I’m writing this on the only device I have left available to me. It is an old laptop computer I bought over five years ago. I am writing this as an account of my and my wife’s last days. I don’t know how long I have, but I pray that whoever finds this record heeds it as a warning and to get out of this evil and desolate place. I would suggest lighting it ablaze and destroying this accursed place, but I fear that may be impossible.
I digress. Let me start from the beginning. My name is Charles Lancaster. Just last year, my wife Ellen and I got married. It was on our honeymoon in this very region that we came across this very place.
After we had eaten breakfast at a local hotel, we decided to go on a hike through the nearby woods. As we walked, we marked our path, much as Hansel and Gretal, in the famous fairytale of old. We pushed through a particularly dense area of the woods and came upon a wrought-iron fence that seemed to grow straight out of the ground. I took a piece of cloth and tied it around one of the bars to mark where had come through the woods.
Curiously, we followed the fence line until we came upon a deserted dirt road and a gate. The gate had rusted shut, but we were able to push it open enough to squeeze through. We followed the driveway to a clearing. Although unkept, we could see the original beauty of the house before us. In the middle of the circular drive stood a stone fountain with angels, articulately carved. The front door was solid oak craftsmanship. I marveled at the wood and marble work on the outside of the large, seemingly forgotten mansion. My wife tried to push open the door, with little success. I then assisted her, and we were able to open it enough to enter. She went first, and I quickly followed behind her.
We toured the old home, making sure to take special care on the stairwells and the floors of the upper levels. I counted at least 10 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms, not including the large walk-in attic or the deep, dungeon-like basement. Broken plaster adorned the walls, but even so, we could see they were painted with images of the surrounding woods. Trees and leafy vines connected the rooms. The kitchen was the only room that was not painted in such a way, as far as we could tell. The massive kitchen boasted a large wood-burning oven and stove. Candle sconces lined the hallways. I could see no electrical wiring of any kind and assumed this house was built and abandoned before electricity was available in the area.
As a carpenter and a contractor, the possibilities of this old house intrigued me. My wife and I had agreed that this would make an incredible bed-and-breakfast getaway. We wondered who currently owned the property and why they never restored it. I personally checked the foundation and looked for rot. I found the foundation was still quite solid, but needed some minor repair and resealed. Rot was my biggest concern and in that, I was also elated to find very little. I knew it would be costly to restore and upgrade this incredibly beautiful house, but it had good bones and I felt it could be done.
We discussed the matter on our way back to the hotel and decided to inquire about it. The very next day, we went to the local courthouse and looked into the ownership of the house. What we found shocked us, as the house and all the surrounding property were county-owned.
Apparently, after the original and only owner died along with his wife and child, there was no next of kin to inherit it. The house, known as Barlow Manor, went up to auction, but rumors that it was haunted because of the grisly deaths of those in the house and the level of decay no one dared bid on it at auction. After a while, the house became more or less forgotten, except for being the source of local ghost stories. now and then, someone would venture up there, usually a teenager on a dare, and would return running and screaming about ghosts and demons. If we wished to purchase the property, we would have to wait to make a proposal at the next village council meeting.
Luck had it that the next meeting was the very next night, and we attended. We made a reasonable offer on the property and even outlined the plans. The council agreed on the spot and even offered to pave the road leading up to the old house. We thanked them graciously and went about the procedure to purchase the property.
I planned and waited for almost eight months for the road to be paved and to obtain all the construction permits, but finally, the day arrived, and we moved to the little village to start our new life. Before we could get started on the remodeling and restoring of the main house, we needed to get the outside taken care of. So, we hired a local landscaping company, and they cleaned up the property surrounding the house. They even repaired, painted, and cut the grass on both sides of the fence. We had a brand-new concrete driveway poured and sealed. We had the fountain restored and cleaned. We had all new piping installed to the fountain, but we couldn’t attach it to any water source until the restoration of the house began.
Finally, the day arrived for us to begin renovations of the primary residence. The first thing we needed to do was to clean up any trash in and around the residence. We hired quite a few of the local teenagers to assist with the clean-up. It was mid-June, and it was getting hot outside. I recall sending a small group upstairs to clean, and a short while later, I heard a scream. I rushed up the stairs and in one of the smaller rooms, one of the boys was screaming and begging to get it off.
He stood in front of the window, and I saw blood spreading across the window sill. When I reached the boy, I saw the window had shut, crushing his fingers. I tried but was unable to open the window. It took me and two other young men before we were able to open it. His fingers were completely crushed and bleeding everywhere. I rushed him to the hospital. The doctors said that the bones in his fingers had been pulverized into tiny fragments and the young man would require extensive surgeries. After a while, I was able to speak to him and ask him what had happened. He told me the room he was cleaning had gotten so hot that he could barely breathe, so he opened the window and stuck his head out to feel a cool breeze. Then he heard a noise behind him and turned his head to see what it was. His fingers were still gripping the sill, and that was when the window crashed down on them. He told me he could feel the bone pieces moving under his skin. I asked him if the window was difficult to open and he said no. He told me that it slid open with almost no effort and that he barely touched it. Almost as if he didn’t open it all.
Needless to say, when I got back to the residence, I sent all the children home and went about the cleanup with just me and my wife. It took a few extra days, but there were no incidents, so I chalked it up to a freak accident. It would be a few months before anything again would happen in the house. After we started to stay there ourselves.
The first thing we had to renovate was the plumbing and the living space for ourselves. Which we did. We were able to turn a few of the downstairs rooms into a little apartment for us, complete with a living room, bathroom, and bedroom, including a small kitchen with a tiny dining area. The entrance to our little apartment was off the office behind the check-in desk. There was also another door that led directly into the hallway. By the time we moved in, we had running water and electricity as well as a landline telephone. There was no cell signal at the house, and it would be awhile before we could get internet and cable ran to the house. The only form of entertainment we had was books, cards, board games, and of course, a radio. We loved to turn on the radio and listen to music. My wife particularly enjoyed listening to hip-hop and would dance around as she worked. I was more particular to classic rock. However, we both enjoyed the 60s R and B.
It was the third night that strange events began to take place. I remember being woken up that night, or early morning, around 3 a.m. by the sound of music. I got up to see where it was coming from. The music was classical, that I knew. I know I had heard the song before on either a TV show or a movie, but I did not know what song it was or where it was coming from. The doors in the apartment were all open, which was not uncommon. However, both doors to the apartment were wide open and I know we shut those. To be clear, we made sure to always shit and keep those doors locked. It was a practice to make sure we kept that part of our life away from guests and until we were fully open, any unwanted visitors. It’s not that we were afraid of anyone coming all that way to try to rob us, but the local wildlife and been known to come into the residence uninvited on more than a few occasions. More than once we had to shoe out a possum or a raccoon. In time, we had to open all the big doors because somehow a bear had wandered into the house. I tried hard to find out how such a large animal had gotten into the house or even the grounds, and I had no idea. As I look back, I wonder if the house let him in.
Anyway, that night I followed the sound of the music out of the apartment. My wife was still sound asleep in our bed. I walked slowly down the dark hallway as the music grew louder and louder until I reached the main dining hall. I stood outside the hall doors, which were French doors that opened outward towards me. They had were open and I know I shut them earlier that night. The music had grown so loud that it became almost deafening. I stepped through the threshold and as soon as I was inside the room; the music stopped. I stepped back out expecting the music to begin like in some old Three Stooges show, but nothing. I re-entered the room and looked around. I found nothing. There was no radio, no speaker, there wasn’t even a musical instrument. I found no source for the music. I was sure that the music was coming from the dining hall. I would also like to add that the dining room had a small stage on the far side of the room. When looking up the house’s history, I found that the couple who built the house would have lavish parties in that room and would have a live band play.
After I searched the room for the third or fourth time, to no avail, I returned to my little apartment. The doors had all been closed and locked from the inside, just as I had done before going to bed that evening. Finding myself locked out, at first, I decided to just find a cozy little spot and go to sleep. As it was now June, the temp was near the eighties even so early, but then the temperature dropped to frigid temps and all of a sudden I could see my breath. I began to pound on the door to wake up my wife to let me in. When she got to the door, she unlocked it, but it wouldn’t budge. She pulled with all her might, and I put all my weight behind the door, trying to push it open. Then, as if it was magic, the air warmed up, and the door flew open, sending us both sprawling to the floor. After that, we laid back down in bed, but neither of us slept.
The next few nights I had resigned myself that no matter what happened, I would refrain from leaving the bed, and so it happened that nothing out of the ordinary happened. I began to justify the events that took place that evening in my head. Maybe I was sleepwalking, and the music was just a dream. A cold front had moved in quickly and left just a quick to explain the temperature drop and that drop caused the door to swell, making it nearly impossible to open. All seemed possible if not plausible and since there had been no reoccurrence of those events, I was able to accept the justifications as facts.
It was almost three weeks to the day before anything else that could be classified as strange would happen. It was now early August and this time it was my wife who was awakened by a strange sound, that of a baby crying. When she realized what she was hearing, she quickly woke me up, and I heard it as well. I told her we weren’t leaving this bed, let alone the room, but she insisted we check it out. She was worried that maybe a homeless woman and snuck into the house and had given birth. As strange as that may sound, in my wife’s defense, she had told me the story of how her great-grandmother had given birth to her grandmother under a bridge. The woman had run away from her abusive husband, my wife’s great-grandfather, and took residency for a time under a bridge until she could save up enough money to get a place of her own. She was very pregnant when she left, and it was that baby that was one of the main reasons why. The story my wife told me, and then collaborated on by her mother, was that her husband, in a fit of rage, punched his wife in the stomach, hoping to cause a miscarriage. He wanted to punish her for burning dinner by making her deliver a dead baby. They also said he was thinking of leaving her for some woman he had met at work and didn’t want to be tied down by a child. So, she left and ended up having that child under a bridge with another homeless woman acting as her midwife.
I told her that there are a few precautions we must take before we begin our search of the grounds for the wailing baby. We both had to get dressed and take the keys as well. We also placed a few extra blankets and pillows in the hall outside the apartment door, just in case. We each had a flashlight as we left the apartment. Although we had electricity in that apartment, we didn’t have the rest of the house turned on yet. There was rewiring needed for the rest of the house that needed to be completed before we could. As we left the room, our flashlights quickly died. The batteries had been brand new and had just been put in the flashlight the week prior. This was their first use and their last.
Once the lights died, I returned to the apartment and found some candles and matches. We lit the candles, and I stuck the remaining matches in my pocket. We began heading down the hallway, jumping at any unexpected sound. I could see the fear in my wife’s eyes, and she saw the same in mine. Once we had reached the front room, we knew the sound of the baby crying was coming from upstairs. Slowly, we ascended the wide stairwell, closer and closer to the source. As we neared, the sound grew louder, much like the classical music the month prior. We reached the first door on the second floor and knew the sound was coming from behind it. I pushed the door open and there on the bed was a dark-haired woman. There were candles lit all over the room and a pail of water with bloody rags on the floor next to the bed that was placed in the center of the room. What looked to be a nurse, although she wasn’t wearing scrubs, but what looked to be a nurse uniform from the past? It was a dark dress with large white cuffs and a white apron over it that was smeared with blood. There was no sound except that of the child crying. The two women seemed not to notice us as we entered. Then a long, dark shadow dimmed the light from the candles, making it difficult to see. The woman turned towards the shadow and looked to be pleading with him. I jumped as a loud bang, louder than any gun I have ever heard, went off beside me and I watched as the woman’s head exploded all over the bed and wall behind her in front of my eyes. Then two more bangs, just as loud as the first went off and the woman who I gathered as the nurse flew backward out of the window. All that was left was the crying child lying on its mother’s lap. I say it not to be disrespectful, but as I do not know the gender of the child as it was completely wrapped in a blanket. Then the shadow grew darker and another bang and all of a sudden there was silence and darkness as even our candles were extinguished.
I rummaged through my pockets, pulled out the matches and relit me and my wife’s candles. There was nothing there. There were no dark-haired woman, alive or dead. There was no baby screaming or silenced, no shadow, no blood or brains on the wall or behind the bed. The bloody rags and bucket of water were all gone. The only thing that was there was an old ratty mattress in the place where once was a plush and fancy looking bed. The window the nurse had forced backward out of by the impact of the two shots was intact and shut. There were no candles at all in the room besides the ones held by me and my wife, and above all, there was no threatening shadow. The house seemed to go back to sleep after showing us it’s nightmare. It wasn’t until the next when I returned to that room in the full sunlight that I realized it was the same room in which that young man had had his hands crushed by that very same window the nurse had crashed out of.
Over the course of the week, we were awoken every night at the same time by the sound of a crying baby and what we assumed were gunshots. We took many tips into town during the daylight hours to try to find some reason for the nightly event. We talked to some of the elders and even visited the local library. All we found out was that there had been some sort of massacre at the house, but could retrieve no details. We did learn that the house had been empty for more than fifty years before the village was founded. It was the early founders of the town that had tried their hands at renovating the old estate. Over the years that had been numerous attempts, and all had failed. In some cases, the ones who had bought the grounds went into the house never to re-emerge. We were determined to not follow suit.
After months of construction and wiring, the electricity was ready to be turned on. The house became lit like a roman candle. From a distance, the soft warm glow of the incandescent light looks like a welcoming beacon of hope. It is not until you are up close with the house that the dream of hope quickly becomes a nightmare of indescribable horror.
After the electricity was turned on, the nightly sounds of the crying baby seemed to go away. Over the next week, we slept and worked in relative peace with the house. It was during this time that we had gotten the restoration of the first floor almost completely done and had begun working on the second floor. It was also during this time that I had found a handwritten diary hidden into the walls of the second floor, just down the hall from the room where we had encountered the crying baby and had witnessed the tragic end of the newborn’s cries.
The book itself had a hardcover and, although it was weathered and torn in places, seemed to be fully intact. I was very careful when I opened the cover and began to read the yellowing pages. After reading the first few pages, I was able to deduce that the diary had belonged to a servant girl who had worked and lived in the house. I began quickly scanning the pages, looking for mention of the child. I came to believe that this book would hold the answers to that strange and supernatural phenomenon. I neared the end of the book when finally there was mention of pregnancy.
Apparently, the lady of the house, a Mrs. Barlow, had become pregnant, and the staff had suspected the child did not belong to the master of the house, Mr. Barlow. I took the book back to our little apartment and sat it down and went back to work. All the while, my mind began to speculate about what had happened. After dinner, I sat down with my wife and began to read the details of the diary out loud to her.
The leaves had begun to turn as all hallows eve approached. The lady of the house grows bigger and closer to birth each day. Master Barlow, a meaner and sterner of a man, had never existed, was off to the city on a business trip. It was believed by many that he would not be around for the birth of the child, not that many held the belief that the child in question was actually his.
Some believed that the much older Mr. Barlow was incapable of such an act. It was rumored that
Mr. Barlow had never been able to consummate the marriage, to those individuals I say false. As the second-floor maid and hand maiden to Mrs. Barlow, I can fully attest that the relationship was consummated on many nights during the first year of their marriage, many times against the will of Mrs. Barlow herself.
I had been with Mr. Barlow at his city residence prior to his meeting with the current and fourth Mrs. Barlow. She was the daughter of one of Mr. Barlow’s residents and took her as back payment of rent owed to him. Once they were married, Mr. Barlow had forgiven all of his father’s debt and allowed his new father-in-law to live rent free in the house he had been staying previously. She was barely 15, with dark hair, green eyes, and incredibly beautiful. I overheard the arguments and the yelling coming from Me. Barlow’s office when he had summoned Mr. Hanson and his daughter and told him what he wanted as payment. Mr. Hanson was resigned to not allowing the marriage to happen and told Mr. Barlow that he would rather go to debtor’s prison before he allowed him to touch one hair on bis daughter’s head. Mr. Barlow, not one accustomed to not getting his was, began yelling that he would not only make sure he was sent to a debtor’s prison, but that he would never leave once there.
It was then that the young Miss Hanson spoke up and brokered the deal for her marriage to Mr. Barlow. If Mr. Barlow wanted her as his willful wife, then he must forgive all her father’s debt and allow him to live in the house for free, and even pay him a monthly stipend of $15 per month. Mr. Barlow, who was used to bartering for the better deal, negotiated with the lass. He would forgive the debt and allow him to live rent free but would not pay him a cent. He would, however, give her a $15 a month stipend and allow her to share it with her father if she so chose. She agreed, and they were married the next spring as part of Mr. Barlow’s sixtieth birthday.
We put the old diary away for the evening and headed to bed, discussing what we had learned about the people who had lived in the house a century before. Neither me nor my wife could believe that such a young woman had been sold into marriage in this country. We had to remember that this was not an uncommon practice for the time, and it was also not uncommon for a woman to be married by the age of fifteen. My wife commented on the fact that old rich men still had a proficiency to marry much younger woman to this day, just maybe not that young. The next day we would continue to work and the next night after dinner we would read more about the history of this house, hoping to find the story behind the gun shot and cries.
That morning, I headed into town. I wished I hoped to find out more about the house and the people who had it built. I spent the entire morning reading old newspapers, unable to find anything of significance about the house or the people who had lived there. An ad here or there for a maid or cleaning staff, Mr. Barlow being mentioned for a donation to the village for one reason or another. It wasn’t until the librarian had asked me what I was looking for and I told her. She gave me a number to an elderly woman who heads the village’s historical society and said she may have some answers to the questions that had been gnawing at me for days now. I thanked her graciously and set out to meet with one Mrs. Halvishom.
I called the number the moment I left the library and Mrs. Halvishom answered me on the fourth ring. She apologized for taking so long to answer as getting to the phone these days took a bit longer. I, of course, told her there was no need to apologize and asked if we could meet to discuss the Barlow house. I could tell she got excited about that and directed me to her house on the corner of Main and Elm Street, which also dubbed as the headquarters for the historical society.
When I arrived at the large Victorian house, I climbed the steps that led to the front porch and before I had a chance to knock, the door slowly swung open. Before stood a short plump woman with curly reddish hair that had gone grey at the ends. She said she had been waiting for me and knew I wouldn’t take long as the library wasn’t more than a few blocks away. Of course, nothing in this small village was more than a few minutes from this house, which seemed to be sitting in the epicenter of the village. She had been correct; the library was a little over half a block from the house. When I asked about the house in which we were standing, she told me that not only was this house in the center of the village it was the first house of Mr. Barlow. That he and his wife had lived here until the big house, known then as Barlow Manor, was completed. This house then was donated to the budding village by Mrs. Barlow and became the Mayor’s house. Every mayor for nearly one hundred years lived in this house, that was, until Mayor Jackson. It seems Mayor Jackson was also a farmer and wanted to stay on his farm with his wife, his family, and the men he hired to help work on his farm. By then, the house had been made into a historical landmark, as it was the very first building in the village. It was bought by her grandfather, Benjamin Anderson. It was he who started the historical society and her family who had inherited both the house and duty to run the society. However, as she never had any children, she has no idea what will happen once she is no longer able to run it.
While she talked, she poured coffee for both of us, and I drank the delicious black beverage with some gusto. When we finally got to talk about Barlow Manor and the Barlow’s, she pulled out a thick book. The book contained handwritten letters and pictures of the house before, during, and after construction. It also contained many photographs of the Barlow’s themselves. One particular picture stood out from the rest. The picture had three people in- Mrs. Barlow, who was a very beautiful and looked very young, standing next to a wiry thin older man in a bowler hat. This, I was told was Mr. Barlow. Mr. Barlow looked to be in his late seventies, and I began to understand why the staff believed he may not be the father of her child. The third man was older than Mrs. Barlow, but still quite a bit younger than the elderly man in the photograph with him. Mrs. Halvishom told me that was Gregory Barnett, Mr. Barlow’s business partner and cousin. In the picture, Mr. Barlow was next to his wife, staring at the camera. Mrs. Barlow, however, looked to be staring up at her husband, but upon closer examination you could clearly see that she was staring at the younger, more handsome Mr. Barnett. It was explained to me that this picture was taken on the second anniversary of the Barlow’s wedding, which would make Barlow 62 and Mrs. Barlow 17, if the diary was to be believed. Mrs. Halvishom told me that she believed that Mr. Barnett may have been in his early to mid-thirties at best, and that there was a rumor that Mrs. Barlow and Mr. Bennett were well acquainted.
It was then that I pulled the diary out of the bag I had carried with me to town that day and showed it to Mr. Halvishom/ She marveled at our find and began to read some of it aloud. After she had read the book, she then told me the story had been wanting to hear all this time.
Mrs. Halvishom put the diary on the table next to her and opened the large book that contained the pictures again. When she flipped to the back of the book, she looked at me and told me that what she was about to read was the police report for the night the child was born. My heart skipped a beat in the excitement and my hands began to sweat. I asked if o could record this so I could play it for my wife later that evening. She allowed me to, and I pulled my phone out and recorded it all. Once she had completed her tale, I sat in amazement. I then backed up my belongings, leaving the diary there with her and the historical society, where it belonged and headed back to Barlow Manor. I couldn’t wait to get home and tell the wife the story. Before I left, I took pictures of the old photographs with my phone. I wanted her to see it all.
It was getting dark by the time I got back to Barlow Manor. Ever since I heard that name, I began to use it whenever I talked about the large house as it was more than just wood and plaster, but a living breathing being of some sort. I told her all of this over dinner and for dessert I played her the recording of the old woman.
The construction of Barlow Manor was started in and finished in 1879, more than two years later. Mrs. Barlow had become pregnant in the following months. During that time, Mr. Barlow had gone on many business trips around the state and even into nearby states. His business partner and cousin, Mr. Barnett, stayed in the village and worked out of the local office and headquarters of their business. Mr. Barlow was the elder and majority shareholder of their company, which manufactured lumber for use in construction. The area was ripe with large maple trees, as you can plainly see to this day.
Reports from the staff and employees indicate that Mr. Barnett had gotten into the habit of going up to the big house on the hill to check in on Mrs. Barlow and keep her company. In those times it was not uncommon for relatives to visit and spend time with each other. So, it would not be frowned upon for Mr. Barnett to do so. Many times, he would have supper there and even sleep in one of the guest's rooms overnight. It was during these visits that, according to rumors, the two fell into love with each other and began a physical relationship, one many believed Mr. Barlow incapable of. This, however, was not true. During these times, Mr. Barlow was known to frequent many houses of ill repute during his trips. According to the house staff, it was shortly after their marriage that Mr. and Mrs. Barlow began sleeping in separate rooms and the only time Mr. Barlow would visit his young wife during the night was when he had gotten very drunk. Then the staff would hear sounds of screams and hitting coming from the room. The next day Mrs. Barlow would show up at breakfast covered heavily in make-up, trying to cover up bruising and sometimes even walking with a limp.
Mr. Barnet was the exact opposite. He was kind and gentle, especially towards her. Love letters from Mr. Barnett to Mrs. Barlow had recently been found, but according to some experts, they believe she never got to see them. On the night she was to give birth, Mr. Barnett had heard about Mr. Barlow’s return and that a doctor and nurse had been summoned to Barlow manor. In the middle of the during a terrible thunder storm, with pouring coming down so hard one could barely see more than a few feet in front of them, Mr. Barnett saddled his fastest horse and raced to be by her side.
Witnesses said he rode like a man possessed with no fear of the weather, Satan, or God himself. When he arrived at the house, he threw open the doors and called out her name in worry and panic. He heard her cries of pain and agony coming from the upstairs room that had been set aside for her to give birth in. He rushed up the stairs to find his cousin and business partner waiting for him.
Mr. Barlow had a revolver pointed at the younger man as the two stared at each other. Barlow accused Barnett of defiling his wife and implanting her with a seed of sin. Barnett confessed his love for her and charged the older man. The man was older, but not slow he fired the pistol and shot Barnett twice in the chest. The second bullet pierced his heart. Then he heard the sun dot the crying newborn and entered the birthing room where he shot his wife in the face, killing her instantly. He then turned the gun on the doctor and nurse and killed them both. At this time, he had to reload the gun, and then he took careful aim and silenced the child forever. He dropped the gun on the floor and left the room. It was here that he poured lamp oil on the corpses of his victim, all except the nurse whose body had been flung out the window from the force of the gun shot. Some day after he lit the fire, he planned on retrieving her corpse and making sure it burned along with the others. By the time the fire was put out and his crime discovered, he would be miles away, maybe even across the border.
But before he was able to light the fire, he had a heart attack and died just outside the room next to the man he had just killed. The superstitious folks of the time, and even some still to this day, like to believe that the ghost of Gregory Barnett reached into the chest of Warren Barlow and stopped his heart from ever beating again. Some say the spirits of the dead still linger in Barlow Manor. People believe the place is haunted and, even worse, that it is cursed. Over the years, many people have found the old house by going on hikes in the woods. Some have explored inside the grounds and even the house, and some have never come back. Few have even died on the property, and some seem to have simply disappeared without a trace.
That is where I stopped the recording. I filled Ellen with a few more tidbits that Mrs. Havisham had told me. That night we slept with quiet unease between us. We jumped at every little sound and you could feel our racing heartbeats through the mattress. We had heard the murders take place almost nightly until that evening. That evening, we heard nothing. It was silent, dead silent.
It had grown late and me and Ellen had finally drifted off to sleep when we were awoken by a loud bang that seemed to come from our little apartment. Slowly and terrified, I rose from our bed and crept towards the door when suddenly the door flew open so hard that the door handle had become stuck in the wall behind it. I was thrown against the wall by some unseen force and held there. I watched as the blankets were ripped off the bed and Ellen was dragged from the bed screaming. After she was dragged from the room, the force let go of me and I ran to catch up with her.
I followed her scream and saw her being dragged up the stairs. I climbed the stairs as fast as I could, taking two steps at a time. I saw her getting dragged into the room where the murders had occurred. The door slammed shut behind her. Someone or something did not want me to follow.
I tried kicking the door in, to no avail. Then I began hitting it with my shoulder and finally the door relented, and I burst into the room to see my Ellen laying on the bed. Her nightgown had been ripped off of her. I tried to get to her, but once again I could not move. I watched in horror as her stomach was ripped open and a small, lifeless body was pulled from her. She had been pregnant, and I had no idea. She screamed in horror and pain. She screamed for me to help. I still hear her screaming my name as I write this. Then I watched as her face collapsed in on itself and her screams stopped.
I cried her name aloud, knowing full well she could not hear me any longer. The force that held me to the ground threw me out of the room and I slammed into the wooden railing. I quickly began to run. I had a feeling that Ellen had been playing the role of Mrs. Barlow and, even though being her husband I should have been Mr. Barlow, I was cast as Mr. Barnett, the Baby’s father. I ran down the stairs, almost falling, and headed to the front door. I tried to open the door, but it would not budge. I wasted little time as I heard shots ringing through the manor, much like the ones we heard the previous nights. I ran into the apartment, shutting and locking the doors behind me. As silly as this sounds, I hid in the closet in our bedroom. It was here, in a box, that I found this diary and began to write. I hear the sounds and they are drawing closer and closer. I feel my time is nearly up. I hope someone finds this.
To my wife Ellen, I love you!
To my unborn child, I am sorry you never got to experience this world, this life, or how truly amazing your mother was.
That is the sound of the doors slamming open, the sound of my impending doom, the sound of death.
