Nina nodded. "For once, I agree with Eddie. Let's go ghost-spotting."
Trudy worried. She didn't want them hurt.
"No. I want you all asleep at ten. I'll check your alarms and I want your phones. This is for your own good. That ghost could be dangerous. I won't have you all sleeping in here. Come into my room."
Because Eddie really wanted to see this ghost, he stood up and looked his housemother in the eye.
"Trudy. We're staying here. If anyone can help this ghost, it'll be us kids." He told her firmly. She sighed, putting her arms around him.
"I just don't want you sweethearts to get hurt. If she kills animals, what will she do to you? Or less importantly, how do I tell your parents that there was a ghost and it murdered you all? I can't do that to them. And I can't let you do this to yourselves."
Eddie hated it when she said that. It made her sound like she was a loving and desperate mother who would be classed as crazy if anything happened.
"And I'll tell you why everyone thinks that the attic here is haunted, if you'd all like." Trudy offered. "It's no more than a legend, but you kids have slipped off up there more than once, so you know."
Eddie had a vision. *Nina was walking with Jerome in the attic. It all caught on fire with one roll of thunder.*
Trudy was rubbing his shoulder. "Eddie, sweetheart?"
"Hmm? Uh, Trudy, bit of a bad idea." He told her.
The other kids were all saying "Come on, tell us." It sounded like they were all eager to hear the famous school legend for they'd all kind of just taken it as a fact that Anubis house was haunted.
"I guess it can't hurt you, but you have to promise me that you won't go up to the attic."
The kids looked at each other and Trudy saw the exchange.
"You have to mean it. I'll know if you're lying to me and I won't tell you anything. I'm sorry, I just love you and I can't let you get hurt." She told them gently and in that firm way where you had to do as she said.
"We promise, Trudy." They promised on their most precious things.
Tears came to her eyes, this story had made her cry.
"When the second owners of this house died, it passed to possession of Sarah Frobisher-Smythe. Nobody else knows this, Victor told me.
Sarah had two children of her own. She loved them more than her life meant to her.
One of them was her son, Elijah. And the other was her daughter, Janet. Elijah was nine and Janet was four. Not even Victor knew their father.
One day, Sarah was making a meal secretly in the kitchen for her two children. But when she called them, the children didn't come to her. She knew that Rufus was out with Victor, they had been for the whole day. She wandered through the house calling for her babies.
She searched the cellar, but her children weren't in there, just as they weren't anywhere else.
She checked the attic. There was mess and dust everywhere. It truly made her groan. Her children were messy and she knew it. At the age of twenty two, she was still one to hate cleaning.
She saw one pile of dust, larger than the others. She had heard that the attic was haunted, but she'd often just put it down to Victor and Rufus playing mind games with her.
She started carefully moving all the rubble, then she felt something cold and sticky. She raised her hand and shone a torch at it.
Blood.
A lot of blood. Sarah dug through it all and found her children, lay face-down and freezing. She gently turned them over and she gasped in horror."
At this point, Trudy's face was covered in tears and she had to wipe herself up.
"Sorry, kids, I must be spoiling this." She said with a shaky laugh.
The kids knew that it must be sad if it made Trudy cry so much. She was usually very resilient and she refused to cry in front of them, even if her heart was breaking, like when Victor fired her.
"Anyway. She looked at her children in horror.
They didn't even resemble the children they had woken as. They wore wigs, but when Sarah took them off them, she saw all their hair had been ripped out. Their clothes were a mess of blood and torn skin and broken bones. It was a gory sight.
Sarah opened their clothes with shaking hands. The children's bodies had been pulled apart, though not with a knife.
By hand."
The kids looked disturbed. Trudy saw that and sighed.
"I'm sorry. I don't know why I'm telling you all this. You clearly want all your food back up now." Trudy's voice held apology and sadness.
Jerome said "It's OK, Trudy, go on."
The others were so eager to hear more, they tagged on with what Jerome had said.
Trudy looked at them for any hint that they may not want her to, but she came up blank.
"Sarah was horrified that anyone or anything could do this to her precious babies. That's when she noticed the masks.
She removed the masks too and cried in sadness and horror when she saw their little faces.
The skin had been violently pulled from their faces and left in a distant corner of the room, covered in blood. Her children's lovely blue eyes had been gouged from their faces and left with their skin.
Sarah cried more to see what had become of her lovely little children. They had been beautiful in life, before their evidently horrible and gruesome deaths. Both of them had originally had soft blonde curls and sparkly big blue eyes. They were the cutest little children ever, both of them slender with rounded cheeks and full lips.
But then, their hearts were gone, the rest of their bodies ripped. Sarah was horrified.
Three weeks after the funeral, Sarah went back up to the attic. She saw two little children, blonde haired and blue eyed. She smiled at them, playing together. Then they turned and smiled back.
As they smiled, their angelic appearance vanished as their bodies and faces peeled and ripped right in front of her. They were still grinning, this time maliciously.
They came to her and she ran, screaming. They couldn't leave the attic.
And that's where they still are today. There's one other thing, you need to hear it.
That attic is kept under lock and key for a reason. That very reason. Victor and I don't want any of you hurt. Those children might be small, but in the afterlife they will be very strong and quite demonic. They'll be looking for vengeance. Don't allow them to get you all, please."
Trudy looked pleadingly at them. She loved them all.
Eddie and Patricia gave in first, surprising everyone.
"OK, Trudy. We'll keep outta the attic."
Everyone else followed suit. Trudy made them swear on it again.
Then Victor reappeared, someone with him.
A voice everyone knew said "Ugh, God. I haven't seen a storm this bad in my life!"
Victor said "You'd think I would have. It's horrible. We'd better hope Trudy's done a good job of managing those little brats."
Victor appeared at the door, seeing all the kids in one place and Trudy wiping tears from her face.
"Oh, have they been that bad, Trudy? Making you cry?"
"No, no. It wasn't these lovelies at all. Just me being a sentimental sop as usual. Who did you bring along?" Trudy inquired sweetly.
"I brought Jasper along for the evening. His car broke down and he can't shift it, so I offered him a space until he can get a new car." Victor told her.
"Oh, OK. I think I have some of my dad's clothes in one of my suitcases in case I needed them in an emergency. As you're dripping wet, I assume you both are, this is an emergency."
Trudy got two outfits for them.
"Here you go. Just change, then you can come and sit with us while we tell ghost stories." She told them kindly.
Just then, the clock struck midnight.
The kids all backed well away from the fire. Trudy stood watching in horror as a shape appeared slowly.
"Oh, goodness!" She gasped.
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Hope that was up to scratch and I hope you enjoyed it. PM me with ideas for next chapter, review if you enjoyed. Until next update, Random Dizzy. :D