Gifted

by Campbell, Jamie

  Her legs grew tired and she slid down to take a seated position on the grass. It was like a soft cushion of vibrant green. She moved her eyes around the fields, the person still could not be seen. He was in her senses though, she could feel his presence in her spine. She tingled with the thought, she wasn’t sure whether she should be excited by him or scared of him. Either way she wished he would reveal himself, it wasn’t fair that he could see her but she couldn’t see him.

  The warmth of the summer day was getting to her, making her sleepy. She laid herself down and stared up at the canopy. Little rays of sunlight danced through the leaves, twinkling like the stars in the night sky. She smiled and closed her eyes, her mind devoid of thoughts for the moment. The breeze caressed her face, a gentle burst of cool air.

  Suddenly, her blissful peace was interrupted. She could feel herself sinking down into the earth. Her eyes sprung open and the man that she had both dreaded and anticipated at the same time was standing over her. He watched as she sunk further and further into the ground. She struggled, trying desperately to get out - to sit up at least. Her body was paralysed, the only thing she could do was grip the dirt underneath her hands. She tried to scream but could only manage a small grunt, the man laughed at her attempt. It made her so angry to see him standing there, slowly getting further and further away, just letting her sink. Why didn’t he do something? For some reason she felt like he should be trying to save her, but he wasn’t. He was just standing by and letting her go.

  The tree was far away now, but the sinking had stopped. She lay there, still unable to move, and watched the man. He knelt down and peered over the side of the chasm. Then, after only a moment of hesitation, he picked up a handful of dirt and let it slip between his fingers down the hole. It landed on Charlie’s stomach. He repeated the action, again and again.

  Charlie suddenly realised what was happened, she was being buried alive. She struggled to move, she wanted so badly to stand and be able to get back up out of the hole. If she stood on her tip-toes she might be able to reach the top. Still, the dirt kept falling over her body. Handful by handful, she was being covered. Soon, she saw her legs were gone, buried underneath the black earth. Then her abdomen, her chest, and before she knew it, dirt was in her nose and hair. She could feel the grittiness in her eyes, she had tried to close them but they wouldn’t abide. All she could see was darkness, all she could hear was dead silence.

  The weight of the soil was starting to bear down on her, it was becoming difficult to breath. With every inhalation her lungs were being filled not with life-giving oxygen, but with dirt. She coughed but it only let in more soil. She could feel her head getting light, it was starved of air. She felt herself slipping into nothingness. She wriggled, trying desperately to get air, she fought against the heavy weight on her body. It didn’t work, she slipped into the blackness.

  * * *

  Charlie became aware of a voice telling her to wake up, that she was only dreaming. She didn’t believe it at first but it was persistent. Then she recognised it as belonging to Blair and trusted him. She opened her eyes, half expecting that she would see nothing but black soil. But instead, she saw her boyfriend looking at her with concern in his eyes. She looked around, she was in her comfy bed in the blue room - not underneath a tree outside. She breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Are you alright? You were thrashing about, it woke me up.”

  Her mouth was dry, she licked her lips before she could speak. “Another bad dream, that’s all. Sorry to wake you.”

  “Another one?”

  “Yeah. Is it cold in here, or is it just me?” She pulled the blanket over her chest.

  “No, it’s cold. See the windows? They’re frosted over. How that happens in the middle of summer is beyond me.”

  Charlie craned her neck to look at the windows, they were indeed covered in a white frost. It didn’t surprise her, the temperature in the room was far colder than it should have been. She had experienced that kind of coldness only days before in another one of her dreams.

  “It’ll warm up again soon.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because it always does once the dream is over.”

  Blair looked at her curiously, unsure whether he should probe the statement any further. He decided against it, she had been through enough already that night. He lay back down beside her and held her until they fell back into sleep.

  Chapter 7

  The library opened promptly at 8:30 a.m. Blair and Charlie were standing outside the doors waiting for that very moment. They only had twenty minutes before they had to leave for their meeting with Harold. It didn’t give them much time to locate the website of the Department of Commonwealth Development, print off an application form, and put it in the post. At the very least, hopefully they would be able to print off the form. It would be a start anyway.

  The opening time ticked by. Brenda unlocked the door and gave them a curious look, obviously not used to having such eager patrons at the public library.

  “Good morning. Back for more research?” She smiled and stood back, holding the door so they could enter.

  “We are. Mind if we use the computer?”

  “Not at all, go for it. You know where I’ll be if you need me.”

  They found their way to the computer and waited for it to boot up. Their first stop was Google where they quickly found the address of the website. They negotiated their way around the various forms until they found the one they were looking for. Charlie pressed the print icon and the printer whirled to life beside them. After a few minutes of watching the paper move perilously slow through the cartridges, they had their form.

  They thanked Brenda and paid for the printing before going to the post office to pick up an envelope and stamp. At least they would have time to complete the application form on the drive to Harold’s place. It was a good forty minute drive to Calliton and then they would have to find his house without a local map.

  While Blair drove, Charlie took out a pen and started on the form. It was straightforward as far as government applications go. She wrote down the full address of Sage Manor, ticked a few boxes and signed the back. She re-read through to make sure nothing was missed and slid the form into the envelope. With that done, she sat back and enjoyed the views of the countryside as it sped by. They passed a post box as they entered the town, Blair pulled over so Charlie could run out and post the application form.

  Further down the road was a tourist park with the town map standing proudly at the entrance. They stopped to track down Harold Munroe’s street and worked out how to get there. It was only three blocks down the road, they found it easily after seeing the map.

  The house was a modest sized four bedroom red brick and tile home. As nice as it was, it was definitely a step down in the world from Sage Manor. ‘He must have really taken a loss on the property,’ Charlie thought to herself.

  They knocked on the door and heard shuffling footsteps soon after. They were greeted by a man in his late seventies. He had greying hair and a matching beard. His striking green eyes were framed by deep wrinkles, far in excess of his years. Charlie stood there a moment trying to take him all in. He would have been a gorgeous man in his younger years. Those eyes would have captivated every woman he graced with a smouldering glance. He was tall too, tall enough to sweep you off your feet at any moment in time. Add to that family wealth and he would have been quite a catch.

  Blair pulled Charlie out of her imagination just in time. She was certain that drool was starting to edge over her lips.

  “Mr Munroe?” Blair addressed the man.

  “That’s me,” he extended his hand to Charlie, ignoring Blair. “You must be Charlie. May I say, even more beautiful in person than over the phone.”

  Despite herself, she blushed as she took his hand.

  “Mr Munroe...” She started.

  “Please, call me Harold,” he interrupted.

  “Harold, thank you for seeing us,”
she remembered Blair standing beside her. “This is my friend Blair.”

  “Her boyfriend, Blair,” Blair smiled a fake grin at the man and shook his hand.

  “It’s nice to meet you both. Please, come in and take a seat. I’m curious about what you want to ask me. It’s not every day I get a call from a beautiful young woman who wants to talk about a place I used to live in. It was quite a surprise.”

  They were ushered into the living room and seated on a plush blue leather lounge. Harold served some cold water with fresh lemons floating on top before resuming their conversation. Blair sat back and pulled out his notebook, he waited to let Charlie start with the questioning. He figured he was probably as invisible as he felt anyway.

  “You sold Sage Manor to my sister back in 2006?”

  “I did. Unfortunately it was a bit run down at the time, but she got a good deal.”

  “Your parents bought the Manor in 1948 and you moved in years later when they retired?”

  “Correct, you’ve done your research then.”

  “I also heard that you were a bit of a party animal. You must have had some wild times there.”

  The old man’s eyes lit up. “We sure did. It was the perfect venue for a rockin’ party. There were definitely some good times had there. What has your sister done with the place?”

  “She’s turned it back into a family home. She lives there with her little daughter. Not so much partying goes on there these days.”

  “It should be a family home. It was built as one. To tell you the truth, I would have preferred to raise a family there. The universe had other ideas for me though,” he winked his left eye.

  “What do you mean? You just never found Miss Right? I find that hard to believe.”

  “I found Miss Right a few times but that house had other ideas.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” Charlie said, confused.

  “Have you spent much time at the Manor?”

  “A couple of weeks. Blair and I are staying there to help my sister renovate the place.”

  “Then you will know what I’m talking about. That house doesn’t like women. Any woman I had stay there for more than a night would be too terrified to stay any longer. They would say there was something there that gave them the creeps. Once, I had a lady friend over for a weekend. She only lasted the one afternoon because something had tried to choke her. She was a nurse too, not some weirdo crazy woman.”

  “Did you ever experience anything yourself?”

  Harold sat back in his chair and thought for a few moments. “Many a time. I never felt threatened though. Nothing tried to choke me, if that’s what you mean. Occasionally I’d hear footsteps, doors closing shut by themselves, that kind of thing. You’re probably thinking I’m off my rocker.”

  “Not at all. We’ve been having some strange things happen to us too. That’s really why we’re looking into the history of the house. Do you know if there was a murder there?”

  “I haven’t heard of a murder before. It wouldn’t surprise me though. There is so much going on in that house that you can’t see. I think it’s what made my parents take an early retirement to the nursing home.”

  “I heard they were struggling to keep up with the maintenance, that’s why they moved out.”

  “That’s the ‘official’ story. Mum and Dad were proud people. If they had been telling everyone it was because of ghosts, they would have been humiliated. The truth is they were never settled there. Ever since they moved in they had been at each other’s throats. They had been married for forty years before and never said a cross word. Six months in Sage Manor and they wanted to kill each other.”

  Charlie was reminded of the fight she had with Blair a few days earlier. She hoped it was just a coincidence. “What makes you think it was ghosts making them fight?”

  “It was like they weren’t themselves. They did a complete turnaround from what they were like before the move. That’s not what made me think it was ghosts though. Strange things kept happening. Electricity would just go off for no reason, sometimes the radio would change stations. It was just one thing after another. Plus, they were elderly people. Have a few things happen and they think they are losing their minds.”

  “Did they ever lose something, only to have it reappear right back where it should have been in the first place?”

  “All the time. I was watching a television show about the paranormal one day. They had a term for it, they said it was quite common. They called it ‘enveloping’. The sprit, or whatever the hell it is, would place an invisible envelope over the object only to remove it later on. Can you imagine what that would do the mind of an old person? They were already worried about dementia because it ran in both sides of the families.” Harold had lost the sparkle in his eye and was speaking as if the memories were difficult to talk about.

  “I can imagine. It happened to me and I thought I was going crazy,” Charlie remembered her search for the paint brushes. “Did your mother ever have trouble specifically? You said the house didn’t like women in particular.”

  “She suffered the brunt of the experiences. In the end they decided it would just be better to move into a nursing home and hand the house over to me. It was a blessing and a curse at the same time. I didn’t really want to live there. The country wasn’t my scene back then. But, I’d fallen on some bad times and made some really bad decisions so I didn’t have a choice. I’d only been there for a few weeks when it all started happening. My lady guests were telling me about things they’d experienced there. At first I would just laugh it off, the alcohol was free flowing so you usually hear some bizarre things,” he paused until Charlie nodded in agreement. “It wasn’t long before I realised all the stories were sounding similar. They would go into the powder room downstairs, the only room where they were truly alone, and the room would fill with a black haze. They would finish their business and run out pretty quickly. It got so bad that I would lock the door to that room when I was having guests over and tell them to use the upstairs one.”

  “It didn’t happen upstairs?”

  “Not as frequently. It was getting hard to get women to attend my parties in the end. Women talk, you know. Soon, the house was getting a reputation amongst them. That’s when I realised I needed to move. I woke up one day and I was seventy years old and alone.”

  An uncomfortable silence filled the room. Charlie grappled for something to say to fill the void. “You said one of the women felt like she was being choked?”

  “She did. She was upstairs in the end room, we used it as a games room. There was a pool table in there, along with a card table. The boys and I would play high-stakes poker in there every fortnight. Anyway I digress, she was waiting in there while I went to get us some drinks. When I came back she was on the floor gasping for breath. I asked her what had happened and she just said someone tried to choke her. I believed her too, she had these red marks all around her neck. I’m no detective but they sure looked like hand marks to me. She left straight away and I never heard from her again. It’s a pity, she was a good looking woman. Smart too, I appreciate brains in a woman.”

  “It must have been scary. Do you know anything about the history of the house? Why it would be haunted?”

  “I know that a Lord and Lady used to live there. They apparently built the manor. They must have been okay in the house. If you go down to the oak tree at the back of the property you can see their initials carved into the tree. I used to take women there, they would think it was sweet.”

  “I’ll make sure to have a look.”

  “Sorry I can’t be of much more use with the history side of things. It never really was my strong point. I always prefer to look towards the future than worry about the past. At least the future can be changed.”

  “That’s okay, every piece of information is useful in some way. Thank you so much for your time today. I must say that it was a pleasure meeting you and hearing your stories.” Charlie looked at Blair, he saw
his cue and put the notebook back in his pocket.

  “The pleasure was all mine,” he shook Charlie’s hand again and looked directly at Blair. “You have a good woman here, don’t let her go or you’ll regret it. Believe me, hang on to those you love. Even if you have to use handcuffs and rope.”

  Blair laughed awkwardly at the comment and shook Harold’s hand. They were guided back to the front door and waved down to their car. They got in and turned back onto the road, heading in the direction of Pickerton. They waited until they were back on the main street before speaking again.

  “Seems like old Harold had a few ghosts’ stories to tell,” Blair commented.

  “He did indeed. He reminded me of one of those creepy old men in horror movies. You know, the ones that always come out of the fog with a warning and a lantern. Except, he wasn’t creepy.”

  “I know what you mean. You seemed to like him enough.”

  “He was a nice old man. Don’t worry, honey, you are still my number one,” she joked.

  By the time they had stopped for a late snack along the way, it was almost dark by the time they arrived back at Sage Manor. Rahni was helping Cate in the kitchen with dinner. On the night’s menu were chicken rissoles with vegetables and gravy. Rahni was happily making the rissoles into flat cakes with her hands and watching them cook in the frying pan. They sat down to eat together within the hour.

  “So, Rahni, how was your day?” Charlie asked, trying to get her niece to join in the conversation.