Prologue

AUTHOR'S NOTE

DEAR READER.

I SINCERELY HOPE YOU ENJOY READING THIS AS MUCH AS I ENJOYED WRITING IT. IT IS A YEAR IN THE MAKING OF THIS STORY.

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                                                                            PROLOGUE

In the town of Buttershire the surname of Thomas was not uncommon. They were the founding fathers of the town after all. Everyone knew the Thomases, as with most founding families, they were hot topics to gossip about.

The town hall had mementoes of the Thomases, but only of those that did not make scandal. For those that did, they were kept hushed behind the wrought iron gates of the property on the hill. Since the nineties, no one had lived on that property for longer than six months, and rumors floated around that the place was haunted.

The property on the hill was huge, and said to have been a wonderful sight to see in the twenties. But things started going downhill after the Spanish flu had gotten hold of Old Man Cornelius. As a matter of fact, it is said that the Spanish flu had wiped out not only the man, but his wife and their youngest daughter and her four young babies, born only a year apart. After the first child died, their father had scampered, fearing for his own life, and not caring about his family, or the fact that the young girls’ mother was to take care of her dying daughter and her grandkids.

They had a son too, but he was taken to war, and not a fan of living with the family. He came back in time to bury his father in 1921 and brought his children with him. Roger had ambitions, stronger than his father’s will, and had extended the property, adding three more houses within walking distance between his father’s house and the one that his sister and her children had died in.

The carefully tended garden had almost gone to waste, had it not been for the then ten-year-old James who had taken an interest in the garden. Without his father’s knowledge, James had created stone paths between the houses and by the time James was sixteen, had retransformed the garden into something magnificent.

But then world war two happened, and twenty-eight year James was called away. His father Roger had tried to re-enlist but was too unwell to be considered. Enraged, Roger uprooted the rest of his family and moved away.

When James came back six years later, in 1945, he came back an old, tired, and frightened man. He moved into the house his father had abandoned, and took up with a nurse that he had met in the field hospital.

They had four children; eight years separated the oldest from the youngest. James died in 1963 when his youngest turned ten, at the age of fifty-two. He had left his love for his garden with his first son, the second-born child, named Robert, after his great-grandfather.

Robert was seventeen when his father died. He decided he was old enough to move out of the house, and into one of the other three available houses, as his sister did the year previously.

His sister Martha had taken the house that his great–aunt had lived in and between the two of them, they decided to put numbers on the houses, as part of the decorations. Martha’s house was number one, their great-grandfather’s house was number two, their mother’s house was number three, and the last house, Robert’s house, was number four.

Robert knew more about the family’s finances than his mother thought he knew, so he picked a spot, right in the middle between the four houses, and had another house built for his mother and his two younger siblings. Robert was smart with the family’s fortune, and when he voluntarily shipped out in 1970, at the age of twenty-four to fight in the American war against Vietnam, he had more than doubled the family fortune through various investments that paid off, and greatly so.

Robert came back to the house five years later, he had physically nothing wrong with him, but his mind was a mess. He brought back a Vietnamese wife, and a small child, no more than four years old, and his wife was expecting another.

Robert’s mother saw the change in him the second he walked through her front door. She gave him house number three, and took house number two, while her second youngest, Samuel, took to house number four.

The big house was finished, but no one wanted to leave their houses behind. Every last child had some form of relationship going on, but things were not well in house number one. Martha’s husband died in a car accident in 1977, and just as well he died that night, or Robert might have killed him. It had come to his attention that his brother-in-law was hitting his sister, and that caused her to have three miscarriages in so many years.

Martha decided to leave for a convent, saying she got her peace in worship. Samuel and his youngest sister both had great relationships, got married, and left their family home for the city. It was most unfortunate that Robert’s mother passed away in 1980, she was the one that had kept him sane for five years.

A year later to the date of his mother’s death, Robert lost his mind completely. In 1981, he had the worst nightmare of all time. He did not see his wife, but instead, his days in Vietnam had caught up to him. Four people died in house number three that night. Four shots could be heard from miles around, and when the police finally showed up, they discovered a nine-year boy, sitting next to his father’s body, holding his father’s gun in shaking hands, covered halfway up the arms in blood

“He killed Mama and my brothers.” The boy muttered to shocked officers as they surveyed the scene.

Bradley Thomas was released into the care of his uncle Samuel, who moved back to the property he grew up on. He chose the main house, citing the death in the other houses as the reason he didn’t want to stay in those houses.

He tried to keep his father’s garden going, but it was too big for him, and he had no time. His children were too young to help in the garden. And Bradley had no interest. He was distant most days and just wandered around the property. 

He took to house four when he was fifteen, trying to hide the fact that he had started drinking and using drugs. But he was calmer on those days that he used drugs, a lot friendlier too. So Samuel just told his kids that their cousin was going through something and that was his way of coping.

The last straw that broke the camel’s back came in 1989; Bradley Thomas was a force to be reckoned with. The seventeen-year-old went on drinking and drug binges, telling his uncle the family was haunting him in house number four. Samuel did not believe him, there had been no deaths in house number four, and it was number one to three that was the problem.

On Tuesday, the seventh of August 1989, Samuel’s wife went to Bradley’s home, to ask for his washing. But she never got his washing. She was in the house for only a few minutes before she came back out screaming for her husband.

When Samuel entered the house he stared in dismay. The house was a mess; there was glass all over the floor, as if a tornado had gone through all the cabinets, and smashed every last piece of glassware it could find.

Samuel treads carefully over the glass and clothes and things to walk to his nephew’s room. But the kid wasn’t there. He searched all of the rooms but found no sign of him. His guitars and things lay scattered on the floor as if he used them to protect himself.

It was the sight in the living room that broke his heart. His nephew lay on the floor next to the glass table, white powder covered the table, and a spoon with a clear liquid lay on top of a piece of foil, burnt black at the bottom. The needle was still stuck in the boy’s cold arm. Samuel knew Bradley was gone before he dropped to his knees and took out the needle from the boy’s arm and took off the belt the boy had used as a tourniquet.

He called his wife to call the services as he stood up and walked away. He went to his grandfather’s garden; behind house one, where his great-grandfather lay.

“I am sorry.” He said and cried until he heard the sirens.                        

Only then did he stand up, returned to house number four, and waited for the police and whoever had been dispatched.

His wife came to stand next to him.

“Gather our things and the children. We are leaving this cursed place. May god have mercy on whoever takes over this forsaken place.”

Friday, 10^th August 1989, was the last time a Thomas left that property. None had returned since.