THE GHOST OF LORDSWOOD
The following are excerpts from Arabella Miran’s “Phantasmagoria: Tales of a Professional Ghost Hunter,” Paragon Publishers, 1992
In the district if Phoebus one mainly finds elegant estates and quiet country homes. There are exceptions to this rule. The largest and most obvious is a shopping and entertainment center, with art galleries, fashion boutiques, and a club. The other, lying quietly between this center and the river, is an abandoned patch of woods.
The locals refer to the place as “Lordswood,” though the origin of the name is obscure. In all likelihood, it is somehow connected to the small ruin at the very heart of the woods; a few crumbling pillars, a mossy bench, and what appears to be a small mausoleum. I say “appears” because this structure is empty. Peering in through the locked iron gates that stand at its doorway, the vault contains nothing other than a few wind-blown leaves. If it is a tomb—as local legend insists—it is a curious one indeed, for its dimensions are such that the deceased would have to be interred standing up. There is simply no room to lay down. Thus it resembles nothing more than a strange and elegant stone booth.
Despite being a tranquil, quiet place, the locals tend to avoid the Lordswood, for eerie stories are connected to it. For nearly two centuries there have been scattered reports of a lone, solitary man glimpsed amongst the trees, dressed in elegant finery. This is, presumably, the “Lord” referred to in the name of the woods. At times, strange groaning noises emanate from the woods, echoing through the trees, and sudden gusts of wind have been reported. Most remarkably, locals insist that the Mausoleum has been known to completely vanish for lengths of time, only later to reappear. There is even a wild account from the 1920s in which local children claim to have seen the Mausoleum lift off the ground and shoot straight up into the sky. Because of all this, the Lordswood is generally acknowledged to be haunted, and it is for that reason, in the summer of 1963 I found myself there.
My research had turned up nothing. Land records indicated that the woods belonged to the Draegonne family, but there seemed to be no other trace of them. No “Lord Draegonne” had ever been known in the vicinity, and though I did find one resident in a neighboring district with that surname, he knew nothing about the woods. So after a few weeks of digging, and skulking around the woods by daylight looking for traces of an other structures, I decided to spend the night. Spreading warm blankets on the stone bench beside the Mausoleum, I settled myself down to see if I could witness any of Lordswood’s reputed phenomena.
I must have dozed off, for around midnight I was awoken by a stranger. My candle had gone out, and all I could make out was his silhouette. He stood beside the Mausoleum, watching me, but perhaps out of respect kept a non-threatening distance away. I was startled, and at first wondered if I was seeing a ghost.
“Whatever are you doing there?” He asked. His voice was soft and cultured, his tone slightly amused.
“I...” Groggy, I rubbed my eyes and fished for an answer. I decided to go with honesty. “Looking for ghosts.”
“Ghosts? You can’t be serious.”
“I am,” I replied. “My name is Arabella Miran, and you are...?”
“Damien.”
“Damien who?”
“Just Damien.”
“I see,” I replied, feeling suddenly nervous. “Would you mind if I put on my light?”
“Not at all.”
I must admit, despite years of experience with hauntings, I was terribly startled by what my light suddenly revealed. Standing before me was a young man, handsome, dressed in elegant clothing a century and a half out of style. I thought surely this must be the ghost of Lordswood.
Steeling my resolve, I looked him up and down and said; “It seems I am looking for you.”
He laughed pleasantly. “Am I a ghost then? I think not.” He stepped forward and extended his hand. “Go ahead. Grab it.”
Reluctantly, I did. It was solid enough, and warm to the touch. If this was a materialization it was the densest I had ever experienced. Just then, the Mausoleum behind him seemed to murmur, or sigh. I felt the vibrations of the sound in the ground beneath my feet. I dropped his hand and jumped.
“Relax,” he said soothingly. “She does that. I think she might actually be a touch jealous.”
“She?”
He shook his head. “Never mind. May I sit down?”
I nodded, and he took a seat on the large stone bench opposite my own. “Is that what people say about me? About this place? That I am a ghost? Is that how they explain it?”
“Aren’t you?” I asked. “I mean...unless I am very wrong, you are the very figure people have seen around here for the last century and a half. You look exactly as described.”
“Then why aren’t you more afraid?”
I took a deep breath and tried to look confident. “I have years of experience with hauntings.”
“Well actually they are more ripples, wrinkles in time.” He scratched the back of his neck. “One point event gets overlapped with others in the time-space continuum, causing weird glimpses of past events. Other cases are usually low-grade psychics who pick up emotional residue left behind from traumatic events. But ghosts? Ghoulies? Things that go bump in the night? No.”
“Who are you?” I asked again, completely mystified by him.
“I am...I suppose you could say I am a Lord, or I was back home. I was a student at the Academy, an Arcalian, when the War broke out. I was drafted, I fought, and I ran. Now I am here, and that is really all there is to say.”
I shook my head. “I can’t understand a word you are saying.”
He nodded, smiling. “I get that a lot.” Then suddenly, he stood. “Go home, Arabella Miran. There are no ghosts here.” And with a slight bow, he went around the side of the Mausoleum, and I heard the sound of a metal gate opening. I sprang up immediately after him, but when I reached the entrance just a few seconds later, the gates were locked and the vault again appeared to be empty.
Not a ghost. Ha! Indeed.
I spent twenty-five years returning to Lordswood, and at least fifty cold nights by the Mausoleum waiting to see him again. I sat there shivering in fog, rain, and sometimes even snow, wondering if this remarkable apparition would ever show himself. Though I must have solved two dozen other cases in the meantime, the mystery of Lordswood continued to frustrate me, never letting go. It nagged at me in a way no haunting ever did, almost as if I had touched something so immense, so incredible, that evening that solving it would be the pinnacle of my career. After awhile, however, I believed I would never see Damien again.
Then, in the winter of 1990, now in my fifties and no longer the young slip of a girl I had once been, I returned to my home in London. It was mid-February, and cold. I was in the midst of preparing for a new investigation, a particularly violent apparition believed to be strangling homeless people in the vicinity of an abandoned church. Unlocking my front door, I stepped into the foyer, and very nearly had a heart attack right then and there.
Impossibly, the Mausoleum from Lordswood was standing in the middle of my room. It even seemed to purr when I entered, as if it recognized me.
“Hello, Arabella Miran.”
He was sitting in the dark in the corner of the room, wearing a suit different than I remembered, but from the same era. Trembling, I flicked on the lights. He stood and smiled, and I realized with a start he had not aged a day.
“My God...” I whispered. “How...”
“Listen to me, Arabella Miran, for this is the last time we will ever meet. The creature you are about to investigate is no spectre. It is a Vyrolak, an alien creature that feeds on the bioelectrical energies released from the death throes of sentient beings. Now, the thing about the Vyrolak is that it can disguise itself as its last meal. In four days, at 9:23 in the evening local time, you are going to come across a bag lady who isn’t. She is the creature, and this can end two ways. You will either die, which will be a pity because I have read your next book and it would be a shame if you never get to write it, or you will take this blue liquid and splash it in her face, destroying the creature.” At this he handed me a vial of slightly luminous blue goo.
I held it in my trembling hand, and stared up at him. “What are you?”
“Does it matter?” He asked. “Just do as I said Arabella Miran, and you will die peacefully in bed many years from now.”
Then with that same bow, he unlocked the gates of the Mausoleum and stepped inside. There was—and my neighbors will attest to to this—a loud groaning sound so powerful it set off car alarms up and down the street. A light seemed to flare on top of the tomb, and a violent gust of wind blasted the chamber. And then, as if I had dreamed it all, both the Mausoleum and its occupant were gone.
It happened exactly as he said it would. A few days later, the woman he had described attacked me (as releated in Chapter 7), and I dispatched her as he told me too. I may never know why the Ghost of Lordswood chose to save me, or what he really was. But I have decided to let this one go. There are some mysteries I suppose we are not meant to unravel, and forces bigger than the rest of us. I cannot say what this Damien Draegonne was, but he saved my life, and for that I am grateful.
