Free The Haunting Within by Michelle Burley Page B

that stung her eyes and scalded herself for feeling pity. She was always taught that self-pity was the devils work. Her mum had never entertained self-pity, not that she was strict or unsympathetic with her children, much the opposite in fact, she was as strict as she needed to be with them and she always had an understanding ear for them. She had just instilled in her children a quality of picking yourself up and carrying on. To make the best of what you had. Lisa wondered now if that was rooted in her having nothing in her childhood. Yes she grew up in a huge house and her father couldn’t have been poor, but the most important thing she never had was a proper loving family environment.
    For a split second she forgot why she was up here. Reluctantly she put the doll back where she found it, and saw a drawing that intrigued her. She held up the yellowed time-worn paper and looked at the strange picture. It was obvious that it had been drawn by a child’s hand; that was apparent from the fumbling lines and the colouring-in that had many times gone beyond the edges. Lisa assumed that her mum had drawn it many, many years ago and she was very disturbed by it. It showed a small girl with pig-tails and a frilly dress standing in a small room. The room looked like it was supposed to be dark from the grey colouring that surrounded the child. The girl had tears falling down her pink cheeks and she was stood opposite a tall man with no hair and he was in a straitjacket with big gold buckles on it. The tall man was staring at the child with huge dark eyes enclosed by black circles. At first Lisa thought the man was crying too, but on closer inspection she saw what she had thought to be a tear, was, in fact, a string of spittle hanging from his straight-lined mouth. The scrawl of the babyish hand seemed to make the drawing look crude and wrong, more wrong than what the picture was actually of. Lisa felt a shiver run down her spine and she quickly put the picture away and shut the lid of the toy-box slightly harder than she intended. She headed for the door, purposefully leaving the light on.

21
    Downstairs Aiden was in the lounge. It was a dull room considering it had four huge windows. It was quite dim when they were all sat in here this afternoon but now with nothing but blackness looming outside, appearing to be waiting, pressing itself against the windows, it had become even more despondent. The blackness almost seemed to possess the power to break through the glass, to seep into the house and ruin everything it touched, so solid it appeared to be. Knowing there were no other neighbours or towns around for miles in either direction of the house bothered him. He knew there was no-one to look through the windows at him, yet he had a strong uneasy feeling that he was being watched. He was just being silly, there was nobody outside, but the house gave off such a strange presence that he couldn’t help but imagine things. At least if there were some neighbours around he would be able to see lights and welcoming glows. He might even be able to hear the odd rumbling of a car engine as it rounded the narrow lane and passed the gates - which were too far back in the drive to be seen from the house, but even so, just to know there was a car there would be very comforting. He hated the feeling of isolation. It was unnatural to him. It was ok for a few hours like when he was in his room enjoying time to himself but he was a sociable person. The more people around him the better. Well, he’d just have to get used to it while he was here that was for sure. Yes there was his mum and Lisa but in all honesty he didn’t want to spend time listening to his mum and her “visions”. Thinking that made him feel like a complete arsehole. His mum needed him and he was thinking of himself. It was just the whole talk of ghosts and whatever bothered him more than he cared to admit. He had spent so long trying to be the “man of the house” for the