Ghosts from the Past

by Bonnie Elizabeth

  I entered the large room. The lights were on, but they looked dim. There was light streaming through the windowpanes, but it didn’t seem to reach as far into the room as it should have. I heard a squeak and then something dropped. I turned quickly, straining to see what was going on.

  A shadow moved towards me. I waited for the chill to come, my heart pattering like a scampering kitten. I wondered if this was the same ghost who had visited me in my room the other night or if the Manor had more than one. I shuddered at the thought.

  It was a silly fear, really. The ghost in the room had done nothing but show me the place where letters were hidden. Still, ghosts were dead people. You weren’t supposed to see dead people.

  Granted, I think I saw my grandfather the day he died, sitting in the chair in the living room. He’d held out his arms to me. Before I’d gone running to him, I’d called out excitedly to my mother that Grandpa was there. I’d leaped onto the chair to find it was only a chair.

  I was so disappointed. My mom was angry with me because she was on the phone with my grandmother learning that Grandpa had just died. To this day, I am certain I saw him in that chair. There was no way I could have known what they were talking about.

  While that hadn’t been a scary moment, either, that was someone who had loved me and brought me joy. I didn’t know these people. I didn’t know their reasons for being around.

  The shadow took form and when it was past the last of the low bookshelves, I saw that it was only Nathan.

  “There you are,” he said. “I wanted to be sure I was on time for our meeting.”

  I didn’t have a watch but I had figured that if Bethany were still at breakfast I’d have plenty of time. I knew that I’d been down in the dining hall well before eight and it was unlikely that I’d spent over an hour making idle chitchat while I ate.

  “I’m sure you aren’t,” I said, walking into the room.

  It was cool but not the freezing chill that I experienced with otherworldly sensations. I walked through the room, glancing from side to side but nothing seem to be moved. I thought some of the books on the desk had been rearranged. The center drawer wasn’t quite closed. I didn’t immediately go to the bottom drawer because, for some reason, I suddenly didn’t quite trust Nathan.

  “I don’t think you are, either,” Nathan said. “But I did want to go over some procedures before Bethany came in.”

  I worried a little that he would chastise me for talking to her rather than just talking to him, but instead he talked about a number of little things that hadn’t been gone over. While he talked about his office, a room that was in the wing we were housed in, on the other side of the stairwell, he also had plenty of questions for me about the software.

  It quickly became clear that he had no idea what they had purchased for me, and I showed him how I was inputting information and where he could find my notes. I even made up an account for him. What I didn’t tell him was that he didn’t have complete access to the database. I did make an account for Bethany as well and gave her full access. After all, she was the one paying me.

  It was frustrating to think that I had such reservations about Nathan. I hated to voice them to anyone. No one had said a bad word about him, except possibly Rachel, and she said nasty things about everyone. She was another person who wasn’t at breakfast, which surprised me. I hoped she was okay. She’d been unusually quiet at dinner.

  As I was finishing up showing Nathan how to use the software, Bethany came in. “I’m early, I know, but if we’re all here, I can’t wait to see what you’ve found.”

  Relief flooded through me, although a different anxiety began in my belly. What if Nathan had found that book and taken it out of the desk for his own purposes? How would that look? And what would I say if that happened?

  Chapter 15

  I opened the drawer, listening to the shush of the wood rubbing against wood as I pulled it out. The slide wasn’t quite smooth and there was a clunk as the drawer hit one side. My index cards were still there, falling this way and that. I didn’t think I’d put that many cards in the drawer the night before. Did they looked a little messier than they had been when I’d left? I couldn’t be certain.

  I reached into the back. My heart sank when my hand felt nothing but the wooden bottom.

  My fingers explored the wood, searching for paper.

  I found something. Larger than an index card.

  A small book.

  I couldn’t keep the smile off my face.

  The room rushed back, with its too musty, dusty smell and the creaks and clanks of the house as the heating sputtered and the building settled or whatever it was that it did. It made too much noise too often to actually be a house settling.

  “Here it is,” I said, bringing the book out. The cover was dark and almost black, though I’d cleaned off what I could. The name was faded and almost impossible to read, though if you looked closely you could make out the name of a large Canadian bank.

  Had it been anything other than a bankbook, I’d have set it aside for more cleaning, though I wasn’t set up to do a full cleaning of damaged books. Those would need to be sent out. It was one of the things Nathan and I had talked about earlier.

  There was a monastery that did book restoration work and Bethany had a contract with them. I would box up the books that needed the most work and then we’d send them off to the Monks. Nathan had given me a website link so that I could look up their particular requests for various types of damage, including what to do if the books were water damaged.

  I handed the bankbook to Bethany.

  She took it carefully, almost hesitant to open it.

  She set the book on the desk and carefully pushed back the cover, showing the first page. There was a man’s name in the book but I hadn’t recognized it. Schilling Coal was also named as a co-owner of the account. That I did recognize.

  “I’ve never seen this,” Bethany said. She reached to turn a page and then looked at me as if she’d made a serious error.

  “So long as your hands are clean, it’s fine,” I said. “Even if they’re a little dusty, the value of this is in the information about the account. I would think it would have been part of Audra’s will unless she didn’t know about the account at all.”

  “It’s for Schilling Coal but the other name wasn’t my great-grandfather’s,” Bethany said. “I’d heard about the Hannas, of course, but I never believed…”

  I waited for her to continue. If I looked at the name just right, it did look like someone had written Robert Hanna on the bankbook. I had no idea who that was.

  Nathan said nothing. He was sitting back, face carefully neutral. I had a feeling he had an opinion about what I’d found but didn’t care to say anything in front of either me or Bethany. I wasn’t sure which of us he wished to keep that hidden from, but I suspected it was me. Or perhaps both of us.

  Bethany looked up, seeing the question in my eyes.

  “Another inglorious chapter in the Schilling family history,” Bethany said. “It was rumored that my great-grandfather helped Robert Hanna with shipping during prohibition. At one point, I guess Hanna didn’t pay him for something and it devolved into a sort of feud. I’m not certain of the details. A few months later, Hanna was bankrupt and he ended up throwing himself into the ocean, or so I’ve heard. This bankbook suggests the stories might have been true.”

  “The names on the book suggests the business they were in was legitimate,” Nathan said. “It involved Schilling Coal, not your great-grandfather.”

  “Or not,” Bethany said. “It’s hard to say what it was for. I’ll have to call the bank and see what they can tell me. If Robert Hanna had heirs and they’re still around, this might belong as much to them as it does to me. My attorney may end up having to solve this particular mystery.”

  “I thought Hanna’s son Eddie was killed in the war,” Nathan said.

  “He was,” Bethany said. “Audra talked about it all the time. I guess she had qui
te a crush on him, probably because her father so disapproved.”

  I wondered if Eddie Hanna was the writer of the letters to Audra Schilling. It would make sense in a way. It would have been particularly heartbreaking if there had been a falling out between the two families. Of course, would Eddie have been allowed on the property if the falling out had been bad enough that Robert Hanna was killed over it?

  “Where exactly did you find this?” Nathan asked.

  I got up and took the two of them across the library. I think only my shoes squeaked. I was going to have to see what Bethany was wearing that allowed her to walk so quietly across the floors here. I found the sticky note I had left up and moved the books there, pointing out the tiny cubby.

  “I just rubbed a rough spot on the wood and it came off,” I said. “It was probably a little secret door but was worn down by the years.”

  “How ingenious!” Bethany said. She clapped her hands. “I always hoped there were secret cubbyholes around or maybe even a secret room. Aunt Audra never really let me go running around to play, not that I wanted to. When she was alive, it was just her and a few servants and the place was far too gloomy to go searching for secret passages. If I found one, I was afraid a ghost would pop out at me!”

  I didn’t want to tell her that ghosts had already popped out at me. Nor did I care to share that I’d found two such cubbies in as many days. How many more would I find? Of course, I’d had help from the ghosts that she said she feared.

  “How did you say you found it?” Nathan asked, giving me a long look, as if he suspected me of something.

  “I think I was rubbing the edge of the section. It felt odd. The wood just sort of pulled off. I used a ruler to make sure there weren’t any bugs on it and pulled it out,” I explained. I rubbed the shelf and sure enough, I found the thin piece of wood that had covered the cubby.

  I’m not certain Nathan was convinced, and he had a look on his face that suggested he wanted to say more.

  Bethany, however, interrupted and said, “This is just fantastic! Imagine if we clean that up, maybe put the little door back on and let everyone know there are hidden panels. They’ll go looking for it. I could hide a small prize inside. People would love hunting for it!”

  I could imagine that people in general would love the hunt. I wasn’t sure about artists. Weren’t they coming on a retreat to do artwork? I couldn’t figure out how hunting for a hidden cubby would help them with their creativity, but then again, I wasn’t planning an artist’s retreat.

  Nathan shrugged and said that he had to get going.

  “I’ll let you know what the bankers say,” Bethany said. She didn’t appear all that excited about an increase in her inheritance, nor did she seem worried about losing it. It was just that I’d found a piece of her history that seemed exciting to her. Which was interesting considering how cagy Jonathan had been about talking about Bethany’s family. I wondered why that was.

  Chapter 16

  When Bethany and Nathan were gone, I sat at the desk for a few minutes, thinking. I wanted to scribble down what I’d learned but I didn’t trust paper because someone could be going through my things. I didn’t trust this computer because it wasn’t just mine. I opened the other drawers until I found the one holding the notecards. I made a couple of notes that would mean nothing to anyone else and slipped the card into my pocket.

  I drew in a breath and found the mask that I’d been wearing. It smelled of dust and coffee, probably because I’d been breathing on it. Then I got up, listening to the creak of the chair, wondered briefly if anything in this house didn’t creak, and started on a new shelf of books.

  I buried myself in cataloging, working my way quickly through the books. I found one book that had what appeared to be the start of mold, so I set that aside. I’d look up how to pack it later on. I spent a bit of time examining the shelf it sat on and paying closer attention to the other books. There were a few spots that might be mold, and I tried to pull out the shelf but it wouldn’t budge.

  Later, I thought, I’d ask Nathan who I should talk to about the shelf. It was only one book and in the early stages, but something was going to need to be replaced and I wouldn’t feel good until the whole area had been taken out or at least painted over with a mold killing paint. Better safe than sorry.

  Of course, I thought, the books really needed to be in an environmentally controlled room but that wasn’t going to happen in this old Manor. The most valuable of them would no doubt be sent away to a university where they could be kept in appropriate conditions.

  I really wanted to wash my hands again. Keeping them clean working with the old books was a nearly impossible task. Even gloves would be dusty and useless in no time.

  I went back to cataloging the next shelf and continued to work my way through the section. Every time I thought I had gotten a bit of work done, I’d look back at what I still had to do, just in this room, and feel as if this was a never-ending task. I sighed.

  The next book had a note in it. “To Marie, with love, Robert.” It made me think of Robert Hanna and I wondered if this was indeed one of his books or if it had belonged to a different Robert, perhaps one of the Schillings. I made a note about the inscription. Perhaps I would ask Bethany about a family tree. It would be nice to be able to understand who the inscription was speaking about.

  It would also help me while I tried to figure out the mysterious ghosts that seemed to plague the Manor. She was the obvious source of information. I could try Nathan but I doubted he’d know who these people were.

  I gathered a new section of books. These were less impressive and there was almost an order to them. Everything in that section was on economic theory. It was old economic theory to be sure, most of the books coming from around the turn of the twentieth century, but all were on the same subject. Either the reader was a real fan of economics and I’d be buried in it for the next several shelves, or someone had actually tried to put the books in order.

  I hoped for the latter. Economics are not all that interesting no matter what era people are talking about.

  However, once I got going on the cataloging, it made things move quickly and I was through two more shelves in record time. None of the books appeared to be particularly valuable. They were in good but not excellent condition, even for their age. No mold, thankfully.

  Two more shelves later and I moved from economics to ancient history. A much more fascinating subject, and it appeared that the family felt that way, too. Many of these books were missing pages. A few had notes taken in the margins. I wondered who had studied the subject.

  This was why books fascinated me. They held their own histories. Who handled them and who read them? Who made those notes? The handwriting was like a ghostly memory of someone else using the book. Those were the types of ghosts I liked.

  One of the books smelled like oranges and I found a small section of what I thought might be fossilized orange peel stuck between two pages. It had blackened over the years and the citrus had bled through into other pages, discoloring them and making much of the book unreadable. I doubted that one could be salvaged, and I put it in its own special pile. I wondered if I should go back and look at the books on the earlier shelves that had smelled of citrus. Perhaps the handler had been this same orange lover, though I hadn’t found any evidence of orange peels in those books.

  I was reminded of the librarian who once told me she had found a strip of bacon in a book in the book drop. At least this wasn’t that bad. Bacon would surely have called rats.

  It was impressive that there were no rats even with the citrus, although perhaps rats weren’t overly fond of citrus. I moved along. In another book I found a pressed lily. I set that aside. I would need a small box for finds like that. Also for any letters that might have been stuck in a book and forgotten about.

  I put back the last stack of books and decided to head off to lunch. I could ask Pat or Bob about a box. Surely they would have them in the kitchen.

&
nbsp; I picked up my walkie-talkie and left the library. I hurried through the entry, past the stairs. I heard several thumps up above and I wondered what the contractors were working on today. They seemed closer than usual.

  The hallway to the dining room was darker than I remembered. And colder, although I tried to tell myself that it wasn’t the freezing chill that I’d been experiencing when something odd happened. I smelled basil and thyme, perhaps a hint of rosemary. I wondered what Pat and Bob were making for lunch.

  I turned into the dining hall and immediately realized something was wrong. The hall was lit by flickering candles and the table was set for dozens. A bunch of servants dressed in costumes that hadn’t been worn for over a hundred years were arranging flowers. Everything looked so real. There were no shimmers. I thought for a moment I had walked into the past and my heart clenched in fear.

  I read books about this happening. Of course, there was always a romantic interest to be found in the past. Things like that couldn’t really happen, though. I’d been the one poking holes in time travel romances for years. This was insane.

  I froze in place trying to take in what was going on.

  I was too shocked to fully feel the fear that waited in the corners of my mind like a shadow. There was anxiety there, too. How to get back? What to do?

  Then something hit me in the back and I stumbled forward, glancing at the floor. The coolness left and the room brightened.

  “I’m sorry,” Maggie said. “I didn’t see you there. I’ll have to watch where I’m going more closely.”

  I’ve honestly never been more thrilled to have been run into. I let Maggie pass me, and I walked into the dining hall that now looked normal. As usual there were corners that were in shadow, but I smelled what I considered modern food. Some sort of minestrone soup, I thought, and more importantly, coffee. That smell had been missing from the hall of the past.