Paranormal is Relative

by S.J. Drew

I-I-I didn't mean harm..."

  "Get out. You can come back after breakfast when we're dressed to receive the company of a gentleman."

  "Yes, you're right. Again, my apologies," he said, and passed right through the door.

  Isabella was just staring at Nora.

  Nora yawned. "Problem solved for now. Good night," she said, and rolled back over and went to sleep.

  Isabella shook her head and went back to sleep.

  In the morning, they met up with Leah and Maryann and briefed them on the odd events of the previous night before they headed to breakfast. While the young women dressed identically on the stage, they could not be more different in their regular clothes. Nora wore a fashion-forward, designer label purple dress with immaculately styled, straightened hair. Isabella had on a plain white, long-sleeved t-shirt and blue jeans from a big-box department store and pulled her blond hair back in a ponytail. Maryann's eclectic sense of style had the common thread of bright colors, so her orange-rimmed glasses, orange shirt, red pants, and shoulder-length red hair stood out against the rather old-fashioned, pastel-colored walls and interior decorations. Leah, who was used to hand-me-downs from her brothers, wore a green sweatshirt and brown jeans and kept her long, thick, dark hair braided and out of her face.

  "Definitely not not-haunted," Leah said smugly.

  "Fine, fine, I jinxed us," Maryann sighed. "I shouldn't be surprised, I guess. So many weird things happen to us it's like being weirdness magnets is really our job in life."

  "You're being silly," Nora said. "We're musicians. It's not like all the weird stuff happens to us all the time."

  They descended the stairs to see a frazzled woman staring at the lounge area looking lost. "Ruby! Ruby! Ruby Lew, where are you?" she asked, calling to either a child or a pet.

  "Over here," said a high-pitched voice with a lisp.

  The woman walked over to an in-table and a three-year old girl crawled out from underneath it. "There you are! Don't run away like that! And look, you knocked over the lamp," she said with a strong Brooklyn accent, setting it back on the in-table.

  "Wow, that's one heck of a lampshade," Leah said.

  "Oh, it's too kitschy for my taste, but I don't think it's that bad," Maryann replied.

  The frazzled woman led the child into the dining room while giving her a lecture on appropriate public behavior.

  "Anyway, let's get some food and figure out what we're going to do," Nora said.

  "By the way, how did you know how to chase away the ghost?" Isabella asked.

  "From the age of the house and his clothes, I guessed he was a financially well-off man from the early 1800s. Men of that time period did not go into ladies bedrooms like that. So I just shamed him into leaving."

  "You made a ghost blush?" Leah asked, sounding impressed.

  "Something like that anyway."

  “And you recognized his age by his clothes?” Isabella asked.

  “One of my projects for American History was on fashion," Nora answered. "I didn't focus on this time period, but I did study it."

  "You went to a way better high school than I did," Leah replied.

  Breakfast was, as expected, homemade and quite filling. They also discussed their mysterious visitor. His identity, at least, was easily found out due to the large portrait over the fireplace in the lounge.

  "'Fitzwilliam Gable,'" Leah read off of the plaque on the bottom of the portrait. "'Founder of the Gable House.' Well, that tells us a little bit anyway."

  An elderly woman in a floral apron walked up next to them. "Oh, would you like to know about the Gable House?" she asked, peering through her thick glasses. "I'm Mrs. Gable and I own this place."

  "Nice to meet you," Maryann said immediately. "We would love to know more about the history your lovely bed and breakfast. And how everyone knows it's definitely not haunted."

  A slightly bitter expression crossed Mrs. Gable's face but it quickly passed and she smiled pleasantly. "Fitzwilliam Gable was descended from some of the first British colonists in Massachusetts. The family first settled in Boston and made a fortune on importing goods. The Embargo Act of 1807 made business difficult, so the family moved to Salem and used a great deal of the money to invest in Chinese imports, which paid off. The Gables were a little tired of city life from their years in Boston, so when they decided to settle down, they picked a spot a bit outside the city. Nathaniel Gable, Fitzwilliam's father, actually built this house in 1810 and it was completed the year Fitzwilliam was born. Of course, all that is just accounting," she said. "In 1832, Nathaniel died and the business was left to Fitzwilliam, who ran it quite well. And later that year, he met Elise Berkshire, whom he later married. That, of course, is where the story gets interesting."

  "How so?" Maryann prompted.

  "Follow me," Mrs. Gable said, leading them to what had probably been originally the parlor of the house. There was large portrait of a young lady with blond hair, fair skin, and attractive, if slightly pointy, facial features. She was wearing a high fashion pink dress of the early 1800s.

  The band stared.

  "Isabella, she looks almost exactly like you," Maryann whispered.

  Mrs. Gable didn't hear her. "Elise joined the household as a common housekeeper. Despite their differences, Fitzwilliam and Elise fell in love and married in 1834. Many of the members of the Gable family remaining in Boston were against him marrying down, as they saw it. There was some bad blood between Nathaniel and his brother William, that's Fitzwilliam's uncle, and old William did not take kindly to his nephew marrying such a low-class woman. Fitzwilliam and Elise had four children and he fought to make sure they were recognized as his legal heirs." She shook her head. "Despite all that, they were fairly happy together. But then in 1859, Elise died suddenly. There were a number of rumors at the time that she had been murdered by one of the Boston cousins, or that Fitzwilliam himself had murdered her to finally appease his uncle William, or that she was so distressed by the family feuding she killed herself."

  The band expressed appropriate sympathy.

  "Fitzwilliam just wasn't the same. He became deeply depressed and almost obsessive over the loss of his beloved Elise. On the one year anniversary of her death, a housekeeper found him dead in his bedroom. To this day no one knows how he died. There were more rumors of murder by the Boston cousins or of suicide so he could follow Elise to the afterlife. So very sad." She shook her head again. "Not long after his death, the family started to report strange happenings. Objects would move of their own accord. Rooms had cold spots and sometimes people would see lit candles in empty rooms, only to have the light go out as soon as they entered. Things got so bad that Nathaniel Gable the second, Fitzwilliam's eldest son, moved out of the house and back to Boston, although I suppose that could be due to the family's interest in manufacturing over imports. For quite a long time the house was empty. My husband inherited the house and we thought it would be perfect for a bed and breakfast. The house still had a reputation for being haunted, which certainly didn't hurt during tourist season." The old lady sighed again. "But the house has been silent for nearly twenty years. I guess Fitzwilliam moved on. I of course wish him peace," she said hastily, however, it was obvious that she felt business would be better if the house was actually haunted.

  "Well, thank you for telling us the story," Maryann said. "Even if the house isn't haunted..."

  Leah coughed slightly.

  Maryann glared at her. "Even if it isn't haunted, I think it's a lovely old house with tasty food so if people would rather go to some touristy haunted house, they don't know what they're missing."

  Mrs. Gable smiled a little bitterly. "Well, thank you dearie, but unfortunately most people don't seem to agree. They like haunted houses or houses were famous witches lived. Or famous colonists, but sadly the Gables did not distinguish themselves to that degree during the Revolutionary War. It's too bad, really. I like the town, even with
all the tourists, and I love the house, but business is business. We need either a tourist draw or a historical draw and since the haunting stopped, we don't have either. But that's not your problem. I hope you'll give us a good review on those social media sites you kids are on these days."

  "Sure, we can do that," Maryann said.

  Mrs. Gable lead them back to the busier, but not busy enough, dining area, and struck up a conversation with the frazzled woman and her daughter Ruby.

  The band returned to Nora and Isabella's room.

  "You look exactly like Elise!" Maryann said.

  "Yes, I noticed that," Isabella replied dryly. "That probably explains the ghost's interest."

  "I feel kind of bad for Mrs. Gable," Leah said. "She runs a nice place but probably doesn't get as much business as she wants."

  "I do too, but we do have the problem of the definitely not not-haunted house to deal with," Nora reminded them.

  "Well, let's talk to the ghost and find out what he wants and go from there," Isabella said.

  "You have to be sensible all the time," Leah replied.

  There was a knock at the door and a male voice asked, "May I enter your bed-chamber?"

  "That's got to be the ghost," Nora said. "No one uses the phrase 'bed-chamber' anymore."

  Isabella quickly cast spirit sight on the group although she suspected the ghost would probably manifest for them if he was knocking on the door. "You may come in," she said.

  The