John Manning - The Killing Room

“Love,” the voice said once more, and then the whistle returned.

Kip switched off the device.

“That didn’t sound like a force intent on the kind of evil that has taken place in that room every ten years,” Carolyn said.

Kip shook his head. “Not at all. The voice was sad. Heartbreaking.”

“So she’s not the one who’s killing people then?” Douglas asked. “It’s the man with the pitchfork. The one who killed her in real life.”

“There’s no conclusive evidence that the voice we just heard was Beatrice,” Carolyn said. “Kip, I know you made that conclusion, but in the kind of investigations I’ve been trained to do, we can’t make any assumptions. We need direct evidence.”

“True,” Kip said. “The voice may have been another spirit, or force, or whatever we want to call it. But we held a séance after this communication. I’ll let Georgeanne take over from here.”

Georgeanne was quiet a moment before continuing the story. “I called upon Beatrice to appear to us. And she did. And she was crying. We asked her if she wished the killings to stop, if she wanted to release the room from her power. And she nodded that she did. So I used the words to invoke the ritual for ending a curse and asked Beatrice to follow along with me. She remained there, visible to both Kip and myself, and seemed to accept the words. Then I asked her to come with me out of the room. She did so. Kip and I walked up the stairs, and Beatrice followed us. I will never forget the experience. She was crying softly. Her long black hair fell over her shoulders. We walked through the foyer and out onto the yard. We walked all the way to the cliffs and turned to Beatrice and told her she was free now, that she was no longer trapped in the place where she had been killed. She smiled and continued walking-directly off the cliff. She vanished then.”

“So you can see why we had hope that the curse was ended,” Kip said softly.

“She was playing you,” Carolyn said. “She played along, let you think that she was really gone…”

Douglas put his hand to his forehead. They all knew he was thinking of his father again.

“Possibly,” Kip said. “Possibly she played us for fools.”

Georgeanne was shaking her head. “But I felt the energy in the room. When she appeared to us, there was no malevolence in her spirit. I, too, have been trained in my own kind of investigations. And I would recognize malevolence. The energy in that room that day was sadness. Grief. I believed her when she said she wanted the killings to end. But perhaps she is prevented somehow from doing so.”

“Yes,” Douglas interjected. “She’s prevented from doing so by that man with the pitchfork. He’s the evil force here! Why do you focus on Beatrice? He killed her. So he’s keeping her spirit trapped there and won’t let her go.”

“It might seem that way, yes,” Kip admitted. “But we focused on Beatrice because she was the only one who appeared when we summoned the forces in that room. The energy we felt there was feminine. The overwhelming presence in that room is Beatrice. And although we spoke with family members who reported seeing the man with the pitchfork, we never encountered him ourselves. We never saw him. We never felt his spirit. Only Beatrice responded when we called.”

“Though there is another force there,” Georgeanne said.

Carolyn was nodding. “The baby.”

“The baby?” Douglas asked. “What baby?”

Carolyn looked over at them. “In Kip’s notes, there was mention of a baby. That some in the family reported seeing the apparition of a baby.”

“Uncle Howie didn’t tell me anything about a baby,” Douglas said.

Kip sighed and stood from his chair, walking over to the edge of the deck. “It appears that Mr. Young picks and chooses the details he shares. For example, we never knew about the man with the pitchfork until other family members reported him to us. Then Mr. Young admitted he knew about him as well. We also did not know the manner of Beatrice’s death. Mr. Young only said that it was a tragic accident.”

“That was the same for me,” Carolyn said.

“So how did you find out?” Douglas asked.

Kip smiled. “Luckily, ten years ago, there were still a few old-timers in Youngsport who remembered the events of seventy years earlier. I’d doubt if you’d find any of them still alive today.”

“Why didn’t you include any of this in your report?” Carolyn asked. “I had no idea of the manner of Beatrice’s death either. There was nothing of it in your notes.”

“I discovered it at the very end of my research,” Kip told her. “By then, events were proceeding quickly. We had already cast Beatrice out of the room-or thought we had. I never had time to go back and write a conclusive report.”

Carolyn thought that was odd. Kip was one of the most thorough psychic investigators she knew. But for the moment, she let it go. “What did these old-timers tell you about what happened?” she asked.

“I could tell you,” Kip said, “but I think it would be better in their own words.”

Once again he stepped back inside the cottage. This time he returned with a much more conventional tape recorder. Placing it beside the other device, he switched it on.

“I had it ready in anticipation of your visit,” Kip said. “Listen.”

Kip’s voice floated from the machine.

“Will you state your name and age, please?”

“Harry Noons, and I’m eighty-eight,” came another voice from the tape recorder. It was a fragile voice, as dry as old leaves.

“And will you tell me everything you remember about the night in question and the events that took place at the Young mansion in September 1930?”

“Ayuh. I’ll tell ya what I know and what I can remembuh.” Harry Noons cleared his throat, a loud rattling sound that went on for nearly thirty seconds. “I was working up on the estate as a groundsman. I was a young man, barely eighteen, and times were tough. We had the Depression back then, you know. And old Mr. Young, the current Mr. Young’s father, he hired me and gave me some work trimming hedges and the like, and I was very grateful. And I noticed the girl they had working there. She was very beautiful. I admit I kind of fancied her myself. All the men who saw her did. She was just that kind of girl. To see her was to make your heart stop for a moment.”

“And her name was?” Kip asked on the tape recorder.

“Beatrice. I never knew her last name. She lived at the house. She did the housework and all that. She was very young. And here’s why she caused such a stir in town in them days. She wasn’t married. But she was in the family way.”

“She was pregnant?” Kip asked.

“Ayuh, sir, she was. And all the busybodies gossiped in town, wondering why Mr. and Mrs. Young, such pillars in the community, would keep her on. They thought she should have been cast out for disgracing their house in that way. But Beatrice stayed, and I’d see her walking around fluffing clothes and hanging them on the line, and she had her big belly right there, plain as day, for anyone to see it.”

“This was how many months before September?”

“Well, I think she had the baby sometime in the late spring. By September, of course, the baby was born and living there in the house with her.”

“Mr. Noons,” Kip asked, “there is no record at town hall of a birth of a child born to a woman named Beatrice in that year. Moreover, there’s no mention of a child in the newspaper notice of Beatrice’s death. Why is that?”

“Dunno. Guess they never filed no birth record. And if Mr. Young didn’t want something mentioned in the newspaper, it wasn’t.”

“Okay. Please proceed with your story.”