Demon: Book Two Of The Carmody Chronicles

The Carmody Chronicles

Book Two

DEMON

Kathryn Deans

Published by Kate Harper at Smashwords

Copyright 2010 Kate Harper

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Prologue

The presence had waited for years, never sleeping, always watching. Hungry beyond hope of satiation but eager for more, just the same.

Welcome to Pear Tree Hill Farm – empty, but not deserted. By no means deserted...

Bound by invisible chains to this one point in time and space, its hatred grows, a dark canker longing to fester once more in the souls of the unwary mortals who come, all unsuspecting, within its reach.

It has been a long time now.

The place has been deserted since that last, glorious night when every aspect came together to give it the power! The terrified screaming still rings on the winds, the scent of spilled blood lingering in the air... In it’s timelessness it could have been yesterday - it could have been eons past. It remembered everything.

But time continues to pass. Nobody comes anymore. Those who do have not lingered long enough for it to destroy, warned by some prescience of the evil remaining.

It feels no loneliness.

It only feels rage. And the thwarted fury grows, longing for expression. To tear, to rend, to destroy. Malevolence broods in shadowed corners. Malice grows, along with the mildew on the walls. Evil needs expression, to wreak havoc, to infect the night and spill fresh blood.

It waits, confined to the house and immediate grounds, biding its time. Sometimes people come. Real estate agents, checking on the property for the absent owner. Curious sightseers, eager for a sight of this house of death although it was an aged fame, its horrors far removed by passing decades. They poke around the gardens, peering in the windows. None stay long, however. Not long enough for it to take hold of a vulnerable mind and have some... fun.

Trapped and grounded by the same forces that allow its very existence, it waits for the inevitable.

Its moment will come again.

Chapter One

The house sat high on the hill.

It was old, the oldest in the district, originally belonging to one of the founding families who came to the area to farm sheep.

Their name had been Cresswell and they had called the place Pear Tree Hill. A long line of trees, not pears but oaks, had been planted along the winding driveway. The oaks were well grown now, overshadowing the entrance, shedding leaves every autumn so that they lay like a thick golden shroud upon the ground.

From the house itself you could see the ocean, three kilometres away in the distance. Fields and a small wooded grove stood between but the house was high enough to overlook everything. The Tasman could be glimpsed in the distance between the trees, ever shifting, ever changing, colours reflecting the sky’s moods.

A placid setting for a house with such a tragic history.

Luisa Marriott pulled her eyes away from the building, wondering where the original pear tree - the farmstead’s namesake - was as she huddled deeper into her coat. There was no sign of it from her vantage point on the hill. Once again she picked up the history notes she had photocopied in the library at Carmody. The book had been a lot of fun - A Local History - the narrative style a little breathless for Luisa’s taste but at least it hadn’t been the usual dry historical crap that she was used to dealing with.

"Back in 1907 old Henry Cresswell died, leaving the property to his oldest son Joseph. There had been two sons and while provisions had been made in Henry’s will for the youngest, one August Cresswell, the young man had not been satisfied. Bad feeling had flared between the brother’s, escalating until Joseph Cresswell had been found one frigid winter morning behind the barn, his neck broken, an expression of abject terror affixed onto his face.

Suspicion immediately fell on August Cresswell but the man claimed to be innocent of the crime. He insisted Joseph was the victim of a malevolent spirit who had been plaguing the family since the summer before. A malevolent, destructive spirit who hated the Cresswell’s and was determined to drive them from the farm. Unsurprisingly, no one believed him although his aging mother, Esther Cresswell, had confirmed that he had been with her on the night in question. She had even confirmed his story about this... spirit... claiming that she herself had unwittingly summoned it one summer evening when she had been using her Ouija board. It was a tall story to swallow - too tall as it turned out. The authorities believed she had fabricated the story to protect her only remaining child.

An order for the arrest of August Cresswell for the murder of his brother was issued in the September of 1913. Two officers were dispatched to the farm. When they arrived they found the place in a shambles. Animals wandered loose, obviously in need of feeding. The family’s milch cow was lowering, distressed from the overabundance of milk in her distended udders. It was obvious she had not been attended to for at least a day or more.

The front door had been wide open, creaking a little in the breeze and all the windows on the first floor had been smashed, glass laying in glittering shards across the garden beds and lawns...

The two officers, deeply perturbed by these discoveries, entered the farmhouse with some trepidation.

The sight that met their eyes was horrifying and one they never forgot to the end of their days."

Luisa looked up, her own eyes going once again to the farmhouse, dozing peacefully in the pallid winter sunlight. She had come up here to get a little bit of atmosphere, some kind of feel for the place before she attempted to write up the history. It was working, kind of. The next bit, she knew, was going to be gross and she felt a reluctant thrill of anticipation. Even though she was not a local she had gleaned enough of the history surrounding the area to know that what had happened at Pear Tree Hill was the stuff legends were made of.

Scary legends.

Her brother Ruben might appreciate such macabre tales such as these but Luisa doubted she would. She’d had just about enough of the strange and unnerving last year. It was especially grim because Pear Tree Hill’s history was all true which made it somehow more... real. Her psychology teacher at uni had suggested she write an account of the famous Pear Tree Hill Murders as they had come to be known - famous because they’d never been solved or even satisfactorily explained away. The authorities had been forced to give an open finding on the case and for a long time the place had remained empty. Her teacher wanted her to do a case for evil - was it born into a person or created by circumstance and environment.

Nobody had ever established one way or the other who had killed the Cresswell’s, back in 1913. But the house had an evil reputation and even after all these years it was still empty. No-one wanted to live in a haunted house...

Luisa grimaced wryly. She wasn’t at all sure she wanted to go along with Mr Austin’s suggestion but she thought she’d take a look at the place anyway. After all, anything was possible and she had developed a particular interest in evil. As a relative newcomer to the quiet town of Carmody, she had thought it was a nice little hole when she had first arrived where time passed but not much else did. What could possibly happen in a small town like Carmody?

A little over a year after arriving, she had discovered how very wrong she could be.

Admittedly, Duncan McConnell had started his murderous career elsewhere, but he had certainly reached his climax in Carmody, killing no less than five people and coming damn close to killing a great many more, herself included.

Luisa shuddered. She didn’t like to think of that terrifying week, had hated going to school afterwards because of the stares, the whispers. The worst thing was that people, students and teachers alike, had taken to thinking of her as a kind of Buffy the Vampire Slayer which was seriously dumb, all things considered as she was more wimp than warrior woman. After a while the excitement had died down. By mid-year things had almost returned to normal.

Sort of.

Luisa’s attention returned reluctantly to the notes in her hand.

She read on.

"The two police officers had entered the farmhouse with considerable caution, fearing some terrible tragedy had taken place. On the first floor, in the kitchen, their worst fears were realised when they found the body of Esther Cresswell’s half hidden beneath the kitchen table which bore the remains of a meal, half eaten, obviously interrupted. The old woman’s throat had been cut from ear to ear.

It was what lay upstairs, however, which was to remained imprinted in the memories of the two officers for the rest of their lives.

Two more bodies, those of Emily, Joseph Cresswell’s young wife, and Simple Maggie, the young girl who had been employed to help around the farmhouse, lay in two separate bedrooms. They had been so badly mauled that it was difficult to recognise them for what they were - the mortal remains of two young women. Blood had spattered the walls almost to the ceiling and poor little Maggie’s head had no longer been attached to her body. One of the officers momentarily lost consciousness at the discovery. Hardly surprising; it was, by all accounts, a most horrifying scene and one that would have shaken any man’s nerve."

And quite a few women’s, Luisa reflected with a shudder!

"At first it was assumed that August Cresswell had gone insane and had run amok but then, some thirty minutes after the grisly discovery in the house, the body of August Cresswell himself was found, hanging from the branch of an oak tree in the paddock adjoining the kitchen garden. As he had been suspended from the ankles by a rope some ten feet above the ground and his throat, like those of the victims in the house, had also been cut, it tended to rule out suicide, especially as no weapon was discovered anywhere on the property. With the best will in the world it was difficult to imagine how a man could have scaled a tree, hung himself up by the ankles, cut his own throat and then managed to dispose of the weapon.

Difficult to the point of impossible.

It became obvious the four murders must have been committed by someone else. Extensive inquiries and a widespread search failed to turn up anyone, however. The only other people who were involved with the family were Prudence Cresswell, Joseph and Emily’s young daughter who had fortuitously been staying with her aunt in Hobart at the time of the murders and itinerate farm laborers who had been elsewhere at the time. When this had been proved beyond doubt the police were left with a mystery they proved unable to solve. Only one thing was certain beyond doubt - someone had murdered the Cresswell’s and poor little Margaret Emmett.

Or possibly something.

As time passed and the solution seemed no closer rumors began to circulate that Pear Tree Hill was haunted. August Cresswell’s wild words about the place being inhabited by an evil spirit gained credence - certainly no earthly explanation was forthcoming about the events on that September evening and the few people who had reason to go