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Moira was sitting in the attic of the house listening to what she termed drivel, and she could hardly stop from laughing out loud, but that would have spoiled the late afternoon`s entertainment for her. She now moved her ‘ghosts’ from the Netherworld to the attic, they were in fact Shades, four of them, and very hungry they were too.
“Here you are my poor pathetic creatures, you can feed upon this.” Moira said and laughed as she pointed to an old man laying cringing in the corner, he was the caretaker of the house.
As the Shades pounced on the first real meal that they had enjoyed for many a year the old man screamed, his screams echoing around the old house and down to the ears of the ghost seekers.
Moira then released Masters and Lang from her control, on realising this they looked fearfully at one another, and as one they bolted for the stairs and once they arrived in the entrance hall they made for the front door. On opening it they made to leave the house, unfortunately they came up against a mystical force field that prevented them from escaping; Moira Bourbon had installed it to prevent anyone from leaving via any of the doors and windows.
“We cannot get out; some sort of force field is preventing us from leaving!” Masters exclaimed fearfully to the others who had also made for the entrance hall, however they had wanted to climb the stairs to investigate the screams, not to leave the haunted house.
Rob had also been about to investigate the screams, but noticing that everyone was accounted for; he decided to investigate the supposed force field. On reaching the open door, he too attempted to leave the house, but he found that Masters was quite correct, Moira, or whoever it was who was running this show, had installed some sort of mystical field, and it prevented anyone from leaving through the front door of the house unless she allowed it.
Mr Hillmore looked across at Rob and pointed at him. “This is all his fault, he and the priest warned me that it could be dangerous to hold the event, they are some sort of government secret agents.”
“Then why did you not warn us?” Ms Lang screamed out angrily.
“Keep calm everyone, it is no use panicking, let us try the other windows and doors, maybe one of them will allow us to leave.” Rob advised calmly as he attempted to still the panic rapidly overtaking everyone within the house.
On the front door Rob saw a note stuck to the back of the door, but all it told them was that the caretaker would not return until the morning, this thought Rob might be too late for them, however he did wonder if the caretaker was the one who had screamed. His first duty was to protect the others so he pulled out his mobile to put in a call to Agers or Markman, but found that the force field prevented a signal getting through. He was not too worried; yet, he knew that he would soon be missed, especially when they could not reach him on the phone.
Moira`s afternoon proceedings did not take long to commence, everyone was now gathered in the large entrance hall and all of them were feeling scared because they could not leave the house, It was now that a series of loud thumps and bangs came from one of the upper floors, then the lights began flickering madly and they heard what sounded like furniture being violently thrown about one of the rooms on the upper floors, this was followed by loud groans.
Rob was beginning to get really anxious for the safety of the other guests, but the noises coming from upstairs could just be teenagers trying to scare his fellow ghost seekers, although he seriously doubted it. He would have liked to check on them first, but instead he instigated a check on all of the ground floor windows and doors, to see if any would provide a way out, in the hope of stilling the ever growing panic, unfortunately all they found was the force field waiting for them. Rob now led everyone upstairs to check on the windows on the other two floors, but here too they were prevented from leaving. Once they arrived on the top floor of the house they soon found that this was where all the noises had originated. In some of the rooms the beds were upside down, in some of the other rooms the small bedside table and chair were smashed into kindling, in others the bedding was not just on the floor, some of it had been ripped to shreds. When confronted with this, none of the guests spoke for they were now more than scared; they were absolutely terrified that the paranormal really did exist.
“Tell us Mr Hillmore, this is just part of the event, isn`t it?” Professor Inglis implored.
Hillmore simply shook his head, he could no longer form whole words, fear was preventing him, and the others were having much the same trouble, paranormal investigators they may have been, but not one of them actually expected to find proof of the supernatural.
Inglis now asked the students to take the broken furniture down to the cellar and as three of them did so, Rob decided to check on the attic, in search of the ‘teenagers’ and in trepidation he walked up the stairs and attempted to open the door, it did open a fraction, but then it slammed shut. Rob turned to look at Father Pritchard who was on the step below.
“Human or ghost David?” Rob asked his friend.
“I have no idea Rob, but you turn the door handle and then let`s put our shoulders to the door.” Father Pritchard suggested.
Rob slowly turned the door handle and then the two men put all their weight against the door, it immediately flew open and slammed against the wall and making the two men stumble forwards into the room. From the rear of the attic they heard noises that appeared to be coming from the very walls of the house, and the noises were travelling down to the floor below them. However, they did not investigate the noises immediately, for just inside of the attic they were met by the sight of the shrivelled body of the caretaker, not that they knew who he was at the time. Rob and Father Pritchard looked at one another, horrified by what they saw; the body had not been here the last time that they had been in the attic, no the body must belong to whoever had screamed just minutes earlier. Feeling an even greater need of help Rob now tried to get a signal on his mobile phone, he hoped that the extra height would allow him to call for help, but to no avail, the signal was still jammed by the mystical wall of energy that went all around the house and now seemingly over the top as well.
“David, it`s time to investigate the sounds that came from the walls, to see if they were made by a human, or something from a hell dimension.” Rob said and walked over to the far wall, as he got there a pale wraithlike figure shot out of the wall and hit him so hard that he fell backwards to land with a thud on the floor.
As Rob lay there trying to get his breath back, the wraith like phantom seeing him lying there screamed with delight and shot towards Rob, but he had seen too many horror films to allow the phantom to enter into his body, something he thought was all too possible, he quickly rolled out of the way and the phantom figure of a small man disappeared through the floor.
Rob`s hands shot to his shirt and pulled out a large silver cross that Father Pritchard had blessed, he now put it in plain sight on the front of his jacket.
“It must have been your cross Rob, that saved you from that thing, it certainly hit you on the exact spot where your cross was.” Father Pritchard said.
“You might well be correct David, and if so we need to distribute some of the protections that you brought with you amongst the others, or Moira and her merry men will run riot.” Rob said to Father Pritchard who on considering the possibility of this happening was happy to agree.
“I think that thing may well have been a Shade, David, from the Dreamscape, if so then we were correct in suggesting that Moira could now be the consort of Lord Asbaritch.” Rob said to Father Pritchard who just nodded in reply as he considered all that had happened and then dwelt on what could happen.
Marchmount along with Timpson and Lewis had witness everything from the open doorway, Timpson and Lewis were looking terrified and excited all at once, they quickly told the others, who had returned from the cellar and were now standing at the bottom of the small staircase, all what they had witnessed. Terror among some of the students quickly turned to excitement, as they attempte
d to busy themselves in an effort to overcome their fear. Surely they had come to the house looking for proof of the supernatural, and three of them had actually witnessed it! They quickly returned to the sitting room and got their equipment ready, then they began to set it up, some of them fearfully, others putting on a brave front. The students always left the main group in groups of three people, when they went to set up some of their instruments, they were not stupid after all, just young and without even a thought of death being possible here in this haunted house.
Marchmount began to wonder if all that had happened was all the coolest of practical jokes and that the beautiful Satanist was behind it all, and that it was just her way of enjoying herself. The two men were obviously the two people to whom she was referring to when she had asked to come along, for she had already played with one of them. Marchmount smiled as he thought about Moira, a feeling of awe spreading through him for his beautiful Satanist.
Masters and Lang, after hearing of the ghost were more terrified than ever, so they waited on the upper landing for Rob and Father Pritchard to exit the attic, as only these two men were taking everything in their stride and appeared to be on top of everything. They followed them back to the sitting room, stopping off at the bedroom of Father Pritchard who collected his large suitcase and who then took it downstairs. Once in the sitting room Father Pritchard took out the protective articles that he had brought along, thankfully he had thought about the customers of Paranormal Investigators.Com and so he had brought along extra supplies. To each of them he gave a wooden cross, a small string of garlic and a small bottle of holy water. Even the most fearless of the students appreciated the protection, even if they wondered whether it would actually work, but even the atheists amongst them did not refuse them.
It was now time for Rob and Father Pritchard to check down in the cellar, and so they walked through to the kitchen, where the door to the cellar was located. Here they found that the cellar door was open, and after turning on the cellar light from a switch at the top of the staircase, they went slowly down into the cellar. Masters and Lang stayed at the top of the staircase, fully expecting another ghost to appear, but now wanting to be close to Rob and Father Pritchard. Rob and Father Pritchard noticed that the entrance through which the coal was delivered was similarly barred, and apart from the coal there was nothing of interest except for some broken furniture that had once been upstairs in the second floor bedrooms, the students having brought it down when Professor Inglis had suggested it. The only other thing in the cellar was the empty wine rack.
Returning to the sitting room Rob spoke to those present. “It seems that no sounds can enter or leave this house, luckily I was due to call my colleagues five minutes ago, so they will now be trying to contact me, when they cannot do so they will attempt to break in through the front door, when they find that they cannot enter via normal means they will use every means available to them to get us out of this place.” Rob said in an attempt to calm everyone.
Masters and Lang sat down on two of the chairs feeling slightly better after hearing his words, whatever was happening within the walls of this terrible house, they would soon be set free.
The house was quiet now, the only noise that could be heard were the hushed voices of the ghost seekers. The remainder of the afternoon went slowly by with nothing happening, and even though they still could not leave the house everyone began to feel a little easier. Then Hillmore asked for everyone`s attention. “A meal has been prepared, all Ms Carson and I had to do was to put it into the range to heat, if you will all kindly follow me through to the dining room you will find that your evening meal is awaiting you.”
The meal was a quiet affair with everyone`s thoughts either on the mysterious force field that was keeping them a prisoner or the ghost seen by three of the students, that is until Mr Masters broke the silence by asking a question.
“Mr Hinds, when will we hear your people breaking through the energy barrier, or have they forgotten about us?”
Everyone stopped eating to focus on Rob. “I am sorry everyone, I can only say that I am as much in the dark as you are, but I promise you that we have not been forgotten, my people will have asked the top minds for help, when they found that they could not break through the energy barrier, do not fear somehow they will get through to us.” Rob assured them.
They was a great deal of mumbled words following his apology, but they knew that the problem facing their rescuers was unique, so no one complained out loud. As it had been quiet for so long they decided to retire to their bedrooms for an early night, but Rob told them to lock the doors to their rooms and to wedge a chair under the door handle.