The Spirit of Ravenshom House

Chapter 11: Falling, Falling, Never Ending

There once was a wise and beautiful girl who lived with her family happy and content. Her name was Jenny and she was adored by all she knew. She was her father's little princess, her mother's sunshine and her brother's best friend. She was kind and loving and no one could find any fault in her, try as they might.

One summer she decided to go to the summer camp much to her brother's dismay. Her brother wouldn't have anyone to play with all summer, he complained. She took him into her lap and rocked him by and by. "I am not really going anywhere," Jenny said. "Because you have got me trapped right in here," she pointed to his heart.

She held his cheeky face in her petal hands, "I will always be there, wherever I go, wherever you go. And all you need to do is tap right over your heart and I will listen, always right here by your side." It was a promise and they swore on it, both brother and sister.

At the summer camp Jenny ran around fields of lillies and swam in the warm water of the creek. Girls flocked to her mesmerized by her allure and kind heart. She made friends easy and lend a helping hand to anyone who was in need of one.

But what happens when everything goes right in a story. When everything is happy and merry?

It turns dark.

It was nighttime and a little girl refused to stop playing and go to bed. She wanted to play hide and seek in the attic room up above. She wanted to go to Narnia through the cupboard in the attic room. Jenny warned her about the dangers of playing around in the night where the devil would catch her and gobble her up. But the little child was naughty and didn't take heed. Jenny caught hold of her and gently led her away but the little girl was jealous, jealous of Jenny's beauty and wisdom. Jealous of her caring heart and her freedom. The little girl scratched her arm and pushed her into the empty cupboard that would take her to Narnia.

She bolted it before Jenny could realize what had happened and ran away down to the bunk beds where no one would hear Jenny's muffled screams and ragged breaths.

No one heard her scratching at the doors of the cupboard neither did anyone hear her call for her mother in the scary darkness. No one heard her last heave of suffocated breath and no one checked on her.

At the end of camp her father and mother hand in hand with her brother came to take her home. They had missed her dearly and the brother very much so.

Girls left with their parents' one after the other but there was no sign of beautiful and wise Jenny. People began to think the worst although the worst had already happened and none were the wiser. They searched and searched but couldn't find her. Finally the naughty little girl came upto Jenny's little brother in her pigtails and told him that the last time she had seen her, she had been in the attic and had gone to Narnia.

The brother ran to the attic and found the cupboard. He slipped the bolt out and screamed a scream so loud it could drown bodies in the little creek and kill the lillies in the field. Alas the rotting body of his sister was found and the mother and father died a death then and there that no one knew.

Several years later after Jenny was asleep in her coffin inside the ground, miles away her parents would hang themselves to join her in her abode. The brother however would be left behind. He wouldn't go. Why would he? After all, his sister had promised him.

"I will always be there, wherever I go, wherever you go. And all you need to do is tap right over your heart and I will listen, always right here by your side."

Acknowledgements

I would only like to thank one person. The little girl in pigtails who made it all possible. The little girl who led me to my sister. The little girl who I owe my sister's death to.

Daphne Durham.

Ephra's hold on Daphne was not strong enough. She fell crumbling to the ground at the sight of her own name spelled out in the journal that told the tragic story of a family that ended because of her.

She tried to remember her childhood. That summer when she had gone to the camp. Her mother had had to go to work. She didn't have anyone to look after little Daphne. So she had enrolled her in a camp far away from home.

Daphne had been sad. She had wanted to spend the summer with her friends. But her mother hadn't listened. She had left her in the camp with her still crying at the administration office's steps. She was only ten. She had never gone back. She had never questioned why. She was only happy she never had to be parted from her friends anymore.

Daphne was shivering uncontrollably. She could hear someone talking to her but it was like she was underwater. Nothing would penetrate to reach her. She was drowning in air.

She didn't remember that summer very well, but there were bits and pieces that added up. She didn't remember the other girls in the camp. But she remembered Jenny and she remembered the attic. And that's when she began to sob. Her whole body shook violently as she cried out for what she had done as a child, what she didn't even remember.

Ephra was pulling her, joggling her like a jar of sugar, trying to comfort her. She couldn't feel any of it though, couldn't feel him or her surroundings. All she felt was the fall. Her falling into a deep dark chasm far below. Falling, falling, never ending.

Daphne became aware that she had erased that heinous tragedy, that entire dreadful night out of her head. She had completely and to her horror, conveniently forgotten the part of her summer camp days where she had murdered an innocent girl who had only wanted her to get to bed early, while other memories, memories of the camp surroundings and laughter of little girls and Jenny's graceful face tiptoed around at the edges of her memory.

But she hadn't been completely successful in blocking it all out. For the horror of the incident, of what her unknowing hands had done had been left behind somewhere inside her subconscious, stirring up when she was asleep, waking in nightmares of ghouls and distasteful things, submerging her in sustained disquietude for the rest of her life. A punishment way less than she deserved.

Her eyes wouldn't stop watering. Her chest wouldn't stop hurting. Her nerves wouldn't stop shaking. She was being hugged by someone, being squeezed out of air and breath by a strong body that she couldn't push away. Ephra, she realised was rubbing her back, trying to quiet her down, trying to relieve her, talk to her.

His eyes were distracted though, skipping between her and behind her. Her mind tried to pinpoint on the movement of his eyes, furtive and unsteady. A terror seized her, inconsequential to the realisations she had just had. She turned to look behind her.

Cached in the corner, behind brindle cardboard boxes and other memorabilia that Daphne was now convinced belonged to Jenny she saw a huge box of umber wood. With a latch that was fast rusting and the wood almost ruined completely beyond any form of restoration it towered like a statue forgotten, like a tombstone beloved.

Her heart seized. She sucked in air that refused to enter her. The cupboard in the attic was staring back at her like a God of vengeance. The cupboard she had killed someone in. The cupboard Jerry's big sister had died in.

Daphne screamed pushing Ephra away from her. Ephra fell backwards losing his grip on her, hitting boxes that tumbled down as if hit by an earthquake. Daphne backed away slipping and screaming and weeping. Her head began to spin and she fought to stay conscious.

Just as she thought she couldn't keep awake anymore, Ephra was there swimming before her foggy eyes. "It was not your fault," he said slowly and deliberately. His face was stock serious. Daphne had never seen Ephra serious. It didn't suit him.

"You were a child, you were playing," he continued. "You didn't kill her, Daphne, no matter what Jerry's Dairy says."

"It's Jenny's diary actually."

The voice shifted the balance of the earth. Daphne was scared to look beneath Ephra's shoulder, at the person who had said those words.

Ephra turned to look back, mercilessly presenting her with the sight of the man whose life she had shattered, who she had dreamed to spend an eternity with.

Of all expressions Jerry Ravenshom could wear on his face - anger, betrayal, grief, misery, what she didn't expect was a smile spread across, the same devilish cocky grin that she had come to love. For the very first time though the smile didn't convey warmth or comfort but instead screamed danger in warning red neon letters.