Lucy's Visitor

Over the years Lucy had moved to a new house several times, but nothing had prepared her for her current move. She and her husband, Eric, had finally scraped together the funds to buy their dream home: a manor house on the Sussex Downs, surrounded by large, established gardens. Part of the house itself dated back to the sixteenth century, albeit with many later and varied additions. It had obviously been well-loved by its owners, with each leaving their own mark, thereby creating a hotchpotch of architectural features and internal decorations. They had both fallen in love with it the moment they walked up the garden path and the estate agent threw open the front door. The house oozed calm and friendliness, or so they thought.

The legal work involved in their purchase took several months, but finally the day of completion arrived and all their belongings were stowed in the removals van, ready for the journey to their new home. Niggling little problems arose as soon as they began unloading their furniture. They had forgotten to measure the rooms properly, so their double bed was too wide to fit through the passageway that led to the master bedroom. Luckily, the bed intended for the spare bedroom could be dismantled, so it was taken to pieces, hauled into the main bedroom and bolted back together. Similar snags occurred all round the property and by the time the removals men had unloaded everything and stacked the boxes in what seemed the most appropriate places, night had already fallen.

“I can’t be bothered to cook now,” Lucy said, as she flopped onto the sofa.

“Let’s go into the village and have a meal in the pub. It’ll give us a chance to meet the locals,” Eric suggested.

“May be next time. I don’t feel like getting changed and being sociable to strangers tonight. I’m sure I saw a chip shop on the opposite side of the village green. That’ll suit me for tonight.”

An hour later, they were sitting on the sofa again, eating cod and chips from the wrapper. The plates and the cutlery were still packed in one of the boxes in the kitchen: the only things they had searched for were a couple of wine glasses and the corkscrew.

“I’ll dig out what we need for breakfast in the morning,” Lucy said, as she sipped her chilled white wine. “I’m too tired to do anything else now.”

They finished their meal, took their first walk round the garden in the moonlight and then locked up for the night.

Lucy had ensured that the box containing their bedding had been carried up to their room and it only took a few moments to make the bed. Both she and Eric were exhausted physically and mentally by the move. Eric fell into a deep sleep as soon as his head hit the pillow, but Lucy lay in bed listening. It was the first time they had owned a property in the countryside and she found the lack of familiar sounds unsettling. Instead of the usual traffic driving along the main road and the distant sound of trains rumbling along the tracks, she could hear the wind in the trees and the strange baying of a fox in the wood behind their house. Little by little she felt her breathing slow down and she drifted off to sleep.

It did not last long though. She woke with a start a few minutes later, sure that she had heard a voice saying, “Help me!”

Lucy turned and looked at Eric. He was still fast asleep and snoring gently.

She listened, but the house was silent.

“I must have dreamt it,” she thought, adding, “but I don’t remember dreaming.”

Lucy settled back, drawing the covers over her shoulders. She lay there for a while, drifting in and out of that strange half-world that lies between sleep and dreaming, not really know what was real and what was imaginary. She was aware of seeing the shadowy figure of a woman of about thirty, wearing a tattered and stained dress. The most striking thing about her was the rope that bound her hands together, chafing her skin. The woman turned to face Lucy and seemed to mouth something that Lucy could not quite hear. She repeated it again and again, with her face contorting each time.

“Louder,” Lucy said. “You’re speaking too softly.”

The woman stopped walking and stared directly at Lucy.

“Help me! They mean to kill me!”

The woman stumbled forward, as if she had been pushed from behind. It only took Lucy a second or two to glance to the woman’s left and discover there was no-one else present but, but when Lucy looked back, the woman had disappeared.

Lucy assumed she had simply been dreaming and would probably have forgotten about the incident if it had not occurred again the following night. This time the colours were more vivid, especially the livid bruising around the woman’s wrists and down one side of her face. Instead of disappearing, she walked through the open bedroom door and turned right along the corridor. Without thinking, Lucy rose from the bed and followed. They walked downstairs and into the hallway. The atmosphere here had changed. Instead of the light and inviting ambience that had first attracted Lucy to the property, it now seemed foreboding and threatening. Lucy looked round the room, half-expecting to see something lurking in the shadows. There was nothing, or at least nothing obvious.

The woman lurched towards the front door, which opened silently, allowing her to pass through into the darkness outside. Lucy followed, only to find a wall of black outside. No moonlight, no stars and more importantly, no woman.

She returned to the bedroom, where Eric was still fast asleep. Lucy considered waking him and telling him what had happened but decided against it. He was a scientist and extremely unlikely to believe that she had seen something, whatever it might be.

This pattern continued for a week, with the vision becoming clearer and more distressing each time it appeared.

“You look tired, love. Is everything ok?” Eric asked her over breakfast.

Lucy stirred her coffee before replying, considering whether to tell him the truth or not. No, he was not the kind of person who would understand.

“Just getting used to the new home, I suppose. There’s still so much to do.”

“I know, but it will be worth it! I’ve got to go into work today, so why don’t you ring your friend, Emily and see if she wants to meet up for a coffee. The break will do you good.”

Lucy rang Emily as soon as Eric had left for work. She was hoping to persuade her to meet in town but was disappointed.

“Oh Lucy, I really want to have a look at your new home. I know you won’t have sorted everything out yet, but that doesn’t matter.”

There was a pause at the end of the line as Lucy tried to think of an excuse.

“And I’ll bring cakes. There’s a lovely baker’s shop in the village.”

“OK,” Lucy finally agreed. “I’ll see you about ten.”

Emily arrived punctually, brandishing a box of cream cakes.

“I have no idea how many calories are in there, but it’s a special occasion, so who cares?”

Lucy smiled for the first time in a few days.

“Come in. I’ll make the coffee and then show you round.”

As the coffee brewed, Lucy took Emily on a conducted tour of the house. Emily made all the appropriate comments, but seemed strangely restrained, especially whenever they crossed the hallway.

“Didn’t you say that Eric had gone to work?” she asked.

“Yes. He left about 8 o’clock. Why?”

“Nothing. Well, I just thought I saw some at the end of the corridor. Only briefly. Just a shadow really. Maybe it was a workman.”

“We haven’t got any workman in today. The carpenter is coming next week, but it’s just the two of us here now.”

They checked the downstairs rooms, which were all, thankfully, empty and then headed back towards the hall and the stairs. Both saw the shadowy figure of a man glide down the last few steps, pause on the last one and then turn towards the front door. He was dressed in black and although they only glimpsed him for a few seconds, they were both sure the style of his clothing seemed a couple of hundred years old.  Lucy was on the point of calling out to him when he vanished through the closed door.

“What the …” Emily began saying, then stopped mid-sentence and turned to face Lucy. “Is there something you haven’t told me about this place?”

“Come into the kitchen and I’ll explain.”

They retraced their steps and sat at the kitchen table.

“Some weird things have been happening since we moved in,” Lucy began, as she pushed the plunger down in the cafetière.

She explained in detail the things she had seen over the preceding week, adding that she had never seen the shadowy man before.

“But what does Eric think?” Emily asked.

“I haven’t told him. After all, he’s a scientist and he wouldn’t believe me. He’d probably think I was imagining it all.”

“Do you think the man we saw was trying to kill the woman you’ve seen all week?”

“He might have been involved, but then again, she definitely said, “They are trying to kill me” and not “He is trying to kill me.” I really don’t know what to believe.”

“My sister belongs to a local history group. I could ask her what she knows about the house. Perhaps that would help explain what’s going on,” Emily suggested. “Can you describe what the woman looks like?”

“I’ve only seen her briefly and not that clearly. I would say she’s in her thirties, about five foot two, blond hair and wearing a whiteish smock.  I can’t say any more than that.”

The following evening the phone rang.

“Hi, it’s me. Emily. I’ve spoken to my sister and I think we’ve solved the riddle, but it wasn’t what we thought at all.”

“Hang on, I’ll just take the phone through to the kitchen. Eric is watching something on tv, so I don’t want to disturb him.”

Lucy walked through the house as she spoke, being careful not to look along the corridor or into any corners in case something was waiting in the shadows.

“OK. Go ahead. What have you found out?”

“Your house, or at least the original house on that site, was built around 1500. There was a fire about sixty years later though and a new property was erected. Over time, it was added to and altered.

Anyway, the original owners were the Saddler family and the interesting bit of their history happened just before the Civil War. In June 1636 William Saddler married Elizabeth Warrene. He was about twenty years older than her, but she was attracted by his money and the property he owned. Everything was ok for a few years. They had three children, but one died in infancy. Then it seems she took a lover and decided to get rid of her husband. He was suddenly taken ill in March 1640 and she looked after him. Or so at least everyone thought. It was normal for women to know about herbal medicine then, especially which plants were helpful and which were poisonous, so at first no-one had any suspicions.

Apparently, some business needed doing in town and as William was still in his bed, Elizabeth went herself in their carriage. Whilst she was out William took a turn for the worse, so one of the servants called in the local doctor. He prescribed some potion or other and left a bottle of it, with instructions on how to use it.

When Elizabeth returned, she was furious, but she did use the medicine the doctor recommended, as well as her own.

The news of William’s illness spread and the local magistrate, who was one of his friends, called in to see him. When he asked what was wrong with the patient, William told him he always felt ill after eating.

Two days later, William died. The magistrate was uneasy and suspected there was more to the story than a simple illness. He questioned the servants and in particular the maid, who usually brought the meals up to William’s room. When he asked if she had noticed anything different in the past few days, she mentioned in passing that she had seen her mistress add something to the spiced punch that William always drank after his dinner. It was a powder of some sort and the servant assumed it was a medicine prescribed by the doctor. When he was questioned though, he was adamant he had only left a liquid behind. By this time, the magistrate was becoming increasingly suspicious and arranged for the house to be searched. His officers found a loose floorboard in the bedroom, with a wooden box and a mortar and pestle in the void beneath it. The box contained some dried mushrooms – not the sort you can eat, but poisonous fungi. Elizabeth was questioned, possibly under torture and eventually confessed to killing her husband, with the intention of then marrying her young lover.”

Emily paused.

“So, who was she talking about when she said they wanted to kill her? I don’t understand,” Lucy said.

“Probably the magistrate and his officers. They came to the house, arrested her and took her to jail. There was a trial, she was found guilty and hung. Apparently in those days, the body of an executed convict wouldn’t have been buried in a graveyard, but probably outside the parish boundaries, maybe at a crossroads. That could explain why she still haunts the house.  She probably feels she was denied a Christian burial. The man we both saw must have been her husband.”

She waited for Lucy to digest what she had just said.

“So, we’ve bought a house with two ghosts who are going to keep appearing to us, or at least to me?”

“Possibly not. It seems those two spirits are curious when someone new moves in, but after a few weeks they, well, lose interest. No-one has seen them more than a few times.”

Lucy was apprehensive, fearing that her nights would always be interrupted by Elizabeth whispering in her ear or by her late husband walking along the corridors.

Emily’s information was correct though. A month after Lucy moved in, all paranormal activity ceased.