Shadows (14 page)

Rory put down his coffee mug.  “Look, no one has actually said this aloud yet, and I’ve no wish to scare anyone.  But this place is haunted.  You and I have been seeing ghosts, you more so than me, Melissa.  I feel responsible for your safety.  Do you really want to sleep with a baseball bat beside the bed because of some spooks?  We’d find another place easily enough.”

He was very serious, and it was good to know he cared for her safety.  Sitting here in the evening sunlight with two attractive young men beside her and the barbecue still throwing out heat, Melissa did not want to worry about seeing ghosts.  “Perhaps it won’t happen again.  After all, as I said once before, people wait weeks for a ghost to appear and it never does.”

In her experience, ghosts came and went without reason.

But then, perhaps she’d been too young to comprehend more than the basics.

Rory’s eyes, aquamarine in the evening light, regarded her steadily.  “Okay.  But if it goes on, then we’ll think about moving on.”  He glanced over at Christophe.  “From what you say, people have not lived here very much.  They came, but they didn’t stay.”  A grin started and spread across his face.  “Perhaps they didn’t have a baseball bat.”

Melissa giggled.  Perhaps it was the wine, or his silly joke, or simply because he was here.

But Christophe wasn’t amused.  “They were farmers.  They had—”  He hunted for a word, could not find it and mimed chopping wood and shoveling earth.  “They defend la maison, mais certainment.”

Somewhere during the evening, Rory warmed to the French Librarian.  They were perhaps half way down the second bottle of wine when Christophe made a comment on rugby, Rory laughed out loud and slapped the smaller man on the shoulder, and from then on, all was well between them.

Rory’s cheerfulness might have a lot to do with the quantity of wine he’d drunk.  He put a hand over his glass as Christophe wielded the bottle, and Melissa's memory stirred.  He'd done that earlier.  His glass was always half full, and he did not top it up very often.  So he must be three-parts sober.  Her gaze traveled to Christophe, who matched each glass of wine with a glass of water, which probably accounted for him asking for the toilet half way through the meal.

Rory waited until Christophe disappeared into the mill, then sat back in his chair and raised his glass to her.  “Happy?”

“Yes.  Christophe is good company, isn’t he?  It’s a pity that more friends can’t come and join us.  Oops, I forgot.”  She shook her head at her mistake.  “No bedrooms.  We should get Jonny to finish the rooms and then six people could come and enjoy it.”

She flashed him a cheerful smile and saluted him with her empty glass.

“Let me top that up for you.”

Melissa watched him pour the wine and grinned.  “Are you by any chance trying to make me drunk in the hope that I’ll fall into bed with you tonight?”

The hand that poured the wine hesitated.  He raised his brows, glanced at her in what looked like genuine surprise before assuming an aloof expression.  “It never crossed my mind.”

“Liar.”  Melissa sipped at her newly filled glass.  Confident of her statement, she only stopped laughing when, instead of returning her banter, he flicked her a cold glance that told her exactly how much he disliked being called a liar.

A small silence followed.  His gaze was direct and steady.  Not even his mouth twitched.  She’d said the wrong thing, and her stomach shriveled.

“I’ll do it by fair means or not at all.”  His voice was soft, but the sound came from deep within his chest.

“Sorry.”  The single word sounded altogether too flippant.  “I was teasing you.  I didn’t really think you…”  His expression did not lighten.  “You know, there are a lot of er…stray emotions flying around the mill.  And they’re not just ours, so please don’t get upset.”

“Whose would they be, then?”

Melissa waved her fingers in the air.  She hadn’t intended to say so much, but the combination of happiness and wine had loosened her tongue.  “Our, er, ghostly visitors, I suppose.  I get the feeling that they want to be together, that they love each other very much.”

“Ah.  So seeing them is not enough.  Now we have to suffer their emotions?”

“They don’t scare you, do they?”

“It’s more curiosity.”  He shifted in his chair and looked away across the bolly as he spoke.

“A scientific interest, perhaps?  No shivers of fear, no cold hand clutching your heart?”

“No, though I expected to feel all those things.”

“I don’t get any bad feelings from them, which is reassuring.”  Melissa stared off across the dark meadow, thinking aloud.  “It’s been a long—”

She stopped abruptly.  She’d been going to say that after the initial shock, seeing ghosts was interesting.  She'd learned to check them out, try and sense what it was they wanted, listened if they spoke to her.

“Melissa—”

Christophe clattered down the steps and flung himself into his chair.  Rory raised his glass to his lips.  Whatever he’d been about to say, he wasn’t going to say it in front of the Frenchman.

Melissa smiled at both men, and said nothing.  There was no real reason why she should tell Rory about her psychic abilities.  Why risk the sort of unkind comments she’d grown used to in her childhood?  Delusional was probably the kindest word.  She sipped her wine.  Would Rory be cool and clinical, suggest she see a doctor?  Or be horrified, as some people were?  Or worst of all, laugh and call her a crank?  Her stomach cringed at the thought.

Christophe checked his watch.  “It is time for me to leave.”  He got to his feet and bowed to Melissa.  “Thank you.  The evening ’as been a delight.”

Melissa smiled politely.  “You don’t have to drive home.”  She spoke without thinking.  “You could stay here.  Those twisty little roads through the forest must be dangerous at night.”

Rory stiffened.  Christophe stared at her, a smile breaking out on his dark-skinned face.

“There’s lots of space downstairs, Rory.”  She spoke in answer to his raised brows.  He wasn't keen on the idea of a guest.  Maybe he didn't want to open the downstairs room for Christophe.  “It won’t be the Ritz, but surely Christophe can camp out there for one night?  I'm sure Jonny wouldn't mind.”

Christophe, his expression that of a child expecting an ice-cream, looked at Rory.

Rory shook his head.  “I think Christophe should see what’s on offer before he decides.”  Rory picked up the keys.  Melissa jumped up to follow them both across the patio.

He pushed the wild rose’s thorny tendrils to one side and opened the varnished wooden outer doors.  Once he achieved that, he gestured Christophe through the inner paned glass doors.

All three walked into cold air.  A few paces inside, Melissa shivered in her thin cotton outfit.  “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”  She retreated, palms rubbing her arms.

Rory switched on the light.  “It is a mess, I’m afraid.”  He kept walking toward the far end of the room.

“Oh, but this is good.”  Christophe smiled as he glanced eagerly around.  “There is even a bed.”

“There’s more than a bed.”  Rory’s voice, oddly muted, drifted back to them as he disappeared into the darkness.  Another light switch clicked.  Light bloomed ten or twelve yards away.  “There’s a brand new bathroom here.”

Christophe hurried over, poked his head around the door and grinned back at Melissa.  “It is better than I ’ave at ’ome.”

“I sincerely hope not.”  Melissa pictured the two-footprints-in-a-porcelain-basin version of a loo so beloved of ancient French cafés.  Surely he didn't have one of those monstrosities at home?

“But it is.  C’est tres nouvelle.”

She took a deep breath and ran across the big, square tiles.  Peering around the door jamb, she gasped in surprise.  Shiny square tiles, a hand basin and a very modern shower and loo shone stark white before her.  “Well, good for Jonny.”

Retreating back through the long room, Melissa gazed at the array of mismatched sofas, chairs, unmade up beds, unplugged lamps and the bookcases bearing a few paperbacks tossed untidily across the shelves.  An empty chest freezer yawned out of the far corner.  Jonny’s parents had obviously had a clear out.

“It is tres belle.  I am ’appy to sleep ’ere.”

Christophe seemed keen.  Either he did not fancy the drive home in the dark, or he really wanted to stay at the mill because he might encounter a ghost.  Melissa ran her hands up and down her arms to warm them.  “It’s so very cold in here.  Amazing, really, when it’s still so warm outside.”

Rory’s voice sounded behind her.  “We’re below ground level, that’s why.”  He gestured toward the wall that ran the length of the room.  “Think about it.  What’s on the other side?  I don’t think it will worry Christophe if we give him a good thick blanket.”  Rory switched off the bathroom light and came back into the main room.  He noticed her frown of puzzlement.  “The ground slopes down from the bolly, doesn’t it?  We come down several steps to reach this level.”

“Ah, yes.”  Melissa beamed as she understood his explanation.  At least he hadn’t made a comment about temperatures dropping when ghosts appeared.  Not that it would have alarmed Christophe, who seemed oblivious to anything they said.  Already he’d wandered over to the old mill wheels.  Melissa clasped her arms and looked around.  She wouldn’t like to sleep down here.  Not on her own.  Perhaps she ought not to have suggested it.  The room seemed tailor-made for ghosts.

She looked longingly out on to the patio, where the fat little yellow candle glowed comfortingly against the indigo sky.

Rory's hand touched her shoulder, and she jumped, and then shook her head at her own nervousness.  The lower level of the mill gave her goose bumps.

He smiled reassuringly, as if to say she was not to worry.  Hands in his pockets, he sauntered across the mill room to join Christophe.  “It must have been quite an operation when it was working.”

Melissa glanced over her shoulder.  The shadows deepened into darkness at the far end of the long mill room.  Instinctively she moved closer to Rory and Christophe, by the two stone millwheels.  About four feet in diameter, each was made up of four or five pieces of white stone held together by a two inch band of iron.  Each wheel was actually one ring of stones set above another.  In her mind’s eye she imagined them rotating in different directions, grinding corn between them.

“The flour would go all over the floor.”  She chafed at the goose bumps rising on her bare arms.

Both men stared at her.  Rory followed her train of thought and looked down at the wheels.  “They’d build a box around them to catch it, wouldn’t they?  Then there’d be a little chute, and the flour would go down into the sacks, and the sacks would go…”

He gestured vaguely toward the far wall of the mill room.  There was another, smaller room beyond the bathroom, and a garage full of yet more jumble.  “Out there, somewhere.”  He paused for a moment.  “Of course, the carts would come down the slope—where Christophe’s car is parked right now—and they’d load up from that side of the mill, beyond the bathroom.  Easy, really, when you think about it.”

Christophe found the thick Perspex sheet let into the floor between the mill stones, and peered down into the blackness below.  “The stream, it still runs?”

Rory nodded.  “It’s blocked off, but the water still finds its way through.  Jonny is toying with the idea of opening it all up again.”

“What?”  Melissa shook her head.  “I’d never sleep down here if he did.  There’d be snakes and spiders and all sorts of things creeping about.  It would be horrid.”

“Not if the mill wheels were working.”  Rory peered over Christophe’s shoulder into the blackness below.  “The noise and vibration would scare every snake within fifty miles.”

Melissa imagined the heavy wheels rumbling around and had to concede that he may be right.  “You’ll be telling me he wants to grind his own flour next.”  She shuddered and hugged herself.  “Look, I’m going back outside before I freeze to death.”  She walked to the door and halted on the threshold.  “I’ll sort out some blankets, Christophe, if you’re sure you want to stay?”

Christophe grinned over his shoulder and nodded enthusiastically.  “But of course.  Merci.”

Melissa walked out onto the fragrant warmth of the lower terrace.  The night was clear, and the trees, black shadows against the silvery fields, seemed so much closer to the mill than they did in the daytime.  Mist hovered along the edges of the stream and pushed through gaps in the bushes and reeds that lined the banks.  A constant rustle of sound came whispering down from the topmost branches of the huge poplar tree as the breeze drifted above the valley.  Warm again, she turned and headed for the steps.  There was time to clear the table and find the blankets while the men pottered about in the mill room.