The Haunting Within (11 page)

32

After a minute or two of psyching himself up he reached for the door knob and pushed it open. The room he was confronted with was vast. The floor was bare stone and there were rows and rows of wooden seats in the middle, like pews, all facing what looked like a stage with a long wooden table in the centre and a small wooden box with a chair in it that looked like a pulpit. It came to Aiden’s waist as he neared it and he gathered that it must be from the old courthouse their mum had been telling them about.

He thought it was all quite cool but it made him wonder why his grandfather didn’t turn it into something else. He came to the conclusion that he maybe wanted to preserve as much of the history of the house as he could, and why not? It certainly wasn’t every day you came across a house that once was a courthouse. Looking around the room he saw a door at the very back. Crossing over to it he could hear a muffled voice. He put his hand on the door knob ready to enter when he heard his mum’s voice from inside. She sounded far away. He held his breath and pressed his ear to the door to get a better listen. She was crying and through her tears she was talking to someone. Aiden didn’t want to open the door, didn’t want to see who it was she was talking to and he didn’t much care to discover what the room behind the door held, but he did anyway. He had to.

Slowly, he pulled open the door just enough to peer through the gap. It was so dark he could barely see into the dense black hole ahead but he could just make out stairs descending down in front of him. They were made completely of grey stone and looked wide enough to fit at least three people on them at once, side by side. Either side of the stairs gave way to cobbled stone walls, the cement in between was so old it was cracked and flaking away to leave tiny piles of dust on the steps below. Standing at the top of the stairs Aiden contemplated his next move. Was he absolutely sure he heard his mum down there? Because if not he didn’t want to go any further there and risk breaking his leg by falling down the pitch black stairs. Besides, he had no idea where the old stone steps led to. As he was asking himself if he had heard her for sure, a small muffled cry floated up on the darkness toward him. Deciding he must go down there he gingerly stepped onto the first stair, holding onto the wall as he did so because there was nothing near him that resembled a banister. With his trainers making a soft, pleasant shuffling sound on the dusty cement of the steps he slowly made his way lower and lower into the bowels of the manor house towards the crying. After taking about ten steps he could see a faint light at the bottom which glowed and flickered and grew and shrunk making shadows at the bottom of the stairs seem to dance, like they were waiting as patiently as they could for him to get to them, to have him in their reach so they could… So they could what? He had a major case of the jitters and scalded himself silently for being such a wimp. They were just shadows, they couldn’t hurt him. They did look demonic though. Jittering in and out of substance like a dream where you couldn’t quite focus on one thing. They seemed to taunt him, to mock him into going lower if he dared, to close the distance and to look upon them and see what they were, see what it was that was hiding behind a façade. Jesus Christ, how stupid was he being?! Frightened now of fucking candlelight and shadows. What a dick. He knew he was being irrational but even so his heart felt like it would burst through his chest at any second. Taking a couple of deep breaths he continued down, running his hand along one side of the wall for support and feeling more dry cement crumbling out of place and onto the floor.

At the bottom he had to decide, left, right or straight ahead? He strained his ears in the dark and listened. All he could hear was his heart pounding out a rhythm in his veins. Left it was. He turned a sharp corner and came to a stand-still inside a room, lit only by a few burning lanterns spread out around the walls. They were the lights which caused the shadows to move so slyly and eerily. He glanced around, unable to believe his eyes. He was in the dungeons! No shitting way! Proper dungeons like the ones he had seen on a school trip once. Only there were no mannequins here, no dummies dressed in old fashioned clothes, chained and manacled to the walls, and somehow, that made it even worse. He had reached the very heart of the house which made sense because the house was as black and scary as its heart. Everything was bare and the stench was almost overbearing. He imagined it was the smell of stale sweat of a thousand condemned men rotting in this hell waiting to die. The bare cement walls were adorned with shackles and contraptions of torture, the instruments of punishment hanging in full view for everyone who entered the dreadful room to see, like they were something to be proud of. Most of them Aiden didn’t even know what they had been used for but they looked incredibly frightening. How must it have been for those poor people to be down here? He back-tracked quickly and found himself at the bottom of the stairs again. Left was a bad idea.

Taking the passageway straight ahead of him he quickened his pace, wanting to be free of this horrible place. The further he went the more normal it seemed down here now. The wider the passageway became the more it looked like a cellar. The stone walls arched up to the ceiling giving support to the floors above. Things were stored in many dusty boxes and there were numerous tables and chairs stacked against the walls. He walked through a room with a huge generator in it, long disused by the look of it. Beyond that was another room being used to store other things including a rack full of bottles of wine that were so thick with dust their labels were illegible. All through the cellar overheard lights dangled from the ceiling and all were turned on. Bare bulbs illuminated brick work and spider webs. In the corner of the room there was several wire bed frames stacked upright against the wall. Next to them was an old wheelchair sitting motionless and forlorn in the gloom. It was an eerie sight. Hurriedly rushing past the chair Aiden came to a smaller room. In the centre of the floor was a large grate that looked like a long drain that ran the length of the room. As he followed it with his eyes he saw a figure kneeling on the floor about half-way up. Noticing immediately it was his mum, he quickly started towards her, calling out to her. She was on her knees in a prayer-like position and she was oblivious to him standing there watching her.

“I’m so sorry Father! Please don’t punish me; I’ve been a good girl! I have! I promise!” racking sobs escaped her.

Aiden looked around her to see who she was talking to, but saw no-one. She was rocking back and forth on her knees saying “sorry” over and over again to thin air. He walked closer to her and saw that her nose was running from all the crying she had done. As he was just about to reach out to her she threw herself backwards onto the floor and banged her head with a sickening thump. She was screaming now, waving her arms about, pleading, begging for “him” to stop. Aiden rushed forwards and grabbed hold of her arms in a strong vice-like grip.

“It’s me mum. It’s Aiden. It’s alright, everything’s okay” he told her gently hoping to calm her thrashing but it didn’t help. His tipsiness had all but gone at the sight he was facing.

She broke free of his grasp and much to his horror, started head-butting the cement floor and punching herself in the face and scratching at her arms and legs. He tried his hardest to stop her but she was totally out of control. She was grabbing clumps of her hair and literally ripping them out of her scalp. Aiden could hear the strands being torn from her head by her own hands. He turned to prevent himself from vomiting on the dusty grey floor. All the time his she was inflicting these injuries on herself she was screaming at her “father” to stop.

“Please Father, please stop. You’re hurting me! Please, I promise I’ll be a good girl forever and ever.”             

It broke his heart to see her like this. He did the only thing he could think of to stop her from hurting herself any further; he pushed her down into the floor and pressed his whole body weight onto her. Lying on top of her he thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye. When he looked up there was nothing there. Even with all twelve stone of him on top of her it still took a while for her thrashing to end. When it did, she looked up at him with eyes filled with so much distress that he began to weep for her. It was the first time since he entered the room with her that she actually saw him.

She simply asked him “Did you see what he did to me?”

He looked down at her pitiful face and replied in a voice thick with agony “Yes mum, I saw.”

33

Upstairs Lisa was just leaving the hidden room still completely shocked and horrified about what she had seen and read in there when she heard a faint shout from downstairs. A little disoriented, she had to work out which way she needed to be. She rushed to the top of the stairs and looked down over the grand hall. There she saw Aiden standing in the centre of the large, open space with tear stained cheeks and pale white skin. He looked ill and somehow, much older. She asked what was wrong and he just shook his head sadly and headed for the kitchen.

Rushing down the stairs to catch up with her brother she asked hopefully “Did you find mum? Aid, what’s wrong?”

Coming to a stop just before the kitchen door Aiden turned to her and replied with an exhausted sigh “Yeah, I found her.”

“Oh thank god for that! Where was she? Is she okay? Oh listen, I’ve got something really important to tell you and I don’t want mum to hear” Lisa quickly whispered, overcome with relief at finding their mum but bursting to tell Aiden the secret.

“Not now Lisa. I’m worried about mum.”             

“Why? What’s wrong? Where did you find her?” she asked, all of sudden really worried about her mum as well.

“Just come with me. She’s in the kitchen.”

Lisa did as her brother asked her, never before seeing him in such a distraught state. She followed him into the kitchen. Sat at the table holding a mug of steaming hot tea in her shaking hands was their mum, only she hardly resembled their mum. The woman Lisa saw looked like she had been run over. Debbie didn’t look up as they entered the room just continued to stare into the tea.             

“Oh my God! Mum, are you alright? What happened to you?” Lisa asked as she rushed over to her poor mum.              She began checking her injuries, parting her hair to look for lumps, examining her cuts for any that may require stitches.

“Father did this to me. He’s not very pleased with me right now. He says I’ve been very bad and I must be punished. I do try to be a good girl though, honestly I do!” Debbie told her daughter in an infantile voice.

Lisa looked over to her brother but he just shook his head in despair. She understood that he meant don’t ask just yet so she kept quiet and held her mum’s cut hand in her own. She seemed so weak and feeble. Lisa felt like the mother in this scenario and she just wanted to protect her and keep her safe. It was too late for that though, judging by the state her mum was already in so she went to the cupboard under the sink hoping that her grandfather kept the medicines and plasters in the same place they always kept theirs. Luckily he did, so Lisa got out the antiseptic and cotton-wool along with some plasters and went back to her mum. This seemed so strange to Lisa. It had always been her mum bathing her cuts and bruises and now for the first time - and hopefully the last - it was the other way round. She did the best she could under the circumstances, but it was too late to do anything about the dried blood in her hair. That would have to wait until tomorrow Lisa decided. When they got home she would take her mum to the hospital and get her wounds cleaned properly because there was still a lot of grit in the wounds that Lisa couldn’t get out.

Debbie looked up at them with clear and sudden recognition in her tired eyes. “I’m so tired. Do you think you’ll both be alright if I have a nap?” she asked them.

“We’ll be fine mum. We’re just going to have a nice cuppa and then we’ll be off to bed as well.” Aiden smiled at her, trying to keep things as light as he could.

Together they took her upstairs and put her to bed in one of the bedrooms on the second floor. They made sure there was an en-suite and that the door had a lock on the outside and they both agreed it would be best to lock her in to make sure she stayed safe. It was keeping her safe from herself that Aiden was worried about.

34

Back downstairs Aiden sat wearily at the table while Lisa made them a drink. When she joined him she asked where he had found her. He told her the whole sad story and when he glanced over his mug of tea at her he saw that she was silently crying.

“I’ve never seen her like that before. She was fighting nobody for God’s sake! There was no one there and she was punching and scratching herself, pulling handfuls of hair out, all the time saying it was
him
” this word was spat out with utter disdain “doing it!” Aiden shook his head, disturbed at what he had witnessed. He knew with perfect clarity that he would
never
forget that image of his mum harming herself for as long as he lived.             

Lisa could think of nothing to say so they both sat for a long time in silence, sipping their tea and trying to infuse some of its heat into their chilled bodies. They were both lost in their own thoughts when Lisa remembered about the reel. For want of something, anything, to say, she starting to tell Aiden what she had discovered.

“When I was upstairs I found something.” She was going to start to tell Aiden about the film she found but he looked so tired. He was trying to stifle his yawns.

“Sorry” he said with a sheepish grin. “I’m so tired, can hardly keep my eyes open.”

“I’m not surprised. It’s been a really long day for all of us.” Lisa said unconsciously mimicking her brother and yawning. She decided he could wait to hear about the film. It wasn’t a big deal anyway, not under the circumstances.

“She really did believe it was him you know. It was awful to watch. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to come and get you, but I was afraid to leave her alone.” Aiden said shaking his head sadly.

Lisa remembered the state her mum was in when she saw her at the kitchen table and shuddered. There were pinpricks of dried blood on her scalp from where she had torn her hair out from the roots. She had open cuts on her face, hands and arms from scratching herself. Her lip was blooded and swollen where she had either punched herself repeatedly in the face or where she had battered her head on the floor. She was in such a mess. It looked as though she had gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson. Lisa felt so bad for Aiden. He was her little brother, she was supposed to protect him, yet she hadn’t been there to protect him from witnessing such horror. Then she thought if it was her who was there instead of him, she might not have been able to stop her mum from hurting herself. She didn’t have the strength Aiden had. This thought made her feel slightly better. She pulled Aiden towards her and gave him a cuddle and for once, he didn’t try to push her away.

Holding him close against her she thought out loud. “What if it was
something else?
What if mum wasn’t harming herself?”

“I
saw
her Lis. I
heard
the sound of her punching herself.”

“I know, but what if she was being made to hurt herself? Aiden, I know this is crazy but what if there’s something we can’t see?
Someone
we can’t see?” The question was left hanging in the air, neither sibling wanted to think too much about that possibility.

In the warm embrace of his sisters hug Aiden had a nagging feeling like he had forgotten something. It seemed like he was two different people; one part of him was trying his hardest to remember what it was he had forgot and the other part of him was trying to keep the memory at bay. He knew he had forgotten for a reason but he couldn’t for the life of him remember why. He tightened his hold on Lisa and breathed in her perfume…and that was it. He remembered what he had to tell her and the same fear came rushing back into his being like the smell had rushed down the stairs at him.