TALES FROM MORTIFER HOUSE - Part Three - Eleanor's Vision

 

Two short weeks after the bones were discovered, Eleanor encountered another strange happening.

 The night of the bones incident Angus had been awakened by Eleanor's screams and even though he and his wife were not on the best of terms, it jolted him enough to race to her side. 

Alice appeared white faced,clutching her teddy bear. Grace quickly materialised behind her on the stairs, torn from sleep by the sound of her mothers terrified scream. The girls were told sharply to return to their room by their father. Tearful and confused they obeyed.
 Although Angus was obviously shocked and concerned, Eleanor was quite puzzled at his subsequent actions. After a mostly sleepless night, partly because Angus insisted on coming to bed with her initially, which was strange in itself, Eleanor went downstairs with trepidation.
The door to the garden room was firmly closed, she reached out with a trembling hand to open it because, just for a moment, she wondered if it had been a horrible nightmare and it hadn't actually happened. 

'I've dealt with it!' Eleanor jumped a mile, a small whimper escaping her lips. Angus's voice came booming down from the top of the stairs where he was standing, somewhat awkwardly shifting his balance from one foot to the other. 

She turned to look at him, not understanding what he was saying, her heart was beating so fast she thought she was going to pass out. 

'I've dealt with it' he said firmly but offered no explanation as he turned and disappeared back upstairs, presumably to his study. 

His version of 'dealing with it' turned out to be a little odd.  

She checked. Sure enough the vine, the pot and the bones had gone - but they hadn't gone far. 

Eleanor didn't notice the fresh patch of earth in the far corner of the garden straight away, but when she did she was immediately suspicious. 

Hunched down, it didn't take much digging to unearth a leg bone followed by what was clearly the top of a skull. As the trowel she was carefully digging with hit the bone with a crunch, Eleanor recoiled in horror and stood up. This was no solution, what was Angus even thinking, burying God knows who, like some kind of animal!

When Eleanor confronted him that same afternoon, Angus had merely shrugged. 'What do you want me to do? Who is going to believe we haven't gone and murdered someone ourselves?' 

Eleanor felt helpless as he continued 'We just have to pretend that it never happened. I've buried, him or her and that is an end to it' 

But it DID happen she thought to herself and she wasn't just going to be able to forget about it. 

As evening came Eleanor went back outside and carefully covered the disturbed earth over the freshly dug grave. Rain had fallen and the smell of it on the fresh earth was pungent as she breathed in the air.

She said a silent prayer and scattered the petals of a fresh rose that she had picked from the garden over the grave. That was all she could do, but with a heavy heart she knew this would not settle things within the walls of Mortifer House. 

How right she was. 

Fast forward two weeks, nothing major happened at first, the usual voices, it seemed slightly odd to say 'usual', but Eleanor had grown used to hearing them. She only really noticed them if they were very clear or loud like they had been when she discovered the bones. 

She had just finished a particularly difficult tarot card session. She always found them draining at the best of times, but it had been hard to conceal her horror at the fate she had been shown for the handsome young man who sat at the table drinking tea with her. She had feigned tiredness and sent him home to his family, knowing deep within, that his time with them was about to be cut short. 

Wearily she packed away the cards and returned the crystal ball to her cabinet, her new found powers were an absolute curse she reflected. 

It was a little after ten in the evening, Angus was entertaining a friend in his study. Every now and again she could hear him laugh loudly as the sound drifted down from upstairs. The girls were, she hoped, fast asleep in bed which is exactly where Eleanor longed to be, blanked out from the burden of knowing peoples fates. 

If she was quick she could be in bed asleep way before Angus finished entertaining whoever was in his study. She hoped he would pass out in his chair and not make it to the bedroom. The nights that she shared a bed with him she never slept well. 

She extinguished the lamps in the garden room and opened the door into the hall. As soon as she stepped over the threshold the strongest smell of rotting hit her, causing her hand to fly up to her mouth and nose in disgust. She looked around the dimly lit hall and all the hairs on her arms started to stand on end. Every wall was damp, fetid and running with water. The wallpaper was mouldy and peeling, the plaster was falling in lumps, slipping and sliding down the stinking, sticky walls. It was as if the walls were breathing, they seemed to vibrate and pulse with every paper peel and slip of the plaster. But the smell, the smell was indescribable, like every dead thing in the universe and more. Yet,she could see all the normal things in the hall, the chest in the corner, the mirror, the pictures, the stags head. They remained firmly in place unaffected by the crumbling walls. 

In the corner of her eye she was aware of a source of light coming from the mirror. It was a strange, blue, glowing light that seemed to brighten and then dim and then the surface of the mirror seemed to take on the appearance of water. The liquid swirled and a dark shape formed within it, starting small but growing larger. A skeletal head pushed out of the surface ,the liquid stretched taut to its face. For a moment it seemed as if it would burst from the mirror and shatter it. Instead its mouth opened in a silent scream as it twisted and writhed beneath the confines of the taut surface and then as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone. 

Much to her own surprise, Eleanor didn't scream, she merely very calmly, closed her eyes. 'I can't help you, I don't know what you want' she whispered in frustration.

There was a sudden bone chilling rush of moaning wind that passed straight through her, taking her breath away. 

Then as if nothing had happened, all she could hear was the gentle ticking of the clock.

She opened one eye and then the other, slowly, cautiously. Everything had returned to normal, the walls were intact, the wallpaper no longer peeling, well no more than the odd piece, same as before. The stench however, was the last thing to fade, remaining in her nostrils for the rest of the night.

Eleanor went shakily up to bed and with the house calm, she slipped into a deep and almost dreamless sleep. I say almost, because between sleeping and waking she saw the skull head but this time it was speaking over and over 'Help us, please help us'  

But Eleanor didn't know how. 

Sarah Russell 2022