Shiverton Hall Read Online Free PDF Page B

Lord Shiverton’s mouth: murderer .
    Lord Shiverton tried to hold his breath, but his lungs were too weak from choking on the purple smoke. Gasping, he inhaled, drawing the word in through his nose. For a moment, all was still. Ma Watkins watched Lord Shiverton, with a toothless grin. Suddenly, he convulsed, clawing at his throat, his eyes bulging as he struggled for air. He reached into his mouth, tearing at what was lodged in his gullet, and drew out a long, gold chain with a locket at its end. He gagged as it clattered to the floor. But this was not the last of it. Spluttering and wheezing, he retched as he pulled out a plaited lock of auburn hair, a rabbit’s foot and, lastly, a pink velvet ribbon. The choking stopped, and Lord Shiverton slumped back in his chair, exhausted.
    Ma Watkins stooped to the floor and picked up the pink ribbon, lacing it through her quivering fingers. She secreted it in her cloak, along with the other missing girls’ items, the terrible evidence of Lord Shiverton’s crimes, summoned by her spell. Then she calmly turned to walk out of the room.
    Lord Shiverton, some of his strength returning, stood up and began to shout, calling her a ‘stinking crone’ and a ‘devil woman’. He began to cough again, staggering after her, screaming insults at her back. He called to his butler, who remained cowering in the shadows, to stop the old woman, but she had already opened the door.
    Lord Shiverton stopped in the middle of the hall, and the room was suddenly filled with a sickening gurgling as he convulsed and doubled over. Ma Watkins slammed the door behind her as he began to pull something wet and pink from his mouth. It seemed endless, this slithery tube, and with a muffled, repulsed cry, he realised what he was pulling at. Lord Shiverton desperately tried to push it back in, swallowing at the sliminess of his own intestine. But he could not stop it – it poured out of him, landing in a coiling heap at his feet.
    ‘Help me,’ he gasped, his mouth full of guts. ‘Help me.’
    The butler could not have helped even if he had wanted to. He stood transfixed, watching as his master’s intestines were followed by his lungs, kidneys, liver and, finally, with a wet thud, his beating heart. Lord Shiverton staggered back, dragging his insides along with him, and threw himself, screaming, on to the hall’s enormous fire, leaving a bloody trail behind him.
     

     
    ‘It sounds like he deserved it,’ Arthur said, more repulsed by George’s story than he cared to admit.
    ‘He most certainly did,’ George replied, ‘but Ma Watkins’s curse didn’t stop with Lord Shiverton. It can strike any male who enters the hall.’
    ‘Go on,’ Arthur urged, intrigued.
    ‘Nope.’ George grinned. ‘You’ve had quite enough excitement for one night. It’s late, I’m going to bed.’ He got up from the chair.
    ‘Come on!’ Arthur protested. ‘I want to hear the rest.’
    ‘No, no!’ George replied loftily. ‘You’re clearly too cynical to believe me.’
    ‘Well, you’ll have to convince me then, won’t you?’
    George pondered this. He knew he really should be getting to bed, but he never could resist the opportunity to tell one of Shiverton’s dark tales. He sat back down.

The White Arm
    After Lord Shiverton’s unnatural death, his solicitors had a difficult time finding any of his relatives. Neither of his parents had had siblings, so the solicitors needed to climb very far back up the family tree to locate his heir. His beneficiary turned out to be Sir Jack Flipp, a third cousin on Lord Shiverton’s mother’s side, who had racked up a mountain of debt with some very unsavoury characters in London, and had fled to America with his wife and children.
    The news of his inheritance could not have come a moment too soon, as Sir Jack was hiding from a rather fearsome debt collector in Boston, and had already pawned most of his wife’s jewellery. They sailed back to England in style, his wife in