GHOSTSCAPE - A DARK HISTORY

In the mid 14th century the Black Death hit the small village the house was situated in. It came via the European trade routes and was carried by fleas living on rats and other small rodents. It was a terrible time, a time of death, confusion and a dwindling lack of faith in the church. The church could not explain the rate of death and simply couldn't read the last rites or hear the confessions of the dying fast enough. This in turn led people to question their faith in god, the church and life itself. However the church continued to keep records as best they could and these events are derived from those old accounts.

The house was used as a makeshift hospital and a large strong-willed matron ran the place, she was referred to as 'Nurse Black'. A gentleman known only as ‘Smith’ also helped her to run the place and was responsible for general maintenance duties including digging the giant pit in the garden to contain the dead. It was far enough from the house to prevent the spread of disease. The clergy were stretched to breaking point and far too busy to come out to the house every time someone died, so the bodies were thrown unceremoniously into the pit without being read their last rites or the hearing of confessions. This caused the public to speculate on what would happen to people who were buried in such a way, these were very superstitious times.

The cartman, his horse and cart loaded with bodies pulled up the muddy hill and arrived at the side of the house alongside the high walled garden. Smith came out, sullen as ever and shouted 'You bring more dead for us?' it was a rhetorical question. It was just what he always said and nothing more. The cartman nodded keeping his distance from Smith as he dragged the bodies off the back of the wooden cart and round the old house to the hole. He heard Smith grunt as he threw a body into the pit and then trudge back around to pick up another one. The one thing the cartman couldn’t quite figure out was that even surrounded by all this death and disease the nurse and Smith were still healthy, something wasn’t right about that. He had his own worries though, he had found his first sore this morning under his armpit and it was growing larger by the hour, another had appeared near his groin around mid-day and he knew the end was near for him as there was simply no cure for the plague. Smith rounded the corner and in his usual rough tone shouted 'See you soon cartman!' which certainly was out of the ordinary. The cartman turned around and trudged off back down the hill alongside the horse and empty cart facing a certain future, death was coming for him.

Inside the house a series of makeshift beds filled several of the downstairs rooms. Nurse Black marched up and down day and night tending to the sick and the dying with infinite patience. She was a strong willed woman and was driven onward by the strength of her positive thinking. It was thought that the reason she hadn’t contracted the disease herself was that she simply didn’t allow it to infect her. Smith stepped into the house with his muddy boots and she gave him a look that was more lethal than the plague itself, he looked down at his boots and quickly realised his mistake. Throwing his boots outside and fetching the water bucket, he’d be mopping the floor until it was spotless. All without a single word from Nurse Black.

An older man named Arthur lay in his bed almost unable to move, behind his bed on the wall was a strange painting of a foreign looking man, his eyes piercing. The kind that follow you around the room. Arthur spoke softly in a whisper to the new woman in the bed alongside him. He whispered 'Strange things are going on around here. Don’t tell no-one I said so, but strange things.' The woman paused before asking 'What kind of things?' The old mans' eyes darted around before continuing on 'People go missing…not just dying from the plague. They are taken upstairs. Screams are heard. Something strange is going on in this house. The house screams!' The new woman rolled her eyes and lay her head back down, her body was aching so much and she really needed to sleep but was told she shouldn't. The old man must be delirious, near the end

Later that night Nurse Black came for Arthur. The new woman had fell asleep but the commotion woke her. Nurse Black and Smith dragged Arthur from his bed and as he passed the new woman’s bed he whispered ‘good bye Sarah.’ Obviously still alive and able to read the chart at the foot of her bed. Sarah pretended to be asleep but listened intently as they dragged him out of the room and up the stairs. She got out of bed quietly and tip-toed across the room, the feeling of being watched by that damn painting raising the hairs on the back of her neck. She opened the door and it creaked so loud she thought that she would be discovered. Hearing no-one approaching she climbed the stairs slowly and reached a landing area, a ladder was propped up against the wall leading to the attic where red candle light flickered down through the hole. She climbed the ladder very slowly ignoring her aches and pains.

Sarah poked her head up into the attic now too curious to be worried about discovery. She saw Smith tying the old man down onto the floor within some peculiar markings. Several candles surrounded him and a strange smell pervaded the air. Nurse Black was opening a locked chest and carefully unwrapping something. She turned and strode towards the old man kneeling at his head, Sarah could see now that it was a golden knife that Nurse Black held in her hand. Smith also knelt alongside the man and forced open his mouth, Nurse Black swiftly pulled up her sleeve, made a cut in her arm, blood dripped around her forearm and down into the old mans mouth. Smith closed his mouth and held it tightly shut, the old man shuddered a few times and relaxed. Then the chanting began. Nurse Black began saying words, or at least what Sarah thought were words over and over again. She didn’t recognise the language. This went on for some time and as it did the words changed, they got more aggressive, more guttural, more animal, less human. At the peak of this chanting Nurse Black suddenly stopped and raised the knife before bringing it down hard into the old mans chest. Blood sprayed upwards in a fountain and Smith held the body still as it struggled for a moment. A strange feeling passed throughout the house, it almost seemed to scream from within. What happened next caused Sarah to lose her grip on the ladder and fall to the landing floor. The last thing she saw was Nurse Black plunging her face into the open chest wound mouth wide open, teeth bared!

Sarah came to, seeing Smith awkwardly climbing down from the attic above her, spattered with blood. She got up as fast as she could manage and ran down the sweeping staircase towards the front door. It was locked and far too solid to break open. She saw Smiths bare feet coming down the staircase through the balustrading and she turned and ran to the right through a dining room with more makeshift beds in it. She staggered across the kitchen and the back door was open, she entered the conservatory and tried the door but again it was locked with a very sturdy mechanism. She heard Smith shout ‘Get back here!’ from within the house but she had to escape. She grabbed a chair and swung it with all her strength and broke the lock off the door. She kicked the door open and ran out into the rain. The floor was muddy under her bare feet, oozing between her toes, she didn't care she just ran.

She ran about twenty feet before the world dropped away beneath her. She slid down a bumpy slope and landed with a wet slap. She heard Smith shout again and tried to figure out where she was. She was in a hole. She was in the hole surrounded by the dead. She heard Smith shout something like ‘You can’t be far away!’ and it stifled her scream, covered in mud she quickly grabbed the nearest cadaver and rolled over pulling it on top of her. She lay there and held her breath as Smith peered over the edge of the hole holding a lantern. He seemed to look right into her eyes as he scanned slowly back and forth. She felt sure he had seen her but he hadn’t. After he left she breathed out as slowly and quietly as she could and lay there too afraid to move for what seemed like hours. The sun was about to rise and she looked around to see hundreds of bodies all around her. The body to her left suddenly opened its eyes and gave a silent scream via its tormented eyes. She climbed over the bodies and clambered up the side of the slippery hole as fast as she could. She scaled the garden wall via an old oak tree and disappeared into the woods.

Several hours later she reached a monastery, she was exhausted, feverish and the plague was setting in. Her boils had enlarged and were turning almost black in colour, she was vomiting and coughing up blood, she knew she didn’t have long. A priest guided her to a quiet room with a simple bed offering her water and bread. She insisted on him hearing her story and as tired as he was he listened and took notes of what she had been through. Over the next two days she became delirious and finally the Black Death took her but not before she had told every priest she could what was going on in that house. Unfortunately most believed her story to be the ramblings of a mad woman dying of the plague. The documents lay hidden for hundreds of years amongst the many others that were penned during that terrible era. Only now is the history of the house being researched in more detail and accounts such as this are coming to light.



Copyright Psionic 2011