The Man in Black: A Gothic Romance (Crookshollow Ghosts)

by Steffanie Holmes

  Eric didn’t move.

  “Are you afraid or something?”

  “You’re damn right I’m afraid.” Eric said, his eyes boring into mine. “Would you want to see where you were killed?”

  No. “Don’t be a pussy. You’re supposed to be some kind of badass goth superstar. Now fix your eyeliner, embrace the morbid ridiculousness of this situation, and get out here.”

  Eric set his mouth in a thin line, and stepped across the entrance hall toward me. He reached the threshold of the door and stopped, his face grim. His whole body tensed, and he leaned forward, pushing himself toward the door. It looked as though he were fighting against some invisible force. I stepped over the threshold, and held the door open with my hand. “Just one more step,” I said.

  He frowned, but raised his hand, tentatively extending his fingers across the threshold of the door. Eric’s face twisted in concentration—he was trying to push through that repelling sensation to reach me. I noticed his fingers, long and thin and beautiful, the tips hardened from furious playing. Musician’s hands. I bet they could play a tune on anything … I made a note to look up some of his music when I was alone.

  Eric’s fingers dangled in mid-air, and then they passed over the threshold. He gave them an experimental wiggle. His face broke into a grin.

  “Hey, this is strange! I tried to float through the wall last week, and it was like coming up against a solid object. But look at this! I don’t know what it is about you, Elinor, but I’m very glad you’re here.”

  I turned my head as I held the door open for Eric, not wanting him to notice the heat collecting in my cheeks.

  Eric stepped forward, his foot passing over the threshold and hovering a couple of inches above the porch. His grin grew wider as he moved the rest of his body across, moving to stand beside me under the porch, a black silhouette that cast no shadow on the ground. Once he was completely outside, I shut the door behind us, shoving the key in the lock and dropping the ring into my pocket. I wasn’t going to forget the keys again.

  “This is amazing.” Eric gushed behind me. “It feels so good to be outside again. I feel all tingly—”

  I turned back to him, and screamed. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. Eric was growing faint—his body fading like the image on an old TV screen after someone turned it off. I could still make out the outline of his black suit, but through his torso the wisteria trailing around the porch railing was clearly visible. Eric looked down at his hands. He cursed as he watched the tips fade into thin air.

  “I think …” Eric whispered, his voice weak. “I have to go … back inside ...”

  Inside, now. I fumbled with the keys in my pocket, finally managing to grab them and jam them in the lock. My heart hammered as I watched Eric’s motorcycle boots vanish, followed by his shapely calves and knees. My hands shook so violently that it took me three tries before the key slipped in. “Hurry!” Eric’s weak voice pleaded.

  I turned the lock and flung the door open. I was so desperate to save Eric I forgot my fear of touching him, and I tried to push him back through the door. My fingers dropped right through his skin. This time, I didn’t feel the sharp explosion of heat down my arms, only a weak, warm tingle, barely distinguishing his presence from the air around him.

  Please be OK, I prayed silently. Please don’t disappear.

  Eric’s face burst with effort. He moved slowly across the porch, his arms circling around his head as if he were swimming through thick toffee. With every agonising step, his shape faded away, until I could barely make out the edges of his face against the dark bricks. I gripped the handle so hard my knuckles ached. Hurry, Eric! You’re almost there.

  Eric reached the door and heaved himself over the threshold, just as his face faded completely from view. I squinted my eyes to try and find him. I could only just make out the outline of his shoulders and the shadow of his face as he slumped on the floor. I dived inside after him, slamming the door shut behind me.

  I collapsed against the back of the door, panting heavily, trying to slow my racing heart back to normal. I watched as slowly, bit by bit, more of Eric’s body became visible. He was hunched in front of me. At first I thought his legs had disappeared for good, but then I realised that he wasn’t kneeling on the floor, he was floating halfway between it.

  When his colour had fully returned, Eric floated up again, so that his feet hovered on the same floor as mine. “That was close.”

  I rose to my feet, still leaning back against the door. I didn’t quite trust myself to stand under my own weight. “I’m so sorry. That was scary, Eric.”

  “I know.” He gazed at me intently. “I think … I nearly stopped existing. Thank you for saving me.”

  “I didn’t save you. It was me who insisted you go outside in the first place.” Guilt overwhelmed me. A hard lump clung to my throat. You’re not about to cry, are you? You barely know this guy, and it’s not as if he can die. He’s already dead.

  “Hey, I was willing to let you off, but you’re an honest lawyer. I like that.” Eric smiled. “It’s OK, Elinor, really. We didn’t know what would happen. Now we know.”

  “What did happen?”

  “I guess I’m not allowed outside of the house. It makes sense. In all the ghost stories I’ve read, the ghost is confined to some specific space. Marshell House must be my boundary.”

  “So what are we going to do?”

  Eric sighed. “I hate asking anyone for anything, but I’m getting pretty desperate. Please could you go and have a look at the crash site?”

  “Why? It’s pointless without you there. The whole reason we were going was to see if you could remember anything.”

  “Take some pictures on your phone and bring them back, or a video if you can. Anything that might help me remember. Plus,” he gave me a wry smile. “I can tell you’re pretty clever. You can look for any clues that the police might have missed. I think you’d like that, Miss Not-a-Criminal-Lawyer.”

  “I’m not a detective, either.”

  “Ah, but this is a ghost story,” Eric gestured to himself. “And all the best ghost stories contain beautiful amateur detectives.”

  “They also contain heroines in voluminous gothic gowns who end up dead at the end. I’m not sure which character one I am.”

  “Did you pack a voluminous gothic gown in that Prada suitcase of yours?”

  I shook my head.

  Then I think you’ll be fine. Although,” He grinned. “I bet you’d look stunning in a corset.”

  I grabbed my coat from the rack beside the door. “Will you be OK here by yourself?” I stared at Eric with concern, wondering if he was going to fade away as soon as I left.

  “Oh, sure. I’m used to my own company by now.” Eric gave me a tight, formal wave. Strangely sad to be leaving him, I pulled the keys from the lock and went outside, shutting the door softly behind me.

  I guessed the people at Crookshollow Car Rentals must be as scared of Marshell House as the Pete’s Pizza’s employees. They had parked my car on the street outside the open gate, and hadn’t even bothered to come up to the house to give me the keys. Instead, I found an envelope with a hastily scrawled note in the letterbox. Because that’s safe. I unlocked the little Fiat and plugged my phone in, turning on the GPS and entering King Alfred Road, the name of the street where the paper said Eric’s car had crashed.

  The drive took me through a neighbourhood containing even larger, older, and creepier homes, many in gothic revival or Georgian styles. I didn’t know why people around here had such a problem with the Marshell house. This whole town is filled with probable haunted houses. Why were people afraid to even walk onto the property?

  I snorted with laughter. I guess if people thought there were ghosts inside, they were right. Although Eric was probably the least frightening spectre I could’ve imagined. What was frightening was how much I liked him already, and how much I wanted to impress him by finding something useful at the wreck site.

  I
t turned out, King Alfred Road was a country road. Stately manors and gothic mansions gave way to quaint cottages peeking out from behind dry-stone walls, and fields of puffy white sheep snacking on lush grass. After just a few miles, the houses grew even more spread out, and all I could see was miles of rolling farmland and a dense forest. What was Eric doing out here? He wouldn’t come this way driving from London to Crookshollow.

  The forest grew denser, and as I rounded the crest of a hill, I saw a small wooden sign reading WITCHES CEMETARY. Behind it was a field filled with crumbling tombstones, many toppled over or crumbling away. Both the earth and the trees around the graveyard were charred black, as if they’d been on fire. I wondered what had happened there. I bet if I asked Duncan he could give me a whole history lesson on the place.

  The spot where Eric had been run off the road was easy to find. Two sets of tire tracks criss-crossed the road like ley lines. One set of tracks went straight off the right side of the road and into a ditch. The council had already righted the power pole Eric’s car had wrecked.

  I noticed something wrong immediately, something the papers hadn’t picked up on. The tire tracks were on the other side of the road, the same side I was driving on now. Eric hadn’t been driving to Crookshollow. He’d been driving away.

  I pulled over on the verge and got out, wishing I’d paid more attention to all those crime investigation shows on the telly. Weren’t detectives always looking at tire tracks and determining who had driven where and done what? How fast were they travelling? Was the driver drunk? How many greasy hamburgers had the passenger eaten that night? CSI teams could solve it all with just a glance at the tracks. But I was a probate lawyer, and it just looked like a mess of skid marks to me. I pulled out my phone and took a quick video of the road for Eric.

  Next, I went over to the ditch where Eric’s car had landed. The grass had been charred black and cut up in the crash, and the dirt beneath churned up by the workers who’d pulled the car out of the ditch. A dark stain blotted the earth beside the power pole. Is that Eric’s blood? I wondered. The thought made my stomach turn.

  This is where he died.

  It was hard to think of Eric as dead, because he was so … animated. But I remembered the way his fingers had fallen right through me, how touching him caused a hot, unnatural energy to race through my skin. And it brought it all back, all the pain and horror of Joel’s death. Don’t get attached. Because eventually he’s going to be gone forever, and you’ll be alone, again.

  Joel. I hadn’t thought about him for … almost a month. That was a record for me. I’d been so distracted with Operation Shag Damon that I hadn’t been sad for a while. It seemed like I was getting over him. But as soon as his name entered my mind, fresh tears sprung to my eyes. Don’t think about it, Elinor. You have to concentrate, for Eric.

  So I concentrated. I bent down and started to search the ground, moving in a sweeping motion to inspect ever square inch of dirt. This is pointless, Devil’s-Advocate Elinor complained. The police would have been over every inch of this ground. They did that when high profile people died on their turf. What do I think I am going to find that they hadn’t—

  Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a glint of metal down in the ditch. An empty drink can. The police wouldn’t have bothered with that—there was probably a ton of rubbish in the ditch. But what is that, poking out of the top … I peered closer. A small scrap of paper was pushed through the lip of the can. Someone must’ve tucked an extra bit of rubbish into the can before tossing it away. It could be nothing, but it could be … I crouched down, aware that I was probably getting my favourite Vivienne Westwood skirt all dirty, and picked up the can. A couple of shakes and I was able to dig out the paper. It was wet from the rain, but being inside the can had probably saved it from being completely obliterated. I clasped my hand around it and, after a final glance around to ensure I hadn’t missed anything, went back to the car.

  Once inside I held the paper up to the light, squinting to read the tiny print. It was a ticket stub, but the name of the show had been smudged too badly to read. All I could make out were the words “Coppeli—” and ADMIT ONE. A phone number had been scrawled across the top in a messy pink pen.

  It could be a clue. An actual, honest-to-goodness clue, just like in a mystery story. Eric was a musician, so if someone murdered him, there was a fair chance they were in some way related to the music industry, and would have plenty of reason to toss the scrap of a ticket stub away. Feeling a little pleased with myself, I stuffed the stub into my pocket. I started the engine and sped away, eager to get back to the house and show Eric what I’d found. It was funny how quickly I’d got used to the idea of having a ghost around. I wasn’t even questioning my sanity. I mean, I could be hallucinating Eric, couldn’t I? Maybe someone had slipped some kind of slow-release hallucinogenic into my drink last weekend. It would explain why I’d managed to conjure up a ghost that was so ridiculously attractive …

  It was weird, but when I thought of it that way, Eric being a ghost trapped in the house because he couldn’t cross over until he solved the mystery of his own death was actually the most plausible explanation for everything that had happened.

  If you’d told me two days ago that I’d be hanging out with a spectre, I would’ve laughed in your face. But Eric was so … likeable. Arrogant, and a little stiff and formal, and his jokes were in pretty bad taste, but I could forgive a lot when my poltergeist was so damn gorgeous.

  Is that why you’re so keen to help him, because he’s hot? Devil’s Advocate Elinor sneered inside my head. Do you think he’s going to be so grateful that he’s going to make sexy ghost love to you on his mother’s bed? That makes no sense. First of all, he’s dead. Second of all, Eric is … was … a famous musician. He had groupies lining up to share his bed every night. If he was alive he never would’ve noticed a frumpy bookworm like you. And it’s no different now, it’s just that for some unknown reason you’re the only person who can see him.

  I’m not trying to— I started, but stopped the thought in my head. I knew better than to attempt to lie to Devil’s Advocate Elinor. I was a lawyer. I was trained to spot a lie.

  Even if he was alive, it could never work. And he’s not alive, just like Joel isn’t alive. So don’t get attached to him, Elinor. Don’t get involved. I’m telling you this for your own good.

  “Shut up,” I said to myself, as I drove back past the charred witches’ cemetery and back towards the village. Atta girl, Devil’s Advocate Elinor shot back.

  Eric

  Every minute that Elinor was away was agony to me. I hadn’t realised just how desperate I’d been to have someone to talk to, and now she was gone again the house felt so large and oppressive and empty, even more so than when I was alive. I floated aimlessly around the downstairs rooms, nervously flicking at my mother’s antique vases and cat statues with my fingers and watching my skin disappear through the glaze. It was weird being nervous and not being able to touch anything. I had all this energy humming around my body, and I couldn’t do anything with it.

  I know how I’d like to burn it off, but ...

  That was an inappropriate thought.

  But I couldn’t help it. Elinor was just so tempting. With her no-nonsense brown hair and her black-rimmed glasses and her tight skirt clinging to her gorgeous curves, she had that whole hot librarian look down to an art. I could tell just from our short conversation that she was whip-smart, and she was ready to call me on my bullshit, which I admired, although I didn’t necessarily welcome it.

  Back when I was alive, I’d had a lot of girls, although not as many as Allan or Pierre or the other members of my band and crew. Performing was so physically and emotionally intense for me that I preferred to drink alone afterward over making small talk with Bambi-McCocknstein or whatever that night’s goth groupie’s name was. But I’d definitely enjoyed more than my fair share of the world’s population of beautiful women. I’d been a loser and a loner in high school
, and now that people knew who I was, it was a major ego boost to see women falling over themselves just for a night with me. It was fun, and I loved the sex, but it was easy. And easy got boring after a while.

  I could tell that wasn’t Elinor’s game. It didn’t even seem as if she really knew who I was. She certainly didn’t fall all over herself in front of me like my female fans. I’d have to work to win her, and I was happy to rise to the challenge.

  Just thinking about her in that tight sweater, her glasses pushed down her nose, was making something rise right now.

  No. Reality slammed into me with enough force to knock me back through the hall wall. My phantom erection faded into the nothingness that was my body. What was I thinking, getting all hot under the collar for Elinor? It didn’t matter how I felt, I was dead. Elinor wasn’t interested in a fling with a restless spirit. I needed to stop being distracted by my mother’s sexy estate lawyer and focus on the problem at hand; how to move my soul from the living world to wherever it was supposed to go.

  Luckily, as a musician who played music that Rolling Stone described as avant-garde-gothic-neo-folk-meets-Freddy-Mercury (try saying that three times fast), I had a strong interest in the occult and hauntings and other supernatural phenomena. Unfortunately, all my books were back at my own house, probably torn to pieces by the mystery burglar. Luckily, I was in Crookshollow, where information about the occult was never far away. Maybe I could get Elinor to go to the library—

  I heard the car pull up outside. I was still feeling pretty shaken about my current situation, and in a split second, a wicked thought crossed my mind. If I was stuck like this, and I couldn’t have the kind of fun I wanted to have with Elinor, I could at least amuse myself. I rushed through the hall, and waited behind the door while she fumbled with the keys. A few moments later she pushed the door open, and stepped inside, calling “Eric! You won’t believe what I found—”