I was excited to find the house where my ancestors had lived. It had been at least five generations, maybe six since my family had even been in the area, but I was excited to learn that the plot of sheep-grazing land my grandfather had left me had a small, livable house on it. Much of my family preferred the city, but I LOVED the country and open fields, and didn't mind sheep (or their droppings).
I was surprised when I reached the house, but hardly disappointed. It was more a cottage than a shack, and while I expected it to be in the middle of a wide expanse, there was a beautiful copse along the back and sides of the house. It looked hundreds of years old, but diligently patched by family members and contracted groundskeepers. It took only a few minutes to explore the house in its entirety, but from the looks of it, I would be finding hidey-holes and secret cupboards for months to come. The most interesting thing was a bookshelf with little on it; a set of Farmer's Alamnacs from the 19th century, some collections of old publish-by-chapter novels, and a few newer books that had presumably been left by keepers and wandering tenants. One of the three shelves had a book lying on its own, and I told myself to return for it as soon as I'd found a place to drop my heavy backpack. That place turned out to be the bedroom (who'd have guessed?). I rolled my sleeping bag out on the floor, wanting to avoid the bedbugs that could be in the old hay-stuffed mattress held up to the bedframe with ropes. A few nights of discomfort while waiting for a bed to be delivered was nothing, but I drew the line before itchy, biting bugs that would require a flea bath, or worse. I took out my mobile and one of the battery-powered chargers I'd brought to order a new bed online, but discovered that there was no internet connection out here. I'd asked the solicitor about wireless connections out here, and he'd given me the okay, but he was from a different generation. He may have not even HAD internet on his mobile phones.
I grabbed the book from the shelf and wandered out to the trees out back. The copse wasn't as deep as it looked, since the far side opened to a watering pond. I found myself a good reading tree, one with a nice, sturdy limb low to the ground, and opened the book.
It seemed to be an undated diary, but when I flipped back to the first page, the format caught my eye. The first page was a note instead of an entry. "To the last Henry Michaels." I chuckled; while I'd been born Henry Michaels, as had every member of my family's male line in recorded memory, I'd been Julie Michaels since the age of sixteen. Whatever Magician's Force the author wanted to pull, it wouldn't work on me.
"To the last Henry Michaels:
"Do NOT stay in the house. Get out, and read this book elsewhere. Stay with a friend. Stay in a cave. Just do not stay here.
"This house is cursed for you. You may not be the last. If so, incase you can't name your son Henry, or he can't name his son Henry, never use this for a family home. Rent it out. Live here in your old age. Never, NEVER let the last Henry Michaels spend the night here.
"If you are the last, leave now. May the devil have mercy on your soul, since God never will.
"-H.M. II"
I've always been a little superstitious, but never enough to let it affect my life. Even if I'd believed the message, my boyfriend and I had already agreed to name our first son "Henry". We'd also agreed to name our first daughter after his grandmother; in that light, keeping a family name going for another zillionth generation was hardly an unfair thing to plan, and we each liked both names. I kept reading.
"Bette got me this book for a wedding present. She said I should keep writing. I'm going to be a shepherd like my fathers have for scores and scores of years, but she likes that I write as a lawman."
"A lambe was born early. The ewe is healthy. We took the lambe inside the door to keep her warm."
"The lambe is fine."
"The flock has finished birthinged. A damned stripey ram must have gotten into the paddock. The wool will sell for less until I breed it out of the flock."
"Priesf John had dinner with us today. Bette made him take home a loaf of hard bread and a loaf of spiced bread."
It continued like that for many pages. "H.M. II" clearly skipped a lot of days, since after the first year the cycle of seasons was only about fifteen or eighteen entries long. It grew too dark to read and, spooked by the inscription at the beginning, I chose to read one of the books I brought by lanternlight until I fell asleep.
The next day, I hiked into town to pick up a small solar panel and brackets and order a cheap bedframe and mattress. Even in the middle of nowhere, superstores sometimes cropped up these days, and the town was a hub for all the local villages. I had to charge my battery at the diner since it had died in the night, and I guess I mixed up my backups when I was charging them because they were all dead, too.. I hiked back and to set up the panel and explored the land, but by the time I'd fished wandering it was nearly dark. This time, I decided to read more of the journal by lantern-light. Thanks goodness the lantern battery still had juice... or had recharged through the day, I spookily reminded myself.
After another apparent year went by, one entry finally broke the pattern:
"Father died. He always told me horrible storys of ghosts and bugges. He told me a story before he died that he swore on his open grave was true, and said most of the other storys were fake. We almost starved and froze at the same time one year, when I was but an unchristened childe. He called to the devil in the winter to save him from such a death. He says the devil came when mother and me were asleep. He signed his name in blood with his fingertip that the devil would get the soul of Henry Michaels for keeping us from a young death. When the devil vanished, he woke up from his bed, and the snow was stopped. Father went to the empty wood pile, but it wasn't empty. He filled the stove and stayed up until Mother was awake. As soon as he could fetch Priest Lemuel, he had me christened with his name, and spat to spite the devil. The sheep never went a season without lambing. The trees by the house never ran out no matter how much we had to burn in the winter.
"Father told me this was why he insisted I call my firstborn Henry. He told me to make my Henry call his son Henry. He wanted to cheat the devil, even if it took forever and a day after his own death. I still do not understande, but I wrote a warning in the front of this book for any one of my sons who tryes to live here with his son.
"I swear by my right hand that my first son will be rich enouf to live in town until he has a grand-son."
THAT creeped me out, but the superstition of an old, dying man explained the message at the beginning of the book. I was relieved. I read a while longer, but despite my worries at ever flickering shadow as the lantern dimmed, I soon fell asleep.
I hiked into town and picked up some food for the next few days, including some fresh eggs to make an omelette for lunch. I LOVE tomato omelettes. To tell the truth, that would be the hardest part of living without a refrigerator.
After lunch, I decided to finish the book in one sitting, even if it got dark... not that it was likely to happen, since many of the pages at the end of the book were blank. I sat myself up in the same tree as the first day and started reading.
The entries were mostly the same as the first part of the book, but H.M. II had become almost creepily superstitious after his father died. He had the local priests bless the house at least once a year, and one time even traveled to a city (he didn't say which one) to pull in a Catholic to preform a blessing from that church. He seemed to view it with an air of secrecy and desperation; I guess it was back when Catholics and Protestants REALLY hated each other.
The last entry seemed no different from the others in style, only in content. The handwriting was the same, but the words impacted me like a rubber mallet to the sternum. My ancestor, all those years distant, was dying.
"I was elf shot today. Henry brought me in when he and his Mary paid a visit. He ran for the priest for last rites. I fear he will not make it in time.
"I can not open my left eye. I can not talk. Henry's Mary keeps tipping me forward to keep me from drowning in my spit. The elf shot brought a blessing. I can hear Old Scratch. I know more than my father told me before he died.
"Julie, burn the house and sell the land. Spend not a single night of sleep between those walls."
I dropped the book.
Submitted January 11, 2016 at 04:13PM by Jechtael http://ift.tt/1JESLHD nosleep
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