Nightmare Abbey

by David Longhorn

  The story isn't over, thought Denny. That's why he needed a slug of whiskey. There's even worse to come.

  “I heard the story in fragments, down the years,” Gould went on. “They sent me away to my grandparents for a fortnight after the disappearance. My physical injuries were treated, blamed on broken glass or wood splinters. I had no therapy, of course – I told you this happened a long time ago. Just a little holiday. So I wasn't there when they found the body two days later. It was on the edge of the forest, the side nearest our house, not the village side. She was in her red coat, with her dress, socks, shoes – all readily identified. The only strange thing was that the dress was wrongly buttoned. And her shoes were on the wrong feet.”

  “You mean,” gasped Brie, “someone had undressed her, then – Oh Lord.”

  Gould stared into his coffee for a long moment before resuming.

  “In those days, of course, they did not have very advanced forensic techniques. Certain tests were made, and I later found out that an autopsy was carried out. The results were described as inconclusive, but heart failure during an assault was settled upon as the cause of death.”

  “And that was it?” asked Matt. “You were all very British about it, I guess?”

  “I never talked to my father about it, if that's what you mean,” replied Gould. “After we lost Lucy, something in him died. He carried on working, but everything else – he would just sit in front of the telly, only spoke if you talked to him. Eventually they separated, and my mother raised me. Sometimes bereavement does that – smashes a family apart.”

  There were sympathetic nods, and Matt seemed about to speak, then thought better of it. Denny recalled how needy and clingy he had been when they'd had their brief, unwise fling. Matt had lost his mother when he was young, she remembered. I'm not here to psychoanalyze my co-workers, or ex-lovers, she thought. Denny focused once more on what Gould was saying.

  “I could almost have written off everything that happened in that clearing, if it had not been for my mother's attitude. My mother was stronger than us menfolk, I suppose. That's often the case. But she never discussed it, either. Once I caught her crying on Lucy's birthday, but that was it. Then my father died, still quite young, and at his funeral, my mother told me something. At first, I didn't understand what she had said, it was so unexpected.”

  Gould looked up at Denny, then at the others around the table.

  “It wasn't her. That's what my mother said.”

  For a moment Denny was puzzled, then realized what Gould meant, given the context.

  “It wasn't Lucy?” asked Brie, frowning. Then understanding dawned. “You mean they found – that creature?”

  Gould nodded.

  “It took a while for me to get the rest of the story out of her. She and my father had had to identify the body, you see. But when she saw it, she became convinced that it was not her daughter lying on the slab in the county mortuary. My father, at first, thought she was merely in shock. Then, as she continued to insist that Lucy was still alive, he became angry, confused, and unable to talk to her at all. From then on, they only communicated about mundane things, never really talked. And because I was a child they didn't tell me.”

  “But isn't that called Impostor Syndrome?” asked Marvin. “When people get the idea a loved one has been replaced by a lookalike, somehow? It's a mental disorder.”

  “True,” said Gould. “But in Impostor Syndrome it's always a living relative, never a dead one. And there's more. Many years later, when I first became involved with the foundation, I sought out the doctor who had performed the post mortem examination. Turned out he'd retired.”

  ***

  “Dr. Beddows gets a bit confused,” the nurse explained, leading Gould into the day room. It was a pleasant July morning and the residents of the Bide-a-Wee Home for Retired Gentlefolk were enjoying the sunshine. Two elderly men were playing chess, while a white-haired old lady was busy with the Times crossword. But about a dozen other old folk were simply basking in the golden light.

  The nurse gestured at a man with a mop of gray hair and a straggling goatee sitting on his own in a wing-backed armchair. Gould went over and introduced himself, then tried to explain why he was there. But Beddows gave no sign that he recognized Lucy's name, staring up at Gould with watery, pale blue eyes.

  “Michael?” the old man asked. “Is that you?”

  “He thinks you're his son,” the crossword lady explained. “Lives abroad, never visits. This often happens, I'm afraid. He has good days, but this might not be one of them.”

  Gould introduced himself and offered to shake Beddows' hand, but the old man just looked blankly up at him.

  “I'm here to ask about Lucy, my sister,” Gould said, speaking slowly. “She was found dead, and you examined her body. Do you remember that?”

  “Lucy? No, no,” said Beddows, shaking his head emphatically so that a cowlick of white hair flopped over his forehead. “No, you told me that your lady friend is called Carla. Or was it Martha?”

  Gould pulled up a chair and tried to explain again, but Beddows just asked a series of questions about Michael's work and family life. They talked at cross-purposes for a couple of minutes, but it was clear that the old doctor was just becoming more agitated. Gould stood up, frustrated at hitting a blank wall in his investigation. At the same time, he felt sorry for Beddows, left to vegetate by his only close relative.

  “I'm sorry, doctor,” Gould said, offering his hand to the old man again. “I shouldn't have bothered you. I just wanted to know about Lucy.”

  “At first I felt bad because it was a child,” murmured Beddows. “Then I felt frightened, because it was all wrong.”

  Gould stopped, and tried to process what he had just heard.

  “The Lucy Gould autopsy?” he asked, sitting down again. “There was something wrong, something strange about it?”

  “Everything was wrong – it was so disconcerting!”

  Beddows was staring intently up at him now, his eyes focused, his manner showing no hint of confusion. The old man's gnarled hand fastened on Gould's arm, gripped it with surprising strength.

  “It was almost a child, you see,” he hissed. “Almost, but not quite. The organs weren't right, and the skeletal structure – everything was simplified, as if someone had taken tissue, bone, and cartilage to make a living doll, a passable facsimile. I remember thinking how awful if that creature had lived, passing for human, but not. Going to school, sitting at the dinner table, being tucked in bed. The brain was outlandish. What thoughts might such a thing have had?”

  The old man shuddered. Gould struggled to process what he had just heard. The pleasant, sunlit room seemed impossibly calm and ordinary. Not a place for such revelations.

  “You're sure it wasn't my sister?” he demanded, struggling to keep his voice low as the other residents looked on. “It wasn't Lucy at all?”

  Beddows nodded gravely, then looked around.

  “These people can't imagine it,” he whispered. “The things I saw. Beneath the skin, so much that wasn't right. Monstrous! But who could I tell? I had a career, a position in the community. The newspapers had already reported the death of a child. The police had it all typed and filed. Terrible thing. Grieving parents. So I signed the forms, wrote what they wanted, kept my nose clean. Oh yes. It had already begun to decay, you see. Disintegration accelerated rapidly once it set in. Soon there would be nothing identifiable!”

  “You did what they wanted?” asked Gould, taking the old man's hand in his. “Who do you mean? Did someone pressure you?”

  Beddows frowned. His expression of intense concentration faded, facial muscles slackening. The old man leaned back in his chair, which creaked.

  “Pressure? No, no pressure at all – it's very relaxing here. Everyone is very kind. But I do get lonely, sometimes, Michael. I wish you'd come more often.”

  ***

  “Oh my God,” said Denny. “That's horrible.”

  It's als
o ratings gold, she could not help thinking. The guy's a natural storyteller.

  “It has the ring of truth,” added Marvin, again surprising Denny.

  He's given up on his trademark cynicism, she thought.

  “But what are these things?” demanded Matt. “Where do they come from? Do you know, Ted? Don't hold out on us, not in this situation”

  Gould rubbed his chin, glanced around at his listeners.

  He's wondering how much more to reveal, thought Denny. I'll bet our audience gets that.

  “Okay,” Gould said. “The scientists I work with think the Interlopers come from what they've dubbed the Phantom Dimension. PD for short. A real, physical realm, like our own universe, but existing parallel to it. Obviously one world is closed off from the other, but there are weak spots where energy and matter can pass through. Gateways, if you like. Our ancestors knew about them, and placed those odd marker stones to show where they could sometimes be found. I'm sure that some stones were simply warnings, like a buoy marking a wreck.”

  It took the others a few moments to process these ideas.

  “So the stones aren't sacrificial altars?” asked Marvin.

  “Some might have been,” admitted Gould. “We don't know, despite many decades of research. All over the world, you find stones carved with strange faces, not quite human visages. It's conventional to say the prehistoric cultures that produced them were depicting their gods, or demons. And that is what the Interlopers must have seemed, for a long time. Beings that could change their shape, appearance, and drag people into some strange realm. The Trickster of Native American myth, the Little People of Celtic folklore. There are lots of variations on the theme.”

  “These things are intelligent?” Denny asked.

  Gould nodded emphatically.

  “Intelligent, aggressive, cunning. And not bound by the same physical laws as ourselves. That's why they can read our thoughts, to some extent, and change their appearance accordingly. In the Phantom Dimension, what we call magic seems to prevail – willpower alters reality. It might be that that is where we get all our magical beliefs – half remembered stories about the PD and its denizens.”

  “Hang on,” interrupted Matt. “If they enter our world, surely our laws apply?”

  “That's a good point,” agreed Gould. “Some believe there's a kind of conservation of energy involved – they can survive here for a while because they bring their own weird reality with them. But this power they have dwindles, is diluted by our reality, so that they must return to the PD or suffer dissolution. Like the Interloper that took Lucy's form – something went wrong, it died, and disintegrated.”

  “So it decayed because it ran out of paranormal juice?” asked Marvin.

  “You have a knack for making the most serious matter seem frivolous,” replied Gould.

  Soon everyone was talking at once, throwing questions at Gould, interrupting one another. Then Jim banged the flat of his hand down on the table. For the first time since Denny had met him, the stocky man looked angry. And scared.

  “This is all very nice,” Jim said. “But what I've heard only convinces me that we're in immediate danger. We should go. Now.”

  This triggered more argument, as the group split along predictable lines. Jim and Brie were keen to get out at once, while Gould and Matt both wanted to stay and finish filming. Marvin, Frankie and Denny were caught in the middle.

  It's a great opportunity to get rock-solid evidence of the paranormal, Denny thought. But only if we live through it.

  “If we stick together,” Gould was saying, “they can't do us any harm. Remember, they prey on our weaknesses; fears, hopes, deep emotions. A group is too diverse to attack in that way.”

  Jim began to protest, but Gould shut him down with a single remark.

  “Are you quitting your job, Davison? Because I hear you ex-army types have poor employment prospects these days.”

  It's a stalemate, Denny thought. But we came here to make a show.

  “Ted,” she said, “if we filmed the gateway to this other dimension that would be the clincher. So far we've got nothing useful on tape.”

  “If we got that, we could leave,” conceded Matt. “So we go back into that temple, see what happens, right?”

  “No,” said Brie. “Everything Ted has said just convinces me I need to get far away from this place. I still want to leave!”

  Chapter 5: Little Boy Lost

  “Okay,” said Denny, trying to salvage something before they had to stop filming. “Maybe you guys could tell us something about the psychic aura of this – whatever it is, altar?”

  Marvin snorted in derision.

  “Down there is just some dirty minded old lord's rumpus room,” he said, gesturing at the doorway. “I sense a lot of tension, fear, confusion – but only from the living people standing right here. There are no spirits, evil or otherwise.”

  “But Brie says she can sense evil,” Denny objected. “So who's right? Ted? Do you feel anything?”

  Gould shook his head.

  “Apart from a chill, no. And I don't claim to be psychic. Anyway, the cold is what you'd expect in an unheated cellar in autumn.”

  “I want to go now,” Brie insisted. “I will not spend the night here. Will somebody call me a taxi? Or should I do it myself?”

  “Okay,” Denny sighed, looking into the camera. “For the first time in the history of ‘America's Weirdest Hauntings’, one of the team has – let's say – withdrawn from the field of battle.”

  Brie really is freaking out, she thought. And I don't blame her. If what she experienced was worse than my encounter, she's right to draw the line.

  After Frankie had stopped filming, Gould arranged for Jim to take Brie into Chester and find her someplace to stay. Brie also insisted that Jim come upstairs with her so she wouldn't be alone while she packed. The rest of the team adjourned to the kitchen, where an old kitchen range provided much needed warmth.

  “Guess we can film them driving away,” Matt said, sulkily. “Or can we simply edit Brie out?”

  Denny began to protest, but Frankie settled the issue by pointing out that they already had several hours of footage that included Brie.

  “Crap,” said Matt. “We'd have to miss out all the preparations back in the States, the flight, arriving in England.”

  “Can't be done,” Frankie said, with finality. “Make a virtue of necessity, play up why she's leaving.”

  “Prescription meds?” Marvin asked in his all-too-familiar bitchy tone.

  Gould looked startled at this, but said nothing. Matt shot Marvin a 'cut it out!' look.

  “Okay, I'm not on any kind of pills, and I'm still pretty sure I saw something,” insisted Denny. “Maybe not a ghost, or the devil, but something scary and weird. This house is haunted in some way.”

  “But we've got nothing on tape!” said Matt, frustration clear in his voice. “Two of the team are confronted by God-knows-what, and they're alone with no camera running.”

  “Maybe that's it,” said Denny. “Whatever we're dealing with doesn't show itself to more than one person. Perhaps it preys on individual fears somehow? What do you think, Ted?”

  Gould looked cagey, then shook his head.

  “In the past, more than one person has been involved in manifestations,” he pointed out. “And in 1919, something supposedly killed or wounded several people.”

  “Or they went crazy and attacked each other,” Matt said. “That was the official verdict, wasn't it?”

  “Yes,” Gould admitted. “But when you consider the evidence …”

  The debate went to and fro until they were interrupted by a text message from Brie to Denny, 'Ready to go!' When they got to the main hall, she was descending the stairs, followed by Jim, who was loaded down with her luggage. Denny again tried to persuade Brie to stay, but failed. When Jim opened the front door, a gust of chill, damp night air blew in. It was now pitch dark outside.

  No streetlights, thought Denny, wit
h a shiver. We're a long way from help.

  “Well, if you have to go, good luck,” she told Brie. “And don't keep Jim to yourself, we need him here.”

  Brie said her slightly awkward farewells then left, clutching Jim's arm as he struggled with her bags. Matt shut the front door behind them and as he did, the hall lights flickered, died, then came on again.

  “Looks like she left just in time,” observed Marvin, wryly.

  “It's probably just the old wiring,” said Gould, but without much conviction.

  “First that thing with the Geiger counter, now this,” Denny said. “Any connection, Ted?”

  “Electrical equipment sometimes becomes unreliable in these situations,” replied the Englishman. “But you all knew that already, I'm sure?”

  True, Denny thought, but why do I get the feeling you know a lot more than you're letting on?

  Matt, Denny, and Frankie began to discuss how they would cope if the power failed. They had batteries for most of their equipment, but recharging might become an issue if they had no power for the whole night. Frankie decided to start the raw editing process, beginning with footage from the various automatic cameras. She had only been working for a couple of minutes when she called Brie over.

  “So I put one camera in the hall,” she said, “looking down from above the doorway, right? So here's Brie after her panic, going into the dining room for a lie down, Jim and me take her inside, then you see us come out.”

  “Okay,” said Denny, “you know the motion sensor thingy works. So what?”

  “So this,” Frankie said, as the others gathered around the kitchen table to look at the laptop screen. “See, this is Brie leaving the dining room to go upstairs, just a few minutes later. Now we jump forward about ten minutes and this is you, see?”

  Denny stared, confounded by what she was seeing. She watched herself knock gently on the dining room door, then go inside. Frankie skipped forward a few minutes and Denny emerged, closing the door gently behind her. Another fast forward and the team gathered in the hall, Brie descending the stairs, followed a couple of minutes later by Denny.