Ghosts of our Past

One Final Visit

In the morning, I got up, more than happy to be leaving Crowling Ground. Mr Clarke was feeling better and was also evidently pleased to be leaving. All we would do was go to the church, leave the books and be on our way.

We both helped attach the cart, keeping our heads down in fear of what had happened before. I was coming round to the idea that perhaps what I has seen was neither real nor living - I had sat and thought for hours about the distant voice that was still so close. It had felt so real at the time in my paranoid state but now that I looked back on it, there was no way that it could have happened. It couldn't have truly been there. No one had spoken about it - not the landlord or Mr Clarke or any other passer by- and I knew from the papers that I printed so regularly, no blood curdling death like that stayed silent.

The two of us got in the carriage and with a single shout from Mr Clarke, the pony started to plod along.

As usual, we made the journey in silence, but this time the silence spoke volumes. We soon reached the church and made a swift delivery but the church did strange things to me. Both Mr Clarke and I stacked the bibles on an empty book shelf, though I doubted they would ever be looked at. As we began to leave the church, I was drawn again tot he small room. I asked Mr Clarke if we could stay another few minutes and, though dubious, he left to tend to the pony. I made my way through the now familiar pews and listened - silence. The absence of the usual scratching peaked my curiosity and my hand found the cold metal doorknob. I turned it, in a strange trance with none of my own thoughts. The door swung, with a groan of complaint, open.

I moved slowly onto a red carpeted floor am peered around the wooden shelves against cream stone walls. There was nobody there but a desk sat at the end with a quill and parchment placed upon it. I went to look closer, and to my astonishment found another notice waiting to be posted on the notice board:

A memorial will be held on November 15th to commemorate the life of Miss Vanessa Rowling, tragically killed in a road accident.

This was the woman whom my father had been engaged to and the other puzzle pieces quickly slipped into place - the screams, the notice, the woman on the corner.

Realising that fate had cornered me once more, I quickly slipped from the room - I knew I shouldn't have seen it. This should have remained a secret. My father had been engaged to Miss Rowling before she died. I assumed that it would be a marriage of convenience because she was quickly replaced by my mother, Rose Bailey. In death, Miss Rowling's soul did not go to heaven but stayed in Crowling Ground to seek revenge upon the family of my parents. 

I returned to the cart and sat down with Mr Clarke.

"Yer know, now?" he questioned. I simply nodded, not trusting my voice to hold.

"I do not wish to scare yer, but now I must wish yer good luck," he continued to my surprise, meanwhile getting the pony moving. "Bad things will now occur."

"Such as what?" I asked in a husky whisper.

"Every time the ghost is seen, a young woman dies," Mr Clarke explained. I was stunned into silence by this shocking revelation. "It took my fiancee," he confided at which I could hold back no longer. A single tear escaped from my eye and I cried for all the sorrows that I would leave in Crowling Ground.

The rest of the journey was continued in silence. It was a different silence, though. Like we both understood it, and all the while I wondered what would happen next.