by Mark Lukens
Shane looked at the cracks in the walls again. He wasn’t a geologist, and he wasn’t going to challenge Harold’s opinion in front of everyone, but those cracks looked strange to him. It still looked to him like something had pushed the wall out from the inside.
Nick, suddenly impatient, looked at Laura again. “Let’s proceed with the investigation please.”
Billy focused his camera back on Laura who had never left from her spot in front of the door to Room 214. He filmed her as she stood in front of the door. She touched the door handle and then she pulled her hand away like the metal had burned her. She closed her eyes for a moment, and then she opened them again. She turned around and looked at Shane and the camera “Something bad happened in that room.”
Laura turned back around and touched the doorknob again, careful this time. She opened the door and then went inside. Billy and Shane followed her inside, and the rest of them were right behind them.
Room 214 was empty, free of furniture, but the floor was cluttered with loose pieces of plaster, bits of wood and metal, and other debris. But one object stood out in the middle of the cluttered mess—a white hardhat.
Warren picked the hardhat up and turned it over, staring at it for a second. “Guys, there’s blood inside this hardhat.”
Nick hurried over to him.
Warren handed the hat to Nick.
Billy filmed over their shoulders, zooming in on the inside of the hat where there were smears of bright red blood on the white plastic.
Nick looked at the camera, narrating. “We’ve just entered Room 214 and we’ve discovered a hardhat presumably left behind by one of the construction workers. There’s blood inside of it.”
Shane watched Nick and he was sure that Nick knew more about the accidents that had happened here than he was telling them.
Nick turned to Laura and offered the hardhat to her.
She took it and held it for a moment, closing her eyes. It looked like her body jolted for a moment as she held the hardhat, like a sudden surge of electricity had just shocked her. She shook her head; she had her eyes squeezed shut and a pained expression on her face.
“What is it?” Nick asked Laura. “Can you tell us what happened in this room?”
Laura shook her head again and then opened her eyes. She looked over at the hole in the wall down by the floor at the other end of the room. There was what looked like black soot smeared all around the jagged edges of the hole.
“There’s something bad in this room,” Laura whispered. “Inside that hole. Inside these walls.”
“Let’s get that camera set up in here,” Nick told Billy.
Billy wasted no time. He got the next camera out of the case and set it up on the tripod in a corner of the room, closer to the door. Shane helped him and they aimed the camera at the hole in the wall at the other end of the room.
Warren walked towards the hole at the bottom of the wall like he, too, could see something in the darkness hiding down inside the hole.
“What are you doing?” Nick asked Warren.
Billy left Shane to the static camera as he picked up his handheld camera and crept towards Warren, filming the physicist as he crouched down in front of the hole to get a better look at the dark stains all over the wood floor.
“Look at this,” Warren said. “It’s all over the floor and around this hole. It looks like dried blood.”
Warren got even closer to the hole, peering inside at the darkness.
Billy crouched down near Warren and shined the light from his camera into the hole.
“There’s something in there,” Warren said. He reached into the hole, plunging his hand into the darkness.
“I don’t think you should be doing that,” Kristen said.
“There’s something in here,” Warren said, straining as he groped around inside the hole, his arm buried up to his shoulder, the side of his face pressed against the wall as he pushed his arm in even more.
And then Warren froze. “I’ve got it, but it’s stuck … it’s …”
Nick moved closer to Warren, a few steps behind him, suddenly excited by what Warren might have found. “What does it feel like?”
Shane watched all of them at the other end of the room through the lens of the static camera, getting everything in focus.
Nigel looked bored. He stood closest to the door near Harold. Nigel still had his handheld recorder gripped in his hand in case he needed to make another sarcastic comment into it.
Warren pulled at the object stuck deep in the hole, trying to pull it out, grunting with effort.
Nick’s eyes danced with excitement. “What is it, Warren? What does it feel like?”
“It feels rectangular. Made of … metal.”
Warren let out a yelp of surprise as his arm was pulled deeper into the hole, his face colliding with the cracked plaster.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Kristen screamed as Warren was slammed into the wall, his face smashed against the plaster.
“Let it go!” Laura screamed at him.
Warren grunted, trying to pull his arm out of the hole in the wall.
Shane stepped out from behind the camera and rushed over to Warren. He dropped down behind him on the floor and grabbed him around the trunk of his body, pushing against the bottom of the wall with one foot as he tried to pull Warren away from the hole in the wall. Nick was on the other side of Warren in a flash, helping Shane pull on him.
Suddenly Warren fell backwards. His arm was free but he held something large and made of metal in his hand. He toppled back into Shane and Nick, knocking both of them backwards a few steps. Nick backpedaled, almost losing his balance, but Kristen grabbed him and caught him before he could fall.
Shane fell back onto his butt and Warren was down on the floor beside him. Warren jumped back up to his feet quickly.
“What the hell was that?” Kristen practically shrieked. “What grabbed you?”
Shane got back up on his feet and stared at Billy who still had his camcorder up to his eye. “You couldn’t help us out?”
Billy smiled from behind the camera. “I’m just here to film, man. That’s all.
Warren held a dented metal clipboard in his hand.
“That’s what was inside the wall?” Shane asked. “You risked your arm for that?”
“It looks like the same kind of clipboard we found in the sunroom,” Warren said.
“What was grabbing you inside that wall?” Kristen asked again, her eyes darting to the hole in the bottom of the wall like she was waiting for some kind of animal to come crawling out. “It looked like something was grabbing you, trying to pull you inside that wall.”
“I don’t know,” Warren said. “I … I think when I was trying to pull this clipboard out it got stuck on something and … I don’t know, I might have panicked, thinking my arm was stuck.”
Shane glanced at Kristen—she didn’t look satisfied with Warren’s answer.
Harold joined the group like what had just happened to Warren suddenly interested him. He moved closer to the hole in the wall, crouching down in front of it like Warren had just done, studying it. He shined his flashlight beam into the hole.
“You see any monsters in there?” Nigel asked with a slight slur to his words from the alcohol he’d been sipping all day.
No one responded to Nigel.
Harold sighed heavily like something was bothering him.
“What is it?” Nick asked Harold.
“It’s strange,” he said. “It’s just empty inside here.” He shined his light up into the hole, crouching down lower to peer up into it as far as he could. “It’s like there aren’t any studs in this area of the wall, no bottom plate. I don’t know what the clipboard could’ve gotten stuck on.”
“Something had him,” Kristen said. “Right?” she asked Warren as she turned to him.
Warren shrugged. “I thought so … but like I said, I might have imagined it.”
“Something pulled your arm f
urther into that wall,” Kristen said, not willing to let it go. “I saw it. We all saw it.”
“Or he might have been acting,” Nigel said.
Warren and Kristen glared at him.
Nick turned his attention back to Harold. “You think the wood studs inside the wall rotted away?”
Harold shrugged. “I don’t know. That would be a lot of wood rot. I see wood studs farther back in the darkness, but the space between this wall and the next one is really wide. Must be … maybe almost four feet to the other side.”
“Like there’s a passageway inside those walls,” Nick said, looking right at Billy’s camera which was capturing everything on film.
“Yes, like a secret passageway for your special effects crew to travel from room to room,” Nigel quipped.
“I don’t have a crew here,” Nick said to the camera. “I assure you, it’s only us here.”
“Many old homes had wide walls with passages in between them,” Shane said. “A lot of times secret passageways were built into walls of expensive homes and mansions. It was kind of common back then.”
“Look at this,” Warren said. He had the clipboard opened up and he was looking through the sheets of paper inside. He pulled a few pieces of paper out that were stapled together. “It’s the same map.” He handed the stapled pages to Kristen so she could see it. “The same map that was in the other clipboard. The same map we have with us.”
Nick nodded. “Like I said, these clipboards must’ve belonged to some of Templeton’s men.”
Shane stared at Nick. “So why is one of their clipboards stuffed way down inside a hole in the wall? And why is there dried blood around that hole in the wall and on the floor? And inside the hardhat?”
Nick shrugged and shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Something happened to the men that were here.”
“No one was killed,” Nick said.
“Well, someone was obviously injured pretty severely from the looks of it.”
Nick just shrugged, refusing to answer.
“I think it’s time we got that explanation that you’ve been promising,” Shane told Nick. “We need to know what happened here to those construction workers, what kind of accidents they had. And we need to know the history of this place.”
Nick nodded. “Of course. After we get these static cameras set up, Kristen and I will tell you everything we know about this place. We need to do some narration for the documentary anyway … get some backstory narrated on film.”
Shane sighed. He still wasn’t happy about the withholding of information so far, but at least Nick was agreeing to reveal it soon. He decided to let it go for now. He couldn’t help feeling that they were in danger here and the bloodstains in this room were only fueling that dread.
Warren closed the metal clipboard and then turned it over in his hands. “Shit,” he whispered and dropped the clipboard on the floor.
“What is it?” Kristen practically screeched.
“There’s blood all over this clipboard, too.”
They all stared down at the clipboard. Stains of dried blood were smeared across the back of it.
Warren checked his hands for blood; there wasn’t any but he wiped his hands several times on his pants just to be sure.
Kristen looked down at the floorboards. “What about all of these dark spots on the floor? Is all of that blood?”
“Looks like it could be,” Warren said.
“That’s a lot of blood.”
“Could be animal blood,” Nigel said. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be human blood, does it? Did anyone think of that?”
Laura hugged her arms like she was cold.
Shane looked at her. “Is this room the center?”
The others looked at Shane, not sure what he was talking about.
Nigel sighed and interpreted for Shane. “He means the strongest area of paranormal activity.”
Laura looked at Shane. She shook her head no. “There’s somewhere else in this place—somewhere much worse.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Laura led the team back down one of the sets of curving stairs to the first floor and through the ballroom, and then into the base of operations, and then to the kitchen.
The kitchen was in ruins and looked like nothing had been used there for nearly a hundred years. The crumbling remains of a gigantic stone oven dominated the left wall on the other side of the room. Directly across from the oven was a rotting wood countertop underneath a line of tall windows. Each pane of glass in the windows was cracked and the glass was thick and opaque. A rust-frozen hand pump for water stood next to one of the sinks. Most of the cabinets had either rotted away or had already been torn down by some of the construction workers. The chipped and stained tiled floor was covered in debris, but there were large piles of scrap wood, metal, and pieces of plaster in a few shadowy corners, most likely swept together there by the construction crews.
“A real fixer-upper,” Nigel grumbled.
Laura walked past the water pump, sinks, and stone oven. They followed her as she turned a corner and then stopped. At the far end of the sprawling kitchen was a closed door.
“It’s down there,” Laura said, pointing at the door. “In the basement.”
Shane pulled the map that Kristen had given to him earlier out of his back pocket and unfolded the papers. He looked at the page with the first floor on it, at the kitchen. He found the door to the basement on the map and then looked up to see Laura staring at it.
Billy backed away from the group, panning his camera around slowly, taking the whole kitchen in.
Kristen froze as she stared at the door. “I don’t think I want to go down to the basement.”
Nick gave her a hard look. “I think it’s best if we all stay together right now,” he told her. “Don’t you think?”
She just swallowed hard and nodded.
Shane walked past Laura to the simple wooden door and tested the doorknob, expecting—hoping—it would be locked. But it turned easily underneath his hand. He opened the door, revealing a set of wood steps that descended down into the darkness. He turned his flashlight on and shined it down the stairs into the darkness.
For a moment Shane’s heart stopped in his chest—his body and mind paralyzed with fear.
Standing at the bottom of the steps, spotlighted by his flashlight, was an old woman with long scraggily hair. Her pale skin drooped down from her face and twig-thin arms. Her clothes were gray rags that hung in tatters. Her mouth was hung open, her jaw muscles slack. She was so old her teeth should’ve been long gone, but she had a full set of dull brown teeth that still looked strong enough to bite, strong enough to tear flesh away. Her dark eyes were set deep in her pale and wrinkled face, just black shadows now. She stood next to the wall at the bottom of the basement steps; she reached out towards the wall and scratched at it with her long and yellowed fingernails.
Scratch …
Scratch …
Shane couldn’t breathe. He stood in the basement doorway; his hand holding the flashlight began to tremble uncontrollably, the flashlight beam wavering on the woman.
Then he jumped as a hand settled on his shoulder. He whirled around and stared at Nick.
“You okay, Shane?”
Shane looked at Nick, then at the others—they had gathered closer behind him. They all looked concerned. “Uh, yeah,” he said, his voice thick and dry. “Why?”
“You were standing there for like … like two or three minutes,” Nick said.
Shane felt funny, like he was trapped in some kind of a dream. He felt a little light-headed, like he was close to passing out. Two or three minutes? That couldn’t be right. “I … I don’t remember … two or three minutes?” He looked at the others … at Kristen.
She nodded, and she looked scared.
Shane cleared his throat and turned back to the basement doorway, staring down at the bottom of the steps.
The old woman was gone now.
&nb
sp; She’d never been there, his mind whispered.
He pushed the image of the old woman from his mind and looked back at the others again as he tried to pull himself together.
“You sure you’re okay?” Nick asked Shane.
“Yes, I’m fine,” Shane answered, clearing his dry throat.
“You saw something down there, didn’t you?” Nick challenged.
“No,” Shane answered quickly. “No, it was nothing.” He turned away, not wanting to keep eye contact with Nick or anyone else right now. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t want to tell them what he’d seen, but he just couldn’t bring himself to talk about it. He searched for a light switch inside the doorway, but he didn’t find one. He shined his flashlight beam back down the stairwell. He almost expected to see the ancient woman at the bottom of the steps waiting for him, perhaps climbing them now.
But she wasn’t there.
What was wrong with him? Old Lady Cranston wasn’t here at the Thornhill Manor; she was still haunting the Cranston House, still trapped there inside those walls.
“I’ll go down there first,” Shane told everyone. “Only one at a time on the steps—we don’t know how safe they are yet.”
Shane took the first step down onto the stairs. He still felt unnerved by the vision he’d just seen, but he needed to get himself under control. He was the leader here, the expert. He’d been in many haunted locations since the Cranston House and he had learned over the years to push that childish fear away … hadn’t he?
The steps creaked from Shane’s weight as he ventured farther down the dark stairwell, but each stair step held strong. He worked his way down the steps slowly, playing the flashlight’s beam across the steps in front of him as he went, his heart thudding in his chest.
He got to the bottom and shined the flashlight beam around this area of the basement—stone archways led to many other rooms down here. In this room there were collections of furniture piled up in places; the furniture disappeared into the darkness beyond the strength of his light beam. A lot of the furniture had white sheets covering them which brought back vivid memories of the Cranston House. Boxes, crates, and steamer trunks were stacked up four and five high, some precariously balanced, possible accidents waiting to happen. It seemed to Shane like everything that had ever been in the Thornhill Manor throughout the years was now stored down here in this basement.
