The Legend of Darklore Manor and Other Tales of Terror (15 page)

     "What did she look like?" Sandra asked.
     "I didn't really get a good look at her face. To tell you the truth, she scared the hell out of me. My heart's still pounding. She looked to be about fifteen or sixteen. Black hair, black dress. She looked solid—like a regular person. But regular people don't just vanish into thin air, do they?"
     "Show me where this happened," she said.
     They began to walk down the corridor and as they did, I realized that in all the excitement Sandra had left her cassette recorder in the library. Without thinking, I turned and ran down the stairs as fast as I could, then sprinted to the library to fetch the recorder. As I entered the room, I noticed that the candelabra, which had been burning brightly only a few minutes ago, was now extinguished. The strange sight struck me as curious, but I didn't hesitate to ponder its significance. I grabbed the tape recorder and hurried back toward the second floor.
     As I began to ascend the main staircase in the entrance hall, an icy chill passed through me, and I was suddenly overcome with an unexplainable feeling of sorrow. The dismal sensation was so overwhelming that my legs nearly buckled beneath me. As I tried to regain my composure I heard whispering from somewhere behind me. Although I knew that there was no one else in the room, I realized I wasn't alone.
     The entrance hall fell silent once more, then I heard a voice that seemed to whisper my name. I should have ignored it, dismissing what I heard as the sound of wind whistling through a broken window. I should have continued up the stairs without hesitation and quickly returned to the sanctity of my group. Had I only done so, I might have avoided the grim repercussions of my reckless actions. But I did not. Instead I slowly turned to face whoever or whatever had spoken my name, and in that moment, my lifelong beliefs were shattered.
     A tall man, dressed entirely in black, wearing a Victorian-style top hat and coat, was standing on the staircase directly behind me. His dark form wavered like black smoke and his cloak tapered to shadows, fading from sight before reaching the ground. I realized that what I was seeing was no living person, and I knew I could no longer deny the existence of ghosts or the paranormal. Facing the macabre reality that stood before me, I suddenly felt the icy grip of fear taking hold of my heart.
     The shadow man whispered my name again, then lifted his head to reveal his ghastly face. I stared in horror as my gaze fell upon two gaping black holes, bored into the center of his head where his eyes should have been. He raised his withered hand toward me and I screamed and stumbled back upon the stairs. I reached out to try to break my fall and as I landed, a jolting pain shot through my shoulder. The pain temporarily took my mind off of the apparition. I looked up, hoping to see nothing more than an empty room, but to my horror, the ghoulish specter was hovering over me, its empty eye sockets blankly staring downward.
     The phantom leaned close and its hollow voice hissed,
"Leave this place."
     Petrified with fear, I began trembling but remained frozen in place. Drawn by my scream, Sandra and Jake ran down the staircase, but came to a dead halt on the landing when they saw the sinister apparition looming over me.
     "Get away from her!" Jake shouted, taking a step closer.
     The shadow man turned his head in their direction, then slowly began to ascend the steps toward them. Although the apparition's feet were not visible, the wooden stairs sagged and creaked beneath each step he took.
     
"Get out,"
he commanded, his raspy voice sounding like the voice of Death itself. The specter moved past Jake, paying him no heed, and proceeded to the landing, stopping to stand before Sandra. Towering over her, the dark phantom lowered his lips to Sandra's ear then he whispered something that I could not hear.
     His grim message delivered, the shadow man slowly began to dissolve into a dark mist that wavered in the air, then disappeared completely.
     Ron was standing at the top of the staircase, holding his camera in his hands. "What the hell was that thing?"
     Sandra looked out over the entry hall, surveying it for vestiges of the grim apparition, and said, "I think it was the ghost of Damon Darklore." She turned to Ronnie. "Did you get a picture of it?"
     "Yeah, I think so—right as he was fading away. If it turns out, it'll be fantastic."
     Jake gently helped me to my feet and checked my injuries. "Her shoulder's dislocated, and I think her arm might be broken. She needs to get to the hospital."
     "So what do we do now?" Ron asked nervously.
     Sandra didn't answer. She seemed to be weighing all the crucial factors against one another.
     Jake took the opportunity to voice his assessment of our situation. "I've never run from a fight in my life, but this is different. You can't fight something that's not alive. If this thing doesn't want us here, I say we oblige it."
     "I agree," Ron said, "I vote we leave. We got what we came for."
     Sandra turned to me and I could see a genuine look of concern in her eyes.
     "Please Sandra," I pleaded, "let's go home."
     Sandra remained quiet for a long moment, then she said, "All my life I've been searching for evidence of life beyond the mortal realm and undeniable proof of its existence. Now I found it... and the truth is more terrifying than I could have ever imagined. I guess you should be careful what you wish for."
     She reached into her coat pocket and withdrew the key to the front door. "Let's get the hell out of this damned place."
     Just hearing her say that we were leaving made me feel as though a crushing weight had been lifted off of me.
     Sandra descended the staircase to where Jake and I stood. "I'll take Pam to the hospital. You guys pack up and meet us there."
     "No problem, boss," Jake said, content with her decision.
     As we walked toward the front door I glanced back to watch Jake and Ron head back through the south archway and disappear into the engulfing shadows.
I remember only bits and pieces of traveling to the hospital. I must have been in shock, partially from the pain and partially from what my mind could not process. I vaguely remember leaving the mansion and speaking to the sheriff outside the entrance gates. I remember him escorting us to the hospital, but somewhere along the way, I must've blacked out. When I regained consciousness, I was sitting in the emergency room.
     Sandra was sitting next to me, watching over me like a mother hen. "Welcome back," she said. "How do you feel?"
     "A little groggy, but not so bad. They must've given me something for the pain. I don't remember much." I glanced down to see that my right arm was in a sling and my wrist was wrapped tightly with cloth bandages.
     "You dislocated your shoulder and sprained your wrist, but the doctor patched you up, good as new. He said you'll be back to normal in a couple of weeks."
     "I'm sorry, Sandra. I messed up."
     "That's okay, Pammy. I'm glad to be out of there. We've got enough for our story. Weiss isn't going to be happy that we cut our investigation short, but I wasn't going to risk anyone else's safety." She checked her watch and looked up and down the hospital hallway. "I'm a little worried about Ron and Jake, though. They were supposed to grab the gear and meet us here. They should've been here over an hour ago."
     A few minutes later Sheriff Hill entered the hospital lobby.
     Sandra walked over to him and handed him the key to the mansion's front door. "I forgot to give this back to you," she said, offering him a halfhearted smile.
     The sheriff's eyes conveyed a look of unease as he took the key from her.
     "What's wrong?" she asked.
     "I need to talk to you, about your two friends." His voice carried a solemn tone. "My deputy said that when they left, they still seemed pretty shook up from whatever happened inside the manor."
     "Where are they?" Sandra asked reluctantly, as if she feared hearing his answer.
     "Mr. Cooke was driving. He must've lost control of his vehicle in the rain."
     "Are they all right?"
     "His van ran off the road. They went over the cliff at Widow's Point and crashed into the ocean." He put his hand on her arm. "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Miss Faraday... but your friends are dead."
     Sandra's expression was a garish mixture of devastation and disbelief. Without uttering a word, she staggered to a row of seats near the lobby window and slumped into a chair. The sheriff spoke to her for another ten minutes trying to console her, but she didn't seem to hear a word he said. She just sat there, blankly staring out the window into the rainy night.
     I took a seat beside her and closed my eyes, hoping that when I opened them, I would awaken from the nightmare of the past several hours. After a while I dozed off. When I awoke, the first rays of dawn were breaking through the cloud-laden sky. Sandra was no longer sitting in the chair beside me. I scanned the lobby, but she was nowhere to be found.
     Sheriff Hill was talking to one of the nurses at the front desk.
     When he saw that I was awake, he came straight over to me. "Have you seen Sandra?" I asked.
     "The receptionist said that she left the hospital about ten minutes ago."
     "What? Why would she leave me here?" I asked. "I'm worried that she might do something crazy."
     We went outside and I scoured the parking lot, but her car wasn't there. As I stood there pondering the strange turn of events, the sheriff pulled up in his patrol vehicle.
     He opened the passenger door and said, "Get in. I know where she's headed."
     I realized that there was only one place he could have meant, and although my closest friend was missing, the thought of returning to Darklore Manor made me hesitate with fear before joining the search to find her. After a brief moment of indecision, I gathered my courage and got in the car.
     As we drove to the mansion, I reflected upon all that had transpired in the past day. None of it seemed real. Twenty-four hours ago, the world was a different place. Oblivious to the horrors that dwell in the shadows, I had enjoyed the blissful ignorance shared by rational society. Now, the grim reality of my situation chilled me to the bone, and I realized that from this day forward, my life would never be the same.
     We pulled down the forsaken brick road that led to the manor and saw Sandra's car parked beside the front gates. The mansion was veiled by a light mist that obscured its sinister details, but just being on its accursed grounds filled my heart with uncontrollable anxiety. I stayed in the car as the sheriff parked and got out.
     Sandra was standing before the locked iron gates, looking toward the manor. Her streaked mascara betrayed the fact that she had been crying. The sheriff approached her slowly.
     Without taking her eyes off the mansion, Sandra said, "You can chalk up two more victims to the Darklore curse, Sheriff. It's real and it won't end until the spirits that haunt these grounds are put to rest once and for all. How many more people have to die before you do something about this place?"
     "I'll make sure no one goes back inside," he said. "You made it out of there in one piece. You're safe. Go home." He rested a gentle hand on her shoulder. "It's over now."
     "No, Sheriff," Sandra whispered, "this is only the beginning."
The investigation was closed, and although things had gone from bad to worse at the mansion, the events that followed were absolutely disastrous for Sandra's career. She reluctantly wrote the article, which was published in
Haunted Havens,
but only after some creative editing by Carl Weiss.
     The day that the magazine hit the newsstands I met Sandra for lunch at a local diner. As I entered the restaurant I saw her sitting at a booth in the far corner, scowling and shaking her head in dismay as she read over the article. I slid into the seat across from her, and before I could say hello, she began to voice her disgust.
     "That bastard Weiss, he twisted my words. I turned over my notes and the next thing I know, he's written his own article." She held up the magazine so that I could read the headline,
Haunted House Spooks Investigators.
     My heart sank. "How bad is it?"
     Sandra tossed the magazine down onto the table, saying, "See for yourself."
     I picked it up and began to read the misleading account, hoping in vain to find something that could be interpreted as positive. The article covered the basic facts but put a pessimistic spin on everything that had transpired. It stated that Sandra investigated Darklore Manor with a team of professional ghost-hunters and "alleged" to have detected the presence of several paranormal entities. It went on to say that she "claimed" to make contact and speak with the spirit of Belladonna Darklore, who told her that she and her family were murdered and that their bodies remain hidden within the walls of Darklore Manor. Although it stated that a thorough search of the home revealed no trace of any human remains, it also mentioned that we discovered a secret doorway in the library but were unable to open it.
     Our entire investigation had been reduced to a few paragraphs that glossed over the facts with general statements like "Members of the investigative team reported being overwrought with an unexplainable feeling of sorrow while inside the house," and "Among their numerous claims of paranormal activity they reported hearing a music box playing an eerie melody and allegedly detected a mysterious aroma of lavender on more than one occasion."
     One of the final paragraphs described my encounter with the shadow man, casting me as a hapless crybaby who caused the team's early departure and ultimate failure.
     My voice filled with anger as I read the paragraph aloud. "'Faraday's visit was cut short after her assistant Pamela Moore was traumatized by a dark entity that appeared on the main staircase. Miss Moore claimed that she was startled as she was ascending the stairs when an icy-cold chill passed through her. She turned to see a man dressed entirely in black, wearing a Victorian-style top hat and coat, standing directly behind her on the stair. Moore was visibly shaken by the encounter and refused to stay in the house. Though photographers shot several rolls of film inside the mansion, none of the pictures could be developed."'