Famous Last Words

Get Me The Hell Out of Here

It was weird. We ate breakfast like we didn't ever want it to end, slowly chewing each mouthful and each of us drinking more coffee than Gerard would normally drink in a week. As much as we wanted to get to the bottom of what was happening I think, the truth was we didn't want to start looking into it. I think that was because of my revelation that the pockmarked man had threatened me with the same fate as the woman if I didn't just leave things as they were. In one sense I wondered if he had already tried to make good on that threat by sending me into the pool during my sleepwalking. We couldn't deny the possibility and it scared us all. And as much as we had vowed to be strong for each other, we still weren't fully opening up about how we felt. I know I wasn't, and neither was Gerard. Again, it's probably that brother thing – we know each other's mannerisms so well; I knew it was dwelling on his thoughts. I didn't know what to do, I literally had no words of comfort for him because I was scared stiff myself. It seemed reasonable that Frank, Ray and Bob were feeling it too, but because we said nothing, neither did they. They, no, we were being strong in our own ways, but it didn't help that we were having trouble sharing our feelings. It was Frank who finally broke the silence.

"Okay, so, the library?" he asked; his tone was forced, but tried to sound upbeat and I think we all appreciated the effort.
"Yeah," Gerard agreed standing up. "We can get one of the laptops from the studio in there too. Trawl around on Google; there's bound to be something on the house, it's pretty old."

Almost as soon as I stepped through the door, I relaxed and felt ready for anything. I wished I could sleep in that room, I had never felt anything threatening in there and it was the only room, including the studio, that I felt comfortable in.

Pulling down books from the shelves, everyone settled themselves into a comfortable chair or sofa with Gerard taking the desk and setting up the laptop in front of him.

Ray had a book on the family history, Frank had a local history book, Bob had pulled a short volume on the actual building and behind them all, covered in dust lay a small leatherbound and somewhat tatty book, tied with a black satin ribbon. I was immediately drawn to it. I had taken some of the books from the shelves before now and never noticed it, but I couldn't honestly say if I had taken those specific books. From the thick layer f dust, I'd say that it appeared to have fallen behind them many years earlier and on opening it, from the colour of the pages, I revised my estimate to some decades earlier. They were brown and the edges were – it brought a brief smile to my face – torn and frayed. A little like my nerves. I settled down to read it, realising almost immediately that it was a diary.

At first, I felt as though I shouldn't look at it – it was a diary after all, a very personal thing – but something told me not to be so stupid, the person would be long dead by now, surely. How right I was!

It didn't take long for us to find out more about the history of the house and its inhabitants. Built in 1923 it was variously named The Paramour Mansion or The Crestmount but originally and officially The Canfield-Moreno Estate. Your typical residence of a film star and heiress. Lavish parties would be held for the high-society of the 1920s and 30s but it ended abruptly with a horrific car crash in 1933 when Daisy Canfield plunged off a cliff on Mulholland Drive whilst returning from a party.

We sat and discussed this tragic event for maybe another hour or so before finally giving up on that line. As terrible as that was, we couldn't squeeze a connection between the crash and the more terrifying aspects of the hauntings. The only glimmer that something was amiss was the suggestion in one of the books that perhaps her car had been tampered with. Daisy Canfield knew the road well and there was no reason to suspect that she might career off the edge of a cliff if nothing was wrong. But then, there was the party – in those days driving after drinking wasn't illegal, it wasn't even considered a problem. She could have been drunk. It didn't say in the report and we had hit a dead end... except, of course for the diary.