The Ancient Curse

“If I might advise you, Miss Carstairs-Browne, I don’t think you should be alone in Carstairs Manor. I mean, a great rambling place with not even a servant left.”

“I know Mr.Roberts,” I said, smiling, “and I know the story that is told about the curse, but you see, I don’t believe in old curses.”

I was talking to Mr.Roberts, the agent who managed Carstairs Manor and land. It had fallen to me to inherit the crumbling old house and the few remaining acres of what had once been a huge estate.

I was the last of the Carstairs, my parents having failed to produce any more children. The “Browne” came from my mother who before her marriage to my father was Amanda Browne, and being an independent woman, insisted on her name being linked to the Carstairs name.

My parents were dead, and there was no one else to take on the old ruin. I had dragged myself away from the novel I was writing, to come to Carstairs le Moor, as the village is called, to try to sort out the situation. My intention was, to sell the place for whatever I could get for it.

The story I referred to goes, in brief, something like this: One night in eighteen hundred and five, Sir Lucas Carstairs was carousing with a group of his cronies in the Great Hall.

A young maid was serving them their wine, and at one point, Sir Lucas pulled her on to his lap. The girl started to struggle, begging to be released. This aroused Sir Lucas, and in his drunken state he decided to show the girl who was master.

With the aid of his intoxicated companions, the girl, a virgin, was stripped naked, and being held down by four of the men, Sir Lucas raped her.

When he had finished, he invited his companions to enjoy the girl. She was subjected to multiple rapes, and her screams were heard in the servant’s hall. One of the servants, a footman, was the girl’s brother. Hearing his sister’s screams he made to go to her rescue, but was restrained by the other servants who feared the power of Sir Lucas.

The young footman managed to break loose and raced into the Great Hall. Seeing one of the men in the act of raping his sister, he tore the man from her. He was seized and while being held was forced to watch the remainder of the men take his sister.

When they had all taken their turn, Sir Lucas turned on the young footman and struck him across the face saying, “You’ve just seen what serving wenches are good for.”

Then young man, now insane with what he had witnessed, broke free and struck Sir Lucas. One of the rapists took a knife from the table and drove it into the footman’s back, inflicting a mortal wound.

As he lay dying on the floor, the footman pronounced a curse on the Carstairs family that went like this; “May all Carstairs women be defiled as my sister has been defiled, until the day a Carstairs women surrenders her body to a footman.”

Sir Lucas drove the toe of his boot into the dying man’s side saying, “Carstairs women do not give themselves to menial scum.” The young man died.

The raped girl, deranged though her experience and seeing her bother murdered, staggered from the Great Hall, and climbing the stairs to the east wing, she flung her self to her death from one of the windows.

Sir Lucas was the local magistrate, and such inquiry as there was, found the murderer of the footman had acted in self-defense, and the girl had committed suicide in a fit of madness. No one was ever punished for the crimes.

No one was punished, unless, if you believe the tales that are told, the Carstairs women.

In the succeeding generations of Carstairs, wives and daughters of the Carstairs men are said to have had strange things happen to them. Some committed suicide, others went insane and on three occasions, the women appear to have born children that could not possibly have been the offspring of their husbands, and claimed a ghost had raped them. Indeed, one had no husband, being an unmarried daughter.

Apart from being Carstairs women, they all had one thing in common. They all told stories of being raped in the night by an unseen assailant. Investigation of these claims found nothing, and since the three pregnancies took place before the time when satisfactory tests for paternity were available, nothing was ever proved.

The male line of Carstairs, apart from the problems they had with their womenfolk, were never assailed in any way. My parents had never lived in Carstairs Manor, so my mother was never “defiled.”

I did not believed these tales, and as I entered maturity, I took a rather cynical view of the women’s stories of being raped by someone unseen. “One way of accounting for bit on the side,” I commented to my father when he spoke of the matter.

Whether he fully believed the stories I do not know, but he did say, “Ushas, don’t ever go near that house.”

Mr.Roberts was speaking again. “If you insist on going to the Manor, Miss Carstairs-Browne, I’m afraid you will find it unprepared. I didn’t expect you so soon or I’d have got the place ready for you.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ve brought some food with me, and presumably there’s somewhere I can cook?”

“Oh yes, the electrical power is still on, and by the way, you’ll find sheets and blankets in a cupboard on the first landing. I’ll send young Gresham along in the morning, and you can go over the inventory with him.”

“I want to get rid of it as soon as possible, Mr.Roberts.”

“Hmm. Not a particularly good time to sell a property like that, but, we are at your service.”

I rose. “Thank you, Mr.Roberts. I’ll be on my way then. I’ll be in touch.”

We shook hands and he saw me to my car. I was about to get in when he said, “Oh, I forgot to mention it. The telephone isn’t connected.”

I shrugged. I couldn’t think of any particular reason why I should need it for the short time I intended staying.

I drove the couple of miles out of the village along the road to Carstairs Manor wondering what I should find. I had only ever visited the place once, and that was with my father to see my grandfather. I never knew my grandmother. She was one of those who, about five months after giving birth to my father, had committed suicide.

Grandfather had never married again, and he had disapproved of my father marrying my mother. “Not a gel of our class,” he is alleged to have said. We did not stay overnight, so if there were any ghosts wandering around, I wasn’t there to see them.

I came to some rickety gates with a sign that read, “Carstairs Manor.” The gates must have been imposing once, flanked as they were by stone pillars surmounted by lions sitting on their haunches holding the Carstairs coat of arms. The gates themselves were stained with rust and a couple of the iron bars were missing.

After a struggle I managed to open the heavy gates and continued up the weed festooned drive to the house, which came into view round a bend.

In its finest hour, the place must have been truly imposing. Three stories high, and with dormer windows set in the roof (“Servant’s quarters I’ll bet,” I thought), it must have had at least sixty bedrooms. Now it showed all the marks of unpainted neglect.

I pulled up in front of the main entrance and got out. The place was strangely silent. No bird sang. No tree or bush rustled. Out on the road as I opened the gates, I had felt a slight breeze. Here, there was nothing.

I went up the steps to the door, and taking from my bag the huge key Mr.Roberts had given me, I pushed it into the formidable looking lock. I turned the key, and much to my surprise, it moved easily.

“Well, something around here works,” I thought.

Stepping into the large entrance hall, I found it in reasonable order. The servants had left over week before, so I supposed they must have given the place a last thorough tidy and clean up.

I tried a light switch, and a massive chandelier sprang into life. “Something else that works,” I congratulated myself.

Picking up the hall telephone, I discovered Mr.Roberts was right, it was dead.

I went back to the car and after making a couple of trips back and forth, I had all my gear in the hall. “Kitchens,” I thought, and started the hunt for them. It took a couple of false starts before I lit upon the right passage.

The kitchens were gray and gloomy as if designed and decorated to produce the maximum depression in whoever used them.
It looked as if the equipment had been haphazardly upgraded over the years, with old solid fuel stoves still in place, and a couple of large cast iron gas stoves that appeared to be about vintage 1902. Then in one corner I spied a small modern, if 1950 can be considered modern, electric stove.

“That’s for me,” I thought, and went to bring my food supplies in from the hall.

The next task was to find a suitable bedroom. I went up the curving stairs to the landing indicated by Mr.Roberts, and found the cupboard with bed linen. I then proceeded to open doors to see what was available for sleeping purposes.

Most of the rooms looked as if they had not been used since the nineteenth century, but I came upon one which, almost before I turned the doorknob, seemed to open of its own volition.

I walked in and the first thing that I saw was a truly magnificent four poster bed. It was of gargantuan proportions with splendid hangings of a golden coloured cloth. Unlike all the other beds, it gave the appearance of having been freshly prepared, with clean silk sheets and soft blankets.

“Might as well sleep like a member or the aristocracy for once in my life,” I said aloud.

I thought I heard a faint rustle behind me, but turning, there was nothing.

There were huge floor to ceiling windows, a dressing table that must have been made by some master craftsman in the eighteenth century and, much to my delight upon opening a door, a bathroom and toilet. I tried the hot water tap, and behold hot water! “Must be an electric hot water tank somewhere,” I said, once more aloud.

Another faint rustle, and again, nothing. “Watch your imagination, girl,” I said, but making sure it was not aloud this time.

A further hunt revealed a large cupboard with the hot water heater, and an abundance of warm, fluffy towels.

“Well, that’s settled the cooking and sleeping arrangements,” I thought. “Now, where to eat?”

I went back to the kitchens and on investigation found a side room no less depressing than the kitchens themselves.

“Must have been where the servants ate, poor buggers,” I thought. “Well, it’s either this, or that bloody great dining room, so here it is.”

By the time I had finished cooking and eating my meal, the sun had disappeared over the horizon and I had the lights on. I decided on an early night preceded by a bath in the magnificent cast iron receptacle provided for the purpose.

Carting my suitcase with spare clothing up to the bedroom, I stripped off and ran the bath. I luxuriated for about half and hour, and after drying myself, I wrapped myself in another towel and went back into the bedroom.

The room was filled with soft light from concealed lighting controlled by a small panel set beside the bed. I switched on the bed reading light and extinguished the others. I had brought a book with me, and after reading for a while, I put the book aside, turned off the reading light, and went quickly to sleep.

I don’t know how long I had been asleep, when I awoke with a start. The room was pitch black. I had pulled the heavy curtains across the windows before my bath, and if there was any starlight or moonlight outside, it did not penetrate the room.

Everything was very still. One might say, “It was deathly silent.” I reached for the lighting panel and flicked a switch. Nothing happened. I tried another, then a third. Still nothing happened.

“Damn,” I thought, “a fuse must have gone.” Having no idea where the fuse box might be, and having no torch even if I did want to go in search of it, I had to accept the situation and go off to sleep again.

I settled down again for sleep, but before I could go off, I heard that faint rustle again. I listened intently, and the sound grew louder I began to distinguish words. They echoed round the room so that I could not pinpoint a source.

“Carstairs…Carstairs…Carstairs…” They went on and on softly vibrating all around me.

I called out, “Whose there?” but the voices went on and on, “Carstairs…Carstairs…”

I felt an icy terror grip me and I begged, “Please, show yourself…tell me who you are…”

“Carstairs…Carstairs…”

A dim, wavering light took shape above me, I wanted to scream, but no sound would come.

The bed clothing seemed to float away, and I lay naked and exposed. Unseen hands held my wrists with an unyielding grip, and my arms were raised above my head and outwards. I tried to resist, but some power or constraining force seemed to have taken control of me, rendering me incapable of sound or movement.

I felt something soft, yet unyielding clamp round my wrists, rendering my arms immobile.

Then my legs were drawn apart and clamps came upon my ankles. I was spread wide open, helpless.

The light hovered over me for a few more seconds, and then descended to my breasts. I felt what might have been icy hands grasping them and start to squeeze. I felt glacial lips close over a nipple and there was a sucking sensation.

Then slowly but inexorably the light approached my genitals.

The light hung over my vulva for a moment, then descended to it. I felt the outer lips moved apart, and at the same time the echoing voice or voices grew louder, more intense.

“Carstairs…Carstairs…”

Something entered my vagina. It was hard and cold, like a bar of steel. It moved back and forth in me, slowly at first, then with ever increasing speed until finally, with a deep thrust, I felt the discharge of what must have been ice cold semen.

I was not a virgin, and had experienced the warm semen of a man on several occasions injected into me in an act of love. This ejaculation was one of hate, of revenge; it drove into me as if by so doing it would slay me.

Unable to utter a sound, I was screaming inside. Shivering as waves of horror coursed through me. I felt a spinning sensation in my head and heard the voices laughing in derision. I heard one last “Carstairs” pronounced in a cry of malevolence, and I fainted away.

When I came too, I had no idea of how long I had been unconscious. My arms and legs were free and the bed covers over me. The room was still dark, but faintly I could hear a sound I had found absent on my arrival. I heard bird song. It was morning.

In the vain hope it might work, I reached for the lighting panel and flicked a switch. Light flooded the room.

I lay bewildered and frightened then, recalling the ice-cold ejaculation, I sat up and searched the lower sheet for signs of sperm. There were none. I put my fingers into my vagina, seeking the residue of sperm I had felt pound into me. There was nothing.

“My God,” I thought, “it was a nightmare. All that talk and thinking about the old stories must have been buzzing around in my brain, and I had a bad dream.”

I rose and went to the window and pulled aside the curtains to let light flood the room.

“A dream, a bloody dream, you silly cow,” I said aloud.

I heard a rustling behind me. I whirled round. Nothing.

“My God, Ushas, pull yourself together, girl, or there’s no knowing what you’ll start imagining.”

Convinced though I was that I had only dreamed the terror and its penetration, I never the less took a bath, paying particular attention to cleansing my vagina.

After dressing, I went down to the kitchens and breakfast.

Mr.Roberts had said that “young Gresham” would be coming to go over the inventory with me. He hadn’t said what time young Gresham would be arriving, so I took a wanderer round the old pile.

I quickly came to the conclusion that the place would not fetch in much cash, but whoever bought it would have to spend a heap to get it in order. “It’d have to be an American or an oil rich Arab,” I thought.

I heard the clatter of a bell in what must have been the servant’s hall. “Ah, young Gresham,” I thought, and hastened to open the front door.

By contrast with the surrounding dejection of the house, young Gresham was a brilliant ray light. Tall, slim and smiling, he extended his hand and asked, “Miss Carstairs-Browne?”

I took his hand, which was warm and firm, as much to gain some sensation of another living being as in greeting.

“Yes,” I replied, trying to return his sunny smile. “But please call me Ushas.”

He hesitated for a moment, then made the comment that most people make. “If you don’t mind my saying so, that’s a most unusual name.”

“Yes. Name of a Hindu goddess of the dawn. She’s also said to be a willing young wife who likes to look after the home. My father was lecturer in comparative religion, and an optimist, as I’m not sure I fit either of those descriptions.”

We both laughed.

“Well, you’ve certainly got a big enough home to look after here,” he said with a grin.

“I don’t think I shall be doing much ‘looking after’, I want to sell it as soon as I can.”

“So Edgar told me.”

“That’s Mr.Roberts, is it?”

“Sorry, yes. We have an inventory of what’s in the place, but I’m afraid I have to ask you to check everything, and then sign. It’s going to be a big job.”

“How long? Three or four hours?”

He laughed. “More like three or four days, I’m afraid.”

I was somewhat disgruntled by this. I wanted to get out of the place as soon as possible, not wanting to spend another night there.

“Look, couldn’t I just sign and go.”

“I’m sorry Ushas, but we have to cover ourselves. Look, I’ll get us through it as fast as I can, but it has to be done thoroughly, I mean, we have had people who have accused us of stealing their property and selling it on the side…”

“All right Peter, I understand. Where do we start, from the top down or the bottom up?”

“Let’s start from the top.”

I had not ventured up into the servants quarters, and when we got there I felt compassion for those whose only privacy was in their wretched room, and who had to sleep in it.

With a couple of exceptions, they were sparsely furnished with iron bedsteads, a single hard chair and a small table with a mirror over it. There was only one bathroom and one toilet for what at one time must have been a staff of at least fifteen.

The two exceptions were rooms with title plates on the doors, “Butler” “Housekeeper.” These had more space, better beds, one armchair and one hard chair, desks, and proper dressing tables.

Most of the rooms looked as if they had not been in use for decades, thus indicating the decline in the Carstairs fortune.

One of the rooms presented Peter and I with a puzzle. Hanging up on a hook was a uniform. It was the sort of garb you see on footmen in historical films, and certainly not an item any modern servant would wear, yet it looked almost new.

“That’s odd,” said Peter, riffling through his papers. “We don’t seem to have any record of this. We went over the place very carefully, I don’t understand how we missed such an obvious thing. Oh well, I’ll write it in now. You see why we have to get you to check with us?”

“Yes,” I murmured thoughtfully. “It must have been worn by a footman ages ago.”

I took the uniform off the hook and turned it round. In the back was slit surrounded by a huge stain.

Peter had been gazing at his lists, so I called his attention to the stain.

He stared at it intently for a moment, then said, “You know, that stain looks like blood. Pity, we might have got a very good price for it. Wonder if we could get it cleaned and mended?”

I heard the rustling behind me again and turned quickly.

“What’s the matter?” Asked Peter.

“Didn’t you hear it, Peter? A sort of rustling sound.”

“No. Might have been or mouse or something.”