A Secret Place

The clocks in the old Sutton Manor had a certain musicality. One deep toned in its clanging on the hour, like a rotund, bass voiced man, the smaller, gilt, glass enclosed one,a tinnier sound, like tiny needles poked in your ear lobes although not entirely that unpleasant.

When the house was quiet the clocks talked among themselves, gears grinding and clicking, hands moving.

Except at 2:00 a.m. when they all ,ten of them in different parts of the house, inexplicably stopped. Daily.

No one ever knew why and the maid and butler tried everything but had to start them all again. The two were the only staff left for the house, other than the cook and they all lived in the village at night.

Mrs. Strickland , the Duchess, was aging. Her white hair was now in a bun and her light blue eyes were getting more opaque. She had lived in this place with its ten bedrooms, ten stall stable and church ruin from the 1500’s her whole life.

She had lost her beloved Ian twenty years before and the lack of his gregarious chatter was a void the sound of only clocks magnified as if they mocked her sorrow, though it was still her cherished home in its loneliness.

Her children were grown and scattered, rarely visiting from their far away places.

Her country house was built a decade after the church, on 2000 acres of forest and field. King Henry had been a frequent guest with his various wives who fell in and out of favor.

Parcels had been sold over time and only a meager 800 acres remained of the property.

The house had been renovated many times over the years with ten layers of wallpaper and walls added and opened , staircases enclosed, and many dark secrets going to the graves of those who came before.

Legend had it that priests haunted the church ruins at night and when the moon was full, sometimes dark robed figures would appear darting across the grass into the black hole that was left in the stones where the altar had been , disappearing into the English mist.

Mrs. Strickland was an insomniac. She suffered terrible dreams since childhood and dreaded sleep.

Many were about finding her husband hanging from her favorite ancient oak tree in the garden, when he started to get dementia and no longer wanted to live. His twisted face forever engraved in her mind. Her sweet Ian. It took two men to cut him down.

Other dreams were compelling , as if the house wanted her to know things, to respond to its will.

Lately, the dream was the same and one she had not had before. She was underground somewhere but it was dark so she knew not where. Wherever she was it was damp and rats were running over her feet and the stench of human sewage made her want to vomit. She felt as if others were there but she couldn’t see them in that claustrophobic place. She wanted to claw her way out. Scream, but no noise would come. There was only breathing quietly around her.

She would awaken in that sunny bedroom with fresh flowers at her bedside, gasping for breath. The dread of the night was affecting her mental health.

After ten days, that dream stopped and instead as she slept she was walking down one of the long halls where she would stop at a wall and would awaken.

It was the guest room with the green, Art Deco wallpaper with white cranes, a choice her grandmother had made as a 1920’s flapper. It was in the East wing of the house which was closed up and had been since the 70’s.

After ten days of that she had enough. She put in her warmest wool sweater, gloves and a hat and took the massive key to unlock the east wing door. Wasn’t it strange she could see her breath on a warm spring day? It wasn’t a stone castle after all, just beams from ancient oaks. “I should not be this cold”, she thought.

Her eyes squinted as she walked down the abandoned hall with dust covered furniture and so many spiderweb kingdoms to the wall of white cranes with its faded chinoiserie Kelly green, metallic, paper.

“What is it you want me to know?” , she said out loud. She paused, knowing no answer would come but wished for it. She felt a gnawing dread as she stood at the wall remembering she was not allowed to play here as a girl but then giggled at the thought that she was being disobedient now. At the age of 70! That feeling of mirth left quickly.

“Hmmm”, she muttered. She began to tear off the wallpaper, layer after layer, her long, ancient fingernails scraping the wall. She stopped. There was a faint scratching sound coming from the other side. Barely audible and with it another sound she could not place but not a pleasant one. One , she sensed was not of this world. She shivered.

The hair on the back of her neck and arms stood on end and she froze in place for a moment. Her heart was racing. She thought she may vomit.

She turned and ran back down the hall, her white hair flailing out of the bun and her dress trying to catch up with her body.

She slammed the heavy door and quickly turned the massive key to lock it with a satisfying “click”. She clutched her heart.

“What was that?!”, she couldn’t even fathom it but the depth of fear she felt beyond any she had felt before.

Days passed and she slept better with no visions. She gardened, sat on the patio with a cool lemonade and felt peaceful. This was not to last.

The next dream she was back in that place, surrounded by others she could not see, holding her breath, her heart beating out of her chest, suffocating, footsteps above her. Had her husband had these dreams that led him to kill himself?

“I must face this!” She tried to muster her courage. This time she brought her Irish wolfhound ,Samson, with her, to feel some measure of protection. They walked towards the torn wallpaper wall and Samson began to growl, a low menacing sound, then as if stung by a hornet ripped his leash from Duchess Strickland hand’s and ran full force back out the door of the wing, yiping loudly till she could hear him no more. “Coward!” She shook her fist in the air.

She decided not to stay alone but this time just slowly turned and walked with dignity out again. “I will not cower in my own home to whatever you are!”she thought determinedly.

She did wish she was not alone at night to battle this thing and only explored that wing in the light of day.

That night the moon was full and a fog had drifted in from the marshes, so even buildings were just white blobs in the distance.

Mrs. Strickland had a sense of foreboding but reasoned it was her accumulated lack of sleep putting her on edge and feeling alone.

As the clocks struck 2 a.m. and then stopped, Mrs Strickland slumbered in her four poster bed, cotton nightgown tucked to her chin, piles of blankets enveloping her.

She was awakened but what sounded like an all out war. Yells of soldiers, swords clattering, footsteps like the the ones above her head in her dream stomping on the heavy wooden floors. Bloodcurdling screams, pleading , wailing prayers in Latin, followed by more screams and crying.

Mrs. Strickland threw on her night coat and ran into the hall and down the stairs to the East Hall. It defied logic to go to the place she feared but she had to face it and had to know it’s secret.

She saw Samson through the dim light out of the upper window running as fast as he could away from the house. “Damn cowardly dog!”, she screamed.

As she unlocked the door to the east wing it was as if the house was in a time warp going back to the 1600’s. To her amazement the crane wall was gone and there was a room with a stairway beyond it in its place.

To her horror, there were many soldiers and the bodies of those already cut down were sprawled grotesquely in pools of blood in the long hall, like broken puppets , eyes bulging, throats cut, clutching their crosses with their last breath. It was mesmerizing and ghastly. Mrs Strickland could not run or look away.

The soldiers were pulling up a trap door in the floor and the wailing and hellish cacophony of suffering surged. Screams and fighting and ungodly wails filled the night as the ghost soldiers slaughtered the unfortunate victims beneath the trap door stabbing them with their swords and daggers. The unbearable suffering crescendoed as the brutal carnage continued.

Then there was silence. And the clocks in the house, one by one came back to life with their ticking and all Mrs. Strickland could see was the garish wallpaper at the end of that once bloody hall. Samson ran back in tail wagging , lavishing Mrs. Strickland with kisses.

“Damn dog”, she muttered.

The next morning, Mrs. Strickland awakened determined to set things right. She called a local contractor who took a sledge hammer to the chinoiserie wall and found on the other side a creaky trap door in the pitted, dark oak floor , under a carpet which when opened , revealed the nine priests who had hidden there in the “priest’s hole” during Henry the 8th’s persecution of Catholics.

The cool conditions of the stone basement had preserved them somewhat in their agony, no skin was left , but blood stains telling the tragedy were in the tattered robes, mouths agape in horror, hands held by some in last prayers. One man wore the remnant of the clothes of a noble.

Now she understood. She had been among them and they wanted to be free.

She went to the local archive and found the story. In 1560 , in the early hours of the morning, the Duke of Sutton Manor was besieged upon for harboring priests. King Henry got word of this and felt betrayed by his former because of his hatred of Catholics and the Duke’s secret religion. . He sent thirty soldiers to kill them all.

The Duke’s wife and children fled unharmed through the woods, but the Duke joined the priests in the hole and died protecting them as the tenth man.

Mrs. Strickland had the bodies consecrated by the local parish priest and buried in the churchyard ruins.

Sometimes on moonlit nights she catches a fleeting glimpse of dark , faceless robes in the ruins, walking into the darkness.

But she sleeps like a baby, a slight smile on her face,knowing she released them for eternity.