The Ghost of Longthorn Manor and Other Stories

by Amy Cross

  Jason takes out a set of syringes.

  “No!” I scream, looking toward the door. “Hannah! David! Somebody help me!”

  “Your story has to end not with death,” John continues, “but with a very simple image. A woman holding a book. Or perhaps one of those new-fangled e-book readers. I haven't decided yet.”

  “I'll kill you!” I shout, pulling hard on the ropes, ignoring the sensation of them rubbing through the flesh around my wrists. “Bring Hannah back! I want to see my daughter!”

  “That isn't going to be possible,” he says calmly. “In fact, after tonight, you won't remember any of this. I still have so much money left over from my Hollywood sales. I'm going to fund an entirely new identity for you, Beth. A new name, a new face, a new family, even new memories. I've already arranged the basics, thanks to my good friend Mr. Jason Hodges here, and now you're going to spend a year, perhaps two, undergoing a kind of conversion therapy. It might sound outlandish, like something from a potboiler thriller, but I've been assured that it's more than possible. By the end of it, you won't remember me, you won't remember Hannah or David, you won't remember Jacqui or Jason or anyone from your current life. You won't even remember having the name Beth.”

  “You're insane!” I sob.

  “I'll still be writing your life, though,” he continues. “I haven't decided upon the details yet, but it'll be a fresh beginning for you. A blank canvas. I already have a few basic ideas.”

  “You can't be serious!” I shout. “You can't seriously believe this is real! You're deluded!”

  “I'm ready,” Jason tells him, briefly making eye contact with me but quickly looking away. It's as if he can't actually look at me.

  “You won't remember any of this,” John tells me, as Jason comes closer with the syringe. “I'm going to turn everything that has happened to you so far into a book. A horror novel, or perhaps a novella. A long short story, even. I'll only know for certain once I've started writing. It'll be about a woman who loses her family in a car crash, and who then has them come back to haunt her. I was originally planning to have it end with a big melodramatic scene where you face the ghosts, but instead I think I'd rather include this ending. I'll write it in the first-person, from your point of view. I'll have to change a few details, of course, but I'll keep the story the same. I think perhaps I'll call it The Puppet Master. Or is that too dramatic? Maybe something simpler, like The Author or...”

  He hesitates, and then slowly a faint smile crosses his lips.

  “Or The Writer,” he adds finally. “Yes, I like that title better. A short story titled The Writer, perhaps placed at the end of a collection of other short stories.”

  “No!” I hiss, trying to pull away as Jason steps behind me. “You can't be serious!”

  “And do you know the best part?” John asks. “The truly cruel final flourish? I'm going to wait a while, but eventually, once your new life has been established for a while and you've accepted the actors who play your so-called friends and family, I'm going to make sure that a copy of The Writer ends up in your hands. You'll read the story, and you'll think it's some kind of lurid, melodramatic tale that couldn't possibly be true. You'll laugh it off. Maybe once you've put it down, you'll briefly wonder if it could be pulled off, if someone like me could do something like this to someone like you. You'll wonder whether the protagonist in the novel, who I think I'll call Beth, could actually be you. And then you'll dismiss the idea as an absurd and outlandish fantasy. You'll roll your eyes and move on to read something else. But I'll be there somewhere in your life, playing a new role, still writing a story for you. Plotting some fresh horror.”

  “No!” I scream. “You're not -”

  Before I can finish, I feel a needle sliding into the side of my neck. I let out a gasp, but I'm already starting to become light-headed, and a moment later I feel the needle being pulled out.

  “We need to move fast,” Jason says, his voice echoing around my head. “I want to get her to the operating theater before sunrise.”

  “No,” I groan, even as my heavy head falls forward and I feel myself slumping in the chair. “This isn't real. It can't be real.”

  The last thing I feel, as I slip into unconsciousness, is John kissing the top of my head. I can tell that it's him because of the cologne. And the last thing I hear is his voice.

  “When you wake up,” he tells me, “you'll be a whole new person. You won't remember any of this. You'll read about it, though, in a short story called The Writer. And you'll laugh it off, because you'll tell yourself it couldn't possibly be true. That the person in that story you're finishing right now, at this very moment, couldn't possibly be you.”

  Also by Amy Cross

  PERFECT LITTLE MONSTERS

  AND OTHER STORIES

  A husband waits until his wife and children are in bed, before inviting a dangerous man into their home...

  A girl keeps hold of her mother's necklace, as bloodied hands try to tear it from her grasp...

  A gun jams, even as its intended victim begs the universe to let her die...

  Perfect Little Monsters and Other Stories is a collection of short stories by Amy Cross. Some of the stories take place in seemingly ordinary towns, whose inhabitants soon discover something truly shocking lurking beneath the veneer of peace and calm. Others show glimpses of vast, barbaric worlds where deadly forces gather to toy with humanity. All the stories in this collection peel back the face of a nightmare, revealing the horror that awaits. And in every one of the stories, some kind of monster lurks...

  Perfect Little Monsters and Other Stories contains the new stories Perfect Little Monsters, I Hate You, Meat, Fifty Fifty and Stay Up Late, as well as a revised version of the previously-released story The Scream. This book contains scenes of violence, as well as strong language.

  Also by Amy Cross

  THE BRIDE OF ASHBYRN HOUSE

  “I have waited so long for your return.”

  In the English countryside, miles from the nearest town, there stands an old stone house. Nobody has set foot in the house for years. Nobody has dared. For it is said that even though the lady of the house is long dead, a face can sometimes be seen at one of the windows. A pale, dead face that waits patiently behind a silk wedding veil.

  Seeking an escape from his life in London, Owen Stone purchases Ashbyrn House without waiting to find out about its history. As far as Owen is concerned, ghosts aren't real and his only company in the house will be the thin-legged spiders that lurk on the walls. Even after he moves in, and after he starts hearing strange noises in the night, Owen insists that Ashbyrn House can't possibly be haunted.

  But Owen knows nothing about the ghostly figure that is said to haunt the house. Or about the mysterious church bells that ring out across the lawn at night. Or about the terrible fate that befell the house's previous inhabitants when they dared defy the bride. Even as Owen starts to understand the horrific truth about Ashbyrn House's past, he might be too late to escape the clutches of the presence that watches his every move.

  The Bride of Ashbyrn House is a ghost story about a man who believes the past can't hurt him, and about a woman whose search for a husband has survived even her own tragic death.

  Also by Amy Cross

  THE BODY AT AUERCLIFF

  “We'll bury her so deep, even her ghost will have a mouth full of dirt!”

  When Rebecca Wallace arrives at Auercliff to check on her aged aunt, she's in for a shock. Her aunt's mind is crumbling, and the old woman refuses to let Rebecca stay overnight. And just as she thinks she's starting to understand the truth, Rebecca makes a horrifying discovery in one of the house's many spare rooms.

  A dead body. A woman. Old and rotten. And her aunt insists she has no idea where it came from.

  The truth lies buried in the past. For generations, the occupants of Auercliff have been tormented by the repercussions of a horrific secret. And somehow everything seems to be centered upon the mausoleum in the house's groun
d, where every member of the family is entombed once they die.

  Whose body was left to rot in one of the house's rooms? Why have successive generations of the family been plagued by a persistent scratching sound? And what really happened to Rebecca many years ago, when she found herself locked inside the Auercliff mausoleum?

  The Body at Auercliff is a horror story about a family and a house, and about the refusal of the past to stay buried.

  Also by Amy Cross

  THE GHOST OF SHAPLEY HALL

  “Georgette Shapley died outside this house. Her ghost has spent the past century trying to get back inside so she can be reunited with her child.”

  James Spence doesn't believe in ghosts, so he has no worries about going with his girlfriend Rachel to visit an old, abandoned country home.

  Rachel, meanwhile, is convinced that a weekend at Shapley Hall will make James change his mind. After all, she knows from bitter experience that the the house is haunted by a woman who once died in the most horrific manner possible, and who now waits to be reunited with her long-lost child.

  As the weekend continues, however, James starts to realize that maybe ghosts are the least of his problems. Rachel's behavior is becoming increasingly erratic, and it soon becomes clear that she'll stop at nothing to fulfill a promise she once made to a dead woman. Did Rachel imagine a terrifying experience during her childhood, or are the hallways of Shapley Hall really haunted by a terrifying, vengeful creature?

  The Ghost of Shapley Hall is a horror story about two people who venture into a dark, abandoned house, and about the echo of a terrible crime that still haunts the Shapley family to this day.

  OTHER BOOKS

  BY AMY CROSS INCLUDE

  Horror

  The Bride of Ashbyrn House

  The Body at Auercliff

  B&B

  Asylum

  Meds (Asylum 2)

  Annie's Room

  The Farm

  The Haunting of Blackwych Grange

  The Devil, the Witch and the Whore (The Deal book 1)

  Perfect Little Monsters and Other Stories

  Twisted Little Things and Other Stories

  The Disappearance of Katie Wren

  The Horror of Devil's Root Lake

  The Ghosts of Lakeforth Hotel

  The Printer From Hell

  The Nurse

  American Coven

  Eli's Town

  The Night Girl

  Devil's Briar

  The Cabin

  After the Cabin

  Last Wrong Turn

  At the Edge of the Forest

  The Devil's Hand

  The Ghost of Shapley Hall

  The Death of Addie Gray

  A House in London

  The Blood House

  The Priest Hole (Nykolas Freeman book 1)

  Battlefield (Nykolas Freeman book 2)

  The Border

  The Lighthouse

  3AM

  Tenderling

  The Girl Clay

  The Prison

  Ward Z

  The Devil's Photographer

  Thriller

  The Girl Who Never Came Back

  Other People's Bodies

  Dystopia / Science Fiction

  The Dog

  The Island (The Island book 1)

  Persona (The Island book 2)