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| Image by Jason McKittrick |
Back in Cromwell’s day, the Fisher family left their ancestral home in Cumberland and moved south to more spacious accommodations. Loath to sell their old farmhouse called Croglin Grange, they leased the one-story home to Amelia Cranswell and her two brothers.
The Cranswells enjoyed a peaceful first winter in their new country home.The summer came hot and damp, and on one especially stifling night, the family retired at moonrise to sleep through the heat.
Amelia lay atop her bed sheets, hovering on the edge of sleep, when a strange fancy moved her to sit up and look out her window. A pair of lights like red fireflies flickered in the dusk through the grounds of the old Norman chapel adjoining the grange.
The young lady sat anxiously spellbound until the twin lights vanished near the churchyard wall, only to reappear on the near side. Amelia’s unease grew as the red lights darted through the small copse of trees between the wall and the yard. The spell broke, and Amelia lay back down in the hope of putting the unwholesome vision out of sight and mind.
Sleep still eluded Amelia. Still, she resisted the growing urge to rise from her bed until the scratching of sharp claws on glass sounded from her window.
Amelia sat bolt upright. The sight that greeted her outside her window moved her to dash from bed to her chamber door. A swarthy scarecrow of a creature stood hunched outside her window, scrabbling at the panes with the long nails of its bony fingers. Its crimson eyes burned blue afterimages into the young woman’s vision.
Faint but definite clattering reached Amelia’s ears from across the room. Terror froze her at the door as she realized that the nightmarish visitor was picking away the lead that held the mullioned panes in place.
The chime of breaking glass roused Amelia from her trance. Her numb hands fumbled with the lock as she watched a clawed withered hand reach through the opening it had made and unlatch the window. With predatory speed that belied its shriveled form, the intruder lunged across the room and sank its teeth into Amelia’s neck.
Their sister’s scream woke Amelia’s brothers, who raced to her room, only to find that in her fog of fear, she’d actually locked it. By the time they broke down the door, Amelia lay bleeding on the bed, and her attacker was fleeing across the lawn.
One brother remained to tend his sister’s wounds while the other gave chase. The intruder outran him in the gathering dark and soon disappeared into the churchyard.
The thwarted pursuer returned to the house where, thankfully, he found Amelia lucid despite her serious wound. She recounted the grisly incident, speculating that she’d fallen prey to an escaped lunatic.
The Cranswells decamped to Geneva to aid Amelia’s recovery. While there, she engaged the services of a Swiss gunsmith to obtain a pair of pistols and a number of bullets. The iron of the region bore large traces of copper, giving the pistol balls a novel green hue.
When Amelia recovered, the family returned to Croglin Grange–but not before she issued a pistol to each of her brothers with instructions to keep them by their bedsides. They passed another placid winter at the grange, but one night in March, Amelia spotted a grimly familiar pair of red lights flitting through the neighboring graveyard.
This time, Amelia immediately summoned her brothers, who burst in when the shabby creature broke into the room as it had before. The intruder took flight, but not before one brother shot it in the leg.
All three Cranswell siblings set out in pursuit of the housebreaker. Spatters of blood led across the yard, through the trees, and over the wall. The red trail ended at the closed doors of a crumbling crypt.
Amelia advised her brothers that the wounded ghoul wasn’t going anywhere and to defer further investigation till morning. At first light, the Cranswells returned to the churchyard and breached the ancient crypt.
Several coffins lay jumbled about in the tomb’s musty confines–only one intact; its lid ajar.
The brothers opened the coffin, and there lay a blackened, desiccated corpse.
With a bloody wound in its leg, from which Amelia’s brother dug the same telltale green ball he’d fired into his sister’s attacker.
The body was summarily taken from the crypt and burned, and the Cranswells enjoyed many years of peace at Croglin Grange.
For more eerie horror, read my award-winning Soul Cycle!