The Haunting of Ashburn House (19 page)

Adrienne pressed her thumbs into the corners of her eyes.
Think, Addy. Logic it out. What do you need to do? What do you need to survive tonight?

The answer came quickly: light. With a woodless fire and no electricity, Adrienne would be blind when the sun set unless she found an alternative. The little plastic torch in her pocket would be ideal, but its battery had been drained the night before. That meant finding new batteries had to be her first priority.

She hopped into the kitchen and began rifling through drawers. They held a wide assortment of implements but no batteries. Adrienne chewed at the inside of her lip as she moved through the other downstairs rooms.

It was hard to imagine Edith living in Ashburn without any batteries. Adrienne had a horrible suspicion that they might be in the upstairs office, hidden inside the desk’s drawer or in the cabinet, but she was loath to pass the portraits again; the images had made her regret ever being curious about the Ashburn deaths.

The search inevitably brought her to the lounge room she’d inhabited over the previous few days. She took a deep breath before opening the door, steeling herself against the stench of burning rubber, and was surprised when the room didn’t smell.

A black stain spread out from the fireplace, growing fainter the farther it moved into the room. Adrienne approached it, wiped her finger through the grime, and grimaced when she smelt it. Whatever Edith had done to lower the smoke outside had been replicated inside the house. The soot had dropped onto the ground to coat it in a layer of carbon.

Adrienne pulled the grate away from the fire and checked inside. As she’d suspected, not even embers remained. The condensed smoke had choked out the fire and left mostly intact logs and twisted rubber. Adrienne touched the wood, but it was cold, and she didn’t have any kindling to revive the blaze.

She left the fire and searched the rest of the room. Despite digging through every drawer and even searching between the bookcase’s ornaments, she had to admit there weren’t any batteries on the ground floor.

Adrienne wiped her hands on her jeans as she gazed about the room and scrunched her nose.
Looks like we’re going upstairs after all. But first…

Wolfgang was still in the sitting room, so Adrienne went to fetch him and return him to the lounge area, where he had food and water. As she opened the sitting room door, motion flashed through her peripheral vision. She turned towards the mirror she’d hung on the room’s back wall. Her own reflection, pale and with a smudge of soot over her cheek, stared back. And in the shadowed hallway just beyond her, tall and straight and impeccably dressed, walked Edith.

The phantom disappeared from sight before Adrienne could even move to look behind her. She pressed her lips together and balled her hands into fists to keep them from shaking.

Wolfgang appeared from behind the chaise lounge and shot past her legs. Adrienne hissed his name and tried to grab the grey streak, but her fingers only brushed his tail as he disappeared into the hallway’s gloom.

“Poor buddy.” She didn’t like the idea of Wolfgang roaming the house but knew nothing would make him return to her before he was ready. She left the lounge room’s door propped open so that he could get to his food and water if he wanted then went to the kitchen in search of fabric.

“No mirrors,” she said as she returned to the hallway and draped a tablecloth over its mirror. “Looks like you and I agree on one thing, Edith.”

A second cloth went over the sitting room’s mirror, and the tea towel she’d used as a face mask covered the smaller mirror in the lounge room.

The only other mirror she had any cause to pass was the large gilt-frame affair in the upstairs hallway.
Well, I was going there anyway. Multiple birds, meet my stone.
Adrienne fetched a new knife from the kitchen drawer, checked that she still had the torch in her pocket, threw a tablecloth over her shoulder, and turned towards the dim stairwell.

The sun was already slipping behind the treetops. It wouldn’t take more than ten minutes for night to fall, and she didn’t want to be on the second floor without the sun.

The lantern waited on the little table, but she moved past it. The weight would make her climb more difficult, and she planned to finish the search quickly. The only upstairs room that had any hope of holding batteries was the study, and its sparse furniture wouldn’t take more than a handful of minutes to rifle through.

Adrienne took the stairs as quickly as her leg would allow but stopped on the landing. The second floor, windowless and with only a refraction of natural light coming through two open doors, had always been dark, but with the sun close to setting, walking up there felt like stepping into a tomb. She was grateful she hadn’t brought the lamp. It was easier to pass the portraits without light.

She walked along the centre line of the scuffed runner to give herself as much space from the paintings as she could. Her eyes stayed focussed on the end of the hallway, but her peripheral vision caught little glimpses of blood and bone. An aching lump grew in her throat, but she couldn’t swallow it. She knew the paintings only contained corpses, but she still couldn’t shake the feeling of eyes following her.

The hallway mirror hung at the midway point, reflecting dated wallpaper and broken teeth. Something moved in its depths—wrinkled skin flexing, bulging eyes watching without blinking—but Adrienne threw her cloth over it before the figure could become clear.

She adjusted the fabric to ensure every part of the decadent frame was covered then slipped through the closest door to her left, which opened into the study. The room felt a fraction warmer than the hallway, and its papered walls were a welcome relief from the paintings. The claw-like anxiety in her chest relaxed a fraction.

The last beams of sunlight came between the curtains and lit the wall behind Adrienne. She scanned the furniture quickly. On either side were two bookcases, both holding nothing but books, and a wooden chair and a dark-wood desk rested below the window. The desk had a drawer in its front, which Adrienne hurried to open.

The space was crammed full with knick-knacks. She shifted through a large magnifying glass, boxes of paperclips, envelopes, outdated stamps, spare pens, measuring tape, hole punches, and scissors before finding two packs of batteries held together with a rubber band.

Adrienne exhaled a silent cheer. She pulled the torch out of her pocket, tipped its old battery out, fitted a new one, and tested it. The beam was weak but infinitely better than the alternative. Adrienne took another three spare batteries and tucked them into her back pocket.

When she lifted her gaze back to the window, the sun was no longer visible. The red dusk strained to keep the sky lit, but faint stars were already beginning to appear above the house.

Adrienne pulled the chair out and dropped into it then propped the torch on the table so that its beam would keep the room lit. She knew she would need to go downstairs eventually, but the room felt so safe, and her view of the sunset was so beautiful, that she couldn’t resist the temptation to hold onto the moment for as long as it lasted.

How am I going to get out of here?

It was the question that had been living in the back of her mind since she’d escaped Edith. She’d been picking at it, poking and scratching and turning it over, but was no closer to an answer.
If I just knew what she wanted from me, I might be able to find a way to assuage her or use her plan against her. Does she just want me dead, or is there more to it than that?

Edith had always been an enigma to Adrienne. Even in death, she presented disparate impressions: the contorted, dirtied, naked creature that stalked outside, and the upright, proper, elegantly dressed version in the mirrors. It was almost as though she’d been split on death, and her mind lingered as a memory while her body clung to the earth.

Adrienne knew that couldn’t have happened, though. The Edith outside was too clever and calculating to have lost her senses. She’d been shocked by the use of her name and had even told Adrienne to weep for her.

Does she expect me to mourn her after everything she’s done? I don’t know if I’d be physically capable of it. And even if I did, is there any chance it might help me? This isn’t a spirit that needs to feel loved before it can move on. This is a monster that’s bent on hurting me.

The day was gone, and night creatures were coming alive in the forest. A very faint clicking reached her through the night air as Edith started to patrol around the house’s perimeter.

Adrienne squeezed her eyes closed against the noise. She’d managed to relax while watching the sunset, but the erratic, rough clacking returned the familiar ache of stress to her chest.

Then a new sound rose to drown out the tapping: a deep, drawn-out rumble emanating from the forest to her right. Adrienne’s eyes shot open as she recognised the cadence.
A car engine.

Adrienne bolted out of her chair and pressed close to the window. The study was high enough that it could look over the treetops, and she could see the waving glow of headlights moving through the woods.

Her heart kicked into overdrive as her mind scrambled to take in the development.
I need to find Wolf. Has he come out of hiding yet? There’s no time to get my luggage, but that doesn’t matter. Who is it? I somehow need to warn them not to get out of the car. Will Edith try to chase them off?

But even as her muscles tensed for running, she realised something was wrong.

The car had been moving along the driveway towards the house but then made an abrupt turn into the trees. Adrienne pressed against the window, bent double over the desk, as she tried to understand what it was doing. Had it gone off the driveway? As far as she knew, there weren’t any other roads through the area.

Except…

Peggy had asked if her brother could use a shortcut that ran through Ashburn’s land. She’d said the road came off Ashburn’s driveway and saved him fifteen minutes if he wanted to go to the next town.

“Hey!” Adrienne beat her fist against the glass. The pane rattled, but she already knew she was too far away for him to hear. “Don’t go!”

The car was moving slowly as it picked its way across the land. The path would be overgrown; Edith’s driveway had been difficult for the taxi, and the shortcut would be even worse. That meant she had a few minutes until the car moved beyond her vision.

It’s less than a hundred metres away. I could almost run to it.

She tried putting some additional weight on her leg and had to grit her teeth against the pain.

No, there’s no chance. Even if I somehow got a head start on Edith, I doubt I could reach the road in time. He would have to come here. I’ve got to find some way to attract his attention.

She grabbed the torch off the table. It was the only light in the powerless building.
If I flashed SOS in Morse code, will he see?

The headlights had already passed the midway point of her view. The driver would have to look over his shoulder to see Ashburn, and if the road was dangerous enough that he had to crawl along it, she doubted he would be moving his eyes from the path.

Damn, damn, damn.

Adrienne pressed the torch against the windowpane and tried to shine its light in the car’s path. The beam was too weak; it didn’t even reach past the forest’s edge, and the shortcut was more than fifty metres beyond that.

An idea struck her. Adrienne pulled the desk’s drawer open so violently that the contents almost spilt out. She scrabbled through it, her heart thundering, to find the magnifying glass she’d seen while looking for batteries.

The car’s headlights were growing increasingly distant as the road turned away from Ashburn. The full moon was bright enough to illuminate a gap in the trees.
If I can get my light through there, it should hit that large oak on the edge of the road. That would be unmissable.

Adrienne shoved the window open and reached the magnifying glass outside. She then pointed the torch at the magnifier so that its beam passed through the glass.

The change in brightness was startling. Normally the torch’s beam grew outwards, its light becoming weaker as it was stretched over an increasingly large circle. But by passing the stream through the magnifying glass, it was reflected back in on itself, narrowing instead of widening and strengthening instead of diffusing.

Adrienne let a grin form as the beam became a spotlight. It was a delicate balance. If she held the torch too close to the glass, the stream crossed over itself again and became weaker. She kept adjusting, shifting them closer and farther apart and fixing her angles, until she hit her target: the large oak in the car’s path.

The car engine’s rumble broke off in a screech of brakes. Adrienne held as still as she could manage, the beam jittering in her shaking hands, as she watched the car. It had stopped only a dozen metres from her spotlight.

He’s seen it. Give him a minute—let him figure it out—

Tyres wailed as the car shot forward. From what Adrienne could tell, he’d floored the accelerator. The vehicle passed her spotlight in a cloud of dust. It kept up the insane pace as it crashed along the path, drawing away from Ashburn as quickly as the engine would allow.

Adrienne’s smile disappeared. She dropped the magnifying glass and flashlight back onto the desk as she watched the car careen along the road, growing quieter and smaller until it finally disappeared from view. Then, confused and heartbroken, she slumped back into the chair.

You’re driving along an abandoned, overgrown road. Somewhere behind you is Ashburn House, a property rumoured to be haunted. You’ve grown up listening to ghost stories. All of a sudden, a light appears ahead of you. What would your first thought be?

Ghost, of course.

She dropped her head into her hands. The outside world was silent for a moment, then, far below, the clicking resumed. Adrienne swallowed a furious, frustrated scream then took a deep breath and released it slowly.

Will he realise the truth? Probably not. He would have only seen the light for a second before driving away. I’m guessing he’ll either continue to believe it was a ghost or convince himself he imagined it. Will he come back later tonight? I’m thinking it’s a no for that as well. The shortcut only saves fifteen minutes. He’ll use the safer main roads on his return trip.

She slid the magnifying glass back into the drawer then pulled the windowpane back into place and drew the bolt to lock it.

Nice work, Addy. Not only did you chase him off, but you made sure he wouldn’t be coming back. Edith should put you on salary.

She snorted in laughter at the idea. She was zero for two as far as escape attempts went. The night outside was darkening, fighting against even its own moon’s glow, and hunger itched at Adrienne’s stomach. She’d eaten her final cup of instant noodles the night before, and the pantry didn’t have many alternatives. Most of her remaining edible food came from Marion’s gift basket: two eggs, a jar of jam, and a tin of beans. Everything else she owned—flour, rice, and a bag of dried lentils—needed cooking to be edible.

It was a sad prospect. She could eat the tin of beans and some of the jam for energy that evening. If she hadn’t escaped by the following morning, she’d just have to eat the raw eggs and take her chances with salmonella.

Adrienne couldn’t bring herself to leave the study. She sat in the chair, hands clasped on the table, as she stared at the expanse of forest filling the window.
I was so close. He saw the flashlight! If he hadn’t jumped to conclusions, I could be out of here by now. But instead, I have to go downstairs, eat the world’s saddest dinner, and then… what? Sit in the lounge room with just the torch for company while Edith paces around the house?

She sighed and rubbed at her eyes then pushed away from the table.
Enough of the pity party, Addy. You’re alive. You still have Wolf. You can escape… if you just figure out how.

The hallway felt deeply hostile, and Adrienne, her nerves on edge, flicked the torch’s light across its length. The portraits were still doused in gore. Half of the doors were open, their dark insides veiled from her light. The door to Edith’s bedchamber waited opposite, its ornate bronze handle glittering in the dark.
I never want to step foot in that room again. It felt sour even when I was trying to like Edith. The black clothes, the dark curtains, the words scratched above her bed—

REMEMBER YOUR SECRETS

Adrienne, halfway to the stairs, froze, and her eyes widened.
Edith wrote the messages to remind herself of things. “No mirrors” anywhere a mirror could have been placed, “Is it Friday light the candle” on the dinner table where she would see it every evening, and “Light the candle your family is still dead’ on the door leading to the attic. All of these memorandums were placed strategically. “Remember your secrets” is on her headboard. What if it was put there for a reason?

She swivelled on the spot to face the bedroom door. Frightened prickles scurried across her skin and made the hairs on her arms rise. She didn’t want to return to Edith’s room, but understanding the spirit and her motives could be the difference between a safe escape and death.

Adrienne felt in her jacket pocket to ensure the kitchen knife was still there then tightened her sweating hand on the doorknob, turned it, and stepped inside.

The curtains were drawn, but they still let a sliver of moonlight through. It cut across the room in a harsh line, running over the rug and the bed and up the wall. Either side of it, the area was a mess of swimming shadows and obscure shapes. Adrienne raised the torch and panned the light across the room. The light gleamed over the polished wooden wardrobe, the bedposts, and the desk. She was alone as far as she could tell.

Adrienne lifted her chin, inhaled, and closed the door behind her. The room, protected from the sun, felt unpleasantly cold. She could hear her breaths, the subtle crunch of carpet being crushed under her feet, and faint creaks from higher in the building as the wood shifted.

She had to pass the wardrobe to reach the bedside, and she glanced through the open door. The black silk and crepe glistened in the torchlight. Adrienne wondered if she would find the mirror phantom’s dress if she searched through the apparel, but she let it alone. She didn’t want to touch anything so intimately associated with the dead woman.

The bed remained as she remembered it. Dark curtains hung from the posts, framing the indent where Edith had slept every night. Scored into the headboard, just above the pillow, were the words REMEMBER YOUR SECRETS.

She would have seen it every night before going to bed.
Adrienne stretched out a hand to brush the scarred wood.
And it would hang above her while she slept. Remembering this was important to her. But what secrets did she mean?

As much as she hated disturbing Edith’s space, Adrienne couldn’t leave while there was the chance that something in the room could help. She opened the bedside table’s drawers and scanned their contents. A historical-fiction book, a pair of reading glasses, and a bible sat in the top drawer. Adrienne squinted at the leather-bound book.
Why would she own a bible after everything she’d done? Scripture and occult resurrections aren’t terribly compatible.

She looked into the second drawer, but it was full of undergarments, so she moved past it quickly. The lowest drawer was empty. Adrienne bit back a sigh as she closed it.

Am I grasping at straws? Maybe Edith didn’t leave any additional clues. Maybe the nightly reminder was enough to help her to remember.

On impulse, Adrienne moved closer to the bed, hovered her head above the pillow, and looked towards the ceiling. It was the same position Edith would have taken each night. And there, on top of the canopy, nestled amongst the dusty fabric, was a small wooden box.

Adrienne gasped and reached for the container. It was beautifully carved, made of dark wood, and had a little gold clasp on its front. For a second, she was afraid it would be locked, but it wasn’t; the lid lifted easily, and the insides were full of Edith’s secrets.