The Inheritance

The Inheritance

© 2002 Hal Westhead

As the key turned in the lock Emily was overtaken by a stomach-wrenching wave of fear, as though she had looked up and seen a truck bearing down on her. What she saw was, for Emily, far worse: the living nightmare vision of her sister surrounded by the flames shattered Emily's down-to-earth pragmatism. Leaving the key in the lock she fled back to the car in which she had taken so long to steel herself for this moment. The worst she was expecting was to be confronted by the lingering smell of death indelibly etched into the fabric of the building. As Emily fled she decided that the house could have its dead and was welcome to them. This was one gift which she could not afford.

Here was the house and a very grand affair it was too. How strange it seemed to Emily that she should be transformed from poor student to a lady of property by one sudden accident. 'Accident' is not quite the right word - and 'sudden' only describes the final step in a chain of events. There was nothing sudden about the bequest. Her sister had made a will, so she must have gone through all the legal process of getting it drawn up properly. This was all very deliberate - not at all sudden. Had it not been drawn up with meticulous care she risked (if it can be said that the dead can take risks) her in-laws contesting it at every turn. They were practically blood relatives of the house.

"But why," Emily wondered, "had Celia never told me her plans."

Celia was ten years her senior, and they had never been particularly close. Being sisters they were thrown together at family gatherings, but in reality lived very different lives and were utterly different people. It had astonished the entire family that Celia had left most of her estate to Emily. There were other, far more likely, recipients of her enforced generosity. That description begs the question: if you slice your wrists and bleed to death, is that an enforced act? How much choice did Celia have over the decision she made? What freedom did Celia really have if sinking into a bath of your own blood seems the best option? Celia had made the will just two weeks before being found in tub of her own diluted blood, suggesting that Celia's unexpected generosity was entirely premeditated.

Emily's sister had been married for only a short time before she became a very wealthy widow. She was wealthy in goods that is, but quite destitute in her soul. After living with Karl for two contented, idyllic years, to see him burn to death mere days after their marriage seemed a fate guided by a malicious intent. Could fickle chance be so cruel? To say that Celia never recovered from the trauma would be like saying that Pompeii was never the same after the eruption of Vesuvius. Whilst literally true it really did not capture the magnitude of how changed Celia was. She blamed herself so utterly, so profoundly that she seemed intent on committing herself to Hell in her own lifetime. What seemed strange to Celia's family was the way Karl's family also placed the blame for his death on Celia's head. Celia's parents simply could not understand what she was supposed to be guilty of. It was as though Karl's family thought that Celia caused his death by their marriage.

That Celia should blame herself was, in many ways, only natural - she had been forced be a bystander and watch the man she adored engulfed in a ball of fire. Guilt was not the judgement of reason or mercy but it was a quite understandable human response, and utterly self-destructive. There was nothing she could do: she almost died in the accident herself but had been thrown clear. Thrown just far enough away to survive and just close enough to see Karl's face as the fire consumed him.

Celia never slept easily from that day onwards. At least she could not do so without the help of drugs, some legal and some not. Love and laughter also abandoned her, finding her to be an inhospitable host. She was wading through the swamp of despair breathing in the foul air of insomnia, self-hatred and drugged debility.

After Karl's death Celia decided to remain in the house which had been his. Despite being a couple for two years, Celia always thought of the house as his. It was full of his family history and his heritage. Although technically and legally it was in part hers, this claim on the house seemed a terrible presumption to Celia. The house had been in Karl's family for almost 200 years and no shallow ritual could forge a birthright which two years of loving intimacy had been unable to create. Many of the house's contents had been passed down through the generations long before they came to rest in the house. When Celia came to hold the title on the house she felt she could no more sell it than sell a grandparent. Yet despite it being full of family heirlooms and almost a shrine to the history of his people, Karl's family refused to visit Celia after the accident. There was a bitterness and reproach which neither reason nor compassion could assail.

The house was impressively large, standing in its own grounds, and much too big for one person to live in alone, comfortably. Celia made up her mind that she would live in it by herself, and sacrificed the luxury of being at ease in her home. The house was luxurious and on one level did afford her with every comfort. On another, more significant level, it was for her the most uncomfortable place on the face of the Earth. Celia chose to live there, her days surrounded by reminders of Karl and her nights filled with nightmares fresh-cast in the forges of hell. She craved and feared sleep in equal measure.

Emily sat in her car, parked on the drive and looking at the house. She sat there almost motionless for a long time, trying to face the simple task of entering this house she now owned. Emily still thought of it as Celia's house and it was only the superficial auditor of her thoughts that corrected her from time to time, reminding Emily that this house, its grounds and all it contained were hers almost to do with as she would. There were complicated legal restrictions on what she could do with some of the contents but Emily did not care. She knew that as long as she sold those items back to members of Karl's family she was in the clear. As she sat in silent combat with her nameless anxieties she clenched the hefty bunch of keys in her hand. She fingered their shape. The longer she held them, the more they reminded her of her task and her fears: the keys felt sweaty in her grip.

"No wonder Celia put an end to it, but did she have to be so ghoulish? ... and why leave this monument to me?"

Unlike Celia, her younger sister had no special attachment to Karl's family or their history. As she looked at the house all she could see was a very large pile of blood-stained money. Despite her no-nonsense approach Emily had to admit that the house was off-putting. She was not prepare to credit it with any malevolence, but even as an inanimate pile of building materials it drew power from her. Emily cursed herself for being weak. Before ever she could think about visiting the house there was a particular job she had arranged to be done by a local builder. The door to THAT bathroom had to be sealed shut. Emily did not want to accidentally wander into the room. She wanted to be certain that its secret and its all-to-awful stains were locked away until she was well away from the house. Merely thinking about the scene which greeted the cleaner that damp Thursday morning when Celia's body was discovered led Emily very close to panic. The sooner she was done with the place the better. However for the next week she was to be owner in residence and lady of the manor - complete with jeans and T-shirt rather than ball-gown and tiara.

It really annoyed Emily to be so irrational. She had dealt with enough blood stains in her life.

"So why," she asked herself, "am I letting this freak me out?"

Beneath the facade of philosophical belittling she knew that they were not just stains. There was a story and a life written in those marks, and the life was her sister's.

If she was going to take charge she would have to go in. It was, after all, just a house - a large one to be sure, but simply stone, plaster, history and its non-human residents. Emily imagined that a house of this size hid quite some population of spiders in its cavernous depths, and they had to live on something. The house could not be entirely dead. Emily berated herself again for stupid but very real fears.

"A blood stain is just a nasty mark." Emily chanted this mantra followed by the equally unconvincing, "A suicide is just something that happened."

Somehow the house managed to convey a presence to Emily far more than any soulless semi on the estate on which she'd grown up. Emily resented the house for having more strength of character than she did herself: it was against nature that she, a centre of free will and creative force, should be unable to face a mere building. Leaping from the car she ran to the house, keys in hand. Indecision would be fatal at this moment. Taking the bull by the horns she plunged the key into the lock, keeping her mind focused on what she had to do, never allowing a reflective instant to interrupt her dynamism.

At last she had her hand on the iron door handle, and heard the last tumbler fall. Only then did she understand just how much strength of character the house had been imbued with in all the years of its turbulent history. Only when she was faced by the presence of Celia, adorned as at the last moment of life, did Emily's certainty about the realm of the possible start to crumble.

As the key finished its circular passage and the final tumbler fell into place Emily found herself transported into the world of a vision. Standing directly in front of her was Celia: naked, wet and looking distraught. Around her the flames danced, not touching Celia but reflected in the water droplets giving her the appearance of being enshrouded in a cascade of opals. Like some saint carrying the instrument of their martyrdom as an emblem, the water neither ran down Celia's slim frame nor was it dried up by the flames' heat. In her left hand she carried the single razor blade and from her right hand, hanging loosely at her side, dripped a steady, rapid succession of viscous globules of crimson blood.

Celia did not seem to speak, her face as still as a Byzantine icon. Even so Emily heard her voice. It was expressionless and distant, as though the form of an icon had taken on the nature of sound.

"Welcome to my world, sister. This is your true inheritance, and I am freed."

Emily was dumb-struck. The chilling dead voice announced:

"You are owned by the house and its blood-line now. You are the ransom I had to pay."