by Cindy Winget
“What about the knocking?”
“What about it?”
“You mentioned the library, when I would have assumed you would be more frightened by the incident we went through last night.”
“Well, to be honest, it was quite exhilarating!” Eleanor allowed a small giggle to escape her lips, her cheeks flushing. “I’ve read of adventures in books my entire life, but I’ve never been a part of one. It’s the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me.”
“I never thought of it that way,” Theo responded.
“I’m happy to be here with you, Theo,” Eleanor said. She felt her entire face turning red at the admission. “You’re a person I would like to get to know better, but I’m not good at social interaction.”
“I think you do just fine.” Theo smiled.
“What are you ladies doing out here? It’s cold and it will be dark soon,” warned the voice of Dr. Montague from the house. “Come inside.”
Theo turned to Eleanor. “I guess our little foray into nature was short-lived. Dad’s calling,” she said. Her expression turned apprehensive. “I wish we could stay out here a little longer. The house makes me feel so claustrophobic.”
“Me too!” Eleanor exclaimed, feeling a small kinship with Theo.
As they stumbled up the steps to the verandah, Eleanor turned back toward the flower-strewn hill, looking forward to spending time with Theo on the idyllic spot. To her amazement, she found a young family already picnicking there. A man and his wife sat upon a checkered blanket, reaching into a wicker basket full of food while their three young children ran screaming and playing about them. The two older children played a game of tag while the youngest chased a butterfly.
“Look!” Eleanor implored Theo and Dr. Montague. They turned their gazes to where Eleanor indicated but saw nothing.
“What am I supposed to be looking at?” asked Dr. Montague.
Eleanor turned back and saw that the scene had disappeared, leaving behind nothing but the hill as it had been, empty of any life except for the flowers and patches of grass. “I could have sworn I saw something.”
“What did you see?” Dr. Montague inquired.
Eleanor remained silent for a few seconds. She knew that she should tell him what she had seen. She was being paid, after all, to inform him of every and all supernatural phenomenon she came across. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. The moment seemed too private. Too sacred. A frozen memory of family bliss, and she was loath to cheapen it by divulging it to a stranger.
“Nothing,” she said. “It was nothing.”
Chapter Eleven
It was a beautiful spring day, and the two kids had been plagued by cabin fever for months. The sun was shining, beckoning them to the lake behind their house. The sunshine glinting off the water hurt their eyes if they looked directly at it. They heard birds twittering merrily in the treetops and chipmunks chattering as they searched for nuts.
“Come on, Theo, jump in!” yelled the boy, who was already in the lake. He used one hand to shade his face while treading water with the other, waiting for her to join him.
“Coming!” Without hesitation, Theo ran to the end of the dock and jumped into the lake, cannonball style. A huge deluge of water splashed up and came crashing down around her as she broke the surface. The water was still frigid, having thawed only a month before, but Theo loved it. She floated on her back, drifting in the small eddies created by her cannonball. Her blue and white polka-dot bathing suit swelled a bit with trapped bubbles, tickling her skin. She giggled at the sensation. Keeping her eyes closed, she enjoyed the feel of the warm sun on her face and arms.
She wished her brother wouldn’t splash so much and make so much noise. It was a buzzkill to her serenity. She lay there for another ten seconds before opening her eyes and raising her head, preparing to yell at her brother to “knock it off!”
What met her gaze sent a shiver of terror through her young heart. She caught a glimpse of her brother just before his head was submerged. A cascade of bubbles rose up from the spot where he had gone under. Theo frantically swam in his direction. If this was some kind of sick joke, she would make him pay.
But it wasn’t a joke. He wasn’t coming back up.
Theo dove and searched the murky water for her brother. Nothing. She couldn’t understand what had happened. He was a good swimmer. The two of them swam in this lake every year. She took long strokes back up to the surface, drew in a large gulp of air, and dove once more.
There! She caught a hold of his swimming trunks. Kicking her legs, she tried to haul him up, but he was stuck on something. She tried desperately to free him. Whatever it was finally snapped, and she was able to get him up to the surface. Gasping for air, Theo lugged him to the side of the lake and dragged him onto the rocky ground.
He wasn’t breathing.
“Help!” she called out. “Help me! Mom! Dad!”
A few seconds later, her parents came running out of the house. Her mother reached her first. “What happened?” she shrieked.
“I don’t know. Michael went under. I don’t think he’s breathing,” Theo cried.
“Move!” commanded her father as he reached them. He turned Michael’s head to the side and began to press down on his stomach.
“What are you doing?” asked Mother.
“Trying to see if I can get the water out of Michael’s body,” Father replied.
His hands looked so large. Theo focused on them as they tried to bring back her brother.
Theo frowned in her sleep. The scene in her mind began to shift and change. She was no longer at the lake by her home. In fact, she and her family had disappeared entirely from the dream.
Such beauty. He could stare at his lovely Ligeia all day long. It was strange, he couldn’t recall how they had met exactly, only that it was by the Rhine River. He didn’t know her last name or family history or what her likes or dislikes were. He only knew that he loved her and that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, with long black hair that nearly swept the ground and piercing green eyes set in a pale face.
Not only beauty. Oh no, there was something else about her that called to his young soul. She carried herself with such grace. The grace of a queen. She was passionate and did everything with an intensity that both baffled and amazed him. She was also intelligent, unmatched by any other woman.
Theo turned her head on her pillow.
Gone now, all of that vitality of spirit, all those beautiful smiles, her regal stance. All gone. She is wilted now, like a rose plucked from a rosebush, once beautiful but its life cut short by the devilment of man. His Ligeia had fallen ill.
Sitting down by her bedside, he could see that she would soon leave him. Tonight, death would claim her. His heart ached and his lungs constricted, making it hard to breathe.
“Read me a poem,” she implored him from pale lips.
“Yes, my darling. Which one?”
“The Conqueror Worm.”
He should have known, it being a poem that she had just finished writing the other day. He began with a strong voice, telling of the conqueror worm’s triumph over man, but faltered toward the end, his voice thickening with emotion. This was the last time he would ever read his dear wife a poem. When he had finished, his lovely Ligeia smiled, closed her eyes, and was gone.
Theo rolled over. The bedroom morphed into the tower of an old abbey.
She is nothing like my Ligeia, he thought morosely as he stared at his second wife, the Lady Rowena Trevanion of Tremaine. He winced as Lady Rowena picked up a golden handled brush—a family heirloom left over from Ligeia’s inheritance—and began combing out her golden hair, so unlike Ligeia’s raven tresses. Beautiful in her own right, it was true, but Rowena was not nearly as intelligent or passionate as his late wife.
Taking another puff on his opium pipe, he contemplated how this was the only way he could make it through the day without his Ligeia. They had only been married for two months, and a
lready he was sick of the Lady Rowena and her vapid coquettish ways.
Theo’s eyes roved about under her closed eyelids.
Time passed and he grew more and more disenchanted with his current wife. In time, she had fallen ill. The illness was hauntingly similar to his dear Ligeia’s, but try as he may, he just couldn’t muster up the same empathy he had felt for his first wife. Instead, he found it tedious trying to nurse her back to health.
“There! They’re right there!” shrieked Lady Rowena, pointing across the room from where she lay in her canopy bed.
“Where? I don’t see anything,” he told her.
“How can you not? They’re everywhere!”
“It’s the fever, darling,” he explained. “You are hallucinating.”
“Don’t tell me I am seeing things! I’m not crazy! The squirrels are right there!”
He walked to a small table and grabbed a decanter and glass. “Here, my sweet, have a glass of wine. It will calm your nerves.” He poured a good-sized portion into the long-stemmed glass and handed it to his wife.
As he stepped back, a strange sensation took hold of him. He could feel an invisible presence in the room with them. Something caught his eye, and with a small turn of his head, he perceived a faint shadow upon the carpet. Perhaps he was also delirious and having hallucinations. He was high on opium, after all.
Soon he could hear footsteps traipsing their way toward the bed where his wife reposed, taking sips of her wine. Three red drops fell into Lady Rowena’s drink.
What was going on?
Rowena took another sip of the wine and fainted dead away, never to be revived. He felt at a loss for what to do and tried to stimulate her stopped heart, but without any success. He closed Lady Rowena’s eyelids and pulled the sheet up over her head. For a long while he sat at her bedside, recalling the death of his first wife, Ligeia.
As the clock chimed midnight, he thought he heard a small moan from the shrouded body upon the bed. He folded down the sheet and was shocked to see that a bit of color had returned to Rowena’s cheeks and lips.
She is still alive!
But no. She was no longer breathing. He tried once again to revive her but to no avail. Soon she looked worse than ever. In despair, he pulled the sheet back over her. His thoughts turned once again to Ligeia. The wife whose death he truly mourned.
Was that a cry?
He looked to the bed and saw that the sheet was slightly lifting about the mouth as the body upon it exhaled. The sheet began to rise as the former corpse sat up, the sheet falling away, revealing, not the golden tresses of Lady Rowena, but rather, the curly raven hair of his dear Ligeia. She opened her green eyes and looked at him.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Theo sat up in bed, pulled from her dream by a foreign sound.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
She groaned. Not again!
Theo gasped as her doorknob began to turn. Was the dark presence trying to enter her room? She was going to start locking her bedroom door at night. She could barely perceive the door through the moonlight filtering in from the window. Just as Theo reached over and turned on the lamp upon her bedside table, the door swung open. Theo was prepared to scream when Eleanor came barreling into the room. She shut the door behind her and leaped onto the bed.
“It’s back!” Eleanor cried in sheer terror, her brown eyes filling with tears.
“It’s okay,” Theo reassured her. “You can stay here tonight. After all, I was the one that invaded your room last night.”
Knock. Knock. Knock.
The girls stopped talking and turned their attention back toward the door. Once again, the doorknob began to turn. Theo’s heart raced as she told herself it was probably just Luke or Dr. Montague coming to check on her. The doorknob turned first one way and then the other, but the door remained shut.
“Did you lock the door when you came in?” whispered Theo.
Eleanor shook her head.
Why couldn’t Luke or the doctor get in?
Boom. Boom. Boom.
The knocking was so loud this time that both girls’ hands flew to cover their ears. Girlish laughter invaded the space, just as it had the night before. Theo could feel Eleanor quaking beside her. She put her arm around the poor girl’s shoulders, feeling like a mother comforting her child, despite the fact that Eleanor was older than her.
The laughter choked off in a painful gasp as though the child had just been struck. Terrible weeping replaced the phantom laughter, and the voice of a young girl begged not to be hurt anymore. Her tone was so hauntingly sad and frightened that Theo’s own eyes filled with tears.
“Stop it!” Eleanor screamed.
The lamp light blinked out, plunging the room into darkness. The squealing of the doorknob handle turning resumed.
“What should we do?” Eleanor asked.
“I don’t know,” Theo admitted.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
The abruptness of the knocking caused both girls to shriek. Theo, feeling a bit foolish for screaming as she had, tried to calm Eleanor. “Whatever is out there doesn’t seem to be able to get into the room.”
As though to contradict her words, the door swung swiftly open, admitting Luke into the room. “Are you two alright? I heard screaming.”
“Yes. We’re fine,” Theo told him in relief. “The knocking just frightened us.”
“Knocking?”
“Yes. Didn’t you hear it?”
“No.”
Dr. Montague stepped into the room. “How is everyone? What happened?”
“There was knocking,” said Theo. “Same as last night. It was back. Didn’t you hear anything?”
“No. I found Luke wandering around the halls, and we both heard you girls screaming.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” explained Luke.
“There was a girl,” Eleanor stated.
“Pardon?” Dr. Montague turned to her.
“Theo and I heard a little girl. She was being hurt. It was awful!” She burst into tears, and Theo once again wrapped her arm around Eleanor’s trembling shoulders.
“It wasn’t real,” Theo reassured her.
“It was!” Eleanor choked out. “Maybe not in the present, but if it was a ghost, then what if she was acting out some terrible scene from her previous life?”
“It’s possible,” mused Dr. Montague. “In my research, I have read about how ghosts can become trapped in a time loop where they act out their death over and over again for eternity.” Theo glared at him. He didn’t appear to notice. “I don’t know of any little girls who died on the property, though,” he added.
“Maybe she didn’t die here, but the abusive behavior was so traumatic that it left an imprint,” ventured Luke.
“It could happen, I suppose,” conceded Dr. Montague. “I haven’t heard of anything like that before, but you never know. These two rooms seem to have quite a bit of paranormal activity to them. I’m going to put you up in different rooms.”
“Can we share a room?” pleaded Eleanor.
Dr. Montague looked perplexed. “If you insist.”
“I do!” Eleanor said, grabbing Theo’s hand.
Theo began to protest. “I don’t know, El—”
“Please!” cried Eleanor. “I’ll be so frightened sleeping by myself.”
“Oh, alright,” Theo consented.
“Thank you! I won’t be a bother, I promise!”
“Well, today is sure off with a bang,” Dr. Montague said with a smile, clearly excited to have more evidence of the paranormal. “Why don’t you all go down for breakfast and I’ll meet you there later. I’m going to take some pictures while the iron is still hot, so to speak.”
Chapter Twelve
Dr. Montague gripped the single lens camera tightly in both hands. He had just finished taking pictures of the hallway and both girls’ bedrooms. It was a shame that he would have to wait until he got back from his experiment to see if the camera had picked up on anything.
He sighed in frustration.
All he could do now was wait. Perhaps he would come take some more photographs at night. That seemed to be when these events always took place.
On his way to join the others for breakfast, Dr. Montague detoured down to Valdemar’s room to check on him. He was beginning to be quite worried for his friend, having half a mind to send the man home. He obviously wasn’t well.
Even knowing this, Dr. Montague was shocked by what he saw upon entering the bedroom. Valdemar’s eyes were bright and his cheeks rosy with fever.
“Oh, Valdemar! You shouldn’t have come if you had the flu! Or did you not know you were ill until you arrived?”
“I knew.”
“Then why on earth did you come here? You could get my assistants sick and ruin my experiment,” Dr. Montague said a bit testily.
Before Valdemar could reply, great wracking coughs shook his frail body. He reached for a handkerchief on his bedside table and covered his mouth as the coughing continued. It came away with a wet lurid redness. Blood. Valdemar folded the handkerchief and wiped at his sweaty forehead.
His friend was a lot sicker than Dr. Montague had originally believed.
“What’s going on?” Dr. Montague asked.
“I’m fine. A few days of rest and some medication and I’ll be right as rain.”
“I can tell when you’re lying.”
Valdemar sat silently for a moment before confessing, “I’m dying.”
“Dying!?” Dr. Montague said in alarm.
Valdemar nodded. “Tuberculosis.”
