The Ghosts of Tullybrae House

by Veronica Bale

  “Hope you don’t mind,” Sophie said, flicking a finger at her pint glass. “We got here a bit early.”

  “Of course, no worries.” Emmie took the empty seat next to Famke at the end of the table. She glanced back over her shoulder to the bartender. He was as thorough a Highlander as one could want, with ruddy, weathered cheeks and a mane of shaggy, graying hair. Catching her eye, the man acknowledged her with a tip of his chin, then sent one of his three waitresses over.

  “You eating, too, love?” inquired the middle-aged woman, pre-emptively handing Emmie a laminated, four-paged menu. She had bleach blonde, spiky hair, a tight, black tee-shirt, and the look of someone who was perpetually tired.

  “Thanks.” Emmie took the proffered menu. “I’ll have a pint of Kilkenny, please.”

  The waitress gave a listless nod and left.

  “Kilkenny,” Dean noted approvingly.

  “I had you down as a cider drinker,” Sophie put in.

  Emmie tilted her head. “Cider’s okay. But I like the strong stuff better.”

  “I’m with you,” Famke agreed. She lifted her pint of stout in salute.

  Ewan snorted. “The only Dutch woman in existence who doesn’t like Dutch beer.”

  “So tell us,” Dean said, leaning forward. “What’s it like working with that Lady Rotherham?”

  “We already had this conversation,” Ewan answered, swallowing the last of his pint. “I’ll have another,” he told the waitress, who had come to deliver Emmie’s Kilkenny.

  “I didn’t hear this story,” Dean protested. “So? Lady Rotherham?”

  Emmie took a sip of the thick, creamy red ale. “She’s… enthusiastic.”

  “Cor,” Adam exclaimed. “She’d barely shook my hand before she was off, scampering about like a dog being let out of the house. Totally dismissed me, she did. I was like, ‘Eh, careful lady. Don’t wanna go pissing me off, or I might just cut your water line while I’m digging in your yard.’”

  Sophie scoffed. “Give over, man. You couldn’t cut through chicken wire with those bony arms of yours.”

  “She’s really not that bad,” Emmie insisted. “Just excitable.”

  “My nephew’s excitable. Wees himself when he gets worked up.”

  Emmie laughed at Adam’s quip despite herself. “I think her plans for the house are different than the late Lord Cranbury’s. She’s eager to get started on it all, now that she’s free to do what she wants with the place.”

  “Cranberry?” Famke asked, confused.

  “Cran-bury. I know, I thought she was saying ‘Cranberry’ when I talked to her on the phone, too.”

  Adam took a long swallow of his Tennent’s. I say ‘Cranberry’ anyway. I want to see if she’s paying attention. She never is.”

  “Just don’t say it to Lamb. He caught it when I first met him. He may look old, but he’s sharp as a tack.”

  “Oh, he’s a sweetheart,” Sophie declared. “I like that man. Makes the best shortbread bickies, he does.”

  Emmie smiled tenderly. “Yes, he is a sweetheart.”

  The waitress came back to take their orders. Emmie hadn’t yet looked through the menu. While the others were ordering, she opened the laminated pages and quickly scanned her choices. They all looked like possibilities, but in the end, Famke’s order piqued her interest.

  “I’ll have the Thai curried beef, too, please,” she told the waitress when it was her turn. “Can I get my rice on the side, though?”

  The waitress bobbed her platinum head as she scribbled on her notepad. Then she collected the menus and returned to the kitchen. Ewan’s eyes followed her retreating backside.

  “Ewan, you dirty old man.” Sophie, who was sitting next to him, shoved him lightly in the arm.

  Ewan didn’t miss a beat. “I am not old.”

  Emmie listened to their easy banter appreciatively. Together, this group had found the kind of comfort that came from years of working together. She envied it a little; she had never been close enough with any of her previous teams to know this kind of effortless company. She was glad to be a part of it tonight, though. Their high spirits raised her own. They were a lot of fun, this eclectic mix of archaeological excavators. And they made an effort to include her in their conversation. Even if it was just making eye contact to let her know they were speaking to her, as well. She began to settle into the group, and by the time the food came, she’d even allowed herself to be pulled into their good-natured bickering.

  “Ooh, that looks good. Why didn’t I get that?” Dean leaned over the waitress as she placed two Thai curries in front of Famke and Emmie.

  “Shoulda, woulda, coulda, mate.” Adam eyed his own plate of loaded nachos with an eager grin.

  Just as he was reaching for his first chip, Dean’s hand shot forward and snatched the cheesiest, meatiest chip from the top. Before Adam could protest, he pushed it into his mouth.

  “Eh, get off.” Adam pulled his plate away, cradling it like a child. “Touch my crisps again and I’ll kill you in your sleep. Just watch, mate.”

  Dean grinned at Emmie through a mouthful of nacho.

  “Don’t even think about it,” she warned, pulling her own plate close to her.

  Sophie barked a laugh. “He wouldn’t dare. He’s still trying to impress you. It’s you, Famke, that’s gotta watch your plate.”

  “So when’s someone going to ask her about these ghosts we keep hearing about?”

  Emmie’s hand stilled over her rice. She stared at Adam, who chewed a mouthful of nacho with a glint of humour in his eyes. When he saw the expression on her face, he sobered.

  “Eh, you okay, love? Sorry, did you not know about the ghosts? I thought you did.”

  “I— Um, yes, I know about them.”

  “Are you all right, Emmie? You look very pale.” Famke studied her with genuine concern.

  Emmie shook her head and forced a smile. “Yes. I’m fine. Sorry about that, you just caught me off guard.”

  “So then? Tell us about them,” Adam prodded.

  “Adam, have some tact,” Ewan grunted.

  “What?” He shovelled another cheese-and-bean-laden taco chip into his mouth.

  Sophie tossed him a disgusted look. “Could you be any more of a pig?”

  He grinned sloppily. “That a challenge?”

  “Really, really no.”

  Emmie laid her fork down on her plate and folded her hands in her lap. “Why don’t you tell me what you’ve heard, and I’ll tell you if it’s true or not.”

  “We were told on debriefing that there were two ghosts at Tullybrae,” Famke answered, somewhat chagrined by her own curiosity.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Yeah, they didn’t say much,” Dean added. “Only that there were two, and that they were friendly.”

  “Is it true? Have you seen them?” Sophie leaned over her plate, eager to hear more.

  “It’s true. I haven’t seen them, exactly. I may have… I’m not really sure how to describe it. I may have encountered one. At least I think I did.”

  “Really?” Dean leaned forward, too, mirroring Sophie’s wide-eyed awe. Then, as quick as lightning, his hand snapped out and snatched a few French fries from her plate.

  “Deano!” She slapped his hand, and scooched her chair away from him, dragging her plate with her.

  Dean laughed. “I totally had you, Soph. Seriously, though, Em. What happened?”

  “Not much happened. Just that a candle flickered when there was no draft. It had been burning for a while and hadn’t flickered once. That’s not a big deal, I know. But it happened at the same time that I smelled a rose-scented perfume. I don’t know where it could have come from. I didn’t have anything rosy around, and I know Lamb uses lemon-scented cleaners religiously. But that’s what I was told happens when the Countess of Cranbury is around. People smell roses.”

  “Do they know which Countess of Cranbury it was?” Even Ewan was engrossed in her
story. His hands rested around his half-drunk pint, and he listened just as intently as the others.

  “The sixth, I’m told. She lived at Tullybrae through the sixteen hundreds.”

  Sophie sat back and exhaled through puffed cheeks. “Wow, that’s fantastic. Man, if I were telling this story, I’d be right into it, with voices and sound effects and I dunno what. I don’t know how you can be so nonchalant about it.”

  “Nonchalant,” Adam teased. “Look at you, using big words.”

  Sophie pulled a face. “You’d know some big words, too, if you ever read anything other than Playboy.”

  “I read it for the stories,” he guffawed.

  “What about the other one?” Dean interrupted. “Do you know anything about him? Or her?”

  “Her,” Emmie nodded. “A little girl named Clara. She’s supposed to be mischievous, but I couldn’t say from experience. Lady Rotherham said she died in the seventeen-eighties.”

  “Is there any historical documentation to show that these people actually lived here?”

  “Of course you’d ask that, Ewan,” Dean joked. “C’mon, dude. She’s just told you she’s seen a ghost, and you want to know what kind of a paper trail there is?”

  Ewan shrugged.

  “Provenance is important,” Emmie agreed solemnly. “Of course, they know who the sixth Countess of Cranbury is, when she lived and when she died and all that. Although there is nothing concrete which proves that’s who the ghost is.”

  “If you can even prove there is a ghost in the first place,” Adam put in.

  “True.”

  “And the girl?” Ewan pressed.

  “Yep. They do have a record of a little girl by the name of Clara dying on the property. Or, at least, she is the only recorded child’s death, so that’s why they think it’s her.”

  “What did she die of?” Famke asked.

  “Tuberculosis.”

  They all nodded and murmured in unison. Historical diseases like tuberculosis, syphilis and the bubonic plague were all ones with which the crew was familiar.

  Famke sat back in her chair. “I wonder why they would not have told us that in the debriefing. We should know about what kinds of diseases have been recorded.”

  Ewan took a sip of his beer. “Now, Famke. You’ve been in the field long enough to know that people who aren’t in the field have a funny way of deciding what information is and isn’t important to share.”

  Adam nodded. “Her ladyship is only interested in the bones at the bottom of one grave. That’s the one what’s gonna make Stannisfield Films happy. We find that, it’ll make for a good television show.”

  “Is that the murder?”

  Adam levelled a serious look at Emmie, more serious than she would have though him capable.

  “Murders, love. Plural.”

  “More like a massacre,” Ewan corrected.

  She looked from one to the other. “Massacre? What massacre?”

  “Haven’t you heard?” Ewan put a piece of his shepherd’s pie into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “There’s supposed to have been a dispute between clans that was settled in these parts. Nearly a dozen men slaughtered in ambush.”

  “I heard a hundred,” Adam challenged.

  “You did not, you wanker. It was a dozen, or thereabouts.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Emmie reflected. “Lady Rotherham talked of murder, and the victim was supposed to be buried on the property, but I thought it was only one.”

  “Oh, if the stories are true, then it’s a hell of a lot more than one. The disturbance the technician found with the ground penetrating radar certainly corroborates the legend.”

  Emmie suddenly felt unwell. Her palms began to sweat, and her skin felt clammy. “What clans were they?”

  Ewan laughed, failing to detect the wobble in her voice. “I’m sorry to tell you, lass, but we don’t know. I know this is probably going to eat away at your historian’s curiosity, and I’m sorry for that. But there’s nothing recorded. Not one scrap of written account—or not one that survives to this day, anyway. All that we have is legend passed by word of mouth. That, and now this disturbance.”

  Adam raised his arm to the waitress, who was on the other side of the room, and caught her eye. He made a circling motion with his finger.

  “’Nother round, love,” he said through a mouthful of chips.

  “Your girlfriend is one lucky woman,” Sophie drawled when a gob of chewed-up chip fell onto his plate.

  “She counts her blessings every night,” Adam parlayed, stretching his arms above his head languorously.

  Emmie forced a laugh with the others, though her hands still trembled in her lap. Tales of murder, mayhem and mass disease always piqued her interest. But never before had she been so overwhelmed by a story that it affected her physically. Especially not a story that was nothing more than a vaguely recalled legend which might not even be true.

  This story, though, this particular massacre…

  She couldn’t say what it was, exactly. But it frightened her.

  “EMMIE, SWEETHEART! YOU certainly took your time about calling.”

  Emmie was tucked away in the alcove under the grand staircase where one of the manor’s three landline phones were plugged in. It was an eighties-era dial-up, ivory plastic with a spiral cord, which stood on an antique cherry wood pedestal table. A padded walnut armchair was placed next to it. Emmie sat in the chair, with her knees pulled up to her chin, and her fingers winding nervously around the phone cord which was misshapen from decades of fingers pulling at it.

  “Sorry about that, I’ve just been busy is all.”

  “Why aren’t you calling from your cell?” Gratuitous concern laced Grace Tunstall’s voice. It was one of Emmie’s pet peeves about her adoptive mother: Everything out of the norm was a reason to fret. That Emmie never voiced her dislike of this particular idiosyncrasy required a conscious effort.

  “It’s just logistics.”

  “Are you sure? Do you need us to send a new phone over for you? We got Chase a Samsung last week.”

  “That’s a tablet, not a cell phone,” Ron, her adoptive father, barked from the background.

  “How come he can talk through it then?” Grace barked back.

  “Really, it’s not necessary,” Emmie insisted. “My cell still works, and even if it didn’t, I can buy a new one here.”

  “So why are you calling from a landline?”

  She took a breath, willing herself to remain calm. “Because calls home are included in my living arrangements, and it’s just easier to put it on Tullybrae’s phone bill directly, instead of expensing my cell bill at the end of the month.”

  “All right. If you’re sure.”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “So tell me all about your big adventure. Have you had a chance to take any pictures of the house yet? Your dad is dying to see the place.”

  She sounded so excited. And so genuine. Whatever Emmie’s personal reservations were about her adoptive parents, she couldn’t say they didn’t love her. She felt bad that she hadn’t called sooner.

  “It’s beautiful. Better than the pictures Camille sent over before I left.”

  “Camille?”

  “Lady Rotherham.”

  Grace glowed with pride. “Look at that. My little girl on a first-name basis with the British upper crust. That’s going in the monthly newsletter.”

  “Oh, no. Don’t, please. It’s no big deal.”

  Grace clucked her tongue. “Now honey, I’ve got a daughter that’s a curator all the way over there in Scotland. If that’s not fair bragging rights, I don’t know what is.”

  Emmie was already getting that itchy, squirmy need to end the call. She had never been quite at ease with Grace’s fawning, and the thought of being plastered into the church newsletter made it worse. She changed the subject. “How is Chase doing in his new job?”

  “Oh, you know your brother. He could charm garden gnomes and grizzly bea
rs into following him home if he had a mind to. He’s already Mr. Popular out there in Toronto.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  She could just picture her brother in the big city, swanning around all the night clubs and upscale patio bars in a swanky suit, letting loose after a fast-paced day at the office. The rich, honey colouring and the jet black hair of his Aishihik heritage on his biological father’s side, combined with the crystalline blue eyes of his French-Canadian mother, always had women drooling over him everywhere he went.

  “You’ll never guess,” Grace continued. “He got rid of his truck. And he’s found himself a girlfriend.”

  “About time. So Carly’s gone, then?”

  “Gone, gone, gone. Can’t say I’m sorry to see the back of that one. Far too young. Twenty-two, Em. Twenty-two, and two children from two different fathers.”

  “Yes, yes. I know.”

  “This new one’s a few years older than him. Gillian, he called her. She’s an account manager at a marketing firm, apparently. On the up-and-up. And she’s got a condo of her own in the Distillery District… whatever that is.”

  “Stop it,” Emmie warned, good-naturedly.

  “Stop what?”

  “I hear that tone of yours. He’s just met her. Don’t go planning the wedding yet. Give it a year at least before you get your hopes up.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about—what’s that, dear?—Oh, really, Ron!” Grace blew a pained sigh into the receiver. “Your father wants to know if the pubs are as great as they’re made out to be—Yes, I heard you, and no I’m not repeating what you actually said.”

  Emmie laughed. “Go easy on him. You can tell him that I’ve been too busy to do a real pub crawl, but the two I’ve been to so far have been top-notch. If not better than anything back home, then at least as good.”

  “You hear that, Ron? Em says you’re a cretin, and you wouldn’t know a good pub if you fell down drunk in one.”

  “How the hell would I hear if she said that? You’re on the damned phone with her, woman.”

  “You’re evil,” Emmie told Grace.

  “I hope you’re not spending all your time in bars, sweetheart.”

  “You don’t need to worry. It was just to eat both times.”