Fall of the House of Crain

by Cindy Winget

  With a sigh, she sat back down on the sofa and grabbed the book Luke had been reading earlier. She was curious what he would have picked out of the library to while away a few hours with. A Tale of Two Cities she read off the front cover.

  Really? He was a Charles Dickens fan?

  She had only ever read one Charles Dickens book in her life: Nicholas Nickleby. And only because it was an assignment for her high school English class. She placed the book back down on the end of the couch, careful not to lose his place.

  Should she go look for him?

  She decided she would give him twenty more minutes, and then she would go searching. Perhaps he had gotten lost or distracted. She could easily picture him wandering off somewhere, having completely forgotten about her and her problems.

  * * *

  Luke was running out of time. He stood a mere three feet from the precipice, the sharp pendulum coming ever nearer. He couldn’t talk himself into making a run for it. He tried to decide what would be a better way to die—to be cleaved in two or fall to your death off a cliff. Neither option seemed appealing. The former seemed more painful, but ultimately quicker, and the latter seemed less gruesome but without knowing how far down the pit lead, the prolonged unknown seemed scarier.

  In his hesitation, he had made no decision at all and was soon to have no choice. He would either have to risk a race with the pendulum or be pushed off the edge of the pit.

  A cold sweat broke out on his forehead.

  “Hello! Is anybody out there!?” He had been yelling intermittently in the hopes that at some point his salvation would make an appearance.

  To his immense surprise, a voice called back. “Luke? Is that you?”

  “Theo? Theo! I’m in here! Behind the brick wall!”

  A face appeared on the other side of the room where the gap remained in the brick wall, blocking out the light.

  “How did you get in there?” Theo called to him, her voice muffled.

  “It doesn’t matter right now. I need you to get me out! I’m in danger!”

  “Danger? What kind of danger?” she asked.

  “The kind that leaves me dead!”

  Without saying a word, Theo’s face disappeared. A moment later she called to him. “I found a sledgehammer! I’ll get you out!”

  “Hurry!” he told her.

  Schwing.

  Luke had grown to hate that sound. Each time he heard it, it filled him with sheer terror, knowing that it could be the last thing he ever heard.

  A pounding began as Theo attempted to bust down the brick wall. He only hoped that she would be strong and fast enough to save him in time.

  Then a troubling thought occurred to him. Even if Theo broke down the brick wall, he would still have to make a run for it. The giant pendulum was between him and the way out! He was now only a foot away from the dark abyss behind him.

  Screwing up his courage, Luke prayed—something he hadn’t done since he was a child—took a deep breath, waited for the blade to reach the very top of the left side, and ran for all he was worth. He didn’t stop until he had made it to the brick wall.

  Schwing.

  He had done it! He was still alive! Luke gave out a whoop of joy, crowing forth his jubilation as loud as he could.

  The pounding paused. “Luke! Are you okay?” Theo shouted.

  “I’m great!” Luke said. “Keep hammering.”

  The booming sounds of the sledgehammer renewed.

  “How did you find me?” Luke asked.

  “Making it sound hypothetical, I asked Dr. Montague where a hidden crypt would be at Hill House, if there was one.”

  Luke smiled. Clever girl. He knew she could figure it out.

  “He seemed to like the question. He answered as though it were part of an academic debate between us.” Theo chuckled.

  It took ten minutes of silent effort for Theo to break a hole in the wall large enough for Luke to crawl through, but he didn’t mind. He was alive! That was all that mattered.

  “What happened?” Theo asked as he scrambled out of the hole she had made.

  “When I got into the crypt there was a man standing there.”

  “A man? Did you recognize him?”

  Luke shook his head. “He was dressed like a court jester.”

  “Why?”

  Luke shrugged. “Beats me. But I decided to follow him and—”

  “Hold up. You see a stranger dressed up in a costume down in a dark, gloomy crypt and you decide to follow him? That makes no sense! Why would you do that?”

  “I don’t know,” he said sheepishly. It hadn’t seemed like a big deal at the time. “I was curious as to why he was down here.”

  “And it never occurred to you that he could have been a ghost?”

  Luke opened his mouth and then shut it. “Hmm.”

  Theo rolled her eyes.

  “In any case, he bricked me up in this room. and then a large blade came swinging down from the ceiling, moving me steadily toward a pit at the back of the room. If you hadn’t gotten here when you did, I’d be a goner!”

  Theo peered in the room through the hole she had created with the sledgehammer. “What large blade? I don’t see anything.”

  “It’s pretty dark in there, you likely can’t see it from out—hey! Where are you going?”

  Theo had begun to climb through the hole and into the room.

  “Are you crazy!? What if that ghost comes back and bricks you in there?”

  “He won’t.”

  “You don’t know that!”

  “If you stand guard out here, I’m sure I’ll be safe.”

  Feeling uncertain, but knowing he couldn’t stop her, he nodded. She slid into the stone prison, and he lost sight of her.

  Five minutes later, she reappeared. “There isn’t anything in here. No pit. No blade. Whatever you saw must have been a figment of your imagination.” She climbed back through the hole in the wall.

  “It couldn’t have been. I watched it for hours! It was real. It had to be…It looked so real.”

  “Maybe what you saw wasn’t a ghost after all,” said Theo.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe what you stumbled upon was a poltergeist. According to Dr. Montague, unlike ghosts, they’re more solid and love to cause mischief.”

  Luke clenched his hands into fists, his jaw tightening. If that was the case, then he had been perfectly safe this entire time! The psychological abuse the poltergeist had inflicted on him was cruel.

  “I hate it here,” he grumbled.

  Theo laughed. “Look at it this way. Dr. Montague will be thrilled!”

  Chapter Twenty

  “Did any of you discover a diary or journal that explains why the second Crain daughter disliked coming to Hill House at night?” Dr. Montague asked his assistants as they sat down to dinner that night.

  Annabel had not yet joined them, and it was unclear if Valdemar intended to or not. Dr. Montague had not yet mustered up the courage to see or speak to Valdemar since the mesmerism had been performed. As curious as he was by what had taken place, he was also terrified.

  “No,” said Theo, looking guilty. “I forgot to look.”

  “I checked all the bedrooms but couldn’t find anything,” Eleanor stated.

  “I didn’t find a diary, but I did discover a book about the most haunted places in America, and it mentioned Hill House and the Crain family,” said Luke, his mouth full of pork chop. He swallowed and continued. “I only found one vague reference of Penelope mentioning to a friend that strange occurrences happened here at night after six pm, but it didn’t give any details as to what those supposed occurrences were.”

  Dr. Montague noticed both Theo and Eleanor glancing in Miss Dudley’s direction as she poured a drink for Luke, and he knew why. She had always adamantly refused to stay at Hill House after six pm. He had assumed that the Dudleys left Hill House at that time because that’s when their shifts ended, but perhaps there was more to it than that
.

  “Miss Dudley, have you or your brother noticed anything strange happening here at Hill House after six pm?”

  “Strange, sir?”

  He ignored her use of sir. “Yes. You know, anything out of the ordinary. Anything otherworldly, perhaps.”

  Miss Dudley wrung her hands and looked away, biting her lip. “Um…no, I don’t believe so.”

  “But what about—” Theo began.

  “Excuse me. I have something that needs my tending to before I leave tonight.” Miss Dudley hastened toward the dining room door and was gone before Theo could finish her sentence.

  Strange woman.

  “When was this book written?” Dr. Montague asked, turning back to Luke.

  “I’m not sure. Sometime in the mid-1800’s.”

  The conversation was interrupted once more by Annabel as she entered the dining room and took a seat next to Eleanor. “I just finished my second séance in the library. I also performed one in the nursery, and I have communed with the ghosts of a nun and a monk, a woman who claims that her Nell is lost without her mother, and a woman named Helen who claims to be trapped behind a wall.”

  Dr. Montague noticed that Luke seemed startled at this bit of news. He made a mental note to ask Luke about it later.

  “A nun and a monk?” said Dr. Montague. “That seems unlikely. In all my research—”

  “There is also apparently something hidden in the cellar,” Annabel barreled on, as though not hearing him. She grabbed a roll and began to butter it.

  Dr. Montague’s eyebrows furrowed. “But if Hugh Crain was the one to build Hill House, how would a nun and a monk be among the spirits that haunt the place?” he insisted.

  “How sure are you that Hugh Crain built the house?” spoke up Theo.

  Dr. Montague stared at her as he pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. “That’s what all the books and articles on Hill House say,” he replied. “Why do you ask?”

  “I have been having some dreams,” Theo confessed.

  “Dreams?” Dr. Montague asked with growing excitement. “What kind of dreams?”

  “Honestly, they feel like premonitions. No, not premonitions exactly. That isn’t the right word for it. What I mean is, I get the feeling that I am catching glimpses of the past. That these dreams are scenes from here at Hill House.”

  “Are you trying to tell us that you are, in fact, psychic?” asked Dr. Montague, his eyes widening in wonder.

  Annabel scoffed at this. Dr. Montague ignored her, looking expectantly at Theo.

  “I can’t say for certain. But I believe so. And one of my dreams took place in an abbey. I even found the old turret where the dream took place. Although the people I dreamt about weren’t a nun or a monk, this place could easily have been a convent or monastery at one point.” Theo’s eyes were bright and her voice increasingly high-pitched. “Think about it. Hill House is a conglomeration of different architectural styles. Most people think this is because of Hugh Crain’s eccentric personality. But what if that’s not true? What if the real reason is because Hill House is much older than everyone thinks, and it’s been added onto or changed or renovated over the years? Perhaps Hugh Crain didn’t build the house. He inherited it.”

  Dr. Montague rubbed at his beard in thought. “Perhaps. It’s possible.”

  Annabel, looking smug, dipped a pair of tongs into the cooked vegetables and placed them on her plate.

  “What’s more, I got the impression from both dreams that something about this place drives people insane,” Theo added.

  “In what way?” asked Dr. Montague.

  Theo gave them a brief description of the dreams she had been having.

  “But it’s more than just insanity,” she concluded. “I got the feeling that not only does it make people crazy, but it seems that many of them have some bizarre disease or illness,” concluded Theo.

  Dr. Montague tugged on his beard some more. “You’re right. What if they aren’t really going insane? What if they are mentally or physically ill in some manner? Some scientific explanation could be at play here. You said that all of your dreams pertained to the Crains? Perhaps it’s a genetic anomaly.”

  Theo looked skeptical. “That’s not the impression I got. I felt like the house itself meant to harm them.”

  “Okay. Then perhaps there is something in Hill House that contributed to their ailments. A gas leak or mold in the walls or something.”

  “I don’t know,” Theo said. “Maybe.”

  “I think Theo is right,” piped up Eleanor. “Hill House drives people insane, and not in any physical way.”

  “What makes you say that?” asked Dr. Montague.

  “I stumbled across a diary our second day here.” She described the oval portrait of the beautiful woman she had found and explained about the corresponding journal entries. “This man and woman were not Crains. They were the last to own the house before the Sandersons. So it stands to reason that there was no genetic component.”

  Dr. Montague frowned in thought.

  “Well, in any case, I think it wise if we all stay in one room tonight,” Dr. Montague stated. “With Annabel here, stirring up trouble, I would feel a lot safer if we remained together.”

  “Do you think there is any real danger?” asked Eleanor.

  “No, no. Not to worry. Spirits cannot harm the living.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Luke muttered.

  “What’s that?” Dr. Montague asked him.

  “It’s nothing,” Luke said dismissively.

  Theo gave Luke a nudge with her elbow, nodding toward the doctor. Luke shook his head at her. Her eyes narrowed into slits.

  “Oh, alright,” said Luke. “I’ll tell him.” He took a deep breath. “Theo and I verified that her dreams are real. She found the old abbey tower, and I found a hidden crypt located underneath the Crain family mausoleum. A ghost, or more likely—according to Theo—a poltergeist, bricked me up behind a wall. If Theo hadn’t found me down in the catacombs, I would be dead.”

  So that was it. That’s why Luke shuddered at the mention of Helen, who seems to have met a similar fate.

  “That settles it. We are all sleeping together tonight,” he said out loud. “I would just feel more comfortable.”

  “Isn’t this what you came here to see?” asked Annabel incredulously.

  “Yes, of course, but that doesn’t mean we need to be careless.” Dr. Montague took a gulp of his water.

  “Well, I for one intend on staying in the nursery,” said Annabel.

  Dr. Montague knew he couldn’t force her but was relieved when the others agreed to all sleep in one room. He turned his attention back to Theo. “Did you pick up on anything while we were in the library?”

  “Excuse me?” Theo’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

  “I mean psychically. During the séance.”

  “Oh!” Theo’s cheeks reddened. “No. I didn’t. Not really.”

  “Not really?”

  “Well, I did get the sense that whatever entity was in that room was hostile, but that was clearly visible on its own.”

  Dr. Montague nodded in understanding.

  “Will Valdemar be joining us?” Annabel unexpectedly asked. “I would very much like to see him.”

  “He was feeling poorly, but I shall go and ask him.”

  “I can go.” Annabel started to rise from her seat.

  “No!” Dr. Montague leapt from his chair. Everyone stared at him. “I-I’ll go and see. Perhaps he’ll not be fully clothed, which would not be suitable for a lady.”

  Annabel stared daggers at him. “Since when have you concerned yourself with what is ‘fit for a lady’?” she asked.

  He ignored her annoyance and hurried down to Valdemar’s room, careful not to so much as glance at the gilded mirror on his way.

  When he entered the bedroom, he found Valdemar sitting up in bed, reading a book. “Ah, John!” he said dryly. “So glad you’ve decided to visit me.”

>   “Hello, my friend. I have come to enquire as to whether or not you intend to join us for dinner.”

  Valdemar frowned. “Yes, it would be dinner time, wouldn’t it?”

  “What’s the matter?”

  Valdemar looked up. “Hmm? Oh, nothing. I am simply not hungry. Haven’t been since I died.”

  Skipping over the comment, Dr. Montague said, “Annabel would very much like to talk to you.”

  “Annabel is here? Wonderful!” Valdemar swung his legs to the side of the bed and sprang to his feet. “Just let me get more presentable and I’ll join you shortly.”

  Dr. Montague was about to leave but hesitated, his hand on the doorknob. He turned back. “Valdemar? Could you do me a favor and not mention the fact that you’re dead?”

  Valdemar looked surprised. “You want me to lie to Annabel?”

  “Not lie. Just omit. At least for now.”

  “But why? As a man of science researching the paranormal, I would have thought you would be crowing the news from the rooftops.”

  Dr. Montague didn’t quite know why he wanted his achievement kept quiet. It didn’t feel like an accomplishment. It felt like an abomination. He simply wasn’t ready to include the group.

  “Listen. I’m just not sure what all this means yet. Let me wrap my head around it before we include anyone else, okay?”

  Valdemar shook his head but agreed to keep quiet. For the time being, anyway.

  Dr. Montague nodded his thanks and left the room. He had not seen his friend so energetic since their college days. He was glad for him, and yet he felt ill at ease in Valdemar’s presence.

  “He is on his way,” Dr. Montague informed Annabel upon arriving back in the dining room.

  “Excellent.”

  Silence descended upon the group and only the clinking of utensils upon glassware was heard. The group made polite, if stilted, chit-chat until Valdemar entered the room.

  Upon spotting him, Annabel called out, “Ernest! How are you? John tells me that you have been ill.”

  Valdemar nodded. “But I am much improved now. I apologize that I’ve been maintaining my distance from all of you, but I didn’t want to get anyone else sick.”