House of the Damned

Our little group sat in silence for another moment.

Miss White stumbled in through the door. Her state of shock from last night hadn’t seemed to have worn off yet. The chatter in the room was stifled.

“I think you all know what happened last night,” she swallowed. Her eyes flickered over to Amanda. Amanda gazed back at her with a fixed stare of misery and what almost seemed to be accusation.

“We will not allow this…event to interfere with your home…lessons will continue as normal, as will mealtimes and other activities.

“If any of you knows why or how this happened, speak to me. I don’t understand…I don’t understand how this could have happened here.”

Miss White stared at the stained wall behind us as she finished her speech. “But please, if any of you know anything…”

Her voice died away. She looked ready to simply collapse, as if she couldn’t stand under the weight of the situation…neither could I, but it was a very different set of circumstances.

Would I be blamed as the one who killed—?

No. Possibly not. There might not be anybody who made a connection between Alexander’s encounters with ghosts and dying so soon afterward…

It depended solely on how many people he told.

But no…James had also seen the same ghost, since I knew he slept in a room adjacent to Alexander’s. It was possible there was a door between the two, that the same apparition had been able to be seen by two people in different rooms.

I needed to check the rooms as soon as possible—to see how it was possible they had both seen one ghost.

It would probably also be a good idea to ask James about precisely what he had seen—although it wasn’t a good idea to egg on his imagination. He was probably already terrified as it was.

Amanda and Carey both stood up suddenly and began to walk toward the dining hall, talking about something. I rose up too, figuring that they were going off to eat and I hadn’t heard. I sped up to catch up with them.

Everybody else ate slowly, as though exhausted by the day’s events even though it was still morning. I finished as quickly as I could, and was the first one done and out of the dining hall.

This is probably the stupidest thing I’ve done so far.

I knew the room would probably be boarded up with that yellow police tape or something similar by now. If it was, I couldn’t risk climbing over it, leaving something in a different position than before, and looking even more like I was trying to interfere.

I was surprised to find that my assumption was wrong—there was nothing there to bar off the room, no one standing around watching over it. I would have perhaps ten minutes to look. Checking behind me, I quickly opened the door and slipped inside.

The room was very plain—yellow walls, two wooden bookshelves, a nightstand, and a bed that matched the walls. The body had already been taken away.

As I shifted closer to the bedcovers, however, I realized there was a puddle of red dotting the sheets right below where the pillow rested. It was the size of a softball. Bile rose in my throat, and I looked back up to clear my head. I turned to the wall.

There was no door to connect James and Alexander’s rooms.

Meaning what? That the ghost hadn’t just been raving, but he had been consciously trying to get the message out that the orphanage was in danger?

I wished so badly I could go talk to him, but I knew that the woman would come after me if she found out—and she probably would. It was likely that she patrolled Everett's hallways by night, keeping watch over her twisted little kingdom.

Not finding anything else important, I began the trek back to my room.

I was stuck all over again. I couldn’t contact anybody, Frank or otherwise, to let them know what was happening or figure out what to do. There wasn’t anything I could do to stop the woman from murdering everybody in the house, and if I tried, she’d kill us all at once!

I had to figure out some way to get her to be at peace, to leave the mansion permanently and let all the others she had condemned to the same fate be able to pass on.

Frank had told me that the woman had lived in the house nearly half a century ago. She had been killed by her husband…

Her husband…

He would still be alive. They were probably about the same age when they had lived together, and the woman looked as though she was in her early twenties…

So that would make him in his seventies or eighties now. Old, gray, and had probably forgotten about her by now. But that didn’t change anything—he was the reason for the miserable creatures that haunted the house.

But what was I supposed to do about him?

By now I had reached my room. Almost subconsciously I wandered over to the bookshelf and pulled out what I hoped would have some answers.

I flipped to the page I had left off on the previous night and continued reading, not even bothering to sit down.

A ghost’s requirements before they leave this world, as stated earlier, may vary greatly. Those who are more accepting and less bitter—generally those who have not been dead for a long period of time—can be willing to depart after a simple conversation or message exchanged between a specific person or group.

However, those who do not usually have higher demands. They may ask for cruel punishments upon certain people—such as torture, interrogation, or death inflicted upon those who wronged them.

Death?

Her husband…he would still be alive.

…death inflicted upon those who wronged them.

Could she only be put to rest if—

No. I mentally shook myself. That was melodramatic, and surely I wouldn’t have to have somebody killed.

Would I?