TALES FROM MORTIFER HOUSE - Part Twelve - The Haunting of Charles Mortifer

 The secrets that Eleanor knew were weighing so very heavily on her. So much so that it kept her awake at night. Early one morning after a night of tossing and turning she crept out of the house and watched the dawn break from the garden. Seated on the thick woollen blanket she had hurriedly snatched from the bed, she watched as the first yellowy strands of light hit Mortifer house. It looked foreboding, neglected and sad. She pulled the remaining blanket around her as she studied its glowering exterior.  That house, it had borne witness to so much, it was no wonder its secrets were spilling out years later. 

The journal entries had revealed far more than Eleanor comfortably wanted to know, now that she had virtually finished the decoding. There were just a few pages left to decipher, pages that she was putting off while she dealt with the knowledge she already had gleaned. And of course, there was that final torn out page - what would that hold?

As a lone bird broke into song starting the dawn chorus, Eleanor turned her face skywards and shut her eyes. A gentle breeze played across her face, it was beautifully peaceful and a welcome break from the turmoil that she felt inside. 

She was angry, angry at the father in law she had never known, his own reckless ways impacting so many lives, including that of her husband.  He had spent most of his life without his father, true his influence probably wasn't that great but at least he would have been there had he not disappeared. But no, his selfish actions ensured Jane and Angus were deprived of him. Her heart went out to Emma too, she had been nothing but the dutiful wife and mother while Charles was off fathering children by another woman.  She felt a pang of regret that she had not taken more time to get to know Emma better while she had been living with them. 

She shook her head in despair and drew the blanket ever tighter around her body as the light of early morning continued to banish the shadows.

Eleanor reflected that she no longer seemed to have the power to see peoples futures. She realised this when a complete stranger had touched her hand by accident in passing. She had held her breath and awaited the images that usually flooded her like some kind of horrible dream like vision. Nothing, absolutely nothing. She tested it later when she passed some money over in a shop and again, nothing. The relief was overwhelming. She could only think that the 'entities' within Mortifer had used it somehow to get her attention. They certainly had her full undivided attention now and she was cautiously optimistic that the change was permanent.

It was no wonder that there was an aggrieved presence in the house, the more of the journal Eleanor had decoded the more she learnt about Charles and the angrier she became.  After Charles killed Elizabeth and buried her he had the issue of what to do about Florence and Stitchy. Florence was easy. Charles went to his friend, a local  doctor, and had her committed to Moreton Grange on the grounds of moral insanity saying she was betrothed to a man in Bath and yet here she was 'carrying on' with Stitchy. The doctor made sure she was dosed with many pills and that her cries of innocence and accusations of murder went unheard. A handsome payment exchanged hands between Charles, the doctor and indeed the hierarchy of Moreton Grange, for no questions asked. After a while the poor woman had no idea what day of the week it was and could barely recite her own name (Charles own words). Eleanor's blood was boiling when she read this.

Stitchy it appeared had not been such an easy fix, no amount of money was going to buy his silence but, as luck would have it, (again this was his own words) after a heated exchange between the two men in which many a harsh truth was spoken, Stitchy mysteriously disappeared from public life. This left Charles constantly looking over his shoulder but somewhat relieved that his 'problem' had gone away. 

Eleanor's heart hurt for Florence and Stitchy, she was quite the romantic and the thought of the two of them being forced apart the way they were left her deeply saddened. Internally she had been seething at every revelation. 

The journal was a little sketchy in detail for several months. It seemed Charles felt guilty every single day seeing his children waiting for the reappearance of Stitchy and Emma bereft without the friendship of Elizabeth of whom she'd grown so fond. He offered only a very brief explanation to Emma as to why Elizabeth had departed so suddenly without so much as a note. The toll of losing the children, he told her, had grown too much. She had taken a carriage to Cheltenham with a view to travelling onwards to a new life. Emma was bewildered, she couldn't grasp why Elizabeth would leave without saying goodbye. More lies followed as Emma was also told by Charles that Florence had been taken to Moreton Grange as she had suffered a breakdown. Of course Emma was not 'allowed' to visit as an asylum was no place for her she was told firmly. 

Reading between the lines Eleanor guessed that Emma had maybe insisted that Angus take over the role of family visitor to Florence after Charles had gone, obviously once he was old enough to take on such a responsibility. 

The journal detailed the local search for Stitchy, a search which Charles reluctantly but with pretend enthusiasm, joined, not wishing to draw attention to the fact that they had parted on bad terms. He hid missing posters, the ones Eleanor had found stitched into the rug, instead of distributing them. Again he talked of the guilt which didn't wash with her one bit. She wished dearly that he was in front of her right then and she would not hold back on how she viewed him, such was her vitriol.

After the sparseness of the journal for several months it suddenly gathered pace. The writing seemed less legible, it was harder to interpret, but even before Eleanor began to write out the words she could tell it had been written in haste and with an unsteady hand. 

Charles had arisen one morning and to his horror he was confronted by a pile of bones lying in the downstairs hallway close to the front door. He could tell straight away it was the remains of Elizabeth, he recognised the remnants of the sheet he had hastily buried her in.  He had thought that an animal had unearthed her, consumed the flesh and somehow, inexplicably, dumped the stripped bones in the house. Of course he realised how insane he sounded even thinking that, and he said as much in the shakily written entry. The heavy oak front door was firmly locked and all the downstairs windows closed. There had been no way for an animal to enter or leave. 

He could hear movement in the upstairs rooms so he hastily scooped up the bones and let himself out the door. He hid the remains in the outhouse. Eleanor shivered, little had she known that the putrefying remains of a dead woman had lain in the outhouse where she had been only a short while back. 

It was a warm spell in early summer, the remains would soon smell as there were still pieces of flesh clinging to the bone here and there. It would attract flies and rodents Charles knew he would have to deal with it as soon as he could. 

His opportunity came a couple of nights later, he had considered opening one of the children's coffins and hiding what was left of Elizabeth in there but he could not bring himself to do that. He was afraid to gaze upon whatever state of decay the body might be in. He had got so far as to enter the tomb and begin to pry open the lid but could go no further. So with little choice left he decided to bury her in the wooded area again.  Eleanor had to force herself to try and not picture the graphic detail of Charles's terrible words, she felt physically sick.

Two mornings later Charles arose early and as he made his way down the stairs a fetid stench wafted up to meet him. He had stood stock still upon the stairs, unable to move, gripping the bannister so hard that his knuckles turned white. The bones were back in exactly the same place as before and although they appeared almost devoid of flesh,the smell was indescribably bad. It were as if Death himself were present. 

Charles was visibly shaken by this event, he rushed to hide the bones once more with a sweat beading his brow.  Emma questioned him several times that day, concerned by his pallid appearance, she thought he was sickening for something. He brushed off her concerns and spent the rest of the day and well into the evening locked in his study with strict instructions that he did not want to be disturbed. When night arrived he once again headed to the woods to bury Elizabeth. He couldn't understand how on earth this was happening, there was no logical explanation, he recorded in the journal that same evening. This time he dug a much deeper hole, and with a certain amount of revulsion he bound the remains together with sheeting. When he had finished the burial he laid the heaviest stones he could find on top of the grave, no animal or being would be able to remove them now. 

His efforts were to no avail, every two to three days would see the now bound bones return, along with the foul scent, and he would have to repeat the same ritual. Charles wrote that he was questioning his sanity as he found himself getting up earlier and earlier in a vain attempt to catch whoever or whatever was doing this to him. It seemed that it didn't matter what time he came downstairs the bones would already be there, mocking him in a sense. He was becoming exhausted and his nerves strained, he snapped at Emma's quiet concern and shrugged her hand away from his brow. 

This carried on for three weeks on and off, he would never know when they would appear. One morning he woke up late with a start, he'd fallen asleep at his desk. He scrambled to his feet, he could hear Emma talking to the children upstairs, they would be down any minute! 

  Of course the bones were there along with the ever present stench,inevitably. Charles grabbed them, there was no time to to take them outside,Angus was already coming down from the nursery in leaps and bounds, two stairs at a time.   

Charles had to bundle them into a coat he snatched from the hallway and stuff them into a drawer. He had just enough time to open the front door releasing some of the smell outside. He had announced loudly that he thought a rat or mouse had got trapped somewhere and died. It was enough, this time, to cover his tracks as he went on a pretend hunt for a dead rodent. 

Since the bones kept finding their way back to the house Charles concluded that perhaps things would get better if he hid them within Mortifer. An idea born of madness and desperation, an idea he would soon live to regret it seemed. 

He had thought of several places none of which were truly suitable. Then, when he was looking around the house, he noticed the extremely large pot in the garden room that had a huge vine growing in it. Whilst Emma and the children were asleep he carefully dug the pot out and placed the remains in the base of it. He packed the pot out with earth from the garden, fortunately there was no smell detectable once he had finished. He didn't think Emma would notice the fresh earth, gardening was not her thing leaving the care of the houseplants up to him. 

When Eleanor had read this she had been horrified, but at least she knew who the bones belonged to finally and how they had got there. 

Charles recorded joyously that he had 'fixed' the problems and at last he was able to have a full nights sleep.  That lasted for precisely one week. He started to be plagued by extremely bad dreams, where Elizabeth's face would appear in a mirror behind him. The face was disfigured, part skull, part flesh, she would open her mouth in a scream but no sound would come out. He would turn to face her in the dream and the remaining flesh would melt from her skull and she stared at him with those blank sockets, mouth still screaming, skeletal hands outstretched towards him. 

Charles would awake in a sweat, shouting, frightened. Emma, startled by the noise would come running to him - he was usually asleep in his study clutching a bottle of something. He would usher her back to bed and reassure himself that it was only the worst nightmare he had ever experienced. It happened night after night. People began to ask him if he was ill, Emma feared that he was descending into some sort of madness. 

When the nightmares finally stopped and Charles was sleeping again, without disturbance, was when other things started to happen and not just to him. 

This was the point that Eleanor had reached in her translation of the journal, she feared worse was to come, although there were not too many entries left to unravel the final movements of her wicked and devious father in law. 

A loud and angry shout from the doorway of the house brought Eleanor back to the present. She noticed the sun had climbed much higher while she had been deep in thought. In the distance she saw the owner of the shout, a furious Angus. Within a few strides he was right in front of her, glaring and visibly seething. He towered over her and spat out his words 'What exactly were you doing at Moreton Grange?!' he hissed at her. 

Eleanor stared up at him, her hand above her eyes to shield the morning sun from her gaze.

She opened her mouth and then closed it. Where on earth would she begin? 

Sarah Russell 2023