie almost turned and ran. Something about the old woman’s face told her that she actually had the choice. That this time she would escape. Only as she looked at the door she looked past Alice. The young girls face crumpled into a look of pure despair and yet she nodded. Alice would encourage her to go, to save herself even though it would leave her and the rest of the children in torment. Rosie knew she could not do that. No, she was in this until the end and she would have her happy ever after. She would save all the children and she would send this evil bitch back to the hell she came from.
Quickly she walked forward throwing the salt and shouting out the prayer, “Christ, God's Word made flesh, commands you. Be gone, Satan, inventor, and master of all deceit, the enemy of man's salvation. Unclean and evil beast, hear the Lord’s words and be gone.”
Mabel stepped back in shock and seemed to fade.
“Our Father who art in heaven,” Rosie prayed. “Hallowed by Thy name. Thy kingdom come.”
Matron was fading. It was not the same as the other spirits. She did not burn or sizzle as they had done.
“Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Instead she seemed to fold in on herself. Shrinking before their eyes. Becoming smaller and fainter.
“Give us this day out daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
Rosie felt her spirits soar and continued walking toward the shrunken figure. She was winning, she would survive this. Once more she threw salt and the woman bowed over before her.
“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever.”
As she walked towards Matron the older woman faded away to nothing.
Rosie had won.
She dropped to her knees and put her head in her hands.
“Amen,” she whispered and then burst into tears. She had done it. She had survived and all she wanted to do now was curl up on the floor and sleep.
A gentle hand touched her shoulder and she looked up to see Alice smiling up at her. This wasn’t over. She still had to see that all the children were given rest.
“I haven’t forgotten you,” she said and sat up. “Just give me a minute.”
The gentle voice appeared in her head. “There is no rush. We can wait another night. Sleep now and we will watch over you. Tomorrow night is time enough to lay our souls to rest.”
Rosie nodded and stumbled to her feet. She walked across the office and to the opulent bed in the other room. For a moment something nagged at her mind but she pushed it away and fell onto the bed. Before she could even adjust her position she was asleep.
Chapter 19
Rosie jerked awake and sat up in the dimly lit room, her heart pounding. With her hand clutched to her chest, she listened and tried to make sense of what had woken her. It was hard to remember but she had been dreaming. In her dream she was fighting and she was losing.
There was nothing here.
She let out a long breath and relaxed against the headboard. It had all been a dream. Closing her eyes she tried to calm her pounding heart and catch her breath. Yet there was something wrong with her cheek. It felt different, stiff, no not that. It just felt wrong. Thinking that it was probably just how she lying but knowing she wouldn't sleep until she had taken a look she crawled out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom.
As her feet touched the floor her back and hip ached. It had not been that long since she had taken a severe battering. The bumps and bruises were letting her know about it. Maybe that was what was wrong with her face. Maybe it was just a bruise and yet still, she felt drawn to the mirror. She had to see what the problem was.
Pulling on the cord, she flooded the bathroom with light. The gray room had never looked so somber. The paint so dull it cloaked the room in shadow. Now she knew she had to be imagining this. Looking for problems where there were none. So she walked to the sink and ran some water. Then, she looked up at the mirror and her face.
Fear traced a cold knife down her spine and then rammed it into her heart. The hairs rose on her arms and her breath froze in her throat. The left side of her face was distorted.
Her hand reached out to touch it; the skin felt course, dry, wrinkled. As she watched, it was as if that side of her face was aging rapidly. The skin tone slackened. Her cheek dropped and deep crow's feet appeared around her eyes. Wrinkles spread across her cheek and lines appeared etched deep into the skin.
Rosie's mouth fell open, still she could not breathe.
What was happening?
She wanted to turn away. To run back to the bed and crawl under the covers to hope that by morning this would be gone. That it was all a dream.
Instead she reached down with both hands and scooped water from the sink. Splashing it over her face.
The right side felt exactly as she thought it would but the left side felt different. It was almost as if the skin was not real, as if it was not hers. How could this be?
In her mind she tried to call Alice. The young girl had helped her so much and maybe she could help her now. Nothing happened, just that strange half face in the mirror.
Maybe this was just a dream and she had to wake up. With her right hand she pinched her left arm.
“Ouch.”
The pain was real and still nothing changed.
At last she could draw in a breath and found she was gasping for air. Breath after breath she pulled into her lungs but still she wanted more. The panic was taking hold, closing her airways once more and weakening her. Closing her eyes, she willed this to be gone, willed it to be back to normal. As she opened her eyes, the wrong face stared back at her.
Once more, she lifted her hand to touch her cheek. Tentatively she traced two fingers over the crow’s feet and down her skin. It felt so strange and she pulled her hand away. Only in the mirror the hand continued to trace downward.
Rosie let out a gasp.
The left eye and the left side of her face curled into a smile... no... it was not a friendly gesture, this was a mocking, cruel motion, it was a sneer.
Stunned, Rosie reached up to touch her face. The hand in the mirror moved with her, for a moment she thought she had imagined everything. It was just her mind playing tricks on her. Yet as her fingers touched her cheek the hand in the mirror turned. She could still feel the wrinkled skin and yet she could see those very same fingers reaching out towards the mirror.
How could this be?
“I still have power,” the face in the mirror said. “You may have gotten rid of some of my strength but much of it still remains and now they will help me destroy you. See.”
The fingers looked different. Like her cheek, they were older. The joints twisted and swollen with arthritis. As they touched the glass it rippled like the surface of a lake and then the hand burst through and pointed behind her.
The breath left Rosie’s lungs and she turned around to see that she was surrounded by the children. There were at least ten of them and once more they wore the feral visage of desperate animals. They were angry, controlled, and braying for her blood.
Rosie searched for Alice but she was not amongst the crowd. How she hoped the girl had escaped but she could not think it was possible, then she saw her, standing near the door of the bedroom.
“Alice run,” Rosie shouted. “Maybe I can set you free but keep away from her.”
Alice hesitated on the threshold. Dithering on the spot, as she wondered what was the right thing to do.
“In the Name of Jesus, I rebuke the spirit of Alice Cotton.”
There was a roar from behind her and Rosie turned back to the mirror just in time to see a figure step from the glass.
It was Matron, the woman in the cloak. She was bent and wrinkled but as Rosie watched she straightened up and smiled in a way that turned Rosie’s blood to ice.
“Who are you?” she asked.
&
nbsp; “You know,” the voice said. “I gave you the opportunity to leave and you turned it down. Now you will be mine.”
“I command you leave this place,” Rosie shouted putting all her focus on letting Alice go but she could not take her eyes off the spectacle in front of her.
The old woman was changing. The skin became firmer, the cheeks more rounded. The wrinkles smoothed out as she watched. Gradually she seemed to straighten up. It was as if the kinks in her spine were dissolving and she was becoming younger before Rosie’s very eyes. Only that wasn’t all that was happening.
Rosie knew she had to keep on with the prayer but her mind was blank as the woman staggered towards her and put her hands around her throat. Ice cold fingers squeezed onto her windpipe and the face began to change. It was morphing, flexing, dissolving and reforming and Rosie could not take her eyes off it.
As her lungs began to burn and her throat craved for just one breath of air, the figure that was squeezing the life from her became her. She was looking at a mirror image of herself. Staring into her own eyes as her own fingers squeezed the very life from her body.
Only the new her wasn’t solid. At times the figure would blink and she got the chance to draw in a breath. It seemed to happen at regular intervals and she watched and waited until she was ready for the next one.
As the fingers dissolved and loosened on her neck she stepped back. Ignoring the pain and the desperate urge to breath she shouted with all she had, “Alice go, without manifestation and without harm to me or anyone, so that He can dispose of you according to His Holy Will. Amen.”
Rosie turned to the door. Alice was looking at her with a smile on her face and yet there were tears in her eyes. She had found peace and she faded away but she was replaced by Matron wearing Rosie’s body.
Matron thrust her hands around Rosie’s neck before she could move and was squeezing again.
Rosie could feel the blackness settling on her but she knew she had to fight. So she timed it carefully and as the hands loosened she stepped to the left. She was free for a second and she drew in a deep breath before starting the prayer again.
“In the Name of Jesus, I rebuke the spirit of...”
The hands were back around her throat before she could say a name. It had been strange but each time she tried to lay the soul of one of the children to rest, their name came into her mind and she knew that the next child was Shaun Bedford, but she could not speak the words. As the hands tightened around her throat she tried to think them but everything was going black.
“You are not strong enough,” she heard her own voice say.
Be gone unclean beast, Rosie thought, but there was nothing left.
“No, not this time.”
Rosie felt herself fall and could see her own eyes looking down at her. Her own hand over her mouth and nostrils and then the figure was gone.
Had she won?
Chapter 20
For a moment Rosie felt sweet relief. She took in a huge breath and felt the sweet air fill up her lungs. The urge to choke was strong. How she wanted a drink to ease the soreness on her throat but the children were crowding around her once more. Their faces were wild, their eyes wide and their lips curled back over sharp teeth in a snarl.
Rosie tried to swallow. Once she could speak she would say a prayer for each of them and she would release them and yet the way they looked at her sent a fission of fear into her heart.
Why were they still like this? Why was it as if they were still under Matron’s control?
“Because I’m still here,” a voice said in her head and then Rosie understood.
Matron had not gone. Somehow she was inside her and she was about to have the battle of her life. A searing pain sliced into her brain. It was like hands ripping and clawing at her cerebral cortex and she had no way to fight against it. Each rip caused a spike of pain and a little bit of her will was torn away. She was being clawed out of her own body and she could not resist.
First Matron ripped out the part of her brain that controlled speech. Without that she couldn’t formulate thoughts and so she couldn’t say the exorcism even in her mind.
Rosie felt her body go weak as the part of her brain that controlled her spinal cord was shredded. Now something was replacing her. Something was filling up the place where she had once been and she wanted to ask a question but didn’t know what it was.
Then the pain stopped, everything stopped and she was just a cell floating on a dark ocean of nothingness.
A voice came out of the sky, maybe it was a God, or maybe it was the universe. She didn’t know what those things were but it spoke to her. As she listened she felt a cold darkness and a feeling of such despair. What had she done?
“I have been trapped in this house for so long but I have learned my lesson. If I killed you, I gained another acolyte for my army but I was still trapped here. This time you will be my host. You will be my way into the world and all the delights that have been hidden from me for so long. Thank you Rosie, for I couldn’t have done this without you.”
Rosie knew she had lost but she also felt her self returning. Her mind was not lost it had just been suppressed. Now, Matron was securely in control of her she allowed her to be once more and Rosie began to wail inside her own mind. She could see what Matron had planned. How she intended to kill and torture and to spread her reign of terror as far as she could and Rosie would not be able to stop her.
* * *
It was two days later when Amy arrived.
“How are you doing?” she asked as she bounded into the house all full of smiles and pulled Rosie into a hug.
Matron smiled but Rosie was screaming, shouting and rattling on the inside of her skull. Anything to make Amy see the danger before her. Only none of it could be seen.
“I want to leave,” Matron said. “I contacted the owners and they say it is fine. I’m just to lock up and post the key.”
“Don’t you want to hear the good news?” Amy asked and gave that cute little smile that said she was teasing.
Matron was impatient, “Can’t it wait?”
“Hey, Rosie, what is it?”
Rosie felt Matron crawling through her memories and she tried to shut them down. Tried to make it hard for the spirit to learn from her but it was no use.
“Sorry, I’ve just been having nightmares. About Clive. I think he may have found me.”
Amy laughed and pulled her into a hug. “That’s just it. He’s been arrested. They found him trying to get back into your old place and he’s in jail. You’re finally free.”
Inside her prison Rosie started to cry. She would never be free, not ever again.”
“That is such good news, now let’s go celebrate I could kill for a decent Mocha.”
“You and me both,” Amy said.
Soon they were in Amy’s car and as she drove away Rosie looked back at the house. What was currently beautiful fell rapidly into a state of disrepair. The garden was filled with weeds. The house lost roof tiles and the windows were broken. The front door was hanging off the hinges and the place looked as if it had been abandoned for decades. Maybe it had, maybe it was only Matron keeping the place going. Surrounding the door were the children. They tried to follow but each time they got more than twenty feet from the door they would disappear and snap back to the front of the house. It looked like they would be trapped there forever.
“I will release you one day,” Rosie said in her mind.
“No, you won’t,” a cold voice replied. “You will stay here and watch me murder your best friend.”
Rosie screamed and shouted and raged at the prison that was her mind but the only response she got was a deep and evil chuckle. She had lost and the world would pay for her foolishness.
* * *
I hope you enjoyed The Haunting of RedRise House. It was a fun book to write and gave me a lot of sleepless nights. Read on for more books and a way to get FREE Advanced Copies of books from me.
Called From Beyo
nd
Coming Soon
6th July, 2018
Country Road,
Yorkshire.
England.
11.59pm.
Mark stared out through the windscreen at the dark and twisty road ahead. He stifled a yawn. “Probably should have taken up the offer to stay the night.” The long drive back to civilization slowly ate away at his concentration. Taking his eyes off the road, he turned to face Alissa.
She had her feet curled up on the seat next to her and her eyes were almost closed. “Mmm, probably. It was good to see them again,” she said, pushing her long blonde hair back from her face.
He loved to see it when it fell in whispers across her pale skin. It was so fine and silky to the touch and, right now, he just wanted them back in the hotel so he could hold her. These bleak and lonely roads were no place for a couple of city kids like them and he couldn’t wait to get back to the noise and bustle of Leeds.
They were staying at a hotel in one of the small villages—make it a bit of a romantic night as well as a reunion—but now he wished they hadn’t. Maybe he should have taken her away somewhere not just down the road from their house?
“It was good,” he said, pulling his eyes back to the road. “They both looked so healthy. And the food? Mmmm. Amazing.”
“Don’t I know it.” Alissa’s bright smile contrasted with the dreamy quality her eyes still held. “That stroganoff was so creamy and delicious. I think that’s why I’m so sleepy. I’m way too full.”
Mark laughed. “Or perhaps a few too many glasses of red wine?”
“You’re only jealous because it was your turn to drive.” She stuck her tongue out and her green eyes danced with laughter.
“Funny, that.” He tried to put a stern expression on his face. “It’s always your turn to drive on the way there and mine to drive back.”
The Haunting of RedRise House: Ghosts and Haunted Houses Page 11
