The Mammoth Book of Ghost Romance (Mammoth Books)

by Trisha Telep

  He looked annoyed. “I’m going to get the luggage.”

  Hillary watched him troop down the stairs. When she heard him go out, she looked around the landing once more. Why did she feel so uneasy? As if she were invading someone’s space. She didn’t like the feeling at all, and hurried downstairs to help Matthew.

  They made a trip into the village of Tadcaster, picked up some supplies, a few groceries that they could stuff into two coolers, and some sleeping bags until they could arrange for a bed.

  It was early evening when they arrived back at Whitstone House. As they pulled into the drive, Hillary squinted at the door. “Did you leave it open?” she asked Matthew.

  He looked, too. “I didn’t think I did. The latch is probably rusty,” he said. “I’ll have a look.”

  They hauled in their purchases, and dragged the coolers into the kitchen area. Hillary dumped ice on top of them while Matthew checked the door. He came back to the kitchen and told her nothing was wrong with the latch. “It’s fine. I guess I left it open.”

  “What about electricity?”

  “Got a little problem there,” he said apologetically. “I can’t find the breaker box. I’ll have to call the caretaker tomorrow.”

  “Great,” she said.

  “I’m going to go sweep out a room for us,” he said, and left her to finish up in the kitchen. When Hillary was done, she went upstairs to help. They went around opening windows, airing out the house, trying to get rid of the musty smell.

  When dusk fell, Hillary opened a bottle of wine while Matthew lit candles. He showed Hillary an old concave mirror on the wall in the main drawing room. He explained how those mirrors were intended to reflect light to provide more of it.

  “Seriously, how do you know these things, like the history of light?” Hillary asked curiously.

  Matthew grinned. “I’ve been reading,” he said. In the candlelight, she noticed that he looked boyishly handsome, like the guy she’d fallen in love with twelve years ago. They’d met at an engagement party for one of Hillary’s co-workers. Hillary had just sold her first house, and Matthew had brokered the mortgage. He’d said hello at the party, asked if she had any other sales. Hillary remembered that great smile, the shining blue eyes under a mop of dark hair. He used to tell people he couldn’t look away from her brown eyes, that they reminded him of pools of honey.

  Whatever had clicked between them that night, Matthew had left with her number, and over the several weeks that followed, they fell in love.

  God, how hard they fell! They loved the same movies, the same sports, the same books. Their lovemaking had been out of this world. Hillary still got a tiny little shiver just thinking about those days. She’d had a little loft apartment above a coffee shop and, on weekends, they’d lie in her bed all day, making love, taking little breaks to run downstairs for coffee and pastries. It had been a perfect existence, a perfect love.

  After a couple of years of dating, they’d married, and the twins had come along eighteen months after that. They’d been delighted with their babies, and so much in love, and Hillary had believed, truly believed, that it would always be like that. And it was. For years. Until Matthew lost his job.

  “I’m going to build a small fire and see if this main chimney is working,” Matthew announced, drawing Hillary back to the present. “I saw some wood down by the shed. I’ll be back in a few.”

  Hillary decided it was getting a little chilly, and took a candle upstairs to close some of the windows. They had chosen the room at the end of the upstairs hall to use as a bedroom. It had windows on two walls and a fireplace with a carved stone mantle, which, Hillary had grudgingly admitted, was pretty cool.

  As she moved down the hallway, a cold draft caught her flame and extinguished it. “Damn,” she muttered. There was still enough twilight filtering in that she could make her way. The light in the room at the end of the hall was better, and Hillary relit her candle before putting it aside. She closed the windows on the east side, then those on the west side. When she turned back to the room, something caught her eye, and Hillary’s heart plummeted to her toes with fright. Someone, a woman, a face, was staring at her through the window. The woman’s hair was wet and hung well past her shoulders.

  Hillary’s heart was beating wildly; she whirled around, thinking it was a reflection, that there was a woman standing behind her, not at the window, but there was no one there. And when she jerked around again to the window, the woman, the face, was gone. Hillary rushed to the window and opened it, leaning onto the sill to look out. There was nothing there. There couldn’t possibly be anything or anyone there, for it was straight drop to the ground, and there was nothing on which the woman could have been standing.

  Impossible! She slammed the window shut and fell back from it. She tried to make sense of it – it had to have been a shadow, some trick of the light. Yet she had seen a face as clearly as if the woman had walked up to her and shook her hand.

  “Hillary?”

  The sound of Matthew’s voice below was a welcome relief. “Up here!” she shouted, and hugged herself tightly, trying to rid herself of that awful strange feeling.

  “Why are you in the dark?” Matthew asked a few moments later as he walked into the room with an armful of wood.

  She hadn’t even noticed the candle had gone out again. “A draft, I guess.” She was shaking, she realized.

  Matthew noticed it, too. “Cold? Well, I’ve got a surprise for you,” he said. “The heat is on, which means . . . hot water.”

  “Great,” she said, and risked another look at the window. Nothing. Her imagination, that was the culprit.

  As for the bath, it took some doing, with the pipes groaning and shuddering, but after a couple of blasts of junk, hot water flowed out of the pipes and into an ancient claw-footed tub.

  Matthew lit the bathroom with a dozen candles.

  “This is great!” Hillary exclaimed, truly delighted. She looked at her husband and felt a sudden rush of longing. “The tub looks big enough for two . . . want to join me?”

  “Ah . . . you go ahead. I need to make sure we’re locked up.” He smiled a little absently and went out. Deflated, Hillary undressed and sank into the warmth of the bath. In fact, she didn’t come out until Matthew assured her he’d made a suitable pallet on which they could sleep.

  The jet lag had caught up to both of them. Hillary found the sleeping bag surprisingly bearable and, as she drifted into welcome sleep, she thought she heard the faint sound of a woman crying. But the need for sleep was too great and pushed her under before she could think much more about it.

  Hillary awoke from a dreamless, deep sleep the next morning to find Matthew’s bag empty. She sat up and looked around. Bright sunlight was streaming into the room and, in the morning light, the house looked entirely different. Warm. Almost inviting. She did not feel that weird, unsettled feeling she’d felt all day yesterday. She wandered downstairs and found Matthew sitting on the back steps, eating cold cereal.

  “What time is it?” she asked sleepily.

  “Ten,” Matthew said, and smiled up at her. “You were really sawing the Zs, so I didn’t wake you. Cereal?”

  “Please,” she said, and sat next to him. “This could be gorgeous,” she said, looking out at the vista before them. The grounds swept down to a narrow river. Mature trees rose up on either side of the grounds, enclosing the property.

  “There’s an orchard of some sort down that road,” Matthew said, pointing to a two-track road that ran along the river. “I went for a run this morning and found it. I think they are apple trees.”

  “How quaint,” Hillary said. “And really lovely, in an agrarian way.” She laughed.

  “I saw a guy at the far end of the orchard,” Matthew said. “I thought he must be the orchard keeper or whatever you call it, so I detoured to ask him about it, but he disappeared over a hill. I guess that means there are more houses on the other side of the orchard. I’m really not sure how big this prop
erty is.”

  “Want me to check it out when I go to the village to do something about beds?” Hillary asked.

  “What, you don’t like roughing it?” Matthew asked, nudging her with his shoulder.

  She laughed. “Have you met me?”

  He looked at her, his blue eyes shining with amusement. “Fortunately for me . . . yes,” he said, and kissed her. It was more than he’d done in weeks. In fact, Hillary thought, as he went to get milk for her, she couldn’t remember the last time they’d really kissed.

  They puttered around after breakfast, making a list of things she needed to get. As she picked up the keys to leave, Matthew said, “Thanks, Hill.”

  She paused. “For what?”

  “For this,” Matthew said, gesturing to the house. “For being a sport. I just want to do some work and get it ready to sell. It gives me . . . it gives me something useful to do,” he admitted sheepishly.

  Hillary smiled and lovingly touched his cheek. “I’ll see you later.”

  Matthew turned his face into her hand and kissed her palm. “Be careful. Remember to look right, and that they drive on the wrong side of the road.”

  Hillary laughed. She went up on her toes and kissed Matthew’s mouth, lingering there and feeling, for a moment, like she could wrap herself into him like she used to do.

  In the village, Hillary found a little housing goods shop which happened to have a double bed in stock, as well as a couple of used armchairs. “Can have that delivered today if you’d like,” the man behind the counter said. His nametag read “Stan”.

  “Thank God,” Hillary said with a laugh. “Do you know the Whitstone House?”

  “Sure I do. Are you staying near there, then?”

  “We’re actually at the Whitstone House.”

  Stan stopped writing the invoice and looked up. “Do you mean you’ve let it?”

  “Actually, my husband inherited it,” Hillary said. “Just like that, out of the blue.” She laughed at Stan’s astonishment. “He didn’t know his mother had it or was even connected to the Whitstones. Talk about a surprise.”

  “I can see that it would be.” Stan looked down at his invoice once again. “Been years since anyone’s lived there.”

  “Right. Why is that, do you think? Is it too far from Tadcaster?”

  “Oh, perhaps. But, you know, they say it’s haunted. That might have something to do with it. People round here can be bloody superstitious.”

  Hillary’s gaze locked on the shopkeeper. “Excuse me?”

  He looked up. “You haven’t heard it, then? Oh, pay me no mind, miss. They say that about all the old houses round here. This one or that one died, and therefore it’s haunted.” He grinned at her. “I wouldn’t fret too much about it.”

  Hillary would have laughed along with him had she not seen that face in the window last night. “How would I find out about the house? I mean, about who lived there before?”

  “Now I’ve gone and scared you. I’m sorry for that, it was not my intent. But you can ask the librarian. She keeps a room of local records. Now then, I can have the bed and the two chairs delivered by four o’clock if that suits?”

  “Perfectly,” Hillary said. She didn’t believe in ghosts. She wasn’t going to let what he said rattle her in the least. What she’d seen in the window was some sort of weird shadow and light thing, it was not a ghost for heaven’s sake. And the fact that there was even a tiny niggle of doubt in her mind told her that she had watched far too much late-night cable TV.

  At the library, Hillary met Mrs Browning, the librarian, who, she quickly realized, also happened to be Matthew’s estate agent. “Not a lot of buying and selling here,” she explained with an infectious laugh. “One needs an occupation outside of it.” She was a cheerful woman who wore a thick cable-knit sweater in spite of the mild summer temperatures. She wore her grey-streaked hair in a ponytail.

  “Ah, the Whitstone House. How did you find it? One of the treasures in this county, isn’t it? The original structure was built in the 1700s, although it’s been added to over the years.”

  “What can you tell me about the previous owners?” Hillary asked.

  “Miss Esme Whitstone was the last of them. My mother knew her quite well, actually. Here now, here is the file,” she said, placing a box between them. It was labeled “Whitstone”. Mrs Browning put her glasses on her nose and opened the box. “I know there were four siblings, three girls and a boy. The boy married an American, which is how you’ve come to have it,” she explained. “Poor Esme never married and lived out her days in the very house in which she was born.” Mrs Browning picked up a yellowed newspaper clipping. “Ah, that’s it, I recall now,” she said nodding. “This is Esme’s obituary. Her older sister Aurora married a London boy and lived there until her death.”

  “What of the other sister?” Hillary asked.

  “Oh dear, that would be Agnes.” Mrs Browning put the yellowed newsprint aside and sifted through the papers, picking up another one. “This is the late Mr Riggin’s work. He fancied himself the local historian and wrote little papers about all the old houses and esteemed families round here. Agnes is the one who died so young. Only seventeen years, can you imagine it?”

  “She died?” Hillary said. “How?”

  “Oh, a nasty fall,” Mrs Browning said, wrinkling her nose. “Broke her neck. Now, depending on what story you choose to believe, she either jumped to her death when her father wouldn’t allow her to marry her beau, or she fell out of a window trying to escape. Either way, a tragedy.” She clucked her tongue. “The note the poor girl left for her parents is in the box. It was in Esme’s things when she passed.”

  Hillary gaped at Mrs Browning. “Agnes died at Whitstone House?”

  “Indeed she did,” Mrs Browning said, nodding enthusiastically.

  “What . . . what happened to the boy?”

  “Well now, that’s the worst part of it. When he found that Agnes was gone, he took his own life. Very Romeo and Juliet, isn’t it?”

  “Very,” Hillary agreed.

  “It’s all in here. You are welcome to check out the file if you’d like, for a small surety,” Mrs Browning offered.

  “Thank you. I believe I will,” Hillary said.

  The bed and chairs were delivered at four o’clock as promised, and with the linens and the small area rug Hillary had purchased, the room at the end of the hall was suddenly very cosy. Hillary’s vision of what the house could be was improving. She could imagine a pair of chairs by the hearth, a nice wardrobe as well. She was beginning to see the potential in the resale value of the house. She was beginning to believe that Matthew was right – that with a couple of weeks of hard work, it would be an outstanding property.

  She said as much to Matthew over dinner.

  He looked at her with surprise. “Wow. That’s a sudden change of heart.”

  “Maybe,” she said with a sheepish shrug. “But I’ve had a few days to decompress since we left New York and . . . and I guess I am starting to see what you see.”

  “Really?” he said, grinning now. “I think we can do it. I’ve lined up all the labor we need. If you and I tackle the cleaning and painting, I think in a couple of weeks, we might have a gold mine on our hands. So you’re in?” he asked, lifting his wine glass.

  “I’m in,” she agreed, and clinked her glass to his. “Hey, I stopped in at the library today and got some history on the house.” She told him about the Whitstones, as well as some other things she had read in the file about the construction of the house. She showed him some grainy pictures too, of people standing next to Model T cars in early twentieth-century dress. In those pictures, the house looked really very grand. They looked at an old bill of sale for tallow. And they found the note from Agnes Whitstone. Hillary told him what Mrs Browning had told her about Agnes’s death.

  Matthew read the note again. He shifted, uncomfortable.

  “What is it?” Hillary asked.

  “I don’t know. I
just had this strange feeling,” he said, shaking his head, and looked at Hillary. “I know what that feels like, that desperation to be with someone.”

  Hillary gazed back at him. She felt something flow between them – something she hadn’t felt in years.

  “Look at that,” Matthew said, breaking the spell and pointing at the picture. “They had a butler.”

  “I want a butler,” Hillary said, dreamily.

  “You have one,” Matthew said, and kissed the top of her head as he stood to clear the kitchen table of paper plates and the empty pizza box.

  That evening, they worked on the kitchen. Matthew took measurements for some new cabinetry while Hillary scrubbed the tiled surfaces of the workspaces. Hillary was, oddly, almost hyper-aware of her husband’s physical presence. Without looking at him, she could feel him moving around the kitchen. She kept looking at him, at his hands and hips, the breadth of his back. She wanted him. She wanted him to take her right here, in the kitchen. And she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so . . . randy.

  “It’s cooling off,” Matthew said. “I’m going to get some wood.” He picked up a flashlight. “Back in a bit.”

  Hillary finished up in the kitchen and walked down the hall to the foyer. She was digging around for some trash bags, and heard Matthew come in the kitchen, clomping about doing God knew what. “Hey,” she called out to him, “will you bring the rest of the wine?”

  Matthew didn’t answer. Hillary stood up and looked in the direction of the kitchen. A strange sensation washed over her, making her feel slightly off balance, and the hair stood up on the back of her neck. She started for the kitchen, but the front door suddenly opened. Startled, she whirled around with a shriek as Matthew walked in with his arms full of wood.

  “What?” he said.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Wood, remember?” he said, nodding at his arms.

  “No – I heard you in the kitchen,” she said, pointing away from them. Matthew looked at her curiously. Hillary’s heart began to pound. “Someone is in the kitchen, Matthew.” As if to prove it, there was the sound again, of someone walking around.