The Curse of Wetherley House Read online

  “One of them came in, one time,” he replies, setting the money down and then sliding an overflowing pint glass toward me. “All I know is there was a lot of talk in town about them going out to Wetherley House, and for a few nights we saw lights out there in the distance. Then eventually we stopped seeing the lights, and we just assumed they'd gone home. Some of the locals weren't too happy.”

  He fetches a bottle of soda from the fridge and brings it over.

  “Have you tried calling them?”

  “I have,” I reply, bristling at such a dumb suggestion. “Well, thanks for your help. We -”

  “The men who used to keep an eye on the place -”

  “That's fine,” I add, interrupting him before he has a chance to waffle on again. “I don't need a potted history.”

  “But if -”

  “You don't know an estate agent around here, do you? I want to get started on listing the house. I'm also going to need to hire a cleaner. Do you know anyone in town who could do the job for a reasonable rate?”

  He hesitates, as if he's not entirely sure that he wants to answer.

  “Is that a no?” I ask. “Seriously? I didn't think people out in the countryside could afford to be so picky about the jobs they take. What's wrong, is city money no good in these parts?”

  “You're welcome to put a card up on the noticeboard,” he continues, “but I wouldn't go expecting too many people to call you. There aren't many from round here who'll be keen to go up to that house.”

  “Let me guess. Because it's haunted?”

  “You need to speak to Daniel Langton,” he adds, grabbing a piece of paper and scribbling a phone number down. “He spoke to your sister last week, I believe. He also knows some people who'd maybe be interested in buying the house and land from you. They've been talking about nothing else, non-stop, over the past few days. I'll be honest, they'd be doing it so they could tear the place down, and they might not be able to reach the market rate. Last time they were in here chatting away, it sounded like they'd been able to pull together about two hundred grand, but at least -”

  “The house is worth four or five times that.”

  “Only if you can find a buyer.”

  “I don't think that'll be a problem.”

  “If you'll just accept their offer,” he continues, “they'll do the right thing by Wetherley House. It's high-time the place was bulldozed. Someone has to think about the future, and about what happens to people who go near that land.” He hands the piece of paper to me. “Call Dan Langton. He'll offer you as much as he and his friends can, and that'll be the end of the house. They'll take all the risks.”

  “If they want to make an offer,” I reply, picking up the drinks but ignoring the paper, “they'll be able to do so through the estate agent. But two hundred isn't going to cut it. We're selling that house for as much as we can get. It's been in my family for generations and as far as I can tell, it's given us nothing but grief. It's about time the bloody place gave us something back. We're owed.”

  ***

  “Are you worried about them?”

  Staring out the window in our little room above the pub, I can't help watching the darkness in the distance. If anyone had switched on any lights in the house, if anyone had so much as lit a match, they should be just about visible from here. But there's no sign of anything. After a moment I turn to Louisa and see that she's lumbering through to the bathroom, getting ready for bed.

  “Hannah and Katie?” I reply. “No, of course not. They're grown women, they can take care of themselves. I just wish they could stop messing around and at least let me know what's going on. It's typical of them to leave all of this in my hands. I'm starting to think...”

  My voice trails off for a moment.

  “Starting to think what?” she calls back to me from the bathroom.

  “I'm starting to think I need to reduce my sisters' involvement in my life once the baby comes.”

  Taking a deep breath, I feel a rush of relief that I've finally managed to get those words out. I've been feeling bad about the idea for a while now, but the truth is that I don't want my child to be exposed to the madness of my family. If Hannah and Katie are going to continue to pull dumb stunts, then maybe they're better off being kept at a distance. I have every right to cut off parts of my old life that no longer contribute in a positive manner.

  “Thank God,” Louisa says after a moment. “I've been thinking the exact same thing.”

  “You have? So it's a deal?”

  “What do you think your sisters'll say?”

  “Oh, they'll complain about things either way,” I mutter, turning and looking back out at the darkness beyond the edge of this crumby little town. “They're both so emotional and hysterical, and that's the last thing I want to have around our kid. You might have noticed that my family tends to be dramatic. We need to be practical and -”

  Suddenly Louisa lets out a scream. Turning, I hurry to the bathroom and make my way inside, only to find that she's standing back near the sink and staring in horror at something on the floor. I don't see anything wrong at first, but finally I realize that there's some kind of wriggling thing on one of the tiles. Stepping closer, I crouch down to get a closer look.

  “Is that a maggot?” I ask.

  “Oh God, it was on my leg!”

  I look up at her. “Seriously?”

  “It was on my leg, Johnny!” she shouts, clearly in a state of panic. “I was just about to brush my teeth, and then suddenly I felt something tickling and -”

  She lets out another shriek and starts brushing her legs frantically, and sure enough another couple of maggots fall down onto the tiles and immediately start wriggling.

  “Where are they coming from?” she asks, climbing into the empty bath and stepping back against the wall. “What the hell kind of place are we staying at, Johnny? I told you we shouldn't have stayed here! We should never even have come in the first place! I want to go to a Radisson or a Hilton!”

  “It actually looks fairly clean to me,” I mutter, looking around the bathroom.

  “Well they certainly didn't come from me!” she yells. “I want to leave right now!”

  “I know, I know.” Grabbing some toilet roll, I pick up the three maggots and drop them into the toilet before flushing them away. “We're here now.”

  “So?”

  “So let's make the best of it.”

  “You owe me!”

  I look up at her.

  “For making me stay in a place like this,” she continues, through gritted teeth, “you owe me a luxury spa weekend. At least! This whole hotel, this whole town, is cursed or haunted or something!”

  “Are there any more maggots?”

  “I don't think so,” she replies, still checking her legs. “This place is seriously creeping me out. I had the most horrible nightmare earlier when I was taking a nap, just after we checked in, and now I've got bloody maggots over me!” She climbs out of the bath, although she's still looking around as if she expects more maggots to show up. “I had this nightmare about a woman sitting on top of me. You know the woman I saw in our apartment last week? It was her again.”

  “The one you imagined.”

  “She was digging her fingers into my belly and telling me that our firstborn child is going to be hers.”

  “Sounds melodramatic,” I point out, double-checking the grouting in case any more little critters show up. “I think you should be fine now.”

  “It felt so real, too,” she continues, turning to finish removing her make-up in the bathroom mirror. “She told me I'd married into the wrong family. She told me that every firstborn in your line is cursed to get taken away, because of something that happened years ago. Her voice was so horrible and shrill, it's like she was taunting me. I kept telling myself she wasn't really there, I kept trying to focus on the fact that the whole thing was just in my head, but that didn't make it any easier.” She takes some cotton pads from a packet next to the sink an
d starts wiping her eyes. “Elizabeth Caulstone.”

  I head over to the door. “Who?”

  “That was her name. In the nightmare. She told me, or somehow I just knew it. I don't remember. It was the freakiest thing. I think she was some kind of witch who got messed up with your family a long time ago.”

  “Oh, I'm sure she was. Door open or closed?”

  “Closed.”

  After pulling the door shut, I head to the bed and flop down, grabbing my phone and trying yet again to call my sisters. They still don't pick up, and Hannah's goes straight to voicemail while Katie's at least rings for half a minute before the same happens. I've left more than enough messages over the past week, so this time I don't bother. I simply toss my phone aside, lean back with my hands behind my head, and try to think about all the things Louisa and I can do with our share of the money once we've sold Wetherley House.

  This is our chance. We're going to be rich. And if my sisters don't come back to claim their share, we'll get the whole lot.

  ***

  “What?”

  Sitting up in bed, in the darkened room, I look toward the door and see that there's a shadow at the bottom, as if someone's standing outside. A moment later, I hear the knocking sound again, and this time Louisa lets out a groan as she sits up next to me. Still feeling groggy from sleep, I realize someone must have been knocking for a while.

  “Seriously?” she asks. “It's just after midnight. What the hell do they want?”

  “Wait here,” I mutter, climbing out of bed.

  “Where else would I go?” She sighs. “If it's a bunch of drunks from the pub downstairs, I'm going to call the police.”

  Heading over to the door, I take a moment to make sure that my pajamas are properly buttoned and then I slide the bolt across, opening the door just a little. To my surprise, I find that there are three local-looking men outside in the brightly-lit corridor.

  “Mr. Cruikshank?” one of them asks.

  “It's midnight,” I point out, figuring that they must have wandered up here after staying down in the pub for a lock-in. “For God's sake, can't you people leave us alone for five minutes?”

  “We need to talk to you,” the man continues. “My name is Daniel Langton, and I'm part of a group that would very much like to buy Wetherley House.”

  “It's not on the market yet,” I tell him, “but once I've -”

  “We can offer you two hundred and fifty thousand pounds.”

  “And what do you expect me to do in return?” I ask. “Laugh in your faces?”

  “Please, Mr. Cruikshank, we only have so much, but we've pooled our resources and we just need you to listen to us. It's very important that Wetherley House is torn down.”

  “My wife and I are trying to sleep.”

  “I spoke to your sister last week, right here in the pub. It was after she ignored me that I realized we needed to buy the house from you, fair and square.” He holds up a small cloth-bound book. “These photos might help you to -”

  “I don't want to see any photos,” I tell him.

  He starts opening the book, but I snatch it from his hand and toss it back toward the top of the stairs.

  “I don't want to see any goddamn photos!” I say again, more firmly.

  “I'm begging you,” he replies, “please listen to what we've got to say.”

  “Tell them to sod off!” Louisa whispers behind me.

  Sighing, I step out into the corridor and pull the door shut, so as to keep from disturbing her.

  “Wetherley House will be put up for sale,” I tell the men, all of whom look like dirty yokels with barely two pennies to rub together, “but there's a proper process to go through and I'm afraid the house will go to whoever makes the highest bid. I'm not a charity. I've got a family to support.”

  “You can't let the house continue,” this Langton guy replies, his voice filled with tension now. “We all thought that maybe once it was empty, after the last business with old Mrs. Carmichael, that'd be an end to it all. That's why we guarded it at night, to make sure no-one went inside. But even though it's stood up there for decades, all locked up, it's started to...”

  His voice trails off.

  “It reaches out,” one of the other men adds finally.

  I turn to him.

  “It does!” he continues. “It reaches out, or the thing in it reaches out, and it tries to make certain things happen. It tries to influence events so that people'll go back there. The right people.”

  “What the bloody hell are you on about?” I ask. “Listen, I'm tired and -”

  “It's never been empty,” the third man says suddenly. “Not really. After Mrs. Carmichael was hung, Wetherley House was locked up and left alone by your family, but there's still been something there ever since. On the nights I've been out there, I've -”

  “You trespassed?” I ask.

  “We never set foot on the property,” Langton tells me. “We just had three or four men stationed around the perimeter, to make sure thrill-seekers and ghost-hunters never got through. We caught a few each year, too. The thing is, I suppose we thought that if we could keep the house undisturbed, if we could isolate whatever's inside, no-one else would get hurt.” He pauses for a moment. “Looks like we were wrong. She found a way to reach out and bring people here regardless.”

  “We should've just burned it to the ground,” one of the other men mutters.

  “And you'd all have served nice lengthy jail sentences if you had,” I point out.

  “That would have been worth it.”

  I can't help laughing. These madman seem so painfully earnest, it's almost as if they actually believe the bullshit they're peddling. I can only assume they're trying to spread ghost stories in a pathetic bid to lure tourists to their rubbish little town.

  “You have to take this seriously,” Langton says firmly. “There's been so much pain and suffering at Wetherley House over the years. So many people have died there, in such horrible circumstances, and -”

  “So do they all haunt the place?” I ask. “Or is it just one of them? I've got to be honest, it sounds as if you haven't really thought this through very well. I mean, if several people died at the house, then surely their ghosts should be bumping into one another all the time, instead of just this Mary bird.”

  “It doesn't work like that.”

  “So how does it work?” I continue. “If you're the experts, why don't you tell me?”

  “We always kept our backs to the house,” one of the other men says. “When we were guarding it, I mean. We never dared look at the windows. May God have mercy on our souls, but we all turned our backs, except...”

  “One man looked once,” Langton adds. “He saw a figure at one of the windows, staring right back out at us. We believe her name is Mary Carmichael. Or Evil Mary, as she's better known these days. Nobody who goes into that house is safe.”

  I can't help sighing. This is ridiculous.

  “Your family will never be safe for as long as Wetherley House stands,” Langton continues earnestly, “and the shadow of that place will hang over this entire town. For the love of God, man, we all have a common interest in getting rid of the house as quickly as possible. If you don't agree now, the cycle will go on for another generation. She'll be doing things, she'll be twisting the fates of men in an attempt to get what she wants. And what she wants is first-born children from your family.”

  “Oh, pull the other one,” I reply, pushing the door open and stepping back into the room. “It's got bells on.”

  “Listen to me!” He puts a foot in the way as I try to shut the door. “You have to -”

  “No, you listen to me, Worzel!” I hiss, shoving him back out into the corridor. “If you bother us again, I'll call the police. Is that understood? This is none of your bloody business, and do you want to know something else? After the way you've shown up like this tonight, I wouldn't sell Wetherley House to any of you lot, not even if you could scrape together a vaguely
respectable bid. This whole situation is pathetic, and you'd better not darken our door ever again.” I start to shut the door, before pulling it open again so that I can add one final point. “Oh, and if anything happens to the house, like a fire for example, I'll know exactly where to send the police.”

  With that, I slam the door shut and take a deep breath, before turning and seeing that Louisa is sitting on the bed still, but at least she's put her phone aside. Instead, she's looking through some kind of pamphlet.

  “Did you hear all that bullshit?” I ask, as the men's footsteps slink away from the other side of the door. “I guess you've got to give them credit for trying. I can understand children believing in this Evil Mary rubbish, but grown men? It's insane.”

  “She was real,” Louisa whispers, with a hint of fear in her voice. “The woman in my dream, the woman I saw at the apartment... I found this on the bedside table. Evil Mary is based on a real person!”

  Great. My wife has finally lost her mind.

  Johnny

  “I still don't want to hear it,” I say firmly as I park the car at the front of the house and immediately start climbing out. “You're just working yourself up into another bad state.”

  “Will you at least listen to me for two minutes?” Louisa asks, getting out the other side with that goddamn pamphlet still clutched in her hand. “Mary Carmichael -”

  “Enough!” I reply, almost shouting as I turn to her. “You've been trying to tell me this since last night, but I'm still not interested. You're starting to sound like those mad bastards from the pub. I don't want to hear it.”

  Realizing that I'm maybe being a little tough, I head around the car and place my hands on Louisa's shoulders. “I'm all for a good ghost story, but I'm worried that this stuff is getting too real for you. Now we have a plan this morning, and that plan involves taking photos and checking the place out and trying to decide how we go ahead with a sale of the house. Let's stick to that and try not to fill our heads with talk of this woman you've found online.”