Home Sweet Home?

HOME SWEET HOME?

The lodge stood menacingly silent, alone and unoccupied. Again. This had been an endless cycle, over the decades, with previous tenants dwelling within for only short periods of time before moving on, often quickly. The longest staying tenants were a burgeoning young writer and his wife. As newlyweds, the lovely young couple wanted to start a family and for the husband, a quiet retreat to focus on his writing away from distractions while he could. The family expanded and soon outgrew the house and eventually moved on. Other occupants, however, had not enjoyed their stay quite so much.

It had been on the town’s estate agents listings and prominently displayed in their windows for years. However, not even the manager knew exactly who owned the old house, only that there was a number to call with any problems. Gradually, as time passed, there had been a few successful interested parties around intermittent periods, when it stood empty. Time was not kind with the property beginning to look old and dishevelled.

Its rustic location was in the favour of those that sought solitude and those that did not want to be found. Some of these individuals liked the anonymity and comfort of being unreachable or untraceable. Whenever the rental contract had come to an end, the agency’s representatives had to visit. They reluctantly drew lots as to who should go. On every occasion, a representative came to check on the condition of the property, before completing the difficult task of seeking a new tenant. Trying to overcome their initial fear of approaching the intimidating and scary lodge via its long pathway, they often found the house now lay vacant and devoid of personal belongings. It was as if nobody had ever been there.

Its remoteness to town and being on the edge of dense woodland did nothing to enhance the lodge’s haunting image. It was as if the house was waiting for someone to enter. It’s interior chilling ambience with its long hallways and lightly pastel coloured walls matched the chilling exteriors. The long pathway and high hedgerows gave a daunting feeling to whoever walked on it as they approached the four bedroomed lodge’s front door. It also acted as a wind tunnel making breezes even more chilling and created a creepy whistling sound you’d often hear in movies.

The lodge was built in the late nineteenth century and was used as a hunting lodge by a wealthy land owner. The interior and exterior remained virtually unchanged save for any necessary repairs. Today though, just like the previous tenants had left it, cobwebs stretched from corner to corner, dust lay on lampshades, furniture covers and had settled on hallway carpets.

Another long, hot summer came, bringing with it a sultriness that accompanied long hot evenings. The lodge remained quiet, save for the heaving and creaking of floorboards settling after a day’s exposure to the heat, sounding like a house’s equivalent of a person’s yawn towards the end of a long, tiring day.

The letting agency was unscrupulous at best. They had all heard the rumours about disappearing tenants but didn’t disclose this to potential new tenants for fear of not being able to get their fees. Considering it looked like nobody had been there for a while whenever they visited, they did not see it as necessary to disclose this information to potential viewers. Property inspections to see if the lodge and other properties were still in good condition were few and far between.

*

The lodge heaved and made a sound akin to a satisfied sigh as an estate car pulled up alongside the pathway. The car’s occupants craned their necks to get a better view of the lodge. One by one they exited the car, all the time surveying the surroundings. The driver walked along the path with the other front passenger and peered through a partly shuttered side window. The sun light behind them helped to see inside. Flecks of dust aimlessly floated about the room, glinting in the sun as they moved. Outlines of bookcases and lampshades could vaguely be made out. They looked at each other in bewilderment. A crow cawed from the woods, as if uttering a menacing greeting to them.

The two children were exploring the garden at the rear. A nice size square lawn, overgrown and riddled with tall weeds and surrounded by a tall fence. They swayed in unison in the gentle breeze. A tall oak tree dominated the lawn at one end with vacant flowerbeds either side. The tree which had kept still despite the slight breeze, stirred and in doing so, slightly revealed a corner of a wooden platform, inviting the observers to investigate. They looked at one another and approached the tree slowly and uncertainly.

Meanwhile, the two adults left the window and came to see what their children had found. They were pleasantly surprised at what they had discovered. Giggling and trying to keep their feet from being seen but it was too late. Their parents had seen them.

“Oh, you’ve found a treehouse, have you?” the father said.

“Yeah. It’s a nice one. It’s even got a carpet in it!” bragged the oldest child Alan.

“And a window,” said the youngest child, Emily.

“Good. Be careful. I’m going to help daddy unload the car,” Brenda said.

“Right, let’s open up first,” Colin responded.

Colin and Brenda had married ten years ago in Nottinghamshire and sought a slower pace of life away from the bustling towns and cities they had known. More to the point, unbeknown to their children, they had deliberately sought anonymous surroundings. Long before their children were born, and when they were courting, they had met one evening for a drink. They had both drunk too much and Colin had driven Brenda home. While negotiating a roundabout, he had lost control of the car and swerved to avoid hitting another. The car behind swerved in avoidance and crashed head on into a tree. Rather than attend to the driver, they had fled the scene. They later discovered the crash had been fatal. They quickly left the area and never looked back.

Now, with their children Alan and Emily aged nine and seven respectively, they were looking forward to having a new adventure and exploring Devon.

Piece by piece, the car’s contents were put tidily in one room near to the front entrance ready to be unpacked and put elsewhere. The children helped to carry in lighter items. Once they had finished some of the unpacking, Brenda set about in the kitchen making drinks while Colin and their two children looked around in the other rooms. Unheard by any of them, the key and handle on the front door turned thus locking them in. Sash windows were secured further without the slightest noise.

Colin pulled open the curtains and tried to open the window in the study to ventilate the room. There was an ominous and overpowering musty smell about the place.

“It won’t budge,” he said absent mindedly.

“Let’s try the other window,” Emily said.

“Neither will this one. Maybe they need oil,” he said again.

“Wow, Daddy. These books are very old,” said Emily.

“The shelves are very dusty,” said Alan.

As they busied themselves with windows and book shelves, the study room door slammed shut, audibly locking, causing all three to visibly jump and turn their startled faces towards the door.

“Brenda? Is that you?” Colin called out trying to hide the rising dread in himself.

There came no reply.

“Brenda? It’s not funny!”

The children couldn’t hide their growing panic. Just then, the curtains twitched making them all panic more. Hairs rose on the back of necks. Colour drained from faces.

One by one they started pounding the door with their fists. Brenda rushed from the kitchen when she heard the noise. She unlocked the door hurriedly and was greeted with panic-stricken faces.

“How did you lock the door?” Brenda asked.

Getting his breath back, Colin replied, “We didn’t.” The children rushed to their mummy and hugged her in relief.

The next day, Colin and Brenda started to unpack clothes and put them into cupboards and chests of drawers. The children were watching television downstairs. As Brenda opened the top drawer, the bottom drawer suddenly opened with such force that it struck her in the shin. She dropped the neatly folded clothes on the floor. She yelped causing Colin to turn around quickly from the wardrobe.

“Are you ok? What happened?” he asked urgently.

Brenda sat on the children’s bed massaging her now bruised shin, wincing.

Just then, there was an almighty crashing sound from downstairs. The children shrieked in surprise. Colin fled down the stairs, frantically rushing from one room to another, checking on Alan and Emily as he did so, and telling them to remain where they were, until eventually he found the crashes’ source. A wooden shelf on the dresser unit had somehow collapsed sending crockery hurtling to the floor and smashing. In his rush to enter the room, he had trodden on a piece of crockery which had pierced the skin on his foot. Brenda entered the room and saw the mess.

“Don’t move. Are the children ok?” she asked concernedly.

“Yeah. They’re fine. They just jumped is all.”

“Kids, could you come in the kitchen, please,” she requested urgently.

“Yes, mummy?” asked Emily.

“Daddy’s cut his foot and I’m going to help him. Could you sweep up the broken pieces, please,” Brenda said while helping Colin to sit down at the table to examine his foot.

“Ok,” came the reply.

Brenda had swabbed the affected area of his foot with an anti-septic wipe and nursed it appropriately.

That evening, before the children went to bed, Brenda drew a bath for them and left to get their pyjamas, leaving them to clean their teeth. Colin was downstairs, washing up while listening to the radio.

“Aaaaaaahhhhh!” screamed both children simultaneously.

Blood oozed out of the taps like treacle from a sponge cake. At the same time, blood dripped and then ran down the wall into the bath turning the water frothy crimson. Both disappeared as quick as they had come.

Brenda came rushing in to see them white with fear and pointing at the taps. Their toothbrushes now on the floor. A quizzical look traced over Brenda’s face.

“Whatever’s the matter with you two?”

“B... bl... blood, mummy!” screamed Emily.

“Blood? Where?”

“It was coming out of the taps!” Alan yelled.

“And down the wall!” Emily shrieked.

Brenda looked at the taps. The water was coming out with no colour. She turned off the taps and peered into the frothy bath. The water was clear, save for the bubbles. The wall looked clear. She looked at them.

“Are you sure you saw blood?”

“Yes! We saw it in the mirror.”

Disembodied laughter emanated from deep within the house.

The next morning, Colin awoke with a pain in his injured foot. He sat on the edge of the bed to have a look and give it a rub. It was now swollen and looking septic. Brenda drove them to the hospital on the other side of town. They returned hours later in the dark. The barest of moonlight beams shone their way along the path to the front door. An owl hooted amongst the rustling of the trees’ leaves. A fox howled in the distance shattering the eerie silence. Cicadas carried on unperturbed with their rhythmic chirping to add to the cacophony of the ritualistic night sounds.

“Mummy, it’s creepy,” Emily said.

Putting her arm around her, Brenda said, “We’re nearly there.”

A black cat slinked out of the hedgerow in front of Alan, scaring him with its sudden emergence.

It wrapped its tail around his leg and then weaved in between both of his feet. Alan relaxed and bent down to stroke it. The cat reared up, flashing it’s piercing yellow eyes and hissed at Alan before scurrying away.

As the weeks turned into months, more and more unexplained events happened. Menacing whispering and other ghoulish ramblings could be heard at night. It caused the adults to now think about researching the history of the lodge with its mysterious goings on.

While the children were at school, the parents investigated using their lap tops while sitting at the dining from table at the back of the lounge. They had found a lot of redacted online entries. They delved further into estate and letting agents. It was the same there too. In many cases, whole articles were removed and what little they learned did not tally up with other information they had obtained.

“Look at this, Colin. I’ve found this article. It says there was a seance held in this lodge in the late sixties. The police got a tip off that there was LSD there and other drugs being used. It says here the chap who resided here was interested in the occult and wanted to experiment and see for himself. He believed drugs would enhance the experience and aid his research.”

“Really?” Colin said pulling his chair closer to look. “Interesting,” he mused.

“It goes on to say that one of the participants was still doing an incantation when the police arrived and got interrupted. It went wrong.”

“Wrong?” Colin said baffled as to what that had to do with what they were researching.

Brenda found another online entry. This was more worrying than the last. She stopped reading.

“What is it?” Colin asked nervously.

“It is believed that the person leading the séance had inadvertently released evil spirits into the house. Must’ve been stoned out of their minds. Later accounts state that tortured souls and those bearing grudges against bad people, came alive . . . in this lodge and could be heard.”

She stared at the laptop screen in disbelief. Colin looked shell shocked.

“It . . . gets worse. It says the house is possessed!” she said solemnly.

Colin’s jaw dropped.

Getting her breath back, she read on. “Whole families have gone missing from here. Paranormal experts suggested an incorrect incantation must’ve been done in order for the house to be possessed. There’s a photo,” remarked Brenda.

“That’s our lounge!” Brenda said in disbelief.

“They must’ve done the séance in here!” Brenda said alarmed and looked around the room warily. “I’ve read enough. I’m worried. What if something happens to us?”

*

The next morning, after a sleepless night, they helped get their children ready for school. Hallway lights went on and off quickly. Curtains swayed, kitchen cupboard doors opened and slammed shut downstairs.

“Enough!” roared a menacing guttural voice. “You have been judged.”

They all stopped in their tracks and quickly looked around. Suddenly, pillows flew at them and bed sheets were tossed around mid-air forcing them all downstairs. As they fled, carpet rods detached themselves, launching into the air, freeing the carpet to act like a huge wave chasing them. One by one doors slammed shut, blocking any means of escape, leaving just the lounge door open. They hastily ventured inside and shut the door, backing away from it. The menacing cackling laughter was deafening and incessant. Chairs and sofas spun around and around, and then shoved by themselves to the sides of the room.

The astounded family could not believe what they were witnessing. The children clung to the parents, crying. The huge, round rug in the centre of the spacious room slowly lifted up and rolled itself back. The floor from the door to where they were standing fell in on itself and slowly made its way towards them like the skin on an orange when its peeled to reveal a black vacuous space beneath. The floor gave way under them, sending them plummeting into the bottomless void, screaming as they went. Darkness enveloped and devoured them. The floor returned to normal as did the chairs, sofa and rug. The lodge now sated, patiently awaited its next tenants.

*

A few weeks later, a newly married couple arrived. They had met at college, where they began their criminal ways, becoming wealthy by taking advantage of others. Now, on the run, and using fake names, they wanted to find somewhere quiet to lay low.

As they surveyed their new surroundings, they opened the front door.