Satan's Sorority Girls 2, page 12
“For now we’ll start off in the cottage,” Seth said as he motioned behind him. “The house was given the name Rose Cottage after Rose Haiden had died. Some thought it felt fitting, others weren’t so keen on labeling her murderous torture chamber, but it has been over fifty years, and the name’s never changed.”
“I thought it should have had more roses,” Julia mumbled.
“You were right.” I nodded.
Julia and I stood back as we allowed the others to walk first, and Seth told us to mind our heads as we walked into the cottage.
I tried to focus on any sensations or magical energy in the air, but all I felt was a cool draft of air as it whizzed through the house.
The cottage felt much smaller on the inside than it did on the outside, and layers upon layers of dust and dead cobwebs seemed to cover every surface. Seth mentioned something about how it added more to the atmosphere if the cottage was the way Rose left it, so even an overturned chair in the living room hadn’t been corrected.
But as he continued to tell the group the history of the house, when it was built and who owned it first, I placed my fingers on every surface I came across. I wanted to form a connection with Rose, or perhaps the men she’d killed, and touching the objects she used felt like the best way to do that.
“Rose Haiden was born in 1928,” Seth said as he came to a stop in the archway between the living room and the kitchen. “She was an only child, and when she was fifteen years old, a fire unfortunately spread throughout their house in the middle of the night. Both of Rose’s parents died in the blaze, and the fact that Rose was the only survivor made some people wonder whether the fire was intentional…”
“They think Rose started it?” a lady beside me asked.
“They did.” Seth nodded. “Of course, no one will ever know what happened that night, but I happen to be among those who believe it was the start of her manic killing spree, because only three years later, Rose claimed her first victim.”
A tingling feeling began to swarm across my hands and into my arms, and I closed my eyes as I allowed the sensation to wash over me. Seth continued to talk to us about Rose, the blonde shine to her hair that made her look gentle and loving, and her bright blue eyes that everyone fell in love with.
But something about that description didn’t seem right to me.
I hadn’t heard of Rose Haiden before, and I definitely hadn’t seen any pictures of her, but as I focused on her name, a lady with brown hair appeared in my mind.
The brown hair was practically glowing in the darkness of my mind, and it was so clear to me that I could almost reach out and touch it.
“I thought Rose had brown hair,” I said as I tried to hide the confusion on my face.
Julia let out a small gasp beside me, and Seth frowned as he looked back at his clipboard.
“Man, I’m sorry,” he laughed. “You’re right, she did have brown hair. You must have been on this tour before.”
But I hadn’t been on the tour before, so how did I know Seth’s information was incorrect?
“Holy shit, Grayson!” Julia whispered. “I think it’s working.”
She was right, it definitely felt like something was working. But as exciting as this was, it also terrified me, because this unknown lady, Rose Haiden, had forced her way into my mind, and I couldn’t seem to shake her off.
Seth continued to tell the story, and how Rose would lure men back to the cottage. He told us that she got those men drunk, so drunk they couldn’t walk, and then the torture would begin.
But as Seth told us that, a voice in the back of my mind whispered their own version of the tale.
“That isn’t what happened,” the female voice felt as soft as a whisper, like they were my own thoughts speaking to me.
“I never forced anyone,” Rose told me. “They willingly joined me. They just weren’t aware of how the night would end.”
“People claim to hear the ghostly screams of the men coming from this house,” Seth said as he motioned around the room with his hands. “Others have heard screams coming from the houses where the men were later buried, so I’ll be interested to learn what you hear.”
Then Seth took us upstairs, and he claimed Rose’s bedroom was where the torture would start, and then the men were either dragged to the other houses already dead, or they were dragged there only for Rose to continue torturing them.
But Rose told me a different story. She was adamant all of the men were dead by the time they left the cottage, and she said how their pained wails gave her a headache.
I believed her, but then I had to ask myself why.
It felt like I hadn’t done much to connect myself to her magical energy, and I certainly hadn’t gone through the same tethering process like in the sorority basement.
All I did was focus on the sensations around me, and then I touched the walls and furniture of the house as I passed them.
But that was all it took for me to believe the serial killer who found her way into my mind.
I believed the lady who killed anywhere between ten and fifteen men– Seth said ten, but Rose said there were at least fifteen victims in her cottage. I allowed her into my brain, but I wasn’t freaked out in the slightest, and if anything, I started to get excited every time Seth said something, just in case Rose had a different version to tell me.
But a new feeling worked its way through my body as we entered Rose’s bedroom. The bed had been covered in tough plastic to keep the bedding well maintained, but there was still a hand mirror on the vanity table, and the wardrobe door had been left open slightly.
Seth described how some of the victims were supposedly strapped to the bed, or had to face water torture in the ensuite bathroom, but I was too distracted by the heat in my hands to pay much attention.
The tingling in my palms had vanished completely, and now it felt like I had a fire in my hands, or like I was standing in front of a burning heater.
I tried to scratch at my palms in an attempt to remove the heat, but it just seemed to get worse. I even used my teeth, but nothing removed the heat, and nothing soothed the insane itching.
The heat then slipped further up my body until a dull pain began to pound against my temple.
“Fucking hell, Grayson,” Julia whispered as she pulled on my arm. “Your eyes!”
I didn’t have the time to react. I just spun around to hide my glowing, red eyes from the room full of strangers.
“Is everything okay?” Seth asked as I rubbed my fingers against my eyes.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I whispered under my breath.
“Oh, he’s fine!” Julia laughed. “I think Grayson just needs a minute. This is a lot, you know?”
“I get it,” Seth replied. “If you want to go outside, you just have to let me know.”
I didn’t want to go outside, I just wanted my eyes to stop fucking glowing in the middle of a haunted cottage.
It was the first time my eyes had turned red since the night in the basement, so I had no way of knowing how to soothe the glowing light, or whether it was a case of just waiting until the light simmered down.
Fortunately, the pastel goth beside me was more than used to covering her eyes from the public.
“Here,” Julia whispered as she unzipped her coffin bag. “Put these glasses on. They should hide the light for now.”
“What if you need to use them?” I asked.
“I think you’re more important right now, Grayson.” Julia smirked, and then handed her star-shaped glasses over to me.
Personally, I would have gone for circular, or possibly square lenses, and I wasn’t sure if the stars went with my jeans and hoodie, but I also knew that beggars couldn’t be choosers.
Seth returned to the story, and as he described the spirits in the bedroom and around the rest of the house, I glanced out of Rose’s bedroom window in an attempt to calm myself down.
A low white light shone across the field at the back of the house, and nothing but the river separated the field from the cottage. A white-gray fog settled across the grass and through the trees, and I found myself staring at the fog as the pressure in my head slowly lessened.
But then, before I turned back to the group, two figures walked out of the fog in the direction of the cottage. At first I didn’t think anything of it, and perhaps it was just two residents on an evening walk. However, that thought quickly changed when the figures came closer.
They were completely see-through, almost like smoke drawings.
They were everything I imagined ghosts to look like, almost like the eerie white figures added to the background of old pictures.
“Julia,” I whispered as I blindly felt for her arm.
“Yes?” she asked as she turned back around to stand beside me.
“Is it just me, or are there two figures standing on that field?” I questioned.
I tried to keep my voice as low as possible, but Seth was still talking, so I hoped the rest of the group were too busy taking in his story to overhear our conversation.
However, Julia’s loud gasp completely gave our game away, and the entire cottage fell silent as Seth asked us if everything was okay.
“Sorry,” Julia giggled as we both turned back around. “I’m new to all this ghost tour stuff, and the information is chilling!”
“It is.” Seth nodded. “These tours aren’t for the faint of heart.”
“I’m just curious,” I said casually as I pointed to the window behind me. “What’s at the back of this cottage? Did Rose ever take her victims out there, too?”
Rose’s faint voice appeared again, and she told me she never buried her “lovers” in the “witches’ field.” But I did everything I could to ignore the manic killer while Seth gave me his own response.
“As far as we know, the bodies were only ever taken to the houses,” he told me. “However, I’m glad you brought up that field.”
“Oh?” I raised my eyebrows. “What’s it known for?”
“Some of you may know, if you’ve joined us before, that those fields were useful during the witch trials in the sixteen hundreds,” Seth explained with a slight chill to his voice. “The ashes of the accused were scattered across that field, or sprinkled into the river. We have other tours that take us onto the field, so you can take a look on the website to find out when the next one is.”
Some of the crowd gasped, but they all appeared interested to learn more.
Just like I was.
“It’s the same in Oakwell, too,” I replied. “The ashes were dumped on the grass behind the cathedral.”
“Yes, there, too.” Seth nodded, and then he smiled. “I see you’re a regular with these tours.”
“You could say that,” I laughed.
But inside I was screaming, and I wanted to get the hell out of there.
The figures in the field were as clear as day, and the fact that Julia noticed them, too, meant they weren’t a figment of my imagination.
Seth continued the tour after that, and he walked us out of the cottage and over to the other houses, but I knew I had to end the tour there, and Julia did, too.
I needed to know what we had just witnessed upstairs, and I wouldn’t have been able to do that with Rose Haiden’s voice taking over my thoughts.
Fortunately, given the way I had acted in the bedroom, Seth completely understood when Julia said we had to leave early. He thanked us for coming along, and he said it was normal for people to get a negative feeling while walking around haunted buildings.
I just laughed it off, and then I took Julia by the hand and practically sprinted back toward the car.
“Oh, my god, oh, my god, oh, my god,” Julia panted as she climbed into the passenger seat. “What the fuck just happened?”
“I was hoping you would tell me,” I replied through labored breaths as I handed her back the sunglasses.
My heart felt like it was going to rip out of my chest, and I was almost certain my lungs were seconds away from exploding.
My eyes had stopped glowing, and Rose’s voice hadn’t appeared again, but I still had the reminder of the ghostly figures, and that was all I saw whenever I closed my eyes.
“What were those figures in the field?” I asked. “They were ghosts, right? Like… actual ghosts?”
Mo was going to be so pissed that I saw them without him, but I hoped he’d understand.
“The figures in the field, the fact you knew Rose’s hair color, and your glowing eyes!” Julia jumped around in her seat. “Holy fuck, Master! They… They were ghosts! Literally formed out of thin air, and you saw them! I saw them! I’ve never seen a real ‘other’ before!”
“Never?” I asked a little uneasily.
“Nope.” Julia shook her head with a huge grin on her face. “I’ve communed with spirits a couple of times during full moon rituals of the dead, but I’ve only heard their voices for a short moment of time…”
“Right…” I said because I honestly didn’t know where to start with all of that.
“Thank you, Master,” Julia sighed blissfully. “Because of our tethering, you’ve already opened up a world of wonderful possibilities for me.”
“But how?” I frowned. “I’ve never seen anything like that. I always thought a ghost was more a sensation than a literal object. That… Fuck, I’m so confused.”
“I think we should try something…” Julia mumbled as she unzipped her bag and brought out her jar of teeth. “Come on, babies. Let’s show our master what we can do.”
I didn’t say anything, I just watched as Julia arranged her creepy teeth on the dashboard of the car, and then she pulled off her sweater to reveal the black vest she had on underneath. Her pale cleavage practically spilled from the tight top, but I only let myself admire them for a brief moment.
There were way bigger things at hand.
“I want you to tie this around your head,” Julia said as she handed me the sweater. “There’s slightly too much light in this car, so use this as a blindfold.”
“But… why?” I frowned.
“Because I want you to tap into the energy in that field,” she explained. “From everything that happened while we were in that cottage, it feels like you’re some sort of magnet to the afterlife. You barely had to think about it, and boom! Rose connected herself to you. Then two ghosts, the craziest fucking thing I’ve ever seen, literally walked out of the fog like something from a sweet nightmare. There has to be more to it, and I want to see what you find.”
“Okay…” I sighed as I rolled up Julia’s sweater and placed it against my eyes.
I tied the arms into a knot, and then I adjusted the material to make sure it blocked out any remaining light.
“Your perfume is nice,” I mentioned as Julia’s sweet scent filled my nose.
“Thank you, Master,” Julia said, and I could just imagine the smirk on her face. “But enough about my mouthwatering scent, you need to focus on–”
“I wasn’t focused on that,” I said in defense. “I just noticed it, that’s all.”
“It’s okay, Grayson,” she giggled. “I’m fucking with you. But you do need to focus on the task at hand, not on my scent.”
I rolled my eyes, even though she couldn’t see me.
“Okay,” Julia said softly once we were set. “I want you to think about yourself outside that cottage, then you’re going to walk around the side of the house until you reach the field. Once you’re comfortable where you are, I want you to think about the figures you saw. Focus on them for a moment and see what happens. It could be that you’re not ready yet, in which case that’s absolutely fine, but I just want you to try.”
I nodded my head, and I settled myself against my seat as I took a few calming breaths.
Once I was ready, I gave Julia a signal, and then she softly whispered the same melodic words from yesterday as I pictured myself walking back to the cottage.
I imagined myself walking up the small path that led to the cottage, the set of houses nearby, and the wooden gate that looked like it was going to fall off its hinges. But instead of walking into the garden, I imagined myself walking around the side of the cottage until I reached the river.
In my head, all it took was one swift jump to clear the river, and then I found myself in the field. I pictured the dark, looming trees surrounding the grassy area, and I felt the fog as it drifted over my hands.
But then my surroundings started to change as I felt myself sink into the grass. My first instinct was to crawl back out, and to stop the ground from swallowing me whole, but the more I lowered into the dirt, the more images that appeared in my mind.
A feeling of absolute chaos overpowered me, as well as complete sadness and uncontrollable anger. It felt like I was trapped in a mass of webs and confusion. White lights danced across my vision, my skin crawled like thousands of insects were wriggling across my body.
I wasn’t sure which thoughts were mine, and which appeared from the ground, but either way, the chaotic, lingering thoughts never vanished. It was almost as if I was stuck in a festering ball of bullshit, like a hoarder’s house, with layers upon layers of trash and negative emotions.
It was hard for me to work out exactly what I was looking at, or what I was feeling, but there was one thing I knew for certain.
So much destruction and negativity had occurred in this field, and now it sat in piles beneath the surface of the ground.
Then, as I started to process the various emotions, sparks of gold and purple lights danced through my eyes. The lights didn’t move like they did with Julia and Fiona, they stayed exactly where they were, but I was pretty sure I knew it was the magical energy from the field.
Perhaps it was a connection to the ashes which were dumped onto the grass without a single care in the world.
More anger and sadness began to seep into me, but it seemed stronger this time, like the lights were trying to make me aware of something.
If I had gathered some sort of connection to the witches who were murdered centuries ago, then perhaps they were trying to tell me their story, and perhaps they were the same figures I saw when I looked out of the window.
