The Blindfolded Soul

There’s no easy way for me to say this, but right now, I’m on the run from an evil that my family thought was dead.  A spirit that laid dormant for decades has come alive and is both haunting and hunting me.  I made the mistake of waking it from its slumber, and now it wants to take revenge on my family for something that I didn’t do.  I’m only connected to the person who did the heinous act that killed her by blood.  I swear on my innocence that I had nothing to do with her death.  She is a product of decades past, but now she wants to take out her vengeance on me.  I kept trying to run, but no matter where I turn, she seems to find me.  I have to escape this house and never come back as long as I live.

All of this started a few days ago when my family and I moved into a house that my mother inherited from my great grandfather.  He had just passed away and had left her his old country mansion in his will.  It was a plantation mansion that had passed down through generations and was being passed on to my Mom.  It was something that we were supposed to inherit because he only trusted my Mom with the house and not with anyone else.  Now that I know why it was entrusted to her, I’m not sure if I can trust my own Mom anymore.  The house has a dark past to it, one full of exploitation and suffering.  My own Mom tried to keep these secrets from me and my brother, but there was nothing that could keep my nosy brother and me out of trouble.  My first mistake was allowing him to sneak around that night.

We had only been here for a few days and my brother had already explored much of the house, but there was a part of the house in the library that we both found odd, a part that he wanted to explore alone.  Seeing as how I was the older sibling, with me being the age of 16 and him the age of 14, I didn’t want to leave him on his own.  I followed him from the bedrooms down the long hallway to the library, our shadows dancing in the moonlight that was pouring in through the windows.  Since it was just our mother and us, it seemed like we were alone, but I still felt like he was unsafe going alone.  I tried to whisper to him, hoping that I would be able to discourage his exploration and send him back to his room.  “Miles!  What are you doing?  We shouldn’t be out of our rooms right now.  We should be asleep.  Go back to your room, please!”

My brother wasn’t convinced.  “Why, Hannah?  I’ve already seen everywhere in the mansion except for what’s behind that bookcase in the library.  I want to see what’s behind it.”

Miles was referring to a bookcase in the library that had an end of it sticking out from the rest of the wall.  He believed that there was some kind of secret lever that would allow him into another part of the mansion, a hidden part that only the original owner knew about.  I just wish that he wasn’t right.  He made is way over to the bookshelf, exactly where he said the lever was and tried to tug at it.  It was an old book with some sort of writing on it that was distorted and didn’t look right.  He kept tugging at it, but the book wouldn’t move.  It was strange enough that the book wouldn’t move, but it was stranger how the rest of the books started to shake and fall off, all save for that one.  I rushed over to him and tried to get him to stop, trying my best to pry his hands from the book.  I pleaded in a whisper to him.  “Miles, we have to go. This isn’t right.  Leave it alone, please!”

Miles was relentless and would not give up on getting into that secret chamber.  As much as I tried, there was nothing I could to get him away from that lever.  “No, Kayla!  It’s right there!  I just need to pull harder!” As much as he was pulling, the lever didn’t budge until he realized there was a book that was wedged underneath the lever that was preventing it from moving.  I wish I hadn’t noticed it at the same time Miles did.  Maybe I could have persuaded him sooner if I had noticed it earlier, but now there was no time to make him change his mind.  “That’s why the lever isn’t moving!  There’s a book caught underneath it!”  I fought with him over the book, but he managed to muster a bit more strength than I could.  Despite him being younger than me, he was still a bit stronger than me.  He pulled the book out from underneath the lip of the lever and yanked the lever back, pulling the bookshelf away from the wall and revealing a staircase that descended down beneath the floor we were on.  We were two stories up in the house and the staircase seemed to descend far down.  As the bookshelf stopped moving, lights along the inner side of the wall flared up to light the way down.  There was no way I could change my brother’s mind now, no more opportunities to turn around.  If something were to happen to my brother and I didn’t follow him down, I wouldn’t forgive myself.  I just wish I could forgive myself for what did happen to him.

We descended down into that dark basement into what appeared to be a dungeon.  Had I known what that dungeon had been used for beforehand, maybe there would have been some hope of saving my brother.  We went further down the steps until we came to an open doorway.  We walked through the doorway into a room that was covered in old blood stains and had four lights, one on each wall, showcasing brutal tools of torture and, with two more steps down to the center, revealed a dimly lit doll that was on a table, covered in a red table cloth.  The doll was maybe a foot tall and looked like it had old brown bloodstains on it.  It had a little white apron, covering a light blue dress and had brown hair.  What was strange about the doll is how it had a blindfold across its eyes.  My brother immediately went to examine the tools of torture with surprise and wonderment, probably wondering what use he could make of them.  What caught my eye was writing that had been engraved into the stone on the wall.  It said what the purpose of the room was in these exact terms:

This room is the chamber of The Blindfolded soul

Below are the keepers of the room

Nicholas Vernon

Wallace Vernon

Nathaniel Vernon

Madelene Vernon

            The last name on the wall was my mother’s name.  Her last name was changed to Richards when she married my Father but later changed it back after the divorce.  Apparently, she knew of this room too, somehow.  Nicholas Vernon was our Great Great Grandfather and was the original owner of this house.  All I knew about it beforehand is that we would inherit it after my great grandfather died and that it was a plantation house.  That’s all I knew about it.  Next to the wall was a wooden pulpit with an old piece of paper on top.  I went up to read it and read about the reason the room had been made.  If only I had been paying more attention to my brother, maybe I could have stopped him from getting hurt, maybe I could have saved him.  Instead, I read on about the room. 

It was first used as a torture chamber to torture slaves that were considered “disobedient” and was later used as a twisted form of retreat for Nicholas Vernon, having later chained up and abused a young slave girl that Nicholas had bought along with the rest of her family.  He made up a story about her going missing, saying that she ran off in the middle of the night and sent a team to go and “find her”.  The reason he cited for wanting to kidnap her was because of her beautiful complexion and her eyes, which were a shade that could only come from her having been the child of a slave and a slave owner.  He brutally raped and tortured her for months until she finally passed away due to starvation and disease when she became too sick.  The problem was that Nicholas became haunted by the spirit of the girl and couldn’t find rest until he forced a slave at gunpoint to use magic to seal the girl’s soul into a doll that was created by the slave.  She was sealed in that room and was supposed to remain undisturbed on that table, that way no one would be able to awaken the spirit.  That was the fatal mistake that my brother made. 

My brother went to pick up the doll and, before I could stop him, I heard a voice that made me freeze in fear.  “You should have left me alone, boy.”

Miles dropped the doll on the table in fear.  “I’m sorry!  I didn’t mean it!”  Before I knew what was happening, a wooden palate covered in sharp swords and knives came crashing down, impaling Miles’s body and causing him to collapse onto the floor, killing him instantly.  I heard a wicked laugh emanating from the doll.  “I won’t have my rest until ALL of the Vernon family is dead.”  I ran up the stairs, unable to do anything else but run.  I wanted to call my Mom, but I froze outside of her bedroom door.  I turned around to see the doll at the edge of the entrance of the library, blocking off the hallway.  The only other way to go was to leave through the other end.  I ran and grabbed my mom’s car keys.  I had only gotten my license two weeks ago, but I had no other choice.  I ran and hopped into my Mom’s van and worked as quickly as I could to adjust myself.  What horrified me the most was, as I looked back through the rearview mirror to see the house one last time, I saw the doll, standing with what appeared to be Miles’ body, standing right beside it, his eyes missing, leaving nothing but bloody sockets.  I turned on the car, put the gear into drive, and sped off into the night, only looking back one more time to see my mom’s bedroom light on, meaning that she was awake and would have to deal with the doll alone. 

I wanted to stay and help, but after seeing the horrifying sight that I saw, there was no way I could go back to that house.  I went to my Father’s apartment and tried to explain everything to him.  It was almost too hard for him to believe before he realized that I came alone in my Mom’s van.  He did his best to calm me down and left me on the couch to sleep.  He went out the next day to try and find my Mom and my brother, but he hasn’t come back.  He gave me a call to say that he was on his way there and that he would call me on his way back, but I haven’t received a call and it’s already nighttime.  I don’t know what else to do other than try to share this story with as many people as I can, and I advise everyone who sees this to share this story as well.  Share it as far and wide as you can, please.  I don’t feel safe and my Father hasn’t come home.  I need to know that he’s safe and that my Mom is safe.  I just wish all of this was a bad dream, but I’m still awake and I’m still typing this down on my Father’s computer.  I didn’t know what else to do.  I tried calling the cops, but nobody has arrived yet and my Father has yet to show up.  Please, help me.  Help me find out what happened to my parents and save me from that doll.  Please save me from the blindfolded soul.