Ashbrooke Lane

I was seven when I moved into
that house at Ashbrooke Lane. At least that’s what my parents tell me. My
recollection of that time is vague. I have memories of the big tree on our lawn,
running round the garden with the boy next door, and I remember sitting on the
living room floor playing with my He-Man figures. But my most vivid memories
are of the recurring nightmares.
To the best of my knowledge they
happened every night I stayed in that house. The first time I woke during the
early hours with a feeling that somebody was in the room with me, lurking amid
the darkness, watching me. I lay there rigid and screwed up my eyes tightly,
hoping it would pass me by. I felt the bed shake and I stiffened up like a
statue, afraid to make even the slightest movement. I heard his raspy breathing
from the foot of the bed. It moved round the side of me then stopped. Moments
passed silently. Then I felt his breath on my face. 
Instinctively, I opened my eyes
and saw an emaciated man in a lab coat looming over me, an expression of horror
etched into his pale gaunt face, veins bulging from his forehead. I tried to
scream, but he grasped me around the throat with his skeleton-like fingers and
dragged me out of bed. Flailing and contorting, I tried to grab onto something
to stop him from taking me. He dragged me out of my room onto the landing where
I gripped onto the stair rail. He pulled at my arms and then at my feet and I
kicked and screamed in a furious fight for my freedom.
The next thing I knew it was
morning and I was waking up in my parents’ bed. They had found me sleepwalking across
the landing in the middle of the night. I had a lot of nightmares as a kid,
which they put down to my active imagination, but sleepwalking…that was a first.
I saw that gaunt prowler again
the following night. Again, he clasped his hand around my throat, before
yanking me from my bed. Time he managed to pull me down the stairs before I
kicked myself free of his grip. I heard a chime coming from the grandfather
clock in the hallway and I found myself waking up in my parents’ bed. My dad
had woken in the night and found me lying at the foot of the stairs. Another
sleep walking incident I guess.
I worked myself into such a panic
over these dreams that my parents allowed me to stay up late with them one
night. We watched TV as I fought to stay awake, terrified of the dream that
awaited me. I don’t remember going to bed that night; I just found myself
sitting on the stairs waiting for him to arrive. The grandfather clock stood in
the hallway, ticking away the minutes.
Suddenly, part of the wall opened
up to reveal a concealed doorway from which he emerged. He was wearing the same
lab coat I’d seen him wear before, only this time it was smeared with blood.
Whatever he’d been doing inside that room I didn’t want to find out. 
I watched with dread as he slowly
and methodically slipped a pair of rubber surgical gloves onto his hands. He
tented his fingers together then turned and looked directly at me with his intense,
deep-set eyes. A pained grimace stretched across his chalky face. I rushed
upstairs calling out for help as he crawled behind me, swiping at my heels. I
ran into my parents’ bedroom. They were asleep and unaware of the commotion. Before
I could reach their bed and shake them awake, my pursuer snatched me up in his bony
arms and started pulling me away. I managed to grab onto the door frame and despite
his efforts, he could not prise me from it. He relented for a moment, his
breath heavy and laboured against my neck. Slowly, he reached into his coat
pocket and withdrew a scalpel, before slicing deep into my hands. I released my
grip on the doorframe as blood dripped between my fingers. I shrieked out, but
there was no sound. I could see mom and dad lying there fast asleep, oblivious
to this withered spectre hauling me out of their room and all the way down to
the bottom of the stairs. 
I tried to claw my way back,
leaving streaks of blood over the carpets and walls in my wake. He pressed his
fingers against my throat. I whimpered and choked, and my limbs thrashed around
in frenzy. At that moment the grandfather clock in the hallway let out a single
chime and he suddenly abandoned his fight. I looked up to see the emaciated
figure creeping back through the secret doorway from which it had emerged. The door
sealed shut, disappearing into the wall as though it never existed. 
A point came where I starting to confuse
my dreams with reality. I couldn’t tell if this was all in my mind or actually
happening to me in the middle of the night. During the daylight hours I
examined the wall in the hallway, looking to see if there was some indication
of a secret door. I told my parents and my Nan about the dreams and though I
never doubted their concern, there was not a lot they could do except reassure
me. I stayed with my parents when I got particularly distressed, either in
their bed or we’d bring the blankets and pillows downstairs and have a sleep
over in the living room. 
Nothing helped. My tormentor
found me night after night, waiting until mom and dad were asleep before
hauling me away, towards that concealed room. I tried to call out, but my
screams were always silent as he gripped his hand round my throat. He grew increasingly
violent. Sometimes he would use his scalpel across my hands or under my
fingernails, other times he would inject me with a syringe, and it wasn’t
unusual for him to bite my fingers. As I prepared for the dreams, I rehearsed
how I would try to fight him off, what I could grab onto as he dragged me
downstairs. I knew if I could just hold out until the clock chimed, then I
would survive another night because that’s when his door sealed shut. 
What terrified me most was the
realisation that if he got me into his secret room before the chime of the clock,
the door would seal behind us and nobody would ever see or hear from me again. 
I don’t remember much else about
that house, but we didn’t stay long. We moved in with my Nan for a while and
even though there wasn’t much room for all of us, at least those nightmares
stopped. And so did the sleepwalking.
Of course, I never forgot about
those dreams. How could I? But I figured I was just a kid with an overactive
imagination and I never considered them particularly abnormal. That is until my
teens when I started to suspect something more sinister was at play. I was
looking through old photo albums with my parents when we came across some from
our old house at Ashbrooke Lane.
“Something wasn’t right about
that house,” I heard my mom say to my dad.
This roused my curiosity. “What
do you mean, mom?”
“Well, I used to have bad
feelings and nightmares when we were living there,” she added. 
My dad tried to change the
subject, but I persisted. “What sort of nightmares?” I enquired.
“I don’t want to go into it. Just
violent and disturbing dreams.”
“I had recurring nightmares in
that house too,” I said.
“You were too young to remember
your dreams,” my dad interrupted. “You probably just picked up on something you
heard us talking about.”
I felt insulted, like they were dismissing
me, but you don’t forget dreams like those. I tried pushing for more
information, but they weren’t forthcoming.
It wasn’t until I was in my
mid-twenties that we were able to talk about it again. I was in the living room
with my parents and my dad was reading the paper. He casually told my mom, “Our
old house in Ashbrooke Lane is up for sale again.” 
“I’m not surprised. Nobody stays
there long,” she replied. “It makes you wonder.”
My dad nodded in agreement.
“So what exactly happened at that
house?” I interjected.
Maybe it was because so much time
had passed or perhaps it’s because I was older, but they were more open with me
this time. My mom explained how she’d had visions of dead bodies lying on the
floor, blood all over the walls, and she claimed she had felt a “presence”. While
alone, she would often hear crying from inside the house. She also revealed
that my aunt and uncle had come to stay one weekend and woke in the middle of
the night to see a figure of a tall man wandering through the room. 
My aunt and uncle had passed away
by this point, so I was unable to ask them about their experiences, but mom
explained that they were so distressed by the incident they returned home the
next day.  
I asked my dad, “Did you have
anything weird happen?”
My dad has always been a very
grounded sceptic, but I knew something had affected him too, though he wouldn’t
admit it. “There was just an uncomfortable feeling,” he said, and volunteered
nothing more.
Ever since learning of my mom,
aunt and uncle’s experiences in that house, I’ve been overwhelmed with
curiosity. Like my dad, I’m quite the sceptic and I was convinced there’s a
rational explanation for all this. Even so, I wanted to know more about that
house. 
From time to time I would check
the newspaper, and just as my parents had said, the house was rarely occupied
for more than six months before going up for sale. There wasn’t much more I
could find out at this time. I’m sure the information and history is available
in some archives somewhere, but I wouldn’t know where to start. However, I was
passing by that area one day and got the idea to drive by the house. It was
unoccupied. I noted down the phone number on the “For Sale” sign and later that
day I called the estate agents and requested a viewing. 
The lady who met me for the
viewing introduced herself as Andrea. We went inside and immediately I felt a
shiver run over my body. It was probably my mind running away with me, but I
got this eerie feeling. I can only describe it as being like the tension that
lingers in the air after a big argument.
If I’m honest, I barely
recognised the interior of the house. My memory was vague, but there was one
area that brought to mind those recurring nightmares, and that was the hallway.
I continued the tour as Andrea gave me her sales pitch. As we walked round, I was
convinced that the wall in the hallway was hiding something. 
“What’s behind this wall?” I
asked.
The look on her face at that
moment could disguise none of the lies she proceeded to tell me. It wasn’t my
intention to make her uncomfortable, but I really wanted some answers. 
She started mumbling awkwardly
about an old boiler room that had been bricked over. She stopped mid sentence. “You
know something about this house, don’t you?” she asked me, a tone of surrender
in her voice. 
“I used to live here as a kid,” I
explained. “Something isn’t right about this house, is it?”
Although still apprehensive, it
was as if I’d freed her from an eternal silence. “It could cost me my job if I
told you.”
“It can’t be much worse than I
already suspect,” I said. “Was somebody murdered here? Behind this wall?” 
I’d put her on edge. She took a
cautious glance over her shoulder. “Do you mind if we talk about this somewhere
else? I’m really not comfortable talking about it here.”
We decided to go for a coffee and
this is what I learned…
[…]
In 1953, Doctor Henry Fenton moved
into Ashbrooke Lane with his wife, Mary, and their teenage son, Raymond. The
upper floor would serve as their living quarters and he had the lower part of
the house converted into a Doctor’s practice. His office was set just off the
hallway, opposite which stood his prized grandfather clock. 
Things were going well for the
Fentons and business was thriving. And then, one day Mary fell down the stairs
in their home and broke her neck. She died instantly. 
Henry reacted to the tragedy by
immersing himself in his work, using the practice as a distraction from the heartache.
Raymond, on the other hand, was struggling to come to terms with his mother’s
death. With his father too busy to offer the emotional support he needed, he
started to drift. He fell in with a bad crowd, started skipping school,
experimenting with drugs and there were a couple of times he’d been caught
drinking or brawling and was escorted home by police. 
Henry barely noticed nor cared about
his son’s troubles during this time. Once he closed his practice for the day he
would collapse into his armchair and attempt to repress his grief with liquor.
Some nights he’d drink himself into a coma, other nights he would fly into a
rage, smashing furniture and throwing things around the room…and sometimes it
was his son who bore the brunt of his temper. Raymond was taken in by his
grandparents soon after, leaving Henry Fenton all alone in that house on
Ashbrooke Lane.
Later that year, on a cold autumn
night, Henry was woken by a disturbance from downstairs. Emboldened by the
liquor, he decided to go and confront the intruder. His practice was the only
thing he had going for him and he refused to let some thug take that away. 
Henry tiptoed downstairs in the
darkness. He saw the light of a torch in the far room and heard the intruder
rummaging through cupboards and shelves. It was probably some junkie after the
drugs and syringes he kept on the premises. Henry snuck into his office,
withdrew a scalpel from a drawer and tucked into a dark corner and waited.
The intruder entered the room, a
rucksack over his shoulder and his face covered by a black mask. Henry sprung
out of the darkness brandishing the scalpel and ordered him to drop his bag.
The masked man panicked and
lunged towards him, attempting to push past and make his escape. Henry swiped
out blindly as he fell backwards against the wall. The intruder staggered along
the hallway and opened the front door before collapsing on the doorstep. 
Henry got to his feet and approached
the fallen man. Blood gushed from a deep incision across his throat from where
the scalpel had made contact. Henry pulled the mask from the man’s head to
clear his airways. 
Staring back at him in the
moonlight, eyes wide with terror, Henry saw the face of his son, Raymond. His
heart wrenched at the sight before him. What had he done? How could he have
known? 
His professional instincts kicked
in and he sprung to action. Raymond thrashed about, choking and gurgling on his
own blood as his father gripped his throat, pressing his bony fingers firmly
against the wound in an attempt to contain the bleeding. He proceeded to drag him
towards his office where he could clamp and stitch the laceration. But by the
time he got him there it was too late. 
At that moment, the grandfather
clock in the hallway let out a single chime. 
Patients turned up to the
practice the following day to find Raymond cradled in Dr Fenton’s arms. Unable
to come to terms with killing his own son, Henry had turned the scalpel upon
himself, slashing his own wrists before bleeding to death on the floor of his
office.
[…]
Update, September 2014
Originally this is where I was intending to leave off, letting the readers draw their own conclusions from the narrative I have presented. But since writing this I decided to look up that old house on Google maps, see if it was still there, see how it looked now and maybe capture a couple of pictures to go alongside my account. I found it easily enough. It has been renovated since I lived there and a new door and disabled ramp now lead directly to that once-concealed room. I zoomed into the image as much as Google maps would allow, trying to read the signs posted outside. I captured a screenshot and zoomed in closer. 
That’s when I saw it. That familiar face, reflecting in the door…
Category:Ghosts
Category:Photography
Category:Places