Illusion

Chapter 2 : The Cursed House

Feng Huiyin's POV

The dining room went silent after Dayu's little incident. Qing and I got back eating while Dayu drank some tea that Qing made. Qing told him he would get Dayu some water but when he was back, he brought a cup of hot tea with him. Qing didn't talk much to Dayu but I noticed there was a tenderness in the way Qing looked at Dayu and it pained me to no end.

"Qingge, do you want to hear some interesting stories about this house?" Suddenly Dayu asked Qing with a serious face. What story? I've lived in this valley for years but never heard any interesting story about this house. But actually it wasn't unusual that Dayu knew more stories than me because as a writer, he loved to snoop and dig around to find some good story for his books. That was another reason why I hated him.

"Sure. Please do tell." Qing answered with an equally serious tone.

"Several years ago when I was walking around the town, I heard some locals called this place 'Cursed House'. At that time, this mansion looked at its best with a beautiful apple orchard, which made me curious was why would they called the gorgeous mansion a cursed house. So I asked around and heard stories." Dayu sat straighter on his seat before continued his story.

"Sometime back in the forties the owner of this house had been killed in a shooting accident, leaving his wife and his three months old baby girl. His grieving widow was said to have wandered the house and ground, crying inconsolably and finally killing herself." Dayu's voice was cold as the ice floes that blocked the river in the winter. I found myself shivering as if an icy breeze had blown in off the river and found its way onto the closed dining room.

"Then I went to find the daughter of the family's maid that time to ask her if she knew more. Apparently her mum, the maid, had been witnessing how crazy the grieving wife was. She said the wife went crazy from seeing figures in her baby's nursery wallpaper and ended up creeping around the floor trying to get inside the pattern." Dayu told us gravely.

"How did she kill herself? And what happened to the baby?" I looked at Qing, who just asked the question I had been thinking to ask, for a second before I turned to look back at Dayu.

"She left the baby on the front steps of this house on a cold night in February in the middle of an ice storm. Maybe she thought someone would hear it cry, but the night was loud with the crack of trees breaking under the weight of the ice.

And as for the wife, she walked around the back of the house and out onto the frozen pond. Halfway across, the ice broke and she went down under it. The people found her in the morning, frozen under the ice, her eyes staring up at the sky. They also found a lifeless baby in the front step." Dayu shook his head. Under the dim light I could see his expression darkened, no smile on his face.

"How dreadful!" I said, rubbing my arms to banish a sudden chill.

"Yes. That's when the locals started calling this place The Cursed House." Dayu looked around the dining room then he smiled a little at me, not the sweet smile he always had on but an odd smile I had never seen. "That must seem crazy, right Yinyin? To be back to a house where so much bad has happened. But a place like this... once it gets into your blood, you're never free of it."

                ❖── ✦──『✙』── ✦── ❖

Later, lying in bed, moonlight paring the room into white crescents, I thought about the tragic story Dayu had told us during dinner. I felt shiver running down my spine when I remembered I would be living in this creepy house where two people had died tragically for weeks.

I quickly changed my train of thought to the unsuccessful dinner plan I got for Dayu. There was no doubt Dayu was highly allergic on all types of nuts, but he didn't react at all. Then I started mustering another plan in my mind. I drifted in and out of sleep on this thought, each time I opened my eyes, I always saw the empty spot on the bed beside me, as if it kept reminding me how Qing didn't love me and how lonely I was, until I fell into a deeper sleep.

I was awoken to the sound of a crying baby. I looked at the digital clock beside my bed and saw that it was 3:26 A.M. I lay on my back listening to the wail carried on the wind through the open bedroom window while thinking whose baby could that be. Grandpa only had one neighbor across the street, Mrs. Edith I believed was her name. But after dinner I had talked with grandpa for almost an hour, catching up with him, and he told me she had moved out last year. So the wailing couldn't be coming from Mrs. Edith's house and barn across the street as it was unoccupied.

I rose up on one elbow and listened harder, but as always, the harder you tried to pin something down, the more it evaded you. The sound was growing weaker; like a baby that'd worn itself out.

I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed. The floor was cold against my bare feet, the chilly breeze coming through the open window. I pulled on a sweatshirt and rubber boots before crept out of the room. I opened the front door slowly so it wouldn't creak and waking up everyone in this house.

Once I knew where the sound was coming from it wouldn't trouble me any longer. 'Face your fear, face your fear', I was chanting those three words in my mind as I stepped outside into the night. The moon and the stars cowered behind a dense layer of cloud, taking the bite out of the cold. Now that I was outside, I could hear that the night was full of sounds; the hum of the river flowing south, the whistle of the train, the twit twoo call of the tawny owl.

Then I heard the crying baby again, weak now, but all the more insistent. It definitely wasn't coming from the barn across the street, though. It was coming from the garden.

I headed out across the mown hay field, slowly walking through ankle-deep fog that looked like cloudy water in the muted moonlight, the sorrowful cry growing louder in my ears until it blocked out all the other sound of the night.

When I reached the edge of the field, I heard exactly where the sound was coming from; the pond. I could hear hiccups coming from the far shore where the fog was thickest. And, if I remembered correctly, there was a walkway over the weir.

As I came around the pond, I caught the sight of the wooden bridge hiding itself in the fog. The crying sound came from the other side of the weir where the fog was bulging upward, churning the air, thickening...

Into a shape... a figure...

I froze, my feet sinking into the cold mud, and stared, willing the figure to vanish, to dissipate into the air. But instead it thickened, into a woman in a long dress, her head covered, clutching something to her chest.

I only made out the shape for an instant, but in that short moment the woman looked at me through her fiery yet soulless eyes. The fear I felt sat on me like a pillow over my mouth and nose and I could feel the cold air around me bearing down on me, holding me motionless even if I wanted to run from the terror of that empty face. I felt my heart in my throat and the horror that she had driven filled me with ice water, as if the contents of the pond had been poured into my body and froze.

And then she was gone. The figure vanished into thin air as if it had turned to water into the weir. And with that, the ice that holding me melted and I fell to my knees in the mud, my legs weak and the crazy pounding of my heart was the only sound left in the night.

When I was able to get up, I walked up onto the bridge. But of course it was empty. 'You imagined it', a trick of fog and moonlight', I told myself.

As I turned to go back to the mansion, I slipped and landing hard on my knees. And as I braced myself to get up, I saw what had me slip. Although the night was warm, the boards under me were coated with ice.