First Chapter of Crawley Manor Haunting by Cheryl Bradshaw
On a clear, star-filled night, Addison Lockhart sat on the deck of Grayson Manor, sipping on a glass of iced tea and reminiscing about her life. As the gentle breeze frolicked through the leaves of the large elm in the front yard, she thought back to nine years earlier, to the time just after her mother had passed away. It was then she’d learned an important truth—a truth her mother had never shared with Addison.
Addison had a gift … and not just any gift.
She could communicate with the dead, helping lost, tortured souls trapped between this world and the next move out of the darkness and into the light.
The gift didn’t come as a surprise. Ever since Addison was a young girl, she’d had the ability to see things no one else could. At the age of five, while attending her friend Natalie’s birthday party, one of Natalie’s ribbons fell from her hair. Addison reached down to pick it up and a vision of Natalie’s future appeared before her, a vision Addison didn’t want to see—Natalie falling from the tree swing in the backyard.
The vision had been so real, like it was happening in the present moment, even though it wasn’t. As the vision faded and Addison returned to the here and now, she warned Natalie to avoid the tree swing. But Natalie discarded Addison’s concerns, choosing not to listen. Four months later, the rope on the tree swing snapped, sealing Natalie’s fate.
Years later when Addison inherited Grayson Manor, the visions she’d had as a child, the ones her mother had brushed off as though they were nothing, returned, strong and persistent, like a weed desperate to push its way through the soil. It was at this time Addison believed herself to be an empath or a medium. Then she learned she was more, so much more than she’d ever imagined.
On Addison’s wedding day, her grandmother, Marjorie, presented her with a unique gift, and Addison began to understand the power she possessed. The gift was a book of enchantments. It was old and worn … and magical. It had been passed down in Addison’s family from mother to daughter for generations. The passages within its pages read like lyrical verses of music, full of wisdom and advice. It also provided a way for Addison to summon the spirits of her ancestors who had passed on.
Soon after Addison received the book of enchantments, her grandmother died, and Addison gave birth to a daughter, Amara Jane. During this time, Addison’s life took another turn when she was visited by the spirit of Joan Waterhouse, a woman who revealed she was Addison’s ancestor. Addison learned Joan had lived in England in the 1500s. Joan also made known that Addison was much more than a medium and an empath. She was a necromancer, a witch, who one day would hold the fate of the world in her hands.
Joan bestowed upon Addison a red diamond, one of the rarest stones in the world. When placed on top of the cauldron of the book of enchantments the cauldron sunk inside itself and the book ignited, sending a surge of energy through Addison as she and the book became one. Now, Addison possessed the power of every necromancer who had ever lived. She just hadn’t learned the best way to use it yet. And since her mother and grandmother had passed away, she’d been left to figure it out on her own.
Swaying back and forth on the rocking chair, Addison’s thoughts turned to her father, Samael, a man who was also known as the raven. The two had never met, and she knew little of him except that he was a powerful sorcerer. After her mother’s death, Addison had been given a letter. In it, her mother admitted the man who’d raised her, Bill, a man Addison had called “father” her entire life, wasn’t her birth father. Her birth father was Samael. She also learned about Corbin, her twin brother.
Since learning of Samael’s existence, Addison had been warned not to seek him out, but as the months unfolded, she’d thought of him more and more often, picturing him in her mind. She wondered if she looked like him. She wondered if he’d ever tried to find her after all these years. And most of all, she wondered if he was as dangerous as her mother had made him out to be. She’d considered summoning him many times, but as she thought about her own child, she stopped herself. When it came to protecting Amara Jane, it was a risk she wasn’t willing to take.
And so she sat, swallowing back the last of her iced tea as she stared up at the night sky. Tonight, there was a strange stillness to the air, an eerie quiet, an unsettling feeling brewing within—a feeling that something terrible was about to happen.