The Haunting of Ashburn House (16 page)

She turned back to the clearing, desperate to get her bearings and find the path that would lead home. The glittering tombstone drew her attention, and Adrienne frowned as she stepped closer. There was something wrong with the gravestone’s shadow. It stretched long and black ahead of the marker, but its angle didn’t match that of the rest of the shadows, and it was far darker than it should have been.

Terrified prickles spread over Adrienne’s arms as she stopped at the shadow’s edge. She tried to swallow, but her throat wouldn’t work.

She wasn’t standing at the side of a shadow after all. Spread out ahead of her was a deep, black hole.

The grave had been exhumed.

Adrienne lifted her eyes to the tombstone.
E ASHBURN. Forgotten But Not Gone.
The gravestone was too old to belong to Edith but would be a close match for the Ashburn massacre.
Eleanor.

Or perhaps it was just the right age for a grave robbery that took place a decade later.

Adrienne wet her lips. Pieces of the puzzle slotted into place, but the picture left her more confused than ever.

Who dug up the grave?

Disturbed earth had been scattered around the clearing. It was dry; the removal had to be at least a few hours old.

Why?

Her mind grabbed for an answer but found nothing. She couldn’t see a single reason for a grave to be exhumed when nothing of the corpse would remain and when the only person it held significance for had passed away.

Unless…

It was a stretch, but she couldn’t stop her mind from going there.

Unless Edith was buried here after all. If she’d made a request to be interred with her mother’s remains, would it be honoured? Not in a city, probably, but in a small and personal town like Ipson…

Leaves crunched as though flattened under heavy feet.

Adrienne turned and slowly, cautiously raised her torch towards the forest’s edge.

A woman stood there, chin elevated, gaze fixed on Adrienne.

No. Not a woman.

A corpse.

Her steel-grey hair flowed behind her in horribly long, matted strands. Her skin, ancient and rippled with a lifetime of wrinkles, still held remnants of the grave’s dirt. She was naked, but her figure was so crooked and malformed that the shock of her nudity paled in comparison to the terror her form inspired. Death had not been kind; her limbs were set at crooked angles, and her spine had warped like a twisting river. Bones protruded under the draping flesh. Hips jutted out, and her flat, sagging breasts couldn’t hide the sharpness of her ribs.

Adrienne took a stumbling step back. Her legs had locked up. Her mind screamed. But she couldn’t drag her gaze from the dead woman.

Edith had no embarrassment for her nakedness or her contorted form. She held her head high, and a powerful, self-assured arrogance lived about her heavy-lidded eyes. They were bleached white, empty of iris and pupil but alert and aware regardless. She released a breath, the sound guttural and rattling and permeating Adrienne’s bones.

She tried to run. The shopping bag’s weight disoriented her, so she dropped it. She had barely enough mental presence to maintain her grip on the torch and the mace. Her legs wouldn’t work the way she wanted them to; they felt as though they were tangling on each other, stumbling her, and her arms pinwheeled as she tried to catch her balance.

A glance over her shoulder confirmed that she was being followed. Edith seemed to be in no hurry but strode forward in long, patient paces, her limbs’ awkward angles accentuated as they moved. Adrienne faced forward again and focussed on making her legs move in the right order, and quickly.

She was amongst the trees in five paces. The forest tried to slow her, but she wouldn’t allow it to. She could hear Edith’s movements between the painful, sharp gasps that stung her throat. The corpse made a strange clicking noise, as though the cartilage had worn away from her joints, and the bones scraped together with each step.

Adrienne prayed she was running in the right direction. Her path carried her uphill, which taxed her shaking muscles and made every breath scorch her lungs. Fear and adrenaline kept her moving, pushing her to make every pace longer, every turn faster.

Branches stung as they cut into her face and arms. Her legs were jarred with nearly every step as she misjudged where to place her feet. But she couldn’t slow down; the clicking was drawing closer.

How? She was only walking before—

Adrienne risked a look over her shoulder then yelped as her foot caught on a root and tumbled her forward. She let the momentum flip her over, regaining her feet as they touched ground, and launched herself forward without caring how badly her muscles screamed.

She’d only glimpsed the dead woman for a fraction of a second, but that sight had seared itself into her mind and refused her any respite.

Edith had been
scuttling
. She’d moved on all fours, her twisted frame writhing as she pressed through the trees, using hands and feet simultaneously to grip the trunks, branches and roots to propel herself forward. Her head had been raised, eyes directed at Adrienne, jaw stretched wide in a hungry leer.

The trees cleared, and suddenly, Adrienne was running across the open lawn. Ashburn, her sanctuary, blotted out the stars ahead of her, and she raced for it, begging her legs to carry her, praying that her heart would hold up for another dozen beats.

Searing, burning pain cut into her ankle. It threw Adrienne to the ground, and both the torch and the mace skidded out of her grip.

Too slow.
Her mind was stretched to breaking, and she wanted to laugh.
Too slow, too slow.

She turned to face the source of the pain. Unlike in the forest, there was nothing to smother the moon’s cold light, and it brought the area into terrible relief. Edith, crouched and looking more like a leathery animal than a human, had sunk her teeth through Adrienne’s jeans and into her ankle. The corpse’s long, bony fingers tightened around Adrienne’s foot and calf to reinforce its hold. Her flesh was cold, as though she’d stepped out of a fridge, and that sickened Adrienne more than anything—more than her protruding bones, more than her opaque, bloodshot eyes, more than the yellow teeth that had grown far out of their gums.

She thrashed, twisted, and tried to kick free. Edith only tightened the bite, cutting through muscle, and Adrienne screamed. She threw her head back and saw Ashburn. Its porch was only ten paces away. It taunted her, offering salvation but asking her to fight for it.

Closer than the house, though, was a small canister of red and white plastic. Adrienne threw her hand back, touched the mace, and coiled her fingers around it. Edith’s jaw continued to tighten, squeezing, drawing rivers of blood until Adrienne’s foot felt as though it had been dipped in acid. She aimed the canister at Edith’s face and squeezed.

Even in the moon’s cool light, she could see the spray burst over the cadaver’s face. Edith’s grip loosened, her teeth coming free from Adrienne’s ankle, as she lifted her head. Adrienne waited for the wails of pain, but no noise came. Droplets of mace settled over the corpse’s opaque eyes, but they did not blink.

She can’t feel pain. Of course she can’t; she’s dead.

The mace had confused, but not harmed, Edith. Already, she was returning her attention to the bleeding ankle. A long black tongue extended over her white lips, licking up the hot red liquid smeared there, and her dead eyes flashed as they focussed on the soaked jeans.

“Please.” Adrienne tried to pull free, but the fingers only tightened, digging into her harder every time she flinched. “Please, let me go, Edith, please!”

The corpse froze, a flash of shock twitching at the wrinkled skin hanging on its face.

Adrienne took advantage of the second’s confusion and fought with the only weapon she had left. She raised her uninjured leg, channelled all of her strength into it, and kicked the corpse. Her sneaker hit Edith’s jaw and snapped the head backwards.

The fingers released their grip. Edith’s neck twisted horrifically, far past the point of where it should break, until the vertebrae were visible through her throat. Then it began to tilt forward again, righting itself, allowing the white eyes to fix on Adrienne.

She didn’t hesitate. As soon as the fingers’ pressure relaxed, Adrienne began scrambling back, kicking and hobbling and dragging herself to Ashburn’s porch with everything she had.

The clicking noise told her Edith was following. Adrienne’s leg hurt enough to make her scream, but she pushed the pain back as well as she could, telling herself she had to ignore it, had to move past it, if she had any hope of survival. The clicking was close enough for the bony fingers to grab her again, the teeth to bite, but she was already pulling herself over the porch’s top step, crawling to the door, stretching to reach the knob.

“Eeeeeediiiiiiith…”

The word was like dead tree branches rattling against each other. The stench of decay was thick. The handle wouldn’t turn; she’d locked the door when she’d left that morning. Adrienne bit back a terrified cry as she scrambled to pull the key out of her pocket.

Fingers touched her. She flinched against them, but they didn’t try to grab her. They tapped and nudged and prodded over her legs and back as Edith’s corpse crept up to hover above her.

The key was in the lock. It was at a bad angle and difficult to turn.

The cadaver was so close, and its stench was overwhelming. Lips, cold and wet and rotting, brushed her ear. “
Weeeeeep for Eeeeeediiiiiith,
” the corpse whispered.

Then the door was open. Adrienne pitched herself into the house. Edith tried to follow, the moon’s light shining off her bulging, laughing eyes, and Adrienne kicked the door into her face. It created a horrible crunching noise as it hit her skull, but Adrienne only kicked harder and harder, pushing against the pressure until the latch clicked closed.

Everything was quiet and dark and calm for a handful of seconds. Adrienne drew in gasping, sobbing breaths, her eyes squeezed closed to block out both pain and terror. Then a low, steady scrabbling began as Edith clawed at the door.

Adrienne wanted to lie there forever, to close her eyes to the world and never move again, but the scratching sound was moving higher as Edith lifted herself up the door. Adrienne rolled over, flinching against pain, propped herself up, and turned the lock.

The handle twitched as Edith tried to turn it, then a pale, grimy hand pressed against the window. The head rose beside the hand, and a single bulging white eye peered through the glass and fixed Adrienne under its repulsive stare. Edith held the pose for a moment then slid out of sight, leaving a hand’s outline made of condensation.

Adrienne woke and immediately wished she hadn’t.

She ached all over. The worst was her leg, which was caked in drying blood and mud and felt as though it had been shredded. But a thousand secondary pains dragged her away from sleep as well; scrapes from tree branches, exhausted and strained muscles, a dull but persistent stress headache, and the throbbing in her chest that came from a taxed heart and exhausted lungs.

It was still dark. Two rectangles of moonlight cascaded through the front door’s twin windows, but they were her only illumination. Adrienne tried to swallow, and a horrible acidic taste reminded her that she’d thrown up before passing out.

A small, fluffy shape danced around her legs. Adrienne had to squint at it for a moment before she identified it as Wolfgang’s tail waving in the moonlight. Something prodded at her injured leg, and she groaned. “Get away, Wolf. You’re not allowed to eat me unless I’m dead.”

Wolfgang turned his sea-green eyes on her and made an innocent chirruping noise. Adrienne stretched an aching arm forward and scratched his head.

“Is she gone, buddy?” The question came out as a whisper. Wolfgang appeared calm. She hoped that was a good sign; he’d warned her against the corpse’s presence before, hadn’t he?

She turned towards the door and the windows set on either side. She could still picture the hand pressed there, just below the bulging eye.
She wanted to come inside. That’s the only reason she didn’t kill me: so that I could let her inside.

Adrienne leaned back against the wall. She felt sick, cold, and miserable. Too many thoughts were pressing into her at once, and she didn’t have the energy to face them all.

Ashburn House is haunted.

She shifted forward and tried to check her leg. The light was too dim to see anything except a mess of blood, torn cloth, and dirt.

I have no phone, no laptop, no way to contact the town.

Adrienne reached a hand behind her and ran it along the wall until she felt the light switch. It turned, but the bulb hung from the ceiling didn’t respond.

Of course. Now I have no light, either.

She’d dropped the torch outside, and there was no way she was unlocking the door to retrieve it. She groaned and pulled herself up to standing then, using the side tables and furniture as support, hobbled down the hallway. Her ankle screamed even though she held it above the floor, but she limped to the stairs, to the lamp, and rested her forehead against the shrivelled wallpaper as she lit the wick.

The golden glow spread down the hallway as the flame grew. Adrienne waited for it to stabilise before picking up the lamp and hobbling back the way she’d come.

Wolfgang, his feather-duster tail twitching, followed. He was hungry and made little purring cries as she entered the kitchen.

“In a minute. Be patient, buddy.” Adrienne placed the lamp on the table then filled the kettle and put it on to boil. She fetched a bowl from the cupboard and found an assortment of dishtowels in one of the drawers. She sniffed them. Except for being a little musty, they seemed clean.

She eased into the nearest chair, moved the lamp to the floor, and bent over to examine her leg. It was a mess. She clenched her teeth as she prised the sneaker off. Blood had run into it and soaked the sock, which she took off and discarded as well.

The drawers were close enough that she could lean across the walkway and open them. She hunted through until she found a pair of kitchen scissors designed to cut bones and used them to trim the jeans’ leg to a little below her knee.

She reached for the kettle, but its water was still cold.
Of course—no power means no boiled water. All right. I’ll work with what I have.

Adrienne poured the water into the bowl, dipped a washcloth into it, and set to cleaning her leg.

When she was done, she slumped back in the chair, panting and trying to ignore the wet tracks running down her cheeks. The idea of cleaning the cuts had seemed straightforward enough when she’d started. She’d watched plenty of movie stars clean themselves up in blockbuster action films, but hands-on experience had forced her to admit that the reality was a lot messier and involved considerably more crying and whimpering.

“I’m a total baby,” she told Wolfgang. He waited in the room’s doorway, tail thrashing and good mood dissipated now that he had realised food wasn’t Adrienne’s top priority. “Don’t cast me in a survival movie. I wouldn’t make it past the first twenty minutes.”

He opened his mouth in a silent, cranky meow, and Adrienne sighed.

“Okay, okay, I know. Food’s coming.”

She took three clean, dry towels and wrapped them around the ankle. She’d had very little experience treating injuries, but the cuts didn’t go too deep. The area had swollen and turned red, and if she cleaned too deeply, it just started bleeding again. She knew infection would be the biggest risk, but with so little to work with, she would have to wrap it as well as she could and wait until she could get to a hospital. She’d heard that human mouths contained a huge amount of bacteria, and she could only imagine how bad a dead human’s mouth would be.

Adrienne choked on a thin, strangled laugh at the idea.
I can’t believe I’ve accepted the idea of ghosts so easily. I can’t believe there
are
ghosts. Oh hell, this is such a phenomenal mess.

She tied the makeshift bandage off and stood. It still hurt too much to put weight on the injured foot, so she carried the lamp in one hand and used one the other to brace herself on furniture and walls as she hopped out of the kitchen and into the lounge room.

Wolfgang, infuriating as always, wove about her legs and threatened to trip her until she’d found his food. Adrienne was past the point of worrying about her cat’s waistline and emptied the entire tin into his bowl. It overflowed the sides and created a little mountain of kibble. She watched the tabby mash his face into the feast and sighed.
At least now, if anything happens to me, you should have enough food to last until you’re found.

Provided Edith doesn’t get you first.
An image flashed across Adrienne’s mind: Wolf, writhing and yowling, being squeezed in Edith’s long, bony fingers as she bit through his fur.

Adrienne bent over, certain she was about to be sick again, but there was nothing left in her stomach. She stayed doubled over, one hand braced against the piano, as she sucked in ragged, painful breaths.

No one’s going to hurt Wolf. I won’t let them.

She blinked, trying to clear her stinging eyes, as she watched the cat eat. His bushy tail flicked happily as he attempted to drown himself in the food, and Adrienne managed a shaky, uneasy smile.

As much as she complained about him, Adrienne loved Wolfgang. She’d found him as a straggly, half-drowned clump of wet fur on the side of the road one rainy autumn afternoon. He’d only been a kitten and so malnourished that not even his thick fur could hide it. She remembered staying awake well past midnight, watching the sleeping kitten with his newly bulging stomach, and promising herself he would never go hungry again.

“And look where that got us, tubby,” she said fondly. One ear flicked in her direction, but Wolfgang’s priorities were firmly cemented on his meal.

The room felt too gloomy, and the windows were too dark for Adrienne to feel comfortable. She shuffled to the fireplace, dragged the chair close so that she could keep her foot off the ground, and busied herself with building up a fire. The task kept her hands busy but not her mind.

Ashburn really is haunted. Imagine that—the rumour that everyone laughs about but no one really believes is true. At least… I think it’s haunted. That wasn’t exactly the picture-book variety of ghost. She was dead, sure, but not transparent. Not intangible. Nothing like those orbs, cold spots, and flashes of light that they chase after in the ghost-hunter shows.

She continued feeding sticks into the little blaze and watched the flames eat through them and reduce them to ash.

She’s closer to a zombie—undead and hungry for flesh. But that doesn’t fit, either; zombies are mindless. Edith clearly wasn’t. She spoke and was startled by the mace and wanted to come into the house.

Adrienne sighed, shoved a new log onto the flame, and shuffled her chair back so that her legs didn’t get too hot. After a moment, Wolfgang sidled up to her, gave her good leg a single headbutt, then lay down on the rug at her feet.

Whatever Edith has become, she used to be dead. Or maybe she still is dead but just never stopped moving. And she hunted me. And hurt me. Why?

Against the townspeople’s advice, Adrienne had built up the idea of a quirky but benevolent great-aunt who had longed for a family as strongly as Adrienne had. But the signs that Adrienne had taken as welcoming—being bequeathed Ashburn and finding a room prepared for her—had started to take on a sinister light.

All right, I'm going to have to assume a few things. Firstly, that the corpse outside is Edith. It’s got to be. She’s the right age, has the right hair, and responded to her name. And if the corpse is Edith’s, we can assume the grave was hers too. I discounted that earlier because the headstone was decades old, but what if she prepared it as a burial place when she was younger? What if it’s a special location that’s enchanted to raise the dead?
She snorted and massaged her closed eyes.
Not too long ago I would have laughed at myself for thinking this sort of stuff. It’s amazing how much a brush with a corpse can change you. I didn’t even believe in ghosts yesterday. Now—curses, spiritual hotspots, the Loch Ness Monster, whatever. Bring it on; I’ll believe it.

Adrienne twisted in the chair. The aches and pains were making it difficult to get comfortable, and her reeling mind didn’t help.

If we can assume all that to be true, then we’ve also got to think there’s a very strong possibility that Edith was responsible for her family’s murders and Eleanor Ashburn’s exhumation. Maybe it ties into whatever brought Edith back from the dead. Some kind of satanic sacrifice, possibly.

And all that rolls together to suggest Edith wasn’t a very nice person.
She frowned at her leg, where blood was staining the towels pink.
Not that it’s a surprise or anything. But if all of that logic is sound, I’ve got to accept that Edith wanted me here for a reason. She prepared a room for me. She left the house to me in her will. All to lull me into a false sense of security while she dug her way out of her own grave.

Why me, though? Does she need me to complete whatever messed-up sacrificial stuff she did to the rest of her family? Is it because I’m a relative? No, not just a relative—I’m her only remaining living blood relative. That’s got to be significant.

A memory surfaced: thunder crashing and heavy raindrops beating on her arms as her mother—wide eyed, mascara running, and cheek dotted with blood—carried her out of Ashburn.

That has to be related to what’s happening now. But what did Edith do? Was she trying to hurt me? My mother? Both of us?

She remembered being thrown into the car and the door slamming behind her. She’d watched Ashburn in the rear-view mirror and seen Edith, tall and proud and dressed in one of her heavy black dresses, come and stand in the doorway. The woman’s stately, composed stance gave the impression that she could have stopped them from leaving if she’d wanted but had voluntarily let them go.

Because she knew I would move into Ashburn after her death? Why didn’t Mum ever talk about Edith or mention Ashburn or tell me what happened that night? What did she see inside these walls?

Wolfgang startled and sat upright. Adrienne’s nerves were so tense that she stood up with him. She hadn’t thought to bring a knife with her, and her clammy hands felt unpleasantly empty, so she limped to the fireplace and took up the poker.

Adrienne turned back to her cat and watched him for telltale signs of distress. There were plenty: his eyes dilated, his fur bristled out, and he exhaled a long, low warning yowl as he backed towards the room’s shadowed corner. His eyes were fixed on the farthest window, and Adrienne turned towards it. The moon had passed over the house, and she couldn’t see anything through the dark pane.

But she could hear the clicking.

Edith moved outside, shifting around the building’s exterior, hidden in the infinite blackness that engulfed everything beyond the lounge room. Her bony fingers touched the house’s walls and windows, prodding and tapping much as she’d prodded and tapped at Adrienne. The noises blended with the clicking bones. Adrienne rotated to keep her attention focussed on the sound. It moved along the lounge room’s wall, drawing closer until the women were no more than two metres apart, then it was passing by and grew fainter until Adrienne couldn’t hear it at all.

The clock in the hallway chimed one.

Adrienne wanted to remain standing, but her balance was shaky and her muscles exhausted. She kept a tight grip on the poker as she slid back into the chair.

After a few minutes, Wolfgang crept out of hiding and returned to his place beside her. She scratched his head to comfort him but could feel the tension lingering in his muscles. He was just as frightened of the walking corpse as she was.

We’re going to be okay. The doors are locked and the windows bolted. There’s no way for her to come inside.