The Folcroft Ghosts

by Coates, Darcy

  Kyle gradually calmed as they followed the winding path back to the house, but he was still sniffling as they stepped into the clearing. “C’mon,” Tara said and squeezed his shoulders. “Everything’s okay. You know that, right? You’ve got me with you. I won’t let anything bad happen.”

  “Yeah,” he mumbled, but she felt him shake as they neared the building. Tara tried to keep her voice bright and her face clear, but the walk had left her feeling jangled. She couldn’t stop replaying the conversation. If Kyle really saw Peter below his window when he was a child, what does that mean? He was only five. Is his memory even accurate?

  May met them on the porch and cooed when she saw Kyle’s blotchy face. “What happened, my dear? You didn’t hurt yourself, did you?”

  Kyle didn’t answer, so Tara shrugged. “We found, uh, some graves, I guess. It startled Kyle.”

  “Oh!” May’s eyes widened a fraction, then a warm smile covered the surprise as she wrapped an arm around Kyle’s shoulders. He stiffened but didn’t try to pull away as May led him into the house. “You poor thing. That must have been a shock. Sit down—the cake’s just cooling, but you can have a slice with ice cream. That should help.”

  Tara inhaled as she followed them into the house. The kitchen smelt amazing. She slid into the chair beside Kyle, who’d fixed his eyes on the white cloth. Tara bumped his foot under the table. Don’t be rude. His scowl intensified.

  “Here we are.” May put generous pieces of the cake into bowls and began scooping the ice cream. “I didn’t expect you to get so far from the house. You found your great-grandparents, my dears. Petra and George Folcroft—Peter’s parents.”

  “Why did you bury them here?” Tara asked. “Why not in a cemetery?”

  “A few reasons.” May handed out the plates then took her seat opposite Tara. She’d only given herself a small cube of the cake on the side of her teacup. “The town was much smaller at that time—there were really only a handful of families settled there—and the graveyard was very lonely and not a welcoming place. Peter and I discussed it and decided Petra and George would have been happiest staying near the house they’d built and on the land they loved.” She shrugged. “The Folcrofts have always been a close family. It didn’t feel right to relegate them to some stranger’s land where they were never visited. This way, we can keep them close and never forget them.”

  Kyle shivered, but Tara couldn’t tell if it was because of the graves or the ice cream he was shovelling into his mouth.

  Tara folded her arms on the tabletop. “Were they nice people?”

  “Oh, the nicest. Even though I’d only married into the family, they made me feel like I was their daughter. George loved to garden. He spent hours in the patch behind the house every day. He grew the biggest pumpkins I’ve ever seen. And Petra had such a big heart. I still have some of the clothes she knitted and the tablecloths she crocheted. I wish you could have known them.”

  Tara glanced at Kyle to make sure he was okay with the conversation. As far as she could tell, he’d tuned them out to focus on his cake. “Did Mum know them?”

  “Very briefly, though she wouldn’t remember it. She wasn’t quite two when they passed away.”

  Tara remembered that the year of death—1975—was only a year after her mother’s birthday. She licked her lips. “Tell me about Mum. What was she like when she was growing up?”

  “Oh!” May laughed and clasped her hands below her chin. “She was such a fiery child. Always thought she knew best, and always getting into trouble. I was heartbroken when she left… but children can’t stay children forever, can they? Peter and I always knew she’d move through life like a shooting star, burning so brightly that people would stop and watch.”

  Tara examined May’s face as she talked. Her eyes sparkled, and her cheeks glowed with emotion. Part of the uneasiness that had grown that morning subsided. Kyle was wrong. May still loves her daughter. She still misses her.

  “When she’s better, I hope we can all come back to visit,” Tara said.

  “Yes.” May’s voice took on a dreamy quality. “The whole family together again. I would like that very much.”

  The front door creaked, then Peter appeared in the entryway, looking tired as he stretched. May bounced up to put the kettle on and slice him some of the cake. “How are you faring out there?”

  “Good and bad.” He grunted as he took his seat and scratched through his steel-grey hair. “The house is safe, but there are trees down blocking the driveway. I’ll get the chainsaw out this afternoon, but it’ll take a few hours to clear the path. Should be done by tomorrow, then you can take the kids to use the payphone.”

  “What a good idea,” May said. “Will you be all right waiting until then, my dears?”

  “Yes,” Tara said then hesitated. “Or maybe we can try our mobiles?”

  “They won’t work,” Peter said. “No signal. But I’ll clear the road as quickly as I can.”

  Tara glanced at Kyle, who still wouldn’t look up from his plate. “I really appreciate that. Thanks.”

  The afternoon passed slowly. Tara offered to help Peter with removing the fallen trees, but May refused to let her be around the chainsaw. The night of missed sleep eventually caught up to her, and she napped inside the quilt tent while Kyle steadily processed the collection of books. Her dreams were fragmented and disquieting, and more than once, she pictured herself standing at the window of their old apartment and staring down at a shadowed man lurking in the alley below.

  May served pasta and meatballs for dinner. Tara chatted with her grandparents through the meal and happily answered their questions about her school and her friends then delved into an explanation of how blogs worked. May listened, enthralled, and called her remarkably clever, but Tara was fairly sure she still didn’t understand the concept. Neither Peter nor May seemed interested in technology beyond radios and cars.

  Kyle was silent and sullen through dinner. When they finally met in the bathroom to brush their teeth, she said, “What’s up with you?”

  “They’re lying.” He spoke around a mouthful of frothing toothpaste. “They don’t really miss Mum. They’re just saying what they think we want to hear.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” Tara rinsed her toothbrush, dropped it back into the cup, then folded her arms. “You know what I think? The new house and new routine are hard to get used to. You’re absorbing all of that anxiety and turning it into paranoia. Now you’ve built a bad dream and a couple of offhanded words into this crazy conspiracy theory. May and Peter have been nothing but generous and kind, and you’re refusing to even talk to them. It’s rude.”

  “Fine.” He slammed the tap off. His lip was quivering, which was always a bad sign. “You can have your stupid fort to yourself. I’ll stay in my own room tonight.”

  “Now you’re being petulant.”

  He sent her an intense, furious glare then stalked out of the bathroom. Tara twitched as the door slammed, then rubbed a hand over her face.

  I’m not wrong, am I?

  13

  Charcoal

  Tara glowered at the floor as she made her way back to her room. I’m doing a garbage job of looking after Kyle. He needs his real mother. She’d know what to say to make him relax.

  She tried to picture her mother’s face. The memory was blurry, and some of the details felt off. Shock squeezed at Tara’s heart. I can’t be forgetting what she looks like; it’s only been four days.

  As she scrambled to pull back all of the details that made up her mother—chestnut hair, eyebrows that pulled up when she smiled, wide lips counterbalanced by a long nose, the tattoo ringed around her upper arm—another more recent image resurfaced. The familiar face swollen and mottled as it lay on the hospital whites. Tara grimaced. She wanted to cry, but sound travelled in the house, so she clenched her teeth to keep herself quiet as she entered her room.

  Her tent had been dismantled. The chair and bedside table that had held the quilt up were pus
hed to opposite sides of the room, and the wardrobe no longer blocked the window. The furniture hadn’t been moved back to its usual place, but shoved away haphazardly as though in anger. Mouth open, Tara stared at the scene. Her first thought was Kyle—but she’d heard him go to his room after their fight. Did May do this, then? Or Peter?

  Tara picked up the limp quilt then let it drop back onto the floor. The idea of a blanket fort suddenly seemed childish and stupid. Maybe that was why her grandparents had dismantled it—as a message that it wasn’t acceptable behaviour.

  More tears prickled at her eyes. She scrunched her face up to keep them inside as she lifted the mattress back onto the bed and returned the dresser to its correct place. The wardrobe was too heavy for her to move herself, but on impulse, she opened it and retrieved the journal from the floor.

  She and Kyle had only had a couple of minutes to pack before leaving for their grandparents’. They’d brought clothes, toiletries, and books, but neither had thought to bring anything that belonged to Chris. The journal was the closest thing Tara had. She placed it on the bed next to her, curled into a ball, and stared at the leather cover as she tried to remember only the nicest memories she had of her mother.

  Sleep took a long time to come, and when it did, it was filled with more uneasy dreams. She was running through a forest as a man with a rifle stalked her. Just as she thought she’d escaped, she looked down and saw she was racing along a dock. Water trapped her on three sides, and the man came out of the woods behind, rifle raised. Tara pulled to a halt at the end of the dock and saw a girl’s face staring out of the water, her mouth open as she begged to be released from her grave.

  Tara jolted awake. She felt sick and bent over her lifted knees as she waited for her stomach to quiet and her heart to slow. The clock on her bedside table said it was nearly one in the morning. Moonlight glossed over a white shape, and Tara saw the journal lay open beside her. Did I open it in my sleep? Or did it fall open with my tossing?

  She picked it up with sweaty fingers. The row of torn page stubs created a jagged shadow running down the journal’s centre. Moonlight landed on the paper—what would have been the next page for an entry—and Tara’s eyebrows pulled up. The sheet had tiny, faint shadows over it, almost like words.

  The pen must have indented the page below the one it was writing on. Excitement built inside Tara. She carefully rotated the book as she tried to make out the imprinted words. It was impossible—the lines were too faint to make out letters. She threw off her bed sheets, wrapped her dressing gown over her pyjamas, then took the book and stepped into the hallway.

  If I can find a pencil or some charcoal, I might be able to make a rubbing of it. She looked towards Kyle’s room. A faint light under his door told her he’d fallen asleep with his lamp on. Guilt hit her, but she swallowed and turned towards the staircase. I shouldn’t have snapped at him. He’s scared and confused, and he needs an ally. I don’t want to wake him, but I’ll apologise tomorrow.

  Tara hung to the stairs’ outer edge to minimise the creaks, but they were still noisy enough to make her grimace. She stepped into the hallway and pressed her lips together as she considered her options.

  She still hadn’t seen the entire house. A study or workroom would probably have normal pencils, but Tara needed something softer that would leave graphite on a page without crushing the indents. She doubted either May or Peter owned soft art pencils—there weren’t any artworks hung on the walls—but she decided to look for some, anyway.

  Tara tried the first door she came across, which led to a tidy laundry. Beyond that was a dining room with a table long enough to seat eight. The area was clearly long untouched, suggesting May and Peter preferred to eat in the more cheery kitchen.

  The third, fourth, and fifth doors were all locked. She couldn’t guess why so much of the building had been barricaded, but it made her feel uneasy. The final door she tried let her into a lounge area. Overstuffed armchairs were grouped around a fireplace, but like the dining room, it seemed to be a part of the house that wasn’t visited often. The fireplace was a good sign, though, and Tara hurried to kneel in front of it.

  The hearth had been cleaned since its last use, but a layer of soot coated the internal stone wall. Tara opened her mother’s journal, tore a page out of the back, and laid it on top of the sheet that held the precious indents. Then, moving as slowly and as carefully as she could, she scooped some of the soot off the wall and brushed her fingers over the page.

  A creak made her startle and smudge some of her work. Mouthing furious words, Tara twisted to look behind her. The room was empty. The doorway was a black cave, hiding countless tangled shadows, but she couldn’t see any movement in them. It must have been the wind.

  She turned back to the paper. The rubbing wasn’t clear, but to Tara’s delight, patchy words had started to appear. She continued moving her fingers until she’d gone over the entire page then held it up as she tried to read it.

  Two words appeared to her immediately: lies and parents. Tara worked to piece together the broken patches of light and dark around them. Her mother’s teenage scrawl was only faintly reminiscent of her neat adult writing. The words seemed to run off the lines in some places. Tara wondered if that was how Chris normally wrote or whether it was a result of heightened emotions. From what she could glean from the entry, Chris had been furious when she wrote it.

  “They finally admitted… lies… all these years my… parents…” Tara tilted the page, trying to get more moonlight on it. There was a gap in the words, then a phrase written near the base of the page. “…to leave. Anywhere is better than here. The ghosts… restless.”

  Tara tried to quiet her buzzing mind. Chris must have seen ghosts at the house, too. Was it possible they were more prevalent than May had implied?

  A soft exhale made Tara swivel. A woman stood in the doorway. Her white nightdress swirled in a non-existent wind, and her hands hung limply by her sides.

  Tara collapsed backwards, her heart thundering, and pressed her hand across her mouth. The woman stood frozen in the entryway for a beat then stepped into the room, her glassy eyes focussed on one of the windows. Moonlight fell across her face, and Tara sucked in a quick breath. “May?”

  May didn’t respond to her name but continued walking towards the window. She passed so close that Tara could have reached out and touched her flowing nightdress. Her face was slack, her eyes wide and unfocussed, and her breathing slow.

  She’s sleepwalking. Tara staggered to her feet, the journal and charcoal page clutched to her chest, and backed away from the older woman. May stopped at the window and pressed her fingertips to the glass. “Mother…”

  The word, so quiet that Tara almost didn’t catch it, left a patch of condensation on the glass. Tara kept shifting away as she reached one hand behind her to feel for the doorway. Icy-cold fingers brushed hers, and Tara gave a choked cry as she turned. The space behind her was empty. May continued to stare through the window, but Tara was certain she could feel eyes fixed on her, watching her, following every motion.

  She turned and ran for the stairs. Not caring about staying quiet anymore, she dashed up the steps two at a time, her heart thundering in her throat and fear making her skin prickle. She passed her own room and continued to Kyle’s, only catching herself as she skidded to a halt beside the door.

  “Kyle?” she kept her voice to a whisper as she tapped on the wood. Someone moved inside, then the door opened.

  Kyle, his face pale, blinked up at her. “Couldn’t you sleep, either?”

  She shook her head. He stepped back so that she could enter his room, and she saw he still had his mounds of books stacked across the neatly made bed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said as soon as she had her tongue under control. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”

  He shrugged awkwardly. “You were right. I was being rude. I just… I…”

  Tara squeezed his shoulder to let him know she understood. “It’s all
right. We’re going to be all right. Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  14

  Photography

  Sunlight fell over Tara’s face and pulled her out of sleep. She rolled over and saw Kyle was still curled into a ball, his arms wrapped around his pillow. It was early morning, and the night animals’ cries had given way to bird chatter.

  Tara lay still as she processed the previous night. May had frightened her, but the more important knowledge had come from the charcoal copy of the last page from her mother’s journal. She guessed Chris had left the home shortly after writing it. She’d been seventeen at the time. The falling out must have been big to make her think she’d be better off on her own.

  They finally admitted… lies… Tara turned to glance at Kyle. He thought their grandparents were lying, too.

  She wished she could speak to her mother. Did she regret the rift that had grown between her and her parents, or was she grateful for it? Was there a reason why Tara had never met May and Peter before?

  She forced herself to get up and go to the bathroom to wash and change. She could hear May cooking breakfast downstairs, but she wanted space to think more than anything. When she was presentable, Tara returned to her own room and leaned on the windowsill as she watched the yard below.

  The rattle of an engine told her a car was coming. Peter’s Jeep emerged from the driveway, circled to the front of the house, and parked. He must have been clearing the road, as promised. Tara hoped she could convince May to take them to the town early. She had two days of news to catch up on. Fear and hope churned in her stomach.

  She’d left her camera on the bedside table. Tara examined the two Polaroids she’d left under it. Now that she’d seen her mother had written about ghosts in the journal, Tara found herself assigning more significance to the blur behind Peter. What if this house really is haunted—and not just in a whispers-and-glimpses sort of way, but actually significantly haunted? They’d have to be the ghosts of Peter’s parents. Is May right—are they really watching over us? Are they trying to communicate? Or do they want something more?