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

by Steffanie Holmes

  Neither dress was my usual style. They were too risqué, too unique for Elinor the Lawyer. You couldn’t wear something like that to meet with a client or attend the firm’s annual Christmas cocktail party. But being stuck here in Crookshollow was making me realise that maybe that image was not who I really was inside. Maybe the red dress was more “me” than all the beige pantsuits in my wardrobe.

  My decision made, I quickly unlaced the corset and slipped out of the skirt, put on my clothes, and exited the changing room. My heart hammered against my chest. I needed to pay for these quickly, before I changed my mind. “I’ll take these,” I said, handing the two dresses over. “And these books, too.” I stacked two ghost books on top of my pile.

  “Ah, those are two excellent and useful books if you have an interest in ghosts. Of course, as the author, I admit I carry some bias.”

  “You wrote these?” The woman smiled a toothy grin, and pointed to the name on the cover. Clara Raynard.

  “That’s me. Around here I’m considered somewhat of an expert on unexplained occurrences,” she said. “I think you’ll find chapter 13 particularly illuminating.” She tapped the cover of The Private Life of Ghosts. “There’s some information on shades that will be particularly useful for your current situation.”

  “What situation?”

  “The Marshell House.” Clara grinned. “You’re the lawyer who is living there.”

  “How … how do you know I was staying in the Marshell House?”

  “This is a small town, dear. And an old lady like me doesn’t have much in her life apart from gossip.” Clara leaned forward, smiling conspiratorially at me. “Duncan told me all about you, and from his description, I think you’re even prettier in person.”

  “Oh, um. Thanks.” Clara kept staring at me with that knowing smile, and I was starting to feel uneasy. She handed me back my credit card and I stuffed it into my wallet, grabbing my bags and heading for the door as fast as I could.

  “I have a special interest in Marshell House. It has a bit of a reputation around here for being haunted. Many locals won’t go anywhere near it.” I nodded, my hand on the door handle, remembering Pete’s Pizza and the rental car company. “But all my investigations have revealed that the only haunting in that house was a young boy terrorised by a bitter old woman. At least, until recently. Have you seen or heard anything interesting during your stay?”

  Just a hot rock star ghost who gave me the best sex of my life, I thought, my cheeks flushing. The way Clara was looking at me made me nervous, as if she could read my thoughts. “No, I mean, I don’t think so. I’m not used to living in an old house. Sometimes it creaks and groans and I see shadows in the corners of the room. But I’m here to do a job. I can’t let my imagination get the better of me.”

  “Oh, no, it’s your imagination that will set you free, my dear. Sometimes instead of hiding from the shadows, we should be embracing them.”

  “Um, yes. Sure.” I pulled the door open. “Well, goodbye. It was nice meeting you.”

  “Don’t give him up for the grave just yet, my dear,” the woman called after me as I darted into the street. “Sometimes love can endure beyond the veil of death.”

  I dashed back to the car, my feet pounding against the pavement as Clara’s words reverberated against my skull. Love can endure beyond the veil of death. But how could she know … The answer was simple; she didn’t know. She couldn’t know about Eric. She was just some crazy old woman who loved to ramble. But she’d written those books. A flicker of hope darted across my mind. If I’d just made love to a ghost, an old woman who read minds was definitely within the realm of possibility. I tried to push Clara’s words away, but they kept nagging at my mind. I knew I had to read the chapter she’d bookmarked very carefully. If there was a way to bring Eric back ...

  Back at the house, Eric still wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Secretly, I was grateful, because it was already past eleven and I desperately needed to get some more work done, and I was also keen to make a start on the books I’d bought. I cursed myself for not thinking of researching ghosts beforehand—maybe the books could give us both some much-needed answers.

  I wanted to get stuck into the books immediately, but I was already behind on my work, and I wanted to send off an email to our forensic accountant about the “music lessons” in Alice’s accounts.

  I made myself a stack of mousetraps and worked steadily for the next couple of hours. Around midday the gardeners showed up to start work tearing out all the weeds and overgrown flowerbeds. They shuffled nervously on the porch and refused my invitation to come inside for some tea. At 2pm the doorbell rang and I let the woman from the hire company around to the back garden to measure for the marquee. She too glanced nervously up at the house and got her measurements done at breakneck speed. She sped so fast out of the drive I swear I saw smoke behind her.

  At five, I told the gardeners to pack up their tools and get lost. I didn’t like the idea of people hanging around the house while I was in the shower. They looked relieved when they left. This house really did seem to get to people. If only they knew.

  I went upstairs, took a long shower, shaved my legs and armpits, plucked my eyebrows, and did all the other essential date-prep required to turn a dowdy frump like me into a vaguely attractive creature. Usually, this was the point of a date where I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and started to question the whole thing. Surely this guy asked me out as a joke, I’d think to myself. It’s a bet, or he’s mad at his girlfriend and out for revenge. But not tonight. Tonight I shimmied into my new black dress, pinned up my hair, applied some dark eye makeup and a devilish red lipstick, and did a little turn in front of the mirror. I looked good. I felt good … if I didn’t think about Eric.

  As I was teetering back down the stairs in my black heels, Eric floated past on the landing. I stopped in my tracks, surprised to see him down from the attic. Our eyes met for a moment, and his face flickered with hurt. Then he turned his head away and silently floated into a wall.

  Good. I told myself. That’s how I liked my ghosts. Silent and sulking.

  That’s not what you were saying last night, Devil’s Advocate Elinor reminded me.

  I had some time to wait before Allan arrived, if he arrived on time, which I wasn’t expecting. He was a drummer, after all. I sat in a chair by the window and picked up The Practical Guide to Ghosts, and started reading.

  The book was all about different cultural perceptions of ghosts. What they were, how they came to be, and what kept them tethered to the world. It talked a lot about recent hauntings in Crookshollow and the rest of England, and how unlucky families had eventually banished particular spirits from their homes.

  As I turned toward chapter 13, “The Ghosts who Return”, a bookmark slipped out from between the pages. It was a business card from Clara’s shop. She had marked the section for me. I turned to that page and started scanning the text.

  In some rare instances, it is possible that a ghost is not a ghost at all, but a soul in a temporary state of flux. The body is suspended in a deathlike state, but the mind has been so traumatized by a violent death or so incensed at an injustice that it must return in a semi-lucid form in order to put right whatever has wronged them. We call these bodyless souls “shades”, for they are but a pale shade of the whole and living being.

  This is nonsense, I thought. There’s no such thing as souls. This is a bunch of New Age hippy-dippy mumbo jumbo. But I kept reading.

  A shade usually manifests as a ghostly form resembling the living person, wearing the clothes they wore upon death, although most people will not be able to see the shade at all. Usually only those who have an emotional connection to the shade’s human form will be able to see and communicate with the spirit. Shades are capable of normal speech with these representatives of the living world—whom we refer to as conduits—and a ghost hunter can use the conduit to send and receive messages.

  Shades usually cannot touch or manipulate
objects and may find themselves trapped within a certain dwelling or locale. Shades are exceptionally rare, and only a handful have been documented by modern ghost hunters.

  A shade is tied to his/her corporeal form, even though he/she may remain separate from it for some time. Occasionally, when a particularly strong emotional state—usually anger, or fear, or love—pulls the shade back into the living world, they may manifest in a solid form. Many of the old religions record spells for sending a shade back to his/her body, but these spells have never been successfully attempted in the modern age ...

  The doorbell rang, startling me out of the world of ghosts and shades and life-restoring spells. I glanced at my phone. 7pm on the dot. I replaced the bookmark and set the book on the table, torn between wanting to stay and find out more about shades and if I could somehow use the information to help Eric, and wanting to escape the house and have a great date with Allan.

  The sexy drummer won out. I was a party girl, after all.

  Allan knocked again. I checked my hair in the mirror above the fireplace, smoothed down my dress, and grabbed my bag from the table.

  “Good evening,” I smiled as I opened the door. Allan stood on the porch, wearing black jeans and a powdery blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up, revealing the tattoos covering his forearms. The blue set off his sparkling eyes, and his white-blonde hair was spiked in all directions. He looked gorgeous. I still couldn’t believe he was my date.

  “You look fantastic,” he said, his eyes rolling over my whole body. I felt my cheeks flush with heat as he took in the curve of my cleavage in the clingy black dress. I wasn’t used to men looking at me like that, with that hunger in their eyes. I liked it, I liked how I felt, powerful and sexy.

  I glanced back into the house. I jumped when I saw Eric standing at the top of the stairs, staring down at us with an unreadable expression on his face.

  “Is something the matter?” Allan asked, peering into the house behind me. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”

  If only you knew. “It’s nothing,” I said quickly. Eric shook his head, then shrunk back into the darkness. I allowed Allan to place his hand on the small of my back and lead me down the steps. “Nothing is the matter at all.”

  Crookshollow was so small that Allan hadn’t even bothered to drive over to pick me up. Instead, we walked toward the high street, veering off into a quaint cobbled lane lined with pubs and restaurants. Allan took me to a kitschy Greek restaurant, where a live band serenaded us with horrific folk music and the waiters kept filling up our glasses with raki, an aniseed-flavoured spirit that tasted like paint-stripper but definitely got rid of any dating nerves.

  Our conversation flowed easily. Allan regaled me with tales of life on the road, and I told him about being a lawyer and some of the crazier cases the firm had worked on. As our raki was topped up for the third time, I even told Allan about my drawings, and my plans for getting a large tattoo. He explained the history of some of his own ink, and how he’d fainted the first time he went under the needle.

  After a delicious dessert of baklava dripping with honey, Allan asked me if I’d like to go with him for a drink at a nearby pub. I was tempted, but I still felt weird about being out with Allan, as if I was somehow betraying Eric. His face flashed through my mind, stone cold as he watched me leave with Allan. The dinner was one thing, but I knew where drinks at a pub usually ended up, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for that yet, not after last night.

  “Not tonight,” I said. “I’ve had way too much raki already.” Allan looked disappointed, but took it like a gentleman. He insisted on walking me home.

  Outside the restaurant, the wind had whipped up a bit. Allan held my hand as we walked back toward Marshell House. His fingers felt warm and exciting, but they didn’t make fire shoot up my arm, like Eric’s did. While we walked, Allan pointed out different buildings and landmarks he remembered from his visits with Eric. “Even though he was desperate to escape this place, he still had a great love for it.” Allan said. “So much of who Eric is is wrapped up in Crookshollow—all the legends and history of this place.”

  We turned on to the corner of Blossom Road. “Hey,” I exclaimed as we walked past the row of shops on the corner. “The tattoo shop is still open.”

  “Oh, yeah!” Allan stopped at the window. “I remember this place. This is where Eric got all his tattoos done. Bianca is one of the finest artists in the country.”

  Bianca? The tattoo artist was a woman. “Really?”

  “Yeah. See—that’s Eric right there.” Allan pointed to the poster on the window of the shirtless man with a beautiful dragon winding around his ribcage. I turned my gaze away, not wanting to remember Eric’s naked body.

  “That’s some impressive work—hey! What are you doing?” Allan pulled me toward the door.

  “We’re going inside.” He grinned wickedly as he pushed the door open with his boot.

  “No!” Panic seized my chest. I couldn’t go inside a place like that. I wasn’t ready. What if it was unclean? What if it was the front for a drug ring? I grabbed the nearest lamppost, my fingers gripping the wood so tight my knuckles turned white.

  “Relax, Elinor. You don’t have to come out with a rose on your arse. We’re just going to have a look. If you want to get that big tattoo of yours one day, you really ought to actually set foot inside a tattoo shop first. What do you say?”

  I stared at the black doors, open just a crack to reveal a light shining from inside. I could hear loud music blaring, and people laughing. Over that was a high buzzing sound, like a colony of hummingbirds had all come in to have Kanji symbols inked on their wings. Allan grinned, revealing his white teeth. Gulping back my fear, I released my grip on the lamppost and reached out and gripped his hand.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “That’s my girl.”

  Allan led me through the doors and down a short hall. The walls and ceiling were decorated with bright-coloured graffiti art; one wall depicting cutesy zoo animals engaged in all sorts of lewd and outlandish acts. The other showed the spectrum of Norse mythology, surrounded by swirling occult symbols and constellations. At the end of the hall we entered a small, brightly lit room. Black leather sofas lined one wall, where a girl with an entire scrapyard’s-worth of metal in her face sat flipping through a fashion magazine. Behind a low wall, a weedy youth lay across a black padded table, while a girl bent over his back, laughing as she ran a tattoo gun across his spine, adding flashes of shading to a beautiful pair of wings.

  “Omigod,” I whispered as I leaned over to stare at the wings. “Did she draw those?”

  “I did,” the girl said, without looking up.

  I leapt back in surprise. The youth on the table laughed, but his laugh quickly turned into a wince as the woman ran the needle along his spine again.

  I clamped my hand over my mouth. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I guess I didn’t realise you could hear me. I hope I haven’t caused you to make a mistake.”

  The woman looked up and grinned at me. I was surprised to see that I recognised her. She was the girl with the white pixie haircut I’d followed into Clara’s shop earlier today. Up close, I could see that she was beautiful, with tiny, almost doll-like features, giant pale blue eyes, and high, movie-star cheekbones. Her neck, chest, and arms were completely covered with intricate tattoos, and her ears and nose were stuffed with all manner of metal spikes and chains. She looked completely badass.

  “I’m Bianca Sinclair, and I don’t make mistakes.” She gave me a nod, and placed the buzzing needle back on to her client’s back.

  “I’m Elinor.”

  “Nice to meet you, Elinor. Are you looking to get something done?”

  “I er …” Allan elbowed me in the arm. “Maybe. I’m not sure yet.”

  “Well, best to be sure, first. Or drunk. Drunk people are usually pretty sure. I just finished up a residency at a shop in Prague, and a drunk guy came in absolutely adamant that he wanted a SpongeBob Squarepants tatto
oed on his forehead. He’s lucky I have a policy against inking cartoon characters.” The boy on the table snorted. Bianca continued to talk to me, even as she worked on adding shading to the bones that formed the spine of the wings. “Do you live near here? I think I’ve seen you walking around the shops before.”

  “Not exactly. I actually live in London. I’m a lawyer. I’m here on an assignment for my firm.”

  Bianca glanced up at me with those big eyes, tilting her head to the side as she looked me up and down. “Interesting. I don’t tattoo many lawyers. Plenty of defendants, but no lawyers.”

  “I’m just an estate lawyer, nothing as interesting as defending criminals in court. I mostly shuffle paperwork and help the relatives of dead people get their hands on free stuff.”

  “Don’t talk like that. No one is just anything. I bet you had to work incredibly hard to get where you are. My mother used to say when she introduced me to her friends, “This is Bianca. She is a professional artist.” And then people start talking to me about Picasso and I have to show them my sleeve and explain what I really do.” Bianca laughed as she gestured to her right arm, where Van Gogh’s Starry Night had been exquisitely rendered across her forearm.

  “Your parents are proud of you?” I clamped my hand over my mouth as Bianca laughed. “I’m sorry, that came out so bitchy. It just surprises me. My parents would probably have disowned me if I hadn’t followed them into the legal field. In fact, they probably will disown me if they ever found out I got a tattoo.”

  “Oh, I admit there was a time when they were bitterly disappointed I didn’t go to art school,” said Bianca. “But they know me well enough to know I don’t do things the conventional way. Now, my mum cuts all my work out of tattoo magazines. She has a scrapbook of press clippings and she brings it out whenever her friends are talking about their kids. It’s really sweet, actually.”