THE CELLAR DOOR

by Karen Lewis

The old house glowed in the winter sunshine. Its turrets and widow’s walk were capped with snow. A large "For Sale" sign dominated the front lawn. It had been built by Nathaniel Pendle, a ship’s captain, and was known locally as the Pendle Place.

Marianne Ross, the listing agent, guided a young couple through the gloomy interior.

"Character homes like this don’t come on the market every day," she told them in her best sales manner, ignoring the obvious signs of damp rot, dry rot, and overall decay.

The house was proving difficult to move. It had been on the market for months. Marianne intended to ask the owner to reduce the price. She realised too, it wasn’t only its state of disrepair that was working against her, but the rumour it was haunted.

"The Pendle Place ghost has been seen by lots of people," Ginny the receptionist had insisted. She mentioned something about the haunting taking place when it snowed. But Marianne had not been interested in the details.

The truth was that she felt nervous enough in the old house. Not that she really believed in ghosts. Still…there was a creepy feeling in the Pendle place, that couldn’t be explained away as mere imagination. Marianne shivered a little as she glanced around at the cathedral ceilings and wall niches.

She was about to leave when she discovered one of her earrings was missing.  "Damn," she muttered. Now she would have to retrace her steps to look for it.

There was nothing on the upper floors save for cobwebs and mouse droppings. So that left the cellar. Marianne hesitated before venturing down there alone. She hated the steep rickety stairs and the cavernous underbelly of the ugly house.

The cellar door was heavy and unwieldy and once she had it open, Marianne looked around for something that would prop it open. But there was nothing. She then began the long descent down into the foul smelling darkness, cursing herself for not bringing a torch.

Her earring was nowhere in sight – perhaps she had lost it elsewhere – and as the dampness began to penetrate her heavy coat, she shivered and abandoned the search.

The cellar door would not budge.

Marianne threw herself against it in a panic and wrestled with the handle until her hands were raw. Then she banged on the panels with her fists until her knuckles bled. But it would not move an inch.

"Help," she called out in desperation even while she knew there was no one to hear her. She kicked at the door until her toes hurt, but to no avail. It was well and truly jammed. Exhausted, she sank down on the top step. What on earth was she going to do? She thought of her cell phone sitting in the glove box of her car outside. It was only a few feet away, but it might as well be in China.

"Damn," she cried out again. "Damn…damn…damn…"

Her situation was a desperate one. Normally, she would be missed and someone would come looking for her. But her husband Jack had left early that morning to go on a skiing trip, taking their son and his wife with him. They wouldn’t be back for three days.

"I feel guilty about leaving you all alone," he said. "Are you sure you won’t change your mind and come with us?"

But Marianne declined. Sliding down icy slopes was not her idea of a good time. Besides, she had lots of paper work to catch up on.

The thought of spending three days and nights trapped in the cellar of this gloomy mausoleum – with no heat, lights or running water – sent her into another frenzy of door tugging and hammering.  But all in vain. As if mocking her efforts, it remained solidly shut.

There had to be a window somewhere. She was wasting her precious energy on the door. But a frantic search around the dark cellar revealed only one window that looked big enough to crawl through. Providing, that is, she could find a way of reaching it.

Marianne looked around desperately for something to stand up on. Then she noticed some old wooden crates in a corner. She dragged one over and kicked off her high-heeled shoes, wincing as a splinter snagged her hand and her stockings caught on its rough edges. But she persevered and clambered onto it.

It brought her level with the window, which by the look of it hadn’t been opened in a decade. The lock was rusted up and wouldn’t budge.

"Damn…damn…damn…" she cried aloud in fear and frustration. What was she going to do? She’d have to find something to try and smash it with.

After rummaging around for a bit, she came up with an old steel crowbar. But the window was more difficult to break than she’d imagined. And it took all her strength to finally smash it. She closed her eyes against the shattering glass. But try as she might, she couldn’t make it through the opening, and was afraid of getting stuck.

"Help," she yelled as loudly as she could. "Help…help…help…" But her anguished cries went unanswered in the freezing air.

The Pendle Place stood at a fair distance from its neighbours which made the chances of attracting attention even more difficult.

"Oh god, what am I going to do?" Marianne wailed. She was now thoroughly chilled and wild with desperation.

She could hear the occasional car pass by and thought of her own car, complete with cell phone, just a few yards away. She had to find a way of attracting attention. But how? She rummaged through her purse, but there was nothing there that could help. Then she had an idea.

She stripped off her coat and white cashmere cardigan, wincing as the icy air cut her to the bone. Then she wrapped the sweater around the crowbar and waved it out the window.

"Help," she yelled. "Help…help…help…" She regretted having quit smoking. A lighter to set it on fire, would be invaluable right now.

After a while exhaustion took over, and she crumpled down on the filthy floor. Tears welled up in her eyes. Could she last here for three long days and nights? Or, would she perish first from hypothermia?

She glanced at her watch and was alarmed to see it was almost 3:00. The short winter day would soon be drawing to a close. What would it be like in here once darkness fell? Marianne shuddered with fear at the thought.

And it wasn’t only the tales about hauntings that held such terror for her, but the purely physical discomforts of cold, hunger and thirst. As well as the likelihood of rodents scuttling over her feet.

She thought of her comfortable warm house with its well-stocked kitchen and luxurious bathroom. What she would give for a long soak in a hot tub right now. Her head was beginning to ache, and she was growing numb with cold.

"Help," she called out the window in weary desperation, willing somebody – anybody – to hear her and come to her aid. "Help, help, help…"

But the answering silence only mocked her as it swallowed up her feeble cries.

It had just begun to snow when suddenly she became aware of a strange sound, which she tried desperately to identify. It was a sort of a creaking noise and it was gradually drawing closer to the house.

Marianne immediately resumed her efforts to draw attention to her plight: yelling at the top of her voice and waving her sweater out the window like one demented.

Then just as she was beginning to wonder if she hallucinated the whole thing, an old man wearing a long shabby coat and a woolen hat suddenly appeared out of the twilight. He was tall and stooped and was pushing a ramshackle old cart. So that’s what she’d heard. Relief flooded over her like a warm tide.

"Over here," she called out with almost a trace of amusement. "I’ve got myself locked in."

But much to her amazement, the old man walked doggedly on, circling the house and totally ignoring her pleas for help. What was wrong with him? Desperation gripped Marianne like a vice. Even if he were stone deaf, he’d still be able to see her sweater waving around. He couldn’t be blind as well, she reasoned.

Still, try as she might, she was unable to attract his attention. And he soon disappeared from sight.

Her disappointment was bitter as bile. To come so close to rescue, then be ignored in such a bizarre way was almost impossible to bear. She punched and kicked the wall in sheer frustration until finally, overcome by exhaustion, she sank down onto the icy floor and wept.

What was that noise? Marianne sat bolt upright, every nerve in her frozen body on edge. It was the creaking sound again. The strange old man must be returning. She scrambled up to the window and screamed for help as loudly as her lungs would let her. But the odd stooped figure – looming black amid the rapidly falling snowflakes – pushed his cart slowly past the house and ignored her as before.

Marianne screamed and wept with sheer frustration. Then a terrifying thought occurred to her. She remembered his rheumy unseeing eyes and wondered if he could be a phantom? What if he suddenly appeared beside her?

"Stop it," she upbraided herself sharply. "This is crazy…I don’t believe in such things."

Still, the way he simply ignored her…and oh my god, another unnerving thought just occurred to her. She recalled Ginny saying that the Pendle Place ghost is seen when it starts to snow.

The night closed in around her and she forced herself to keep on the move. She paced up and down, stamping her feet and waving her arms in an effort to keep from freezing completely. Her breath turned to vapour in the icy air.

She stayed close to the window and was comforted by the lights from a nearby house. At around eleven o’clock they were switched off, and she felt a great sense of loss. Her connection to the rest of the world had been severed.

She willed herself not to look at her watch too often, that way the time might pass more quickly. The snow stopped and the night was bright and clear. She watched the moon in its journey across the mysterious sky.

When she became too exhausted to keep up her restless pacing, Marianne would collapse for a while against the freezing wall until she could no longer feel her limbs. Then in panic she would struggle to her feet and force herself to keep moving again.

Apart from the occasional scurrying of mice and rats – which she tried not to think about – the silence around her was complete and impossible to penetrate. She began to lose all sense of time and place.

Hour after torment-filled hour, she willed it to get light and noticed the first glimmer of dawn with a rush of gratitude. She could never remember being so hungry and would have gladly killed for a cup of coffee and a piece of toast.

The distant sound of church bells filled her with sudden hope. Someone must come around the house today. Near enough that they would hear her cries for help.

With a tremendous effort of will, she heaved her aching body up to the window and yelled as loudly as she was able.

Nothing. But wait…what was that sound? She could swear that she heard children’s voices. Or was she just hallucinating? Her frozen ears strained to hear. Then it came again, the unmistakable sound of a child’s carefree laughter.

Marianne screamed as loudly as her parched throat would allow. "Help…help…over here, please someone…"

This was met by an ominous silence.

Oh god, they must have moved away, she thought in desperation.

But then there was another sound which seemed to be drawing closer. It was difficult to place, a sort of dragging and thumping noise. Then she saw her, coming around the corner of the house in plain view, a little girl on a sled.

Of course, Marianne exalted, growing quite mad with joy. That was the sound she’d heard. It was a sled being hauled over the hard packed snow.

"Over here," she yelled, and the child drew closer. She looked like a miniature Santa Claus, all bundled up in a red coat and hood. A long strand of flaxen hair had escaped and hung over her shoulder.

"I’m locked in the cellar," Marianne explained, feeling suddenly very foolish. "Please go and tell your parents right away. I need help desperately."

But how could one be sure with a child? How much do they understand? Everything is a game to them. What if she wasn’t allowed to play over here and didn’t tell for fear of getting into trouble? Marianne was beset with anxieties.

She asked her name, but the child looked shy and wouldn’t answer. She had obviously been told not to speak to strangers.

"Please, wait just a minute," Marianne begged, terrified that she would run away. Suddenly she had an idea. She grabbed her purse in hands blue with cold, and scribbled on the back of a business card. Help, I’m locked in the cellar of the Pendle Place. Then she handed it to the child.

"Please, please give that to your mother or father right away," she begged, tears starting to well up in her eyes. To be this close to rescue and yet still so far was a torment almost impossible to endure.

Marianne watched until the child was out of sight, and the sound of her sled thumping and dragging over the frozen ground could be heard no more.

Then she waited. Hopeful at first, then growing more and more despondent as the hours passed by. She hadn’t told anyone. There was no help on the way.

Marianne was slumped down on the floor in a semi-conscious state when she heard – as if from a long way off – the sound of the outside door slamming. (Of course, she hadn’t locked it.)

Footsteps crossed the hallway.

What if it was the strange old man? Or some other weird or dangerous character?

She could hear whoever it was struggling with the cellar door. Suddenly the thought of being free of this terrible place made her throw caution to the winds. She tried to call out but no sound came. When she tried to crawl, she found she could no longer move. The hammering on the door stopped. The footsteps were moving away.

Oh no, whoever it was must have given up. Tears of utter frustration streamed down her frozen face. It was no use. She was going to die. She was slowly freezing to death.

After what seemed like an eternity – but was actually only about ten minutes – the footsteps returned. Marianne heard the steady thudding of an axe, and the shudder the door made when it finally caved in.

It was the next door neighbour who introduced himself as Frank Irwin. He was appalled at her pitiable condition and explained he had only just found her card lying on his doorstep. In fact, he had been about to throw it away when he’d noticed the message scrawled on the back.

Huddled gratefully over a blazing fire, Marianne told Frank and his wife Pauline about the strange old man and how he ignored her cries for help. She didn’t, of course, mention her suspicions about him being a ghost.

"He looked as if he’d stepped right out of a bygone age," she said. "Like the old guys who used to come around looking for odd jobs."

"That sounds like old Clem," Pauline answered with a puzzled look. "He used to sharpen knives and scissors, that sort of thing. She hesitated before adding. "But I thought he’d died…years ago."

A couple of days in bed and, apart from a nasty cold, Marianne was none the worse for wear. She described her ordeal to her family, adding she had spoken to a man who’d been dead for years.

"In fact, he came close enough for me to touch." She saw her husband and son exchange worried glances.

"Now don’t tell me I’m crazy," she admonished. "I haven’t been working too hard. And I did not imagine the whole thing."

She did not, of course, mention it at work. Then one day, when she was about to show the Pendle place to a client, it all came pouring out. Ginny started her usual chatter about the haunting when Lyle the accountant began to ridicule her.

"There is no such thing as ghosts," he stated firmly. "They are simply the product of overactive imaginations."

"Oh really?" Marianne snapped. "Well, that’s where you’re wrong. I should know. I spent an entire night at the Pendle Place, locked in the cellar. And I did see the ghost that Ginny is referring to."

"You what?" Lyle’s mouth dropped open in disbelief.

Marianne explained what happened, then finished off by issuing a challenge. "If you don’t believe me, Lyle, why don’t you go around there when it starts to snow? That’s when old Clem appears."

"Old Clem?" Lyle snorted derisively. "Old Clem isn’t a ghost. He isn’t even dead."

"What?" Marianne looked completely taken aback.

"That’s right. Old Clem is alive and well, although he is stone deaf and half blind. And he can be seen any night of the week, soaking up the suds at the Hastings Tavern."

"…I…" Marianne found herself quite bereft of speech and felt terribly foolish into the bargain. She should never have listened to all that crazy talk about ghosts and hauntings.

Ginny looked equally perturbed and was about to speak when the telephone rang. The sound jolted Marianne out of her stupor and she managed to muster up a touch of defiant dignity before marching out the door.

Later that evening Ginny called her at home. "The Pendle Place ghost isn’t an old man," she explained.

"Look, I refuse to discuss the matter of ghosts anymore," Marianne snapped. "There is no such thing. I should never have let your ramblings influence my better judgment." She knew Lyle would be enjoying a good joke at her expense, telling all who would listen about what happened. She would never be allowed to forget it, or live it down.

But Ginny was not so easily deterred. "The Pendle Place ghost is not an old man," she insisted. "It’s a child."

"…A what?" Marianne repeated foolishly, memories of the child on the sled springing immediately to mind. So was she a ghost?

But she dismissed the idea immediately. She couldn’t be. The child was solid. She had accepted her business card and left it on the neighbour’s doorstep. And yet…there had been something strangely quaint about her: the clothes, the hair, and the sled? Or, was she just imagining that now?

"What does this child look like?" she forced herself to ask with just the right touch of nonchalance.

Ginny admitted she didn’t know. "But I think it’s a little girl," she countered defensively.

"Do you know a child who meets this description?" Marianne asked. She had met Pauline just as she was showing the Pendle Place. "About 5 years old with long flaxen hair and wearing a red coat and hood." She added it was the child who had been instrumental in her rescue, and she wanted to reward her.

Pauline looked thoughtful, but shook her head. "Sorry, it doesn’t ring a bell. There aren’t many children around here anymore. Except for a few from the subdivision who sometimes come over here to play."

That then, was Marianne’s next stop. She had to find that little girl. If only for her own peace of mind.

"And have you?" Jack asked when she told him about her quest.

"Not yet," she admitted. "But that certainly doesn’t mean that she was a ghost."

"Well, of course not," Jack agreed. "I just don’t know how you could have bought into such a crazy idea in the first place?"

AUTHOR'S BIO:

Bio: Karen Lewis is the author of the Detective Neil Slater mysteries; the Wolstencroft the Bear series for children; and the award-winning play "Hit and Run." She lives in Vancouver, Canada.