Westerfield Manor

Chapter 8

        The next day was cloudy and humid, so the girls decided to stay in the house playing video games and watching movies.

Just after lunch Jane received a phone call. "Girls," she announced, "I have to drive to Inverell to see my mother. She is ill and needs someone to stay the night with her. I'm leaving now, but I'll be back by eleven tomorrow morning. Will you be okay by yourselves tonight? There's plenty of food."

"Don't worry about us, Mum, we'll be fine," Laura replied.

Twenty minutes later Laura and Shannon waved to Jane as she drove out the driveway. "If you have any problems you can call Ken Rogers," she said just before she left, "He's only ten minutes from here. Or you could call the McKinnons."

"My hair keeps sticking out," Laura complained as they walked back to the house.

"Mine too," Shannon said, "Must be static electricity in the air. We're probably going to get a storm later."

"Where's Grace?" Laura asked, looking around.

"Oh she's around here somewhere," Shannon answered, "Come on, let's get back to that game."

*****
Grace wasn't far away. She was standing outside between the house and the barn. She looked closely at the roofs of both buildings, then noticed Ken Rogers leaving the barn and bolting the door. She knew he usually finished work at around four o'clock. She needed to talk to him before he went home. She called out to him and he walked up to her.

Ten minutes later she was back in the living room with her friends playing a Star Wars game.

When the game was over and they were munching on Tim Tams, she decided it was time to fill Laura in.

"Laura," she said, "Shannon and I have news. We have found the site of Westerfield Manor."

Laura looked at her wide eyed, almost choking on her biscuit. "You found it? Where?"

"Your barn was built right over it," Grace announced. She then spent the next few minutes carefully explaining to Laura almost everything she had deduced about the manor and the two missing children. She had to play down the part about her own psychic abilities. No one could know about that. She finished by saying that the strange noises and footsteps they heard in the house at night were probably some kind of manifestations emanating from the unstable portal.

Laura listened silently until Grace had finished.

"Well, what do you think?" Grace asked, "I know it sounds like science fiction or fantasy, but I'm completely serious, and I'm almost sure I'm right."

Grace and Shannon watched Laura, half expecting her to burst out laughing and say what a good joke it was, but she surprised them.

"Wow!" she said at last, "Yes it does sound like science fiction, but Grace I can see you're serious. I've known you ever since we started high school and you're the smartest person I know, and so are you, Shannon. If you say it's true then I believe you."

Grace breathed a sigh of relief, "I was so hoping you would," she smiled, "Because I'm going to need your help."

*****

It was almost seven o'clock in the early evening. Grace climbed down from the ladder and connected the electrical wire to each of the two metal poles, she and Laura and Shannon had set up in the corner of the barn.

"Okay that should do it," she announced, "It's connected to the base of the lightning rod on the roof. It should take at least fifty per cent of the current down here to these poles."

"Are you sure this will work?" Laura asked, doubtfully looking at the two vertical poles they had set up about two metres apart, "I mean we don't even know if there'll be a storm tonight, and even if there is, how do we know lightning will strike that lightning rod up there?"

"I've checked the weather forecasts," Grace answered, "There's a high chance of thunderstorms in this area tonight, and Ken Rogers confirmed that this house is built on an ironstone ridge. The iron in the ground attracts static charges during thunderstorms. That's why the previous owners installed lightning rods on the roof of the house and the barn. When the lightning strikes the rod the current is taken down the cable and discharges harmlessly into the ground. Lucky we found that reel of electrical cable in your storeroom to divert some of that current to these poles."

Shannon scanned the horizon to the west. "Can't see any storms yet," she said, "Let's go and get some dinner while we wait."

The girls prepared themselves a meal of spaghetti bolognaise, checking the sky every twenty minutes for lightning. Finally at midnight Laura yawned and suggested they go to bed. "I'm tired. There are no storms," she said, "Maybe there'll be one tomorrow."

Grace looked at the storm tracker app on her phone. It showed a few scattered storms well to the south of their location, but they were moving to the east.

"Yeah I think you're right," she muttered, "We might as well go to bed and hope for a storm tomorrow night."

Ten minutes later Grace slipped into bed and was soon asleep.

After a while lightning started flickering in the sky, there were a few distant growls of thunder. Then there was a bright flash and a loud crash of thunder which shook the house. Lightning had struck the lightning rod on the barn. Grace raced downstairs, out to the barn doors and wrenched them open. She went inside and shone her torch into the corner of the barn where they had set up the two metal poles, and sure enough there between the poles was a fuzzy looking rectangular shape about the size of a door. She could see through it. On the other side was a forest, a dark forbidding looking forest with tall trees with no leaves.
Hesitantly she took a few steps towards it. "Michael, Elizabeth," she called, "Are you there? Can you hear me?"
Nothing happened, so she stepped right up to the edge. Then she screamed and stumbled backwards, falling to the ground, as two human shaped black shadows floated through the doorway. She tried to crawl away, but the shadows descended on her, engulfing her, and everything turned black.

Grace sat bolt upright in her bed. A dream or premonition? Then she heard the thunder and saw the flickering of lightning through the window. Storms were here. Maybe lightning had already struck the barn. It wasn't a dream at all. It was a warning! But she had to know. She had to get to the barn and find out. She pulled on a jacket, grabbed her torch and ran out of the room banging on Shannon and Laura's doors as she went.
"Come on," she yelled, "Get up. We've got to get to the barn!"

What will the girls find when they get to the barn?
All is revealed in the next chapter.
But don't forget to vote first :)