The Curse of Wetherley House Page 24

  Taking a deep breath, I feel a kind of dry powder at the back of my throat. I start coughing, but this space is too small for me to turn onto my side and really try getting the powder from my mouth properly. Instead, I push up against the rocky surface again, albeit with no more luck than before, and then I reach my hands out, trying to figure out where I am and how I got here.

  It's almost as if I've been buried somewhere.

  Suddenly the fingers of my right hand brush against a different kind of surface. Something wooden and rough, with splintered pieces sticking out. As I move my fingers across this new surface, I feel gaps where several planks are joined together, and finally I realize I can feel the sharp ends of nails poking down into this narrow space in which I find myself. I try to haul myself closer to the wooden section, so that I can investigate further, but as I do so my right cheek catches against another nail that's poking down, and I let out a faint gasp as I feel my flesh rip.

  Maggots.

  In a flash, I remember the bag of maggots that Katie placed on my head. I remember drowning in a mass of their wriggling little bodies, and I remember frantically breathing hundreds of them into my mouth and nose as I struggled to get free. At some point I dropped to my knees, then onto my side, but I remember how the bag was held so very tightly. I was suffocating, and Katie seemed determined to kill me, and then I must have passed out. I don't remember anything else after that moment, not until I woke up just now.

  I stay quiet for a moment, listening to the sound of the baby in the distance.

  “Hello?” I whisper finally, although I doubt anybody can hear me. “Help...”

  Even those two simple words cause my throat to catch. Dry and painful, my entire mouth feels as if it has not been used for several days, and after a moment I realize that I'm so very thirsty. I try again to move through the darkened space, this time taking extra care to avoid any more of the nails that are poking down, and finally I manage to maneuver myself under the wooden boards, which I think might be the underside of a set of floorboards. I press my hands against the wood and this time I feel the boards flex just a little, accompanied by a very faint creaking sound.

  “Help me!” I gasp, pushing again, unable to apply too much pressure until finally I turn slightly and push my shoulder up against the wood. Leveraging the narrow space for a little extra grip, I start pushing as hard as I can manage. I feel as if I'm running out of air under here, and panic is starting to spread through my body, but I know I have to keep trying. I push harder and harder, until I feel as if my shoulder is about to break, and then I push some more until my entire body is straining. Even then I keep going, determined to get out of here and -

  Suddenly the board gives way slightly, and I let out a gasp as I slump back down. Frantically pushing the board again with my hands, I find that two nails have come loose, allowing me to lift the board just high enough to see the legs of a table with several chairs arranged nearby. I immediately realize that I'm under the floor in the kitchen, which is a section of the house that has no basement underneath.

  Pushing the boards again, I manage to force one end a little further open and then I reach through in an attempt to gain a little better purchase.

  A moment later I slip slightly and the board comes thudding back down. One of the nails slices straight through my outstretched hand and I let out a pained cry before clamping my other hand over my mouth.

  I have no idea who's up there and who might be able to hear me, but I know I have to stay as quiet as possible. Maybe Katie -

  Hesitating for a moment, I realize I'm scared of her.

  My own sister.

  Reaching up again, I push the board, and finally the nail slides up and out of my hand. I pull the damaged hand closer and examine it in the light. Although I see a bloodied hole just beneath the knuckles of my index and middle fingers, I quickly find that I can still move the hand properly, despite the searing pain. Pushing on the board yet again, I use my shoulder to force it open further, and finally I hear a snapping sound as the other end comes away. Setting the board aside, I'm able to force another one free, at which point I manage to clamber up and then roll onto my back.

  I'm out.

  I'm on the kitchen floor.

  The room is dark and I can see the night sky outside the window, but at least I'm out of that claustrophobic little hole under the floor. The baby is still screaming somewhere in the house, but for a moment all I can do is wait to get my breath back as I stare up at the ceiling.

  The child is up there somewhere.

  The master bedroom, maybe, or the spare room at the top of the stairs.

  Either way, I have to go and help. Even though I feel incredibly weak, and despite the pain in my hand, I struggle to my feet and start limping toward the door. My hips are hurting, most likely because I was immobile down there for so long, but I know I can't let pain stop me now. Wincing, I make my way through to the hallway and then I turn toward the stairs.

  There's a body on the floor.

  A man, slumped at the foot of the stairs. I don't know how, but I can tell immediately that he's familiar, so I limp closer until I see the side of his face and a jolt of shock bursts through my chest.

  “Johnny?” I gasp, stumbling over to him and dropping to my knees. “Johnny, what the hell are -”

  Before I can finish, I see that his eyes are wide open and glassy, and that his neck has been left resting at an impossible angle, almost twisted entirely to the side. Reaching out, I press two fingers against the side of his neck, and I immediately feel that his flesh is still and icy cold.

  “Johnny,” I continue, “wake up. Johnny, please!”

  Grabbing his shoulder, I roll him onto his back. As I do so, I see that his head lolls back as if all the bones in his neck are shattered.

  Letting out a brief cry of shock, I pull back and bump against the door as the baby continues to cry upstairs in the dark house.

  Johnny's dead eyes are staring toward the wall now, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that he's dead. Still, I can't process that information, and tears start running down my face as I stare at my brother's body. For the next few minutes, all I can do is sit sobbing on the hallway floor, and every few seconds a brief rush of hope fills my chest as I try to think of some way that he might be okay. The hope quickly dies each time, only to come rushing back just a moment later.

  Eventually I'm stirred from shock by a set of bumps from one of the rooms upstairs.

  “Katie?” I whisper, hoping against hope that my sister will suddenly appear and tell me that everything's okay. That this is some kind of trick, or nightmare. “Katie, what's happening?”

  The only response is a series of faint gasps, seemingly coming from the landing.

  “Katie?”

  Stumbling to my feet, I take care to not even look at Johnny's body as I limp to the stairs and start crawling up on all fours. Barely finding the strength to keep going, I notice after a moment that there are patches of thick blood dried on some of the steps, along with fresher-looking, redder smears. About halfway up, one of the steps has collapsed, and as I get closer I feel cold air from the basement. Every muscle in my body is aching, screaming at me to turn back, but that poor child sounds so upset.

  I have to help.

  “Katie!” I call out, struggling past the broken step and continuing to haul myself upstairs, getting closer and closer to the sound of the crying baby. “What are you doing?”

  I almost slump and fall several times, but finally I grab the edge of the railing and pull myself to the top. Letting out a cry of pain, I turn and look along the landing, and I immediately see that there's a bloodied human figure dragging itself toward one of the doors. My first instinct is to call out, but suddenly I realize that the figure isn't Katie at all. It's another woman, and she's leaving a fresh trail of smeared blood on the floor as she pulls herself forward. And then, just as I'm about to call out to her, she suddenly turns to me. Her face is bloodied and battered, w
ith thick swollen bruises, and one of her eyes looks to have been split open. Matted hair is stuck to the blood on her torn forehead and his bottom lip is trembling, but I still just about recognize her.

  “Louisa?” I stammer, struggling to my feet and leaning heavily against the wall as I limp toward her. “What's happening? How did you get here? Why -”

  Suddenly she lets out a pained moan, something that sounds more animal than human. In the process, thick black blood dribbles from her mouth and several teeth splatter down onto the wet floorboards. Her moan becomes louder, until one side of her lower jaw detaches altogether and a spray of blood hits the floorboards.

  “What happened to you?” I ask as I reach her and drop back down onto my knees. “Louisa, we have to get out of this house. Have you seen Katie?”

  She groans again, and now I can see that tears are mixing with the blood on her face. She reaches out to me and grips my arm with a trembling hand, as if she's trying to use my body to haul herself up, but she's clearly too weak.

  “Who did this to you?” I continue, trying not to panic. “Louisa, I found Johnny, he -”

  The mention of his name brings another cry from her lips, this time one that sounds more pained and twisted. Her whole body shudders as she grabs my shoulder, but she seems unable to lift herself up and instead she starts pulling me down to toward the floor.

  “Why is there a baby crying in the house?” I ask, struggling to stay up. Looking along toward the door at the far end of the landing, I realize that the baby seems to be on the other side of that door. “Louisa, whose baby is that? Why's it in this house?”

  I pause for a moment, listening to the child's continued cries, before looking back down at my sister-in-law as she tries yet again to haul herself up.

  “Louisa, who does that baby belong to? Where did it come from?”

  She stares up at me, and for a few seconds I see fear and pain in her remaining good eye. And then, slowly, she starts to roll onto her back. As she does so, thick patches of dried blood start to pull away from the bare floorboards, and I realize with a growing sense of horror that her entire belly has been torn open. Not only that, but the gaping wound has begun to dry and stick against the boards, and now thick strands of rotten, pus-covered flesh are being torn away as she lets out a whimpering cry and rolls all the way onto her back, revealing the bloody, hollowed out hole where she's been ripped open.

  As I stare in horror at the wound, and at the edges of her shattered ribs, Louisa lets out another agonized cry.

  “I'll get her,” I stammer, pulling back before getting to my feet and turning to look toward the farthest door. I can't even understand how Louisa is still alive, but she must have dragged herself all the way up here in search of her child. Now, limping toward the door, I realize that there'll be time to figure out the truth later. That poor little girl sounds utterly terrified and I just have to get her out of here.

  She's all that matters.

  Reaching the door, I try the handle but find that it's locked. Turning my shoulder against the wood, I try to smash my way through, but when that doesn't work I drop to my knees and peer through the keyhole. I immediately spot a wriggling little form on the bed by the window, and then a moment later someone walks past the other side of the door.

  “Who's in there?” I shout, banging my fists against the door. “What are you doing to her her? Katie, is that you? What are you doing?”

  Suddenly something comes wriggling through the keyhole, blocking my view. I pull back just as a thick fly buzzes out, brushing my face before it flies away. There's a strong smell in the air, as if something's rotten, but all I know right now is that I have to find a way to get into the bedroom and save the girl. I slam my shoulder against the door a couple more times, but I can already tell that I'm never going to be able to break through.

  Pulling back, I try to work out how else I can get into the room.

  “I'm coming,” I whisper, as the baby continues to scream. “I'm going to -”

  Before I can finish, I hear a loud, gurgled scream from over my shoulder. Startled, I turn just in time to see that Louisa has somehow not only hauled herself up from the floor, but is now stumbling straight toward me. I stare at her for a moment, and then I duck out of the way just as she throws what's left of her ravaged body against the door. The wood starts to split, and she steps back before trying again, then again and again, each time with more furious anger. She's smashing her own body apart, but at the same time she's also managing to break the wood around the handle, and finally I watch in horror as she lets out one more cry and cracks the door open.

  As splinters of broken wood fly through the air, Louisa's ravaged body slumps down to the floor. Her head hits the boards and bounces slightly, and then she falls still with dead eyes staring toward the wall. The force of the impact sent her intestines unraveling through her ripped belly and slopping out onto the wooden floorboards.

  Stumbling past her, I make my way into the room and start limping toward the bed. I look around, and now there's no sign of anyone else in here, so I hurry to the bed and look down at the wriggling, screaming baby. Hundreds and hundreds of flies are crawling all over her body.

  “It's okay!” I gasp. “I'm going to get you out of here!”

  I reach down toward her, but there are flies buzzing all around me and a moment later I spot a set of rotten human remains slumped in the corner, covered in flies and maggots. Horrified by the sight, it takes me a moment to recognize the shoes and tattered dress that the body's wearing, and finally I look at the bugs that are eating the remains of the face.

  “Katie?” I whisper, realizing that I've finally found my sister. For a moment I can only stare at the hollow sockets of her eyes. I want to go over and try to help her, but I know it's too late.

  The baby.

  I have to save the -

  Suddenly something brushes against my shoulder, bumping me forward. I spin around and look across the room. At first I only see Louisa's corpse on the floor, but then I realize that there's a patch of darkened air in front of the door, barely visible through the swarm of flies. The more I stare at that patch, the more it seems to resolve itself and form a human shape, and after a few seconds I realize that I can see a pair of eyes staring straight back at me from beyond the flies.

  “Who are you?” I ask, filled with fear. “What are you?”

  Instead of responding, she simply continues to watch me.

  “What do you want with my family?” I continue, as I remember Dad's last words from his deathbed. “Are you Mary? What did any of us ever do to you?”

  As I wait for her to make her move, I can't help looking at the rest of her body. She's naked and painfully thin, with bloodied wounds around her wrists as if at some point she was held in shackles. There look to be wounds in her belly, too, as if she was stabbed at some point, and maggots are wriggling in thick nests between sections of exposed bones.

  “What did my brother do to you?” I sob, as fresh tears run down my face. “What did his wife do to you? What did my sister ever do to you? What did -”

  Suddenly I gasp as she takes a step forward, directly into the swarm of buzzing flies. I instinctively move to block her way, so that she can't get any closer to the screaming baby. Reaching down, I brush as many of the flies away as possible, before turning to look at the rotten woman.

  “You can't actually touch her, can you?” I continue, my mind racing as I try to figure out why she hasn't killed me already, and why she hasn't hurt the girl. “You hurt the others, you killed them, but...”

  Hesitating for a moment, I start to realize that I might have got that a little wrong.

  “No,” I whisper, “you didn't hurt them. That's why you needed my sister, isn't it? You used her, you got her to do these things for you. You made her kill the others, and you made her bring the baby up here, but you can't actually do it all yourself, can you?”

  She takes another step forward, and this time she lets out an an
gry, sneering groan. The flies are still buzzing all around her, and I have to wave several away as they try to land on my face.

  “You'd have done it by now if you could,” I continue, before looking over at Katie's crumpled, rotten body. “You used her. That's what you do, isn't it? You use people, you manipulate them and you make them do things for you. But you do that because by yourself, you can't actually do very much at all.”

  She steps closer and hisses again, and more flies swarm from her mouth.

  “You can't have her!” I shout, determined to stand my ground even though she's now only a couple of feet away. The baby is behind me, and I know I just have to keep her safe and then get her out of this house. “She's not yours. Whatever you're angry about, whatever someone might have done to you, it's nothing to do with her! Do you understand me? You've been tormenting this family for years, haven't you? That means that whoever made you angry, they must be long dead by now. It's time for you to leave us alone, Mary!”

  I wait, hoping against hope that she might disappear, but instead I find myself staring into her cold, dead eyes. After a moment, however, I realize that she's not looking directly at me. Instead, she seems to be looking past me, toward the bed where the baby is crying.

  “You can't have her!” I say firmly, finally realizing that I can't wait any longer. “If you want to try, you're gonna have to come through me first!”

  Suddenly she steps forward. Before I have a chance to react, she walks straight through me. I let out a gasp as I feel a crunching, nauseating pain rippling through my flesh and passing quickly from the front of my body to the back. For a fraction of a second I'm frozen in place, before finally I feel the ghostly figure walking out the back of me, and I stumble forward before dropping to my knees with flies landing and crawling all over my face. The pain is immense, and when I look down at my hands I see that veiny black cracks have formed beneath my flesh and are now spreading through my body even as I watch them grow.