The Guest House Hauntings Boxset by Hazel Holmes (novel books to read txt) 📕

Confident that the door would be locked, Sarah reached for the knob. A light turn to the left, and it opened.

The hinges groaned, and dust drifted from the top of the door as it opened inward. Pushing it open, Sarah let go, letting it drift into the adjacent wall, where it thumped to a stop.

The wooden floors were in the same worn and tattered shape as the door, and they complained with Sarah’s every step. She checked behind her, making sure the noise hadn’t triggered any attention to herself upstairs. She knew that Iris’s room was somewhere on the fourth floor, and the last thing she needed was the old bag of bones finding her up here, despite what the night maid said.

The entire floor looked as if it hadn’t been inhabited since the house was built. Paintings in dirty golden frames hung from the walls, and Sarah took a closer look at the name etched at the bottom of the first one she passed.

Allister Bell – 1844

The man in the portrait wore no smile and sat on a gold-colored chair with a high back that was lined with red velvet cushions. While the painting had weathered over time, the focused expression of Allister Bell had not.

It was as if he was there in the wall, transported through time and staring Sarah directly in the face. He looked angry, as if her presence in the house he built offended him from the grave. But from her experiences with interacting with Bells, Sarah figured the expression was genetic.

Scattered between the paintings of the Bell family’s lineage were tables with small pictures and candlestick holders, dripping with long, hard strands of old wax. More dust, more cobwebs, more relics from a past that refused to die.

“Down here.”

Sarah looked toward the end of the hall, finding the woman at the window near the last door on the left, which was open.

Sarah left Allister to his brooding and continued her trek down the hall. Doors lined either side, the layout similar to that of her own floor.

The woman gestured inside the room, but Sarah hesitated. “What are we doing?”

The woman kept her head bowed and her face concealed behind the thick, straight strands of hair. “You must know why we’re here. It will help us.”

“You keep saying us,” Sarah said, her tone becoming acerbated. “Are we in some kind of danger working here?”

The woman barely tilted her head up and exposed her left eye. “Please. Just look in the room.”

Sarah remembered girls like her in the foster system. They were quiet and shy, beat down by the environment. She had always tried to help protect those girls, but she didn’t always succeed.

Finally, Sarah approached the door. Inside, the room was darker than the hallway. She crossed the door’s threshold and groped the wall for a light switch.

A chandelier that hung from the center of the room brightened, and Sarah arched her brows in confusion.

Unlike in the hall or even the rest of the house, everything inside the room was clean and new. From the floorboards beneath her feet to the paint on the walls and ceiling, there wasn’t a speck of dirt or dust.

The deeper Sarah penetrated the room, the colder it became. She rubbed her arms, shivering as she placed her hand on the bedsheets. When she turned around, the woman was in the doorway.

“The nightstand,” she said, pointing toward it. “Open it.”

Sarah reached for the drawer and pulled. At first glance, it looked empty, but the drawer was deep, and Sarah reached all the way toward the back. And while she didn’t find anything, the weight of her hand made the bottom of the drawer buckle. Sarah removed her hand from the drawer and then pressed down on the inside corner. It was a false bottom.

She wedged her fingernails into the side and lifted the bottom from the drawer, exposing clusters of old papers.

She removed the pages, the paper brittle and worn, and placed them on the table. She unfolded the top paper and discovered that it was a letter.

Much of the ink had faded, but the date was still legible. Still, Sarah had to read it twice before she was confident her mind wasn’t playing tricks on her. It had been written in 1882.

“The truth lies within those pages,” the woman said.

Sarah shuffled the papers in her hands. “What truth? What am I looking for—”

Before she could start on the first line, a door slammed down the hall. She looked back toward the door and found the woman gone, but heavy footsteps heading toward her.

Sarah quickly shut the drawer, keeping the letters in her hand, and then ducked under the bed, knowing it was too late to try and run.

The bottom of the mattress scraped against her back as she crawled, and she covered her mouth with her hand to quiet her breathing. She craned her head toward the door and watched a pair of dirty work boots enter the room. It was Dennis.

He walked all the way to the center of the room and then stopped. He said nothing and didn’t move. Finally, he walked to the closet and lingered there for a moment. Then he sat on the bed, the mattress buckling from his weight.

“I didn’t think you’d be awake already,” Dennis said.

A quick jolt of fear pumped through Sarah’s heart as it beat fast and hard against the floorboards. Unsure who he was talking to, she kept quiet and still.

“I’m almost done,” Dennis said, a pleading desperation to his voice. “But it’s hard.” His voice grew thick with phlegm.

Sarah looked around, scanning the room for other people, but it was just the two of them.

“Help me,” Dennis said. “Guide me.”

The lights flickered, and the door slammed shut.

“Yes,” Dennis said, his voice a breathless whisper. “Show me the way.”

The mattress buckled as Dennis lay down, his legs still dangling off the side.

The bed rattled, and the room darkened. The air grew so cold that it burned