LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Indeed. Follow me.” His torch illuminating the way, Richardson took them further into the warren of dingy backstreets.

      They went down narrow, uneven flights of stairs and up sloping inclines. At one point they exited onto a relatively major road and the sight of cars and lampposts provided some with a well-needed respite in what was proving to be a most unsettling experience. But then the modern street was behind them and they were once more back in the twisting, cobbled streets and alleys of the Old City.

      A malodorous, fetid stench struck at their nostrils.

      “Say, what’s that God awful stink? Don’t you people have working drains?” Lester’s nose wrinkled in disgust.

      “That, my friend, is the accumulated waste of several centuries,” answered Richardson. “You see there were no latrines or sewers back in the days these houses were built and sanitation was virtually non-existent. Much of the effluent was merely tipped from windows where it would fester for weeks. Liquid waste would run down the street, leeching into the very brickwork—hence the better property, if one could say that given the conditions, was always at the top of the hill. The council have not yet tackled this area of the city as it is virtually uninhabited. Indeed, if they finally get round to modernising it I fear we will be losing a piece of history.”

      The buildings around them were even more dilapidated than those they had already seen with smashed windows and broken doorways. Some bore the scars of past fires and a sense of wickedness seemed to hang over them as though, over the years, they had borne silent witness to acts of great inhumanity. Over to their right, away from some boarded-up houses, which leaned like dying men against one another for support, was a burnt-out church-like building. Once a gathering point for the denizens of this area, now it lay desolate and heavily vandalised, its remaining walls and rafters broken and blackened. This area seemed almost detached from all that was sane and modern and it was doubtful that even daylight would improve the look of the place. At night, with a chill drizzle falling from the dark heavens and a gloomy, spectral mist now beginning to fall and with a character like Richardson, dressed as he was, it bordered on the nightmarish.

      “And here we are, East Street. The house we have arrived at is number 333.” Richardson shone his torch at a dark, padlocked wooden door set in a stretch of very old wall, the stonework coarse and crumbling. “It is here, within this very house of horrors that Charles Butterworth, the evil perpetrator of those heinous murders, lived; murders that went beyond madness and evil. Behind this door is the house of a truly depraved individual. What terrible sights the police must have witnessed when they entered we can only imagine but if the records are anything to go by then we can but speculate on the gut-wrenching horrors within.” Removing his set of keys from his case, he quickly found the one he needed, inserted it into the lock, turned it and opened the door.

      By the light from the torch the gathered group could see that the space beyond was a small, bare room.

      “Please be careful once inside as there are numerous loose beams and, as you can see, it is rather low-ceilinged, so please mind your head.” With that warning, Richardson entered. He waited until everyone was inside before closing the door.

      A faint charnel smell hung in the air.

      “Charles Butterworth was more than a killer. When the police came here on a tip-off they found far more than they had bargained for. The ground floor was fairly normal—obviously there is no furniture remaining from that time—but it is what they discovered upstairs…” Once everyone was inside, he led them along a shadow-filled corridor, showing them around several fairly nondescript ground floor rooms. They gathered in what had once been the kitchen.

      “It sure is a creepy place this,” commented Mary.

      Lester put his arm around his wife. “I don’t know; some nice wallpaper, fitted lights and some pot plants…I reckon—”

      There came a loud creak from upstairs as though someone had stepped on a loose board. It came again and was then followed by the sound of a door closing.

      “What the hell was that?” cried out several voices at once.

      All was quiet.

      Richardson swiftly panned the torch around. It was possible that there was someone else in the house with them although that seemed highly unlikely considering the fact that he had had to unlock the property in order to gain access. A vagrant, possibly? On a few occasions he had encountered drunks and homeless individuals down in the Undercity—those unfortunates who had nowhere else to go.

      As a group they remained silent for a further thirty seconds.

      “Maybe it’s the ghost of Charles Butterworth,” said Richardson. “Shall we go and see?” There was a slight apprehension in his tone. Realising this, he forced calmness back into his voice. After all, this was but an old, dark house—admittedly it had been the house of a psychopathic, cannibalistic murderer—but a house, nonetheless. To the others, however, the place was genuinely creepy. In the torchlight the imagination was free to run rampant and unchecked and for some—those perhaps more susceptible to the multitude of fears that came crowding in, ringing them around, notably the two women and Stanley—the pressure was becoming unendurable. It was as though some powerful, malevolent presence now lurked here; an evil that was just waiting, readying itself for the best moment at which to reveal itself.

      In single file, with the guide in the lead, they started up the stairs. There was a small landing halfway up and there was no banister, making it relatively hard going, more so in the cramped conditions and dim light. There was some disgruntled muttering in addition to a few curses from the young men as they tripped, their ascent almost in complete darkness for they were at the rear of the group. Even with the background kerfuffle, Richardson strained his senses; attempting to hear anything out of the ordinary. He thought he detected a further groan from the floorboards in the room at the end of the corridor indicative of someone—ur something—moving around in there but he wasn’t certain. They had all heard a sound when they had been downstairs in the kitchen but he knew from past experience of being in these old buildings how sounds could be deceptive. A gust of wind down an old chimney, the scampering of rats or even the very settling of the building itself due to hundreds of years of age and decay could create a myriad of noises. Noises that those who had been ‘conditioned,’ as it were, to believe in ghosts, would instantly attribute to the paranormal to the detriment of the mundane.

      Gently, Richardson pushed open the door on his right. It was an unfurnished bedroom—rather that is what it had once been. Similarly with the room on his left. He shone the torch inside both permitting the others a brief look. For some reason and despite his rational thinking he was beginning to feel tiny trickles of cold sweat crawling down his back. He had felt like this on one or two previous occasions—more so when there had only been two or three in his group and that ‘safety in numbers’ feeling of security had seemed virtually non-existent. For perhaps only the second time on one of his ‘ghost tours’ he longed for a light switch he could just reach out for and click, instantly bathing his surroundings in bright, welcome illumination.

      “Just what is it that’s beyond this other door?” asked Lester. “Are we going to see a ghost or what?”

      Richardson turned, one hand on the door handle. “I make no promises that we’ll see any ghosts. Indeed, I, myself, don’t believe in them. However, if they do exist then surely it would be in a place such as this. Over the years there have been several investigations by specialists in the field—ghost-hunters or parapsychologists—experts, who, allegedly, have witnessed and experienced dreadful and inexplicable things in the room beyond this door.”

      “What kind of things?” asked Stanley’s wife, her fleshy face shrouded in shadow.

      “I believe they took several photographs,” answered Richardson. “In some there were—unexplained shapes—things that weren’t there at the time the photos were taken; blurred outlines of a man dressed similarly to the reported sightings of Butterworth. There were other things too. Things I’ll explain once we’re all inside. I should warn you that on previous tours I’ve had people feel suddenly

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