Marchwood Hall

Chapter 7

"Thomas...."

The singsong voices rang out, long and playful, calling to him through the inky darkness.

"Come back Thomas, we miss you."

"Come play with us, we're lonely."

The steep stone steps led away from him, deep into the darkness below. They were down there; lost somewhere in the darkness they were waiting for him. He had to go to them.

The passage was narrow and there was not a rail to hold onto to aid his descent so Thomas braced his shoulder against the wall and began to make his way down. Feeling for each step with his wooden crutch he was moving faster than he should, growing careless and hurried with each step. Their keening calls ringing in his ears.

A desperate need was growing inside of him to find the source of those voices that called out to him. It felt strange and uncontrollable, they needed him, and Thomas felt powerless to resist their pleas.

The darkness surrounded him now. A brief look back behind him found the top of the stairs long out of sight, he'd walked down far deeper than should have been possible in any normal house. Surely the end of the staircase could not be much further down.

"Thomas please, we need you!"

"I know," Thomas called back, breathing hard at the exertion of making his awkward way down the steps. Hurrying down another two, three and still feeling no end to them. "I am coming. I'm..."

There was no next step. His words were cut of mid-sentence and replaced with a cry of fear as the crutch found only empty air and Thomas found himself falling. He threw out his hands, dropping the crutch away from him as he sought purchase on anything that might save him, but there was nothing there.

The rough walls of the tight passage were gone, there was nothing but thick, choking blackness all around. Thomas fell, swallowed by the dark and spinning through the air as he cried out in desperate fear for help, knowing no one would be there to save him

*

Thomas awoke with a shout. His heart was still pounding loudly in his ears and the bedsheets were stuck to the cold sweat that coated his body.

"Not again," he muttered, taking deep breaths to try and calm his body. He lay slowly back against the pillows, his heartbeat gradually slowing back to a normal rhythm. It was just a dream; a hideous, recurring dream that had plagued him for the past week, ever since they had visited the house.

Just a dream. At least that is what Thomas should have believed, but as his heartbeat slowed back to a regular rhythm, he could have sworn he heard laughter fading away into the distance. Those same voices that had called to him in his dream joyous at having caused him such terror as he slept. The same voices that he had heard inside of Marchwood Hall and that had almost really tempted him down those stairs he continued to revisit night after night.

That house had more stories to tell that those that lay on the surface, Thomas was certain. Perhaps the war had addled his brain because never would he usually have believed in ghost stories, but something lingered in that house; a darkness that had found and fixated upon him. Perhaps it saw him as a kindred spirit, or maybe an easy target.

Whatever the reality was he was even less than keen to physically return to that house than before, but he also somehow knew that those voices he continued to dream of were not about to leave him alone. If he really had to go back to that place he was going to go in armed with information, and if that failed him as Thomas was unfortunately afraid that it would, he would undertake his own mission in search of answers.