Thank you again to everyone who is still following and reaching out. If you missed the earlier parts, this all started here. The previous post (Part 3) is here. The next post (Part 5) is here.
-——
We gathered in the library, arranging ourselves on the hard couches and rubbing our limbs against the cold. Harvey went to the window and checked the driveway in the last of the light. He lowered the blinds and cracked them open with his fingers for one last look before turning away.
A ponderous silence grew thick. Harvey crossed his arms. I had a thousand questions, we all did, and he must have known it. He came to Windhaven Manor uninvited and unannounced, drawn by forces he had not yet full explained. We waited on him to shed some light, to give us some clues as to what and who we were up against. At last I could stand it no longer.
“Who was in that van?”
Harvey raised his eyes without taking his chin from his chest. “I don’t know.”
“You think your friend the sketch artist had something to do with this?”
Harvey considered this for a beat before responding. “My heart says no. My head isn’t sure. I feel like I’m in a world turned upside down. I’ve been chasing bad people my whole life. Some I couldn’t catch. It might be because I didn’t consider the possibility that my friends were on the wrong side of it all. But then it could be whoever this is found this place the same way I did. They saw it online and came down out of curiosity.”
Parker straightened. “Or they followed you here. You said so yourself. Don’t be so quick to blame my video.”
“I’m not blaming. I found you lot because of the video. It’s one possibility. Another is Kyle the sketch artist. Another is that they followed me.”
I knew another option. The malevolent presence I felt, the shadow I saw. If it could see us, if it could hear us, then that could be how they found us. I rubbed my hair and stared at my shoes. There was so much about this I didn’t know.
Parker’s voice cut through my thoughts. “So this is some real life conspiracy?”
“Something is going on,” Harvey said, “and this group, this Séance Club, with all the videos of you together on the internet are all in this. If what Sam saw is real, if Police Chief Crown pushed someone off the cliff then this is serious business. They have murdered people to keep them silent. Everyone in this room is in danger.”
Parker frowned and sank down in the couch.
An intense feeling of being watched drew my eyes up. Juliet stared at me, her face stony. “Sam, that feeling you had, the evil presence. You felt it during the first séance. You felt it by the cliff edge. Did you feel it outside just now?”
I fought an impulse to shout the answer. “Yes.”
“I did too. Whatever this presence is, maybe it is watching us. The black van might be something to do with that.”
Juliet expressed precisely what I had been untangling in my own mind.
Juliet said, “Sam do you feel it now?”
I didn’t feel the presence now. The house felt somehow clean and silent
“No.”
“Me either. And that is somehow all the more terrifying.”
I met Harvey’s eyes. “What do we do now?”
He scratched at the grey stubble on his chin. “There is something important in this house. Jane Laughlin was here the night she died. Her sister was out there on the cliff and Chief Crown came down from the house and sent her to her death. Those are the things we know. Something happened here and we need to know what. And we need a way to prove it. The word of a medium won’t be enough. Believe me, I know. I worked with a medium on the force a few years back. We got close to uncovering a ring abducting girls from the street. But then..” He trailed off.
Beth let out a laboured sigh. “What do we do?”
Harvey fixed his eyes on me. “We need Sam. You need to talk to Jane Laughlin. You need to find out what they did to her and who did it. We need something we can use to hang them before they hang us. What time did you do the first séance?”
Parker checked his watch before answering. “Midnight.”
“Midnight it is then. Get some rest. You will do what you did the first night and this time we pry some information from the girl.”
I feared this was what Harvey wanted to do. There was a problem. The first night in the house I had felt her before I stepped foot inside. My body had vibrated. The nausea had risen in my stomach. And now there was nothing.
I slowed my breathing and closed my eyes and listened to my senses for anything. There was only the damp in my hair and the cold on my legs. If Jane was still here I didn’t know where she was or how to talk to her. Waiting until midnight wasn’t going to help.
Harvey slapped me on the shoulder and headed for the door. “Get some rest. We reconvene at midnight.”
Beth leaned over and touched my arm. “He’s right. We’re all tired. Let’s get some rest.”
I supressed a yawn. It’s amazing how the mere mention of fatigue produces that exact effect in the body. I needed sleep, but I feared it would not come. The weight of responsibility rested heavy on my shoulders. What if I couldn’t find Jane again? And if I did, what if I couldn’t find a way to let her speak? What would we do if I failed?
Beth read the worry on my face and said, “Don’t worry, it will all be fine.”
I opened my mouth to argue and then pushed the words back down.
Beth ushered us up out of our seats like a mother preparing her children for bed. “Come Parker, you too. You look as tired as the rest of us.”
Parker raised his eyebrows. “Tired? Who is tired? I’ve never been this wired in all my life. I’m going to set all the cameras up, everything I have. Not to put online, but to document you know. For evidence.”
“Sure,” Beth said.
Parker wasn’t finished. “Hey, we should sleep in shifts right, so someone can keep watch? In case the van comes back or this evil shadow presence shows up? I’ll take the first watch.”
Juliet smirked. “Knock yourself out.”
Parker’s first watch ended, by his own sheepish admission, about ten minutes after it started when he nodded off on the couch after a frenzy of work setting up his equipment. There was no second watch. Nor was there any disturbance from the van or anything else. They had either left or decided to keep their distance.
I went up to my room. The antique furnishings becoming familiar and giving a whiff of home. As I lay on the bed and closed my eyes, I thought of my parents.
After the failed exorcism, home life grew more strained. My mother spoke to me in short, curt sentences. My father barely spoke to me at all. On a cold December day just before Christmas, he packed a bag and left in the middle of the night. We never saw him again.
My mother accepted her Christian duty to shepherd me through what remained of my childhood, but what began as love was replaced with a mere tolerance of my presence. She was convinced the devil had a hold of me and not only had I let it happen, I showed no desire to turn back to a path of righteousness.
I tried to convince her I was normal. That I could no longer see the things I saw, that I didn’t feel the things I felt. I told her I made it all up, that there never was any kid in the shed with his head in a puddle of blood. I tried to convince myself. But the dye was cast. She didn’t buy it and neither did I.
I took meals in my room. A soft knock at my bedroom door and quiet footfalls away. I knew to wait until I heard her on the stairs before opening the door to the tray of food on the floor. After, I left it where I found it and it was always gone by morning.
As I got older she would take trips away, sometimes for days on end. She never told me where she was going, only that there was food enough in the fridge and the emergency numbers were by the phone.
When I announced I was leaving, I saw the relief in her eyes. I went to my room and cried.
The bedroom in Windhaven Manor was cold. I went to the window and pulled it shut. I held out my palm where the bottom of the window frame met the sill and felt icy air pushing through the gap. I climbed into bed fully clothed and pulled the white quilt up to my ears. It smelled of must. Everything here was old.
I finally slept. I dreamed of a forest. I walked among the trees in the dead of night under a heavy fog. A chorus of screams somewhere far off rippled through the air. It was as if the door to hell had been opened and I heard the laments of the dead.
Then I felt it, the same buzzing in my ears and a wrenching feeling deep in my gut. Some unknown force drew me forwards. A sprawling structure emerged from the fog. A barn or a stable. There was something inside, there was someone inside. A sliding door stood half-open, an invitation.
Inside the soft light of the moon covered the floor in silver. A black shape hovered above the ground. It swayed back and forth. As I drew nearer I saw the rope leading from the neck to a beam above.
A man hung from the rafter. The silver light intensified enough to reveal his face. Skin weathered from age and a life outside, black rings under the eyes, the skin a sickly pale, almost yellow. His eyes were closed and sank deep into his skull. A mess of grey hair hung down over his forehead. I reached up with a vague notion of stopping the motion of the swinging. When I touched his leg, the man opened his eyes. A shock of terror surged through my body and I stumbled backwards onto the floor. The man watched silently and patiently. The rafter creaked under his weight.
Harvey shook me awake.
“Were you dreaming?”
I nodded.
He sat down on the corner of the bed. “Was it a dream, or was it a dream?”
The commotion had woken Beth and Juliet. They crowded together in the doorway.
“It might be nothing,” I said, “but does this place have a stable?”
We woke Parker and spread the map of the grounds on the kitchen table. The giant stone walls running the perimeter of Windhaven Manor enclosed a few acres of garden and forest, and a stable and paddock where the owners once kept horses. I fingered it on the map.
“This is where we have to go.”
Beth flicked her eyes to the clock mounted on the wall. It was a little after eleven. The windows were black with night. “You mean now?”
“Yes now,” Parker said excitedly. “What are we waiting for?”
We used our phones as flashlights and followed an overgrown trail through the trees. Beth checked the map, but I told her to put it down. The vibration intensified the moment I stepped beyond the tree line. It would lead me there.
Dark closed in from all sides, thick clouds blanking out the moon and the stars. The evening rain had cleared, but a smell of moisture hung in the air. The trees swayed, branches trembling as the wind washed through them. As we ventured deeper into the woods, my senses dulled to the sights and smells of the forest. Something turned the volume down on the world and turned up something else. It drew me inexorably to a stable I knew was there before I saw it with my eyes.
It rose out of a murky dark background as a cut-out of ink black. The flickering of the lights from our phones played against the worn timber siding, giving glimpses of the disused structure.
Juliet grabbed my arm. She felt it too. How strong it was in her I could not know, but her brain had tuned in the frequency. I stopped a few yards from the entrance. The door was not open as it had been in my dream, but pulled all the way shut and padlocked.
Parker approached the door and rattled the padlock. He angled his phone to the window beside the door, the glass filthy, but intact. He dragged a hand through the grime and peered through.
“I can’t see anything,” he said. “How do we get in?”
I couldn’t say how I knew, but there was a way inside. Around the back a narrow door had a lock that never would catch. Fear rose in my stomach and a pressure pushed at my neck. I suddenly felt as a child stepping up to a task far too daunting for its tender years. I half-turned and peered into the darkness and hesitated.
Before I could ask her, Juliet said, “I’ll come with you.”
I unlatched a fence on the left hand side of the stable and sent it creaking into the darkness. Juliet swung her light around in front of our feet and moved gingerly forwards. I ran my fingers across the worn timber siding for guidance, the wood damp and cold from the rain.
My body pulsed from the inside out. As we rounded the corner my throat contracted and I gasped for air. My fingers clutched at an invisible collar around my neck. Not a collar. A rope. The man inside hanging from the roof beam. He shared with me a dull version of his pain.
I straightened and forced my feet to move. Involuntary tears pooled in my eyes. Not from pain, but sadness. His sadness. He would never again see those he loved. In his final moments he thought of them. They would never even know what had happened.
We reached the door at the back that I knew would be there. I took a beat to catch my breath and Juliet tried the handle. The door did not give and she rattled it.
“No,” I said, “like this.”
I bent at the knees and grabbed the handle from the underside and lifted the door. I jerked the handle hard to the left and the latch clicked free. A long forgotten muscle memory, like riding a bike. The door swung silently inwards under its own steam.
Dark shadows dominated the interior, overwhelming the thin light filtering through the windows. And yet I could see him, feel him. The timber beam that supported his weight in the moment of his death was free now of its load, but I heard it creak as it had then, tiny cracks opening up along the grain of the wood. After they cut him down the kink in the beam remained, almost imperceptible, but there.
Juliet linked her arm through mine and she half-pushed me into the stable. Our shoes scraped at the grime on the hard concrete floor. It smelled of damp hay and must and mould.
“He’s up here,” I whispered.
And there he was. A silvery light from an unknown source illuminated him and left no shadow. He hung from a thick yellow rope wrapped around his neck. He swayed back and forth, head bowed and eyes shut. Stains from dirt and grease covered a pair of worn overalls. His feet dangled at eye level.
At arm’s length from the spectre I faltered. I pushed the butts of my hands down onto my knees. The horrible despair of his last strangled breath pumped through my veins and fired every synapse in my brain. I couldn’t breathe.
“I have to get out,” I said.
“No.” Juliet squeezed my arm. “You can do this Sam. He won’t hurt you. He doesn’t want to. You’ve been hiding from this your whole life. It’s time to stop. We’re into something here and it’s you who holds the key.”
“I’m not sure I can. I’m not sure I want to.”
“We don’t ask to be who we are. It isn’t a question of want. The question is what we choose to do.”
She was right. Since that day in the schoolyard I had been hiding. Alone in my room I had constructed an image of myself that ignored this ugly, cancerous limb that pushed my parents and my friends away. I had hoped that I could in some way be whole without it.
I thought back to the man in the cellar of the bar, who had asked me if I had come for him. The man who had asked for my help. And I had turned my back. I could not do that again.
“Do you see him?” I whispered.
“No. But I can feel him.”
“What do I do now?”
“The dead who linger do so for a reason. It is for us to ask.”
I reached out and touched the man’s leg. A dull smack of electricity. He opened his eyes. My heart thundered like a cannon in my ears. I met his gaze. The bones in his neck cracked as he turned towards me. He garbled unintelligible words. I shook my head at him. His eyes narrowed. His mouth made exaggerated motions, concentrating on each syllable.
“Cut me down,” he said. The words came out in hissing bursts, a whimper in his voice.
“I don’t know how.”
He screwed up his face and a veneer of tears covered his eyes.
I scanned the darkness of the stable floor dumbly and then tapped my pockets searching for some tool to help.
“What is it?” Juliet asked.
“He wants me to help him down. I need something to cut the rope.”
Juliet peered up into the darkness. “There is no rope, not in that sense.” She touched my arm. “Close your eyes. Imagine the rope breaking, imagine it coming apart in your hands. Believe that you are getting him down.”
I did as Juliet instructed. I shut my eyes. I created an image in my mind of the rope and broke it apart thread by thread. A strange and giddy feeling of release spread inside my head. It was as if I were about to slip off into sleep and enter into the world of dream. Some part of my being decoupled from the rest and I separated from my body.
When I opened my eyes I had left the stable floor and was eye to eye with the man hanging from the beam. I swung my arms around in the darkness of the stable, trying to find something solid to grasp. I panicked and instinctively reached out and grabbed the rope.
As my hand clenched around the rope it pulled under my weight. The thick rope writhed in my grip, not an inert object, but somehow a living one. It felt like a thin hose passing a torrent of pressurised water.
The man never took his eyes off me, his body writhing and shaking below the rope. “Help.”
I didn’t know how and I wanted to tell him so. We were nose to nose now, his heavy eyelids cutting off the top quadrants of his eyes. Those sad eyes.
I willed him to come down. It became the only thing in the world that mattered, to break the rope and set him free. Individual rope strands began snapping one at a time, breaking free and fraying into the darkness. My hand grew warm and then hot until my skin felt like it would blister. I gritted my teeth and squeezed tighter and the rope continued to disintegrate until what remained could no longer hold the weight and the man fell.
At the sound of him hitting the stable floor I too came back to earth with a rush. The man lay in a heap on the cold concrete floor. He groaned.
Juliet exhaled and brought her free hand to her forehead. Relief coursed through my body.
I looked up to the beam that had held the man, the frayed end of broken rope hanging motionless.
The man stood and rubbed at his neck and sucked at the cold air of the stable. My own lungs expanded, as if we breathed together.
“Are you ok?” I asked.
He nodded.
“How did you end up there?”
“That’s a long story and one I’m not ready to tell. What is your name?”
“Sam.”
“I’m Leon. Thanks for coming to help.”
“What will you do now?” I asked.
“When the sound of my own neck breaking reached my ears, I thought of my family. I wished I could have said goodbye. That I should have said a lot of things that I didn’t. I want to thank you for giving me the chance.”
He walked towards the door at the back of the stable. A strange sound filtered through the trees of the forest beyond. A subtle cacophony of muted screams. Leon stopped and turned his head towards them.
“Every night I hear them,” he said.
“Who are they?”
“Bad things have happened out in these woods. And something terrible happened in that house.”
“What do you know of it?” I asked.
“Only enough that they did that to ensure my silence.” He pointed to the bent roof beam. “Do not tarry long in this place. It is overcome with evil.”
“Do you know of a girl? A blonde girl called Jane?”
He cast his eyes to the floor. “Part of me knew what they were doing. I suspected it. I did nothing. I needed my job. I needed to feed my family. That is what I told myself. She is still there, the girl.”
“In the house? Where?”
“Listen for her.”
He held up a hand and waved and walked out into the forest and the dark and was gone.
The vibration and the buzzing echoed inside my head, each ringing softer than the last, like the reverberation of a note played on a piano. Soon it was gone. The building felt somehow numb. The stable was an ordinary a timber structure again, like any other.
“He’s gone isn’t he?” Juliet whispered.
“Yes.”
The inside of the stable returned to an almost complete darkness. The air felt colder. I shivered. If it had not been for Juliet standing beside me, it would have been lonely.
She covered her face with trembling hands. I tensed and stifled my own shaking. A flash of light flickered in the corner of my eye. Parker’s half-lit face appeared at the window across the other side of the stable.
“What now?” Juliet asked.
I pieced everything together in my mind. We had to go back to the Manor.
We gathered at the same dining room table where we held the séance on the first night. The clock ticked towards midnight. Juliet glided around the room lighting candles. Parker busied himself with camera and tripod. Beth and Harvey took their seats at the table.
Parker flicked on the camera and straightened. “Do we have a plan?”
I shrugged. I had no idea what to expect. I had no idea what to ask. I had only a vague idea of what I would try. It seemed so strange that the room looked to me for answers. I hadn’t wanted to take charge of anything. The unanswered silence grew and I cleared my throat to buy an extra beat.
“The man in the stable, he said she is still here. Jane. There are others too out there somewhere.” I pointed in the vague direction of the forest. “I don’t feel Jane like I did the first night. Something has happened in here. The house feels clean, it feels empty. Somehow someone has masked her, has hidden her from me. I’m going to try and find her.”
Parker took a seat and leaned on one elbow. “And then what?”
“I’m going to find a way to talk to her. She is our witness. She will tell us what happened.”
Harvey leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “You might not like what you hear. And it could put us on a collision course with some powerful people. If anyone wants out, now is the time.”
Parker chuckled nervously and looked at the others in turn. “Are you joking? You couldn’t pay me to stay away.”
Harvey rose his voice a little to add effect. “This could get dangerous. It already has.”
Parker slapped his palm on the polished oak. “All my chips are in the middle of the table. Whatever it is, I’m there.” He looked to me. “Are you sure you can find her and talk to her?”
Juliet shook out a match, a wisp of grey smoke rising into the air. “Sam can do it.”
I wished I shared her conviction. I remembered the way the Manor had seemed to shimmer when I walked up the driveway. It had to be the work of the shadow figure, the one who kept showing up whenever I encountered a spirit in this place. But it had not been there out in the stable. I set my face in an expression I hoped hid my worry.
Beth pulled up her sleeves and fiddled with her bracelet nervously. “What if they come, the guys in the van or the Police Chief?”
Parker raised an index finger and opened his laptop on the table. “I’ve got cameras set up outside the front door and in the hallway and the kitchen and at the top of the stairs. If they come anywhere near us we’ll see them.”
Beth clasped her hands together. “And that evil presence you both felt. What about that?”
I said, “I don’t know. It was here during the first two séances. I felt it again when the black van showed up. It isn’t here now.”
Harvey said, “Beth, if you want we can get you out of here now. We’ll find a way.”
Beth shrunk a little as all the eyes of the room turned to her.
A blanket of guilt wrapped itself around my shoulders. I was determined to see this through come what may, but we were all edging closer to danger. It felt as if a freight train were barrelling towards us in the dark.
Beth said, “I want to be a part of this. Those girls deserve our help. Something terrible happened to them and we need to set that right. We need to put a stop to it all.”
She turned her mouth up into a smile, but there was a reluctance in her eyes.
I thought about what Leon had said in the stables. He spoke of evil surrounding this place. Of terrible things that had happened. Of his own fear of speaking up. And how they had hanged him to ensure his silence. Terror rose in my stomach. I pushed it down.
Beth was right. Jane and Kylie Laughlin could no longer speak for themselves. They were the silent dead, their stories buried, their voices extinguished. And those who silenced them walked free. We had enough to put targets on our backs, but now it was time to blow the whole operation open.
The clock showed one minute to midnight.
Juliet took her seat and said, “Let’s begin.”