The Companions

The Companions

I glanced out the window as night fell. Towering charcoal thunderheads slid low and fast toward Ravenhill House, from across the untended meadows and forests of the estate’s enormous land reserve. The wind rose ever higher, a wall of heavy summer rain behind it.

A bolt of lightning flash-bulbed the room in light and shadow– the room’s mullioned window projected across walls, the ceiling, a clutter of dark, dusty furniture, and two strange antique dolls. Then the resonant boom. Everything in the bed chamber shook – picture frames on walls, frosted glass shades on the ceiling chandelier. I needed to switch on the room lights for my camera, before the storm knocked them out for the night.

I checked my phone for the time of day. No dice – the thing was dead, out of charge. In my excitement that morning, I’d forgotten to plug it in. So I was roughing it – cut off from the world, the nearest living soul seven miles distant as the crow flies. The old house had electricity and running water, but tonight’s severe storms would most likely knock out the utilities.

More lightning and thunder rattled the room as I switched on the ceiling light. I could’ve sworn I’d seen two dolls on the settee, one seated at at either end of the plush wine-colored velvet. There was a third, however – a spindly old man dressed in black. In all my research on Ravenhill, nobody had mentioned these creepy dolls. They were large – perhaps three feet tall and dressed in antique clothes.

The appearance of the third doll was strange and exciting at the same time. For a ghost story addict like me, this was a dream come true. I'd made a two hundred quid donation to spend the night here. My goal – to capture ghostly manifestations in a notoriously haunted mansion. And I’d already witnessed something I could not explain.

Still, the house hadn’t spooked me. Not yet, anyway. A bit of a disappointment, to be honest. My only emotional vibe was a sense of melancholy, felt when I’d first glimpsed Ravenhill’s silhouette from the tour bus – a dark hulk looming forlorn against the horizon. The four-hour tour was instructive, but I’d felt my excitement building throughout. Then my elation, bubbling over when the tour bus left without me. I’ve always been a loner. Not comfortable in social situations.

As a work-from-home software developer, I enjoyed conversations with my coworkers from a distance, on Zoom. Only had to attend meetings in person once a month or so. My friendships outside of work were all online – fellow photographers, writers, haunted house enthusiasts. I hadn’t been on a date since my wife Lucinda’s death – five years ago – and I really had no interest. She was the only woman I’d ever clicked with, and I still missed her dearly.

We recommend that all visitors bring a friend. Who knows what strange apparitions, what odd sights, sounds, and smells, what dark frights lurk among the dust-strewn rooms and corridors of Ravenhill House? Will you witness Albus Ravenhill wandering the halls, night lantern in hand, as he searches in vain for his lost beloved bride? Or hear the servant bells ring shrilly at one o’clock, to mark the fateful moment Lady Blackwood hanged herself atop the west wing servants’ stairs? Most of all, please remain in your group. The number of residents and tourists who have vanished without a trace remains the home’s most troubling and enduring mystery.

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An hour later, fueled on food and coffee, I moved from room to room, snapping my initial barrage of inventory photos. I stood in the master’s bed chamber, its enormous four-poster bed shrouded in dust. What a cavernous room, with visions of heavenly angels on clouds spread across the ceiling. Ever since crossing the threshold, I’d marveled at these paintings, wondering if the angels’ eyes, gazing down from above, were the source of my strange sensation.. That I was being watched.

My gaze fell below the ceiling art, and that’s when I saw him. There was another old man doll, just like the one on the velvet settee. He, or rather it, perched atop the bed’s center pillow, back leaning against an ornately carved headboard. I snapped one shot after another while moving closer. The odd sensation solidified into unease. Intensified with each trip of the shutter. It felt like… annoyance from a withered, spindly old man wearing black.

I moved to other parts of the room. Kept glancing back at him. I swore his eyes were following me.

“Camera shy?” I said. The feeling of annoyance reached from across the room, radiated from the old man’s shriveled, porcelain face, as though he were displeased with being photographed.

I finished my photos and headed back to the room with the settee. Moving through the corridor, I could hear the next storm approaching. Walls and doors creaked as the house shifted in the heavy wind. Muffled thunder boomed.

When I poked my head through the doorway, I froze. The two women dolls were on the settee, but the old man was gone.

Was I imagining things? I scrolled back through my digital photos and verified that the man in black had actually been on the settee. There he was, his expression one of indifference, not annoyance.

I had a sinking feeling, an emotion that, for me, always precedes the need to confront someone. There had to be someone else in this house. A malicious volunteer from the Ravenhill Preservation Foundation? A homeless squatter? Was he staying just out of sight to play mind games on me? Move dolls from here to there to freak me out?

“I know you’re here, whoever you are!” I called out. “So you can come out of hiding and show yourself!” This could spoil my entire venture. For all I knew, he could be dangerous.

Faint, whispered giggles, in a woman’s voice.

I moved to the settee, inspected the two female dolls and traced a finger over one’s mouth, frozen open in laughter. Back through my photos again, until I found my earlier shots of her. Zoomed in on her mouth – firmly shut, lips together, face placid.

Pulling the settee away from the wall, I checked for hidden speakers that might be projecting sound. A soft thud behind me. Whirled around – an armoire door hung open, and a large felted, cube-shaped box had tumbled from inside. The lid lay beside it, and inside sat a half dozen more dolls – smaller than the others, like children’s toy dolls – all of them garbed in old fashioned clothes.

My heart thudded. Closed my eyes, did some box breathing exercises to relax myself. It was a self-calming, mindfulness technique I’d learned.

Then it hit home – I was no longer alone. Or rather, I no longer felt alone. Instead, with my eyes shut, I had the very palpable sense of being watched by multiple people, and from different directions.

Out in the hall, I cried out in alarm, dropped my camera. The expensive lens exploded on hardwood. There was the man in black again, standing six feet away, in the middle of the hallway. A smile. No, a grin was fashioned on his face. His expression showed mirth, not malice. Spun around, where the two women from the settee stood frozen in the doorway, grinning.

This was no squatter’s prank, no interloper’s trickery.

I tore down the hall, toward the home’s grand staircase, the ground floor, and the world beyond. Storms be damned, I had to get out of here. Dozens of large dolls – men, women, children, even a dog and several cats, stood in silence on the steps, blocked my path, all grinning, their glassy eyes trained on me. Their awareness, their emotions, their energies drilled into me. I heard whispers. Their lips began to move. Limbs flexed, joints pivoted – elbows, knees, hips. They ascended slowly, wobbling left to right as they did.

With each step, their movements accelerated. These fucking dolls were alive! I spun round, saw throngs of them in every doorway, all walking in that same wobbling gait. Hallway closet doors creaked open, and more of these animated porcelain, wood, and cloth creatures appeared, then approached, as if to surround me.

Behind me was the only closed door in sight, so I yanked it open and glanced up a set of steep wooden stairs that vanished into blackness. I stepped through, closed the door, but it wouldn’t latch from inside. Fished out the small torch in my right pocket. Switched it on and climbed the stairs as quickly as my legs would carry me.

The attic was huge – with its peaked roof, wood plank floors, and, thank God, none of those cursed dolls. Rain hammered the roof, now just a few feet above. Lightning strobed through small windows along the attic’s length. It was full of old furniture, large framed paintings, and countless other things. On an old table to my right lay a book with a bright white cover. The book’s complete lack of dust took me aback.

I picked it up, a small hardbound volume titled “Companions and Their History.” A quick perusal gave a name to these large, elaborately dressed dolls – Companions. Used in many estate homes to assuage the loneliness of the infirm and very old. To act as some minimal form of companionship for those living in loneliness or forced seclusion. There was a satin bookmark near the book’s middle, so I opened to that page.

Many have claimed, over the years, that their own companions were alive to some degree, aware of their moods and emotions. That they sensed sadness, sorrow, and loneliness, and hoped to offer some level of comfort, despite their immobility, their inability to speak. Such people admitted that they loved their companions and were thankful for their endlessly patient presence.

Suddenly, an armoire door creaked open before me. Small hands reached out, and three of these… companions… stepped out and walked calmly toward me. One was an elderly woman in a night gown, the second a boy in striped pajamas, the third a girl – his sister by their familial resemblance.

“Stop!” I shouted. “Leave me alone! I’ve done nothing to harm you or this house!”

They advanced toward me, and I had no option but to retrace my steps. Then the boy sped up, so I leapt back, my feet finding only empty air as I tumbled down the attic stairs. The terrifying inability to stop my fall, jolts of intense pain as bones broke, an explosion of pain and lights as my head struck a step halfway down. When I hit the attic door, it flew open, and I rolled out onto the hallway floor.

Dozens of companions approached me from all sides, raised their arms toward me, tiny fingers unfurled, speaking now in whispering child-like voices to each other – layers of conversations upon conversations, giggles, laughter, all of it happy, enthusiastic, gleeful, like they wanted to touch me, greet me. Welcome me. They walked into me, began to climb up my sides, onto my chest, my legs. They were incredibly heavy, impossibly strong, as though imbued with adult human strength. They continued to pile on. Weight upon weight. I struggled to breathe. Then darkness.

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I lay on my back. Impossibly huge pieces of furniture stood about me. From beside my head, a bench leg as thick as a building’s support column rose into the heights. Several dolls knelt about me, all of them gazing down upon me, intent expressions on their faces. Lifting my head, I looked down the length my body where a “physician doll”, dressed in a white lab coat with reflector banded about his head, stitched my left leg to my body. I felt only a mild prickling sensation as he worked the needle in and out, pulling the threads taut after each stitch.

Then they dressed me in vintage gray tweed trousers, vest and jacket. I could smell the old wool, and knew the clothing to be of the highest quality. Several of them lifted me up to a sitting position, then to my feet, where I stood for a while, a bit wobbly. Before me was a tall vanity mirror with a gilded gold frame.

A companion. I was a companion – fashioned in stunning likeness to my older, human form. A woman stood beside me and parted my brown hair with a comb, straightened out my collar, and then the group of us, six in number, stood together and gazed at our reflections.

They led me back into the hallway, where, beneath a line of flickering sconce lamps, a dozen dolls gently dragged my clothed, lifeless body toward the stairs with ropes tied around my limbs. My body was like a deceased Gulliver, being removed from the scene, most probably toward some hidden crypt where my former self would lie in repose forever. Would the people at the Foundation search for me? Police? What little remained of my family and friends? Probably. But I already knew they would find nothing.

The number of residents and tourists who have vanished without a trace remains the home’s most troubling and enduring mystery.

Outside, a hard rain fell, beat against windows that had weathered storms for centuries. I wondered at my own lack of anguish and terror, about my physical death. But my mind, too, had been refashioned into some simpler, more straightforward form of consciousness. All of this felt natural to me. This was the proper order of things. I would live here with the others, as we awaited our chance to find someone new to merge into our ranks. Would I make friends? In contrast to my former life, I hoped so. It would make for quite a boring existence, otherwise.

The man in black stood beneath a huge oil portrait of the patriarch and founder of Crowhill. It was he – Albus Ravenhill. Someone lay a hand on my shoulder, and I turned to see a fair young lady, her porcelain cheeks flushed with pink, smiling at me. I was home. At last…