Westerfield Manor

Chapter 5

        After making cookies and watching another horror movie the girls went to bed at midnight.

Grace lay awake wondering if she would hear the creaking sound on the stairs again. Her thoughts went back over the information they had found out about Westerfield Manor that day. She wasn't sure why, but she felt it was important to find out where the old house had been built. It was something to do with the two children who had died in the fire that terrible night. Why hadn't their bodies been found? Yes, there was something strange, something not right about the whole tragedy. Her sixth sense told her so.

Eventually Grace drifted off to sleep. She found herself looking out the window of an old house at an approaching thunderstorm in the night sky. The flashes of lightning arced across the sky, a beautiful but somehow disturbing sight. Soon the rumbles of thunder became louder and louder. Then there was a bright flash and a loud crash and the house shook. She heard the sound of a child screaming behind her. She whirled around to see a boy and a girl sitting on a bed looking terrified. They seemed to be frozen in place. Then flames came surging in through the door and window. As the smoke became thicker and the room became hot Grace looked closely at the children. They no longer looked terrified, instead they looked quite relaxed and were staring past her at something behind her. They got up from the bed and calmly walked towards her. Where were they going? She turned around and for a split second through the smoke she thought she saw......

Grace sat up in bed instantly awake. What a dream! Or was it a dream? She sometimes had premonitions of future events, but this was different. Maybe she was seeing back to the night of the fire at the manor. If so, she now knew what had happened to Michael and Elizabeth Robertson on January 8th 1908.

The next morning dawned bright and sunny. Over breakfast the girls discussed what they would do for the day. "How about we ride the horses down to the river?" Laura suggested. "We could take a picnic lunch with us, then come back here for a swim in the pool."

Grace and Shannon nodded in agreement. Jane and Laura put together a hamper of cold meat and salad. Ken Rogers had prepared three horses for them, and soon they were riding down a trail which ended about three kilometres from the house on a grassy bank by a river, although it could hardly be called a river. More like a small stream tricking along a rocky bed.

As they sat in the shade of a tree eating their picnic lunch Laura pointed up the slope they had ridden down earlier. "Look," she said, "Way off in the distance, you can just see our house through the trees, and to the right of it is the barn."

"This is such a beautiful spot here," Shannon said, "I wish we could sleep out here tonight."

"Hey that's a good idea," Laura exclaimed, "We have a four person tent back at the house. After we have our swim this afternoon I could get Mum to drive us back down here with the tent and some food. We could light a fire and sit around it telling ghost stories, then sleep in the tent. What do you think?"

It had been a fun evening. The girls had sat around a fire scaring each other with ghost stories until they eventually crawled into their sleeping bags in the tent and drifted off to sleep, except Grace. She lay awake thinking about the dream she had had the previous night. Something very strange had happened that night of the fire all those years ago. If only she could find out the exact location of the long gone mansion she could go there and maybe get some answers.

After half an hour she felt more awake than when she had gone to bed. She quietly wriggled out of her sleeping bag and slipped out of the tent into the cool evening air. As she sat in front of the now almost cold fire she faintly heard what sounded like distant screams. Startled, she looked in the direction of the sounds and gasped in horror. There in the distance was a large three story house with flames pouring out of its windows and glowing orange smoke billowing into the sky. Then, much louder this time, she heard the sound of a girl screaming. The same scream she had heard in her dream the previous night, then a boy's voice speaking calmly, "Don't worry, Lizzie, it's going to be all right, it's going to be all right."

Was this really happening? Was that a house on fire just a few kilometres from their camping place? She jumped up and was about to run into the tent to get Shannon and Laura when the distant glow suddenly vanished, like a light switch had been turned off. She turned back around and the burning house was gone. All was silent again and there was nothing but blackness.

Grace sat back down and thought carefully about what she had just seen. It was a vision, a fleeting glimpse of a terrible scene from the past when Westerfield Manor burned down. She was close getting closer to finding it, and now she had a feeling that last night's dream and tonight's vision were meant to be a message for her.

"But what's the message?" she muttered to herself.

After a few more minutes she decided to go back to her sleeping bag, but first she found a long stick, walked to the edge of their campsite, and placed it on the ground pointing in the exact direction she had seen burning house.

Half an hour later she was asleep.

The sound of the birds woke Grace at seven o'clock the next morning. As the other girls stirred, Grace climbed out of her sleeping bag and went outside. There was something important she had to do. She stood in the same spot she had seen the vision the previous night. She looked at the nearby stick she had placed on the ground, then looked up through the trees. She saw where it pointed. Now Grace knew exactly where Westerfield Manor had burned down one hundred and twenty five years ago.

Hope you are enjoying this.
Don't forget to vote before going to Chapter 6