by Darcy Coates
Her sharp inhale told me I’d finally gotten her attention.
The police had thought Hanna died in the vast forest behind the house. Mrs Gillespie had believed her daughter was kidnapped. Both were wrong.
Without being able to ask either of the people involved, I could only guess at what had actually happened. After Genevieve lost her final fight against her father, her ghost—or spirit, or whatever had let her interact with the human world—had lingered in the passageway between the crypt and the house, seeking help to finish the undead monster in the mausoleum.
Hanna had been the first to hear her, though. Without realising she was talking to a child, Genevieve had called for help. And without realising she was far too young for the task, Hanna had answered. She’d discovered the flap behind her wardrobe, found the key for it, and entered the tunnel. Of course, Jonathan Gillespie’s trap had claimed her life before she’d even left the boundaries of the house.
SILENCE
Hanna’s funeral was a very quiet one. Mrs and Mr Gillespie stood by the graveside, next to the priest, and watched as the child’s coffin was lowered into the ground. Two of their good friends—I think their names were Mallory—hovered a little behind them, and I stood still farther off, feeling like an intruder watching a very personal moment.
The Gillespies’ eyes were dry. I had the feeling they’d exhausted all of their grief during the years they’d spent searching for their daughter. This end, while sad, seemed also somehow very comforting to them.
It was a gorgeous warm day, and the cemetery the Gillespies had chosen, the town’s public cemetery rather than the little patch behind their house, was filled with trees, flowering bushes, and insects.
I’d been staying at a hotel in the town while the police scoured the hidden passageways and mausoleum. Normally, I wouldn’t have been able to afford the room for so long, but according to Mrs Gillespie’s solicitor, the reward Mrs Gillespie had offered for information that led to Hanna’s discovery was mine. I’d made an effort to reject it, but the solicitor had said Mrs Gillespie was adamant that I should have it.
It was a week after my night in the mausoleum, and the police investigation was wrapping up. Because Jonathan Gillespie’s corpse couldn’t be identified, he was given a pauper’s grave in the town’s cemetery. Genevieve had been interred with the rest of her family behind the house.
The priest said a final few words that I couldn’t catch, and Mrs Gillespie nodded curtly then turned to speak with her friends. I loitered for a couple of minutes, unsure of whether I was supposed to stay or leave quietly, but as soon as I turned to go, I heard Mrs Gillespie’s voice ring out, “Just a moment, Elle.”
I waited while she said goodbye to the Mallorys and approached me. She was wearing a navy business suit and looked incredibly out of place in the relaxed, park-like graveyard.
“I realised this morning I hadn’t thanked you properly.” Her voice was much softer than I’d ever heard it. I wondered if this was how she spoke when she wasn’t feeling pressured.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said “I’m—I’m sorry about… everything.”
She waved away my lame apology. “Don’t be. It’s been a long time since I last had hope that I would find my daughter alive. At least this way, I have some closure.”
“Yeah,” I mumbled, scuffing my shoes through the grass. One question had been weighing on me, but I didn’t know how to ask it without seeming rude. “So, uh, your retreat’s been cut short. I guess you’ll be moving back home now.”
Mrs Gillespie laughed. It was such an unexpected sound that I startled.
“No, no, we’re not moving back there. We only stayed because… well, I suppose it was always a stupid dream, but I kept imagining I might open the front door one day and find Hanna on the other side. We moved into the house because of her, and we stayed there because of her. Now that…” She gestured towards the burial plot, and I nodded. “Now that it’s over, Mark and I will be moving back to the city. It suits us much better, and I’ll be able to re-join my old law firm.”
I did a double-take. “You’re…?”
She quirked an eyebrow at me, but a faint smile was playing about her mouth. “I’m a QC. Didn’t you know that?”
The workroom at the back of the house flashed through my mind, and I suddenly felt foolish for assuming it belonged to Mr Gillespie.
“Sorry,” I said, but Mrs Gillespie laughed again.
“Don’t worry about it.”
Silence lapsed over us for a moment. Mrs Gillespie’s gaze had returned to the plot where her daughter lay. Her expression was soft and a little sad, and once again, I felt as if I were imposing on a personal moment. I desperately dug around for something to break the silence.
“I guess being in law will come in handy for selling the house,” I said at last. Mrs Gillespie turned back to me, and I could see in her face that she hadn’t heard me fully. “You’ll be able to draft your own legal documents.”
“Oh.” Understanding flashed over her face, and she smiled again, though she was starting to look tired. “No, we’re not selling the house. It’s been passed down through the family from my great-great-grandmother, who helped build it. I never liked the place, but it’s something I want to keep for when my nephews and nieces are old enough to live on their own. If they want it, anyway.”
It was the second curve ball of the morning. I stared at Mrs Gillespie. Now that I was paying attention, I realised her streaky grey hair would have probably been midnight black at one time, and her jaw, while still feminine, had a hint of thickness to it. “You’re a Gillespie? I thought Mr Gillespie—”
Both of her eyebrows shot up at that. “My husband’s name is Mr Hammond. I had a very strong career when I married Mark, and it made sense to keep my maiden name.”
“Wow,” I muttered. Now that I knew what to look for, it was obvious that Mrs Gillespie was only a few generations away from Genevieve. They even had the same fiery look hidden in their cool eyes. I could only imagine how terrifying she was when she was defending a client in court. “I shouldn’t have assumed.”
She waved away my apology again. “Don’t mind it.”
“So the house will be left empty?” I asked.
She nodded. “I guess it will. I couldn’t sell it, and I don’t know how many people would be interested in renting such a rural property… especially with its history.” She quirked a smile at me. “Unless you want it?”
She’d asked as a joke, I knew, but as we stared at each other in lengthening silence, we both realised what my answer would be.
“Do you want it?” she asked, a little incredulous.
I thought of the house—with the shadowy hallways, the beautiful woods just behind it, the way it seemed to go on forever, and how it breathed late at night—and nodded. “Could I? Would you mind? I wouldn’t own it—you can keep it in the family. I could just stay there for a while and keep an eye on it. Like an extended housesitting session.”
She looked surprised. Her eyes darted across my face, as if testing to see if I was being serious, and my pleading look must have been enough of an answer for her. “Well, okay then.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. I’ll have to run it by Mark, but I don’t think he’ll mind.” The gentle smile flickered over her face again. “If you really want it… yes, I think that might work out well for all of us.”
It’s been six weeks since I officially moved into the Gillespie house. I’ve spent a lot of my time bringing the furniture down from storage and making the building feel like a home.
The chandelier in the dining room doesn’t look out of place anymore now that the ancient, chipped mahogany table is set up below it. The library isn’t full, but at least it’s no longer empty. I found boxes upon boxes of books in storage and added my own collection to the mix.
The garden beds out back are repaired and filled with compost and seeds. The first shoots are starting to come up. I planted a lot of tomatoes as a
tribute to Hanna. Apparently, they were her favourite plant.
The reward money has been an incredible gift. It not only let me break the lease of my old apartment early, but if I manage it carefully and supplement my food shopping with vegetables from the garden, it should keep me going for quite a few years.
That’s more than enough time to have a good, solid shot at something that used to just be a dream: publishing my own novel. I’ve nearly finished a first draft, and I have a folder full of plot notes for a sequel. I have no idea if anything will come from it, but things feel right like they never have before. I’m cautiously hopeful.
Genevieve visited my dreams for the first few nights after I moved in. She was a lot weaker than when the living blackness in the mausoleum had been feeding her energy, and she couldn’t place me inside her memories anymore. Instead, she showed them to me, like a movie. She wanted me to know that, despite a horrible beginning and terrible end, she had lived a happy life.
After the plague wiped out most of the family, Genevieve and her four siblings struggled to find their place in the world for the first few months. Her older brother, the one missing three fingers, had a good mind for business, and within four years, he owned his own company in town. He married a sweet girl, who’d come to live at Gillespie House. Steve, the man who wrote the blog I’d found, is her grandson.
Over four decades, the Gillespies built their company into an industry, and they became one of the wealthiest families in town. Although both of her younger siblings had married, Genevieve and her older sister never did, but their burgeoning collection of nieces, nephews, and eventually grand-nieces and grand-nephews, meant the house never felt empty.
Genevieve was eighty-six when she found an obscure book talking about the black magic her father had wielded and how tanzanite, the crystal she’d fashioned into a dagger, could be used against it. Her siblings had put the mausoleum out of mind and steered their children away from the graveyard, but Genevieve had never forgotten about how her trapped father had screamed until his vocal cords were shredded or how he had banged on the door any time she disturbed his rest.
She hadn’t told anyone of her plans, and when she didn’t come down for breakfast one morning and an exhaustive search failed, no one had thought to look in the hidden passageway that was almost completely forgotten.
The house had stayed in the family for generations. Out of tradition, Jonathan Gillespie’s room was never occupied… until, of course, Hanna had taken a liking to the bay window. Genevieve’s activity had been accepted as normal house noises. When she slammed the hidden door, people complained about how drafty the house was. When she walked through the passageway, they assumed another of the house’s occupants were moving about. When she scratched at the walls, they thought they had rats.
She could finally rest, though, she told me during the last night she shared my dreams. She thanked me for what I’d done and told me she was happy I was enjoying her family’s home.
When I woke up the next morning, the house felt slightly different, as though a long-term occupant had moved out. I miss Genevieve, but I’m glad she’s finally at peace.
I found the painting of her. It was the last one behind the stack of oil portraits I’d found in the upstairs room. Her dark hair was streaking with grey, a lot like Mrs Gillespie’s, and her face had grown many wrinkles, most of them about her mouth after an abundance of smiles. It must have been painted not long before her final visit to Jonathan; the tanzanite jewel that she’d used to fight her father sparkled beautifully on her necklace. I hung her painting in the middle of the hallway, between the paintings of the rest of her family, so she can continue to watch over the rooms.
The house is beautiful. It’s all I ever wanted in a home. Mrs Gillespie seems happy to have someone to maintain the building until it’s reclaimed by another of the Gillespie descendants, and I’m happy to stay as long as she will let me. I feel like a fuller, happier person here. Every morning, I wake up to a sense of excitement and anticipation, and every night, I go to sleep to the sounds of the house breathing around me.
Author’s Note
Hello, gorgeous reader! I hope you enjoyed Gillespie House.
Reviews are invaluable for helping people find my books. Please consider leaving one on Amazon if you have a moment: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B010XQ4AVU
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About Crawlspace
I wanted to share a short story, Crawlspace, which has special significance for this novella. If it weren’t for Crawlspace, Gillespie House would never have existed.
Short stories come with a unique challenge. Because they have a limited length—7,500 words, according to many publishing houses, before a short story technically becomes a novelette—good ideas often have to be scrapped to keep the story’s length manageable.
While I was planning Crawlspace, I kept thinking of new scenes and themes, even though I knew I couldn’t include them. Wouldn’t it be great to have a graveyard behind the house, I’d think. Or a maze of hidden passageways inside the walls. Or a scene where the protagonist explores her home at night. Or, or, or…
I tried to pare the story down to just the basics, but the excess ideas wouldn’t go away. They kept building on each other, and building, and building, until they were too big to ignore. I raised a white flag and rewrote Crawlspace into what’s now Gillespie House.
It took nearly two months to plan Gillespie House, and, during that time, the story evolved dramatically. It changed so much, in fact, that once I’d finished Gillespie House, I was able to go back and write Crawlspace as a short story, the way it was originally intended to be.
You’ll notice a lot of similarities between the stories. The initial cause of suspense—the scratching in the walls—is the biggest recurring theme. But I hope you’ll enjoy seeing how vastly different the stories became, despite starting in the same place.
Again, thank you for taking the time to experience these stories with me. You’re the reason I write, dear reader.
Much love,
Darcy
Crawlspace
It was our first day in the new house. My parents were downstairs, fighting over how much to unpack. Dad was a borderline hoarder, but at least he was an efficient one. He believed that leaving most of our belongings in boxes would make it easier for next time we moved. We had at least a dozen cartons that were sealed nine years ago, when I was still too young to appreciate the insanity of his logic.
Mum also had hoarderish tendencies, but she preferred to have her clutter on display, decorating the house like her personal thrift shop. I was the polar opposite—anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary for our comfort or survival could be thrown out. I didn’t even have much furniture, just a bed, a wardrobe, a desk, and a chair. My small book collection sat atop my desk, but they were the only decorations I owned. Compared to downstairs—which Mum continued to fill with trinkets, vases, miniatures, and paintings—my room was spartan. I liked it that way.
The lack of furniture meant there was nothing to cover the door in the wall, though. It sat in the area between my bed and my desk. It was barely noticeable unless I was looking for it, but once I’d seen it, the door was hard to ignore.
It’s probably empty, I repeatedly told myself as I made the bed and hung my clothes–five shirts and three pairs of pants–in the wardrobe. It’s not like there’s some great big secret hidden in there.
My unpacking took less than ten minutes. I could have gone downstairs when I finished, but I knew I would get roped into helping Dad squirrel away boxes marked “Don’t Open,” or mum would ask me to help arrange dozens of her miniature horses and squirrels along the mantelpiece. I’d already done more than my share to help pack them, and the f
our-hour drive had exhausted me. If they want clutter in their house, they’ll have to deal with the consequences, I decided and flopped onto the bed.
My window had a view of the large oak tree that grew beside the house, and I watched its fluttering leaves brush against the glass, mesmerised, until I drifted off.
I woke to the sound of tapping. The sunlight was hitting my face, so I rolled over to block it out and mumbled, “I’m coming. Hold on.” When the noise didn’t stop, I sat up and rubbed my palms into my eyes.
It wasn’t Mum knocking at my door, as my half-asleep brain had assumed. I glanced towards the window, where the motion of the tree leaves had lulled me to sleep. The wind had died down, and the boughs were still.
I mussed my hair out of my face as I looked about the room. The tapping was quiet but, like a dripping tap, impossible to ignore.
“Hello?” I called.
Mum answered me from downstairs. “Dinner’s almost ready! Come help me find the cutlery.”
As the sound of her voice died away, silence rushed in to fill the space. The tapping had stopped, at least.
It was probably the tree, after all.
“Do you want to know what I found out today?” Dad asked.
Our real dinner table was crowded with half-unpacked cartons, so we sat our paper plates on a large packing box while we ate. Neither of my parents seemed to appreciate the irony.
“What?” I asked, scooping up pasta with a plastic spoon.
Dad swelled with excitement. “Apparently, this place used to be an orphanage during the Depression. They had up to sixty children here at a time.”
