Woodrow High House

It was late, nearly midnight when I ventured out of the house to meet Rene and the gang. We always met up outside the huge old house at the end of my road, Woodrow High House.

Rene was waiting for me in the usual place, inside the little summerhouse. Jenna, Smithy and Luke were already there, I wondered what we were going to do. We had already been to the Amersham Fair and gone clubbing and managed to get stone drunk over the last few days and I had no more ideas for activities this week.

"Hey guys!" came a voice, Mimi came huffing and puffing up the track path, her slight form like a sender shadow in the moonlight, "Hey Matty," she flung her arms around me and squeezed until I coughed.

"Girlfriends!" muttered Luke with a grin and we all laughed, but when we stopped the laughter went on.

Slowly all our smiles faded and, I looked around the trees hoping for some explaination to the deranged laughter, it choked and became a terrible croaking sob. The sound echoed through the night, coming closer to our hiding place with every second. Words started to form and an eerie mist coiled about our legs.

"Matty?" Mimi whispered in a terrified voice, "What is this?"

"It's just morning mist off the river," Rene said but her usual confidence had disappeared.

"Then what's that!?" cried Smithy pointing to a shape on the edge of the trees.

I stared, a woman, as pale as the moon that shone through her was stumbling towards us, her long, sleek black hair was tumbling down around her tear stained face, her rich, forest green dress had mud splattered up the edges and was torn down one side.

"Oliver! Oliver! Beloved child! Gentle lover!" She screamed then went back to her gutted sobs.

We were all frozen in fear, her hand searched for a pocketed vial, everything was transparent, except the liquid of her tears and the strange purple looking mixture in her hand.

"Oliver! Oh Oliver! Why?" She screamed and tipped the contents of the vial down her throat, we saw it disappear into nothing before us as the woman wailed and weeped, she now staggered in our direction as she began to dissolve, first her feet, then hands moving up until her face, that had turned a strange green, a fainter version of her dress, vanished into the night.

None of us hesitated, we all ran, we wanted to be inside as soon as we could, safe from the strange apperition, I ended up with Mimi and Jenna with me, unable to sleep alone that night.

**********

The next day I decided to visit the High House itself. Jenna and Mimi, along with Rene and Luke came with me but not Smithy (he refused to leave his house). We were ushered into a very spacious libary where a man, tall and dark stood in the window, a wide, toothy grin on his face. We explained everything to him and in return he explained what we had seen.

Apperently Oliver Cromwell had lived in the House for a period of three years but only as a place of hiding. In the first year he had fallen in love with a woman, Lady Isabella who had borne him a child, on the third year though he was forced to flee in the middle of the night, without telling his wife or son. She was over come with grief over this but for four months they lived in the same routine just without her beloved Oliver. Her son, also called Oliver was playing on the landing though one day in October, they had had builders round though. He fell, caught his neck in a loose rope and died. This tipped Lady Isabella over the edge. She dressed herself in her beautiful green wedding gown and found her poisons.

"That night the Lady commited suicide in the white summer house where she had first met her husband. Last night was the anniversary of her death, October sixth." The man said softly, "The terrible thing was that in late October, thirteen days after her untimely death, Oliver Cromwell was cleared of all charges, but when he returned it was to two funerals, his wife and son. He killed himself a year later."

As we left I glanced up the stairs, a rope hung from the middle of nothing and blood dripped on to the floor.

**********

So that was our ghost's horrible story. We saw her on the day she died, four hundred years into the future. We don't hang out up at the High House anymore and Smithy was admitted to a mental institution last month. All of us, even Rene though, warns the other teens and children in the village, it scared us like nothing ever before and no one else needs to know exactly what Woodrow High House hides in it's past.