The House Of Fear (Don’t worry, it has a happy ending )

“Don’t go to work please, Derek”, said Karen pleading with her husband as he was sipping on his tea and biting into his crumbling toast and marmalade.

“Talk sense, Karen”, said her husband, starting to get irritated, “How else are we going to be able to afford to pay off the mortgage on this old house and all the bills we’ve got coming in without me going to my measily, low paying job every day. Do you think I enjoy working at that place for an employer who hates my guts just because of the colour of my skin?”.

“But I don’t want to live in this house anymore, I told you. Let’s move to somewhere else, please, Derek, please”, said Karen, tears starting to flood her eyes.

“God, you’re not still frightened by what that mad old bag next door said are you?”, said Derek, half laughing, “She’s just a racist too, who doesn’t want to live next to a mixed race couple, that’s all”.

“I know it’s hard to believe. I didn’t believe her myself at first”, said Karen, gripping hold of her husband’s arm tightly and looking him in the eye, “But I’m starting to believe it”.

“Believe it?”, said her husband, incredulous, rising from the kitchen table, “How on Earth can you believe it when some old mad woman tells you that your house is haunted? And, anyway, I live here too, don’t forget and I’ve never seen any ghosts”.

Derek started to put on his pinstripe jacket and took hold of the handle of his leather briefcase but Karen wouldn’t let go of his arm.

“Yes but it’s different when you’re not here, Derek”, said Karen, “It’s too quiet and I’m all alone and sometimes I think I can hear things and see things; shadows, things that frighten me”.

Derek leaned close and kissed his wife on the lips whilst simultaneously pulling his arm free from her grasp.

“Can’t you see, Karen”, he said, “It’s all in your imagination. The house is quiet, you said so yourself and big and empty and that old woman has just spooked you, that’s all”.

Karen was about to argue with him but then Derek caught sight of his watch and wild horses couldn’t have held him back.

And, before long, he was out the door and Karen was alone again in that dark, quiet old house.

“No”, she said to herself, shaking her head, “Derek’s right. I’m being silly. Like a frightened little girl who’s afraid of the dark. There’s no such thing as ghosts”.

She walked into her living room and turned on her TV.

A little noise, she thought, that was what she needed, it was too quiet; just the sound of the clock in the hall and her own thoughts; no wonder she kept imagining things.

She pressed the On button and the TV screen was lit up by grey, crackling static. She tried another channel and then another but they were all the same, a whirling grey blizzard and an eery monotone hiss. On one side she thought she saw the outline of something, a man and a woman,amidst the crackling snow but she wasn’t sure.

She went back out into the hallway to where that clock was ticking. It seemed very loud now.

“A ticking clock but no ghosts”, she said to herself, trying to boost her confidence and smile, “No other sounds”.

But then there was another sound; a sort of dragging, like feet on the carpet upstairs, she thought, and a creak like one of the upstairs doors being opened.

She held her breath and listened, making sure that she had not just imagined it and then she heard that dragging noise again.

She imagined what her husband would say if she'd told him about the noise.

“Old houses make noises, that’s all”, he’d say, “Probably just the wind or vibrations”.

And he’d probably be right. Why was she so nervous about something as silly as a creaking door and,whatever that other sound was.

“I’ll go upstairs and see for myself”, she said, standing at the bottom of the stairs, gripping the shaky bannister and looking up towards the large grey-curtained window on the landing, “Show those ghosts that I’m not afraid of them”.

She stomped forcefully upstairs, determined not to be scared; to be the noisiest one in the house.

Now she could hear that creaking again, only louder, coming from inside one of the little rooms at the end of a white wallpapered corridor.

The door of the room was slightly open, like an invitation and she hesitated for a moment as a scary image flashed through her mind as to what she might find in that old room; an old man and woman waiting to drag her inside.

She kept remembering what that old woman who lived next door had told them when they first moved in.

“You do know that house is haunted don’t you, dear?”, she’d said, anxiously, leaning over the garden wall, smoking a cigarette and dropping ash onto their lawn.

“What?”, Karen had asked, shocked, her mouth hanging open.

“That’s where old Jack and Jill used to live, dear, and where they died”, she said, casting a furtive angry glance towards the house as if afraid to look directly at it, “Jack and Jill Crawley. Brother and Sister, although if you ask me, the way they lived together they were more like husband and wife. All the kids round here used to call them creepy crawly ‘cause they were witches, see, and I mean the evil kind; black witches, Satan worship. Everyone was afraid of them round here”.

“You mean those, those vile terrible people died in my house?”, asked Karen, horrified.

“Died or disappeared, dear”, said the woman, “No one’s really sure what happened to them but, ever since, there’s been something evil in that house”.

Derek had just laughed it all off, she remembered and, looking over at him in a way that didn’t seem altogether unfriendly, the woman had added, “I think I ought to tell you, they weren’t very fond of coloured people either. They supported Oswald Mosely and his lot as far as I can remember”.

But then, something about the house had seemed to worry her. It was as if the old woman had caught a glimpse of something at one of its darkened windows and, shaking, she didn’t want to talk any more.

Now Karen was in the corridor near to that half open door and the creaking sound was getting louder and she thought she heard some other noise like, her eyes widened, like someone breathing in the dark.

What happened next seemed to be in slow motion; Karen’s heart pounding, she saw the door start to slowly open wide into darkness then, as she opened her mouth to scream, suddenly, she saw the edge of a pale, gaunt face peering out of the shadows, grinning, its eyes glaring with a burning anger and then a hand, half decaying, thrust out towards her, trying to grip at the long sleeve of her dress.

The door slammed shut and, behind the closed door now she heard the sound of that thing clawing with its fingernails and something else that sounded like a little girl was crying, “Let me out! Let me out, please!”.

Dazed and screaming, the corridor seeming to spin and another voice, laughing, close to her saying, “They’ve put something in you, dear, one of Satan’s children”, Karen turned around and tried to run but she had lost all sense of direction and - Oh god! Oh Christ! - she could hear someone coming up the stairs now; it sounded like two people, an old man and woman, somehow she could see their faces grinning, skeletally, as they came up the stairs, the woman scraping the edge of a long knife against the bannister and they were chanting something as they came, a nursery rhyme, but the words were all wrong, they were horrible.

“Jack and Jill came up to kill the girl because they’d caught her. Jack and Jill got out their knives and they began to slaughter”, she heard them say.

Then Karen blacked out.

“You're starting to wake up now”, she thought she heard her Husband, Derek say, although everything was still a blur; then, opening her eyes, she could see his face looking down at her, concerned and, beside it, the ceiling light of their bedroom, then she realized she was lying in bed.

“Was I dreaming?”, she asked.

“I found you lying on the floor. You must have fainted or bumped your head or something”, he said.

The room and her husband’s beautiful, shining face became less blurred and she reached out her hand towards him, feeling him take hold of it in his strong hands.

“But I’ve been thinking about what you said”, he told her, “About moving out and I’ve decided that if that’s what you want, then I want that too. I can face hatred and even ghosts and monsters as long as we have each other”.

But then, behind him, in the corner of their bedroom, Karen noticed something else standing there; the old man and woman, smiling.

“Look, Derek, look!”, yelled Karen springing upright suddenly, pointing, her eyes wide and her mouth gaping with horror.

But then the clothes of the ghosts seemed to glow bright white so that, suddenly, they seemed almost like angels.

“Don’t be afraid of us, please”, said the old woman reaching out to her with a glowing hand , “What you’ve seen in this house is only your own fear and the long shadows it casts. The people here were always afraid of us because they never understood our faith; they gossiped about us, made up stories that were untrue and called us devil worshippers when we only worshipped the soul of nature. We were old, we’d seen the hate and destruction of the war and we couldn’t live in a world where people were filled with so much hate, so we ended our lives together and became part of the light of all life”.

“We gave up hope”, said the old man now, looking towards her husband, “But seeing you two has given us hope that things might change and people learn the folly of hate and suspicion”.

“This is your house now”, they said together and, turning towards each other, looked into each
others eyes with a deep undying love, “Take it, with our blessing”.

Karen took hold of her husband’s other hand then, and he felt that she had a strong but gentle grip.

“I’ve changed my mind”, she said, a smile, like a smile of contentment, spreading over her face, “I think this is a nice house now. The kind of house where I’d like to bring up our children”.