by Amy Cross
I try to cry out, but as the cracks continue to spread I feel as if my body is starting to freeze.
Slowly, I manage to turn and look at the bed, and I see that the ghostly woman is leaning down toward the little girl. More and more flies are crawling all over the girl now.
“Leave her alone,” I whisper, barely able to get any words out at all.
The girl is screaming louder than ever.
“Leave her alone,” I gasp again. “Don't touch her! Don't you dare touch her!”
I try to warn her again, but I'm starting to become breathless and I swear I can feel the cracks spreading through my chest and filling my lungs. For a moment, all I can do is stare in horror as the woman leans closer to the girl, as if she enjoys making her scream.
“Stop” I hiss, finally forcing myself to turn and reach onto the bed. Grabbing the girl, I pull her away and then force myself up, stumbling toward the door with the screaming child in my arms.
Before I've managed even a couple of paces, a large chunk of broken wood shoots up from the floor and slams into the side of my head. I almost duck out of the way in time, but the wood still clatters into me and I almost trip as I hurry out to the landing.
“It's going to be okay,” I stammer, holding the girl tight as I make my way toward the top of the stairs. “You're not -”
Suddenly I cry out as another piece of wood hits my shoulder from behind. I stumble and bump against the wall, but I keep going and finally I start limping down the stairs. The boards are creaking and straining under my feet, and the railing shudders slightly when I try to support myself, but I can see the front door ahead and I know I have to keep going. At the same time, my limbs are becoming stiffer with each and every step, and I'm not sure how much longer I can stay on my feet.
A moment later one of the steps collapses beneath me, but I manage to grip the railing and hold onto the baby at the same time. Stumbling down the last few steps, I reach the hallway and hurry to the door, only to find that it's locked. I try pulling a couple of times, before realizing that I don't have time to break it down. Grabbing an old clock from one of the tables, I turn and throw it at the window, shattering the glass and then immediately starting to climb through.
Stray shards catch my arms and rip the flesh, but I focus on making sure that the baby doesn't get hurt. Once I'm through and out on the other side, I stumble across the grass and limp as quickly as possible toward the gate in the distance. I don't know how long this women can follow us, but hopefully we might be safe as soon as we're off the house's land. My legs almost buckle beneath me several times, causing me to stumble, but somehow I keep going while forcing myself to not look back.
I left the key inside, but it's too late to go back for that now.
When we reach the gate, I clamber over with the baby in my arms and finally I step onto the grass verge at the side of the road. I know we have to keep going, but in a moment of weakness I turn and look back, and to my horror I see the ghostly woman standing just a couple of feet away, on the other side of the gate. As soon as I see her eyes, she leans forward and screams, and I immediately stumble back a few paces until I'm in the middle of the road.
“Leave us alone!” I shout, with tears running down my face. “You can't have her! You'll never have her! Leave my family alone!”
She screams again, but it's clear that she can't leave the property, so I turn and start limping along the pitch-black country road. There are still some flies buzzing around us, as I hold the crying baby closer and whisper to her, telling her that everything is going to be fine. The pain in my limbs and chest is immense, crackling through my body with every step, but I have to keep going and I can see the lights of the town now, a couple of miles ahead. If I can get there, maybe I'll be able to find help and warn people about the house.
I don't know how long I spend walking, but after about an hour I hear a faint rumbling sound nearby, and I turn just in time to see the lights of a car coming up behind me. My legs finally buckle and I drop down onto my knees, clutching the baby. The car's headlights get closer and closer before stopping a few feet away, and a moment later I hear one of the doors opening.
“Are you okay?” a man calls out, hurrying toward us. “What are you doing out here in the middle of the night? I could've hit you!”
“Help!” I stammer, holding the baby out toward him.
He takes the girl, and I immediately slump down against the tarmac. I'm shivering and filled with pain, and I can see scores of thick black veins running through my shaking hands.
“What happened to you?” the man asks. “What the hell's wrong with your skin?”
“Help her!” I gasp, looking at the little girl as she continues to scream in his arms. “I got her away. I don't know how, I don't know why she let us go without more of a fight, but you have to make sure she's okay!”
“What's your name?” the man continues, still holding the girl as he takes his phone from his pocket. “I'll call for help. Can you tell me your name?”
“Hannah,” I try to reply, but I'm shaking so much that the word barely leaves my lips.
“Okay, Hannah, I'm going to call for an ambulance, and I'll call the police too. Is this your baby?”
“She's my...”
For a moment, my throat seems to close entirely, and I can't get any more words out.
“Niece,” I manage finally, as I feel my heart suddenly pounding harder and harder in my chest.
“Okay, and does she have a name?”
“She -”
Before I can finish, I remember a day at Johnny and Louisa's flat several months ago, when they were discussing baby names. They were going to call the child Ashley if it was a boy, but for a moment I don't remember what they'd chosen for a girl. After a few seconds, however, it comes back to me.
“She...”
I watch the girl's crying face for a moment.
“Rosie,” I manage finally, as I feel my thudding heart suddenly come to a halt and stop beating. I'm dead. “Her name is Rosie.”
Part Seven
Today
Rosie
“Rosie!” Toby shouts. “Run! Rosie, you have to get help!”
Staring into the woman's dark, dead eyes, I feel trapped for a moment, as if I can't possibly look away. Finally, however, Toby's continued gasps of pain start shaking me from this inaction, and I look down to see him trying desperately to crawl away.
Reaching down, I grab his arms and start dragging him toward the door, while not daring to look back at the woman. I have no idea what's going on in this house, but I can figure it out once we've made it outside. As soon as I reach the landing, however, I see that the woman is now standing at the far end, blocking my way to the stairs. With panic rushing through my chest, I immediately drag Toby into the nearest room and then slam the door shut, before running around to the other side of a large dresser and pushing it so that the door can't be opened.
“You have to get out of here!” Toby hisses as he tries to sit up, only to slump back down.
“What the hell was that thing?” I ask, dropping onto my knees next to him. As he looks up at me, I see that the maggots are all gone, but that his face is still covered in tiny burrowed holes, most no larger than a pinhead. Reaching out, I run a hand across his cheek, feeling the holes against my fingertips. “Please tell me it was a trick. Please, Toby, tell me you set this all up as some kind of stunt.”
“What are you doing?” he gasps, as I continue to feel the damage to his face.
“Who was that woman?” I ask, pulling my hand away.
“It must be her,” he replies, looking toward the blocked door. “It must be Mary Carmichael. Maybe she's even the one who somehow got the key to me. She's real!”
“Don't lie to me!” I shout.
“Do I seem like I'm lying right now?” he stammers, trying once again to sit up and this time just about managing. At the same time he clutches one side of his chest, as if he's in pain. “I went into the ro
om, and suddenly she was just there,” he explains, still struggling to catch his breath. “I swear to God, I've never felt my heart jump with fear like that before, but when I saw her...”
His voice trails off for a moment, as if he's reliving the moment.
“So many flies and maggots,” he continues. “I could feel them inside me and -”
Suddenly he lets out a cry and starts furiously scratching at his face and chest, trying to rip his shirt away.
“Get them off me!” he screams. “Get them out of me!”
“They're gone!” I shout.
“Help!” he shouts, tearing his t-shirt and starting to dig his fingernails into his bare chest. Tears are rolling down his cheeks now, dribbling into the holes all across his features, and he's starting to sob. “I can feel them!”
“They're gone, Toby!”
Letting out a gasp, he slumps back against the wall and lets his hands fall to the ground. Already, he's managed to scratch thick cuts in his flesh.
“I can feel them,” he whimpers. “I swear to God, I can feel them inside.”
“Please tell me this is a joke,” I say after a moment, still watching the door. “Either you've set it up, or someone else is messing with us, or -”
“That was Mary Carmichael!” he says firmly. “It has to be! All the stories about this place are true, about Mary's ghost haunting Wetherley House. Evil Mary's real!”
“Why?” I ask. “Why would she try to kill us?”
“According to the story, Mary was horribly abused by her mother. She was chained in the basement and -”
“I saw that!” I say suddenly, remembering the words I saw scratched into the wall when I was down in the basement. “She wrote her name hundreds and hundreds of times!”
“She was down there for years,” he continues. “They say that by the time she was found, she was more animal than human. They found traces of human meat in her gut. She'd been beaten and tortured by her own mother for years, except that it turned out that the woman wasn't even her mother at all. Mary had been torn from her real mother's womb and raised by some crazy bitch named Eve Carmichael. And now Mary haunts the place, and she's determined to take every firstborn child in each generation of that family.”
I open my mouth to ask if he's serious, before realizing that the story doesn't make sense.
“Why would she do that?” I ask.
“Because she's insane!”
“I still don't get it,” I continue. “Even if I buy the idea of ghosts, why would someone like Mary come back and try to cause more pain, after she'd been freed? It just seems so cruel and pointless.” I pause for a moment, trying to figure this mess out, as I hear a series of creaks coming from the other side of the door. “Wait, how old was Mary when she died?”
“I don't remember. She was born in 1888 and she died in 1906, so -”
“Eighteen,” I whisper, thinking back to the horrific creature I just saw in the other room. “That woman wasn't eighteen. No way. She was more like eighty!”
“What do you -”
“There might be a ghost here,” I continue, as I feel a strangely fuzzy feeling running through my head, “but I don't think it's...”
My voice trails off as I realize my thoughts are starting to fade away. No matter what I try to think of, it's as if every thought in my head is slowly sinking into the depths of my mind, and other thoughts are starting to take their place. I blink a couple of times, and I swear I can hear loud voices shouting now in the distance and I can smell smoke in the air. I look around, in case something's on fire, and then I slump back against the wall.
“Rosie?” Toby gasps, crawling over to me and placing a hand on my arm. “Are you okay? We have to get out of here.”
“She wants me,” I whisper, as the realization hits me. “I don't know how I know, but I can feel it. She wants...”
The words fade away, and for a moment I don't even remember what I was saying. I have to really struggle to get my thoughts back at all.
“She wants me,” I continue, filled with fear as I realize that some other mind seems to be creeping into my head, like mist rolling across a moor. “Why me?”
No matter how hard I try to fight back, someone else's memories are curling through my mind, and I'm barely aware of the room or the house or Toby anymore. Instead I'm remembering a place I've never been, and sounds I've never heard, and at the same time I can feel a sense of fury rising through my chest.
Anger.
Real anger.
A kind of anger I've never known.
Toby's calling my name, but his voice is echoing in the distance. He's unimportant now.
Instead of being in the house, I'm suddenly outside in a muddy street with rickety wooden buildings all around. Rain is pouring down, splattering into the mud with shocking force, and I'm shivering in soaked clothes as I see angry faces staring at me from nearby windows. From nowhere, I'm filled with a sense of fear that seems to twist out through the veil of anger, as if I know that I'm hated, and finally I stagger back until I bump against the wall of a wooden house.
“Witch!” a voice hisses, and I turn to see a furious woman emerging from a nearby door. Before I can react, she pushes me hard and sends me falling back, and I land hard in the mud. “You're not welcome in my home!” she shouts. “Why don't you do us all a favor and leave this town in peace?”
I want to ask her what I've done, but instead I start screaming at her, warning her that she'll pay for laying a hand on me. The voice isn't mine, yet it's coming from my mouth as I get back onto my feet, and I'm filled with a sense of fury that I've never felt before.
I want to kill her.
I want to kill all of them.
And then everything changes.
Suddenly I'm naked and warm, and I realize I'm in some other room. Torches are burning in metal holders on the walls, and after a moment I find to my horror that I'm riding someone, and I can feel a man inside me. Looking down, I see the leering features of a fat old man staring up at me, and I feel his rough hands reaching up and squeezing my breasts. Except that when I look down in horror, I realize that they're not my breasts at all. Instead, they're large and swollen, with thick red and purple veins running through the pale flesh, and the nipples are large and firm. Looking down at the rest of my naked body, I see that it's the body of an old woman, yet I can feel the man's hands gripping me and tugging on me. Between my legs, his engorged manhood is buried deep inside me. There's no pleasure. Only pain.
“You're a nice young thing, aren't you?” he gasps, spraying white spittle from his lips. “Don't worry, I'll keep you safe. Just so long as you make sure my wife never finds out about this!”
Before I can scream, I hear a door swinging open, and I turn to see several men storming into the room with a group of women right behind them.
“There she is!” one of the women screams, pointing at me. “I told you! She's a witch!”
“Get her off me!” the man shouts from between my thighs, and he pushes me away as he scrambles off the bed. Naked and sweaty, he stumbles toward the door and then turns back to look at me with an expression of pure disgust. “She's hideous!” he yells. “She wasn't like that a moment ago!”
Again, I want to cry out and ask them what's happening, but instead I start laughing. I can't stop, not even when several other men come over and clamp metal shackles around my wrists. They drag me off the bed, not even bothering to cover my naked body as they haul me through the doorway and into the filthy street, where I'm pulled cackling through the mud as crowds jeer at me from all around. I can hear them calling me a whore and a devil and an abomination, but there's one word I hear more than all the others combined, spat at me with vitriol and hatred.
“Witch!”
“She fooled me!” the man from the room shouts, having dressed himself now and hurried out after me. “She changed her appearance! I thought she was my wife!”
“That's what witches do!” another voice yells, and then
that word rises up all around, as if everyone in town is chanting it in unison.
Letting out a cry of pain as I'm dragged through the mud, I twist and try to pull free of the shackles, but their ragged metal edges are already digging deep into my wrinkled flesh. The harder I pull, the more my skin is gouged away, leaving rivers of blood running down as far as my shoulders. I cry out, my voice sounding so old and pained, and all around me the crowd jeers and boos until finally we reach the edge of town and I'm shoved forward. As I land, a boot slams into the back of my neck and forces my face into the mud, and for a moment I think they might be planning to drown me.
When the boot eventually lifts, I roll onto my back and spit out mud, while the crowd continues to yell. A few seconds later rocks start hitting my naked body, and I curl into a ball while covering my face with my hands. Still they pelt me with their rocks and stones, and while some hit and bounce off harmlessly enough, others crack into me and cut my flesh. For several minutes the onslaught builds and builds, until finally a voice calls out and people stop throwing things at me, although one or two rocks still land and I don't dare uncover my face.
“We are not barbarians!” the voice says firmly. “This woman might very well be a witch, but -”
“Witch!” several other voices shouts.
“We are not going to execute her!” the first voice continues. “She'll be cast out of our town, with the mark of a witch upon her back so that no other innocents might be fooled by her. If she tries to ingratiate herself in any other towns, they'll see her for what she is. And that's the end of it!”
A chorus of boos and jeers begins to ring out as I'm hauled from the ground. My arms and legs are so painful, I feel as if I'll never be able to walk again, and I'm dragged quickly through the mud as people continue to yell at me.
And then everything changes again.
All I hear now is the rustle of leaves in a breeze, and I realize after a moment that I'm flat on my back in a ditch, staring up at a blue sky. A moment later I hear footsteps coming closer, and finally a woman steps into view, staring at me with an expression of pure shock.
