The Cypresses

The diary of Lucey Lacchesser aged 12

January 16^th 1897    We have just moved into a new house! Well, not a new house, but new for us, In fact it is a very old house which Daddy says was built on top of an old abbey. There are large stones and old statues in the garden. Some have been converted into rockeries and are covered with aubrietia of varying shades of purple.

There is a creepy part down by the old pond where there are rows of gravestones. Daddy and Mummy say that I can play anywhere else but not there. I am sure they are scared I fall in and drown. I can swim, but the pond water is a dirty colour and the weeds are thick. If I fell in I am sure they would wrap round me and pull me down.

January 18^th 1897    I didn’t manage to write anything yesterday as the teacher had given me a lot of homework. Arithmetic and English. Lots of sums and an essay to write. Yesterday was wet anyway and I wasn’t allowed to go out to play.

January 19^th 1897   It rained again today and by the time I got in from school I was soaked. Mummy said I was to take a bath and I used my Christmas present of scented bath salts. I felt like a grown up.

January 20^th 1897    I got a bit of a fright today. As a special treat Mummy let me play in the garden after school. I was running around the old stones and statues when I fell over and banged my knee. As I got up I thought I saw someone looking out of my bedroom window. It looked like an old person and I wondered if someone had come to pay a visit. I ran into ask Mummy but she said that we were the only people here and that I must have had a day dream. I was sure it was a person and it gave me a start.

January 22^nd 1897   I was off school yesterday with a chill. Mummy heard me coughing during the night and thought I had a bit of a temperature. It was great, Mummy ran up and down stairs carrying hot drinks. She gave me a little silver bell to ring if I needed anything.

In the afternoon I fell asleep, I had a short nap and then just as I was waking up I thought I saw the old lady again. I thought that she was standing at the bottom of my bed, but when I rubbed my eyes, she wasn’t there. I didn’t tell Mummy in case she thought that I had been dreaming.

January 23^rd 1897   I had a very strange dream last night. I dreamt I was down at the pond. I felt very naughty as Mummy and Daddy said that wasn’t to go near it. I was looking into the dirty water when I saw a pair of eyes looking up at me from below the water. They were the nastiest eyes that I have ever seen and I felt very scared. I woke up with a start.

I went back to school today and with all my friends round me I felt very happy.

January 25^th 1897    Something has been sitting outside my bedroom door at night when I sleep. There was a wet patch there when I woke up. It smelt horrible. Mummy said that there had been a leak from the roof, but I couldn’t see anything on the ceiling. Daddy said that he would get a man to have a look at it.

January 30^th 1897    The old lady was back last night. She seems to be trying to tell me something, but I can’t understand her. She vanished before I could shout for Mummy. I wish someone believed me.

School was boring today. The teacher was trying to get us to do sums, but no one could understand it, so we were all given homework to do.

January 31^st 1897      Today it rained and when I got back from school I played with my dolls until tea time. Mummy had baked a cake and I ate a slice with a cup of tea. Mummy asked what I wished for my birthday which is on March 12^th. I said that I would like a doll with a china head. I know they cost a lot of money but Mummy said that she would speak to Daddy. I returned to my room to play for a little while before I went to bed. The damp spot outside my door as almost completely dried up and Mummy sprayed some of her perfume on it to hide the smell.

February 1^st 1897        Woke up this morning early. The birds were singing their dawn chorus and I knew that it was too early to get up. I lay and tried to remember what, if anything, I had been dreaming of that night. I was sure the old woman was there and she was trying to point to something, but it was all cloudy and I couldn’t see what it was.

February 4^th 1897         Just recovered from a dreadful chill. I woke two mornings ago to find I was totally soaking. So was the bed and the surrounding carpet and it stank. I had screamed and Mummy ran through and scooped me into her arms – even though I smelt awful. She said that it had been that leak, the same as outside my door. But there was no mark on the ceiling. I was so chilled that by lunchtime of that day I had developed a fever and a dreadful cough.

February 6^th 1897     Went back to school today and worked steadily to catch up with what I had missed. As I approached the house I saw the old woman. She was standing at my bedroom window beckoning to me. She looked very worried and kept looking over her shoulder at something. I told Mummy that I had to get something from my bedroom and ran upstairs but the old woman had gone by the time I got there. I smelt a perfumey sort of smell in the room. I don’t know if I should tell Mummy. I don’t want her worrying.

February 7^th 1897               I woke early again this morning and the old lady was standing at the foot of my bed. I could smell the nice perfumey smell again and realised that it must be her scent. It took away any feeling of being scared and I sat up in bed and waited to see what she would say.

First she asked my age and then she asked if I was a woman yet. This puzzled me until I remembered what Mummy and I had been talking about a few weeks before. All about my body changing and the effects it would have on me. I felt pretty sure that it hadn’t happened yet and told the old lady. She smiled at me in a very sad way and then what she said next really scared me. She said that I must get Mummy and Daddy to leave this house and take me far away from it. If they refused, I must run away and I must do it before the end of the month. I begged her to tell me why and she put her finger to her lips and whispered the word ‘Soricks’. I said that I didn’t understand and asked what it was, but the old lady began to fade and as she faded she kept telling me to get away as soon as possible.

I must have cried out for Mummy and Daddy came into my room looking very scared. They asked why I had shouted and I burst into tears as I told them of the old lady’s warnings and they both looked grave. Daddy said to Mummy that he thought that I really hadn’t got over the fever that I had had. He thought that I had been day dreaming the awful event due to my illness. He rushed out of my bedroom to send a message to the doctor to make a house call as soon as he could.

I whispered to Mummy that I hadn’t been dreaming and that I felt that the old woman was real and so was her warning.

February 10^th 1897       After the doctor had been Daddy insisted that I stay in my bed and rest. The most I was allowed to do was to read a book of fairy stories!

Daddy came in from the garden where he had been digging a piece of earth for a vegetable patch. He had found a bit of pottery with a pretty design on it, he wondered if I would like it. He said that it was quite old.

I cleaned all the mud off it and saw that there was some writing in between a design made up of leaves. It said “Cave Sauricus”. I got a bit of a fright as I realised that ‘ Sauricus’ sounded like the ‘Sorick’ the old lady warned me about.

February 11^th 1897    Returned to school and my spirits rose when I met up with my school friends. They had been worried about me.

I had written the strange wording on a piece of paper and after one of the lessons I asked my teacher, a dear lady called Miss Prudence, what it could possibly mean. She admitted that her Latin was a little rusty but what she thought it said was ‘Beware the Sorick’. She asked me where I had got this from and I said off a piece of pottery that had been found in the garden.

February 12^th 1897    We had a visit from the local vicar the Reverend Goodbody today. He came for tea and cakes and almost ate them all!

During the conversation I asked politely if Mr Goodbody knew any of the history of the ruined abbey. He admitted that upon arriving five years before he had delved into all the local history of the area. Not a lot of information remained regarding the abbey and its monks, but what he did know was that the abbey had been burnt down by the local people after there had been tales of unholy practices being preformed there.

Mummy cleared her throat which was a sign to the vicar that he shouldn’t proceed with his narrative, as ‘little people’ were present.

Before the adults moved on to pleasanter topics, I asked if he knew what a sorick was. This was met with a sudden silence in which Rev. Goodbody’s face turned a shade of red. Before he could bring himself together he blurted out that a sorick was a mythical amoeboid (think I’ve spelt it correctly) entity.

Both Mummy and Daddy jumped up and began trying to change the subject. I would have laughed at their antics but I thought that it would be rude.

After the vicar left, Daddy scolded me for causing Rev. Goodbody to be embarrassed. I said that I was sorry.

February 13^th 1897    The word is not sorick but saurick. I found all about it in an old book in the library. Daddy had had gone into town and Mummy was in the garden when I decided to see what books were in the house library.

The History of Melford Abbey was written in an ancient looking book which was falling apart. It had an engraving of the abbey as it was when it was being lived in and it showed people with wagons moving in and out of the building. The Saurick was listed in the index and upon turning to the pages I learnt that a ‘star’ had fallen to Earth two years before the Abbey was burnt down. It was considered to be one of the ‘Virgin’s Tears’ as the day it fell was the Festival of the Virgin Mary. Just after the ‘Tear’ had been found and carried into the abbey it was renamed as the Saurick and the reports of misconduct and evil began, ending with the burning down of the abbey and the banishing of the monks.

As I lay in my bed that night I wondered what it could have been. A meteor? A comet? Whatever it had been, it changed a place of worship into something else quite evil.

February 14^th 1897     Woke this morning and thought that I had cut myself. The bed was covered with blood. Mummy came in and gave me a big hug. She whispered that I was now a young woman and that she and I should have a long talk about the changes that I could expect.

I didn’t feel at all well and after a troublesome day at school went to bed early. I intend finishing this entry in my diary and then get to sleep.

February 16^th 1897        The old woman appeared by my bed this morning. She looked terrified and began pleading with me to go away. You are a woman now she said. It will be coming for you.

I asked what she meant by ‘it’ and she whispered ‘saurick’.

Just at that moment Mummy came into the room and the old lady faded away to nothing. But just before she vanished she whispered ‘sacrifice’.

I once again asked Mummy if we could leave the house as I was scared. She laughed and said houses like ‘the Cypresses’ were scary but that Daddy had paid a lot of money for it and that they couldn’t afford to move.

Later in the day Mummy fixed a wooden crucifix above my bed. She said that it would keep all the ‘monsters’ at bay.

I hope so.

February 17^th 1897    I woke during the night and heard something outside my door. First of all I thought I heard water running and then it quietened to a steady drip. I lit a candle that I kept by the bedside and as the light shone on the door to my bedroom I noticed three streams of liquid coming across the floor from under the door. They moved like jelly and I knew that the saurick had found me. I jumped out of bed and hid behind my cupboard as the streams continued to move until the saurick had totally entered my room. It was like a large blob of jelly that quivered and shook as it held itself erect. Deep within its body I saw the evil looking eyes that had observed me from the pond by the graveyard. The Saurick had come to claim me. I was now an eligible sacrifice.

I reached up and plucked the crucifix from the wall and hurtled it at the mass. It struck and the creature shrunk back then it began to ooze out of the room till nothing remained of it apart from a large damp and stinking patch on the floor of my room. 

I am sitting in my bedroom trying to get all this information down. It will return, of that I am sure and I do not have any weapons to defeat it.

The creature is from outer space, it has the power to turn good to evil. It expects to be worshipped and have sacrifices made to it.

I am going to run away and hopefully escape from its clutches.

Pray for me please.       

This diary is given as evidence in the Procurator Fiscal’s Court of Inquiry into the disappearance of Major and Mrs J. Lachesser’s daughter Lucey

March 12^th 1897