Brackentree (standard:drama, 2820 words)
Author: Ian Hobson	Added: Apr 19 2004	Views/Reads: 3984/2442	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A family rent a holiday home in Scotland, thinking that they’ll have the place to themselves…

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

'Under a plant pot beside the door.' 

'I'll find it, Mum!' said the boy.  He was the youngest of the three
children.  He ran towards the front door and Mack heard a scraping 
sound as the boy tilted the large terracotta pot that stood beside it.  
'I've got it!' 

'Be careful with that pot, Edward,' warned the boy's mother.  Mack heard
the pot rock back into place. 

The rest of the family disappeared from view as they too approached the
house, and Mack heard the key in the lock and the sound of the front 
door opening.  He left the bedroom and went to stand in the shadows 
near the top of the stairs, looking down on the family as they entered 
the house.  There was a time when he would have gone down to welcome 
them.  But he had soon learned that visitors had been instructed to 
ignore him.  He could just imagine what had been said.  'Take no notice 
of the boring old fart that lives in the attic.  He won't bother you, 
if you don't bother him.'  People were so rude these days. 

'What's that pong?' the eldest girl asked, as she followed the rest of
her family inside. 

'It's just a bit musty, that's all,' replied the woman, opening the
nearest door and discovering the lounge, complete with colour 
television and video.  'We might be the first to stay here this year.  
It'll be alright when we've had the widows open a bit.' 

'I bet it's haunted,' said the other girl.  The man stepped behind her
and grabbed her shoulders, mimicking deep rumbling ghostly laughter. 

'Get off, Dad!'  The girl shrugged her father's hands off her shoulders.
'It might be haunted, anyway.' 

'Well, if it is, perhaps the ghosts would like to give me a hand with
the suitcases.'  The man turned and walked back outside. 

'Where's the bathroom?' asked the older girl, moving towards the
staircase.  'I need a pee.' 

'So do I,' said the younger girl, following. 

'I need one first,' said Edward, pushing past his sisters and racing up
the stairs. 

'No you don't!' they shouted, in unison, chasing after him. 

'There's supposed to be two bathrooms!  But let Edward go first.'  The
woman turned and walked along the corridor, her sixth sense guiding her 
unerringly towards the kitchen. 

As the children reached the landing, Mack backed into the doorway of
what used to be his son's bedroom, lingering just long enough to stick 
out his foot and trip the boy.  He didn't like boys.  Edward went 
sprawling across the floor, and began to cry loudly but unconvincingly. 


'Now what's the matter?'  The man was at the foot of the stairs, a
suitcase in each hand. 

'Naomi tripped me!' the boy managed to say, between howls. 

'I didn't!' exclaimed the oldest girl.  'Did I, Melanie?' 

The boy got to his feet, momentarily unable to speak or cry, as his
lungs were now empty.  He gulped air and then began to howl again. 

'Oh, shut up, you big baby,' said Naomi. 

'He did seem to trip over something.'  Melanie was examining the carpet.
'But I can't see anything.' 

'Well, put a light on or something,' said the man, as he carried the
suitcases up the stairs.  'It's dark up there.  You'd think they'd have 
painted the walls a lighter colour.' 

Naomi opened the nearest bedroom door, and the light from its window
illuminated the landing.  'I want this room, Dad,' she said, as she 
looked inside. 

The old wooden flooring creaked as her father came and stood behind her,
looking over her shoulder.  'You and Melanie can share it.  There are 
twin beds, look.  Feels cold though.  I think we better put the heating 
on for a bit.' 

'I want to share a room!' exclaimed Edward.  He had stopped crying.  'I
don't want to sleep on my own if there's ghosts.' 

'I'll share with you if you like,' said Melanie. 

'There's no such thing as ghosts.'  The man put the suitcases down and
lifted his son.  'Are you alright now?' 

'You should see the kitchen.'  The woman was back at the bottom of the
stairs.  'It's got a microwave and a tumble dryer and everything.  And 
the view from the window is brilliant.  You can see right down to the 
loch...  Have you found the bathroom yet?  I've found one next to the 
kitchen.' 

The girls began to open more doors, soon finding the upstairs bathroom
and disappearing inside.  Edward wriggled out of his father's arms and 
ran down the stairs to his mother.  'I want to use the one downstairs.' 


As the man picked up the larger of the two suitcases and carried it into
the master bedroom, Mack came out of his son's old room and made his 
way silently along the landing towards the one remaining closed door.  
This was marked 'Private' and led to the attic stars; and as Mack 
climbed to his retreat he sighed to himself and wondered how he would 
get through another season.  Bloody visitors! 

* Despite it being only mid April, the weather had turned very warm, and
the visitors, the Bradshaws, Mack had soon learned, were making the 
most of it.  There was just the one tiny window in the attic.  But from 
there Mack could see the two adults and the eldest girl sunning 
themselves in the back garden.  The younger children had discovered the 
orchard and were playing their own version of hide and seek, which for 
some reason, unknown to Mack, included a lot of screaming.  Worse than 
that, only two days into their holiday, Mrs. Bradshaw had started to 
use that unspeakably noisy contraption in the kitchen. 

Suddenly the high-pitched whining of the automatic washing machine
stopped and all was quiet.  Mack, realising that at least for the 
moment, the house was his, made his way down to the kitchen.  There 
were plastic bags full of groceries lying on the table; the proceeds of 
an early morning foray into town.  And the little oven thing, with the 
glass door, was humming gently, with a chicken on a glass plate 
rotating inside it. 

Mack thought about helping himself to something from the fridge.  He
opened the door.  The shelves were piled with all manner of things, 
mostly in colourful plastic tubs and wrappers.  'What on earth is 
Muller Light?' Mack wondered.  There was nothing there to tempt him; 
not even the cans of Foster's lager.  His appetite these days was not 
what it was.  A symptom of old age he thought.  And he had never liked 
lager.  Whiskey was a man's drink. 

Hearing footsteps approaching from outside, Mack quickly retreated to
the corridor.  Mr. Bradshaw entered the kitchen and stopped as he saw 
that the fridge door was wide open.  'Edward!' he shouted, sticking his 
head back through the door.  'How many times do I have to tell you to 
stop leaving the fridge door open!'  He stepped back to let Naomi in 
through the doorway. 

'He can't hear you.  He's right down at the bottom of the garden.  Mum
was in here last, anyway...  What's for lunch?' 

'You better ask your mum.'  Mr Bradshaw walked over to the fridge and
reached inside.  'I'm just after a beer.  Do you want a Coke or 
anything?' 

'I'll have a lager.'  Mrs. Bradshaw padded barefoot into the kitchen. 
'I can't believe how warm it is.  And that view.  I think I could sit 
and look at it for the rest of my...  Oh, now what?'  Outside Edward 
had begun to scream and clearly this was not part of the game he had 
been playing with his sister. 

Naomi looked through the window.  Melanie was racing up the garden path
towards the house.  She burst in through the door.  'Edward's been 
stung by a bee!'  Naomi rolled her eyes and shook her head as Melanie 
and her parents rushed back outside. 

'Serves him right,' said Mack, as he reached the bottom of the stairs
and began to climb them. 

Naomi turned towards the corridor.  'Creepy old house,' she said, before
taking a bottle of diet coke from the fridge and closing the door. 

* Edward's bee sting had done him no permanent damage and by the evening
the swelling had gone down.  After a chicken dinner, the family 
gravitated to the lounge, where Mack heard them arguing over what to 
watch on television.  Eventually they agreed to watch a video: 
Nightmare on Elm Street.  Mack had seen this one before and thought it 
thoroughly ridiculous.  He recalled the time another family had watched 
it and the subsequent screams in the early hours of the morning when he 
had inadvertently wandered into an occupied bedroom and sat on the bed. 
He stood outside the lounge door, chuckling to himself at the memory. 

'Who's there?'  Melanie was coming along the landing towards the top of
the stairs, carrying a teddy bear.  Mack hadn't realised that she was 
up there.  As she reached for the light switch, Mack shrank back into 
the shadowy corridor. 

'Dad, if it's you, you're not frightening me,' said Melanie, as the hall
light came on and she walked resolutely down the stairs.  Just then the 
lounge door opened, so Mack slipped into the dinning room. 

'Come on, Melanie.  You're going to miss the film.'  It was Naomi. 
'We're not waiting any longer.' 

'I thought I heard a funny noise,' said Melanie. 

'It'll just be the wind or this creaky old house,' replied Naomi.  'I
heard a funny noise before.'  But at that moment there was a crash as 
something in the dinning room hit the hardwood floor and shattered.  
The two girls stood and looked at each other.  The rest of the family 
immediately joined Naomi, who was still standing in the lounge doorway. 


'Now what have you broken?' asked Mr. Bradshaw. 

'I think there's someone in the dinning room,' said Melanie.  'I think
it's the ghost.' 

'There's no such thing as ghosts.'  Mr. Bradshaw headed towards the
dinning room, immediately followed by his wife and the three children.  
He switched on the light and looked inside.  There was no one there and 
the door to the kitchen was closed.  One of Edward's toys was on the 
floor at his feet, and close to it lay a shattered vase.  'It's just 
that vase that was on the little table beside the door.  It must have 
fallen off.' 

'Things don't just fall over by themselves, Dad,' said an obviously
worried Naomi.  'I think you should search the house.' 

'It's kind of you to volunteer my services.'  Mr. Bradshaw suddenly
seemed a little less confident. 

'I'm not staying here while you search,' said Melanie. 

'An I'm not!'  Edward's eyes were beginning to fill with tears and he
tugged at his mother's sleeve until she lifted him onto her hip. 

'Shall we search together?' she suggested.  'All of us?'  Though she
didn't lead the way.  She left that to her husband. 

Meanwhile Mack was in the kitchen.  He had trodden on Edward's toy and
then knocked the vase off the table.  Now he felt like a sneak thief in 
his own... well, his son's own house.  And as he heard the family 
hesitantly approaching the connecting door he slipped out and walked 
stealthily along the corridor and back into the hall. 

He had meant to go back upstairs but, without knowing why, he opened the
front door and looked out into the semidarkness of the moonlit evening. 
 He hadn't been outside for a long time.  He knew that there was a 
reason for this but it had slipped his mind.  Another consequence of 
old age, he reminded himself; memory lapses.  He stepped over the 
threshold and quietly closed the door, but then it came back to him.  
There was something wrong with outside; something frightening.  It 
began immediately the door was closed.  It was like being in a violent 
storm.  Wind tugged at his clothing.  Leaves fell from the sky and 
swirled about him.  Yet there was no sound and the moon or some other 
light source had become so bright that he could hardly see. 

He turned to go back inside but a female voice called his name.  He
remembered hearing her call before, but fear had always driven him back 
inside; back into the safety of the house.  As she called again he 
steeled himself and turned towards the sound.  The shadowy figure of a 
woman was walking along the drive towards him.  And she walked straight 
through the Bradshaw's motor vehicle as though it wasn't there. 

'Don't go back inside, Mack,' said Beatrice.  Her voice was clearer now
and her Scottish lilt sounded so sweet to him.  She took hold of his 
hand and together they walked away, and Brackentree was haunted no 
more. 


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