The Haunting of Westbane

Chapter Three - The Edwards House

Jeremy

The Control Center Van was our pride and joy. Eli had sold his father’s Camaro (can you believe that, his Camaro!) to buy the van. But then he’d done justice by the trade, fully customizing it so that the back could store all of our equipment, and then easily be converted into Brendan’s workspace once we parked at a location. He even had a heavy battery pack and inverter that could be used to power our equipment in the event that our location had no power source.

Yeah, that’s how deep in we were. The proviso to his investment was that he was the one who always got to drive the van, with me riding shotgun. Brendan was driving his car, with Harley and Mayah as passengers. Anthony was riding his bike. The house was located in a rural area outside of a small town in Connecticut. We would have had a hard time finding it without the help of GPS.

I had done some digging on the property. The original house was built in the 1800s. That house had burned down, leaving only the stone foundation. The German cabinet maker had indeed built his house on top of the original foundation in 1941. Eli mumbled something about coincidence but it was clear that he didn’t want to speculate on how Mayah had known that detail.

Time would tell. It always did with Mayah. Hang around her long enough and you got to see that the stuff she said was always dead right. Strange. F.ucked up sometimes. But dead right. Sure, anyone could access the historical files, if they knew what they were looking for. But even if she had just searched the archives, how would she have known which house to look at? Eli hadn’t selected that location until the night before the meeting.

Still, I didn’t push it. I got the sense that Eli didn’t want to waste any mental energy on our “spiritual consultant.” He was fully focused on the case now, with that same excitement and anticipation he always had. And I was right in there with him. It was like an addiction for both of us, diving into this grey area of the unknown. Using scientific methods to try and disprove claims of paranormal activity, all the while secretly hoping that we wouldn’t be able to disprove them. We were always looking for that piece of irrefutable evidence of the otherworldly.

Eli always said, “We all know that there is something more out there, and we all want proof.” It was sort of his unofficial motto.

Eventually, we pulled into the driveway of a very unassuming little house. It looked like any other cute starter home for a small family. It was small, boxish; two stories with dormer windows protruding from a shingled roof. There was a lush green lawn, with pretty flowers growing around the front porch. The house looked like milk and cookies and puppy dogs. It didn’t look like a haunted house at all. Unlike all the other places we had been called to which screamed Ghost House, even though they rarely were.

The owners were waiting for us by the back door. They were an ordinary-looking couple in their 30s, both of them a little plump, both of them wearing glasses. The man had a severely receding hairline and looked like he should be selling life insurance in an office somewhere. The woman... well she looked like she should be baking cookies. She held a squirming toddler in her arms, the little boy we’d seen in the file photographs.

“Hi, hello, thanks for coming. Please come inside,” the woman, Beth Edwards, welcomed us in through the back door into the kitchen.

“Wow,” I stopped and admired the unusual woodwork in the house.

“Amazing, isn't it? All the cabinetry and woodwork is original to the house,” Alan Edwards said proudly. He ran his hand along the kitchen cupboards. “It’s a shame someone painted these, but you can still see the fine craftsmanship.”

Evidence of the builder’s artistry was everywhere; the cabinets, of course, the built-in shelves, elaborate wainscoting - even the floors themselves weren’t just ordinary hardwood. The wooden planks had been arranged in diamond patterns. We sat down around their dining room table to do the initial interview. While we talked, they set down the little boy, and he wandered off to play with his toys in the living room. Beth Edwards watched her son go with a worried frown. “It wouldn’t be so bad,” she said nervously, “if it wasn’t affecting him too.”

The man put his arm over his wife’s shoulders in a comforting gesture. “It isn’t just affecting him... it almost seems like it’s centered around him.”

“Tell me more about what you’ve been experiencing,” Elijah prompted. He was sitting and interviewing the couple. Mayah was sitting beside him, while Anthony and I were filming. It was good to capture things from different angles. And it paid to have an extra camera for a more peripheral view - in case weird s.hit started happening in the room. Brendan and Harley were outside unloading and setting up the equipment we would be using for the investigation.

“At first it was little things,” Mrs. Edwards said, shifting uneasily in her chair. “We would come home and find the basement light on. And we would be asking each other, ‘Honey, did you leave the light on?’ And he’d be like, ‘No, I haven’t been down in the basement, you must have left it on.’ I think we were each blaming each other, you know? And then you start to question yourself, and even doubt yourself. I’d think to myself, I know I shut that door. But the door is open, so then you ask yourself... didn’t I? Maybe I didn’t shut it tight enough? You start to feel like you are going crazy.”

Mr. Edwards picked up the story. “At first it was just lights and doors... then stuff started going missing. Especially Pete’s stuff.”

Mrs. Edwards nodded. “He has this bear, it’s his favorite. He goes everywhere with it. And it keeps going missing... and then we find it in places... weird places where Peter couldn’t have possibly put it himself. Last week I found it in the rafters of the basement.”

“We’ve lost other things too... keys. Money. Hell, we are still missing about three hundred dollars, so you know, if you find that, we’d be super grateful.”

“But look, it’s getting violent now,” Mrs. Edwards said, wringing her hands. “A couple of weeks ago, we were all in bed, almost asleep, and I just got this real bad feeling, like something was wrong. And then, in the next minute, Peter was screaming bloody murder. We went in and he had these scratches on his face…” Mrs. Edwards shuddered at the memory. “Show them the pictures, Alan.”

Alan pulled out his phone and scrolled through the pictures, stopping at the one that showed the toddler’s face, with three, ugly welts from his chin to his left eye. I aimed the camera at the phone, being sure to capture the photos. “People said, ah, he just scratched himself by accident with his own nails. You look at that picture and tell me if you think he did that to himself.”

Elijah pulled the phone closer and then used his fingers to zoom in. “It appears that the scratches are going toward his eye... upwards.”

“That’s what I thought too!” Beth exclaimed.

“Can I get a copy of that picture for my files?” Eli asked, and I silently congratulated him for remembering. We couldn’t tell if a photo had been doctored from my video footage.

Mr. Edwards nodded, and sent it to him immediately, continuing to recount their tail as he did, “Ever since that night, he won’t go in that room. When we tried to lay him down in his crib the next night, he just screamed and screamed. Not like a normal tantrum, you could just tell that he was terrified. We couldn’t bear it, we had to move his crib back into our room.”

“And is he okay now,” asked Eli, his voice very professional, “since he’s in your room?”

“He is his normal, happy self.” Mrs. Edwards confirmed.

“Show them your knees, Beth,” the husband urged.

Mrs. Edwards flushed, pushed her chair back, and rolled up her pant legs to show us knees that were quite bruised and swollen, the right more so than the left.

“What happened?” I blurted. Damn, I would have to edit that one out. Eli asked again, knowing that we’d need the question in the take.

“Two days ago, I was carrying Peter down the stairs. I was about five steps from the bottom landing when it felt like something just pushed me. I landed on my knees on the lower landing. Thankfully, I never dropped Peter or anything, so he was alright, but my knees... well they're pretty stiff and sore.”

“You were pushed? Are you sure?” There was obvious skepticism in the question. So much for professionalism. I smirked behind the camera.

The woman’s jaw set. “You think I just fell? Well, tell me, if I just fell, how did I miss all the other steps on the way down? No, I’m sure of it, something pushed me... not down the steps, but away from them.”

Eli shook his head. “I believe you, Mrs. Edwards. Thank god you weren’t hurt worse. And thankfully the baby was okay.” Believe is such a strong word. Eli and I had spent many a night debating the question of belief. Nevertheless, Eli made notes of all their encounters on his notepad, until it seemed that they had run out of stories. “Well, if there isn’t anything else specifically, perhaps you could give us a tour of the house.”

“Yes, of course.” The Edwards pushed back their chairs and stood.

“I’m going to be using this meter as we tour the house,” Eli said, producing a small, hand-held EMF reader. “This measures electromagnetic fields. Sometimes old houses like this have faulty wiring or old appliances that produce high EMF fields. Those fields can potentially cause people to feel as if they are having paranormal experiences."

Mr. Edwards looked at his wife with a frown. “Does it cause scratches on your baby’s face? Does it push you down stairs?” I didn’t miss the defensive edge to his questions.

“I’m not trying to invalidate your experiences, Mr. Edwards,” Eli said politely. Good save. “I just need to establish the baseline and eliminate any other possibilities before we start.” It would not do to tell them that we would, in fact, try to disprove what they were saying. Something of that had obviously come across though, because Mr. Edwards did not look comforted or convinced as he began to lead us on a tour of the small house.

I continued to admire the craft skills of the woodwork as we made our way down a short hall to the living room and the front foyer.

“We don’t use the front door.” Mrs. Edwards explained. “The stairs are starting to rot, and they are so far from the driveway, it's just more convenient to use the back door.” We turned the corner to the staircase. The banister was an incredible hand-carved work of art, until it reached the second-floor landing and became a railing across the stairwell. The walls were all paneled with stained wood. On the second floor there were only three rooms: the master bedroom, the child’s bedroom, and a little room that Mr. Edwards used as an office.

We walked around the room that was supposed to be Peter’s. The walls were decorated with colorful hanging artwork, there was a bright rug in blocks of primary colors on the floor. Everything seemed cheerful and inviting. Eli only peeked into the master bedroom, not wanting to infringe too much on their personal space, confirming with a nod towards the camera that the crib had been moved into the room and situated under the north-facing windows. I waited until backs were turned to make a pan of the whole room, just in case.

“I’d like to see the basement now, if you don’t mind?” Elijah asked after we had descended back down the beautiful staircase. The door to the basement was just off the kitchen. Unlike the rest of the house, here the woodwork seemed rudimentary and serviceable, and not pretty. The stairs were uneven and everyone was gripping the handrail on the way down. Now, if Mrs. Edwards had fallen on this staircase, I would have understood.

The basement was mostly empty. There was a washer and dryer set up in one corner, the oil tank and boiler in another, plus a couple of pieces of broken furniture that the Edwards had stashed in the space. The cellar hole was shallow, putting the floor above only a few inches from my head. I was glad I didn’t have any hair to catch the cobwebs. Mayah walked just ahead of me, her eyes distant as she ran her hand along the walls.

“They sealed the stone foundation with cement...” she said softly.

“Yeah, I guess, but look at those boulders in the corner! I suppose they were just too big to move, so they cemented around them!” Mr Edwards stated enthusiastically.

We moved closer to the dark corner, and sure enough, the tops of two massive boulders stood, sealed all around by poured cement. Eli wasn’t terribly interested in a couple of rocks, but he wanted to run his EMF meter around the furnace and the breaker box. He had his back turned to the rocks, and to Mayah, when Mrs. Edwards pulled on his sleeve. “Um, is she alright?”

Eli turned back and looked at Mayah seated on the rock, she had something held in the crook of her arm like a baby and was rocking back and forth and making a small, distressing sound. I looked at Anthony and motioned for him to keep his camera trained on Mayah and continue filming.

“Uh... Mayah?” Elijah called to my cousin.

She didn’t seem to hear him. Her eyes had that vacant, faraway look, as though she were seeing something from inside her head, rather than out. She didn’t acknowledge anyone as she continued to rock.

Mr. Edwards frowned as he noticed the thing she was cradling in her arms. “Hey! Where did you get that? That’s Peter’s bear.”

She blinked, and her eyes focused on the couple. She looked from face to face, finally settling on Elijah. She seemed a little startled as she looked down at the tattered and well-loved stuffed animal in her arms.

“Mayah?” Eli prompted again.

She stood and offered the teddy bear back to Mrs. Edwards. “Your ghost is a woman,” she said quietly. “She lost her baby... and she wants to replace him with Peter.”

Mrs. Edwards gasped and clutched the bear against her chest. “What??”

Mayah’s eyes glanced around the basement as though she were seeing it for the first time. “She didn’t die in an accidental fire. She set the fire.” White lines bracketed her mouth for a moment. “She set herself on fire. And now she wants your son."