by Lily Morton
An hour later I wander down the cobbled lane. It’s bloody cold with the wind howling along and rattling the branches of the old copper beech tree that hangs over the road. I look up at my house and smile. The exposed brick has been cleaned up and the sash windows painted a light grey-green. The door has been painted the same colour, and the house seems to sit up straighter now that it’s not the poor relation on the street. It looks serene.
Letting myself in, however, the first thing to greet me is some extremely inventive cursing coming from the cellar through the open door.
“Hello?” I shout.
“Oh, Mr Black.” Kevin, the trainee builder, comes to the top of the stairs looking flustered. He’s a thin, pale lad with black hair and acne blooming angrily over his cheeks. “I didn’t realise you were here. Sorry about that.”
“What? The swearing?” He nods, and I laugh. “I wouldn’t apologise about that. I’ve heard far worse.” I pause. “I’ve used far worse.” He smiles, and I dump my case on the floor. “What’s the problem?”
For a second he looks hesitant, but then indignation comes into his eyes. “Downstairs is a right mess,” he mutters, jerking his head at the door as if I wasn’t aware there was another level. My lip twitches, but I say nothing and follow him down the stairs. When we get to the bottom, I stop in amazement.
“What the fuck?” I breathe. “What happened in here?”
“We didn’t leave it like this,” he says slightly indignantly. “It was like this in the morning when I came in.”
“Who the fuck did this, then?” I mutter.
Where yesterday there was a big empty space with bare brick walls is now chaos. The previously neatly stacked bags of cement have been ripped open and the dry cement thrown around liberally. The builder’s tools have been similarly treated, although three or four lie in pieces as if someone has smashed them repeatedly into the concrete ground.
I look at Kevin. “Was it kids getting in?”
He shakes his head. “Kids didn’t do this,” he mutters. “If they’d got in, there’d be damage all over the house.”
“Then who?” I breathe. He looks awkward and my attention sharpens as a sudden thought occurs to me. “Has something like this happened before?”
For a second he hesitates and then his obvious desire to tell the truth overcomes it. “There’s been something weird happening down here every day.”
“What?”
He nods solemnly. “Every day. Things going missing, tools damaged.”
“But how?” I pause. “I mean, why?”
He shrugs. “This old house, I reckon. Mr Harrison, he was saying the other night it’s a common happening. When he was clearing the house of stuff for the old lady, he’d regularly come in to find the boxes he’d packed the previous day had been emptied and the stuff thrown around.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” I say feebly.
He shoots me a look of almost pity as if I’m being extremely thick. “It’ll be the ghost, of course.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” My instinctive laughter echoes around the empty cellar but unfortunately it has the effect of completely shutting him up. He bristles and clams up, and no matter how many questions I throw at him as he moves around the cellar collecting some of the gear they need for their new job, he refuses to say any more.
I give up and follow him to the door. “I’m sorry I laughed,” I say, holding the door open for him. “It was really rude of me.”
He thaws slightly, his young face taking on an earnest expression. “You can’t help it, Mr Black. You don’t know this place.”
“This house, or York?”
He shrugs as he loads his gear into the van. “Either. We live here. We know York isn’t like other places. It’s different.”
“Different, how?”
“Ah now, Mr Black, I reckon the only thing that’ll make you believe me is to experience it yourself.” He looks up at the house before he climbs into the van. “Reckon that’ll happen soon enough, knowing this place.”
“Wait. What do you mean this place?” I ask, but he slams the door of the van and with a wave he sets off jerkily down the lane.
Within seconds he’s vanished and I’m left on the street, the wind blowing my hair around. Shivering, I look up the house and for a second it seems to tower over me, and I find myself searching the windows looking for something. Someone.
Then I shake my head. What the fuck is wrong with me? Am I actually going to believe there’s a fucking ghost in my house?
The memory of that first night here stirs. It’s faded into the background over the months, and the fear I’d felt then, that deep foreboding, I’d simply dismissed as being down to tiredness. I don’t believe in spirits and things that go bump in the fucking night.
I shrug and make my way back into the house. I’ve had too many nights listening to the locals talk about the ghosts around the city, that’s all.
I wander around the house with satisfaction. This is my place. Something that is just mine. Everything in it, every alteration, has been my choice, and I love the result.
The previously dark hallway is now painted white. The floorboards have been sanded and glossed and a huge blue and white oriental rug has been laid over them. The dining room walls are now a deep red, and when the new light-oak dining table and chairs arrive, it’ll be a snug and cosy room.
One of the rooms I’m most pleased with is the kitchen. It took a couple of weeks of work but now the once-greasy-and-grim room is lovely. The builders stripped the walls back to the original brick and laid the floor with flagstones. New black cupboards gleam in the light, and an oak worksurface warms the room up. A black and gold roman blind has been fitted to the huge restored Georgian window. I look around the room. I just need to unpack all the boxes in here now.
My phone beeps with a message from the furniture company informing me that they’re delivering the new sofa, bed, and other bits that I’d had to order.
When I walked away from Mason, I left him with everything. Whether it was petulance or a desire to never see anything connected with him again, I’ve started over from scratch. I’ve spent a small fortune, but I’ve reassured myself with the thought that I won’t be moving for a while. Maybe not ever, I think as I look around, inhaling the scent of new wood, carpets, and fresh paint.
The doorbell rings and I spring into action. The next few hours are spent arranging and rearranging furniture until I’m happy with the results. The lounge now sports a huge grey sectional grouped around a low coffee table and set in front of the restored fireplace. Three of the walls have been painted a soft grey while the other one is a rich blue. I place a mustard velvet chaise lounge by the blue wall, and unroll a huge cream rug to bring everything together.
In my kitchen, I now have the choice of sitting at the small oak table and chairs set in front of the big window or at the barstools around the breakfast bar.
I can even sleep comfortably, I muse, attempting to shove the duvet into the new bed linen. I frown when the duvet seems to settle in the middle of the cover in a huge lump. Who the fuck manages to do this in one go? You’d need the intellect of fucking Einstein to get this massive fucking duvet into this cover.
It takes me fifteen minutes, but eventually it’s done, and I look around happily at the room. A few months ago, the bedroom had been dark and cold and dusty. Now, it’s painted a light grey, and the bed with its dark grey fabric headboard looks hotel-ready with its mixture of green and white bed linen. Big lamps sit on either side of the bed, so there’ll be lots of light in here.
My mind supplies a memory of the footsteps and the chuckle I’d thought I’d heard in my first visit to this room. I shake my head. The solicitor must have thought I was on something.
Leaving the room, I bound up the steps to my favourite room in the entire house. My studio. I switch the light on and look around contentedly. My huge drafting table is drawn up under a skylight, and my desk and chair sit in fron
t of one of the big windows. The room is painted a warm cream and the builders have sandblasted the beams. My artwork is framed and hung on the walls, and a massive oriental rug lies on the shiny wooden floors. The space is warm from the big radiator, but the atmosphere feels nice in a deeper way. Like a safe space, if that doesn’t sound too ridiculous.
I spend a happy hour unpacking the boxes of my art equipment and shelving my books on the floor-to-ceiling bookcases on one side of the room. Then I sink onto the large red sofa and stare out the window, watching the rain beat against the panes of glass, blurring the outline of the Minster until it looks like an Impressionist painting.
I’m not sure how long it takes me to realise that there’s a strong scent of lily of the valley in the room. By the time I do, it’s incredibly strong. I look around for the source. There isn’t one. Just the sweet scent that brings back memories of an old great-aunt who never wore any other scent. It drifts around me until it’s almost choking, and I cough. Then as quickly as it came, it vanishes.
“What the hell?” I say out loud.
Did the builders put scent plug-ins in the rooms? Laughter bubbles up at the thought of Mr Harrison, the stoical builder, struggling to choose between warm vanilla and clean linen. My smile dies. Where did that smell come from, then? I stand up and pace around the room, but there’s no sign of anything that could cause it.
The next second, there’s an almighty bang from downstairs that practically makes me levitate off the fucking floor.
“What is it with this bloody place?” I groan and dash out of the room only to be brought up short on the stairs down to the first floor. It’s fucking freezing down here, and it shouldn’t be. When I went up to my studio, the whole house was toasty warm. Now it’s so cold I can see my breath in the air. The banging comes again from downstairs. It sounds like someone is slamming a door over and over again.
I take the stairs at a run and stop dead at the bottom. The front door is open wide and swinging in the wind which is howling down the hallway. Shivering madly, I grab the door and slam it shut, looking down at the lock in consternation. Is the catch faulty? I’m sure I remember locking the door while I was working upstairs. Living in London all of my life means that habit is ingrained. I frown. Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I forgot today, and the wind had caught it and blown it open.
It’s still cold and there’s a distinct draft coming from behind me, as well as a rattling noise coming from the kitchen. I go into the room and stop abruptly. The tall heavy sash window is raised to its highest level and the rattling I can hear is the wood rocking in the casement. A chill runs down my neck and back that has nothing to do with the cold. I might have forgotten to lock the front door, but I’m fucking damn sure I didn’t forget opening this window.
Rain gusts through, and I curse. It’s going to ruin the wooden worktops. It takes a few minutes of swearing and struggling, but eventually I get the heavy window down. I click the lock on it and make myself watch what I’m doing.
More banging erupts. This time I jump like a bloody child at a horror film. What the hell is happening here? Anger kindles as I move into the lounge. The new French doors are open, of course, and the wind is billowing the curtains back so fiercely they look like windsocks.
I shiver and stiffen my spine. Locking the doors, I make my way round the house in a grim silence. Every single window in the place is open apart from the attic where I’d been. For a brief minute I contemplate whether the builder did this. Is he trying to scare me off? He’d wanted to buy the house before. Does he still?
“Fuck me,” I say out loud, the sound of my voice almost startling in the newly hushed stillness of my house. “You’ll be writing fairy stories next, Levi Black.”
The idea of the staid Mr Harrison creeping into the house and opening windows is faintly ridiculous. Maybe someone else has keys, I think suddenly. Maybe this is vandalism.
The words of Kevin the builder float through my mind, and I shake my head. “No bloody way, Levi. Get a fucking grip. There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
The whole house feels like the inside of a meat locker, and so I turn the heat up on the boiler. Then I stand staring out onto the lane outside my kitchen window, watching some tourists walk past clutching their maps of York, the wind blowing their clothing about. It looks such a normal scene. I frown. In the usual run of things, I don’t make a habit of noticing what’s normal, which should tell me how weird this whole situation is. I shake my head and switch the lights off. I’ve got boxes to unpack.
A few hours later, the last box for the lounge has been unpacked and the room is complete, apart from a few pictures that need to be put up. Barring my mysterious window opener striking again, I’m done for the night. My only plan for the evening is ordering a Chinese takeaway and having an early night. It’s Friday night for everyone else.
I strip my clothes off and step into the shower. Blessing the fact that I bought a rainforest shower, I twist and let the hot spray pound down on my sore muscles. I soap up and fist my cock lazily, feeling it thicken in my hand. Searching my spank-bank images, I’m amazed to find myself thinking of Blue. And once he’s in my head, I can’t get him out. That sparky, defiant air about him, the slender body, and vivid face. I grunt as I fuck my fist harder and moan as I shoot against the wall, the water washing the spunk away down the drain as if it was never there.
For a second I rest against the wall and then shake my head. A person should really get out more if they’re reduced to wanking over someone they’ve never met and likely never will.
I switch the shower off and stand drying myself with a large navy bath sheet and admiring my new bathroom. The floor is made of wide light-oak boards, and the room is white and light apart from the glass-encased shower which is tiled in vivid blue subway tiles. There’s also a clawfoot bath which is about the only decent thing that was original to the house.
I pad back into the bedroom, which is thankfully warm again. I stand there, wondering where my fucking clothes are. Then I remember leaving my suitcase in the kitchen for some reason. All my other clothes are in a box somewhere that I haven’t seen yet.
Running a hand through my hair, I wander downstairs as naked as the day I was born. I don’t know why it’s so freeing to walk around nude, but I’ve always enjoyed it. I wanted to go on one of those LGBTQ-friendly nudist beaches, but Mason would never agree.
I’m pondering this as I switch on the under-cupboard lighting in the kitchen. A woman shrieks, and I just about jump out of my skin, certain someone is in the house with me.
I spin around. A group of people is staring at me through my kitchen window, and as it’s set low to the road outside, they are all, without exception, enjoying a close-up view of my dick.
“Fuck!” I choke.
I grab a tea towel and cover my cock with it. I then rather incongruously opt to cover my nipples with my arm. I’m really not sure why.
For a long second that stretches into eternity we all stare at each other, including, I discover, Blue. He’s standing at the front of the group with a sardonic smile on his face and eyes that clearly express a desire to laugh. He’s dressed in what I’m coming to recognise is his ghost-walk gear. Which means he’s leading a ghost walk. And my house must be on the walk.
The two of us break the strange détente we’re engaged in. Me, by reaching out and whacking the light switch off so the kitchen darkens, and him, by turning and gesturing theatrically at his followers to follow him as he moves off down the road.
“So, that’s the Murder House,” he says loudly, a thread of laughter running through his voice. “Very shocking, I guess you’d say.”
“Was that a spirit?” an old lady asks him, her voice quivering with what I presume is excitement. Hopefully, it’s not amusement. “I saw a ghost. Did you see it?”
“I did,” he calls back. “As clear as day, but the ghost really needs to buy himself a bigger dish cloth.”
I groan, throwing the tea towel on the count
er. Why did it have to be him?
Then I still. Did he just call my house the Murder House?
I break my stasis and zip over to the window, but they’re gone and the lane is empty once more. Just to make sure of no more flashing incidents, I lower the blind.
Chapter 3
Levi
The next evening, I sit in my dark kitchen. I’m ready for when Blue brings the ghost tour by my house. I smile grimly. Very ready for some answers.
I woke up this morning to a wind blowing through my bedroom, which came from… You guessed it. All the fucking windows being open again.
The one in the small bedroom had been wrenched upwards with so much force that the catch had been bent out of shape.
When I got downstairs it was to find that the boiler in the kitchen had been switched off, as had the electricity. It’s dark at seven in the morning in October, so I’d ended up stumbling all over the place looking for the fuse box. I’d found it in the cellar, along with a whole bag of cement that had been emptied down the stairs so it’d got all over my bare feet. The fact that I’d then had to shower in cold water had not helped my mood.
So, you could say that I’ve definitely got a few questions about the Murder House. I sigh and scrub my hands down my face and take another sip of my Jack Daniel’s. What is happening that I, a sane person, am reduced to looking for answers about my own house from a man who leads ghost walks and dyes his hair in an apparent attempt to look like one of the Tweenies?
Voices suddenly sound outside the kitchen window, a few excited, one wry. It’s him.
I sit stock-still as if they’re going to see me, despite the fact that the blind is half closed and the room dark. I shift closer to the window to hear what they’re saying, but at that point the phone rings. I hesitate as it rings again and then sigh and grab it, groaning at the sight of Mason’s name on the display.
“What?” I whisper.
There’s a startled pause. “Levi?”
“Yes, of course it is. You just rang me.”
