The Curse.

Chapter 5.

I hardly saw anything of Dad over the next few days, so I kept myself busy hanging paintings and sorting out the attic.

In the meantime Dad was either out in town booking the holiday that we had promised ourselves or on the telephone (that he had had installed shortly after we moved in) querying prices to have the whole house decorated.

If he went into town, he always came back with bits and pieces for the back garden, he also put na advertisment in the local newspaper for a live in housekeeper. Which appeared in the newspaper a couple of days later, which read as follows:

Housekeeper wanted.

Must be able to live in.

Wages Negotiable.

If interested please call:

88901-7371-0061

Thank you.

Mr Samuel Fairchild

I pointed it out to him over lunch.

"Now all we have to do is wait and see if anyone calls."

Rebecca-She saw the advertisement and smiled secretly to herself, thinking it had been a long time since she had been inside that house and that a visit to dear Sir Francis Fairchild and his descendants was long overdue.

Her name was Rebecca Owens and was much older than she looked. She looked around forty-five. Whereas she had been around much longer. She was infact 500 years old.

She had seen many human catastrophies that had taken place in that time and had been involved with one or two herself. But her favourite just happened to be:

The Manchrian Plague of 1910, which was the greatest outbreak since the Black Death during the 1300s, in the earlier epidemic both bubonic and pneumonic plague were responsible, whereas in Manchuria she was to blame, by becoming the very first victim.

Again, she smiled as the memory re-surfaced.

The epidemic began in October 1910, which by the spring had claimed the lives of 45,000 to 60,000 people, and there were few, if any, survivors.

She had been a part of a medical team sent out to find out the facts and to aid the Manchurian medical staff inside a converted temple.

There was a makeshift hospital only one to three rooms inside the temple, packed with the infected, the walls were covered in blood and sputum, patients lying on wooden platforms, side by side, coughing and spluttering the frigid winter air.

The dead were carried outside and stacked in piles, awaiting to be autopsied.

She smiled inwardly as she had wandered up and down the aisles, listening to the choked pleas for help, enjoying every moment of agony of the dying, pretending as if she really cared when in actual fact she was thriving off it.

Her next favourite was during world war one, and it was the influenza pandemic of 1918: It began sometime during March 1918, infecting soldiers but by September had moved on to the civillan populace, moving swiftly down the eastern seaboard to New York, Philadephia and beyond.

Civillians could be healthy in the morning and dead by nightfall. Other's died more slowly, suffocating from the build-up of liquid their lungs.

Medical services were rendered powerless, and people turned to folk remedies such as: garlic, camphor balls, kerosene on sugar, and boneset tea.

Health officials distributed masks, closed schools, and forbade spitting in the street. Everybody is living in fear, and Rebecca Owens loved it!

Funeral homes were stacked with coffins of the flu victims. It destroyed intimacy amongst people.

But by mid-november 1918, the calamitous disease began to vanish, and the number of dead was plunging. This influenza pandemic killed around 9,000,000 in three months around the world, casualties not reported numbered at 66,000.

The virus swept in three waves through Europe and North America. The older form of influenza was often called "grippe", Which was debilliltating only occasionally deadly.

This new virus struck fast, 2-3 days of high temperature, which in some larger number of cases caused death.

The lungs of victims filled with liquid and their skin turned a dark blue as their respiratory system failed and their tissue became starved of oxygen.

The old flu virus was deadly for the old and weak but this new flu virus preyed on the young and strong of whom everybody needed at the time but her nature thrived on all of the suffering, she sneered at the vain attempts to slow down a virus that the so called authorities knew absolutely nothing about. But they kept on trying.

The public health response began late and was impossible to enforce, forbidding such things ch as: Public gatherings, quarantining victims, closing down schools, and churches.

People from war preparedness and the Red cross organised volunteers such as herself to visit and fetch medication or food to the sick. Emergency kitchens were set up to cook for those too sick to help themselves.

It had made her sick to her stomach to see all the do-gooders helping others.

It killed with something like the speed of modern warfare. Many soldiers died in training camps of the flu and never took part in battle.

In many cases, 48 hours passed between the first sneeze and the last breath.

As these memories faded, she reached for the telephone and dialled the number, spoke to Mr Fairchild, and arranged an interview for the following day at 10 am.

The following morning, she awoke filled with anticipation, hoping that she could secure the position of live-in housekeeper, also hoping that Sir Francis had not made himself known.

The memory of the day that she had captured Sir Francis Fairchild's spirit and trapped him in an oil painting re-surfaced.

The year was: 1755, and Great Britain was at war with the thirteen colonies:

- Province of Massachuettes Bay.

- Province of New Hampshire.

- Colony of Rhode Island and Providence plantations.

- Connecticut Colony.

- Province of New York.

- Province of Pennsylvania.

- Delaware Colony.

- Province of Maryland.

- Colony of Virginia.

- Province of North Carolina.

- Province of South Carolina.

- Province of Georgia.

It had grown into a world war involving Britain, France, Netherlands, Spain, and newly formed United States.

The assault of which was American victory and European recognition of the Independence of the United States with mixed results. The Stamp Act of 1765, imposed by the Parliament of Great Britain, insisted it had the right to tax colonists to finance colonists' military defence, which had become expensive due to the french and indian wars

But all the misery and death soon ended in 1783 due to the Treaty of Paris.

The total casualties and losses went as follows:

- American: 25,000 dead.

- 8,000 in battle.

- 17,000 by other causes.

Total American Casualties: up to 50,000 dead and wounded.

Allies:

- 6,000 + French and Spanish (in Europe)

- 2,000 French (In America)

- 20,000+ soldiers from the British Army (dead and wounded)

- 19,740 Sailors dead

- 42,000 sailors deserted

- 7,554 Germans dead

She smiled, knowing the devastation that the war had caused to the Fairchild's. The suffering, of course, was an added bonus.

Sir and Lady Fairchild had Robert, 22 years old, had been pressed into the army one evening whilst out walking with a lady friend.

She had returned home to her parents in a hysterical state and had never spoken to the Fairchilds again.

About two months before their second child was due to be born, Sir Francis had received a letter which he opened promptly, believing that his son had written to both himself and their mother, and it read:

"Sir, it is without a doubt that I write to inform you that your son, Robert Fairchild, has been shot and killed in battle. You may be assured sir that Robert was brave and fought well until the end.

I offer you my deepest sympathies for your loss."

Sir Francis didn't bother to read who had sent it. He just put his hands over his face and wept.

Mary, his wife, was inconsolable. She had locked herself away in her bedroom and refused to let anyone in except the doctor when he called.

The news of his son's death could not have come at a more inappropriate time as Sir Francis had found that gambling at cards with men from dubious backgrounds was not as easy as it seemed. Well, not when you are master of a huge house with a second child almost ready to come into this world of chaos and confusion.

In desperation, finding no other way to pay off his gambling debt, he turned to the few land-owners and neighbours that he knew of and sold his land, including a small cottage within which a young woman resided.

She had been outraged to find that her home had been sold and that her new landlord had doubled the amount of rent that she had to pay, which she couldn't afford, with no means of paying the rent. She was evicted, rather roughly and unceromoniously from the cottage and land.