Ghosts of Yorkshire

by Karen Perkins

  ‘Where were they in the end?’

  ‘Well, that’s the strange thing,’ Vikram said. ‘They were on the top stairs – that’s what all the shouting was about earlier. One camera on each tread. Cables neatly coiled, all very carefully. Sparkly went ape.’

  ‘So had one of the guys done it to wind her up?’

  ‘I don’t see how. She’d searched the place top to bottom, there’s nowhere they could have hidden them – then they were set out in plain view. No one’s been on their own, and everybody swears it wasn’t them. I believe them.’

  ‘Sounds like your ghost is playing tricks.’

  I swung round at the familiar voice. ‘Lara! How wonderful to see you!’ We hugged, then I released her to hug Hannah while Jayne embraced Lara.

  ‘How long have you been standing there?’

  ‘Long enough to hear you’ve been having fun and games without me, and apparently not long enough for anyone to offer me a drink.’

  ‘Oh sorry! Mulled wine?’ I turned to pour her a glass without waiting for her nod. ‘What’s up with you anyway? It’s not like you to wait until you’re asked – you certainly know you don’t need to stand on ceremony here.’

  Lara shrugged. ‘You have company, I was trying to make a good impression.’

  ‘That ship sailed with your ghost comment,’ Jayne said, laughing. ‘Seriously though, it’s good to see you.’

  Lara raised her eyebrows. ‘Why do I get the feeling I don’t know even half of what’s been going on?’

  Jayne and I shrugged in unison, and Lara narrowed her eyes but checked her curiosity for the time being and turned to her daughter who was tapping her arm, trying to get her attention.

  ‘Can I take Grasper for a walk, Mummy? Can I? Can I?’

  ‘You’d best ask Aunt Jayne.’

  ‘Can I, Aunt Jayne, can I take him walkies? Pleeeaasse.’

  ‘Well, now you’ve said the magic word—’

  ‘What, walkies?’ I said, laughing as I indicated Grasper’s excited and downright manic circling.

  Jayne smiled. ‘Of course you can. Just watch out for that Main Street – I took him down there earlier and it was lovely. The only problem was getting back up it!’

  The adults laughed, but Hannah looked confused. ‘Why? It’s just a hill.’

  The laughter died and Jayne held out the Irish terrier’s lead with a resigned smile. ‘Now I feel old,’ she said. ‘From the mouths of babes ...’

  ‘I’m not a babe, I’m ten!’ Hannah said, full of indignation. She clipped on Grasper’s lead and marched out of The Rookery, head held unnaturally high.

  ‘You’ve got a right one there,’ Vikram said.

  ‘Oh, Lara’s more than a match for her,’ Jayne said. ‘She keeps us all on our toes, though – doesn’t let us get away with anything!’

  We all sipped our drinks, then Lara said, ‘Oh, I meant to tell you, Verity – you need to get some netting or spikes on the window ledges and gutters. You know, the ones town centres use to keep the pigeons from roosting and messing up the front of the buildings.’

  Vikram scowled. ‘We don’t really have much problem with pigeons here – the buzzards tend to scare them off.’

  ‘Well, whatever they are, there’s loads of birds perching outside. I dread to think what your window cleaning bill will be if you don’t sort it out.’

  Jayne and I looked at each other in confusion. ‘I haven’t noticed anything,’ I said.

  ‘No, nor me,’ Vikram added. ‘Let me go and have a look.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Jayne said, and we moved to the door.

  ‘Mistletoe!’ someone shouted from behind us – Omar or Gary, I’m not sure, and the build team filled the place with laughter as Vikram and Jayne looked up to see the offending greenery with white berries hanging over the doorway.

  ‘Bad luck not to give her a kiss, boss,’ Gary – definitely Gary this time – called.

  ‘They won’t stop,’ Vikram said to Jayne and she gave a slight nod to permit his peck on her cheek, then glanced at me in a mixture of apology and embarrassment.

  I smiled and we trooped outside – in single file.

  ‘Worse than Spin the Bloody Bottle,’ Lara muttered.

  Outside we looked up and I gasped. Every window ledge, door lintel, the edge of the roof – every available roost – was occupied. I had a brief flashback to Daphne du Maurier’s The Birds, then shook myself. They weren’t doing anything, they weren’t threatening, and they weren’t attacking.

  All the same, the sight of so many rooks, wing to wing, was unnerving.

  ‘I’ve never seen owt like it,’ Vikram said.

  ‘What made you call this place, The Rookery, Verity?’ Lara asked. ‘Where did the name come from?’

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t know really, I was playing around with more Brontë-like names, Wildfell, Thrushcross, that kind of thing, then The Rookery popped into my head and just kind of stuck.’

  We stayed staring at the façade of the building for a minute or two more, then the build team emerged – in single file again to avoid the mistletoe – to say their thanks and goodbyes.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it as well, ladies. Happy Christmas,’ Vikram said.

  Lara, Jayne and I returned the greeting then went back inside and I topped up our glasses.

  ‘I think you two had better tell me exactly what’s been going on,’ said Lara.

  24.

  ‘There’s something you’re not telling me,’ Lara said, looking at Jayne after I’d told her about my dreams, the touch in the shower, and the sightings of the Grey Lady. ‘Jayne, you’re too quiet, and too accepting of everything. Why haven’t you made any jokes or suggested rational explanations?’

  Jayne shrugged, clearly uncomfortable, but said nothing.

  ‘Something happened to you too, didn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. It was probably nothing.’

  ‘Jayne?’

  She sighed. ‘Verity, you tell her.’

  I wasn’t sure if she was scared, in denial, or just reluctant to admit what had happened after years of poking fun at Lara for believing just this kind of thing. Whatever was going on with her, I did not want to make things harder, and told Lara about the push.

  ‘Do you feel safe here?’

  I was surprised at Lara’s response, but nodded. I did feel safe. I was curious and confused, but I didn’t feel threatened.

  ‘No.’ Jayne’s reply was unequivocal. ‘And I worry about Verity staying here. I think she should sell up.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Something’s going on, Verity – something strange, something powerful, and even if you feel safe, I don’t. I could have been badly hurt. The builders don’t like it here either – one’s run off already and the others all keep falling out, and it’s centred around this place and you. You’ve only been here a couple of weeks and it’s escalating. I think you should go.’

  ‘Verity?’

  I was flabbergasted and needed Lara’s prompt to gather my thoughts. ‘I can’t go. Look at the place, I could never resell with it like this, and I’ve invested everything into it. Anyway, I don’t want to move.’ I sat back and folded my arms.

  ‘To be honest, it sounds like it may already be too late,’ Lara said.

  ‘What do you mean? How can it be too late?’ Jayne asked.

  ‘There are different types of hauntings,’ Lara began. ‘Take the Grey Lady – from the sound of it, she’s a residual impression of something that happened a hundred and fifty years ago. It may be something that happened often and regularly, or maybe something else happened around the woman – whether she’s Emily Brontë or not – that has kept her stuck in that action. It’s almost recorded into the fabric of the building – a bit like the way sound used to be recorded on to iron oxide in the days of cassette tapes. There’s no interaction, no consciousness there, just a repetitive image.’

  ‘Okay,’ Jayne said, drawing the syllables out. ‘I guess that makes
sense.’

  To her credit, Lara didn’t bat an eyelid at this apparent acceptance of her theory. ‘But the man – the man’s different. He’s communicating – at first just with Verity and through her dreams, but he’s getting stronger. The dreams are becoming more focused, he’s touched not only Verity, but you too, Jayne, and I think he’s connected to Verity rather than the building. He’s sentient, and if Verity leaves, I think there’s a good chance he’d go with her.’

  ‘But he didn’t last night,’ Jayne objected. ‘Verity didn’t dream about him last night when we stayed at the White Lion.’

  ‘He may have overexerted himself, weakened himself. Plus you were both relaxed, focused on each other, and I’m guessing had quite a bit to drink.’

  ‘Well ...’

  ‘That’s a yes then. Even if you did dream about him, Verity, your sleep could have been so deep that you just can’t remember it.’

  ‘Oh. Yeah, I guess.’ I wasn’t sure if the prospect of having to drink to silence him was more unsettling than the idea that if I did drink, I would miss him.

  ‘Talking of drink, I need a refill,’ Jayne said, rose and fetched a bottle of merlot. On her way back to our makeshift seats of sawhorses and trestles that Vikram and the team had left us, she stopped, visibly shook herself, then rushed over.

  ‘You’re freaking me out,’ she complained.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I just came over all cold.’

  Lara stood and moved around the same area that had frozen Jayne. ‘A cold spot. He’s here.’

  ‘Well, tell him to go!’

  Lara slowly shook her head at Jayne as she returned to her seat. ‘No. He’s here for a reason. We need to find out what that is, then maybe we can help him and he’ll leave us alone.’

  ‘What if what he wants is Verity?’

  We looked at each other – Lara and I now sharing Jayne’s fear.

  ‘Then we protect her,’ Lara said at last.

  Neither Jayne nor I asked her how. We were both too scared that she may not have an answer.

  ‘So what do we do?’ I asked after more silence.

  ‘We find out all we can about this place and the people who lived here,’ Lara said. ‘We do our research – books, the museum, and is there a ghost walk or anything? This is a tourist village, there must be a ghost walk.’

  ‘Yes, there is,’ I said. ‘But I don’t think they’re running at the moment, we may have to wait until the New Year.’

  ‘Well, I’ll get stuck into the books and Google,’ Jayne said. ‘You two can do the ghost walk, then all of us can go to the museum again – I’ll find out when it’s open over Christmas and the New Year, and if we can access their library.’

  ‘Oh ghost walk, ghost walk! Can I go on the ghost walk, pleeaasse?’

  ‘Hans, are you sure?’ Lara turned to greet her daughter as Grasper hurled himself at Jayne. ‘It might be scary.’

  ‘I’m not scared of stupid ghosts. Anyway, Grasper will look after us.’

  ‘Well, okay, if you’re sure, but tell me if you get too scared and Auntie Verity will bring you back here, okay? I need to stay to the end of it, I don’t want to miss any of the stories.’

  ‘I won’t get scared, Mummy, promise. Can we go tonight, can we? Can we?’

  ‘No, not tonight, Hans, we’ll have to find out when the next one is. Anyway we’re all a bit tired, we’ll just have a nice evening together and an early night.’

  ‘Okay, Mum.’ Hannah looked crestfallen. ‘Do you promise we will do it, though?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Hans,’ Jayne said, ‘did you see the birds when you came in, are they still there?’

  ‘What birds?’

  Jayne breathed a visible sigh of relief.

  ‘Mum, what’s Grasper doing?’

  We turned and looked. Hackles up, growling – something I couldn’t remember hearing him do before – Grasper had placed himself between us and the cold spot Jayne and Lara had found earlier. He did not like whatever it was he could see.

  25.

  Harry stood back watching Uriah Barraclough – the master stonemason and the man he was now apprenticed to – and John Brown, the sexton, push the tiny coffin into its final resting place within the Brontë family vault underneath the church.

  Opened just four years ago for Maria, the parson’s wife, ten-year-old Elizabeth had now joined her mother and elder sister,

  Her father, Patrick, remained stoic and calm, but Harry had already seen enough pain etched into too many faces not to recognise the same in his.

  And no wonder. When his wife died he had been left with six children to care for. Now, consumption had taken the two eldest within little more than a month. What would become of those surviving: Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne?

  Harry risked a small smile at Emily, but she turned her head. He kicked himself. It was hardly the place for a smile.

  He concentrated on watching Mr Barraclough and Mr Brown carefully secure Elizabeth’s carved memorial in place next to those of her sisters, then they stood back and the Reverend Brontë cleared his throat to speak.

  ***

  I woke with a sob. Those poor girls. That poor family.

  I rose, went to the loo, washed my face, and took a long drink of water. Maybe Jayne had been right and I should have joined them at the White Lion after all.

  No. I shook my head to emphasise the thought. This was my new home, my new business, my new life. I could not run away from a few dreams. I pushed thoughts of caresses, pushes, orbs, cold spots and Grasper’s odd behaviour out of my mind and went back to bed, accidentally on purpose leaving the bathroom light on and pretending not to notice.

  ***

  Harry found Emily in one of her favourite places; the little waterfall only half a mile up the moors, over the clapper bridge. She was sitting on a rock and staring at the summer trickle of water, her new puppy, Grasper, at her feet. Harry suspected she would find a wild winter torrent more to her taste today.

  ‘How do,’ he said, and she grunted.

  ‘It’s hard,’ Harry tried again, ‘when a sister dies. I remember when our Rebekah went last year, it were like a light had gone out of the world.’

  ‘Two,’ Emily said.

  ‘Beg pardon?’

  ‘Two sisters. Two sisters died. Two sisters in their coffins. Two sisters in the vault. Two, two, two, two!’

  She jumped to her feet and ran through the heather – her sure feet jumping from tussock to tussock as she somehow kept her skirts away from the grasping branches of the tough, hardy plants.

  The inevitable happened and she fell.

  ‘Emily!’ Harry cried. He had been following as quickly as he could, but heather was not easy to run through – poor little Grasper had to bound in a series of jumps to make any headway.

  Harry reached down to help his friend up, and she kicked and scratched. ‘Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, get away!’

  He sat next to her and stared, waiting for her to calm down.

  ‘I still miss Rebekah,’ he said. ‘And Charlie, and John.’

  ‘Who’s John?’

  ‘The babby. Died before he got a name really, but I allus think of him as John. Don’t know why.’

  Emily sat up. ‘I remember Rebekah. She cried when Black Tom caught a chaffinch.’ Black Tom was Emily’s cat. Even by age seven she’d collected a menagerie of stray and injured animals, not all of them four-legged. ‘I liked her.’

  Harry nodded. ‘The consumption took her too.’

  Emily pulled Grasper on to her lap and tugged on his ears in affection. ‘It was that school. That school killed them. I’m not going back, neither’s Charlotte. They can’t make us.’

  Neither spoke, knowing full well that Emily and Charlotte had no choice in the matter.

  ‘I want to be here,’ Emily said. ‘Nowhere else. I just want to be here. In Haworth, on the moors. Here.’

  Harry shuffled sideways and put his arm a
round her. ‘I want thee to stay here too,’ he said. Emily relaxed into his embrace and sobbed her grief for her beloved sisters.

  Harry was just glad she couldn’t see the tears on his own face.

  26.

  ‘Morning, ladies. Happy Christmas Eve,’ I said as I opened the door to my friends. We all looked up, startled at the thrash of wings, and a dark cloud lifted to the sky.

  Hannah ducked as the rooks rose overhead and all three dashed into safety as Grasper raced around in circles, barking at the birds.

  ‘I think you’re right about that pigeon netting, Lara,’ I said.

  ‘You might need spikes to deter that lot,’ Jayne said.

  ‘I’ll get Vikram on to it as soon as they’re back at work,’ I promised.

  ‘Ugh,’ Hannah said. ‘One’s messed on me!’

  We laughed then immediately sobered as the child neared tears.

  ‘Don’t worry, Hans, it’s supposed to be good luck,’ Lara said. ‘Take your jacket off and we’ll give it a good wash.’

  ‘Yes, the new washing machine is working,’ I said. ‘Come on up and I’ll put the kettle on.’

  ‘Oh goody, I’m ready for a coffee,’ Jayne said, and Lara and I laughed.

  ‘When are you not?’ I spluttered.

  ‘You know, when we came down this morning, the breakfast staff had a pot ready brewed and waiting for her.’

  ‘Well-trained,’ Jayne said.

  ‘Terrified of you more like – you’ve only been here a couple of days and you have your name on a coffee pot!’

  We laughed again – even Hannah – the tension broken.

  ‘They had a cup-to-go ready for me when I took Grasper out first thing,’ Jayne admitted, ‘with two extra shots.’

  ‘Do you bleed red or coffee brown?’ Lara asked sweetly.

  ‘Definitely red,’ Jayne answered, ‘but the nurses swore they could smell coffee brewing last time I donated blood!’