Page 16 of The Haunting of William Thorn

“ OUT! ”

William startled awake to feel a pressure across his legs. He tried to open his eyes, but it was as if they were glued shut. He was both awake and asleep, existing in the void between his body being motionless and his mind alert.

His first instinct was to shout, but his lips were pinched together. It was like a hand had covered his mouth, fingers digging into the soft flesh of his cheek.

But his arms were fixed to the bed beside him.

Panic dragged him from his dreamless sleep. A scream gargled in his throat, but he couldn’t release it.

Someone or something was holding him down.

An image of Edward flooded William’s mind. Was he on top of him? Had Edward broken down William’s walls of distrust, dampened by wine, only to pounce on him in the dead of night?

Somehow, beyond the panic and darkness, he knew that wasn’t the root of this. Edward’s hands had been warm, soft and real. This pressure was the callous. Cold. An unforgiving, deathly chill kept him forced to a bed like an insect pinned to paper.

William tried to move his legs, but he felt no sensation. Perhaps this was another dream? It would explain the strange occurrence he experienced. This nightmare would end if he could just calm himself down.

But nightmares couldn’t talk – shouldn’t talk.

“ Out ,” it hissed again, soft as a whisper yet sharp as a knife.

A brush of wind caressed William’s ear. The feeling was feather-soft, sending a sickening shiver across his frozen body.

William felt a single tear slide out of his left eye and track down his cheek, staining the pillow in a puddle of dampness.

He still couldn’t open his eyes, but somehow, he knew if he did, he’d see something to his side.

A kiss of stank breath dusted across the side of his face – the flirting tickle of a lip brushing carefully over the faint hairs that coated his ear.

“Out .”

The command was powerful the third time. William felt the single word pierce his soul and poison him from the inside out. Then it was over – gone like a whisper caught on the wind. Suddenly, his body belonged to him again.

William’s eyes opened, a scream rupturing out of his throat.

Hanbury Manor was cut apart by his shouts.

William wasn’t in the safety of a bed, shut away in Robert Thomas’s room. No. He faced a familiar door… a door far from the room he should’ve been inside.

He was stood on the top floor of Hanbury Manor, so close to the attic door that the wood brushed the tip of his nose.

Stumbling backwards on panicked feet, he hit the banister, cracking fragile wood against his hip. If it weren’t there, he would’ve tipped over the edge and fallen.

The space around him was bathed in obscurity. His eyes, filled with tears, strained to look around him to make sense of his location. Behind him, a window revealed ominous clouds coating the night sky. He was at a height, and the realisation made him stumble back on numb feet.

How did he get here? More importantly, why?

William’s heart was in his throat. It beat so viciously it choked any attempt to breathe, let alone scream again.

Silver light burst to life as lightning split the sky outside, casting the landing in a stark glow.

It revealed every detail of the empty space.

Movement caught in the corner of his eye.

Something was behind him. A flash of shiny red as lightning caught on the material urged vomit to claw up William’s throat.

Slowly, he turned around. His hands balled into fists, and that was when he heard it. Breathing. Deep, raspy breaths, like the person was struggling to fill their lungs. But by the time he faced the door, there was no one to be seen.

Relief lasted but a moment. Fear dwelled long after.

“Out!”

William spun back to the staircase, the blood rushing from his head, making him dizzy. What he saw before him was unlike anything he could imagine.

A man hung, suspended in the air, directly before the grand window.

Their face was blurred by shadow, but the flash of lightning highlighted their figure’s outline.

William couldn’t move. He couldn’t release the sorry whimper that stuffed his larynx.

All he could do was look upon the floating apparition, bile scorching his throat.

In a single moment the person’s head bent to the side, their neck snapping, the sound enough to snatch William out of his state of shock.

William clamped his eyes closed as he screamed.

His soul tore apart as all his terror gouged out of him.

Fear coiled beneath every inch of his skin.

It crawled among him as though spiders lived inside his veins and bones.

He dropped to his haunches, gathering himself in a ball and covering his head with his hands as if that would protect him from this nightmare.

“I’m dreaming, I’m dreaming,” William sang to himself, refusing to open his eyes. “It’s just a dream. It’s just one big fucking nightmare.”

And yet, as he spoke his manifestation aloud, he could still hear the crack of bone and the rasp of ruined lungs.

It could’ve been seconds, or hours, before a set of heavy hands grasped for him.

Soft, warm and real. The touch came so suddenly that William’s initial reaction was to fight.

Blindly, he threw out his fists, battling away the hard figure that accosted him.

His body shook, his ears roaring with the rush of blood, that he almost missed his name being called.

“William, it’s me. It’s – ouch, that was my nose…”

William continued to fight against the force until solid arms wrapped around him. The more he did, the stronger they became. This was it, he thought. This was the end. If that horror didn’t murder him, his own reaction would.

In one last attempt, William was drawn into the protective embrace of a warm body, a soft hand drawing down the back of his head.

“Go away,” he bellowed through the bubbling expanse of fright. “Please, just leave me alone!”

Still, the arms held on firm.

“It’s Edward. Look at me and see. I’m not going to hurt you.” The response partially penetrated through William’s boundaries, but not enough to calm him completely. “You’ve just had another nightmare. It’s okay. I promise it’s going to be okay.”

There was a kind brush of a mouth against his clammy forehead, followed by the vibration of that promise repeating over and over, seemed to finally calm him. If but a sliver, enough for William to stop resisting and open his eyes.

William found himself face to face with Edward, his piercing brown eyes and full lips. The mass of hair stuck up at awkward angles, a bead of sweat rolled down his temple. William opened his mouth to speak, but the urge to vomit down Edward’s chest was so sudden that he clamped his lips together.

“What in the hell has happened?” Edward asked.

Even if William wanted to answer, he couldn’t.

“I heard you scream,” Edward continued, breathless, face flushed. “I came up as quick as I could. Are you all right… are you hurt or something?”

William nodded, then shook his head, then nodded again.

He couldn’t explain what he’d seen except that it must have been some wine-induced nightmare.

In all his life, he’d never sleepwalked, and in the space of hours, he’d done it twice.

Except this time, he didn’t remember following anyone.

One moment, he’d been paralysed on Robert’s bed; the next, he had woken outside the attic door.

And how could he explain that? Words were impossible, not helped by the raking pain in his skull and the deep-rooted sickness in his gut. Even in his state he knew the power of words, and if he didn’t pick his answer wisely, Edward would be the next person to condemn William as crazy.

He couldn’t have that.

“Help me… back to bed,” William managed, hyperaware that Edward’s eyes were scanning every inch of him, searching for answers.

“Not until you tell me what you saw!”

Why was he so adamant I’d seen anything?

A sharp pain sliced through William’s skull. He straightened, hyperaware of the comfort this stranger’s touch offered him, and how – deep down – he didn’t want it to end. “Nothing, Edward. You’re right, it was just a bad dream.”

Although they both knew that wasn’t the truth.

William could see that Edward didn’t believe him, but he didn’t question William.

Instead, Edward helped him up from the floor, wrapped a firm hand around his side and guided him back down the stairs.

With every step they took, William fought the urge to turn and look back, searching for that ghastly figure he’d seen.

One, to prove he wasn’t crazy.

Two, because the apparition had worn Archie’s coat. The flash of red, the light catching on shiny material, that was what he’d seen. It didn’t make sense, and as soon as he got back to his room and found the coat on his bed, he would prove that this was all just some fucking nightmare.

“God. You really spooked me there for a second,” Edward gasped through a forced laugh. “I thought I was dreaming about someone shouting, and when I woke it was like the sound had been drained out of the manor entirely. On top of that, I’m beginning to think you are a liability to yourself.”

“I didn’t mean to frighten you.” William admired Edward’s attempt to make light of the situation, but nothing could cut through the haze clinging to him. Numb. “And I’m sorry if I woke you. This… this has never happened before.”

“It’s okay.” Edward brushed a soft hand down William’s back. “You don’t need to explain yourself to me.”

Was it? William was beginning not to trust himself. He’d even barricaded his room from the inside, and by the time they got to it, the furniture had been put back into its original place.

Had he done that?

“I’m just overtired – I think the move and all the excitement that followed has sent my head on a bit of a spin. I regret to say it out loud but I don’t think the wine helped either.”