“Watch where you’re going, don’t trip over the cobbles,” Mum said.
I, of course, ignored her and ended up flat on my face, chin, hands and knees bloody and boy did I wail!
That advice was from my childhood. I had no end of scrapes and it usually came from not listening to mum. She doled out advice, I ignored it and almost instantly, I came a cropper.
At school, the advice would be, “Do your homework on Friday evening so you won’t worry about it all weekend.”
Sunday evening, late, supposedly tucked up in bed, but doing my homework by the light of a torch. Nice one, stupid! I’ll listen to mum next time – but of course I never did. She never repeated herself, if I hadn’t got it on the first time of saying, that was it. She allowed me to make my own mistakes without nagging.
“Be back before 11. I’ll be home at midnight. I don’t mind if you stay up til then and I don’t mind if your friends stay over to keep you company, but make sure you’re home, please.”
I had no intentions of being back by 11. I wasn’t even that concerned about being home before mum got back. By that age, I was rebellious, running to wild and mum knew it.
We got stuck down town and panicked that we’d run out of money, we didn’t have enough to get home by taxi, but I didn’t worry too much. Even if we did manage to get a taxi to take us home on the promise that he’d get paid when we got there, we’d worry about paying that money back later. Maybe I should have worried more. Maybe I should have listened to another piece of advice mum gave before we went out: “Don’t accept lifts from strangers.”
Maybe we wouldn’t have ended up leaping from a moving car in the middle of nowhere after we got scared stupid because we’d been close-to-kidnapped.
I didn’t listen to my mum, but my friends had to listen to theirs - especially when they were grounded. Not only were they not allowed out at the weekends for a whole month, they were also not allowed to come out with me unless we had someone responsible picking us up.
They never found the guy that close-to-kidnapped us – I don’t even think they believed it happened. They probably thought we’d made up the story to divert their anger from us and how stupid we’d been trying to walk five miles from town after midnight.
Stupid seems to be a recurring theme in my life and it’s my own fault, I don’t learn and I don’t listen.
When I was old enough to start ‘dating’ (mum’s way of saying ‘having sex’), her advice was “Use precautions!” She emphasised that advice and I do believe, up until that point, I was determined NOT to heed any advice from her, but this time… this one time, I listened and heard.
It caused a bit of a row with the guy – I can’t use the word ‘boyfriend’ because he wasn’t my boyfriend. He wasn’t interested in going steady or even dating. Hell, he didn’t even want to know my name, so I know we were never going to be an item! He wanted to go ‘natural’ and I told him without qualm or fear of rejection that if he didn’t put it on, he wasn’t going to be putting it in! I’m pretty sure that if he’d wanted to see me again after that, I’d have told him to sling his hook anyway. I know it was my first time, but I never imagined it was his!
When I said, “I was expecting fore-play… not four seconds!” I grabbed my coat and got out of his car, slamming the door.
After that night, I started listening to mum a bit more. Ok, I admit it, I listened a LOT more! Mums may not know everything, but it would appear that they at least have their kids’ best interests at heart.
So, now we come to the evening in question.
“Wrap up warm,” she said. Mum is never wrong, it was freezing! Colder than I imagined it would be.
She didn’t tell me not to go. She didn’t even say, “I wish you’d reconsider.” A half-remembered conversation on a similar topic ran around in my brain, skipping out of reach just as I thought I’d got it. After a little while of playing ‘Tag’ with the slippery memory, I gave up, it would either come back to me or not.
I wish mum had said something, because I like to believe I’d have listened to her.
I suppose she was trying to teach me to be my own counsel. After all, I’d proven that her advice was sound. Maybe she figured it was time I started thinking about consequences. Even if I said ‘Now what would Mum say about this?’ to myself before rushing headlong into the next stupid scheme.
I can blame her all I like, but at the end of the day, I knew she didn’t like me going on these ghost hunts and séances. She’d never spoken about the events I went to, the spooky happenings, the EVP – ghost hunting meter – results. She didn’t want to know, but I just assumed she thought it was nonsense, not dangerous.
I drove at breakneck speed to get there; I didn’t want to be late.
Snow had started to fall by the time we got to the ruined priory. It was freezing and I’m glad I wore my best coat, the faux-fur-lined one with a hood. The short walk over from the car park to the ruins had us panting because we rushed, almost ran, all the way.
We had the usual prep talk, safety first and all that, but we’d heard it so many times we didn’t really need to listen.
We figured we’d be on our way right after, but another woman got up to speak. It was a change to the norm so we stopped messing about and listened.
“This evening, we believe, is the anniversary of an event that took place here before the priory was built. If you know what happened, please keep it to yourselves, the team would like to know if anyone picks up any information. Last night we did a reconnaissance and the EVPs and recording equipment went ballistic with info. We’ll share the info with you after everyone has had chance to visit the under croft.”
That caused a buzz of excitement, we didn’t get to go down there very often.
“So, split into three teams please and follow your Team Leaders. Kathy and Mandy, Jack and Michael and me and William are taking a group each.”
We followed Jack and Michael, mainly because Debs, our friend, had a massive crush on Jack. Me and Suze picked on her for it but we hoped he’d notice her one of these nights.
The three groups didn’t get properly formed until we were all congregated in the large courtyard. I’m sure it looked beautiful in the right settings, back in the day. Unfortunately, under the harsh orange sodium lights, with snow flurrying in the blustery wind, the courtyard looked neglected, even abandoned.
We followed Debs who followed Jack up the stairs to the Abbot’s bedroom. The title was a spurious one because the room at the top of a flight of stone steps was neither grand enough for an Abbot that self-aggrandised, nor meek enough for a pious one.
We stood ourselves off to the back of the room to watch the ‘normals’ arrive. The members of the public who came on these ‘Ghost Walks’ as a one-off were dubbed ‘normals’ by Suze one time and it stuck.
This one woman, tall, bundled in a warm-looking coat, a little like my own, caught my attention. She seemed really unfit, once inside the Abbot’s bedroom, she leaned against the wall, panting.
Jack and Michael got themselves organised and ready for their piece. She calmed down a little but clutched her coat at her throat, I thought she may be having a heart-attack and pointed it out to Debs and Suze.
“Look, the normal’s having a seizure. There’ll be one extra ghost here the next time we come,” I whispered.
Those two laughed behind their hands; I did too.
Jack started the same story we’d heard times many.
Not much proof that this was the Abbot’s bedroom, only stories from when the Victorians took over the priory and made it a tourist attraction. One guy used the ‘bedroom’ as a makeshift museum, displaying the finds from the garden and grounds.
Apparently he died in that very room, amongst his treasured artefacts.
The ‘normal’ in the big coat interrupted Jack.
“He died right here, in this corner!” she said, still breathless.
“Well, yes, actually, he did. Have you been here before?” Jack said, his interest piqued.
“No, we’ve come with friends, we’re visiting from the South,” the normal said.
Jack nodded. “Anything else you can tell us? Like how he died, for instance?” Michael said.
We three stood with mouths open as the normal received more attention from both guides than we had – ever.
“No, I don’t think so, but my heart is really hammering, it’s like it’s fit to burst,” she said.
Jack nodded and continued.
“The curator committed suicide,” he said.
“Warfarin,” the normal whispered.
“What?” Jack asked.
“He took warfarin. He committed suicide by poisoning himself.”
“Well, yes, he did.”
“Wow, that’s really interesting,” Michael said. “Do you know how warfarin kills?” He looked around his rapt audience but no one had an answer.
“It thins the blood, depriving the body of oxygen,” he said and looked at the normal who was panting again like she’d run up the steps moments before, not ten minutes ago.
Once she moved away from the corner, her breathing became regulated again, although she kept looking over at where the Victorian curator had taken his last laboured breath.
We couldn’t stop looking at her. Debs wasn’t upset about her taking Jack’s attention; she was fascinated by the woman. Suze was a little bemused by it all, she couldn’t work out what had happened, how the woman had managed to get those facts right without research or coming on at least one of the tours.
I whispered, “I bet she knew really. This looks like a staged thing.” The woman glanced at me just as I said that. I wondered if she’d heard me, but she couldn’t possibly have.
We went on to the next room, but had to wait outside in the snow until the group still in the maternity suite had finished.
It puzzled me why a priory had a maternity suite in the first place, but I just figured it would be a title made up by the Victorians to romanticise it all.
We were all starting to stamp our feet and snuggle in our coats, trying to ward off the cold by the time the other group came out. There was a little grumbled exchange between Jack and the other group’s leaders.
“We have a specified time limit that we’re all supposed to stick to. The group following us were there when we came out, now we’re not going to get our full twenty minutes,” Jack said to the woman that had spoken last at the introductory meeting.
“Jack, if it helps, I’ll go and speak with Mandy and explain. Take the full twenty minutes, we can over-run a little.”
Jack was still grumbling about having to wait by the time his group had converged at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the ‘maternity suite’.
The stairs had a sharp bend halfway up, with an alcove to the outside wall, a tiny window gave quite a lot of light from outside. Not enough to see everything clearly, but enough to make it safe to climb the stairs. The window was way out of reach because the walls were so thick; they made them to last in those days.
The normal that had caught Jack and Michael’s attention in the Abbot’s bedroom gasped and caught hold of her friend’s arm.
“I don’t want to go up there, there’s something not quite right,” she said.
I rolled my eyes in disdain as I passed her. “Come on, we’ve been here before, the spirit that’s supposed to be here is a little girl that likes to play with toys. There’s nothing to be frightened of up there,” I said in a cheerful tone.
She looked at me and frowned, more a puzzled frown than an angry one, but they followed us up the stairs.
The room was used as a store room for the priory, it contained bags of plaster one time when we came and the next time, piles of timber. The room was in darkness, only the sodium lights outside shining through tiny, high up windows to break up the pitch black of the room. I heard the ‘normal’ from before give a little groan.
“Are you ok?” Jack asked her.
“Yeah, I think so. I don’t like this room though,” she said.
“Oh boy, she’s really piling it on thick,” I whispered to Suze, expecting her usual giggle at my comment.
“Don’t. I think she’s really frightened. Look at her.”
I looked. She gripped her friend’s arm and he had his arm around her.
Jack started to talk. “This room is called the Maternity Suite because some people believe unwed mothers were sent here for the nuns to look after and this was where they gave birth. Does anyone sense anything in here? This is one of the best rooms for communicating. We’ve had loads of results from this room in past investigations.”
Jack and Michael both looked at the normal from before. She shook her head but kept a tight grip on her friend’s arm.
I heard her whisper, “I really don’t like this room, can we go?”
I placed my hand on her arm as if to reassure her.
“Don’t go, it really is ok, I promise,” I said, squeezing her arm through her coat.
I saw her nod once. Her friend leaned toward her and asked if she was ok and she said she’d stay, for a little while at least.
A shaky, frightened and wavery voice spoke up. “A girl… she was only a girl.” It was the normal again and I sighed, nudging Debs.
Debs ignored me, so I nudged Suze. She turned her head and actually shushed me!
“Yes, go on,” Jack said in an excited voice.
“She was only eleven, perhaps twelve. That’s too young to be having a baby. She, oh, she died,” she said.
“They all died, that’s why they’re ghosts,” I said, a little too loudly. Debs and Suze turned their heads toward me and I was grateful I couldn’t see their expressions. Someone else ‘tutted’. I shut up, glad of the darkness so no one could see my blushes.
Everyone jumped out of their skins when an almighty crash rang through the room. Jack and Michael switched on their powerful halogen torches and illuminated the room.
A collection of tools lay on the floor, dust swirling up and around the pile. No one was anywhere near enough to have caused the crash.
People stood clinging to each other. The normal left the room in a hurry, her friend following her.
She shouted as she went down the stairs and Jack told her to stand where she was, he was coming to see what was wrong.
“Come on everyone, you have to see this!” he called.
We trooped out of the room and down the stairs. In a window alcove at the bend, an old ragged doll sat leaning against the window, too far back for anyone to have placed it there, but it was obvious no one had thrown it, it sat perfect, just as though a child had put it there on purpose.
“Ooh, now that’s creepy,” Suze said.
The normal had gone outside when we got to the bottom of the stairs.
Michael spoke to them while we waited.
Debs took a chance to speak to Jack. “What’s going on?”
“It looks like she might be a sensitive and she didn’t realise,” he said, glancing at Debs.
“You mean she’s been right about both rooms so far?” Suze said.
Jack nodded. “Yep, we don’t give all the details away, but she confirmed what a couple of psychics have already told us about the Abbot’s bedroom and the Maternity Suite.”
Michael called us all together and prepped us for the next room, the under croft.
“There are lights down the walkway, and handrails. I suggest you use the handrail because the path is not perfect. There are a few holes and lumps as you go, so please be careful.”
We took tentative and excited steps down under the priory, where we’d never been before.
The path took a curve off to the right. Michael stood blocking the way round the bend and I took a curious glance past him. He lifted his arm to guide me left, through a sturdy stone arch. “Mind your step,” he said as I passed him.
Down two steps onto the floor of the under croft I went. The floor felt soft and sandy underfoot, like a beach but without sinking too far down. The floor emanated a deep cold, I felt it through my boots. Colder even than the stone flagged floor of the courtyard outside, I shuddered and moved across to join Debs and Suze.
I looked around for the ‘normal’ and her friend. They stood off to one side, close to the far wall. She hunched down in her coat and looked miserable.
‘Oh boy,” I thought to myself. ‘Another scene coming up.’
As the thought crossed my mind, she snapped her head up and looked directly at me as though I’d said the words out loud.
I couldn’t look at her, I felt ashamed of myself. What was I doing here if I didn’t actually believe in these things?
‘Are you here to mock us?’ Words in my head again, as though I had thought them, but I hadn’t. They were not my thoughts.
Jack explained the room to us.
“The ‘Hellfire Club’ were rumoured to have met in these rooms a few times. Although there are written accounts passed down saying the meetings were not held in the under croft, but in a few rooms which were blocked off, perhaps because of the association with the infamous club.” Everyone looked behind him to the faint outline of an arch that had been blocked off centuries before. The stone had worn almost the same as the original structure, so we could tell it was not a recent renovation.
Jack’s voice droned on and though I really was interested, I couldn’t help my mind wandering. The ‘normal’ and her friend moved around the back of us all, making their way to the outside and I wondered why.
A loud bump stopped Jack speaking and the two fled outside. In their hurry, she tripped up the steps and he reached back to help her scramble up and away. I stood stock-still as the rest of the group milled around.
I watched everyone’s panicked activity as someone close to me fainted – I couldn’t see who and I wasn’t really interested because I saw something that no one else seemed to be aware of.
Hooded figures came into the room via the arch we had arrived through. They had not come from the outside though, they trooped in silently from the passageway that Michael had blocked from us.
Neither Jack nor Michael seemed to be interested in the hooded figures and the rest of the group either couldn’t see them or were too engrossed in the fainter.
I watched in rapt silence as the figures removed their hoods and shuffled around to surround me.
I nodded as I realised they were trying to give me a scare, I suppose as revenge for my scepticism earlier.
Two figures approached and pulled me gently forward, removed my robe – wait, what? Robe? I’m not wearing a robe!
I turned to look for Debs and Suze but they were gone, swallowed by utter blackness. The area they had been standing in engulfed by shadows. Gone was the orange glow from the sodium lights, replaced by flickering torchlight – not the powerful halogen torches Jack and Michael carried, but the torches used in cheesy horror films to add atmosphere and tension.
The floor, no longer sandy in texture, felt hard against my bare feet – where are my boots?
I followed in mute supplication to the altar at the end of the room, through the blocked up archway.
Naked but unashamed, I lay on the cloth covered altar and the leader approached me. His own robe fell from his shoulders to reveal his naked body. His face swam in and out of focus as he spoke and I couldn’t understand half of what he said.
“Not the one I chose earlier…” “No matter, this one will do…” “Make the preparations…” “Centuries…” “Our actions…” “Span across time…”
As the guy climbed onto the altar, his intention very clear to me. I wanted to tell him, I tried to tell him… “If you don’t put it on, you’re not putting it in!” My words were not shouted as I wanted them to be, they were whispered.
He bit my chest, just above the swell of my left breast and I screeched at him but again, it was more of a whisper.
When he had finished, he clambered off me, smiled and said, “Let her go back to her own time and place. We need to be patient now.”
I woke up outside, on the snow in the courtyard. Suze and Debs hugged me like I’d been gone for years.
“What happened?” I asked, dazed and confused.
“You said something about some monks coming in, we looked round at what you were looking at and then you passed out!” Debs said.
“You frightened us all to death!” Suze said. “The ambulance is on its way and the ghost walk has been abandoned.”
“I don’t need an ambulance,” I said. “Can you drive, Suze? Let’s go.”
Jack and Michael protested, but they couldn’t stop us. We left. As we walked across the road to the car park, I thought I saw the woman, the ‘normal’ standing with her friend. She wasn’t wearing her thick snuggly coat, they were both wearing cloaks, just like the cloaks the people in the under croft wore. I stopped and looked at them, but before Suze and Debs could see them, they’d gone.
Suze drove me home. She wanted to know if I’d be ok. I’d rallied quite well on the way back and I told her to go home. The door was locked when I tried it. That was the first indication that something wasn’t quite right.
“Mum? Let me in, the door’s locked.” I called.
I waited ages, knocking on the door, she must be asleep, I thought.
“You can’t come in,” she said when she finally got to the door.
“What? Why not?”
“I always told you not to talk to dead things. You can’t come in because if you do, you’ll bring the evil with you.”
“Evil? What are you talking about mum? Please let me in, I’m cold and you’re frightening me.”
She didn’t speak right away and I could hear her quietly crying. “You never listened to me did you?” she whispered. “The evil you’re impregnated with will come out eventually, but it will take more than my knowledge to help you now. I’m sorry. I tried but you didn’t listen. There’s only so much I could do.”