The Murder of the de la Marrs

It had been years since the terrible murder of the de la Marrs, and people had been avoiding the old farmhouse since then. When Christina voiced her intention of buying it and turning it into a nice place where people can go for retreats, the mayor had questioned her motives multiple times.

The place was cursed, he said.

The spirits of the de la Marrs are still there, he said.

Knowing Christina, she was never the sort of person who believed in curses, even though she believed in ghosts. And she certainly didn’t believe that the place was cursed. Sinister, yes, but cursed? No.

Once she hired a local caretaker to show her around the property. The man was reluctant at first, but she offered a handsome price just for a tour and he couldn’t resist, not with a tight budget and too many mouths to feed. Plus, it wasn’t a good season for crops. The day they visited the property, he drove up the motel she was staying at in an old pickup truck, the paint chipped from weather and rough terrain. He had told her earlier that she should dress in overalls and boots, or at least pants and long-sleeved shirt, preferably if she had on a jacket as well.

No one has been in that place in a long time, miss, he had told her the day they were discussing the visit. None, and only God knows what kind of wild creatures and insects have been holed up there in the meantime. Best wear something that will protect you.

He had done mentioning about the terrible incident to Christine, he figured if the mayor couldn’t sway her, he himself most likely couldn’t. He just prayed that nothing would happen to them.

“Morning, Jackson,” Christine smiled as she closed the door behind her, dressed in a comfortable overall and a pair of sturdy boots made for hiking and jungle trekking. He was glad that she at least took in his advice.

“Morning miss,” he replied curtly with a sharp nod. As Christine climbed into the passenger seat, he lighted a cigarette and let out a puff of smoke out his truck window, staring out to the sky. It looked disagreeable. Maybe it was a sign that they should make it a quick and brief trip. Not that he was complaining. The sooner they finish the tour the better.

“So, since we are driving up to the place anyway, why don’t you tell me more about it?” Christine tried to strike a conversation, moreover than not trying to find out more about the place they were heading. There wasn’t much record of the old farmhouse, even in the town hall. She tried asking the locals but the lot of them refused to talk, too scared to talk. In fact, she considered herself lucky that Jackson was willing to help her, even if he was just in for the money. She couldn’t really blame him.

Jackson released the hand brake and stepped onto the pedal, turning onto the road. “What’s more to tell, miss? That place is a nightmare. Once some young punks decided it would be funny to spend the night in and play some stupid games of theirs, and the next thing we knew, one of them gone missing. For two months, before he was found dead, stuffed behind one of the old mantelpieces,” he took a puff, “horrendous, miss, if you ask me.”

“What about police investigations? How that turned out to be?”

“No clue, even they couldn’t figure out the murderer and ruled out the case as accidental death. Said they found some natural poison in the lad’s body,” he replied, still focusing on the road. “And this weird marking on his forehead, right here miss,” he took off his baseball hat and tapped the middle of his own forehead.

Christine shifted slightly on her seat. “What markings?”

“No idea, miss, none of us knew. But we reckon it had something to do with the de la Marrs. Their spirits, ghosts. Vicious creatures, miss…”

“Have you actually seen one, Jackson? Ghost, I mean.”

He looked taken aback by the question. “No miss, I don’t. But people have, and you can’t really call them liars when there really are weird stuffs happening in the house.”

“Well I hope that the stories are wrong, Jackson, because I’d be buying this place and having it haunted is just so unfortunate,” she sat back and adjusted her scarf, a little swayed by his stories. Murders and disappearances didn’t sound good for business.

They drove through the small town, which, even at the early hours had been buzzing with life. It wasn’t as busy as her current hometown, but Christine loved the place. Quiet and reserved, a perfect place to be after a turbulence in one’s life. Of course, she wasn’t at all expecting walking in through the front door of a ghost house. Literally.

The roads became narrower as they entered the greener area, but now everything looked grey. Jackson was right, it looked as if the sky were ready to cry, but Christine prayed silently that it would hold its tears for a little while longer. After been driving for another half an hour Jackson turned right into an overgrown path. It used to be a proper cobble-stoned driveaway but now it was covered in moss and crawlies. She noticed that Jackson’s hands were tensed on the wheel.

“Here we are, miss,” he cleared his throat, then stubbed out his cigarette even though there was still halfway to go, as if smoking in the very area might offend whoever was there. Christine slipped her phone into her pocket and got out, scanning the area. The yard was supposedly beautiful once, but now she could barely see the outline of the dried-up fountain, or the rusty metal benches around. But when she began to peel off the layers upon layers of greens in her mind, she could see that it was once a breath-taking place. The yard was twice bigger than the house itself, and in a distance, she could see more structures rising among the overgrown grass.

She turned sharply when she felt chills down her spine, and upon the look on Jackson’s face she could tell that he felt it too, although he was better at hiding it than she was. Taking a deep breath, she made her way up the stone staircase to the porch, stopping at the front door.

“Can I have the keys, Jackson?”

“Are you really sure, miss?” he frowned and took a step closer, enough to hand over the set of old keys to her. Christine didn’t answer him and unlocked the front door.

Once she did, she swore her ears caught the sound of someone -or something- wailing in a distance. It was faint and could be mistaken as the wind, but Christine was sure that it wasn’t. “Jackson…”

“I wouldn’t go in there, miss. I wouldn’t, it’s all yours,” he cut her off before she even began.

“You promised,” she stressed on the word.

“Well I didn’t sign up for this, miss! This… this thing! I’ll wait in the truck,” he hurried off, eager to get away as far as possible from the house. Christine bit back a groan and turned towards the open door. It was dark inside and so she took out her flashlight and turned it on before stepping inside.

The first thing she noticed other than the darkness was the musty smell coming off from the rooms. She paused to pull her scarf up before she continued walking, watching where her she stepped to avoid unnecessary accident, or rather, dead stuffs. She scrunched up her face as she reached what she would assume the living room, or if the house was generations old, some sort of a drawing room.

She made her way around the cloth covered furniture and did a round in the room and mentally calculating the cost to revamp it. The walls weren’t too bad off, they were mostly covered with torn wallpapers and spiderwebs up to the ceiling. The furniture was well covered, although she suspected that underneath, they won’t look pretty at all. The floor was the worst. She couldn’t make out if it was made of wood or not from the accumulated dust and droppings.

Those would be fun to clean, she sighed heavily.

A sudden chittering noise made her jump and almost slipped on the cloth covering a long tea table. She brought up her flashlight and pointed it around but found nothing that moved. It was probably a rat.

“No, it’s a not.”

She yelped and swore, turning around only to see a man standing at a corner. It took her a few moments before she regained her voice. “Who are you? Wha…what are you doing here?”

“My name is Theodore,” he stepped forward. When he did, Christine stepped back involuntarily. He smiled. “What are you doing around here? This is a place for anyone you know. People went missing in here.”

“I’m just looking around,” she admitted, though still wary of his presence. “I’m buying this place. What are you doing here? How did you get in?”

Theodore jerked a thumb to his left, where a huge part of the windows was missing. Even with the windows out the place was dark.

“Okay, what are you doing here?” she asked impatiently, uncomfortable of his presence in the room. “This is going to be my property soon.”

“This is an old house,” he began, ignoring her last comment, “And people who are scared tend to avoid this place. I don’t. I see this as an opportunity.”

“To loot?” she guessed. “That’s not right.”

He just shrugged. “Maybe. But I can show you around. I’ve been here a lot of times and explored the whole place. Your choice.”

Christine paused, contemplating her choice. She wanted to see the whole place, but this guy, she didn’t trust him. Moreover, when he just admitted that he had been looting from the house. Her conscience told her to go back to where Jackson parked his truck, but she knew that she won’t likely get this chance since no others would take her around. She slipped a hand into her pocket and felt her pocketknife. That somehow reassured her.

“Alright, please do. But don’t try anything funny,” she warned him, hoping that her voice came out braver than she felt. She guessed not, because Theodore just chuckled and shook his head before he turned and led the way.

Christine watched him as he walked ahead. He was tall and lanky, and he seemed to be around her age. He moved confidently in the dark, proving that he had been in the house countless of times before, which mildly irked her. She tore her eyes away from him when he noticed her staring, and focused on her surrounding, trying to memorize the identical rooms and corridors. “This isn’t a farmhouse; this is way bigger...”

A noise made her jump, heart racing so hard she could feel it in her throat. Turning around she realized with horror that Theodore was no where to be seen, and she was standing alone in the middle of the dusty corridor. Christine swallowed a scream. She couldn’t panic, although she felt it rising in her like an alarm waiting to go off.

“Theodore…?” she called out softly, tightening her grip on her flashlight to keep her hands from shaking. She pointed ahead, seeing nothing but long corridor and doors lining up on either side. Then back where she came from. She hadn’t realized that how far they had walked from the living room, and now she couldn’t even see the arch door they crossed.

Brows began to trickle with cold sweat, she decided to keep walking ahead, reminding herself that nothing would come for her. However, with every step she took, she heard another behind her, or was it just an echo of her own? This place isn’t good for echo.

Christine took a deep breath when she reached the end of the corridor, standing in front of an old oak door that was once must had been beautifully engraved in patterns. She dared to peek over her shoulder but saw nothing. When she turned back however, the oak door was ajar. She frowned, trying to remember if it was completely shut or partially opened when she first saw it. She reached out to push it open, hesitated, but did it at last. It revealed a larger room than the living room downstairs, and the musty smell was even stronger. She stepped inside, and instantly caught the smell of grass and faint sweet of vanilla. It was mixed with something musky and old, and she realized that she had stepped into a library. She made her way to the middle of the room and looked around, rows upon rows of decayed and tattered pages, a redolent of dust and forgotten knowledge.

There were sounds again and she found Theodore standing at the oak door.

“Where have you been?” she hissed, then immediately composed herself. “Where did you go?” she asked again, calmer.

“You were the one who disappeared on me,” Theodore accused. “I went through one of the doors and you weren’t behind me. How that makes me...”

Christine shushed him, and he raised an eyebrow. She stared into the dark, but everything seemed still.

“Hey, that must be the family who lived here before,” he pointed to a tapestry across the room. It was hung above an empty old fireplace, covering the overmantel. It might have been a deep shade of red once upon a time, but now it was covered in spiderwebs and stuffs neither of them wanted to know. Their footsteps were dampened by the carpet caked in dust. Upon close inspection, they made out a middle-aged man, a woman who looked like his wife, and three children. They looked ancient.

“So, this is the de la Marr family…” Christine muttered. Theodore flinched. “No one really says that name out loud anymore, Christine… moreover when entering this house.”

Christine frowned and dusted off one side of the tapestry, which revealed another figure. The face was ripped off as if on purpose, but it was clearly a young man from the built and the clothes he was wearing. “Who’s this…? I thought...”

“I heard that they had another son. The oldest one,” he said. “And he did something really bad and they kicked him out of the family. Burn away all his records and stuffs... but it doesn’t really add up to me.”

That caught her interest. “Why?”

“Let me show you,” he gestured for her to follow him out into another room a few doors away. At first Christine was reluctant, but her curiosity got the better of her and she followed him, albeit cautiously. The other room looked less like a bedroom and more like an old dungeon. It was almost bare, except for a broken bed and a massive wardrobe. Theodore was standing next to an opened chest someone had pulled out from under the bed.

“Did you do this?” Christine asked, mildly annoyed.

“I did, but for different reasons. See this?” he picked up a few yellowed photographs with frayed edges. The same young man they saw in the tapestry was in the photographs as well, with each face being burned into a hole. “This has to be the same guy. The son.”

Christine’s mind was reeling but a sharp noise woke her up from her deep thoughts. She shone her flashlight around. “Theodore...?”

“We should get out of here,” he said, and she was surprised at the panic look on his face. He dashed to the door, beckoning for her to follow him. Christine didn’t need to be told twice, but to her horror she found herself unable to move. It was as if her whole body was being petrified.

“Theodore!”

She called out his name again, but he was gone, and she was all alone. She tried to move again but failed. Her arms flailed desperately, reaching out even though she knew that no one was there to save her. Brows trickled with sweat as she grunted and scream. Only to find that her voice wouldn’t come out. Panic seeped in, and she instantly regretted following Theodore. No one would find her in here. Not even Jackson, who won’t go into the house. Her legs weighed a ton, and she couldn’t feel her toes. She tried moving back, or sideways, but none work.

“You shouldn’t have come in here, miss,” a voice greeted her at the door, and her eyes met with Jackson’s. He stepped into the room, his expression vacant and cold. Then a sickly grin cut across his face as a few other figures walked into the room.

“You shouldn’t have come in here…” he repeated, “But thanks to you, we have found the eldest son.”