The Evil Within Read online

  “I will have breakfast waiting on the table, sausage, and eggs.”

  “That sounds good Hillary, see you in the morning.”

  Lyle and Hillary left the room and went back to their room for the night. I turned and looked at Elizabeth and said, “I hope that all of us get a good night’s sleep.”

  As Elizabeth left the room she said, “Yes, I sure hope that we can Mason, I will see you in the morning.”

  I woke up to the sun shining through the window. It seemed as if it was going to be a great day, and what do you know. No supernatural happenings occurred, and I got a great night sleep. I got out of bed, walked into the bathroom, opened the shower door to turn the water on, and jumped back. There was a giant tarantula right on the faucet lever. I grabbed the hand towel that was on the shower door, tossed it over the spider, and grabbed it. I then walked over to the window, opened it, and tossed it out the window, hand towel and all. I could not help but think that, tarantulas are not common in England. But I had no idea if they were or not. It sure scared the crap out of me though. Nonetheless, I walked back into the bathroom, opened the shower door, reach in, turned the water on, and in less than a minute, the water was hot enough to steam up the bathroom. I got in, closed the door, and wondered if anything out of the ordinary has happened to anyone else this morning.

  After I was done taking my shower, I went downstairs to the kitchen and found Elizabeth, Lyle, and Hillary setting at the table eating and talking away. As I pulled out the chair and sat down at the table, I said, “Good morning.”

  The eggs and sausage smelled so good that I scooped up a couple of eggs, and three sausages and put them onto my plate. After a few bites I asked, “Did anyone encounter anything out of the ordinary this morning”? All three of them shook their heads no at the same time and Elizabeth spoke up and said, “Why do you ask Mason?”

  “Well, I had encountered a tarantula in the bathroom this morning. It was sitting on the shower lever when I opened up the shower door.”

  Elizabeth replied, “What did you do?”

  I laughed and said, “The first thing I did was jump back. Then I took the hand towel that was hanging on the shower door, threw it over it, grabbed it, and tossed it out the window. Elizabeth, are tarantulas common here in England?”

  “I have to say that I do not know. However, I can tell you that I have never encountered one in the time that I have lived here.”

  Lyle spoke up, “Either have I, and I have lived here my entire life. You said you tossed it out the window of your room?”

  “Yes, it should still be within the hand towel.”

  Lyle responded, “Well lets got take a look.”

  We got up, pushed our chairs back under the table, and walked outside to where I had thrown the tarantula and hand towel out of the bedroom window, and there it was, the hand towel at least. I bent down and grabbed a stick that was near and used it to open up the hand towel and to my surprise, nothing was there, the hand towel was empty. I looked at Elizabeth, Lyle, and then Hillary and said, “What is going on here, I swear that there was an enormous tarantula inside the towel.” Then I thought, this was not the only weird thing that I have encountered since I met Elizabeth.

  Elizabeth replied, “I believe you Mason!”

  All four of us walked back inside the house, into the kitchen and sat back down at the table with a puzzled look on all of our faces. Elizabeth was the first to speak up and said, “Well Mason, I think we should get going. The sooner we leave, the sooner we will get back.”

  “Alright Elizabeth, I am ready whenever you are.”

  Elizabeth and I got up from the kitchen table, pushed our chairs in, went over and grabbed our coats from the mudroom, and walked out onto the porch. Lyle came up to the front door and said, “Have a safe trip you two, see you when you get back.”

  Elizabeth replied, “Alright Lyle, things will be fine, do not worry about a thing.”

  Elizabeth and I walked over to her exquisite four-wheel drive Jeep, got in, and waited for it to warm up to operating temperature and took off for White Heaven. In the first twenty minutes or so, the only thing Elizabeth and I talked about was that damn vanishing tarantula. The rest of the time was somewhat silent, and in less than an hour, we were pulling up to 666 Leave Street. Elizabeth and I got out, walked up to the porch, and rang the doorbell. The door was answered by a man in his late sixties, or appeared to be in that general age group and said, “May I be of service to you?”

  Elizabeth replied, “I sure hope so. Are you Vincent Branstone? My name is Elizabeth and this is Mason, may we speak with you about the Blackwood’s?”

  Right at that moment, I could tell that the man who answered the door was blind. He turned his head to one side listening for the sound of movement and replied, “Yes, yes I am! May I help you? I do not receive many visitors, please come inside.”

  Elizabeth and I followed him inside.

  “Please sit down and take a load off, make yourselves comfortable, I will have Chester bring us some tea. Oh, pardon me, how do you like your tea, hot or cold?”

  Elizabeth replied, “Cold tea would be just fine Mr. Branstone.”

  “No need for that, call me Vincent.”

  “Alright then, Vincent it shall be.”

  Within minutes, Chester brought in the tea, and then quickly left the room after setting down the tray. Once the formal introductions were made, I expected Vincent to have a good idea as to why we had come, but we both got a very big surprise, as Vincent inquisitively asked, “Should I have known the Blackwood’s?”

  “Well Vincent, since your sister had once worked for the Blackwood’s for many years, I assumed that you would recognize the name.”

  “I am truly sorry Elizabeth, but you seem to be a little confused. Bastelet was my mother, not my sister. I was the only child, and I regret to inform you that she has been dead for many years now.”

  “Vincent, do you have a photograph of your mother? I would like to see if the woman who claimed to be your sister bears any resemblance to her. Can you tell me why anyone would want to impersonate a sister that you never had.”

  “No, I cannot Elizabeth, but I sure can provide you with a picture of my mother.”

  Vincent rang the bell that was around his neck like a necklace, summoning Chester. When he came back into the room, Vincent instructed him to get his family photo album.

  “No problem Sir, I will be right back with it.”

  Within no time at all Chester returned with the photo album and handed it to Vincent.

  “You may look at all the pictures that you wish to Elizabeth, but I am sorry to say that the photo album only contains pictures of my mother and father.”

  Elizabeth opened up the photo album and started flipping through the pages when she suddenly paused, and her facial expression was somewhat ghastly. Poor Elizabeth, she was nearly brought to her knees when she pointed to a picture inside the old photo album. The woman who had worked at the Blackwood Manor was the same. Furthermore, the man in the picture standing beside Vincent’s mother was Elizabeth’s father, and had evidently fathered both of the children, one by Bastelet, which was Vincent, and the other by Gwendolyn, which was Elizabeth.

  “Vincent, did you say that the man in the picture with your mother is your father?”

  “Yes I did indeed Elizabeth, although I had never met him because he had died before I was born in a war. My mother was always telling me stories of his bravery right before her death. So tell me Elizabeth, does my mother look anything like the woman you are looking for?”

  Elizabeth looked at me with tears within her eyes and could barely speak a word, but managed to say, “No Vincent, she does not, I am sorry to have bothered you. Mason and I certainly appreciate you taking the time to speak with us and answer our questions.”

  “The pleasure was all mine Elizabeth, and it has been no bother at all. As a matter of fact, it gave me great pleasure to have the both of you as my guests for the time being. I get
rather lonesome at times since my mother’s passing. I surely hope the both of you can visit again sometime soon. I almost wish that I had a sister, perhaps then I might have persuaded you to stay a bit longer.”

  “I am very sorry Vincent, but we must be getting on our way. Please do not get up, we can find our way out. Thank you for your hospitality Vincent, you have been very kind to the both of us.”

  As we were leaving Vincent’s house I said, “Elizabeth,I am terribly sorry, if I would have known that this was going to turn out this way I would have never asked you to come with me.”

  Her face was pale, white like a ghost, as we walked out the door of the house, and got back into the Jeep.

  “I am glad that I came with you Mason, at least now I know that I have one person that is related to me, even if he does not. I just wish that I had found out sooner.”

  I still did not understand, was Bastelet really dead, or was she just possessed by an evil supernatural force?

  “How Mason, how could my own loving father do this to my mother and I? I sure wish that he was here right at this moment because I would choke him to death with my bear hands.”

  “Elizabeth, please do not torment yourself with this nonsense. So your father made some drastic mistakes in his life, neither of us can change what has already taken place. He was only human after all, but do not get me wrong, being human is no excuse for what your father had done in his life. People know what is right, and what is wrong, and we are given a choice in life to do the right thing, or the wrong thing. It is up to us which path we choose to take in life.”

  “Mason, being human is no excuse for what my father or anybody else does in their life!”

  Elizabeth started the Jeep and took off like a bat out of hell, screeching the Jeeps tires. She kept bringing up her father on the drive back to the house, and could not believe that he would have done such a thing. I tried to calm her down, but it was a waste of my time. Elizabeth seemed as if she was on a roll to get all her cooped up emotions out, and nothing was going to stop her. So I just sat back in my seat and listened to everything that she had to say. After a few miles went by I knew that the drive back was not going to end soon enough, as Elizabeth kept rambling on and on about her father, and my head started throbbing. It sure seemed as if the drive back to the Manor was taking longer than it took us to get to White Heaven. What could I say to convince Elizabeth that her father had been a mortal man when I was unsure of it myself? I guess the best thing to do was to keep my mouth shut, and let her vent all her emotions, or I would never be able to get a word in.

  We eventually arrived back at the Manor, and instead of parking the Jeep under the carport, Elizabeth pulled up in front of the house. We got out and walked up to the porch, and before I could touch the doorknob to open the door, it swung opened. It was Lyle greeting us on our arrival back to the manor. “How was your trip to White Heaven?”

  Elizabeth replied, “It was not a waste of time, I will tell you that much,” while she walked into the library.

  I spoke up before leaving the room and said, “I will tell you all about the trip to White Heaven later, but right now my head aches and I need some quite time.”

  I left and went directly to her mother’s bedroom, which was the only place in the house that I could find solace and solitude. I walked in and laid down on the bed, and before I knew it, my mind swirled like a whirlwind with many thoughts, thinking of all those things that Vincent had said to us back at his house. Then it came to me. What if Cassandra had somehow found out about Elizabeth’s fathers affair with Bastelet, and that is why he wanted to keep Elizabeth and her mother as far away from her as possible? That could be it, and a logical one at that. I felt sorry for Elizabeth, just knowing that she has to know the truth, whether it is what she wanted to hear, or not. Vincent on the other hand would never have to know the truth, unless Elizabeth wanted to tell him, and then it would come down to, would he believe what she was telling him.

  While Elizabeth and I were looking through the photo album back at Vincent’s house I had caught a glimpse of a death certificate with the name Bastelet Branstone printed on it, neatly in black ink. The year of her death showed 1866, which was more than a century ago, and the probable cause of her death was heart failure.

  I also wondered how old Bastelet would have been if she had been alive today? She was just a young woman when she had worked for the Blackwood’s. If I was not mistaken, and I could have been, Elizabeth would have been around eight years old, and Bastelet’s age at death was listed at fifty-seven, it just could not be possible. Bastelet would have been well over one-hundred years old, and one other thing that puzzled me was the picture of Elizabeth’s father with her. Elizabeth’s father, if I had been remembering correctly was only fifty-eight years old at the time of his death, and her mother had been fifty-two years old.

  I knew that I was good at calculating numerous math problems, but I also knew that it could not be possible for Elizabeth’s father to be old enough to be Vincent’s father too. It seemed as if the more I learned about the Blackwood’s, the more complicated everything became. I wondered if I would ever be able to put the puzzle pieces together to solve this insane nightmare.

  Nonetheless, it was now hard for me to keep my eyes open and stay awake. I kept dozing off and re-awaking with a twitch of my body until my eyes closed for good, and there I was, on an island, Devil’s Island. There was an enormous bonfire with a bunch of naked tribal men and women dancing around it. The tribal men looked as if they were in a trance like state, as they danced around the fire with the women, chanting louder and louder, a name that I did not recognize. It could have been in their native language, or just some mumbo jumbo that they had made up. It was a site to see, but an evil force was the source of it, and I knew that nothing good was to come of it. I could not help but wonder why I was there? I knew right away when I saw Elizabeth’s father along with Bastelet among them, but it seemed as if they were inside the raging fire, in what seemed to be an alter with just enough space for two people to sit. I tried to get a closer look, however, the heat from the fire held me back.

  Then suddenly and unexpectedly, nothing but silence filled the air, and the tribesmen and woman stopped dancing around the fire, focusing their attention in my direction. It seemed as if they were looking directly at me, but how could that be since I was hidden behind a bush, completely camouflaged. I thought they had to be looking at something other than me until one of the tribesmen shouted and pointed directly at me. My heart stopped, and a fear unlike anything that I have ever felt engulfed my body, and I awakened, quickly setting up in bed, drenched in sweat, when an immense realization came over me that I had only been dreaming. I grabbed my cell phone off the nightstand to check the time, and was shocked to see that I had only been asleep for ten minutes. My body was burning-hot, as if I had a fever of one-hundred and six, and my head felt like it was about to explode. I swung my feet off the bed to stand up and my legs could barely support my own weight. I managed to stand, but after a brief pause to get the blood flowing back through my legs, walked out of the bedroom, and started walking down the hallway to go find Elizabeth.

  I noticed Hillary walking towards me in the hallway and asked, “Hillary, do you know where Elizabeth is?”

  “Yes Mason, Elizabeth is in the library. I just saw her as I walked past the library to come up stairs. She was just staring at the wall, at least that is what it looked like she was doing.”

  “Thank you Hillary.”

  I walked down the stairs and into the library where Elizabeth was and said, “Elizabeth, I have got to talk to you right this instance, and I cannot afford to worry about the feelings you have for Bastelet and your father. Elizabeth, how old do you think Bastelet would be right now if in fact she turned out to be Vincent’s mother, and not the sister she pretended to be?”

  “I would have to say she was thirty or so when she worked for my parents as the head servant.”

  “Alright El
izabeth, now add the age she was then to sixty plus years for Vincent’s age, and that would make her out to be somewhere in the neighborhood of ninety and one-hundred years old, give or take a few years, whichever the case may be. In the photo album, I saw a copy of Bastelet’s death certificate. The year that it said that she had died was 1866. Do you realize what that means? I will tell you. I believe it stands to reason that if Vincent was the only child, and she was the one and only Bastelet, that would put her well over one-hundred years old. If that conclusion is correct, then just exactly how old does that make your father?”

  “Mason, you cannot possibly be right, I told you my father was only fifty-eight years old when he had died. You just have to be mistaken.”

  “Elizabeth, I do not believe that I am,” and then went on to tell her about the nightmarish dream that I just awakened from about Devil’s Island, and who I saw on that island prior to our conversation.

  “Elizabeth, we have got to get to Devil’s Island. I have a gut feeling that island holds the puzzle pieces that we need to solve this nightmare that we are in. I know it is a lot of years to trace back, but then again, what else do we have left to go on, nothing. I know that we will find something that would shed some light on things there. Or would you rather give up, move somewhere else, and pretend that the supernatural occurrences that we have experienced had never happened?”

  “No,” Elizabeth said with a saddened look on her face, “They would find and torment me where ever I go, so we have to keep searching for the answers that we seek until this horrific ordeal is over. I will make all the necessary arrangements tomorrow. Oh, and Mason, for what it is worth, I want you to know that you have been my strength and salvation over the last week through all that has happened, and no matter what we find at Devil’s Island, or how things might end up, I will always feel the same way about you.”

  A smile appeared on my face as I said, “Thank you Elizabeth, that means a lot to me, but how do you feel about me?” Trying to get her to say how she felt towards me once again.