by Sue Perkins
Good. If we work in different mediums we’re less likely to cross each other’s boundaries.
At lunchtime they joined Samantha in the cafeteria. The blonde had dark smuts all over her hands and Fury wondered what she’d been up to.
“Instead of art I take shop for welding.” Samantha explained when she saw Fury looking at her hands. “I love to make things. I did woodwork last year. It’s so satisfying to hold something in your hands you’ve made yourself.”
Fury hid her surprise. Who would have thought Samantha would do anything to make herself dirty or untidy? Funny how wrong you can be if you only go by looks.
Several senior boys entered the room, among them her brother Jonah.
“Who is that?” Samantha’s eyes gleamed with interest as she looked at the group. “The dark haired boy with a hint of red in his hair is absolutely gorgeous. He must be new.”
Jonah saw Fury sitting with the girls and walked across to their table.
“How you doing, Fury? Settling in okay?”
“Yes thanks, Jonah.”
“Don’t forget to wait for me after school. Mum’s expecting me to give you a lift home.”
Jonah walked away leaving a very astonished Samantha and Cora looking at her in amazement.
“You know him?”
“He’s my brother.” Fury had never thought Jonah good looking and neither had her friends in the city. Probably because her friends had seen her brother grow up, plus they’d only become interested in boys in the last year. Until then they’d always thought of him as Fury’s annoying older brother rather than boyfriend material.
“What a bonus. I’m going to like being friends with you.” Samantha grinned.
Several other girls had seen the meeting in the cafeteria. They had been cool towards Fury during the morning, waiting to see if she ‘took’ with the popular girls, but having a gorgeous brother meant instant access to all the groups. Fury accepted their approaches with pleasant comments, but preferred to stay with Samantha and Cora who had befriended her before they knew about Jonah.
*****
Jonah drove them back home to Cave where her mother put her to work weeding some of the flowerbeds, then insisted she help to get the dinner ready. Fury had assured her she didn’t have any homework today. Samantha had told her after-school work would be assigned every Friday and had to be ready to hand in by the appropriate lesson the following week.
Once the dinner dishes had been cleared away, Fury made her way to the attic floor and hooked the tapestry up over the chair. Reluctant to leave the door exposed, she’d made sure to move the chair and drop the tapestry down the previous day. Hesitantly she knocked on the wooden panels separating her from the hidden room.
“Is there anybody in there?” She felt a fool talking to the door but the figure at the window had convinced her something or someone inhabited the room.
Silence met her query and she slid down and sat on the floorboards, leaning her back against the wooden frame.
“My name is Fury. My mother’s family have use of this house due to the will of Ellen Mune who owned the house over a hundred years ago. We are living here because my father’s job transferred to Timaru and we needed somewhere to stay. I was on the swing in the garden and saw a figure at one of the attic windows, but when I investigated this floor I found only two rooms, not three. Looking a bit further I saw the door under the tapestry. I’m sure there’s someone in there, but if you don’t want to talk to me, that’s fine. I’ll come up every so often and talk to you until you’re ready to trust me.”
Fury waited for ten minutes, but no sound came from the room, although once again a shadow flitted across the gap beneath the door.
“I’m going now, but I’ll try and come back tomorrow.”
Fury grinned as she made her way downstairs. Her family would think her mad if they caught her talking to a locked door. All the more reason to keep quiet about the door behind the tapestry, the person at the window and the shadow showing under the door.
The following day Samantha and Cora invited her to join them at the mall so Fury didn’t have time to go to the attic floor. She signed up for the netball try-outs and these took place the following day. Due to school commitments and her mother’s insistence on helping around the house, Fury didn’t get back to the top floor until the following Sunday. Saturday had been spent doing her homework assignments.
“I know you, Fiora. You’ll leave it until the last moment so I forbid you to do anything until you’ve got your homework out of the way. I’ve got your father to bring up one of the tables from the garage as we can easily move it if the lawyer who maintains the house objects.” Her mother shut the bedroom door behind her, leaving Fury to plough her way through English, Social Studies and Maths and an Art assignment she needed to finish.
Her brother’s loud music affected her concentration and she gritted her teeth in frustration. A sigh of relief left her lips when the bang of the front door indicated he had left the house for his football match. With only her art assignment to finish, she went in search of her mother.
“Mum, do you think I could take the desk and a chair up to the landing on the attic level?”
“Whatever for, Fiora?” Her mother looked at her in astonishment.
“My bedroom is right opposite Jonah’s and he plays his music really loud. I’ve asked him before to turn it down and he does, but then he forgets and turns it up again. It’s very distracting when I’m trying to work.” Fury waited for her mother’s reaction.
“I don’t see why not, it doesn’t belong to the house. I’ll get Jonah to help you move it upstairs when he comes back.”
Fury sighed with relief. Being away from Jonah’s music would help with her schoolwork, and working on the attic floor would allow her to talk to the ghost. She’d decided the apparition had to be a ghost - but whose ghost? Ellen Mune? Or had someone else disappeared or died mysteriously in this house?
CHAPTER THREE
Fury swept the attic floor and when Jonah returned he helped her move the desk. Her brother seemed quite happy to assist.
“If you’re up there I don’t have to worry about disturbing you,” he told her.
With everything arranged in her new work area, Fury turned to look at the tapestry.
Shall I lift it up and have another try?
Footsteps on the stairs sent her flying back to her seat.
“Everything all right, Fiora?” Her mother appeared at the top of the stairs. “Do you know I’ve never been up here. Oh what a lovely tapestry, pity it needs a good clean. I wonder if the lawyer would let us have it done.”
“I think it looks good as it is, Mum. Kind of fits the period of the house knowing it’s been here for at least a century, maybe longer.” Fury held her breath. Would her mother leave the tapestry alone?
“You may be right. Nice touch to this floor though. You okay?” Her mother looked piercingly at her.
Probably expecting me to say it’s not what I thought it would be and I want to move downstairs again.
“All good, Mum. It means Jonah and I won’t disturb one another, plus I can get on with my art work without worrying about it getting damaged as I move around my room.”
Her mother nodded and, with one final look at the tapestry, she went downstairs.
Fury worked on her cartoon for an hour then decided to try the hidden door again. She pushed her chair over to the tapestry, hooked it up then sat down beside the door.
“Are you there?” Fury didn’t expect an answer, in fact she felt a bit foolish talking to a door.
I am here. Who are you?
At first Fury wanted to run away. Down the stairs and not come back up here again, but she forced her nerves to calm down.
“My name is Fury. My mother’s family are allowed to use this house due to the will of the original owner from about a century ago. I guess you’re the ghost of Ellen Mune. Am I right?”
Silence reigned for a minute or two and Fury
wondered if she’d caused offence by mentioning the word ghost. At last, in slow stilted words, the ghost replied.
I am Ellen.
“Are you stuck in there? I can’t get the door open and you don’t seem to be able to leave.”
Stuck? You are correct. I cannot leave. My hand passes through the doorknob.
“Have you tried passing through the door?” Fury had seen a film on television where a ghost passed through walls.
My hand will only go a short way and then it is blocked. The answer is no, I cannot pass through the door.
“How can I open the lock?”
You cannot. The key is on my side and I am unable to touch it
“There must be a way. Leave it with me and I’ll try to figure it out.” Fury’s curiosity itched away at her. “How do you come to be in there anyway? If you’ve been there since you disappeared it’s been a long time. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
I believe I died in the night. I had a fear of being murdered in my bed so my maid would pull the tapestry across the outside of the door and I would lock myself in. Unfortunately, I fired my maid the day before I died, so no one knew I was here.
“Gosh that’s awful.” Fury thought it sounded like the stories you heard of people being buried alive.
How many years have passed?
“My mother says it’s just over a century since Ellen Mune disappeared. They waited seven years then declared you...um...dead.” Horror crept through her as she told this friendly ghost she’d been dead seven years before the authorities acknowledged it.
“Fiora, who are you talking too?” Her mother’s voice got closer as she climbed the stairs.
Fury quickly flipped the tapestry and chair back into their proper places, then sat down at the table.
“I’m not talking to anyone, Mum.” Fury delicately shaded in the jacket on her cartoon animal. “You must have heard me chatting to myself about my work.”
“I’ve brought you a snack. You should get up and walk about a bit too. It’s not good for you to sit still for so long.” Her mother placed a glass of homemade lemonade and a plate of biscuits on the table beside her then took a look at the drawing of a laughing wolf and a tall thin girl. “That looks good, dear.”
Fury quickly covered up her work. “Mum, please. I need peace and quiet to work.”
“Sorry.” Her mother patted Fury’s hair, then disappeared down the stairs again.
Once again Fury hiked up the tapestry and spoke to the ghost.
“Are you still there, Ellen? Sorry, of course you are. That was my Mum. She’s descended from your sister Margaret. I guess that means I’m descended from her too. Sorry she interrupted us.”
Ellen did not reply and Fury wondered if the ghost regretted making her presence known.
Fury didn’t speak to Ellen again for some time. This didn’t mean Fury had forgotten her. School took up a lot of her time and her friendship with Samantha and Cora became stronger. They often went to the shops in Timaru and Temuka and the three of them had a sleepover at Samantha’s house. As she got to know Cora, the dark-haired girl opened up more about her home life.
Apparently, her father had left when Cora was ten and her mother had struggled to survive both mentally and financially. A new man had come into her mother’s life when Cora was twelve, but it hadn’t worked out and the break-up had sent her mother spiralling down into despair again. This was why Cora felt reluctant to make new friends. She had inherited the fear of being rejected from her mother.
A few weekends after Ellen had spoken to her, the three girls gathered at Fury’s house for a sleepover. Fury’s mother couldn’t do enough to make the girls feel welcome.
“This is a cool house.” Samantha looked about with interest as they entered Fury’s bedroom. “Do you actually sleep in that bed?”
“Yep, none of the furniture can be moved. Partly because it’s too heavy and partly because it’s one of the rules for living here.” Fury bounced on the bed. “It’s quite comfortable really. Come and try it.”
After bouncing several times on the bed, Cora spoke for the first time since they’d arrived.
“I can’t believe you actually live in the old Mune house. It’s been the spookiest house in the area for as long as anyone can remember, and now I’m inside it and you live here.”
“My cousin and his friends used to dare each other to break in and spend the night here.” Samantha laughed. “Didn’t work though as they could never get in. He said it was as if there were a protective shield surrounding the whole building. The last time they tried they heard police sirens in the distance and ran off before the cops arrived.”
Fury wondered if she should tell her friends about Ellen, but decided against it. They probably wouldn’t believe her and it might make them think her a weirdo. Besides, if Ellen decided not to speak to her again, there really wouldn’t be anything to tell.
After a lot of hair styling, makeovers of cosmetics and clothes, and giggling, the girls settled down to sleep. In the middle of the night Fury woke with the feeling something had changed. The girls had all decided to sleep in Fury’s huge bed and they’d been quite comfortable.
Samantha still lay curled on her side but Cora had vanished.
Must have gone to the bathroom.
Fury noticed the door to the corridor stood ajar and she slipped from the bed without disturbing her other friend. Moonlight shone through the landing window and up the stairs to the attic floor. The open bathroom door showed the room to be in darkness.
Surely Cora hasn’t gone upstairs. I would have thought she’d be too scared to go anywhere spooky.
A quick climb of the stairs revealed Cora standing before the tapestry.
“Cora, are you okay?”
“This is a lovely tapestry. See, it shows this area as it was a century ago. About the time the factories started being built. There’s your house,” Cora pointed to the small replica of the Mune house. “Here’s the Cave settlement and at the edge there’s Timaru. Isn’t it lovely?”
“Let’s get back to bed. What made you come up here anyway?” Fury wanted to know.
“I heard someone shouting. I couldn’t make out the words so I came up to see if I could help. I thought I heard two voices arguing but they stopped when I arrived. Then I saw the tapestry. It’s okay for me to be up here isn’t it?” Cora looked worried and Fury hastened to reassure her.
“Of course it is. I just wondered why you would get out of a lovely warm bed to come up here to a dusty old attic. Let’s get back to the warm.”
Samantha was still asleep when they returned to the bedroom.
“Don’t tell her about me hearing voices, will you?” Cora begged. “She’ll say I’m being silly again.”
“It’s okay. It will be our secret.”
CHAPTER FOUR
After the night of the sleepover Fury tried once more to contact Ellen. The ghost refused to talk to her.
The only way I’m going to get through to her is to find a way to get the key and open the door.
Fury did wonder if the ghost would zoom off as soon as the door opened. She felt sorry for the old lady who had been locked up in there for decades and decided she had to do something to help her.
I wonder why Cora heard her? It could only have been Ellen. Shame she couldn’t distinguish any words. Wait a minute, Cora said there were two voices arguing. I wonder if it was Ellen and her father, or maybe some of her sister’s children arguing about what to do with the house. No that’s a bit too far-fetched. What am I saying? Talking to a ghost is not exactly ordinary. I think it had to have been Ellen talking with someone from when she lived here. I’ll have to ask her, but not until I get inside the room.
Fury had read stories about the twisting and dropping of keys onto newspaper spread under locked doors and wondered if this would work for her. The newspaper posed no problem, but how did you twist and twiddle a key from its lock? Time to investigate over the internet.
Coverage in their country area was not brilliant so Fury waited until her next visit to the public library.
“Let’s see.” Her tongue peeked out the side of her mouth as she opened up the search engine. “I can’t search for picking locks. The library might shut me out of the network if they think I’m going to commit a crime. Let’s start with locks, old fashioned.”
Slowly she worked her way through layers of information about locks, how they operated and what to do if you lost the key. None of the websites told her how to get the key from the other side of the door.
“Let’s try this. Locks and newspapers.” Fury sat back and waited for the search engine to find some sites related to her query.
One of the on-line encyclopaedia sites came up with an answer almost immediately.
“Place newspaper under the gap at the bottom of the door. Put the flat end of a small screwdriver into the lock and trap the key against the side. Turn the key by pushing on the screwdriver in a clockwise direction.” Several more sites offered the same solution and Fury was in a hurry to get home to try the method out.
Her first attempts were useless. The webpages made it sound so easy, but first Fury had to find a screwdriver small enough to fit the keyhole, but wide enough on the flat end to engage with the key. Once found, the screwdriver refused to move the key and Fury nearly cried with frustration. She pulled the tapestry back into place and went down to her room to think of another solution.
Jonah came whistling up the stairs. Fury suddenly saw a solution to her problem.
“Jonah.” She knocked on his bedroom door. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.” He opened the door. “What can I do for you, little sis?”
“I’ve been reading online about magic tricks. Most of them have explanations about how they’re sleight of hand rather than magic. There’s one though that doesn’t have an explanation.” She paused and saw she’d caught her brother’s interest. “This one has a locked door with the key on the inside. How do you get the key to your side of the door so you can open it?”
