The Haunting of Ashburn House (3 page)

Adrienne kept still, not breathing, and listened as hard as she could. The fire’s crackles were a steady song to her left. The floors above her emitted faint groans as the wind caused the wood to shift. And outside was perfectly silent.

That gave her pause. The birds had created a cacophony barely half an hour before. And even if they’d all fallen asleep, she would have expected some of the insects to maintain their song.

Wolfgang transformed into a streak of grey as he turned and flew into the nook between the bookcase and the piano. Chills climbed Adrienne’s arms as she watched her cat disappear. It wasn’t like Wolfgang to take flight from a threat.

It’s a new house. He’s going to be skittish for a few days.
She rose and took a step towards the window. Outside was nearly pitch black, and all she could see was her own pale face and the fire’s glow reflected to her in the glass.

A pipe farther in the building rattled then fell still. The beams and supports above her head groaned more insistently as the wind buffeted them.

He probably saw a shadow and panicked.
She moved nearer to the window, leaning so close to the smudged glass that she could feel its chill washing onto her cheek.

Outside was deathly quiet. She could make out the moon’s glow, blurred and muted by the thin clouds that hung across it, and the trees’ silhouettes against the sky. Scores of faintly glowing pinpricks were visible between the clouds, suggesting the heavens would be awash with stars on a clear night.

Her heart’s thundering beats fought to be heard over the fire. She tried to block both noises out as she listened for a birdcall, a cricket, an owl—any proof that the world outside hadn’t been muted. Even the trees seemed to be lying still despite the house’s groaning against the wind.

She skipped her eyes across the yard, trying to pick out shapes in the near darkness. The window’s light illuminated a rectangle of the long, weedy grass that stretched ahead of her but nothing else. She couldn’t detect any motion, but she was also acutely aware that a person standing just outside of the block of illumination would be invisible. It was a sickening thought.

Cut it out. You’re frightening yourself over nothing. Wolf got jittery, and now outside is quiet—that’s all. The window is probably really well soundproofed or something—

All at once, as though an invisible cue had been given, the woods burst into life. Birds screamed and took flight, hundreds pouring out of the boughs and shooting skyward in a frenzy of whirring wings. Shrill insects began to buzz. Deep in the woods, some animal—a fox, she thought—shrieked. And behind her, Wolfgang began to yowl, the noise starting as a low rumble and growing in volume, pitch, and terror to become one of the worst sounds she’d ever heard.

Adrienne clamped her hands over her ears and dropped to her knees. Something terrible was happening, and although she couldn’t see the cause, she could feel it growing closer, threatening to swallow and obliterate her very existence. An earthquake, or tsunami, or Armageddon—

The sound began to fade. Wolfgang ran out of breath, and his wail was reduced to a rumbling hiss. The screeches died out as the birds flew out of hearing range, and the insect trills began to fade. Adrienne slowly lowered her hands and opened her eyes. She was shaking, but nothing tangible had reached her. The house stood firm; no fires, giant waves, or asteroids swept through the yard. If judgement day had come, Ashburn House had withstood it remarkably well.

Wolfgang continued to grumble from his hiding hole, but the sound was less insistent than before, as if he were making a point rather than responding to any immediate distress. Adrienne stayed kneeling on the floor for several long moments, waiting, but the phenomenon didn’t repeat itself. At last she stood, moving slowly, as though a wrong move could cause everything to unravel, and looked through the window.

The outside world was still once again but no longer perfectly quiet. She could hear the trees groaning as they moved in the wind, and a few metres from the window, a cricket chirruped.

“Okay.” Adrienne rubbed her sweaty palms on her jeans and tried to breathe through the fear-induced band squeezing her chest. “Okay, that was crazy.”

Wolfgang slunk out of his cubbyhole. He glowered as though Adrienne had been the cause of whatever had upset him and he wanted her to understand how badly she’d misbehaved, but he returned to the fire with the stubbornness of a cat who was too familiar with warmth and comfort to endure an existence without either. Adrienne waited until he took his seat—facing away from her as punishment—then returned to her own fireside chair. She sat, feeling a little shell shocked, and picked up her cup of tea with shaking hands. The liquid was lukewarm, but she still drank it. She needed the caffeine.

What on earth was that? I’d think earthquake, but nothing shook. What could distress both the birds outside and Wolfgang in here without me sensing it? Has some country declared war on us and detonated an EMP bomb? Is that even the sort of thing an EMP bomb can do?

The idea made her cold, and she suddenly wanted a clearer view outside the house. If, mercy forbid, something had happened to the little town, she wouldn't know, because the trees that surrounded her property blocked it from sight. But if she could get to one of the higher windows and see over the forest…

“Stay here, buddy,” she said to the cat, who was very pointedly ignoring her. She grabbed her jacket out of the travel case, wrapped it around herself, and slipped out of the lounge room.

She’d left the hallway light on, but the bulb was so dirty that she felt as though she were suspended in twilight as she followed the hall towards the stairs at the back of the house. A little round table sat by the foot of the stairs. On it stood an old-fashioned oil lamp, a box of matches, and a metal jar, all neatly arranged on a doily.
It’s a bit strange to have a lamp left out like that. Maybe Ashburn is prone to power failures.

Adrienne passed the table and began climbing the stairs. The wood was old and groaned under her weight, and the noise seemed to travel up the narrow stairwell and flood the upper levels.

The darkness seeped out of the second floor and swallowed her as she left the hallway light’s circle of influence. She turned the corner where the stairs hit the back wall and found her light reduced to almost nothing. She squinted to make out the edge of the steps, praying there weren’t any missing floorboards or exposed nails and brushing her fingertips along the walls to help orient herself.

The stairs finally opened onto a landing, and Adrienne inhaled a little breath of relief. She was shaking again, partly from the unsteady climb and partly from lingering shock of the outside disturbance, and it took her a moment to realise there wasn’t a light switch at the top of the stairs.

She stretched her hand out, running it up and down the floral wallpaper in long sweeps, but couldn’t feel any kind of switch. An idea occurred to her, and she snorted.

No way. That’d be ridiculous. The switch must be at the other end of the hall or something.

She squinted down the passageway, struggling to discern the silhouettes that would be invisible save for faint moonlight coming through one of the room’s windows. She thought she saw side tables, and large paintings on the walls, but she wasn’t certain.

Still, the lamp at the base of the stairs niggled at her. It was so deliberately placed that she could easily imagine it being there to light the upper floors.

But rooms downstairs have electricity. Why would they install lights on the lower level but not the upper ones?

She looked back at the empty wallpaper then stepped towards the nearest door. It opened with a prolonged creak, and Adrienne passed her hand through the gap and felt the wall, running her fingers over the dry paper without encountering any plastic bumps.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.” She gave the wall by the top of the stairs one final, incredulous look then began tramping back down the stairs.

The house was incredibly old.
Old enough to have been built before electricity was common.
Perhaps the structure was too unsound to run wires through the higher walls. Or maybe Edith could only afford to do part of the house.

Adrienne reached the hallway and faced the table. The lamp waited there, its glass slightly cloudy from smoke and built-up grease and with a nearly full box of matches beside it. She spent several minutes trying to figure out how to take the glass off to reach the wick, only to find the oil well empty. She picked up the metal container, felt liquid slosh around inside, and unscrewed the lid.

She had to guess how much to pour into the lamp. The last thing she wanted was for the delicate instrument to explode in her hand, but losing her source of light in a dark passageway would be far from ideal, too. She lit the wick, waited for the flame to grow steady, then replaced the glass.

The lamp’s glow didn’t extend far, but it made the stairwell much easier to navigate. When she reached the landing, she was able to make out the hallway’s furniture.

Paintings, all contained within ornate gilt frames, coated both walls. Adrienne peered at them as she passed. They were all portraits. It took her a few paintings to realise the portraits were all of the same family: a man, two women, and a girl. Occasionally, they were painted as a group—or the man and the older woman sitting together—but most of the images were individual portraits.

The man had heavy-lidded, stern eyes and a thick brown moustache. The older woman—his wife, Adrienne thought—had darker hair and was often smiling. The second woman was a little younger with delicate features and lighter hair. The girl’s hair was thick and long, like the first woman’s, and she repeatedly appeared with the same serious, studious expression.

The tableau felt inherently wrong to Adrienne. There were more than fifty paintings, all of the same family, all crowding the same hallway, their eyes following her no matter how swiftly she walked. It quickened her pulse and set her teeth on edge. Adrienne pressed her lips together, picked a door at random, and barrelled through it.

The curtains were drawn, blocking out the moon’s light, and she had to raise her lamp to see the area clearly. A large four-poster bed was pressed against one wall, its wine-red drapes faded and tattered around the edges. Opposite stood a wardrobe, one door half-open, next to a bureau.

She’d taken three steps into the room before she noticed that the rug had been scuffed and one side of the mattress was indented from decades of use. Her insides turned cold.

This was Edith’s room.

Adrienne’s mouth dried. She started to back out of the space but stopped herself at the door.
No, don’t be squeamish. You’re not intruding. She left this house to you, and that includes her own room.

It felt odd, though, to walk across the rug that had been worked down to threads by a single pair of feet and see the black dresses peeking out of the open wardrobe door. She sensed that she was a stranger to the window that must have seen the same face every morning for decades. Adrienne pulled the curtains back from the glass and inhaled.

She’d wanted to see over the treetops, and Edith’s window gave her a spectacular view. Laid out before her was a carpet of trees, and the moonlight reflected off the canopy that gradually grew denser until the trees merged with a spread of lights.

For half a second, she thought the trees were burning and Armageddon might have come after all, and but then she blinked and realised the glow came from hundreds of lit windows.

Ipson. I didn’t expect it to be so close. Or so much lower than Ashburn. This must be a tall hill.

She squinted at the lights. The houses were too far away to appear as distinct shapes, but she couldn’t see any smoke or signs of frantic motion. That was comforting; whatever had disturbed the birds wasn’t an issue for the town.

She exhaled, and her breath formed a small puff of condensation on the glass. The outside chill was seeping through her thin clothes, but curiosity was stronger than her desire to return to the fire. She turned to face the room and gazed at its fittings.

What sort of person was Edith?

The indented mattress and scuffed carpet suggested she’d either been a woman of deeply ingrained habits or one who simply couldn’t afford new purchases.

I wonder if that might have influenced why she left me the house. If she’d known about Mum’s medical bills—if she’d suspected I would have money problems like she had—this might have been her way of helping me.

Adrienne felt warmed despite the cold air. She wished she could have met Edith—or met her properly, at least—and thanked her for the gift. She moved towards Edith’s bed, lost in her thoughts, then stopped short as she realised what she was looking at.

Scratches had been left on the headboard, spelling out another message in the wood. The lines were layered and frantic—mimicking the downstairs writings—and placed just a few inches above the pillow so that someone lying in the bed could see them by tilting their head back a little. Adrienne raised her light and leaned close to read.

REMEMBER YOUR SECRETS

The lamp clinked as she folded her arms across her chest. Curiosity to know more, to understand the enigmatic woman who’d owned the home, battled with a desire to retreat to the relative safety and comfort of the downstairs lounge room.

The wardrobe door stood open a crack, showing a sliver of black silk, and Adrienne edged towards it. It looked like the type of wardrobe that would have a mirror in its door, but she already suspected this one would be different. She wasn’t wrong.

The hinges complained as they turned, but the door opened smoothly. The inside of the wood was bare save for another scratchy message: NO MIRRORS

“No mirrors,” Adrienne agreed. Small holes in the wood at the top and base of the door told her that a mirror had once hung in the wardrobe but had been removed.
Why, Edith?

Adrienne looked away from the door and towards the row of dark dresses. They surprised her, and she set the lamp onto the floor before pulling one of them out to get a clearer look at it. The gown could have come out of the props department in a Victorian-era film. Heavy black silk with lace detailing, a low hem, and a high neckline must have created a startling effect when worn. Adrienne blinked, and all of a sudden she was back in the car, her mother’s frantic breaths echoing in her ears, as she watched Ashburn’s door glide open. A tall figure, dressed in black, moved to stand in the opening, and Adrienne had an impression of a pale, long face and glittering black eyes before the memory faded and she found herself back in Edith’s bedroom.

She sagged away from the wardrobe, breathing quickly. She was suddenly acutely aware of the gown’s length. Adrienne wasn’t short, but in order to keep the skirts from brushing the ground, she had to hold the dress so high that the lace gathered at the neck was at her eye level. She licked her lips as the new information coalesced with her existing knowledge of Edith and transformed the elderly woman in her mind’s eye into a tall, gaunt, black-clothed wraith.

She couldn’t help her height.
The long, pale face from her memory burnt itself into the back of her eyes.
And she probably wore black in mourning. Doesn’t stop her from being a good, kind person.

The dress was hung back amongst its companions, and Adrienne reverently closed the wardrobe doors. Her fingers were trembling, and she balled them into fists to keep them still.

It was stupid to come up here on my first night. I should’ve stayed with Wolf and saved the exploring until morning.

A pipe in the walls behind her rattled, startling her, and she snatched up the lamp and hurried to the door. As she slipped through the gap, a dozen pairs of eyes arrested her. She stayed rooted to the spot for a second, scanning the row of portraits, then followed the hallway to the stairs and hurried down them.

She hadn’t noticed it before, but the family in the portraits all wore Victorian-style clothes not unlike the ones she’d found in Edith’s wardrobe.

Were they her family? Could she be the child in the paintings, perhaps?

The grandfather clock began chiming as she took the stair’s corner. She tried to count the off-note clangs, but her mind was still buzzing with the new familiarity with Edith, and she lost count. It was either ten or eleven at night; either way, time for bed.

Wolfgang still lay on the rug in front of the fire but had rolled onto his back so that his four paws stuck up into the air and his belly was exposed. Except that one eye lazily drifted open at her entrance, he could have passed for roadkill. Adrienne laughed at the sight, and the unease created by the upstairs rooms melted away.

The fire was burning low, so she added two new logs and placed the kettle back over the flames to reheat. Then she pulled her sheets and pillow out of the travel case and looked about the room.

Other than the fireside chair, there were two lounge chairs. One had well-squished cushions, but the second seemed infrequently used. She chose the latter, draping one sheet over the cushions and arranging the second on top. She hadn’t brought any proper blankets but had a thick shawl that would do until she could find out if Edith had a guest bedroom or similar.

“Want any more food, buddy?” she asked Wolfgang as she passed him on the way to the kettle. He followed her progress with the one open eye, but a low, rumbling purr told her he would be staying right where he was.

Adrienne reused the teabag from her earlier cup to make a fresh brew then retrieved the book from the suitcase, turned the light off, and snuggled into her makeshift bed fully clothed.

She’d intended to read by firelight for an hour or two before sleeping, but the day had worn on her more than she’d expected, and she soon let the book sag so that she could watch the dancing flames and her fluffy pet. The fire’s light caught in gaps between the floorboards, making them look like black lines scoring the floor.

“We’re going to be okay here,” she told him as she tried to ignore the eerie sensation that the long, pale face could be watching her from one of the corners where the shadows gathered thickest.