The Rattler (Rattler Trilogy Book 1) (13 page)

1

Matthew
placed his phone on the window ledge, and pointed it towards the group seated
on the floor. “Right, now
it’s
recording. Steven, set
yours to voice recording and then we’re ready to go.” Steven duly switched on
his phone and placed it on the floor in the middle of the group. “What happens
now?” asked Vana. Matthew re-joined the group. “Now we start asking it
questions. Who wants to go first?”

“How
about we all ask one question each, going round the circle,” suggested Steven,
“and you go first, Matthew.” Matthew thought for a moment, his heart starting
to beat faster.

“What
do you want us to do?” The room was silent. The friends looked around the room.
Nothing happened.

“Why
are you in my house?” questioned Zoe.

“Why
did you hit my boyfriend?” asked Vana.

Still
nothing happened; no sounds were heard. It was Steven’s turn. “If you’ve not
got any real reason to stay, then why don’t you please just leave?”

“Steven!
You shouldn’t have said that,” said Vana. She gently nudged him on the arm.
“Whatever,” replied Steven, tersely, “it’s all I could think of. Hey, is anyone
else feeling a draught in here?” They all agreed that the temperature had
dropped a little.

“Right,”
said Steven, “let’s stop the recording and see if we’ve caught anything.” He
picked up the phone, saved the recording, and pressed the
play
button.
They all listened intently to the recording; the questions were picked up
clearly, but there were no answers – until, all of a sudden, after Vana’s
question, they heard something. “Hey – what was that?” asked Vana. “Shsh,
sounded like breathing,” whispered Steven. He stopped the recording.

“Let’s
listen to the questions again before we chat about it,” said Matthew. Steven
switched the recording on for a second time and, after the final question, they
heard a croaky voice:

REVENGE

“What
the heck was that? Did you all hear it?”

“Vana,
be quiet a minute! Steven, rewind it, and I’ll check the video.” They all
gathered closer to the phone as Steven replayed the recording.

One
word –
REVENGE
– was heard.

Zoe
sat silently, looking at the others. They checked the video recording, but it
was blank. Vana could see that Zoe was upset by the creepy voice and the heavy
breathing, and put her arm around her friend. “Come on, Zoe. It’s OK.”

Matthew
looked at each of them in turn. “Shall we carry on?”

“No,
mate,” replied Steven, sharply, “we’ve done what we said we’d do. I think we
should stop.”

His
friend stood up. “Oh, come on; just a few more questions won’t hurt. I want
some answers.” He started to pace around the room. “Come on; show yourself;
you’re a coward – a fucking coward. Why did you fucking hit me? Come on, have
another go then, you useless COCKSUCKER!”

Unbeknown
to Matthew, his hair started to stand on end, as if a ghostly hand was teasing
it up. He continued his diatribe. “Come on, you fucking coward. Show yourself.”
His hair continued to rise. “Stop it, Matthew,” screamed Vana. “You’re
provoking it!”

Matthew
didn’t listen; to his dismay, he found he was lifted two feet off the ground
and flung across the attic. He hit the chest with a thud as he landed. The
friends were terrified.

“Shit!
What the fuck just happened?” shouted Steven; he ran towards his friend.
“Matthew, Matthew, are you alright, babe?” screamed Vana. She rushed over to
where he lay, dazed and shaken. Zoe was consumed with anxiety; she could see
that Matthew had a cut on his forehead and his eyes were closed. Vana hugged
him, fiercely.
Nothing.
She then slapped his face
several times. “Wake up! Wake up you idiot!” Matthew took a deep breath, and
finally opened his eyes. “What happened? What was that? Please tell me you got
it on film?”

“Matthew,
you are a right noob! That’s what you get when you mess with something you know
nothing about,” said Vana, relieved that Matthew had come round. “What came
over you?” asked Vana, as she continued to hug him. “I don’t know, really. I
felt so hot, and full of rage, and the next thing I was flying through the
air.”

“We
need professional help, here,” said Steven, as he offered Matthew his hand to
get up from the floor.

“Now,
can we please leave this alone? I can’t handle any more. Please?”
pleaded
a tearful Zoe. She couldn’t help thinking that they
had opened up a can of worms, and she could not wait to get out of the attic.
Just then she felt a strong blast of cold air across the back of her neck. She
turned towards the door, and screamed.

The
ghostly figures of Hagatha and Charder materialised in front of the friends,
blocking their exit. “So, it wasn’t Ellwood,” whispered Vana as she recognised them
from Ellwood’s journal. “It was the travellers.” Hagatha pointed at the girls.
“You’ve got something that belongs to me,” she hissed. “I want it back.” The
two lads pushed their way in front of the girls. “You’ll have to get past us,
first,” said Matthew, defiantly.

Charder
pointed at the lads and, to their horror, they found themselves pushed back
across the room and pinned forcefully to the wall. “You leave them alone,”
yelled Matthew, “you fucking
harm
them, and I’ll...”

With
one movement of his finger, Charder sealed the lads’ mouths shut. Their eyes
bulged with panic. The girls were terrified, and cowered back in fright. The
old man turned towards the girls, who suddenly found themselves forced to the
ground. Invisible hands dragged them, by their ankles, across the floor. They
screamed in pain.

The
lads watched on, in horror, and tried to shout out – but, to no avail. Charder
pointed at them once more, and their eyes were stuck tightly closed. They
struggled to release themselves, desperate to know what was happening to the
girls.

“Please,”
screamed Zoe, “please
stop
; leave them alone!”

“Matthew!”
yelled Vana, as tears coursed down her face. Her fingers gripped into the
grooves in the floorboards, her nails held, briefly, before they snapped under
the pressure. She looked backwards and stared at the travellers. “What do you
want from us?”

“Ellwood!
Please help us,” cried Zoe, as
the door opened wide. The last thing the lads heard was the girls screaming;
then the attic door slammed shut. “Please save us, Ellwood,” the girls screamed
over and over again as they bumped down the attic steps. Matthew, the
instigator, lay on the ground, virtually paralysed and with a cut eye. All he
could do was to listen to the distant screams of his girlfriend. The travellers
had rendered him and his best mate useless. What would happen next?

1

The
two girls, cut and bruised, found themselves at the bottom of the stairs. The
atmosphere had changed. “I think they’ve gone,” whispered Vana, nervously. She
looked around the landing. “Ellwood must have heard our pleas and helped us,”
replied Zoe, who was badly shaken by the ordeal. She felt for Vana’s hand.
“What are we going to do?”

“It’ll
be OK, babe,” reassured Vana, acting more bravely than she felt, “but we need
to help the guys. You wait here.”

“No,
no! Please don’t leave me. Please,” panicked Zoe. “It’s alright, hun. Come on,
we’ll do it together. We’ll be OK. They’ve gone now.”

Hand
in hand, with hearts beating furiously, the girls walked tentatively up the
dark stairs. They reached the attic door, stopped, and both took deep breaths.
Vana reached for the handle. As she tried to turn it, nothing happened. “Shit!
It’s
effin’ locked,” she said, pushing the door as hard as
she could.

The
lads were still forced against the wall, and could do nothing to help the
girls. Matthew tried shouting, but his mouth was still firmly stuck. “Lads, if
you can hear us – we’re fine,” shouted Vana. “We’re just working on a rescue
plan – we’ll have you out in no time.”

“How
are we going to do that, Vana?” asked Zoe, “and what about their faces?”

“Hun,
there has to be a way to stop the travellers, right?”

“How?
It’s all fucked up.”

“I’ll
think of something; just give me a minute.” Vana put her arm around a
distressed Zoe, and nuzzled her tangled hair. “Please don’t cry, babe. We’ll
sort it out.” Just then they became aware of orbs dancing around and a bright
light appeared on the top stair. The girls froze in terror, and tried to shrink
away from the light. They watched, horrified, as a ghostly figure started to
manifest. It was Ellwood. He stood in front of them, and smiled. “Please don’t
be afraid, my dears. I will not harm you.”

Ellwood
stood there, smartly dressed in black; he approached the girls and gently
placed his hands on their heads.

2

The
fire was burning fiercely when Ellwood arrived at Charles’s house in Foulis
Terrace, Kensington. The firemen were fighting hard to control the blaze, but
their efforts were being hampered somewhat by a crowd of people who had gathered
outside the building. “Get back! Get back! Give the men room,” shouted a
policeman as re-inforcements began to arrive. Eventually the firefighters got
the inferno under control, but ultimately the building was reduced to ruins
which were covered by thick, black smoke.

Ellwood
watched from the shadows. He saw the bodies of Charles and his staff being
brought out, one by one, and laid on the ground. The former butler was
distressed – he had now lost everyone he cared for. He thought he had ended the
curse by selling the painting – how wrong he was.

3

Ellwood
walked around inside the ruins, searching for the canvas. As he approached the
former stairwell, water dripped from the beams above. He had last seen the
picture at the foot of the stairs, but where the heck was it now? He carefully
sieved through the rubble and found the remains of
The Rattler
. The
frame was badly charred, and the painting blackened by smoke. He carefully
rubbed away some of the soot and revealed, to his surprise, the colourful image
of young William. He stood and gazed thoughtfully at the picture. Emotion
overcame him and tears welled in his eyes. He found some burnt rags, picked up
the work of art, gently wrapped it up, and walked out of what was left of the
building. He turned and took a final look at the exterior, and started to walk
purposefully through the cold, dark, quiet streets of Chelsea.

Ellwood
arrived back at the guesthouse; all was quiet as he walked up the stairs to the
second floor. A door to one of the bedrooms was slightly ajar. He pushed it
open, noticing the smell of cleaning products, and walked in. The door gently
closed behind him. The floorboards creaked as he walked around the room looking
for a safe place to hide the painting.

The
room was sparsely furnished – with a cast-iron-framed bed and a single
wardrobe. A small rug covered the wooden floorboards. The man crouched down and
searched for any floorboards which appeared to be loose. He found what he was
looking for underneath the bed and, taking out his pocketknife, lifted some of
the boards. Suddenly he became aware of someone walking around downstairs. He
quickly hid the painting in the space under the bed, replaced the floorboards,
and went back out onto the landing just as the lady who owned the guesthouse
came up the stairs. “Mr Ellwood, what are you doing wandering around at this
time of night?”

“Sorry
if I woke you. I cannot sleep. I’m afraid Charles was killed in a house fire
tonight.”

“How
awful,” she replied. “The poor family have had a run of bad luck of late.”

They
said their goodnights, and Ellwood walked up the stairs to his bedroom in the
attic. He removed his outer garments, and sat down on the bed, staring
thoughtfully out of the window. The distressed man walked over to the chest and
took out a pencil and a journal. He sat down on the bed and began to write:

My
name is Sydney Ellwood, and this is my story...

The
former butler went on to record the events that had destroyed his life.

4

Tears
coursed down his face as he recalled the incidents, but he knew he had to
document all the information in order to stop the curse once and for all.
Sometime later, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper. He
had approached a local traveller for help in lifting the curse placed on the
painting by Hagatha. It had cost him the family silver, but that was a small
price to pay to stop the curse.

Remembering
Hagatha’s words–
With the power of the sun,
Ellwood knew that the curse
was activated by sunlight. Under the floorboards would be the perfect, dark,
hiding place for the painting. He put the traveller’s instructions in the back
of the journal, tied the book up with string, and placed it under the
floorboards beneath the chest.

With
the newspaper hidden in the basement, the picture under the bed on the second
floor, and the journal stashed beneath the chest, Ellwood knew that he had done
all he could to stop the travellers and their curse.