The Haunting of Gillespie House (10 page)

What happened out there?

There was something in the crypt; that much was clear. It was strong enough to bow solid granite doors and aware enough to sense me when I approached it. My mind tried, and failed, to connect those two snippets of fact to any sort of logic. My instincts had their own opinion about what lay sleepless in the stone tomb: Jonathan Gillespie.

It’s been two hundred years since Jonathan walked on earth, Elle.

I was simply too tired to think any further. Whatever was in the tomb hadn’t followed me to the house, so I pushed aside that thought as I cobbled together a dinner. There were hardly any food left; I would need to get into town if I wanted to stay more than another day.

Once I’d finished and washed up, I walked through the house to turn the lights off. It was a little after six in the evening, but it felt much later. The thick rain continued to beat on the house, and the clouds blocked the sunlight as effectively as any blanket could.

As I turned out the lights, I checked the rat traps and poison I’d left. The ones in the kitchen, library, and laundry were untouched. I snorted in frustration and walked past the door that led to the basement. I’d placed traps down there, too, but no way in hell was I going to check them. Mrs Gillespie could do that herself when she got back.

I climbed the stairs, running one hand along the bannister, and walked down the long hallway to my room. The air was colder on the second level, so I pulled more blankets out of the cupboard and threw them over the bed. Then, on an impulse, I grabbed one corner and began dragging the bed until I’d turned it and moved it against the opposite wall, to where I’d seen Genevieve’s bed in my dreams. I crawled under the blankets, lay on my back, and waited for sleep to claim me.

There was a horrible ringing noise in my ears.

Genevieve lay on her side in the small wooden bed, her heavy eyes wide as she clutched her pillow against her chest. I turned and saw her sister sitting up in bed, her knees tucked under her chin. The girl’s limp black hair made a curtain around her face as she rocked backwards and forwards.

“It’s been five days,” Genevieve whispered. Her lips were pale, and the fierce resolve I’d seen in her before had drained away, leaving a scared child in its place. “Why won’t he die?”

The sister didn’t answer, and that’s when I realised my ears weren’t ringing—someone was screaming. I walked to the window and gazed out into the pitch-black night as the three of us listened to Jonathan Gillespie shriek in horror and fury, trapped in the tomb he’d built himself, the tomb Genevieve had locked him in, the tomb where he should have died.

I woke to find the terrible screaming noise still echoing through the house. For a moment, I thought Jonathan had woken again to wail his fury at the night sky, but I stopped to draw breath and realised the sound had been coming from my own mouth.

The echoes died away as I lay in bed and listened to the house’s breathing. It seemed louder than it had been before, as though the house had run a marathon and was dragging in deep, long breaths, rather than the gentle whispers it normally did. Every pipe in the building was alive; every strained wooden brace groaned. The air felt dense, like I’d walked under a power line—and the scratching had returned. It was louder than I’d ever heard it. More insistent.

I got up, wrapping the blanket about my chilled body, and stepped towards where the noise came from the opposite wall. I held my breath and listened as the noise seemed to take on a new timbre.

That’s not rats,
I realised with a burst of horror.
It’s fingernails scratching at wood.

My feet carried me closer, moving me against my will, until I stood directly in front of the wall. I inhaled deeply, closed my eyes, and pressed my ear to the peeling wallpaper. The scratching noise came through my ears and permeated my body. It was frantic. In the midst of it, I thought I could hear faint gasps.

It was coming from Hanna’s room. I stepped back from the wall and pressed my palms into my eyes while I tried to think.

There was something in the house. I was certain of it. It might not have been alive anymore, but whatever—or whoever—it was had refused to move on. I knew what I had to do, and every atom of my body recoiled at the idea.

I pulled my dressing gown on over my pyjamas, slipped my feet into my boots, picked the candlestick off the bedside table, and left my bedroom. The door to Hanna’s room was still open a fraction, letting a sliver of natural moonlight into the hallway. I approached it slowly, keeping my breathing quiet, and pushed it open.

The room hadn’t changed since the day before, but somehow, it looked completely different. The boxes stacked in the middle of the room cast long shadows across the floor. The curtains that had been pastel pink in the daytime looked grey in the moonlight as they shifted slowly in the air current caused by the opening door. The toys in the corner watched me with their beady plastic eyes.

The floorboards creaked under my feet as I stepped fully into the room and looked around for the source of the noise. It came from the wall to the right—the wall that divided this room from my room.

I frowned at it.
Has the noise been coming from my own room after all?

It couldn’t have been. That meant…
it’s coming from
inside
the wall.
I stepped back to get a better look at it. The pink floral wallpaper was more modern and in better repair than what covered the rest of the house. I couldn’t see any marks in it. The only unique part of the wall was the large wooden wardrobe.

The wardrobe looked as if it might have been from the house’s original furnishings. It stood taller than my head, and detailed swirls and strange shapes had been carved into its double doors. I grabbed the handles and pulled the doors open, exposing a cavernous, empty interior.

The scratching persisted, seemingly coming from just behind the wood. I stepped into the wardrobe and pressed my ear to its back. I braced myself by placing my hands on the wood, and I jumped back immediately. A breeze, thin and icy cold, had grazed the fingers of my left hand.

I felt along the back of the cupboard until I found it: about halfway along was a gap in the wood—not large enough to let in enough light for me to see easily in the dark, but wide enough to let a narrow burst of cold air through. I tucked the candlestick into my pocket and began following the crack. It travelled the height of the wardrobe and stopped a half inch above the base. I knelt and felt around it. The crack travelled vertically along the floor before turning upwards again to meet the top of the wooden box.

A door?

I tried to get a grip in the crack and pull it open, but neither side budged. It was only when I knelt again and pulled at the base that it began to shift. It was jammed in place by age and neglect, but I managed to get my fingernails under the board and drag it out with a scrape. It was hinged at the top, but the bottom swung up.
Like a human-sized cat door.

I raised it above my head to see the wall behind. The floral wallpaper continued, but a sparkle of gold off to one side caught my eye. I rested the wooden plank on my shoulder as I pulled my mobile out and shone its light at the glittering object.

It was a tiny key sitting in a keyhole. I reached out to touch the cool metal then, unable to resist the temptation, turned it. It gave a quiet click, followed by a louder grinding noise, and the entire section of the wall pulled away from me, exposing a dark area behind it.

I stood inside the wardrobe for a moment, stunned, then I stepped into the gap. Only about two feet wide, it continued to my right. The weak light of my phone revealed a few stone steps.

“Wow.” The scratching hadn’t been coming from behind the walls, after all; there was an entire passageway
between
them.

It was the early hours of the morning, but that didn’t stop me from pulling out my mobile and calling Mrs Gillespie. Just like earlier, the call went to voicemail. I didn’t bother leaving a message.

I should wait until morning and call again. She needs to know about this.

The hallway stretched before me, tempting me, offering to solve the puzzles that had plagued me for the previous four days, but I knew it would be insanity to continue down there alone. Intending to step back into Hanna’s room, I turned towards the door, just in time to see the last crack of light disappear as the stone door ground into place.

I swore, lunged for the doorhandle, and tried to pull it back open, but the lock clicked a second before I could find a grip. My fingers shook as I tugged at the door’s handle, but it had already sealed itself… and the key was on the other side.

“Damn, damn, damn.” I fumbled for my phone. The thin light illuminated my narrow container as I began dialling the emergency help line.

Or I would have dialled them, if my phone’s reception hadn’t dropped off.
What? But I made a call just a moment ago!

I stared at the empty corner of the screen where my reception bars should have been, but it stayed stubbornly empty.

It had to be the room, I realised. Being so rural, the Gillespies’ house had always had poor reception, but it had never gone below one bar before. Something in that cramped passageway was stopping me from making calls. Maybe the stone walls were lined with something my signal couldn’t get through, or maybe it was simply too thick to penetrate. Either way, I was segregated from the outside world, my entry blocked, and only one way to go.

I swore again, this time with feeling.

The stairwell stretched in front of me, dripping with the darkness that permeated the rest of the building. My phone’s light wasn’t strong enough to penetrate more than two steps ahead. I’d thought the rest of the building was dingy, but the passageway was unnaturally black, almost as if the shadows congregated here.

If the building were alive, this would be its major artery… and the shadows would be its blood.

The scratching had stopped, and I wasn’t sure if that was better or worse. The quiet surrounded me, smothering me and stripping away my security. Standing still in the cramped little hallway wasn’t going to help me, but taking that first stair down the passageway was one of the hardest things I’d ever done.

Once I’d started, though, I quickly picked up the pace, my boots slapping on the stone ground and my breath deepening. The stairs were steep and narrow, making me feel poised on the edge of toppling into the black abyss, but I didn’t dare slow down.

I glanced at the smooth ceiling and tried to work out where I was. The stairs must have been taking me under the second floor’s hallway. I remembered how, two days before, I’d been startled by the sound below my feet, but hadn’t been able to find anyone in the house. Was this where it had been coming from?

I glanced back down and instantly regretted my distraction as my foot plunged into an empty space where the next step should have been. My hands shot out and grasped at the walls, which were rough and unexpectedly cold under my fingers. For a second, I thought I might be able to regain my balance and pull back, but my momentum had been too strong. I tumbled over the edge in a mess of limbs as I tried to grab onto anything that would break my fall into the inky blackness below.

The shovel’s blade dug into the compacted dirt as Genevieve’s boot pushed down on it. She was sweating, but apparently still didn’t dare to shed her heavy black dress—or maybe she didn’t have anything to change into.

Her brother with the missing fingers was opposite her, cutting into the ground with his own shovel. They were both panting, although the day was cool and overcast. I looked away from the hole they were carving, and saw they were in the cemetery. It had fewer weeds, and the gravestones were clean and new, but in other ways, it was almost identical to the burial ground I’d walked through.

Behind us were three other family members. Genevieve’s older sister, the one who shared her bedroom, had tears running down her pale cheeks. She was holding hands with a boy who looked about six and a girl who couldn’t have been older than four. In front of them was a long shape wrapped in a white cloth.

The body, waiting for its burial.

The older boy stopped his digging for a moment, his brow creased. “Maria should be the last one, shouldn’t she? The darkness won’t claim any of us?”

Genevieve’s heavy lids fluttered as she glanced over her four remaining relatives. Her eyes were dry, but something dark lingered there.
Guilt,
I thought,
or possibly anger.
“I think so,” she said. “He needed us to believe him with our whole hearts to have any power over us. We didn’t, so the sickness shouldn’t be able to touch us.”

“Damn him,” the older sister said, but there was no fight left in her voice. “I hope he burns in hell for this, the bastard.”

The other two glanced at the mausoleum for barely a second then returned to digging. I walked around them to where a gravestone lay flat on the dirt. It looked bright and clean, ready to be placed as a permanent marker of Maria Gillespie’s last bed.

A boom shattered the silence. I jolted backwards and stared at the mausoleum; little bits of dirt rained off its roof after something large and fierce had pounded on the doors. The heavy wooden plank was in its brackets, providing a small measure of protection for those outside the tomb.

Genevieve and her siblings stared at the mausoleum for a moment. When there was no more activity, they returned to their chore. I had the impression that wasn’t the first time it had happened, and they had made a silent agreement not to speak about it.

I moved away from the mausoleum to stand next to the older sister and the two children. The three watched the cloth-covered body in front of them with an odd mixture of resignation and revulsion. I watched it, too, wondering which one Maria had been, whether I would have recognised her, and what sort of fate had befallen her.

A gust of wind picked up the corner of the cloth and pulled it back from the corpse’s face. I recognised one of the middle-aged women—Jonathan’s wife, I thought—her eyes open and glassy, her jaw slack, her face as white as the sheets surrounding her. Ugly boils surrounded her jaw and nose, and cracks spread out from her mouth and eyes where the skin had split horribly. Tracks of congealed blood gathered in the splits, looking like dark-red worms crawling across her face.

The older sister moaned and gathered the children to her, burying their faces in her dress so they wouldn’t see what had become of the woman they had probably called mother. Genevieve stepped out of the grave. She glanced down at the grisly body for a moment before kicking the cloth back into place.

“Take them inside,” she told her sister. Her voice was low and gentle as she brushed a hand over the young girl’s head. “You’ve paid your respects. Paul and I will finish burying her.”

I gasped and moaned, rolling to my side as pain flared through my body. My head thundered, my left arm ached, and my back burned. I thought I was going to be sick, but I coiled in on myself on the cold stone ground. Gradually, the pains subsided.

Half of me wished I could have stayed in that dream state longer; I’d been comfortable there, free from pain and fear.
At least the fall didn’t put me into a coma… or worse.

I sat up and groaned as the headache flared. My phone, which lay face-down, gave off a small amount of light; I grabbed at it before it could power off completely and leave me blind. The screen was cracked, but it was still working.

Behind me was the drop off I’d fallen over—it must have been at least eight feet high—and a collection of white rocks and dark scraps of cloth on the ground. I was incredibly lucky not to have been hurt worse by the fall. The pain was intense, but my limbs all seemed to work, and I didn’t think anything vital was broken.

Small grey rocks jutted out of one side of the vertical wall, zig-zagging neatly to the floor.
Steps
, I thought, so that the owner of the passageway could climb down easily. The drop off was likely a deliberate trap. For anyone who didn’t know the stairs ended, it was all too easy to tumble over the edge and break a leg or a skull on the stone floor.

It took me a few minutes to get to my feet. I was dizzy and aching, but I preferred to deal with the pain rather than spend more time than I had to in the tunnel. I started walking again, still using my damaged phone as a light, but I moved more cautiously, paying greater attention to the ground in front of me in case there was a second trap.

As I moved farther through the tunnel, I thought I saw a hint of light in the distance. Twenty paces on, I was walking down a second flight of stairs, moving quickly again, desperate to reach the golden glow cutting through the dark.

The stairs turned a corner, and I found myself facing a sliver of light barely half an inch wide going from the floor to the tunnel’s ceiling.

A door?

I pushed on the walls, but they didn’t budge. My hands scrabbled over the smooth surface, searching for any sort of indent or crevice I could get a grip on, but the crack of light in the corner was the only thing breaking up the monotony of the rough stone. Frustrated, I put my cheek against the wall and looked through the gap.

On the other side were…
bookcases?
I gasped, realising where I was, and felt my heart rate pick up. It was the hidden room with no door I’d found in the library. I was looking through the gap I’d seen the eye in.

Nausea roiled in my stomach as I drew back. I turned in a circle, examining the area behind me. To my left was the staircase I’d just come down. To the right was another turn in the wall and a staircase leading downwards again. The wall directly in front of me bore the strange splotch of colour that had tricked me into thinking I’d seen someone in the tunnel.

Was it a trick, though?
I thought of the scratching noises that had come from the passageway, and the hairs on the back of my arms rose.

There was no way to escape back into the library—I’d tried everything I could think of to get inside on my second night in the building—so I had no choice but to keep moving forward, following the stairwell that led me deeper under the Gillespies’ house.

The air was icy cold on my bare arms. My footsteps were echoing off the stone floor and walls, tricking my ears into imagining a dozen invisible people were following my every movement. It became colder the lower I went, and by the time I thought I had to be equal with the basement, or perhaps even a little lower, my breaths were pluming in front of my face.

The stairwell finally flattened into a long, straight walkway. The grey stone surrounded me, rising above my head in a curved ceiling. I held my light up to the all-consuming darkness, but I couldn’t see how far it went. I wanted to stop and rest for a few moments, but the idea of staying in the one spot for too long made my skin crawl. So I kept moving, following the narrow walkway as it carried me towards goodness knew where.

Jonathan Gillespie must have had this constructed at the same time as building the house. For what purpose, though?

I thought back to the article I’d read about the Gillespie cult being run out of a town after a “calamity”. Perhaps Jonathan Gillespie had been afraid the townspeople would come after him, so he’d constructed an escape passage. That made sense. I’d been walking for so long that I guessed I had to be outside the house.

In my dream, Genevieve and her remaining family had been burying a horribly mutilated corpse. Genevieve seemed to think Jonathan had caused it and that, because they’d believed Jonathan’s teachings, her family had been susceptible to their leader’s curse—his revenge, I supposed, for what had been done to him.

It wasn’t too hard to imagine the same disease I had seen being the reason his cult had fled from their town on the North Coast. The blog had mentioned that a group of his followers had died in a short span of time. It couldn’t have been blatant murder, or Jonathan and his clan would have been arrested straight away and taken to the gallows. But a disease that had no name or cure and killed in such a grisly way would have caused enough confusion and doubt for Jonathan to usher his remaining loyal followers out of town.

Maria’s face rose in my mind, her sheet-white skin split by dozens of dark-red cracks, black blisters pockmarking her cheeks, her blank eyes staring at the sky. “Sicko,” I spat.

My pathway, straight and smooth, led me forward for at least forty meters before it ended in a flight of stairs. I jogged up them then finally came to a short landing, where a stone door stood.

This has to be it.
With a small surge of relief, I reached for the doorknob.
This will be the exit. It probably leads out somewhere in the woods past the vegetables gardens or—

“The mausoleum,” I gasped in sudden realisation. The dread that followed was nearly enough to knock my feet out from under me.

I’d assumed Genevieve had watched her father walk across the grassy lawn behind the building to reach the graveyard. But he hadn’t.
Of course
he hadn’t. He’d taken the hidden tunnel, his private passageway installed in his own bedroom, and she’d heard his footsteps in the floor below her as she’d lain awake in bed.

I was in the same passageway she’d followed him down that night, relying on the darkness to hide her and the echoes of Jonathan’s footfalls to mask her own steps, as she’d stalked him to his mausoleum and locked him inside.

She’d trapped him using the very same door I was about to open.

“No,” I moaned. The word echoed around me, as though the walls were repeating my lament. “Please, please, no.”

I wanted to turn around, to leave the hideous tomb unopened, to protect myself from whatever was inside. Even dying alone and cold in the passageway seemed preferable to turning the dark rusted doorknob in front of me. I made to take a step backwards, and a dizzying sensation rolled though me.

My awareness was tugged from my body, as though my soul were being split from my flesh. My stomach dropped, and I gasped, trying not to lose my balance, trying not to lose my
mind
, as physical and mental were torn apart.

Then I was in Genevieve’s consciousness.