The Fourth Mistress

Dear readers, from this Saturday, you can completely start voting for the book <Letters to Romeo>

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The dark and heavy clouds in the sky crashed against each other, creating friction of lightning and the sound of thunder echoing down on the lands that were part of Habsburg and the other small towns near it. 

Louise tried to absorb every word that she had heard from Lady Viola, trying to understand the situation they were in right now. There was a vengeful ghost trying to hurt Reed's family members, and it wasn't just them but also Louise who had been added to the list. The spirit was trying to kill them one by one, and Louise believed that Emily had kept her for the last to kill.

"So that was when you and others started experiencing headaches, as you couldn't remember certain details," said Louise, her eyes catching sight of the lightning that struck a nearby ground. "I think Emily's ghost had regained her memories long before Graham and I got married. Because the time when I got lost in the forest, I now realize that she was there with me." 

"You met her before visiting the manor?" asked Lady Viola in a startled tone, and Louise nodded her head. 

"I had lost my path and I would have continued to be stuck in the forest if it weren't for Graham coming to get me," replied Louise. It was the details that she had failed to notice before. 

She remembered standing in the forest with the moon up and front of her. Her shadow had projected in front of her on the ground and not behind her. The very same thing had happened when she had gone to try on her wedding gown. She hadn't paid attention to such minute detail at that time, but that day, Emily was present in Mr. Burnell's shop and with her. She was standing right in front of her, and it was her shadow that had fallen in front of her. 

Louise had finally learned that the ghost's shadow fell in the opposite direction and not in the way how the living people's shadow fell on the ground. 

"I don't understand how she came back alive. She is dead and she is alive at the same time?" questioned Lady Viola with a horrified expression on her face. She was becoming extremely worried by every second as Emily's ghost would come after her again. 

"I think it is possibly because of the same phenomenon that has caused everyone related to her to forget Emily's memories," answered Louise, and she pressed her lips in a thin line. "If she didn't hurt any of the family members right away, it only means that she didn't remember about her being dead until recently."

"What are we going to do?" inquired Lady Viola, her eyebrows deeply furrowed, and she looked at Louise for a solution. "What if she hurts Graham? He's alone and by himself."

"I don't think Emily will hurt him, Lady Viola. Until now, she hasn't hurt him. Her obsession towards him runs deep," stated Louise, and Lady Viola shook her head. 

"What if she comes to realize that Graham will never love her? What if she decides to take him with her, to be like her?" asked Lady Viola in distress. 

Lady Viola had a point there. Emily's obsession went far beyond the normal and had returned even after being killed. Louise could only hope that no harm would come to befall on Graham, and the servant would get to Hungate in time, where Graham was.

Over the pitter-patter sound of the rain outside the manor, Louise's ears caught the sound of the wheels of the carriage that came to a halt in front of the manor. The rain hadn't stopped. 

"Is it Graham?" Lady Viola stood up from where she had been sitting. The butler was the first to step out of the room to open the door. The two women followed him. 

When Gilbert opened the door, at the same time, he picked up the umbrella that was resting on one side of the stand, and he opened it so that he could bring the person inside without the person getting wet. Louise's eyes fell on Father Edward stepping down from the carriage and led inside the manor. 

"Thank God, you are here, Father Edward. We sent one of our men as quickly as we could," said Lady Viola, hoping everything was going to be alright once the priest would bless them and purify the place. 

"Your man?" questioned Father Edward while the butler took his coat. 

Louise didn't know why the priest appeared to look surprised. She said, "We sent one of our servants to fetch you from the church. Did you not come here because of him?"

"No, Lady Louise. After hearing from Mr. Burton that the body of the skeleton went missing, I decided to come and see if I could be of any help. I must have missed the person," answered Father Edward. 

Hearing Father Edward's response, Louise's eyebrows furrowed. It wasn't like there were many routes to go to the main town of Habsburg, and it had been almost an hour since one of the male servants had left the manor with their coachman. Both the carriages should have at least crossed paths. 

Right now, Lady Viola was more than ruffled, terrified that the ghost was lurking somewhere in the corners of the manor. Her eyes kept darting left and right to make sure. She said to the priest, "Father Edward, we are in dire need of your help. There is a ghost in here! How can we get rid of it!" 

Father Edward looked around the manor from where he stood near the entrance of the door. He said, "I can feel its malevolence in the entire manor and even before I stepped out of the carriage. I think it has turned into a complete spirit."

"What do you mean by complete spirit, Father Edward?" asked Louise. 

"Why don't we head to the drawing room, which is warmer and has enough light there to sit and speak? Gilbert," Lady Viola called the butler and then said to him, "Take the maids along with you to get something warm to drink and eat. Make sure to see they don't go anywhere alone and keep an eye on them. I don't want any of them going missing."

"Yes, milady," Gilbert bowed his head. Carrying one of the lanterns in his hand, he took the maids along with him towards the kitchen.

When they reached the drawing-room, Father Edward looked around the room while holding a cross in his hand. Louise noticed how the man looked as alert as Lady Viola, as if Emily's ghost would jump into the room and kill them all at any moment. After a careful inspection, he took a seat, and his eyes then fell on the portrait that Louise had earlier placed against the wall. 

"It is her. She was a maid, wasn't she?" asked Father Edward, staring at the portrait. 

Louise turned to look at the painting and, this time, noticed something very odd about it. The painting of Emily with the three Reed members that they had seen earlier had changed. She walked near the portrait, and her eyes fell on Emily's painting which didn't look like others and instead, she had turned to look like a decaying corpse. 

"What is the meaning of this, Father?" Louise turned to look at Father Edward, who had a grim expression on his face. "Do you know anything about this?" she asked him. 

"All these days, I have been going through books and discussing with others to understand what is happening in your manor, Lady Louise," Father Edward started to speak. "Frankly, after seeing the cross sent back to my home, I was worried that if I tried to meddle into its affairs, this malevolent spirit was going to come after me. Bringing the other priests to hold an exorcism would only provoke and make things worse, therefore I have quietly been trying to get more information. What happened to her?"

Lady Viola pursed her lips, not knowing if she should or shouldn't speak about it. While on the other hand, Louise took the initiative to reply, and she said, "Emily has been dead for three years. But somehow, she has come to live in this manor again as if she is alive and no one knew about it until today." 

"That is not possible," commented Father Edward. "No dead can ever return to life. It must be a projection of the dead."

"What does that mean? Are we imagining things?" questioned Lady Viola, feeling the headache again in her head, but this time for a different reason. Was this a curse on her for calling one of her previous daughters-in-law to be insane? 

Father Edward shook his head, getting up from the seat. He made his way towards the portrait where Louise was standing. 

"This theory isn't a confirmed one, and it is only a thought out information of mine that I came across during the time I was reading and trying to understand. As you know, once a person dies, they are not called to be part of the living anymore," said Father Edward, and he bent down to sit in front of the portrait. "And if the dead person does come back, it is never in the living form and because of some reason. The reason can be a curse, or a deal with the devil, at least that is what people tried to understand with it."

"I don't think I ever found anything strange in Emily's room. It is clean," stated Louise, and the priest nodded his head. 

"Then it must be some kind of curse or maybe purpose?" asked Father Edward. Standing up, he said, "Sometimes, there's a spill when it comes to fulfilling purpose. It isn't just the living, but sometimes that purpose extends to the dead. A projection of the dead to fulfil it. It is a mixture of the memories of the person who died when they were alive. How did she die?" he asked Louise. 

"She was buried alive in the forest ground," Louise told him the truth, feeling chills running down her spine. 

Father Edward shook his head as if he was sad to hear about it. A look of pity came to appear in his eyes. 

"This is not good. Long ago, I met a nun who was working in a church when I was very young. She had written a journal, a personal book of her own. She had written about her experience. She's no more now. In that book, she had mentioned some strange things and one of them being that, depending on the way the person died, natural or unnatural, at times spirits come back because of the many different purposes."

Louise doubted that even if Reed's family had killed Emily without torturing her, she would have still come back as a vengeful spirit to haunt them. She then asked, 

"Earlier, when she tried to kill Lady Viola, when I showed her the cross, she disappeared from our sight. Why?"

Hearing this, a frown appeared on Father Edward's face, "If she did, that only confirms the projection of her spirit in this living world. My theory is that this girl's ghost that is haunting the family, came back in the form of its projection. To be part of the family like nothing had happened. Possibly something that was between a living and the dead."

"That only voids what you said," pointed Louise, and the man nodded his head. 

"But not entirely, what we have is only theories with us, Lady Louise. Emily must have turned into a complete ghost, where her projection dissipated when people's memories started to return one after another. She wanted revenge but it also weakened her against the cross. The cross that she had been able to untie easily from the pillar. You told me, she isn't able to stand the sight of the cross anymore?"

Louise nodded her head, "She looked at it and screamed before disappearing from the room."

Louise's eyebrows deeply furrowed, and she wondered if Emily had shown her true form to Mr. Wensley, reminding him that he was the one to bring Elias Latton to bury her alive. She had possibly reminded every person she had killed of what they had done to her that she was dead and not alive. 

"Do you know how to stop her? Should we perhaps leave this manor?" inquired Lady Viola.

"The ghost is not stuck to the manor, but to you, Lady Viola. Where you go, it might follow you," informed Father Edward.

"What do we do then?" asked Louise. "There should be some solution for this." 

"There's only one way to stop all of this. We need to find where her body is and burn it," replied Father Edward 

At the same time, one of the windows in the drawing-room forcibly opened itself, blowing out all the lights from the candle to the fireplace of the room, turning the place dark.