White Manor

2. The Stone Lady

When Freida opened her eyes she was no longer in the wide room with a fireplace and clocks on its walls. Her head ached as she sat up, wet dirt falling all around her. All at once Freida realized she was in a hole. Six feet deep with no coffin in the rain-soaked earth. She spotted a shovel standing upright in the dirt above her.

At least the storm stopped, she thought with an exhausted sigh.

    It wasn't easy for Freida to climb out of that hole with the moist dirt and her pounding head, but she managed it. Finally, she laid out under the moonlight, completely spent. It seemed she was on the other side of the wall, beside the front door. The east side of the backyard, she guessed.
    The girls Freida called her friends had watched her walk into the White Manor just before twilight, as the sun was going down. It was down now, and the full moon cast long shadows all throughout the forest of a backyard.

    Carefully, as not to attract whoever put her in that hole, Freida peeked around the corner of her private gravesite to the rest of the yard.

    A large deck hung over the cement closest to the house, covered in ivy and thorns. Beyond the cement lie a small field of grass and low hanging trees, followed by a family cemetery. One tomb towered above the others, a stone lady carved into the door. Her sightless eyes seem to stare right where Freida was hiding. She shivered in the moonlight and returned to the grave.

    Freida tried to climb the low fence back into the front courtyard by the pet cemetery and the stone children in the dry bowl. Ivy and thorns poked her skin and tore her clothes before she fell back down, almost right into the six-foot hole. With only one option left, Freida entered the main backyard.

    The sound her shoes made on the cement panicked her, surely someone would hear over the crickets and buzz of electrical wires. Freida slowed her place and tried to stick to those long shadows cast by the blue moon high in the sky. She meant to hug the back wall of the house all the way to the west side, hopefully finding an open gate or a less overgrown wall to climb. Unfortunately, Freida's eye caught that stone lady's sightless gaze once again.

    All aches in Freida's head and bones faded with the stone lady's eyes locked on hers, and they seemed to increase sharply if she looked away. Freida felt a deep longing then to approach the statue and the tomb behind it, a feeling so powerful her legs began to move despite her fear. She seemed to glide above the tombstones and the light fog that clung to the earth, but when Freida was close enough to the stone lady to touch its cracked skin, her logic and dread rushed back to her.

    Hands that seemed like blue fire grasped out desperately from the stone lady's tomb, ethereal and reaching right through the carved rock doors. Its sightless eyes were fixed coldly on Freida as the terrified girl sprinted back through the tombstones and to the back wall of White Manor. The crickets had stopped chirping.

    The pale, rough wall felt like home to Freida compared to what she had just experienced in the graveyard, and she could still feel that stone lady's gaze on her back. Careful to keep her own eyes to the wall, Freida made her way to the west side of the house.

Thunder sounded again just above her, threatening more rain before the night was done.

At least the deck is covered, Freida thought, because I really don't want to go back in that house.

Her headache had subsided for now, but the aches in her bones and bloodied cuts from the thorns still plagued her.

If my friends aren't impressed with my guts now, they'll never be, Freida rationalized.

She was beginning to feel a bit like she never had before. Terrified, but also...adventurous? At home? Freida didn't know where that last thought came from.

    There was no gate on the west side of the backyard, just another thorn covered wall that Freida was in no hurry to try and climb.

     Thunder threatened its storm again right above her. She decided maybe she could try the big green front door again if she could make it through the house. A sliding glass door separated her from the inside of White Manor, cracked and impossible to see through. Freida thought of a way to get back inside.

    Mother Friis had always told Freida it's bad luck to knock over tombstones.

"The ghosts will surely haunt you for the rest of your life!" The older woman had told her daughter.

I think I can be forgiven by the dead this one time, Freida thought as she slammed her grave shovel into a cracked and mossy headstone.

The name on it was too worn down to read, but she assumed it was some old inhabitant of the manor.

    Three more wacks and the unnamed tombstone toppled over, giving Freida a nice, heavy chuck to heave through the sliding glass door. She planted her feet and threw that gravestone as hard as she could, the glass shattering with a tremendous sound. At no point did Freida think of using the shovel to shatter the door. She waited in the silence, half expecting a shadowy figure to rush through the broken glass and attack her.

    When nothing happened for three full minutes, Freida gathered the courage to re-enter White Manor, leaving her grave shovel shining in the moonlight.