Chapter X: On This Home by Horror Haunted

It was easier than Dean expected to get away from the two ghosts. Marguerite didn't seem to want to kill anyone at all, and Underhill apparently only wanted to kill Sam by mysterious supernatural illness.

"Hospital," Dean said, as soon as they were out of the basement.

"No. Upstairs."

"Sam –"

"Not… not life-threatening, Dean."

"That's why you're gasping for breath?"

"Dean. We can't leave them. What… what if they hurt someone else?" Sam patted his arm. "I'll be… fine… for a few hours. And I know… where."

Fortunately the elevator was working this time, and they were back in their room with the door locked, the windows shuttered and latched, and salt lines down.

"So what's going on?" Dean demanded as he finished the second ring of salt around the couch and then carefully stepped over it to join Sam. "What did Underhill do to her?"

"Not Underhill. His real name is Unwin. Robert Unwin." Sam thrust a sheet of paper into Dean's hands. "Read that."

To Whom It May Concern

Let it be known that this is a true and faithful account of everything I know of the death of my friend Robert Unwin and his sister Marguerite.

Robert has claimed these several months that his house – Unwin Place, which has been the seat of his family for generations – has attained its own consciousness. None of our common acquaintance has ever taken the claim seriously. Insanity runs in the Unwin bloodline, and while such weird and mysterious things are heard of in the lands of the East, it is not possible here.

I, however, believe Robert. I always have. I can sense it in the air. Unwin Place is alive. Unwin Place is malevolent.

The insanity of the Unwin family found its outlet, in this generation, in Marguerite. It is an unparalleled tragedy that it should have been so. Marguerite was beautiful, kind and gentle. She deserved far more happiness than the world was willing to give her.

Marguerite's insanity took the form of trances. She did no harm to anyone, but her mind wandered, and it was clear to all of us that her soul was not always with us.

We did not think less of her for it, we who understood. It did nothing to diminish her sweet nature when she was not in the grip of one of her trances. But Robert could not bear them. They reminded him of the shame of his family, of the weakness in their blood. He did all he could to cure her, and over time the treatments became more and more unpleasant. He never harmed his sister – he loved her despite everything – but he gave her drugs that made her sleepy, and others that would not let her sleep. Marguerite hated it.

About a fortnight ago, Marguerite was taken ill. It was a mild fever, and she should have recovered. I was shocked, therefore, when Robert sent me a note telling me his sister had died and begging me to visit Unwin Place.

I went with all possible haste, to find Robert coming up from the crypt, where he had laid our beautiful Marguerite to rest among her ancestors. He was excessively disturbed, and he drank much wine. Eventually I managed to put him to bed.

Over the next few days I noticed Robert growing more and more uneasy. Unwin Place is too far outside the town for him to have had much company of an evening. He hated to be alone, but he could not bring himself to stay with us, as my wife Virginia suggested, in an attempt to ease the first agony of grief and loss.

At last one day he called on me. He confided to me that he feared he had done a terrible thing.

Marguerite, he told me, had not been dead when he laid her in her tomb. He had believed she had been dead. He had, I now feel, wanted her suffering and his own shame in it to end, wanted it with such desperation that he had persuaded himself she was dead. But since that time he had heard moanings and mutterings in Unwin Place, and Marguerite had haunted both his dreams and his waking hours.

He begged me to return to Unwin Place with him and examine her body for myself. I could not refuse. I accompanied him to that ancient, brooding house. Together we went to the crypt.

With considerable difficulty, we opened Marguerite's casket.

At once I knew that Robert's fears had been well-founded. Marguerite's lovely face was forever frozen in an expression of terrible agony, her hands raised as though, to the last, she had been attempting to free herself from her prison.

Robert's horror and anguish at the realization cannot be fully described. He had loved his sister with all the tenderness that his heart could bestow on the sole member of his family who remained to him. Perhaps, had he loved her less, he would not have been so grieved and mortified by the disease in her blood.

At length I succeeded in calming him. However terrible her end had been, and however distraught we both were at the thought of such an end for Marguerite, the deed was done. We resolved to say nothing of it to anyone. Lovely Marguerite was finally at peace, and there was nothing to be gained by making public the horrific nature of her death.

I left soon afterward; I could not stay in Unwin Place without my mind filling with awful visions of Marguerite gasping out her final breaths in her marble coffin. I begged Robert to come with me, but he refused.

I did not see him for some days, although my thoughts often went to him.

Last night there was a terrible thunderstorm. It left Baltimore relatively unharmed, but Virginia and I could see lightning in the distance. She was anxious for Robert, and this morning, at her urging, I gathered some friends and we rode out to Unwin Place.

The sight that met our eyes was appalling. The ancient home of the Unwin family, the proud old manor that has stood for generations, lay in rubble.

We made haste to search it, hoping to find Robert unharmed, or at least alive. That was not to be. When we discovered him, he was dead, and not because of the fallen masonry.

Robert Unwin hanged himself.

Even worse, we found Marguerite's body close by. Why he had taken her from her resting place I cannot be certain. Knowing Robert as I do, though, I suspect that his intention was to resurrect her using some unholy means. If that is so, I can only be thankful that he failed, even though I also suspect that despair at his failure was what caused him to take his own life.

We knew at once that, for the sake of the honour of the Unwins and for Robert's own reputation, nobody else should learn that he had desecrated his sister's grave. The crypt, being underground, was intact, and we returned Marguerite to her place in it. I would have laid Robert there as well, but the others were adamant that it could not be so, that a suicide could not be laid to rest beside his proud ancestors.

The groundskeeper's cottage, uninhabited since the death of Robert's father Geoffrey, had not been damaged. We buried Robert under the floorboards of the cellar. Nobody will live in Unwin Place again.

To the rest of the world we have resolved to say only that we found Robert dead and we have buried him. But something in me will not let the truth die entirely, and so I have written this, my own account of the tragic death of my friend. I will leave this letter, along with the others that I have written to Robert over the past months, in the cellar of the groundskeeper's cottage.

To you who are reading this at some point in the future, I say this: Do not judge us harshly. We sought only to protect our friend's honour when he was not alive to protect it himself.

E.A. Poe
March 12, 1836

Dean's hand was shaking as he put the letter down. Sam was pushed up against him, and although he was getting blood on Dean's favourite shirt, Dean wasn't about to call him on the cuddling.

"Dean?" Sam asked quietly.

"His little sister," Dean said, pulling Sam's head down to his shoulder and resting his fingers on the pulse point in his brother's jaw. "God, no wonder he went crazy and killed himself. If I'd done that to you and I found out about it later…" He shuddered, even though the thrum under his fingertips was proof that Sam was alive and breathing. "That was what Marguerite meant? All those warnings she was giving you?"

"But you didn't abandon me."

"She thought I would."

"Because Robert was a creep. From what Poe says, he may have loved her, but he wasn't good to her, not if he forced her to take all those horrible nineteenth-century cures for insanity." Sam sighed into Dean's shirt. "That's why Poe wrote his story about Madeline and Roderick Usher. He wanted the truth to be out there. Just in case."

Dean gave Sam a light squeeze. "What now?"

"We have to get the bones. You can patch me up later. As long as Unwin's on the loose, he might start it up again."

"Right. So I'll go to the cottage –"

"Not alone you won't."

"Because you're fit to be tramping outdoors in the middle of the night."

"I'm coming with you. You won't even be able to climb back up from the cellar unless I give you a boost."

"A boost? You can barely stand, Sam! You think I'm letting you give me a boost?"

"Hey, not my fault you're just five feet tall."

"Shut it, Ginormo. I only look short next to freaks of nature like you. And that isn't the point. The point is that you couldn't give me a boost without breaking the rest of your ribs."

"I totally could."

"Tell you what. If you can pick up the weapons duffel, with everything in it, I'll let you give me a boost."

"Fine."

"Sit the hell back down, Sam! I was being sarcastic."

"But you said it."

"Well, I'm taking it back." Dean tugged Sam down and kept a restraining hand on his shoulder. "How about we compromise? It's probably better for you to be where I can see you, anyway, so you can come with me, but I'll go first and make sure it's safe for you to climb down because you are not falling and hurting yourself more."

"But –"

"Final offer."

"Fine."

"Good. Now let's see your head." Dean grabbed Sam's head and tilted it back so he could examine the cut. It had stopped bleeding, and Sam seemed cogent enough, so they'd probably gotten off lightly. "Right. I'm putting some stitches in that when we're done. For now, you tell me if you start seeing double."

"Yes, Dean."

"Come on, Samantha. Sooner this is done, sooner we can get you to a doctor."

Sam kept one arm wrapped around himself, but other than that he managed with minimal support from Dean. They were at the door when they heard Lou's voice behind them.

"Going somewhere, boys?"

Dean cursed. In all the worry over Sam, he'd completely forgotten that the EMF meter had led him to Lou West.

He put a warning hand on Sam's arm.

"Yeah," he said, turning to face Lou. "We're going to deal with your pet ghost. You got a problem with that?"

"Dean, I just – I had no choice. You understand?"

"No, you son of a bitch!" Dean snapped, suddenly furious. "I don't understand. What I understand is that you knew there was something squirrelly and instead of being upfront about it you fed us some crap about wanting us to look at the hippie's drawings. Your stupid games almost got my brother killed."

"Dean," Sam said.

Dean ignored him. "So tell me, Lou, what else are you hiding? What else do I have to worry about?" Lou stared, shocked into silence. "Answer me!"

"I'm sorry," Lou said quickly. "I am sorry, I never meant for anyone to get hurt – especially not Sam. I – he threatened to hurt me if I told anyone he was there."

"And what was that pentacle crap in your room?"

"Maggie – Astra – she gave me a spell to keep the ghost out."

Dean would happily have hauled off and kicked Lou into the next state. "We were here and you didn't think of asking one of us? An actual hunter? You were letting Astra draw crap on your floor? Sam was right freaking here and you were asking Astra about ghost lore? Are you actually insane?"

"Dean," Sam said firmly. "Let it go. We have work to do."

"Yeah, we do. And this son of a bitch is coming with us."

"What!" Lou yelped.

"Dean," Sam said. "No. We don't take civilians on jobs."

"Yeah, but he's not a civilian, is he? He wants to play hunter and draw symbols and light candles and try to drive ghosts away, so he might as well learn to do it right. Maybe then he'll think twice before putting someone else's life on the line because he's freaking scared."

"Dean –"

"Sam," Dean said. "Shut up." For a miracle, Sam listened to him. "You almost died because of this man. He's lucky I'm not killing him. He's coming with us."

"Fine," Sam said, shaking his head. "I suppose he'll be safer that way anyway." He glanced at Lou. "Stay back and you should be fine."