The Ghosts Of Hamilton House (the name of the office where I work)


The Ghosts Of Hamilton House

In the year 1759, on the grounds where Hamilton House 2 now stands, Endemion Hamilton lived alone in his stately home. For years the locals had worked his land, seldom seeing their landlord who chose to keep to himself within the walls of Hamilton House.

What traffic came and went was mostly businessmen visiting to borrow or return loans or bailiffs coming to drag families off their lands as they had defaulted on their rents.

Endemion Hamilton only ever left his home once yearly on the 17th of July and on this day in 1759, he did the same. It was not known what significance this date held. His black carriage merely raced away from his porch with him on board at 9am returning at 5.15pm.

Molly Clarke, an 11 year old local girl whose family held tenancy near the main house happened to pass on this day in 1759 as Endemions’ black carriage tore away. The carriage clipped her foot as she skipped along. She squealed with pain but no-one heard her over the roar of the four galloping horses. Molly hobbled up the steps to Endemions’ porch in order that she could sit and examine the damage. The injury was painful but not grievous. Molly could walk and walk she did.

Had Molly walked away however, we would not have had this story to tell. Molly noticed the door to Endemion Hamiltons’ house was very slightly ajar. The culprit was an iron key which, Molly realised upon entering the house, had fallen from a rusty over-laden key rack next to the door.

Evidently, fatally, Endemion Hamilton had not noticed the door not locking behind him.

Molly padded through the house holding the errant key. She wondered which door it opened but all of the doors in the house were wide open. The rooms were sparsely decorated. They were many, unlived in, dusty and dry. Molly examined every one but none of them looked as though anyone had been inside in an age. Molly’s curiosity was much provoked. She resolved to discover where Endemion Hamilton slept.

Molly climbed the stairs. The stairs were dusty but for a thin tract where Endemion had descended that very morning. Molly placed her hand on the high banister to aid her ascent and set a dusty cloud to flight across the lobby. She panicked momentarily and thought to flee. Would Endemion notice her hand print upon his return?

Drunk on curiosity, Molly continued to ascend.

Of eleven doors at the top of the stairs, only one was closed. She focussed upon this door and made for it, key at the ready. They key did not fit the lock. Molly turned the handle. The door opened. She grew more and more curious. “Why is there a key rack if all the doors were left open?”, she thought.

Inside Endemions’ room, there was a large, high bed with an assortment of coverings and some official-looking documents. Beside was a food tray bearing a recently used silver coffee pot and toast rack. Across the room there was a desk, thick with ancient candle wax. The room smelled of candles but for a thin breeze coming from the direction of the wardrobe.

Endemions’ wardrobe was tall but not wide; about as tall and wide as a door. Molly placed the key inside the wardrobe lock. The key turned. The wardrobe appeared to topple towards her. She recoiled, frightened it would crush her but it merely swung by her revealing a door-shaped and door-sized hole in the wall.

Beyond the wall, Molly saw only blackness.

She peered inside, squinting. She still saw nothing but heard the breeze a little louder. It was blowing through something; something heavy, something metal. Molly smelled rust and dust. The dust came from bones, the rust from locks and chains.

Molly lit a candle from Endemion Hamiltons’ desk. She ventured inside the black abyss behind the wardrobe. Then she saw the locks and chains. Then she saw the bones; dozens of them. Some still attached to skeletons, some not. Others still hung from chains dangling.

Molly was awestruck. She thought to scream but was so afraid she lost the breath to do so. Molly feared she would awaken the half-dead souls all around her if she made a sound. She turned to run away and THUD! Molly ran into a suspension beam and was immediately rendered unconscious.

When Endemion Hamilton returned that evening at his usual time of 515pm, he felt something was amiss. His front door was ajar. There was a key missing from the over-laden key rack which dangled. Endemion calculated these two facts were causal and yet there was a missing key.

Endemion assessed his surroundings for further disarray. He continued his typical route upstairs along the thin tract of dustless carpet. He did not notice Molly’s hand print on the banister.

He did, of course, notice his secret wardrobe doorway was open. He did notice inside smelled of a candle extinguished some hours prior and he did notice the 11 year old Molly Clarke unconscious on the floor next to the errant key.

Doing just what this place was intended for, Endemion Hamilton bound Molly Clarke in chains and suspended her from a beam. The agony of the ascent awoke her. She whimpered and struggled, still too scared to scream to the undead.

That night, the Clarke family led a search party through the surrounding area bearing torches. Having scoured every other location Molly could possibly have fled to in the intervening time, they descended upon Hamilton House. Endemion Hamilton did not answer their entreaties to come and let them proclaim him innocent so the mob broke down his door. Buoyed by their strength in numbers, they tore through the house setting fire to their landlords home and possessions.
When they set upon him in his room, he was on his knees praying. Their shouts were raucous and violent. Molly was stirred by the din but they did not hear Molly beyond the secret wardrobe door crying for help.

Endemion Hamilton begged for mercy the first time they struck him. The empowered mob showed him no mercy. They beat him to death. They stole everything and drank themselves into a frenzy from his cellar. Then they burned his house to the ground.

Molly screamed and begged and pleaded and cried for them to come and rescue her. She discarded all fear of the undead in her bid to be heard and freed. She was burned to a crisp along with Endemion Hamilton and all of the undead souls tortured and held captive in his secret wardrobe dungeon; all friends of the mob and former tenants of Endemion Hamilton having defaulted on their rents.

It is said that on those very grounds, that very day, between the hours of 9am and 515pm as Endemion Hamiltons’ irredeemable soul leaves his house for places unknown, the mob, the tortured bodies of Endemions’ former tenants and Molly Clarke all relive that day for eternity.



rafter!
baz
(bazmorningstar efil4nat3b, Thu 17 Jul 2008, 17:12, Reply)