The Haunting Within (25 page)

Deborah, are you well? I hope you are. I know you won’t reply to this but I wanted to write to you anyway. I just hope you read it. If you know I am thinking of you and that I love you then that makes me happy. How is my Granddaughter? I still hope I will get to meet her one day but I will leave that decision up to you. You know if there is ever anything you need, all you need to do is ask. I would also like to meet John but please, do not feel pressured. Just do what you want to do.

All my love

Your Father

Lisa could hardly believe she had read such a nice letter from someone she was always led to believe was a nasty man. It was true then, what Cathy had told her. Everything she had been led to believe was a lie. A cruel lie too. How could her mum do that to them? How could she do that to her father? If all he had wanted to do was help them all and be in their lives then how could she be so wicked and deny him that? He had had no-one. He had been alone for all those years with nobody to keep him company, nobody to share his life with, nobody to spend happy occasions with. She really hoped that Cathy was as close to him as she had said. It was so sad and Lisa felt a cold ball of anger settle in her gut. Her mum had done this. Her mum had ruined the lives of everyone she knew. Lisa found it incredibly hard to feel anything other than hatred towards the woman she had once loved more than anyone in the whole world. She had taken everything away from her and she had denied her the opportunity of a loving grandfather. Ill or not, she didn’t think she would ever be able to forgive or forget as far as her mother was concerned.

Leafing through the letters she chose one addressed to herself and Aiden. He had written directly to them both and they had never even been given a chance to reply. What had he thought of them? That they were as bad as their mother? He must have felt so alone and abandoned. A tear escaped the corner of her eyes and ran down the smooth planes of her cheek and chin and left her skin to drip onto the envelope she held in her shaking hand. Blinking to clear the tears from her moist eyes Lisa opened the letter.

My dearest Lisa and Aiden,

I wanted to write to you because I know it is your birthday coming up soon Aiden. You will be getting a very big lad now. Almost nine, my goodness me. I wish I could see you and your sister, but unfortunately I cannot as I am very busy at the moment. I think of you all the time though, not a day goes by I do not think of you. I hope you are both doing well at school and being good for your mother. I have sent a cheque for you both to spend on whatever you would like. I am so sorry but I do not know what things you like so I did not want to buy you something in case I got it wrong. This way you can get yourselves anything.

I love you both dearly.

Your Grandfather

Xxx

Lisa let out a painful cry as she held the letter to her chest. They had never got the letter. They had never got the cheque. Or had they? She can remember times when her mum had bought them lots of new clothes and toys and treats. Were they the times when their grandfather had sent them cheques and she passed the treats off as from her? Did she have no conscience?

Lisa imagined her grandfather would have known the letter would have never been shown to them but still he wrote it and still he tried to protect their mum. He couldn’t see them because he was very busy? Well now Lisa knew the truth. He couldn’t see them because her mother was a nasty bitch who denied him all rights to them and lied about him to make herself feel better. Lisa’s mind was in turmoil. So many emotions surged through her from anger to pity, from hate to love. She knew she didn’t really hate her mum, how could she? She was her mum after all. But still, she hated what she had done to them, to her grandfather, to Aiden. Knowing her mum was mentally unstable didn’t make things any easier but she hoped with time that it would. She just did not think she would ever understand what possessed her to do all those things, to ruin lives, to
take
lives.

Finally, Lisa fell into a troubled sleep where she dreamed of the old manor house and its many secrets.

77

By the time her mother stood trial Lisa felt strong enough to attend. Tom was with her, holding her hand and supporting her. She didn’t know what she had expected but it was certainly not what she saw. Her mother looked so old and frail. She gripped the rail before her as she sat down and stood up and her sleeves rolled up slightly to reveal withered and bony wrists, so thin that the skin looked like baking paper being stretched over sharp bones. Lisa was shocked to see her in that state. Her face was gaunt, her eyes were dead. She didn’t seem to know where she was, let alone why she was there. She had been evaluated and it was decided she was unfit for a state prison. She was sentenced spend her life in the maximum security hospital where she had been kept until her trial.

Lisa heard how Debbie had stopped taking her medication and refused to see her doctor when he phoned. It is assumed she went to her former childhood home under the assumption that she would be committed against her will. She believed there was nothing wrong with her and had told her psychiatrist a few weeks previous to the horrible tragedy, that she suspected they were trying to poison her with her medication. She was scared to take it. Lisa thought that a tragedy in itself. The fact that her mum had been so scared but still she kept the secret from her children. She had fought a battle in her head, all alone. They brought physicians and psychiatrists in to testify to the symptoms of her illness and withdrawal from her medication. They all agreed that she would have experienced vivid, lucid hallucinations, both audio and visual. They also concurred on the fact she would have become increasingly aggressive and hostile towards others and she would become a danger to herself and those around her.

The psychiatrist had been quoted as saying that, although Debbie had seemed rational all of her life, she was merely hanging on by a thread, something that even Debbie herself did not know, and that is also why she had insisted to the police medical examiner when she had been treating her cuts and burns that she had the mark on the back of her calf that, as she had told her, the man in the straitjacket did to her when she was little. The examiner could see no mark.

Lisa couldn’t hate her anymore. Her mum was just as much a victim as Aiden was in all of this. She felt as though the system had let her mum down but she knew the truth, her mum had let herself down. And now, when all was said and done, her fragile mind could not cope with the horror so it blocked it out. She had written a few times to Lisa and in the letters she asked how Aiden was. Lisa wrestled with her hatred for a while but eventually, after a few more letters arrived asking why she hadn’t replied, she gave in and wrote back to her. She told her, tears flowing freely as she out pen to paper, that she and Aiden were both fine. Debbie had asked once, a while ago if they would come and visit her as she missed them terribly but that was something Lisa could not bring herself to do just yet. She didn’t know if she ever would be able to sit across a table from the person who she had watched kill her baby brother. She hoped she would be able to but she knew if she could face her one day it was a long way off yet.

78

Lisa had inherited everything. It was all in her name since she was her mother’s next of kin. The manor, the money in her grandfather’s savings account and the money in the account her grandfather had set up in her mum’s name. But she would have given it all up in a second to have them all back and to be able to see her grandfather and say sorry and to hug him. She had found herself recently talking to him in her head. She would tell him how she missed him and how sorry she was for what had happened. She wanted to visit his grave but she had no idea where he was buried so she contacted Cathy who kindly told her where it was and offered to go with her; an offer that Lisa had accepted. While she was with Cathy, Lisa told her how much guilt she had over the past. Cathy assured her that her grandfather would not want her to feel guilty. He understood the circumstances better than Lisa could ever imagine.

Mr. Leeson had phoned Lisa to set up an appointment for her to collect the documentation for the manor house. She didn’t want to see the slimy lawyer again, especially not while she was alone so she took Tom along with her, much to the surprise and embarrassment of Mr. Leeson. He had hoped he could entice the young lady into dinner with him. It was not to be and they left his offices with everything they needed and without a backwards glance in his direction. No matter, he would just get himself back out there on the lookout for a young lady. A very young lady he had thought to himself with a lascivious grin.

The deeds to the house were a very interesting read. It stated all the details of the house; it had been built in eighteen twenty-four, purely for the purpose of it being the county courthouse. Over the years there were many trials that were held there up until the courthouse finally closed its doors in eighteen seventy-one. It had stood derelict for around twenty years before a practising doctor of psychiatry moved from America and re-opened it as a lunatic asylum - or so it was called in those days. Next to details of the early history were old black and white photographs of what it had looked like at that time. Although looking in much better condition, it seemed to have an extremely lonely appearance and for a reason she didn’t understand, Lisa began to cry. She didn’t know whether she was crying for her recent losses or for the people who would have been locked up in such an awful, ugly place like that. Probably a mixture of both she thought, wiping her eyes and looking through more of the document. When the American doctor moved his practice to the house, he extended the back of it to make a separate area for his patients. There was a picture of the estate and its surrounding land that now belonged to her from a birds’ eye perspective. She never realised there was so much land that she now owned, or that the old hospital - she refused to call it an asylum - was so large. The hospital part was in the shape of a capital T, perfectly symmetrical, and the front of the house looked like an upside down tiered wedding cake.

The land belonging to the house was highlighted and it went far beyond the garden walls. Most of the forest area at the back of the manor was actually a part of it. She had never seen anything like it before. Far from feeling happy about all she owned she couldn’t help but feel despondent. If it wasn’t for the bloody house, they wouldn’t be in the situation they were in right now. Aiden would still be alive and her mum would still be fine, not stuck in some secure hospital where she spent her days and nights sedated. But then, she wouldn’t have finally found out the truth about her grandfather. The man who loved his family more than he loved anything else.

Reading a little more she found that the practice had closed in nineteen twenty-five. It again had stood derelict until her grandfather inherited it from the American who happened to be his uncle, in nineteen forty-two. Now its empty walls were once again filled with nothing but silence, its floors gathering dust where no feet would walk for a long time. Although she knew now what had been the root to the “haunting” she had been unfortunate enough to be part of, she still could not think of the house as anything other than eerie. Maybe it wasn’t haunted in the typical sense but it certainly was haunted with memories. Bad memories. Now it stood empty and waiting for the next owners to experience its desolation. She could only hope that one day someone would live there and make it into a real home and change the bad energy into something good. Lisa shuddered with a cold that was not in the room but inside of her. Flinging the papers to one side she rested her head on the back of the chair and drifted off into a light sleep.

79

Buttoning up her long black cardigan, she shivered from the chill in the air that the morning had brought with it. So fresh and almost captivating was the scent in the mist as she passed by the hundreds of fragrant flowers that were laid on her brothers’ grave. The mist gently moistened her face with its tiny droplets of water, it felt cleansing and good. Looking down at the mound of fresh earth she felt such grief. Would she ever come to terms with the death of her brother and the circumstances surrounding it? She didn’t think so. Would she ever be able to think of him without crying? It seemed like an impossibility. Time heals all apparently. Isn’t that what she had heard so often since the tragedy from well-meaning but completely ignorant people? How could they know time would heal her pain? Had they ever been witness to their mother killing their brother? Just because they had lost people did not give them the insight to how everybody felt. All situations were different, hers especially. She never said anything to them though, just thanked them or nodded politely while holding her tongue. She would probably be forgiven for having a rant at them anyway but did she want to be forgiven? Did she want everyone to be so understanding of her? No, what she wanted was someone to be real with her. For someone to talk about something else and take her mind off the awfulness of the last few months.

A strong but gentle cuddle engulfed her and she turned herself into the owner of the embrace, not quite realising who it was at first, and not really caring at first either, a hug was a hug and she sure needed one right now. As soon as she took in the scent of her embracer she knew who it was and she glad to be being hugged by him. It was Tom; her Tom, now. He had been there for her through it all, just as she hoped he would have been there for her when they left the house, only she wished with all of her heart that it wasn’t in these sad circumstances. She would never have assumed it from him, to give up so much of his time to be with her and help her through everything. But he had done so without needing to be asked and with such a gentle, compassionate understanding of her that she never knew he had. He loved her, of that she was certain. He had told her as much and while some men threw the words around often he meant it with all of his heart. She knew he would be there for her and she would be able to rely and depend on him always. Tom gently guided Lisa to his car and they set off for home.