Enna Melusina's Fright Night

This blog is an attempt by the author to send their horror musings out into the world, to reach out into your homes, to tap at your windows & rattle your bones. These stories will be the creak on the landing & the shadow beneath your door, the strange noise from outside & the footstep on the stair... They will tingle your skin & cause you to look up at the window with a start when there is no reason to at all, making you wonder if you locked the doors... Please. Be Scared.

[ennamelusina-blog]

The Guest Bedroom

'My dear fellow. If it were as simple as that, do you not think I would have married her off to that Snow chap? The one twice as old as my father when he sired my sister, with a penchant for Indian snuff and an eye that shrivels the brightest of souls? I would have her marry him in a heartbeat if I thought it would restore our wealth. But as it is... Well, Jeremiah. You know our Kerensa.'

'Indeed I do.' Jeremiah smiled into his tumbler and inhaled the last of the whisky.

'Then you know that she will not marry any man unless her heart beats in time with his. Or some such nonsense.'

Jeremiah chuckled at his friend's words.

'What is the rush, Eb? She's only seventeen.'

'She's plenty old enough to marry. Or at least to get engaged.'

'Well, I offered my proposal to you already, friend.'

'Not until you have inherited your father's fortune will Kerensa hear of that one.' Eboni warned Jeremiah. The latter shrugged.

'She is too young for me at the moment. She is too young for any man.'

'With three others older than her to marry off, I cannot afford to be fussy.  You know they all demand to be fed three meals a day, with afternoon tea on Sundays? It is ridiculous, Jeremiah. They'll get fat!'

Jeremiah's eyes sparkled in the firelight of Sir Reginald's old study. He leant forward and placed his empty glass on the small drinks table next to him. He kicked his legs out in front of himself and let his head fall back on the arm chair.

'You'd think your brother had passed the throne to you, the way you attempt to organise everybody.'

'Better that he had.' Eboni informed Jeremiah. 'Why he gave it to that little squirt Peter I'll never know.'

'He thought he was more capable of the role, clearly.'

'I do not understand why.' Jeremiah picked up on the bitterness in his friend's voice.

'Is there something I am not aware of? Something to do with Peter? Eboni?'

'No!' Eboni smiled widely, putting his own glass down and rising from his armchair. 'Ready to regroup with your adoring audience?'

Jeremiah stood, straightening his jacket and brushing a hand through his ginger hair. Eboni smirked.

'What she, or any of my sisters, see in you, I'll never know.'

'Maybe it is my charm and polite manners.'

'Maybe it is because you aren't one of their monotonous brothers.'

'That too.' Jeremiah smiled, following Eboni Holt out of the study.

Kerensa was coming down the grand staircase just as Eboni locked the study door. Her small shoes clacked on the hard wood floor of the beautiful, big and bright hallway. Freshly cut flowers scented the space and the tall windows let the light of the early moon fall through the still open curtains. Eboni tutted and walked towards the window closest to him, dragging a curtain angrily.

'Where are the servants to do this?'

'Two more left this morning.' Kerensa informed him, not taking her eyes from Jeremiah. Jeremiah watched Eboni go from one window to the next until all eight had the shutters and curtains closed.

'Jeremiah!' Kerensa finally spoke to the tall gentleman. 'I thought Eboni had sent you home for sure! It has been an age since you two retired.'

'My apologies, Kerensa. We were talking about many important matters. Did you miss us so very much?'

'Like they'd miss their meals.' Eboni growled under his breath, passing the pair, taking long strides to the main reception room. Long strides were a habit of the Holt brothers.

Kerensa smiled prettily at Jeremiah who looked down on her with sharp but kind blue eyes.

'Did you miss us while we you were in England?'

'Of course, Kerensa. I missed you all.' Kerensa's face fell a little. Jeremiah bowed down a little closer. 'But I missed you most of all.'

'Truly?' Kerensa breathed, her smile returning.

'Of course.' Jeremiah offered her his arm and walked Kerensa into the next room. Her sisters looked up in excitement as they came into the room. The Holt brothers exchanged amused glances.

'Oh, so Eboni didn't throw you out,' Odessa smiled happily. Eboni opened his mouth as Jeremiah stopped halfway into the room.

'Why does everyone keep saying that?!'

Odessa ignored her brother, keeping her eyes on Jeremiah. Odessa was the eldest of the Holt daughters and the prettiest by far. Like her siblings, she was adorned with a mountain of thick black hair, a crown for her majestic facade. Next to her sat the third Holt child and third son, Ollie, Odessa's twin brother. He had a wide goofy smile and he sat in an armchair near to his twin, who sat regally on the sofa with her younger sister, Isla, the sixth Holt child.

Isla was slightly plump but it was attractive on her. She was the shyest of the Holt children, and the quietest. She barely met Jeremiah's gaze before dropping her own back to her hands. Like her elder sister and two younger sisters, Isla was wasted at _______ House, she should be out in the world, breaking hearts and laughing merrily. Instead she rotted in her family home, the world tragically missing her bloom of youth.

Jeremiah's stare skipped to the fireplace where eldest child, Bran Holt, stood, long hair shaggy, his figure tall and broad in the candlelight. Bran's intimidating glare welcomed Jeremiah back into the room with words Bran himself did not say. Eboni stood beside him, less than a year between the brothers. He looked as grave as his elder.

Seventh child, Tansy, called out to Jeremiah and he offered her a nod in answer to her question. She was excited at his presence he knew, as she did poorly at concealing it. Sat beside Tansy, knowing herself to be prettier in a thousand ways, was Kerensa. Jeremiah found himself swallowing and quickly looked across to the dark corner of the room where the card table stood and where Peter Holt sat shuffling cards, feet up, cutting the deck. He winked at Jeremiah.

'Fancy a game, chum?' Peter asked, voice deep and charming. Jeremiah came further into the beautifully ornate room and made a small shrug.

'The last time I played you, Peter, you beat me within an inch of my pocketbook. I had barely enough on me to pay my carriage from the tavern to my father's home.'

'Oh, we'll play a farm simpler game this time. We'll bet with people. My sisters, perhaps.'

Jeremiah flicked his eyes to Eboni who looked grimly back at him. Before Jeremiah could think what to answer, Kerensa had humped to her little feet and was excitedly chattering.

'Oh yes! Oh yes, let's play! If you win, Jeremiah, you can take me away with you. It'll be utterly splendid.'

'And should he lose?' Eboni grumbled. Kerensa smiled coyly.

'I shall run away with him anyway.'

'The sad truth is that she is entirely serious.' Bran muttered as Odessa quipped her little sister for saying such things. She spoke to the room next, standing gracefully and making Isla rise.

'Very well, we shall all play. But we bet with matchsticks and you do not cheat.'

Peter gave a devilish little grin in response, making the cards flow effortlessly from one hand to the other. He swept his long limbs off of the table and motioned the others to join him.

'Loser sleeps with the devil tonight.' He answered.

                                                         * * *

Jeremiah lost all three games.

Climbing carefully into the large four poster bed in the main guest bedroom overlooking the front of the house, Jeremiah winced at the pain in his big toe. He had stubbed it crossing the room in the dim light. Pulling the covers up closely around his chin, he felt the warmth of the coal pan at the end of the mattress and sighed happily.

Jeremiah's mind wandered to Kerensa. Beautiful, lovely, innocent Kerensa. The girl he had been in love with for thirteen of his twenty one years. When they had said goodnight on the landing, unchaperoned for Eboni trusted his friend, they had come close to one another and Kerena's breath had warmed his skin. He had smelt the roses she used to wash that luxuriously long black hair, the colour of ebony... It had taken all of his physical strength not to stroke a finger through that hair.

They had said no more than goodnight. Kerensa disappeared into her bedroom down the hallway and Jeremiah had turned to his own door.

But now his mind spoke.

He would marry her in her eighteenth year.

He would make Eboni let him have her. Fortune or no, it would be his house and money one day.

He would take her away from this dark house with those terrible woods, and away from the cloying suffocation of her siblings. Jeremiah had always loved the Holts, Eboni was like a brother to him, he loved them all dearly. But something had changed since their father's death, something Jeremiah could not quite put his finger on...

His mind returned to Kerensa.

Lovely Kerensa.

They'd be married in spring. Her favourite season. They would live in the house his father had promised him until he came into his inheritance. They'd spend a year traveling, he would take her to Europe, to England, he'd show her the Seven Wonders of the World. Then they would return to their home and prepare for the birth of their first child.

He would call her his angel. She would call him, My Love.

Jeremiah fell asleep dreaming of his wonderful future, his final thought dedicating the name Reginald to their first son. Reginald for Kerensa's beloved father. But they would all know him as Timothy.

Jeremiah woke.

Breathing slowly from his disturbed sleep, Jeremiah's eyes blinked heavily, sore, his head aching from little rest. His body felt heavy as he attempted to lift himself out of bed and his had shot to his forehead as a sharp pain ran around the edges of his brain.

Wonderful, his insomnia was returning.

Jeremiah allowed the pain to pass and found that his eyes were not so heavy now. Looking around in the darkness of the guest bedroom, he listened quietly, wondering what it was that had woken him. He hadn't heard anything. He hadn't been woken by anyone. And yet he was awake, scared awake, by something... Without knowing why, he turned his head to the left of the bed, eyes resting upon the tall window of the room with its forty six panes of glass.

His skin beneath his night gown prickled all over with fair hair.

As if controlled by a force not himself, Jeremiah slid back the heavy down on his bed and slipped one uncovered foot out after another.

Tentatively he took silent steps across the cold wood of the floor. Jeremiah didn't know why he was taking the precaution of silence. He didn't know why he was going to the window at all. But he felt the need to open those curtains... And discover what had woken him from his gentle slumber.

There was no wind to be heard outside. No rain flung itself against the window's glass. Jeremiah knew that the moon would still be full and bright in the sky when he pulled back the dark green drapes. But he didn't know what he was going to see. For the first time in his life as Jeremiah's fingers clutched around the material of one of the curtains, Jeremiah felt fear flow lucidly through his body.

His left arm yanked the curtain back and Jeremiah looked out into the night, expecting to see nothing, perhaps only an owl restless with no mouse for dinner.

Instead Jeremiah saw something that would send him leaping back under the covers, leave him devoid of sleep until dawn, and send him away from _______ House forever.

The moon was gone.

The sky was blazing, purple, a dark rich purple. There were no stars, there were no lights from anywhere in the house lighting the lawn of the grass below. Instead there was only what was above Jeremiah, above him, in the sky, hovering like a bee over the nectar of a flower.

Ten figures hung in the sky. About thirty foot away from the window, ten people, limp, lifeless, heads down and hair covering their faces, levitated, Jeremiah swallowed, coming closer to the glass until his breath clouded the barrier between him and the ghosts before him. Eyes darting from one person to the next, Holt counted five men and five women, two of them older than the others.

He also noticed something else.

The two older ones were black. Hanging next to each other, their soulless carcasses never moving, they were head to toe black, as if they had been dipped in oil. Their clothing was spoilt, ripped, dyed the same colour as their skin, tattered.

He noticed another fact.

The other eight were all grey and white.

Jeremiah's eyes narrowed, focusing on each of them as they floated a hundred foot above ground with no scaffold, no rope, no visible means of conjuring. The four boys and four girls were lined up, boy-girl-boy-girl, a straight line of ten corpses. Some were totally white, like the smallest girl at the end of the line. Others had grey paint half way up their bodies. Two, a pair holding hands, had the colour grey reaching the level of their chins.

Jeremiah felt his heart pause in its role as keeper of his life. It thumped loudly in his eardrum as fright shocked it back to its purpose.

The two black corpses had raised their heads. Eyes empty, they stared in at Jeremiah none the less, screaming with hollow mouths at him. Around them, behind them, the sky began to leak from purple to black as Jeremiah realised who it was that hovered before him.

His fears were confirmed when the man next to the older woman raised his head, eyes glowing, and his mouth too opened with a silent cry.

He was looking at the Holt family.

Sir Reginald and his wife, Bran next to them, Odessa, then Ollie, then Isla then Eboni, then Tansy then Peter then Kerensa. It was Ollie and Odessa whose bodies were almost taken over by the grey colour, it was Kerensa who stood in the air, toes pointing down, almost completely white. The children's eyes burned with a bright light, each and every one of them letting out a silent scream. The wind began to pick up, playing with tendrils of hair, hands began to flinch, necks cracked, the sound traveling through the glass, legs began to kick and suddenly each person began to clutch at their throats or their hearts or heads.

And then like that, they dropped. 

Jeremiah pressed his face to the window. Letting out a yell, crying out their names, tears streaming down his face as he watched them all lifting their arms up to him, fingers clawing at the invisible air, limbs kicking and bodies writhing, as if they were being dragged down to hell itself.

Kerensa's face overflowed with fear and Jeremiah knew without hearing that she was calling his name.

Before he could do more, whatever more he could have done, they were gone. They contacted the grass below and sank into it, chipped nails the final part of them to disappear from human sight.

The moon returned. The stars aligned. The sky was a canvas of inky blue.

Jeremiah fled from the window, not even bothering to draw the curtains, and hid himself in a nest of pillows and duvet.

                                                      * * *

'I will not stay.' Jeremiah's voice shook as he faced his friend, the two holed up in the study. Outside the door he knew that Kerensa was listening. She had been stuck to him since she discovered he had ordered a carriage.

'You are overreacting, Jeremiah! You had a bad dream! That is all it was!'

'This was not a dream! I know my dreams, I know the dreams I suffer before my insomnia returns and this was not one of them!'

'Then perhaps you are going insane! Do you honestly believe what you saw last night? Do you honestly believe it could happen?!'

'You were all hovering in the air and then fell to the ground before disappearing!' Jeremiah shouted back. 'Why should I believe it but that I saw it and know it to be true!'

'You are - Europe has ruined you. Your imagination, it is too wild.'

'I know what I saw, Eboni. I saw it.'

'You saw nothing!' Eboni spat out, wheeling around on his friend, throwing the glass he held to the rug. 'How can you even say such things, you better not have told the girls, I will strangle you myself if you have frightened them -'

'Then why are you so frightened if I am not telling the truth?!' Jeremiah cried, exhausted after arguing with his friend for an hour over the matter. Eboni could not answer. So Jeremiah spoke.

'What did I see, Eboni?'

'You saw nothing.'

'Stop saying that! Tell me what I saw!'

'You saw - did you take the sleeping drought Mary offered you? She uses some dodgy herbs -'

'Eboni!' Jeremiah finally cracked, hurling his hand through a vase on the table and listening to it shatter into a thousand crystals. 'Why did I see that? What did I see? Why were your parents in black and why was half of your body assaulted by the colour grey?!'

Eboni lifted his head and looked at Jeremiah with a scared face.

'My ... My body ...'

'Grey. Near almost fully. Ollie and Odessa were practically drowning in the colour.'

'O-Odessa? Ollie? The - the twins?'

'What? What does it mean, Eboni? What is going on? What have I got to protect Kerensa from?'

Eboni would not answer him. Instead he put his head in his hands and hunched his standing body over, looking like a man gulping for air. Instead he seemed to have stopped breathing.

'Eboni.' Jeremiah's tone was watchful. 'What. Did. I. See.'

'The - My - The future! You saw the future and the past and the present colliding! The past of my parent's deaths, the present of their torture in hell, the future of my brothers and sisters and I for the evil sins that my - that our ...'

Eboni's words turned into sobs, his tears running down his face with freedom. Jeremiah stood pinned. His mind could not make sense of this.

'You have to go.' Eboni sniffled, dragging an arm beneath his nose and pulling his shoulders back, regaining composure. 'Leave as you were going to. Like the spineless coward you are!'

'Eboni, I want to help - whatever it is, let me help you, let me save Kerensa -'

'She is beyond your salvation! She is damned! From the moment she was conceived she was damned and all Holt children with her. We will never ever live like you, so go, get out, leave _____ House and never ever return. Fall in love with someone else, raise a family, inherit your father's wealth and get out of my sight!'

'Not until you have told me what -'

'You saw us! You saw us, our souls, floating around this damned house, we are trapped here as if we were dead, though we are not dead, and we cannot leave. Kerensa cannot leave with you, Jeremiah! Our parents were black to you because their bodies rot in the ground whilst their spiritual bodies are assaulted by any number of terrors, terrors that await my siblings and I!'

'How is this even possible -'

'The Cressida.'

'The what?'

'Never mind.'

'Eboni, come with me, all of you, we'll get away from here -'

'We can't go! Why will you not listen?! And if any of us have already begun to change from pure white forms to grey then we are almost black, we are good as dead and now you tell me that the twins were ripening into that foul colour of stone and that only means one thing, Jeremiah. They are going to die.'

Jeremiah was stunned into silence. Before he could say another word, Eboni grabbed a hold of his elbow and veered him to the study door. He flung him out into the hallway where all of the Holt children now stood and told them to say goodbye to their guest.

'But - Eboni, Jeremiah only just arrived -'

'Silence, Kerensa! Be still, for once in your little life, be still!'

Jeremiah watched Kerensa blink back tears, unused to ill treatment from her brother, and he noticed with pain that she bit her lip. But he then realised with anguish that he could not see her as he had before. He could not do it... All he saw as the Holt children stood in a row before him was their ghosts floating in the air, before dropping grotesquely to the ground below -

'I must go.' Jeremiah said as poor explanation. 'I have ... an urgent matter to which I must attend.'

'Will you return to us soon?' Odessa asked anxiously. Jeremiah could barely look in her direction.

'I ... fear that I do not know.'

'Best to leave as soon as possible.' Bran informed Jeremiah. 'The roads are quietest at this early hour.'

'Your carriage is here, m'lord.' The maid informed Jeremiah, coming into the hallway.

Jeremiah silently nodded to each of the Holt brothers, noticing a glance pass between Bran and Eboni which told him Bran knew what this was about. When he came to the women, he held their hands delicately, as quickly as possible, sure that they would slip away from him any second to fall into the ground and enter hell.

'Jeremiah,' Kerensa's voice was a squeak. She looked up at him with wide eyes. He held her hand the longest.

'I - I am so sorry, Kerensa. I am so, so sorry.'

'For what? Jeremiah? What have you done?'

Jeremiah opened his mouth as if to reply. But his eyes caught the mirror behind them. And he saw hazy shadows of the ghosts stood behind the children from last night. Looking down to Kerensa's hand in his, he saw a feminine pair of hands circling her waist, holding her tight, she was unaware. A face appeared upon her shoulder. Her own face, mouth open, screaming endlessly with no sound.

Jeremiah dropped her hand, lurching back, he quickly glanced at all of the Holt children. Each had their ghost behind them, clutching them in different poses. Odessa's held her by the throat, its gaze menacing as it looked at Jeremiah. Ollie and Peter's had a hand on their shoulders. Tansy was linked arm in arm with her ghost, Isla was being kissed on the cheek by her own and Bran's stood beside him with the same stance as the real man.

Eboni's stroked its white hand through the dark hair on Eboni's head.

'I must go!'

And with that, Jeremiah London left ______ House. He slammed the carriage door shut behind him, not waiting for the help of the footman. He slammed the rood of the carriage with his fist, telling the driver to move off. He made the mistake of glancing back at the doorway of ____ House as the horses began to canter, pulling the carriage behind them. Kerensa stood looking after him.

And a black figure stood outside of the house, watching Jeremiah leave, a figure that aged Jeremiah more in ten seconds than life would in ten years.

The black figure turned around to Kerensa. And smiled.

[ennamelusina-blog]

Week 6

Journal Text Book 365:1#2                                               Log: 71

                                                         Chapter XVI: Strange Entities

                                                Case File 16

It has long been recorded now, that the presence of paranormal activity is a realistic assumption in today's society. When you consider the pop-culture of horror films, it would not be too much to believe that these characters must have some inspiration. And fact is surely stranger than the fiction. Take the findings of Younge and Delpha (2005: Younge/Delpha Paranormal Findings of Autumn, mentioned in the previous three case studies), and you cannot help but assume most things deemed ridiculous are in fact perfectly plausible. Disregard such evidence at your own peril, would be the general consensus.

And so we come to the next case. That of _______ House, also generally known in the local area as ______, _________ and ________.

The house was built in 17__ and was owned by the Holt family. They were a prestigious, wealthy stock, with much influence and power. Over the years however, the family wealth and status declined. It is not known why. But the Holts would rise and fall once more. And the second fall would be the hardest landing. It was rumoured that the reason for the fall from grace was as a direct result of the practices carried out to restore it to its health.

The occult.

It is reported in several other journals and essays, that ______ House became a troubled place somewhere around 17__. The heir at the time Sir Reginald Holt, son of the House creator, Sir Tallis Holt, allowed his mistress, one Marie La Chere, a fair girl of Southern roots, to perform rituals. These practices were intended to make the family a fortune and they succeeded, via the arrival of a mysterious woman.

The woman arrived in the small town of ______, and she walked two days to _____ House, barefoot, in the snow, her feet cut and bleeding, her dress torn at the breast, hair falling wildly around slim, bare shoulders. Sir Reginald instantly fell into an intense whirlpool of lust upon seeing the beauty stood on the floor of his magnificent hallway. The servant girl who had opened the door to the stranger's knock, and who would later play witness to many ungodly events at _____ House, was said to have believed her master succumbed to a 'witch's curse' and that he, and his soul were 'forever damned.'

The woman stayed. And Sir Reginald lived how he had always done, with his previous witchy mistress, Marie, his sickly wife and the Mysterious Woman (as we shall for this text refer to her) - and later eight children.

There is no record of information for the Mysterious Woman. But she stayed with the Holts for the remainder of Sir Reginald's sixty five years, as if bound to him. His wife, Lady Emilia Holt, has never been thought to complain about the Mysterious Woman's presence in her home. She was, we understand, well acquainted with her husband's appetites and assumed the woman to be one of his desserts. 

However, local rumour would have it another way. It was said that the Mysterious Woman was a demon. She lived with the Holts because her presence answered the request of Marie; to make the family wealthy, powerful, popular, again. And this worked. In their mid forties when the Mysterious Woman appeared, the Holts had been barren. Yet strangely, Lady Holt became pregnant within days of the Mysterious Woman's arrival and she would bear another seven children. Some say the demon woman's powers stretched to making seemingly infertile women fertile. Some questioned the means by which this was achieved. Notations from Crynos's 1965 booklet on local demonic activity in the _____ area suggests that some demons can change their sexual organs at will. Perhaps the Mysterious Woman was not the lover of Sir Reginald...

A year following Sir Reginald's death and the Holt luck changed completely. The Mysterious Woman left the night the Lord died, and within the next five years, several unexplainable things would happen.

The heir would not take his inheritance, preferring, it would seem, to allow his third brother to take the title. We do not know why the second and first brothers were passed over. But it was the fourth son, Peter Holt, who would inherit the family fortune.

Lady Emilia died mysteriously one night around six months after her husband. We do not know why her death was mysterious, only that it was because her daughter, Kerensa, recorded it as so in her diaries (something we will touch on more in a moment). The servants of Lady Emilia remained or fled. The servant, Mary Lee, who had first allowed the stranger entrance all those years ago, remained.

The mistress of Sir Reginald died also, after falling from her horse. Some suspected foul play in the matter as she was an excellent horse woman - and sixty five stab wounds are not generally sustained from a fall.

The next peculiar occurrence was the almost overnight poverty that came to the family. One moment they were still enjoying their wealth. The next they were rationing their food to those who needed it: servant's meals we no longer provided.

With the economic crisis so came a social one. Society shunned the Holt offspring and proposals were recanted, engagements called off, wedding preparations ceased. The family, four boys and four girls, turned into themselves, creating a peculiar little world of their own. One, some say, that involved incest...

In 18__, the Holts took in a guest, Jeremiah London. Friend of the second son, Eboni Holt, Jeremiah stayed as a favour to Eboni, who was seemingly concerned about something to do with his family. Eboni, known for his practical jokes and sordid sense of humour, often played tricks on Jeremiah. But what London swears to have gone through could not have been the conjuring of Eboni nor his siblings.

Jeremiah, according to the introduction of L.P. Price's book, Tattle-Tale Heart (Kale & Langley, 1990) awoke one night to strange sounds coming from outside of his window. Keen to go back to sleep, Jeremiah investigated, flinging open the heavy curtains on the third floor and looking out of the large window. He faced the frosty front lawn of the property and apparently saw nothing to begin with. But he then noticed something that forced him back into his bed and which sent him away from _____ House, never to return nor contact his oldest friend again.

But we do not know what it was. Jeremiah never spoke of it again until he mentioned it to his youngest grandchild upon his deathbed. He refused to confide what had frightened him so, but warned his grandson to believe in good and evil and to always stay close to the side of God. The diaries of Kerensa Holt further provide proof of the incident. On the eleventh of May, 18__ she wrote:

Master London left us before breakfast this morning. He gave no reasoning to me nor my siblings, but he did impart something to Eboni I believe, as there was shouting and quarreling coming from father's study. I went to Mary after he took his leave but she knew nothing more than I and scuttled away to her work.

He kissed my hand as he made his goodbyes and I fancy that his eyes lingered on me longer than my sisters... But he has made no promise and I fear now that I may never see him again...

Jeremiah London was not the only one to leave _____ House. Two years after the death of Sir Reginald, four servants handed in their notice, fearing their home and jobs. Local tavern gossip would be printed in a cheap one-shot newspaper in 18__ that retold the frightened stories of the servants and their life at _____ House. Sadly, all of those primary sources are now lost to us, only alluded to in the journals of a history university near to _____.

Three years after the death of their father, two of the Holt children died. Ollie, Sir Reginald's third and favourite son, was crushed by his carriage during a storm that hit the grounds of _____ House. Yet the storm was not reported elsewhere. It was however seen over the woods which act as a fence to the Holt property.

The second death was that of the eldest daughter, Odessa, who went to sleep a beautiful, healthy nineteen year old girl. And who was discovered dead in her bed the next morning, ninety five if she was a day. No one could ever explain this impossible death.

Kerensa was particularly distraught by her brother and sister's deaths and in her diaries she wrote:

I hate them. I hate them all. They act as if nothing ever happened, as if Odessa and Ollie were nothing to us. But I mourn them. I miss my Odessa every day. I try not to think of it, to forget the sight of her that morning as she lay in her bed, quiet, small, shriveled and grey, brittle. I don't know what happened to her. But I wish I could forget it. Peter is being particularly odious today...

There are thought to have been more mentions of Kerensa's feelings towards her older brothers and sisters. But many pages of her diaries have been ripped out or cut up, edges still clinging to the hardback spine. The lost pages are thought to have been burnt. Kerensa herself would die two years later.

We assume she died. The truth is that is she disappeared.

So far all I have been able to offer about _____ House is a peculiar woman, hints of the occult but no evidence, odd deaths, possible incest and a young girl's journal and a young man's fright. So where is the ghostly presence you say? Allow me to present to you some more case file evidence.

1976. A young woman disappears on the road running through __________. Tally Spri, twenty one from New Jersey, was driving to visit her boyfriend for the weekend at his campus in Boston. It is thought that she had car trouble and that she took a shortcut through _____. Whatever the truth, Tally was never seen again. But in 1989, renowned Doctor of paranormal activity, Dr Elouisa Brine, went to the road, searching for the spirits of three boys who were known to have disappeared from the Beech Tree road. She had no luck finding them. Witnesses, her assistant Dr Michael McMiel and Detective Robert Twane, logged that Dr Brine was spooked by something, a sign, they say though it is not recorded what the sign said. Dr Brine made them leave quickly. But not before she swears to have seen a young woman in a tan coat holding a black umbrella. This is the only reported sighting of this possible spectre on record in the last thirty years.

No one who has gone missing on _____ ground has ever been seen again. So people have, mostly, stopped going. But there are several disappearances in the last four years which have led to continued suspicion about _____ House.

2009: Five girls, two of them siblings, disappeared. Searches were put into place and a gasoline container was found on the grounds of the property. But no further traces of the girls were found and though the gasoline container was confirmed to be that of the driver (due to her name and several expletives being written on the sides of the container) no further evidence nor clues were found. 

In 2010, a young girl wandered off into the woods, abandoning her school group. She was last seen carrying her rucksack into the Beech trees. Her classmate had told his teacher that Mary Lou Lange had made him promise not to raise the alarm. Because she said, 'He wants me to himself.'

Mary Lou, aged five, did not give any information about who 'He' was to her friend.

Before I tell you about the other two disappearances, there is some note worthy information pertaining to ghosts in 1993. Several young people who had broken down on the east side of the Beech Tree Woods decided to camp out and go for help in the morning. They left their car on the road and set up camp on the very edge of the woods.

The campers went to sleep but something woke one of them. Going out to explore, the camper, Eileen Troop, twenty three from Kansas, is on record to having seen a ghost that has left many wondering just what lies beyond the Beech trees. Here is an excerpt from Miss Troop's statement.

- Author's note. The identities of the interviewer and interviewee have been reduced to MT and DSP for the ease of the reader and the typist.

Miss Troop: I heard a noise... Something loud enough that it woke me. To begin with I ignored it, I rolled over and cuddled up to my cousin, Terri, for warmth. I was just falling asleep again when I heard it, this noise, again. And it was much louder this time.

Detective S. Parker: And what was this noise you heard, Miss Troop?

MT: A ... A cry.

DSP: A cry? What, like a cry for help? A person crying?

MT: No, nothing like that. It was a cry of anger. Do try not to look so cynical, Detective, I'm telling you what you want to know.

DSP: Forgive me. Carry on.

MT: I got up and stuck my head out of the tent. The boys were asleep about twenty feet away in their tent. I scanned the area for life but nothing happened. No one was there. But I knew I had heard something.

DSP: So you investigated further?

MT: Yes.

DSP: What did you see?

MT: I ... I saw a man. From over by the trees. He was walking hurriedly, pacing, on some sort of - some sort of mission.

DSP: Mission, Miss Troop?

MT: Mission isn't the right word. Huh, ok. I got out of the tent.

DSP: After you saw him?

MT: No, before. I got out and I went towards the trees. I was scared but I knew that was where the angry sound had come from. I got closer to the edge of the woods and that was when I saw him. This man. He came towards me from inside of the forest. He walked out of the trees, parting the air like Moses parted the Red Sea. His face was set and grim and his hands were clutching those of two beautiful children, a boy and a girl, one on each side of him... He seemed to drag them along.

DSP: Can you describe him to me?

MT: Oh yes. He was tall. About your height, detective. Masculine, with wide shoulders. He took long heavy strides through the wet grass and he wore a white shirt, old fashioned you know, like an Austen hero. It was ripped open to his naval. He wore black tight trousers and cumbersome boots. The children with him were dressed in little black suits and dresses.

DSP: What did the children look like? You told one of my junior officers that they weren't any of the children in our missing persons database.

MT: Detective, I'm very tired. I'd like to see my friends -

DSP: Once we are finished here, Miss Troop.

MT: Huh. No, they were none of the children on that list. Which is ridiculously long, you know.

DSP: Miss Troop, your job is to tell me what happened. Let me worry about mine.

MT: Nothing much did happen. He came out at me through the fog, dragging these serious faced children and then he began to yell at me, telling me to go.

DSP: What were his exact words, Miss Troop?

MT: He said... He shouted at me. He yelled and yelled, getting closer and closer, dragging those poor dead children -

DSP: Dead? You have not mentioned the children to be dead until now.

MT: You wouldn't have believed me.

DSP: Try me.

MT: They were dead. I could tell by the gashes across their little necks...

DSP: Miss Troop... Eileen... What did he  say?

MT: He said, Get off! Get off my land! Only death comes to those on my land! Be gone!

No other sighting can be found documented on film or tape about the sighting of this mysterious man. In fact, he is only the second credible sighting we have of a ghost on ____ property. The campers were tested for drug and alcohol abuse and were found to be clean. Thy were also traveling to a three day Bible study group in Ohio when they broke down, so it is generally believed that they spoke the truth.

But Miss Troop's statement does give us something. The man she described is similar in physical appearance to the eldest Holt son, Bran, and the clothing would certainly fit to the correct time period.

Bran Holt's death is not known in detail. Kerensa merely touches upon his death as a 'tragedy that (she cannot bear, that should not be bron by anyone possessive of a human soul.' Kerensa's diaries were posted to her only friend in Boston following her own death. We only now have the remainders of their rumoured twenty two volumes.

We can almost certainly identify Bran as the ghost in the woods. But we do not know for certain why he was angry with the campers nor why he drags two children with him. His reasoning could be simple hatred for strangers, he was known to have a temper. Whatever the ghostly inhabitants of ______ House are doing with their afterlife is lost on us. But we have some evidence to suggest and back up the presence of spectral existence.

There is one last note to be made in this chapter about _____ House. And that is the peculiar and continued mention of Number 9 or No9P throughout the remainder of Kerensa's diaries. Who or what is the meaning behind Number 9? We do not know.

And a final not on the Mysterious Woman. If she were indeed a demon then we can safely assume she was a Cressida. A demon woman summoned only by the most powerful or witches and sorcerers and one sworn to be the lifelong companion of their subject. The woman certainly remained until Sir Reginald's dying day and the Cressida are also known for their abundant fertility and capability to bring life into a desert womb. There is always a price to pay for a Cressida's kindness. And kind they are, they are both the most dangerous but also the most caring of demons. All female, they nurture and love their hosts and give them all they they want. But death is the ultimate price and any children born by the will or womb of a Cressida is believed to be born soulless. Making them inhuman, violent and insane. When we consider the fates of the Holt children, and of the Holt line, indeed the house of _____, it is not too much to assume that they suffered their parent's sins. A broad minded warning to the reader.

Do not go to ______ House.

[ennamelusina-blog]

A word from the author

Thank you to the new followers that I have. My blog is only in its 5th week, it has barely cleared the membranes from its eyes, it is only just crawling out of its shell from hatching. But I appreciate you. 

My aim with this blog is to write whatever I feel & to be free of constraints. I will continue to do so, but I would also like to please my readers. So as my followers (hopefully) grow, I would hope that people may become interactive with the blog. 

So far my published pieces are:

The Window 1

The Window 2

The Window 3

Dark Hallway

Trench-Coat Girl (AKA Trench-Coat Visual).

It may or may not be clear to my readers that the Window stories all take place in the same room, the same room that is Kerensa's bedroom in Dark Hallway. They just occur at different moments in time. My intention is to build a house - a house of horrors. A house with a past & a present. A house controlled by an intensely dark presence, Him, or Peter, as we are learning he is called (The Window 3 and Trench-Coat Girl both allude to this).

Each week, more rooms in the house will be built in your imagination, & others will be revisited. There is a lot of evil in the house & it is just waiting for an audience.

I ask for your continued patience as the story unfolds over time. They are not incredibly scary, they do not jump out at you from behind a corner or grab you by the shin & shake. I prefer subtle horror. A story that makes you think, that makes you place yourself in that position & really consider the fright, the darkness & the horror of the situations the characters are placed in. This is not to say that I won't suddenly write something that is obviously terrifying. That is all part of the fun of watching the house reveal itself to us.

Now & then, I may take a break from the house for a week and post a short story that is completely unrelated on a Wednesday night. That is up to me.

Once again, a sincere and grateful thank you to those who have read my pieces so far & a bigger thank you to those who have followed me.

[ennamelusina-blog]

Trench Coat Girl

She hears the car before she sees it.

Perfect almond shaped eyes dart to the road, fixing their soft gaze on the grey surface of the asphalt; pursing her lips together pensively, she waits. Her eyes, a deep brown, trace the oncoming headlights from her position at the bottom of the snowy hill. For a moment she catches a breath, sure that the car will stop. Through the littered graveyard of tall Beech trees and the falling petals of snow, she watches the car getting closer to the curve. Inside of her trench coat she trembles, but not from the freezing temperatures, from fright.  

But the car doesn't stop, it continues the curve and drives on, disappearing. With relief she exhales. Her breath doesn't create a cloud of smoke upon meeting the atmosphere.

For now it was ok.

The woods return to their silent visual. The girl closes her eyes silently. Within seconds she is asleep again.

Sometime later, she hears another sound.

Her eyes flick open immediately, scanning the expanse of trees and snow and road before her. She quickly identifies the cause of the sound out on the road.

It is a deer.

Tentatively poking its head from the bushes, the beautiful creature stood about fifty feet away. Its ears rotated, listening for danger. Its nostrils were tickled by the bitingly cold air. All was quiet. And then, with a surge of energy, the deer darted forwards and survived the crossing to the other side, disappearing from sight like a phantom.

The girl blinked, her nose sniffing but not smelling. Inside her heart was yearning to run with the deer. She never would.

Tally had been driving alone on the highway one evening when she had encountered trouble. Twenty three, alone, she had managed to get her car further into the woods, hoping to make it through. Eventually she had to stop, gas tank saying full but clearly she was out. Swearing, she had been forced to get out to find help.

As her bare fingers made contact with the car door, Tally hissed. Her skin ripped as she peeled her fingers back. Red fingerprints of blood and skin were left on the mustard frame. Tally nudged the door shut with her elbow and stood in her thin off-white trench coat, looking lost and a little scared. Night was beginning to surround her. Her boyfriend was still hundreds of miles away in Boston. Her car was a piece of shit.

She had no choice. She'd have to go for help.

Tally left her headlights on and walked up the road a ways, tightening the belt of her coat. She wondered if there was a town nearby. She feared there wasn't. There hadn't been one on the map. Stopping, she turned back, heeled knee-high boots clacking the way back down the road. Tally gave a shudder and looked about her, her long nutty hair tracing her shoulder blades. There wasn't much to see. Trees, tall skinny white things, surrounded her either side of the road, creating a colony that no doubt covered acres. Tally felt silly being nervous of the trees and what might be hidden in them. Turning her back to the left side of the road, she scrunched her pretty oval face into a frown, peering at something that looked as if it belonged to a property. Feeling hope overcome her fear, Tally stuffed her cold hands into the deep pockets of her coat and began to make her way across the road and then onto frozen ground.

No snow had fallen yet this November, a rare occurrence for this state. The ground was dry. Tally walked over to the sign and stared up at its words in puzzlement. There was no sense to be made of them. Deciding that maybe this wasn't such a good idea, Tally turned to go back to her car. But something made her stop. Keeping an eye on the deserted road for a moment more, she moved her inquisitive eyes back to what she had seen.

A smile broke across her face.

There was a house!

Forgetting to be fearful, Tally began to trudge her way towards the grey mansion hidden deep in the woods, taking the final walk she would ever take.

Tally had been walking for what seemed like ages. She'd gotten a little misled for a few minutes as there was no path to the house and she was unsure if she had taken the right way. Correcting herself by retracing, she quickly had the house within her sight once more. The deeper she got into the woods the quieter her purring car engine became until there was nothing to hear but the branches cracking beneath her boots and the heavy flap of wings from above her.

Everything frightened Tally.

She saw faces in knots on trees.

She saw strange, terrifying men in amongst the Beeches, their true form a sapling tree.

Every noise she heard was a beast coming for her.

Finally she came into a clearing. As she stepped closer, gazing up at the magnificent grandeur of the house, snow flakes began to fall. They settled in her hair, white and small, quickly melting until they were invisible.

Tally went towards the doors.

The house before her was ancient. Nothing like the brand new building she lived in on campus. It was 1973 for heaven's sake, no one lived in houses like this, with its Gothic windows and chimneys, its steepled towers, like something a fairytale. It had two wide heavy wooden doors with bear heads for knockers and a row of huge windows stood guard on the third floor. Tally figured she may as well find out if someone was home, the light had gone out but maybe...

Something knocked the wind out of Tally as she put her foot against the first stone step. The woods span around her repeatedly as she was flung across the expanse. Snow was falling thicker now, but what had fallen was not deep enough to cushion her landing.

Tally broke her flight against the body of a tree, her lungs sucking in deeply for air. She began to panic, making the task of catching her breath almost impossible. Blinking, she scanned the surrounding are for life. And saw a shadow coming towards her.

It wasn't a shadow. It was a man. A terrifying man, loping his way across to her, his black shoes crunching the building layers of snow beneath this feet. 

He was tall and well dressed, everything he wore was black. His hair was thick and the same colour as his expensive suit. His clothes were old fashioned, like something Tally's great grandfather would have worn. His face, chiseled and beautiful, was blank. Tally straightened, pulling herself up against the tree, hearing herself muttering apologies, feeling tears rolling down her cheeks, pain stabbing her.

He stopped before her. Tally's breathing was laboured and torn. Wheezing, she realised that a rib had cracked when she had hit the tree. This was why she could not breathe.

Tally's eyes traveled from the polished shoes up the sturdy legs and broad torso of the man in front of her. She half expected to see that his eyes were gone or that they would burn red like embers or be as black as tar... But they were green, a sharp dazzling green and they came closer to her face as he knelt before her, his strip of a moustache carrying snowflakes like hitchhikers. His breath on her skin was warm. It smelt of tobacco.

'My treasure,' He mewed in a calm voice. Tally whimpered, struggling with the heavy pressure in her chest. His fingers found their way to her face, hand cupping her jaw like a lover. His other hand brushed away the tendrils of hair sticking to her cheeks and neck.

'My treasure,' He repeated. 'Are you hurt?'

Tally frowned, fear beginning to abate. Maybe he hadn't been the one to hurt her, maybe he had seen off her attacker. Nodding gently, his soft thumb brushing her lips, she found herself trying to trust him.

'How bad is it?' There was a little concern in his voice now, those eyes scanning her body, looking for injury. Tally could feel her eyelids drooping, her vision blurring a little, the cold was making her sleepy as her body went into shock.

'Can you hear me?' He asked. Tally lifted a finger, brushing it gently down the gold pocket watch hanging from his waistcoat. He watched her finger fall into her lap. Gently, with warmth, he pressed his lips against her forehead. His moustache bristled against her.

'You suffer from a punctured lung,' He informed her. 'I fear that it is too late, for your sake. You will die within the next three minutes. I'm sorry. If you had returned to your vehicle I would not have harmed you. But you trespassed on my land and I cannot forgive that.'

Tally felt a sharp fingernail twist into her at the base of her neck where her pulse throbbed. She jerked, waking up, her lung screaming and ripping inside of her. Shuddering, she stared into those dangerous green spheres. There was evil behind them. Intense evil.

'I should have snapped your neck. I am sorry, it was what I was aiming for. You rather took me by surprise... Coming so close... I was unsure of how to handle you.'

Tally's teeth began to chatter against each other.

'I'm s-so-sorry,' she managed. For a moment the gentleness returned, he hushed her, soothing her with calming words, hand still running through her hair. Tally coughed, the motion seeming to split her in half. Her tongue tasted something brassy. She coughed again. More blood filled her throat.

'What shall I do with you, my treasure? Should I bury you here? Maybe I should install you in my stone garden... Perhaps you would make good company for my Kerensa...'

Behind him, from what little view she had, Tally saw a blackbird pecking at the dirt before it became completely submerged by snow. Little marks followed his orange feet over the white surface.

'Not long now, treasure... another moment or two...'

Tally coughed violently, body falling forwards, then smashing back against the tree trunk. The man's face was now splattered with blood, his collar and waistcoat shone with little dots of it. His gold pocket watch was now freckled.

'Bitch.' He growled, dropping his hands from her face finally and pulling himself up in a fluid motion. Tally tried to watch him, but her heartbeat was failing her.

'Oh, you'll die, you will die. But I am not done with this. You will not leave me without suffering some more, here, now! In the mortal world!' Tally's eyes closed. She did not see him draw a small sharp dagger from his pocket, but she felt his breath on her once more as he knelt back down and pulled at her lower jaw.

'Do not be afraid, my treasure. You will be dead in a moment.'

Tally's eyes opened again... That had been years ago... More years than she had been able to keep count of. In her sleeping hours, she dreamt of running through the fields of grass, of moving from this spot she stood on. Of feeling the ice in the snow that fell or the sunshine warm her body.

She had woken as if from a dream then too...

He had been carrying her. Lying in his arms, head fallen back, hair moving with the wind. He had carried her to the bottom of the hill, where she could see her car. Her heart had felt overjoyed, he was going to let her go! Instead he stopped at the bottom of the hill and put her down, forcing her to stand up. Tally realised the pain was gone. She felt nothing though... Not even the cold snow falling on her hands...

'You are dead now, my treasure. You are a ghost. I am leaving you here as my visual. You will always let me know when someone else trespasses on my property. This is your life now. In a few days, your people will come looking for you. But they will find nothing to show that you had even been here. You will watch the police car slow down, you will see an officer get out and scan the area for you. Perhaps you have a lover, perhaps he will be with them. Perhaps you will hear him call your name...'

Tally stared at him, dumb. He smiled charmingly. 'It is your Fate, treasure.'

He moved behind hear. She heard a sound, of metal clanging. Then something pulled at her, jerking her to stand a few steps back, before an intense pain came from a body part she did not have, as a hammer drove a peg through it into the ground.

'That was your soul, my treasure.' He purred, coming back around to face her, hammer in hand. 'Or your aura or your spirit, whichever you prefer to refer to it as. I have pinned you down, you are immobile, you cannot move, not ever. And no one can see you. No one can hear you. No one will ever know about the pale white girl watching, stood for eternity to this spot, just watching...' He chuckled to himself, seeming pleased. 'This is, I fear, my cruelest creation yet.'

Tally opened her mouth to speak. But no words came out. As if remembering something, he put his knuckles to his lips, betraying an insane little smile...

'Ah, yes, how could I forget. That unearthly pain I promised you before your death... You suffered it. I cut out your tongue, treasure. And you drowned and choked on your own blood.'

Tally's eyes widened, tears falling rapidly. She looked down at herself and tried to move. He tsked.

'I told you, you are pinned. You are mine now.' He moved as if to leave then paused.

'Oh yes, lest I forget. I am not all cruelty and the deliverer of evil. I do take care of my possessions.'

The sound of an old umbrella snapping open and unfolding broke the wood's silence and he placed the long bamboo handle in Tally's right hand. She gripped it tightly, shaking with anger and fear.

'I bid you adieu, my treasure. You will alert me every time. Just press that little button right there, next to your thumb, if they come off of the road. You will not be able to stop yourself. It will just happen. You are my creature now.'

She had not seen him since then... But he had been right about the police. And her boyfriend. They had come for her and she had waved and jumped and screamed silently and cried so many tears she may have drowned. But they never saw the girl with the black umbrella stood at the bottom of the hill...

Another noise and Tally's eyes sprung open. Vision clearing from her sleep, she gasped as she saw three young boys coming along the road. She prayed frantically that they would carry on, she begged them not to stop. But something had caught the tallest boy's eye and he convinced his friends they should investigate. Tally sent one final prayer to Heaven but they all nodded, sticks in hand, rucksacks on their backs, and came off of the curve onto his land...

Squeezing her eyes tightly shut, a tear rolling down, Tally's thumb ran across the smooth bamboo and pressed the button...

[ennamelusina-blog]

Dark Hallway

Catching up her skirts, the young woman took the third staircase of the house two steps at a time. Reveling in the way her black curls bounced prettily from her forehead to the soft curve of her jaw, she blushed as she thought about his gaze upon her... Soon... So soon...

She was breathless as she put her tiny pink hand on the smooth wooden surface of the large acorn at the top of the stairs. Taking a deep breath, breasts swelling in their cave, she pushed down at the material of her dress and pinched her lips together. She knew from her pretty reflection in the mirror above the chrysanthemums that her cheeks were red enough.

Another deep breath and she was ready. Following the familiar rug, she came to the bedroom door and pushed it open.

It was her room. Furnished with her things. A large bed with goose feather pillows and a satin down. Lavish curtains of richest purple with a gold thread woven around the edges. Her mirror and stool with their dainty pots and trinket boxes for all of her powders and potions. The large fireplace, big enough for several small children to sit in, blazed with flames. Her shawl was still on the chair she kept between the door to her hallway and the fire mantle...

Her hallway...

Rushing across the room, she took the golden handle in her hands and pushed down. From the chambers of the lock, a click came and the door yielded to her gentle push.

The heavy cloying scent of lilies filled the air.

The hallway between the bedroom and the small room connected to it was narrow but light. There were no windows, only eight ornate gilded mirrors, four on one wall, four on the second wall. The mirrors faced candles to echo the light given off by the flickering flames. A mirror on the left faced a candle on the right. A mirror beside the candle faced a candle on the left. And so on and so on until the door at the other end of the strip. She looked down it ... She could walk down here in the darkness, she had walked it more times than she could remember. It took exactly eighty seven steps to navigate the slim line between one door to the other...

Kerensa let the bedroom door where daylight lived close behind her and began to walk passed the sparkling mirrors, blowing out each candle as she passed it with a light breath...

                                                       * * *

Emmy hesitated at the doorway. Her heart beat so fast in her chest that she felt certain her ribs would crack from the beating they took. She swallowed what little saliva she had left, licking her bottom lip and tasting the salty iron tang of blood. Damn, her cheek was bleeding still... From that gash on her left cheek, the one deep enough to have peeled back to the fat and muscle beneath... It had stung when she had placed a shaking finger tentatively to the wound... As though she could not stop herself, she felt her hand sliding upwards yet again...

A scream jerked her hand away and made her entire body leap and shake. She had no choice, she knew. She couldn't hide in the room with the window, there was no where to hide. Her only option was to go back up - and she wasn't going back up - or to take her chances in here.

A final scream from outside the door decided her. Knowing her friends and sister to be dead, Emmy pushed herself into the darkness. Panting from exertion, she yanked the door shut behind her and slammed her eyes shut, willing her heart to stop pounding so loudly. In amongst her own breathing she could have sworn she heard a low sigh... Like a breath extinguishing a flame.

Emmy's mind raced as she stood trembling in the darkness. Images flashed through her head. The crimson rivers of blood ... The trickles of sweat tickling her skin as her sister, Joy, held onto her hand, her grip loosening as she slipped away, slipped away from the pain and the torture ... Polly's scream and the squelches of internal damage inflicted upon her ... That first glimpse of something following them, something following the five of them ...  The bird-like whistling of Candice as they wandered from the path, Jamie swinging a gasoline tankard in her hand, the six of them crunching the late season leaves beneath their boots, urgent to get back to the car and back onto the main road ... That first agonizing tear of skin ... The darkness and the chase and the panic and the fear and the noises and the terrible terrible words ... The way Hayley had looked at her when she took her chance and abandoned the room upstairs.

Emmy groaned. Her throat seemed to seal up and her nose block as a scream she needed to let out built up in her head, threatening to expand her skull beyond the pressure it could withstand... Clutching her fair hair, she allowed herself to sniffle and felt her back and right side slide down the wall and door frame until her knees locked and she crouched, whimpering.

She didn't know what made her finally open her eyes. Maybe it was fear of what was around her. Maybe it was the need to get further away from Him, to distance herself from the horrors on the other side. Or maybe it was the barely audible sound of another crying.

Hayley had always been nagging at Emmy to quit smoking. It would give her lung cancer. She would die at forty. Her fingers would stain and her skin shrivel. Hayley had always hated the smoking. Right now, as Emmy fiddled in her jacket pockets for the box of matches she had stolen from the dashboard of Jamie's car, she thanked her ex for getting her addicted at fourteen to nicotine. It meant that she was prepared now with some form of luminance.

Fingers shaking, she managed to slide the draw of the match box open and clutched at a match until she had secure hold of one. The familiar rip of wood on the rough strip and the odour of smoke (mixing in with a heavy cloying scent of lilies Emmy only now realised was there), calmed her jumping blood for a second and she waited patiently for her eyes to adjust to the dimness.

The first match went out when she exhaled against it. The second illuminated a little in front of her but burned out as quickly as it had come, she had no chance to see what was there. Third time's a charm, she heard an inner voice speak, and she tore a match head against the box again.

She was still crouched against the wall. Shifting, she saw that it was a pale egg shell blue, with silvering swirls of exotic bird's wings. The paper was old but it was not damaged by sunlight. Match flame wavering, Emmy blinked and tore at another match again. Her eyes looked in front of her and she felt her scream rising again.

There was someone with her.

The fourth match joined the other three on the floor once its life was over. Emmy crunched it beneath her foot as she rose to full height, eyes darting as if she could see. Being blind however was worse than knowing what she had walked into, and so she bravely took out another match.

A white shoulder was just feet in front of her. It didn't move. It was boney and looked cold to the touch. Emmy wondered just what she had walked into, a freezer for the dead perhaps, a secret hiding place for corpses.

The match went out before she could see more.

Another match, and this time Emmy had forced herself forward three steps. She was closer to the right hand side now and as she had moved her head collided with something hard and pointed. Raising the flame to the object, she realised she had headbutted an ornate candle stick. Without hesitation she made a peculiar sound of fear as she lit the candle, praying for the wick to catch. Her green eyes jumped with fire as they reflected the guttering candle.

Emmy gasped.

To her left was the shoulder again. Pale, still and painfully thin, skin stretched over bone. Emmy noticed a bundle of red-gold tendrils falling from the shoulders down the back, caught up in a green ribbon to hold them tightly in place in an old style. It was a girl. Emmy blinked. It was another person. But she wasn't turning to look at Emmy, to ask if she was ok or beg for help or even to harm her. She simply stood there. Emmy looked beyond the back of the girl's head to the glass beyond. She was staring at a mirror -

Suddenly, with no warning, the place she was in was flooded with light. Panicking, Emmy pressed herself up against the wall.

More candles on either wall had been invisibly lit. Eight of them. And each candle lit up another girl, row after row after row of frozen, unblinking, unseeing, docile girls. Brunettes, redheads, blondes and one with rich dark hair, the colour of ebony. Emmy thought to appeal to them, to ask for their help. The words died on her tongue as her eyes looked closer at the girl in front of her. Tears welled in her eyes and a small scream came to her still blood-stained lips. Her hand brushed the wound on her cheek as her knuckles were bitten by her teeth.

The girl with the russet hair and the green ribbon was naked. Every inch of her slim body was bare but smooth, no sign of goose bumps from the cold. Her hips were wider than her waist and there was something falling down the curve of her buttocks, down to the trunks of her thighs. Emmy's eyes traveled upwards and the bumps of a spine and the angular points of shoulder blades were covered in this same splash of colour that adorned the girl's lower half. Emmy forced herself to look closer. She wished she hadn't.

The girl was entirely naked. They all were. When Emmy turned to the girl to her right she could see that flat of her stomach and the roundness of a breast, but down the back there ran like water, a deep pink ribbon. The girl a space down had a yellow ribbon. The one after that and the one after that had midnight blue and aubergine purple. A sixth girl had a bronze ribbon and the final girl at the end, the one with the hair as black as a raven's breast, had a ribbon of red.

These ribbons crisscrossed over the skin of the girls. It was the same pattern that a ribbon of a corset made. Only there was no corset to hold together and no eye and hook to loop the material through.

Instead there were little balls tracing either side of their spines. And around these balls which stretched at the skin and created some dark, dimpling bruises, the ribbons were attached, keeping together the skin of the victims before her.

Emmy tasted acid in her mouth and fought the urge to throw up. Hand still pressed against her mouth, her eyes darted from one girl to the next, her breathing muffled against her own skin and the edge of her sleeve.

She could not stay here.

Forcing herself to use her legs, Emmy slid her back against the wall, minding the candle by sliding down and raising up again once she had passed beneath it. Mistake. She was now facing the girl with the yellow ribbon was facing her, staring with brown eyes into her reflection. There was sadness there, Emmy thought, intense sadness and pain. Her rose bud lips, pale against the blue of her skin, did not move, her nostrils did not flinch for air. She just stared. Her hair, Emmy thought, as she forced herself around the girl and further down the lit hallway, looked soft, like it had been freshly washed.

Emmy forced herself down the hallway, counting the steps as she went to take her mind off of the nude girls with their young firm bodies forever frozen in this state, never aging, never sagging, always young and beautiful except for the deep and sore wounds of the corset ribbons going down each girl's back. Emmy thought to herself, as she reached the bronze ribbon girl, at least they were not moving. She had tried to keep her eyes to the ground but she looked up as her face went past the back of the girl's blonde head, Emmy's face pale and scared, obliterated by the reflection and then visible on the other side once more. And it was then that she saw was the girl was staring so intently at.

It was her own reflection. But instead of the beautiful young face that Emmy saw as she passed each girl, the mirror showed something all the more disturbing. Nose to cartilage-free nose, the blonde girl and her reflection gazed at one another. The girl with her fine blue eyes. The reflection with deep eye sockets and a surround of ebony bone -

Emmy screamed. The box of matches she had clutched so tightly up till now fell from her grip. In the skip of a heartbeat she saw the cheesy wide grin of the skull. The empty sunken orifices. The sharp cheek bones and the hairless dome. The boney cord of vertebrae, the empty ribcage, the free space where muscles and blood and oxygen and muscle and fat were meant to be, the tops of her long bone arms falling emptily from hard shoulders...

Emmy's scream seemed to awaken something. From her right, far back down to the door she had come through, the red haired girl turned her beautiful face to Emmy. So too did the yellow ribbon girl. Then the pink and the blue and the purple... As the purple girl turned her head to look at Emmy, just inches away from her face, Emmy saw the blonde in front of her move her crown of golden curls to the left, her stance puzzled as she looked at Emmy behind her in the reflection. In the mirror, the skull bored its gaze into her, terrifying, a skeleton, a creature that cannot live.

Then there came the soft sound of hair brushing against skin and Emmy slowly turned her head to the left. Next to her was the girl with the black hair and the red ribbon. Emmy could see both reflection and human girl staring at her. She was beautiful, Emmy thought, looking with fear at the red cheeks and the swelling breasts as the girl breathed heavily, shoulders beginning to lift... In anger, Emmy realised, too late.

'Fleeeshhh...' The bone jaws croaked in unison. Emmy looked from left to right, panicking, watching as the black haired girl begin to reach out a hand towards Emmy, reaching to take hold of her, the skeleton in the mirror seemingly escaping from its frame. The dead girl leaned closer, and closer, those from down the hallway came nearer and nearer. A small pink hand brushed against Emmy's hair -

'No!' Emmy screamed, forgetting that she was hiding here from Him, that she had to be quiet. Surging forwards, she ran the last few feet of the hallway, noting on her way that there was another candle, another mirror, but that it was empty, that there was no girl stood staring mournfully at her tragic reflection.

There was a breath. And the candles went out.

Emmy continued to run until she collided with the door at the end of the dark hallway. It did not open. Guarding her now broken nose, blood pouring over her hands and into her mouth, down her neck, she turned around, trying to see down the blacked out hallway, trying to tune her ears into the sound of them coming... She only heard her own pained cries and the slight crunch of one as her fingers pressed against her nos-

Then like a snake slithering around a tree branch, she felt it, a cool satin-touch ribbon snaking around the skin of her neck. Gripping the ends tightly, something pulled at the ribbon, choking the life out of Emmy, her windpipe crushing, her mouth struggling as it fought the urge to swallow blood and the let out air. There was no light to dim from her eyesight as she was in cold darkness and the assault by her heart on her ribcage began to abate as Emmy thrashed against her captor but failed to free herself from their sickening intentions.

There was a slight snap of a thin bone in her neck. And Emmy's world went as silent as the grave.

The dark hallway... Now had a complete set of the Standing. Girls in the darkness in front of their mirror, reminded in the rare occurrence of light of what they truly were now, unable to leave, unable to breathe, feeling the stretch of the tight binds of the corsets made from their own skin...

The dark hallway... Now had a complete set of naked, corseted girls.

[ennamelusina-blog]

The Window 3.

There was a shift in the dormant shape of the tall dark curtain on the left hand side of the window. Peter's breath caught. His mind darted, trying to figure out what the movement had been.

But there was no one there.

But there was someone there.

Peter's skin began itching inside of his suddenly claustrophobic clothes. Phoebe! He thought urgently to himself. I must find Phoebe!

'Whooo ... is ... Phoeeebe?'

Peter's bottom jaw began to chatter, his teeth clamping together on his tongue in fright, drawing blood. The sharp pain made him gasp, clearing his vision, making him refocus. He almost wished he hadn't.

The curtain had stopped moving. It stood tall and upright in the inkiness of the room. The room he shouldn't be in, that wasn't Peter's, it was not his room, it was not his grave.

'Phoooebe?' He heard the voice again. Already he had caught a glimpse of it, the owner of the voice, but he refused to look at it again. Pushing down the scream that was rising in his throat, Peter forced himself to look down. No, not down! he reminded himself. His broken ankle was down, its peculiar angle scared him as much as she did.

No, he had to look up, but look beyond, look to the window, to the silvery moon lighting the midnight sky, to the bare trees watching him, to the owl whose shadow just seemed to jump the moon. Funny, Peter thought, I could have sworn it was a cow that jumped over the moon in the rhyme...

'Phoebeee?' The thing before Peter asked yet again and he heard his own breath come out in a low scream. Peter's blood pumped in his eardrums, adrenaline scaring his body into action, urging him to flee. But he couldn't flee. Knowing there was no other option, Peter swallowed tightly, a bead of sweat dripping from his crew cut. Blinking his eyes shut for a moment, he exhaled and looked up at the spectre before him.

She seemed to almost float. She was terrifying yet lovely. Staring back at him with eyes that were simply black holes with empty light emanating from where pupils should be, the girl's head was to one side, studying Peter, her full lips pressed firmly together, her pretty grey face showing no expression of interest, anger or anything else.

Peter was an artist. His eyes took in every detail of an image or person or landscape and his mind registered them automatically, within seconds, noticing things others may not.

The girl before him wasn't transparent or lucid or white as he might have imagined a ghost to be. She had a thick chestnut brown mane of hair that had come loose from its style, falling naturally with the angle of her head. Her small frame was covered by a pale blue dress, long and loosely fitting, Peter could only guess at its date. It looked like one of those period dramas Phoebe adored - the one with the snotty man and the eloping cad.

Her grey arms fell to her sides limply, offering no malice nor assistance to him. The shoulders of her dress were torn, Peter realised, and there was a dark stain, perhaps of dried blood, at her waist. Fine glistening cobwebs were attached to her elbows and the skirts of her dress, giving the illusion that she was sewn to the material. Peter's eyes flicked upwards and noticed a dark mark around the thin neck of the ghost girl before him and only then did he register that it was a frayed old rope hanging from around her neck, resting on her brittle collar bones.

His examination was over once Peter saw the state of her bare feet. They were bloodied from underneath and a small toe was angled incorrectly. Broken. Maybe from when she had kicked out in her death throes, her feet scratched from a splintered chair...

'Phoeeebeee?' Peter trembled at the sound of his beautiful girlfriend's name but he swallowed and told himself to man up. After what he had seen downstairs... that thing... that terrible thing that had... which had... Phoebe...

'Phoebe,' The ghost repeated. Peter blinked through the tears clouding his vision and sniffed, his arms tightening to hug himself.

Oddly, he thought about how he would sketch her... He would use charcoal, he thought... Use them as a base. When he was content he'd draw her again in pencil and then he would fill her world with colour, purple drapes at the window, perhaps a candle in her hand -

A rat's squeak brought Peter to his senses - so did the sharp teeth that dug through the front of his trainer, piercing his toes. The toe of his broken foot. Peter's reaction was to jerk his leg and this caused such a blinding pain that his entire body reacted and his face went white and his canines bit painfully into his lips. The rat scurried off. Peter felt splinters beneath his torn fingernails, ripped up from the ancient floorboards beneath him.

He let out a whimper of pain and fright. The girl, still staring at him, came a little closer, seemingly hovering.

'Phoebe.' She said. Her lips never moved. Peter blinked.

'Phoebe.' The ghost decided and stopped just in front of his sprawled out legs. With a little pain as possible, Peter shifted his good leg closer to his torso.

'Phoebe!' The ghost seemed elated at the sound of the word. Her head still did not move, leaning over her left shoulder. Peter's mind wandered if he'd use water colours or oils on her portrait...

'Phoebe.'

'Please,' Peter finally spoke. 'Please, you've got to help me.'

'Help you?' The ghost's voice was like a song. 'Help Phoebe?'

'Yes! Yes, help me, I need you to help Phoebe!'

'Phoebe.' Peter scrunched down his irritation (could you be irritated with a ghost?) and concentrated on his girlfriend's face in his mind. He counted the freckles on her cheeks and the ones that kisses her nose, as he always did when trying to calm down.

'Please. Help me.'

The ghost seemed to nod her head. But Peter quickly realised she couldn't have done that. There was a reason her neck was to the side. It was broken.

But her arm wasn't. Lifting the left arm of her tiny body, the ghost pointed a bruised finger to the corner where all of the rats came from. Peter blinked, twisting his head, back propped up against the fireplace. His vision took several minutes to find whatever it was he was looking for and when he did he gave a hopeful gasp.

There was a second door.

Not that door in front of him, the one that he had dragged his damaged body through, which he had slammed shut. The skin of his fingers felt suddenly soft and a brassy smell assailed his nostrils as he recalled the heavy key turning in the scraping lock. He also recalled the sound of children's voices as he pulled himself to wards the fireplace, crawling the expanse of the room on his stomach. He thought he'd imagined them...

'Phoebe.' The girl said. It was becoming her mantra. Peter found himself a little annoyed. She may be dead, but surely she was a little more helpful than this. Eyes still locked on the second door, now that he could see it in the gloom, Peter licked his lips and felt a little hope spring within.

But he had no way of moving.

His ankle was broken. There was a bone protruding from his skin. To move, to attempt to move, would be folly. Peter's eyes ran the length of the space from the door back at the ghost and he noticed something glint in the moonlight. She wore a silver locket around her slim wrist. He didn't know why he found this an important detail.

'Please,' Peter said, 'I need to get out of here,'

'Leave?' The ghost said once more, her voice drooling like liquid through his mind. His panic was erupting within him and his anger at what had happened this night was beginning to scratch away at him too. He wished he had a weapon or some sort of aid, something he could use to keep himself safe but also to prop himself up. There was a small old chair near him but it looked riddled with wood worm.

'Do you know how I can get out of here?'

'Door. Phoebe.'

'I can leave through that door?' Peter checked, pointing a shaking finger. The ghost tried to nod. She couldn't.

'I can leave?'

'Hallway... Dark...'

'There's a hallway? Through there?'

'Yes... Dark...'

Peter took a steadying breath and began to think harder. How could he do this? How could he move himself to the door. His ankle... Maybe he could stand -

There was a terrific snapping noise coupled with a high pitched scream from Peter and a screech from the ghost as he desperately tried to move some weight onto his foot. Panting harshly and waiting for the dizziness and the lights darting in front of his eyes to pass, he swallowed bile.

'Please,' His voice was scratched now, that of a broken spirit, tears rolling down his unshaven face. 'Please, I need to leave, I need help, I don't want to die -'

'Door.' The ghost could only say. She remained immobile. Peter let out a frustrated sigh that mixed into a laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation and rubbed a dirty thumb into his right eye. A splinter mixed in with his dark eyelashes.

There was a terrible sound then. One so familiar from his earlier encounter that its repetition made Peter's heart stop for a full second. He looked to the first door, skin going whiter than the paper in one of his sketchpads. His mind flailed wildly for a plan of escape. It gave him none.

A voice came to him again. 'Door.'

'I can't,' Peter cried, shaking his head. 'I can't, not without her.'

There was a sudden shift in the ghost's tangible mood. her head remained to the side but seemed to have jerked at the word 'her'. Peter felt something drop inside of his gut.

'Her?' The ghost girl asked. Peter's words came out as a low whistle before he was able to explain.

'Phoebe, I need my Phoebe.'

'Phoeee... be?' He could see the dead mind of the ghost working behind those shining pit eyes. The locket around her wrist began to swing as she moved a little closer on those awful feet. Her skin was turning darker, as though her lover had been an artist and his method of choice was a stick of charcoal... charcoal that had transferred from his skin to hers as his fingers had run up and down her body.

'Phoebe? You're ... not ... Phoebe?'

Peter told himself to lie. Instead he said, 'no.'

And as if the whole scene was playing before him instead of happening to him, Peter watched and listened as the sound of young boy's voices began to shout and beg and plead, calling out to the ghost, saying a name, shouting it wildly, telling her, no don't, don't do it, please no don't!

As these little words pulled together into sentences he watched as the ghost who had seemed so fragile and pretty and helpful before, so pitiable, transformed into something as petrifying as the thing out in the hallway that was getting nearer and nearer.

Her hair was flying out wildly. Those eyes were no longer black as coal, they were completely lit, shining dazzlingly at him, anger conveyed through them. Her head cracked upwards with a grinding sound and her aura produced a coldness that poured into the room and caught his skin like digits, nails biting into his flesh like tiny iced daggers.

'No,' Peter moaned, fright now bursting into panic. 'No!'

'Not Phoebe?' The voice that came out was harsh, low, a growl. The eyes lit and she seemed to be taller, she was suddenly in front of him, faces just inches apart, her breath rancid and garlicky. Peter trembled.

'Name!' She shrieked at him. 'NAME!'

'P-Peter!' He stuttered, hoping this would appease her somehow. Instead she straightened and looked down on him, lips grim and turned downwards now, a power reaching out from within her that blocked the light of the moon though it were still visible behind her and caused her to bleed from her wounds. The rope had tightened around her neck until Peter could see the contusion marks, until he heard the strings grinding together in the plaited murder weapon. Her hands rose and as she took the other end of her rope which dangled to her knees and lifted it into a loop shape up to her chest, her bones crackled, the loudest sound in the room.

'Not again,' A harsh woman's voice came out from within her, her face changing from a cold and dark contortion of hatred and ugliness to a beguiling and false beauty that gave her cheek bones sharpness and her eyes a flash of blue. Her voice was commanding and it was addressed to him, and her head shook slowly but intimidatingly, telling him no.

'Not again, Peter.' He caught a glimpse of her teeth, sharp points, her inner mouth rotted. Her nails were ripped and blackened and her flesh was now stretched over her bones.

'I won't let you go to her again, Peter... I won't let you do THIS again.'

There was a mingled cry from the boy's voices again, Peter heard it echoing in his brain, it made him dizzy, everything was fuzzy, he felt drowsy all of a sudden.

'Not Phoebe.' The ghost girl said determaindly, mouth twisting, jaw setting in anger. Peter put out a hand, readying to plead for his life, to ask for forgiveness for whatever he'd done wrong, to try and find a way out of this nightmare -

'Not again, Peter.' The rope was finally looped, the same size that her loop had been before it had begun to tighten and crush her windpipe.

Peter looked up at her, at this disgusting evil death before him, the rope she was lifting, the hatred in those eyes, the determination in her shaking limbs. And all he could think was how beautiful she would look with the right shading -

'STOP THINKING OF HER! NOT AGAIN, PETER, NOT AGAIN!'

The screams of the dead boys mingled with the screams of Peter.

[ennamelusina-blog]

The Window 2

Being a ghost is hard.

You never get hungry. Just as well since you can't really ever eat. You never get cold because, well it is your job to make others cold with your eerie presence. You don't shower because you don't smell, you don't jump out at pigeons and make them scarper in frightened surprise because they can't see you. There are a lot of things about being human to miss when you are a ghost. And Casper found it the worst at Christmas time.

And yes, that's his real name. Casper. Casper the ghost. Clichéd right?

'Didn't your parents ever think about that?' Basil had asked once years ago, as they played with conkers, smacking and thwacking the seeds with menace. Casper had frowned as his conker took a pounding and wondered if Basil had coated his in his sister's clear nail varnish again.

'Think about what?' Nine year old Casper checked, tightening his string, readying to deliver the final blow.

'That one day you'll die and be a ghost. And you're gonna be the dumbest named ghost ever.'

'Hardly ever. Tutankhamen the Ghost is pretty dumb, too.' Basil had smirked at that and they'd carried on their game.

Five years later and Casper was now dead. Dead at the hands of his odd-ball parents who'd allowed him to go away with these two. Dead at the will of the road sign that, it came to light later, much later, far-too-late later, had pointed them in the wrong direction to the wrong road, to the wrong house. Dead at the bidding of someone that Casper didn't now like to think about..

'Move yourself Basildon, or I'll bite your ear off,' Jerry warned, straining his eyes to see outside. Casper looked across at the window-doors with their forty two panes of glass and sighed. Jerry and Basil were at it again.

'If you'd just let me move you to the side we could share the view.' Basil pointed out, an edge in his tone as Jerry glared at him.

'If you'd bugger off I'd be a lot happier,' Jerry said. The two went on with arguing over the view.

Casper kicked a feather the owl who had flown into the room yesterday had left, and looked at the wall before him. Its dark purple wallpaper was torn, revealing discoloured edges and old old wall plastering that was cracked and chipped. Feeling exasperated with those two, he did what he often did: pressed his forehead up against what he imagined was a cool surface, and knocked his head against it a few times. It didn't hurt. It didn't actually feel of anything. He didn't even make the plasterwork crumble from its earlier indentations...

'If you don't move, I will toss you out of the window!' Jerry warned. Basil laughed.

'The window that we can't open?'

'I'll open it, I'll find a way.' Basil gave Jerry a look, staring down at him.

'Right. Is that before or after I give you your head back?' and with that Basil lifted Jerry's head out of the mouth of the old Victorian vase and jumped back from Jerry's remaining body, its arms flailing.

'Give me back!' Jerry shouted. Basil was so busy laughing at his friend's dissevered body that he almost jumped at the voice commanding him from under his arm.

'Uh... Don't really want to.' Basil grinned down at the freckle faced ghost. 'It's fun to be ahead of you for once - haha! Haha! Did you get that, Casp? I made a joke!'

Casper lifted his head from the wall, resisting the urge to slam it forwards for the twenty third time and just looked at his friends.

'Shouldn't you be watching the window?'

Jerry looked up at Basil who shrugged down at him. Jerry cried out.

'Don't do that! It feels funny!'

'Want to sit on my shoulder?' Basil offered in truce. Jerry gave a bottom lip shrug and was lifted onto Basil's shoulder. Casper almost laughed for the first time since he'd found himself dead. They looked like a circus freak act. The two headed man...

Boy. They were all boys. They'd now only ever be boys.

'I never realised how short you are,' Jerry commented, staring out at the snowy garden beyond the stone balcony.

'Don't make me let go of you.'

'Okay, okay. Where'd they go?'

'There. Beneath the yew tree.'

Casper looked at his two friends again, Jerry's body now limp on the floor. Basil shifted on his one remaining foot.

'Your wound is gross,' Jerry complained. Basil tilted his half severed neck and grinned at Jerry, their noses almost touching.

'You know,' he teased, looking straight into Jerry's eyes. 'Before I died, I'd never kissed a girl.'

'Ew-yuck! Well don't expect it from me, put me down, you idiot, put me down!' Basil chuckled, putting Jerry's bloody stump of a head back down in the vase.

'Casp, come over here. We'll wager on whether they escape or if they're dumb enough to come in here.' Casper looked down at his hands.

'Nah.' He replied quietly, sitting down on the floorboards by the open and empty fire.

'Sure? If you don't bet now, I won't let you bet later.'

'I'm good.' Casper answered. Basil shrugged in a suit-yourself gesture and turned Jerry's head to face outside so they could watch. Jerry's gravelly voice decided, 'They'll come in,' Basil shook his head as best he could. 'They won't.'

Casper prayed they wouldn't.

It was near to Christmas. Casper had kept a log of the days since they'd all died viciously, painfully, fearfully. Three years, six months, two weeks and six days. He'd been the last to die, he thinks...

He missed his family. He missed his dad's goofy Santa jokes, the way he'd spin round mummy, proclaiming that she'd kissed Santa Claus last year so this year he'd kiss Mrs Claus. Casper's mother would giggle stupidly, turning down the radio, proceeding to protest weakly as she was swung around in his arms.

He missed the smell of roast turkey and the crackle of a slightly burnt potato skin between his back teeth. He missed sledging, the freedom of free-falling. He missed scooting along the waxy pew at church, making room for that scary old woman who stank of peppermints, had eyes like a cat and insisted on naming him after her long dead husband, Teddy. He missed snowflakes on his cheeks and willing his bladder to wake him up before his little brother Peter got all the good sweets from under the tree.

Mostly he missed cherub-faced Peter. Who followed him everywhere and turned his Bambi eyes to his older brother whenever he needed reassuring. He missed how annoying he was. He missed seeing him. Peter would be seven now...

'They're coming closer!' Jerry broke into Casper's thoughts, voice excited. 'They're coming into the house!'

'There's still time for them to turn back.' Basil answered hopefully. Casper hoped so too.

'I don't think they will.' Jerry volunteered, straining his eyes to watch. 'They're heading to the veranda.'

The boys waited in silence. They didn't breathe. No need for that. They didn't speak. They just ... Basil and Casper both jumped a little as a great angry sounding bang came echoing to them from the old front doors downstairs. Casper flicked a look to Basil. His friend swallowed quietly.

'They'll come in.' Jerry said needlessly. 'God, they'll come in.' Even he had hoped they wouldn't.

Silence. Casper watched without fear or repulsion as a rat sniffed in the corner of the fireplace. Its nose twitched, its red eyes glittered. He vaguely recalled how sharp rats teeth were when digging into your supple young flesh...

BANG BANG BANG

'Bas.' Jerry's voice was low. The other boy stayed still. His instinct was to hide behind the heavy dark curtains fringing the windows as the snow continued to fall outside.

'How many?' Casper asked, his eyes watching carefully for Him.

'Two.' Basil answered. 'Boy and girl.'

'Fuck.' Casper hissed.

'He's not in here.' Jerry guessed. 'We'd have -'

BANG BANG

'They're as good as dead.'

'Shush, Basil. They may get away...' The room almost seemed to vibrate at Casper's words. The front doors, those majestic and heavy barriers to the outside world, hiding the evil within, were being 'forced' open.

'Basil, help me.' Jerry said, his body raising up from the floor. Basil lifted Jerry's head and handed it to his body. The head nestled between the crook of Jerry's elbow and his side. The side that wasn't missing a vital organ or two, that wasn't a gaping hole.

'Casp? Want a hand?' Casper ignored the unthinking words of his friend as he tried to push himself up. Basil hopped over and put his arms beneath Casper's armpits, lifting him up. Casper's severed hands remained on the floor.

'I want out,' Jerry suddenly informed the room. 'I don't want to see this again, I want out.'

'We don't have a way out,' Basil answered matter-of-factly. 'And neither do they.'

'Let's not stay around for this one.' Casper agreed with Jerry. His eyes trailed up to the rope hanging from the ceiling, the chair beside the fire. They flicked to Basil pleadingly.

'We can't escape it.' Basil stated, bending to retrieve Casper's hands, struggling to balance on one foot. 'Don't be such scaredy ghosts.'

'Who you gonna call?' Jerry muttered under his breath. After a moment he added 'Wish they would call them. Wish they would bust us. I'm tired of this -'

A scream, male, female, didn't matter, it was a scream, it was a sign that He was getting His fix again, that He would spend the rest of this day, this night, as long as he could, easing His own depraved lust...

'Let's sit in the fireplace together. And put our backs to the room. We'll sing Christmas carols to distract ourselves from the -' Another scream, filled with pain and fear this time, spoke the final words.

'Good idea, Basil.'

The boys moved to the fireplace and sat down, shoulder to shoulder, filling the space.

Casper fixed his eyes on the white marble of the back of the gaping mouth of the fireplace and slowly shut his eyes. His hands lay in his lap. Jerry's head rested in his. Basil had his legs crossed but only one foot remained. Staring at the hole where his heart had once been, Casper finished closing his eyes and began to sing to drown out the terrified screams. Basil and Jerry accompanied him, each boy's voice raspy and was urging to get the job done, to create a peace, to drown out the noise - 

Silent Night...

[ennamelusina-blog]

The Window

Thirty six panes of glass separate to make two doors to the daylight lit window. An overhanging of dark blue curtain, heavy and almost black in this light, cut off two more rows of square shaped glass at the top of the window-doors. This takes the total of glass panes to forty two; the top row obliterated from sight and all good society.

The sky outside is grey. The trees and empty autumn hedges are black, brown, mauve, khaki, green, gold and luscious red. Between the window and the world outside there is a stone balcony with no guard rail, and if you were to open the windows and step through their majestically tall limbs, like a puppy through its owners legs, you could stand on the stone balcony. Stand there and feel the cold breath of Mother Nature on your goose-bumped skin. Stand there and breathe in her heady perfume; that crisp yet moist autumnal scent that tells you what has happened outside today. Rain has fallen, turning brittle leaves into compost. Worms have moved over soil and been picked at by the sharp beaks of birds, you could tell by the scent of blood where the bird was careless and unluckily killed by a fox. It would tell you that the aching clouds long to release themselves and disperse, letting another downpour of water wash away the sin of the world that day.

Time is passing. Your eyes retract from the daylight beyond you as it begins to fade to shadow. Shadow. Your only companion right now. But also your enemy. A dark menacing enemy. It is growing colder. You are like a larvae cocooned in a freezing blanket of menace. You cannot turn your head. If you do it makes your feet move and the chair creak and you don't, lord, you don't want to hear that chair creak. It is more than your soul can bear. 

So your eyes roam for you. Your body is incapable.

Your brain takes the information it receives, first glimpsing it upside down then flipping the images with ease, rotating them so that your world is not upside down. The briefest of thoughts comes to your mind, why is it that the eyes see everything the wrong way up, relying on your brain to flip it right-ways again? But this evaporates and blows away before it can become a more serious contemplation. You should have researched biology more if you wanted the secret to that conundrum.

Your world has shrunk to what is immediately before you - the window - to as far as your eyes can stretch to the left or right. Your breathing is becoming harder. Your body is getting colder. Your stomach, stupidly you think, growls out in hunger. There is terribly little light to see by now, it is all becoming so black. Your eyes take in the tall and wide Victorian vase seated beside the left hand window door, cracked and chipped, worn but still standing. Like you, it is standing. You wonder if it has trouble feeling its feet now too.

A sharp squeak from some corner in the darkness pulls your pupils to the right. Behind you, you hear a pattering of feet. A mouse, you think, calming your beating heart.

No, your soul tells you as a large black shape scuttles lazily across the window opening and to the side of the vase. A rat.

Time passes in silence. Your life ticks away, tick tock tick tock. Needing something to concentrate on, to believe in, you blink your heavy lids and wait for the white glitter that is almost like tiny stars that are blinding your vision, to ebb away. You realise, hands now no longer giving you any other pain than that of being cold and completely dead, tied behind you as they are, that the shade of black is infinite. It is so many different distorted colours. In here, in this room, in this old house that isn't yours, in this place that you do not belong, the accumulated colours are now blank. The vase is now nothing more than an outline for you. A cascade of light which earlier lit the opening of the window is now a puddle of murkiness. The floor is a muddied brown. The walls around you - you're not even sure that they are there anymore, you seem to be lost in a black hole. Your window with its countryside view has become a gaping void of dark dark darkest blue, with sticks tree arms stretching upwards to a sky you cannot see, no doubt to stars you only envisage when you open your and try to focus your pupils.

The musty smell of dust hangs on the window's curtains.

The smallest sound of a baby rat talking shivers your spine as its breaks the silence.

The pain in your lower back and shoulders as your body slumps forwards, legs no longer strong, incapable of holding you up much longer, robs you of much other thought. You are alone. You and the pain. You cling to each other. Pain is the only sensation you now feel, sleepy as you are, weakening as you are. The tight rope wound around your neck is digging in as you loll forwards. Its many contours of fine fibres itch your red marked skin. Your head is burning inside, as if your mind had built a fire in a grate and was burning all of your memories, your secrets, your loves and losses, your fears and desires. Burning them up like paper, leaving nothing of you behind, leaving no trace of you that others could see. That you may not want them to s-

Your shut eyelids flick upwards, stinging you at the sudden action, but you must see what it was. That sound. You rapidly repeat a natural action, eyelashes fluttering until the specks in front of you have cleared and the window greets you once more. Fingers are tapping on the window outside, it is help, dear lord it is help, sweet mother it is help! Your skin, roughened by hair follicles stood on end, recedes its chill, the cold comforting hug from Death begins to release you as you see long fingers scrabbling at the window panes, trying to scratch you out.

Then you realise that they are not fingers of a loving human but of a dead tree, banging and swaying in the wind that must be blowing outside . The ten long bark-covered fingers continue to tap, to scrape, to tease you and taunt you. And you remember that there are no tree branches near enough to the window for this to be possible...

Your eyelids begin to fall rhythmically into sleep. They tell you to let go, the cutting pain as they close tells you to just kick out, to end this, to put some life into your bones and to just kick back the chair's spine and to end all of this, to go now, to a better place, or a worse place, you don't know anymore, you just don't -

Your mind awakens itself and reminds you that your eyes cannot do the working of your mouth. They cannot speak to you in hushed, hurried whispers. They do not encourage you to die, to -

Your eyes will tell you the truth. Slowly, your breaths coming in heavy, choking gasps, your push upwards, the veil of your eyes lifting, huh huh huh huh huh, your body oozes some last semblance of sweat, your spine contorts with fear, your mind telling you that when you look into the reflection of the window now created by the moon, that you'll see them again, the one that did this to you, who has patiently waited in the shadows you called friends and who now, needing the satisfaction of a death, urges you to succumb, to lose this final battle, their terrible face will be screaming at you in the pane of glass as you meet their gaze, as you face your killer -

No one is there. No fingers. No silhouette. No terrifying monster in human flesh. Fear stays with you, brushing itself up against you like a cat that knows you detest it, bristling your surfaces, shriveling your insides...

A crack comes from behind. There is no accompanying squeak. A gaze tickles at the back of your head, telling you of its captor's presence.

And the voice swarms around you, taking possession of your worn out limbs, taking advantage of your panicked, empty, fearful mind and it moves you onto the next step in the journey before you. Tantalizingly. Briskly. Coldly. It orders...

Just kick back.

[ennamelusina-blog]

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Friday 20th of September 11.59 pm.