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Doubting Thomasina
Just up the road from our house, outside the village, lies an old mansion. Legend dates it back to pre-Tudor times, but the village locals say the place is a lot older. Since the place is abandoned there tend to be a lot of stories about the place. Me – I wouldn't give two pennies for the stories, I just don't believe them.
I guess I should introduce myself before I tell you any more; my name is Thomasina. My friends call me Doubting Thomas as a joke. It takes a lot for me to believe in something that's not visible to the naked eye; I'm a firm believer in science.
Anyway, back to this manor house. There's all the usual tales about the place; the wife who was murdered and now returns as a white lady, the headless horseman, the ghostly carriage and four that takes its inhabitants up the driveway that's long been overgrown with weeds. I take my job as a skeptic fairly seriously and I spent a lot of time in the local library trying to debunk all these stories.
It was during once such debunking trip that I quite by chance came across a book. Not just any book – this one was a Victorian photograph album. Now to you it sounds quite ordinary, but to me it was one of the most bizarre things I have ever seen. Despite my skepticism I was intrigued, because every person in these photos was already dead when the picture was taken. The Victorians had a thing for spirit photographs, I discovered. They possessed a macabre fascination with the thought that a person's soul could be trapped in a photograph at the moment of death. Not just that either; sometimes at the moment of death you were supposed to be able to see the soul leave the body and this would be visible in the photo as a white mist thing just above the deceased's body.
I spent hours looking through this album. One thing in particular fascinated me. There was a photo of the old mansion outside the village and it showed five bodies lined up in front of it. According to the caption included with the photo, the mansion had caught fire and the family had suffocated from smoke inhalation. The fire had been extinguished before major damage was done to the building but the family was done for. Every single one of them perished that Halloween night – husband and wife, two small sons and a daughter. And here was a photo showing the bodies, newly deceased. I was horrified and fascinated all at the same time.
So here I sit; Doubting Thomas, on this Halloween night almost a century later, thinking about that photo. Something else strange has just happened – outside my window I saw a shadow walk by. Actually it flitted – that seems more in keeping with shadows. So now I am buttoning up my coat and pulling on my gloves, getting ready to see what it was that flitted just so past the window. It sounds strange to say that I should just step outside to look; after all it was a shadow and nothing more. But the shadow bore a strange resemblance to the dead man in the photograph and now I have to prove to myself that it wasn't. I close the front door behind me, noticing that it is past the time for trick-and treater's and now all that greets me is the odd jack-o-lantern and pumpkin, the flame inside flickering in the cool night air. The shadow is long gone but I seem to know where to go and I am led slowly but surely out of the village towards the old mansion.
As I approach the place I am surprised, but at the same time not, to see candlelight in the lower rooms of the ruin. My skepticism - always an old friend - tells me that this is not possible. But I can see it and so it must be. I turn up the overgrown drive and begin walking, noticing my friend the shadow ahead of me. The shadow seems to turn as if to observe me, I in this case must be the interloper.
I can smell smoke, thick and silent ahead of me. I can see in the lower rooms of the ruin and what I see surprises me. Warm golden candlelight greats me and I notice the walls are covered with old wallpaper and the odd family portrait, plus a nice daybed and a couch near the fireplace. The furniture is high Victorian, but strangely new to my eye. The dead woman in the photograph stands before the fireplace, warming her hands. As I near the window I glance in. She stirs the fire with a poker, returning it to the stand before she leaves. As she leaves I see her climb the stairs, perhaps to prepare for bed. I notice quite by chance that one coal from the fire rolls back out, un-noticed. It settles on the Indian rug before the fireplace and begins to smolder.
By this point I am past trying to decipher why I am seeing all this, my only thought is of the five bodies laid out before the house and the enterprising photographer who hoped to catch their souls in his photo. Shouting, I open the door and run inside. As I run up the stairs I can see the fire is now well under way below and that danger is imminent. I am greeted at the top of the stairs by my shadow, the man of the house. He holds a candle in one hand and smiles warmly, which I must admit I find odd.
"Hello, Thomasina. You doubt no more I see," he said, speaking in a rich baritone.
As he spoke the glow from the candles faded and the wallpaper changed to the rot and ruin of the present day. The flicker of the flames from below disappeared and I found myself teetering at the top of the rotten staircase. The solid body of the man before me faded until I could see right through him.
He spoke again. "Welcome this Hallows Eve to our house, why don't you stay forever?"
With that I felt the stair below me crumble and my balance was lost. I started to fall backwards into a never ending abyss, waiting so long before I hear my body hit the ground below and my bones break in a horrific sound that I will always have with me. As I fall, I fall into time and into the flames.
When the photographer comes to take the spirit photo there will be six bodies on the lawn in front of the mansion, not five.
Copyright Karyn Martin 2002
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