Meredith

Hello, my name is Tavish Donchadh, and this is my story. The ghost stuff doesn't happen 'til the middle, so if you're not into plot build-up, then why don't you skip ahead.
Anyways, my story goes like this. I was born in Scotland, in the year of our Lord, 1893. In 1914, just as the Great War struck, I joined the Scottish army, and was a member of the 116th Rifle Corps. I saw some brutal stuff after the first time I jumped the bags. For instance, there was a young Englishman I knew back in 1916. His name was Edward, but we just called him "Jammy," cause he was the luckiest bastard at the camp. Well, long story short, we became friends. About six or seven months later, Jammy was stabbed in the throat by a German operative working undercover as an engineer. Jammy's last sounds were just him gargling on his own blood. That bloody image still haunts me to this day.
When the war ended in 1918, I decided to move to the United States. Got a job as a police officer there. Many of the men there called me as "Scotty," and most of them were doughboys, so they could relate to a lot of the stuff I had seen. Well, in 1920, I became a detective, and was assigned my first case. A homicide of a young woman at an old abandoned school, or something of the sort. Horrific scene, she wasn't just stabbed or shot like some of the other cases the other detectives talked about, this one was just terrifying. She had her throat slit, her mouth cut in a way to look like a smile, one of her eyes had been removed, and she had been gutted, her insides all mixed about like some sort of weird painting. 
Well, we found her eye, and it wasn't much better than the actual case. Her eye had been placed with some sort of small, homemade cross, nailed into the wall. Nearby was some sort of a child's drawing, looked like a house, with a cross in front, an eye on the cross, crying, and a small coffin in the ground. Not the nicest image. Well, I decided to look into the history of the school, and it ain't good.
Turns out it was a little grammar school back in 1887, and some time into the middle of its operation, a little girl named Meredith Youngsly was killed by some angry old sod in a fit of rage against one of the teachers. Why he killed her instead of the teacher, I have no clue, but it was pretty brutal. He stabbed her multiple times, slashed her throat, and gouged out one of her eyes. 
Her body was stuffed into a toy chest, and a message to the teacher was written in blood on the wall, "You're fuckin' next," it said, I think. 
Well, her death was meant to scare the teacher before he killed her, but he never did. The man was found with his throat slashed, his chest cut open, his face slashed into a smile, and most importantly, his eye gouged out. Turns outs, lots of weird stuff happened at the school after that. Kid reported seeing a little girl in the halls, her throat slit open and leaking blood. Teachers reported hearing a girl laughing, and sometimes screaming as odd, fleshy noises followed. The school was abandoned, and the haunting continued. Turns out the same drawing I found appeared in some of the classrooms.
I decided to investigate the school that night. It was dark, rainy, too. Then I heard it, the laughing. I ran down the hall to investigate, and the door slammed behind me. There was no one there, then the lights, already flickering, shut off. I felt pain, like someone punched me across the face, and then I fell down. The lights turned back on, and what I saw still haunts me to this day. A corpse, dressed in old clothes, just like the way they described Youngsley's body to look after she died. I looked up at the wall, and I saw a message written in blood, "Would you like to pla-" 
It smeared after that, and the lights turned off again. When they turned back on again, I saw the worst thing yet. Jammy, looking the same as he did when he died. The wound in his neck dripped blood, and he gargled and choked as he spoke. "I know why you're here, the girl told me. She feeds of your memories, your regrets, your fears. That's why I'm here, you regret not being able to save me, you fear my face in the night, you remember the horrors of the war. Her name is Meredith, and she wants to play."
The lights turned off again, I heard screaming, stabbing, an angry voice say "Stop screaming, you're helping that whore, so you'll die like that whore." The lights turned back on, and she stood before me, Meredith, covered in stab wounds, her missing eye replaced with a faint, glowing light, and her throat oozing dark blood. Unlike Jammy, she didn't gargle, she didn't choke, but she spoke, God help me, she spoke. "Hello, would you like to play with me? I won't kill you, you're not one of the bad people, not at all." She hummed after she spoke, awaiting a response. "Why did you kill that woman?" I asked her. 
"Why, because she killed her husband. He loved her, and she betrayed him, she cheated, he found out, she took off his head with an ax, hid his body in the garden. She deserved it, just like the other," was her response. 
I wanted to ask why she frightens people, but she spoke once more before I could ask. "I like to watch people's thoughts, they make me laugh, especially the sad ones. That's why I brought Jammy to you, he makes me laugh cause he talks funny. Like you, except not as angry sounding, and not all gargly and chokey." The lights went out again. I felt weightless, like I wasn't even there.
When the lights turned back on, I wasn't even in the room anymore. I was at Somme, dressed not in my suit, but a full battle uniform. A nearby captain took my arm and lifted me back onto my feet. "Get onto that field, soldier, this trench ain't goin' ta last long." Right after he said that, a howie shell landed nearby and exploded, sending three or four men flying and screaming into the air. One of their legs landed near my feet, making me want to vomit. I jumped the bags and rushed towards the enemy lines. Another howie shell exploded behind me, sending me flying forward. 
I looked ahead, and saw an enemy soldier taking aim at me. Just as he fired, that childish giggle sounded again, and the lights disappeared. I felt weightless again. When the lights were back on, I was in the old hallway again. I heard the laughing, that very same laughing. I knew why she killed, to avenge. She didn't want the evil of murder hiding where she was now. She didn't want it to exist. She was like a spirit of vengeance, now.
Well, we booked some poor, crazy old sod on the murder. Said he did it for God, something about the woman being the devil or some wild banter. I never told them what happened, they would have thought I was crazy, too, but to this day, that eye, the image of Jammy, the days on the battlefields, they haunt me still, but even more so now. Especially now that I know that I'm not the only one who knows what happened to me.
Category:Ghosts
Category:History