An Untimely Romance: A Time Travel Romance Page 10

  “Frankie, I’m sorry,” she sniffed.

  How did I possibly manage to get myself lost? she thought, as after only a couple of minutes or so they were heading back up the spiral staircase. She was shielded from the damp mist by his body, and she could feel the firmness of his chest against her and hear his heartbeat. The tree house felt so welcoming as Frank lowered her gently onto the settee, seating himself beside her.

  “Regrettably, there is much I have kept from you.”

  Sitting forward, Heather rested her hands on her knees.

  “But I hardly know you, Frank.”

  “That is not entirely true. We are very well acquainted.” He paused, brushing his sideburns with the back of his hands.

  Heather sat up tall, almost prompting him to speak, though her face soon wore a frown when he didn’t elaborate further.

  “One meeting when I was thirteen isn’t knowing someone.”

  He placed his hand over hers, looking into her eyes.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she snapped, pulling her hand away,

  “I think it best I show you, since my explanation will far from suffice.”

  Frank rose and disappeared into the bedroom. What on earth? she thought to herself. Is he making a play for me now Ruben’s out of the picture? She fidgeted uneasily. Maybe she shouldn’t have stayed after all; perhaps it would have been better if they had all gone home together that night. But her thoughts were soon interrupted when the bedroom door opened again, and she looked intently at what Frank was holding.

  “I don’t think so!” she said, jumping to her feet. “Take it back, now!”

  “This is the only way I have of showing you,” Frank explained, and placed the Ouija board on the dining table. “We must endeavour to know her true intentions.”

  “Whose intentions? Frank, stop it, you’re scaring me.”

  His eyes were intense. “The maid’s,” he answered.

  Heather felt a chill spread throughout her body.

  “You saw her too...” she whispered.

  “But of course,” Frank answered. “Her eyes were filled with anguish, and I need to know why she’s here. It’s not her time.”

  “I guess some things just need leaving in the past.” Heather stood. “Anyway, I think I’m going to have an early night,” she said, forcing a yawn, and made her way to the bedroom.

  “The past is where I thought I had left her. This, I presume...” He paused, looking down at the Ouija board. “...is our only means of communication.”

  “You’ve got some explaining to do,” she snapped, scowling.

  The strange happenings, the ghostly apparitions, were these all linked to Frank somehow? She didn’t want to dabble with the Ouija board for one moment, it scared her senseless, but maybe there were answers she needed too.

  “I am not of your time,” he said.

  “You can say that again,” Heather sneered. “Look, I can’t be doing with any of this or you, and I don’t think I want to know.” Maybe not knowing at this moment in time is an easier option, she thought.

  “This, Heather, is a reality from which we cannot run,” Frank said as he sat down at the table.

  He placed his fingers on the pointer of the Ouija board.

  “Anna, are you there?” he asked. “Why are you here? What is it you want of me?”

  Although she was scared, Heather’s curiosity wouldn’t allow her to walk away, and she watched from the safety of the bedroom doorway in silence.

  “Nothing’s happening, let’s just put it away,” she said after a few minutes, talking to the back of Frank’s head.

  “Maybe it is not me they seek,” was his response.

  Heather stood with her arms folded, rocking herself from side to side as a defence mechanism. She didn’t want to go anywhere near that Ouija board, yet something was drawing her in its direction, and taking small steps, she edged closer.

  “Are you there, Anna?” Frank repeated.

  Heather looked down apprehensively at the rectangular-shaped board.

  “Who’s Anna?” she asked.

  Her eyes ran over the board’s alphabetic letters and numbers, each corner holding a different word: Yes, No, Goodbye, and... As her eyes rested on the word ‘Hello’, she noticed a slight movement from the pointer,

  “Stop it, Frankie! You trying to scare me?” she snapped, jumping back.

  The pointer suddenly took on a life of its own and surged across the board, resting abruptly on the word ‘Hello’.

  “Frankie...”

  Waves of emotion and an all-consuming fear took over her body. She wanted to run, but as her eyes darted around the room, the rich wooden structure of the tree house began to fade, its brown veneer reinventing itself, melting into a brownish-grey, a sepia, a colourless canvas.

  “Frankie, what’s happening?!” Heather screamed, but as her surroundings altered, so had her company.

  In a momentary blink of the eye, in Frank’s place now sat a shrunken form, and her mind flashed back to Snowdonia, and the steam train. The mist was clearing and she could see that it was the same boy, as grey and lifeless as the insipid walls she was now imprisoned by. Her veins were pulsating as her blood ran cold, her mind and thoughts now totally out of sync. She could feel her eyes smarting, the tears so close. After an icy silence, the boy’s black eyes stared at her, sunken deep into his emaciated head, their smouldering gaze watching, waiting. But for what? His face was a mass of distorted pictures, nightmares calling out, but not a word was spoken. Then a hand, skeletal in appearance, was outstretched, the unsightly fingers searching. Heather, now in a trance, felt his hand brush against hers and then gripped it tight, and the more she tried to pull away, the tighter the grip became.

  It was an unnerving meeting between the living and the dead, from which Heather had no escape. A dark shadow eked its way out of the walls, a cloak of invisibility, redressing the room and all of its occupants. Heather suddenly found herself at the end of a very long corridor. As she walked forward, she couldn’t feel her feet moving, though she could hear the echoes of her footsteps against the stone floor beneath her. She looked up at the high ceilings, the arched doorways, and wondered where they were leading her.

  “Frankie!” she cried out. “What the hell’s going on?”

  She stood, anticipating an answer, but it never came. Am I going out of my mind? she thought, her shallow breaths deepening. An unpalatable aroma of deathly decay met her nostrils, suffocating her. She turned and hurried to the nearest door, opening it in the hope of some absolution, some kind of relief. A narrow windowless room stretched out before her, with solid plain wooden tables, unvarnished, running alongside whitewashed walls, against each of which was bench-like seating. On these sat young sickly looking boys of varying ages, their expressionless faces synchronised as they ate the unappetising gruel, no deviation in their movements as their spoons delved into earthenware bowls.

  Heather felt uneasy and shuffled her feet, not wanting to cause any disturbance and wishing she could pass through the room unnoticed. She felt their sadness as she glared at their tormented faces. Each one was a carbon copy of their predecessor, all wearing outgrown bottle-green pullovers and dark grey neckerchiefs, probably concealing ingrained dirt from lack of bathing and inhuman sanitation. They continued, oblivious to her existence as she passed each in turn, in a timeless rotation of hand-to-mouth robotic movements. Panicked, her pace quickened and she found herself running, yet with each step she took, the room seemed to grow with her. An optical illusion, she thought. The robotic souls’ habitual movements also quickened with her accelerated pace. Then she saw a narrow exit, with an open doorway growing closer.

  With breathless relief, as she couldn’t possibly have run for very much longer, and with a backward glance, her stomach surged into her mouth at what she saw. The boys’ heads jerked up in unison to face her, their taut skin lacking lustre and youth with their ashen complexions. And then she saw their eyes, discoloured,
dehydrated and cracked; with un-timeless pain they were crying out to her, yet in silence they sat like a line of marionettes, their puppet-like movements coming to an abrupt standstill as they held their spoons at mouth height.

  Screaming inside, yet too scared to make any kind of noise, Heather held her mouth in her hands, hyperventilating and then falling to the floor. She crawled through the doorway and lay face down, sobbing.

  “Frankie, help me!” she screamed, unable to hold her silence any longer.

  With her eyes tightly closed, she cried like a child and curled up into the foetal position. And that’s where she stayed; seconds, minutes, she couldn’t be sure. Suddenly, she was disturbed by a child’s voice humming a strange tune, yet a melody she recognised. Oh shit, have they followed me through the door? she thought, picturing their haunted faces, deathly images that would stay with her forever, imprinted on her mind. Opening her fingers very slightly, she peered apprehensively between her lashes. She was met by darkness, and as her eyes struggled to adjust, she realised that she was in another room, and could just make out the outline of a staircase, a stoned flight, which after about eight steps turned and made its way to the left, its final steps concealed by a heavily set darkness. She was very much alone, yet the humming continued, its monotony broken by a sharp cracking sound. Not once, but again, as a hard object bounced towards her down the stairway. The two sounds merging, creating an unnerving echo, was just too much for Heather, and wasting no time she sat up and, using both her hands and the heels of her feet, forced herself backwards, away from the unexplainable ruckus. The object was small and round, only just visible, and as it rolled closer, it sounded a lot worse than it looked. When it came to rest by her feet, she grabbed it in her hand and held it between her thumb and index finger. It was a small glass marble.

  “Really? Is that the best you can do? Well, I’m not scared any longer!” she shouted, her fear ebbing as pure adrenalin and a rush of anger overwhelmed her. “What do you want of me?!” she yelled, jumping up and throwing the marble in pure frustration back towards the stairway from where it had come.

  Its destination, however, was to remain unknown, as she never heard it land. Stomping towards the stairs in pure defiance, she wasn’t prepared to live in fear or be browbeaten any longer, and an inner strength surged inside her. The ominous humming hung around her, gaining velocity. She realised she was now standing in an empty space; not a room, just a surreal darkness. The staircase had no handrail, and climbed steeply with no apparent end. Her footsteps added their own beat to the melodious melody. From out of the gloom she saw a distant light, and noticed the stairwell disappearing behind her.

  Heather was once more standing on solid ground, and she walked along what appeared to be a landing or a corridor, she wasn’t entirely sure. There were many doors, all closed except one, which stood ajar, emitting vibrant rays. Heather hurried towards the warm light, but as she did so something caught her eye and she realised she was no longer alone as the silhouette of a woman took shape and the door swung open before her. The figure had no face, no expression, just a ghostly outline of what once was. As the woman drew closer, she raised her arm and pointed towards the room beyond the open doorway. Suddenly, the humming stopped and a deathly silence fell. Heather now knew where she was supposed to go, and perhaps she would finally come face-to-face with the answers she so desperately needed.

  Chapter Seven

  Out of the Darkness

  Heather walked into the room, bypassing the apparition. After only three or four steps, she gasped as the door slammed shut behind her. She found herself in a small square-shaped room, with dark wooden beams stretching up into an apex ceiling. The gloom was interrupted by a couple of cylindrical curved glass lanterns hanging from the walls, beneath one of which, next to a small bed, was a plain unattractive table, its rough wooden surface and knotted legs enhanced only by a decorative earthenware vase with a black enamel over-glaze. The vase held three very distinctive-looking flowers; they were roses, but had black petals, and their aroma held a deathly stench. Heather wrinkled her nose.

  Suddenly, a coldness descended over her, and she could hear heavy laboured breathing rising up from the bed, yet it lay empty, with the exception of what looked like a small golden pendant. On second glance, however, she thought it more likely to be a pocket watch.

  “Ain’t ’e a beauty, miss?”

  Heather’s heart missed a beat, and she turned.

  “It’s you!” She gulped. “What do you want from me?” she demanded, staring at the maid, whose eyes were dark against a ghastly white complexion, her wiry hair scraped back.

  She looked just as Heather remembered, wearing the same plain white dress.

  “Tis me boy. Beautiful, ain’t ’e?”

  Heather looked back at the bed, straining her eyes, but she still couldn’t see anything, yet the breathing continued, more raspy now.

  “Eighteen hours o’ labour, that’s what dun me in, miss... Made ’im a bastard well ’n proper he did.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  “Yer bloody fancy man.”

  “Ruben?” Heather asked, her eyes fixated on the pocket watch.

  The maid followed her eyes,

  “It’s a good’en, worth a bob or two. Belonged to me boy’s father. I be tellin’ ye the truth, miss. I watched ov’a him every day o’ ’is life, missed ’is first breath, but twas ’ere for ’is last in this godforsaken work’ouse, that I was.”

  The maid reached out and held Heather’s hand. Heather saw that her expression had changed, her eyes angry.

  “Yer neva feel me anguish, miss. Now get out, bitch!” she wailed.

  Heather ran blindly to the door and opened it, expecting to see the landing, but she was standing back in the room and the maid was nowhere to be seen, yet the unnerving breathing continued, although it was now more laboured, with intermittent gasps as it struggled to take in air. There was nobody there, but Heather knew she was witnessing a death. She couldn’t cope with this fatality, and blindly she rushed to the door again, to find the same empty room. But the breathing had stopped now and there was a brief silence before the earthenware vase trembled and was then thrown from the table, shattering into tiny pieces on the floor, lying amongst petals and stagnant water. Too scared for tears, her eyes felt dry and gritty.

  “God, help me,” she pleaded.

  She wanted to run through the door and escape, but knew she was just going round in circles; there was nowhere left to go. Her sorrow clung to any remnants of sanity and with the small amount of strength she had left she closed her eyes and dragged herself through the open doorway.

  Is it all over? she thought. Was it just a bad dream? She opened her eyes, hoping that she’d find herself back in the safety of the tree house. But her adventure had taken on an even more uncanny twist, and she was back home, walking in the gardens of Freesdon Manor.

  Welcomed by the scent of pollen from wild roses, the last bloom of forget-me-nots, and newly mown grass, Heather peered between the wispy branches of a nearby weeping willow overlooking the lake, and her eyes were immediately drawn to a young boy and girl playing next to a rectangular plain picnic blanket, on which plastic cups and saucers were laid out neatly. She couldn’t see their faces since they had their backs to her, but she could hear their conversation. She watched their body language, and saw the girl tilt her head back, seeming to find what he had said amusing. It was hard to put an age on either of them, but she guessed they were around six or seven, their playful laughter drifting into the air. The young girl wore a crochet cardigan, partially covering a black and white polka-dot dress. Her light ash-blonde hair was enhanced by the sun’s natural light, and cascaded down her back in loose ringlets.

  Heather’s focus then moved to the boy, and he turned, his eyes cold, looking straight through her, though she couldn’t draw her eyes away from his face. Snowdonia, the steam train... She could still picture him standing in the mist. Ev
erywhere she went he seemed to follow, and she only hoped it was all in her mind. Covering her eyes, the children’s laughter stopped, and the song thrushes’ vibrant tune and the warm sun evaporated around her. Panicking, she opened her eyes, terrified of what awaited her this time. With a sigh of relief, she realised she was back in the tree house, but it still had its sepia hue, and wherever she’d been, she’d dragged the boy back with her, as he was still sitting where Frank had previously been, his head bent down towards the Ouija board. She noticed his hands were placed firmly on the planchette.

  “What do you want?” Heather sobbed.

  As the words left her lips, the tree house reinvented itself again, this time in reverse, with the colour seeping back into the walls, pulling the room out of the darkness and back to life, and with it, Frank. Everything was as it should be, as it always was. She laid her hands on Frank’s shoulders, to reassure herself it was really him and that she was safe.

  “Frankie...” She paused, looking down as the planchette shifted towards the alphabet, and watched on in awe at the letters as they spelt out the answer to her question: A, L, I, F, E.

  Frank looked up, a confused expression on his face as he gazed at Heather’s reddened eyes and tear-stained cheeks.

  “Stay with me tonight,” she sniffled. “I don’t want to be alone.”

  She grabbed his hand, pulling him from the table and the Ouija board, and they walked into the bedroom. She lay on the bed, exhausted; it had been a long night in so many ways.

  “I don’t want to give you the wrong idea, Frankie,” she said, looking up into his eyes, “but can you please just hold me, if only for a little while?”

  Removing his shoes, he reclined back, placing his head on the pillow next to hers. She lifted herself slightly, just enough for him to wrap his arm around her and pull her close. She could feel the warmth of his body, and all the pent-up fear she felt inside slowly began to drain away.