The Stolen Ghosts Page 2

  Heavy footsteps thudded across the floor in front of the fireplace. Two heavy brass candlesticks slid along the mantelpiece and then toppled onto the floor. The noise made Sarah’s mother jump, and she threw wild stares around the room. The footsteps thumped across the room, and books fell off the shelves beside the door. The pages riffled in a non-existent breeze. The harpsichord behind the sofa shrieked, and the keys moved up and down as a doleful dirge filled the room.

  “What’s going on?” roared Mrs Campbell, her face a deep pink.

  “Must be uneven floorboards…a draught must have got in somewhere—”

  Her mother was cut off as the couch lifted a full six inches off the floor. Seconds later it crashed back down to the wooden boards. Mrs Campbell gripped the arm of the couch so hard her knuckles turned white. Mr Campbell turned a peculiar shade of green and he backed away from the sofa. Sarah stole a look at the teenagers. For the first time since she had arrived, they appeared interested in what was going on. Their eyes wide with disbelief, they looked at her, mouths agape. Sarah shook her head and spread her hands wide, the accepted sign for “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “And what’s your explanation for this?” asked Mrs Campbell. She struggled to stand.

  “I…I…I don’t know,” said Sarah’s mother. “It’s an old house…”

  “Balderdash! I have an old house and never have I been subjected to such…such…”

  Sarah sat forward in her chair. She willed something else to happen. Who knew how many people had lived, died, killed or been killed within these walls? Why, an old lord may have been strangled by his cheating wife in this very room. For all Sarah knew, that old lord might be the bald man in her photo. She’d seen things like that before on the TV ghost-hunting shows.

  Calm settled over the room as the old battle-axe made herself comfortable again and Sarah’s heart sank. The twins returned to their games. Sarah’s mother took to her seat. Mrs Campbell plunged ahead with a tirade against old houses that weren’t properly maintained.

  Sarah stared at the clock. The minute hand pulled itself around like a drowning swimmer. Ten minutes dragged by before a movement above the fireplace caught her eye. Sarah looked up at the oil painting above the mantelpiece. In it, an unknown Victorian gentleman and his hound posed in a clearing. A handsome cavalier had now taken the place of the gentleman. The newcomer paused to pick up a stick and Sarah gasped. He threw it beyond the scope of the frame for the dog. The dog wagged his tail. As the hound disappeared from view, the cavalier looked at Sarah. He smiled and winked at her. Sarah found herself smiling back, despite her disbelief, and the cavalier peered down at Mrs Campbell.

  “It’s important to look after paintings in particular.” Mrs Campbell gestured at the portraits in the room with a wide sweep of her flabby arm.

  Sarah’s mother screamed. Sarah followed the direction of her gaze and grinned. Her mother pointed at the strange cavalier above the fireplace. He leapt around the painting with the dog. Watching the silent scene gave Sarah goose bumps, as if she was watching the television with the sound off.

  “What the hell is going on?” asked Mrs Campbell before she saw the cavalier. Mr Campbell’s face broke open in a wide grin.

  The large woman bolted out of the drawing room, screaming all the way down the corridor before her mother could offer an excuse. Mrs McKenzie turned to look at Sarah for an explanation, but Sarah only watched as the unbearable family followed Mrs Campbell.

  The cavalier stopped leaping around. He walked beyond the left-hand side of the frame then reappeared, dragging the Victorian gentleman. He cut the rope binding the gentleman’s hands and the Victorian man resumed his seat at the edge of the tree line. Both the gentleman and the hound froze in their familiar position. The cavalier doffed his hat to Sarah and strolled out of the painting.

  I should be scared, or shocked.

  Sarah ran her hands across the harpsichord, which she knew her mother couldn’t play. She’d never heard such melancholy music, but the instrument had been silent since they moved in. Sarah supposed it must have belonged to her great aunt Lizzie Penruddock, and suddenly wished that she could play.

  The harpsichord yielded nothing. Sarah stood on a chair in front of the fireplace, running her hands around the frame of the painting. She hoped to find something unusual, some clue that might unlock the strange events. Her fingers found only hard wood, cool and smooth.

  “Sarah!”

  Her mother’s shrill cry broke her detective reverie. Climbing down from the chair, she slunk out of the drawing room.

  Chapter 2

  Fowlis travelled through the thick stone walls. He ducked his head into various rooms as he passed. From what he could tell, Cransland House was the haphazard offspring of an older stone residence and a later wooden mansion. The furniture was sealed in plastic or hidden under dust sheets in most of the rooms. Many of his colleagues couldn’t accept the trappings of the modern world, but plastic fascinated Fowlis. He never stopped marvelling at the scientific advances he witnessed during his assignments on the mortal plane. Bubble wrap was one of his favourite inventions; it often made a haunting more fun, and it helped to pass the time.

  Moving boxes still waited to be unpacked, and almost all of the kitchen condiments were new. Most of the castle’s contents belonged to an earlier era, including the marvellous Edwardian kitchen range and assorted cooking implements. A seventeenth-century dresser in a back room pricked pangs of homesickness and Fowlis half expected to open a drawer to find his mother’s best linen. Even the butter churn in the pantry looked familiar, and he examined its faded wood for his brother’s tell-tale family mark.

  An office hid in a corner of the house, and bookcases took up the eastern wall. The groaning shelves were crammed with thick tomes about quantum mechanics, particle physics and Einstein’s theories. Fowlis chuckled. Einstein’s exploits at the annual Christmas dinner were legendary.

  Fowlis knew little of science, much of it having fallen under the remit of ‘witchcraft’ or ‘alchemy’ during his time, but the complicated equations on the chalkboard impressed him. Four blue coffee mugs stood forgotten amid a mess of paper, their cold contents at various stages of decay. Such chaos could not belong to the impeccable woman of the house—it could only be her husband, a man Fowlis was yet to see.

  He imagined the scientist would be an unkempt fellow, with a shock of unruly hair and a look of perpetual wonder. Fowlis pictured him wearing mismatching socks and ill-fitting outfits of uncoordinated clothes. Still, it was usually against HQ policy to send haunters to the homes of scientists. They weren’t known for their receptivity to the supernatural.

  The cavalier drifted into the corridor. After his debut in the drawing room, the ugly family had beaten a hasty retreat, piling into a gargantuan automobile outside. He thought the large woman referred to it as a “four by four” but he wasn’t sure. Cars weren’t his strong point. He made a mental note to ask Jeremiah when he got back to HQ. Jeremiah specialised in haunting automobiles. His escapade with a motorcar used in a motion picture had almost snagged him Haunter of the Year back during the 1950s.

  Once the awful family had gone, the woman of the house threw fits of hysterics, apparently more upset by the disapproval of the fat woman than the idea of a haunting. A thin, shrill slip of a thing, she retired to her room. Fowlis followed her, taking up a seat by the window. The mother paced the floor, pausing every few moments to look around the room to glare at everything. Fowlis watched and waited, keen to observe her behaviour in case a pattern emerged. He considered it his duty as a haunter to understand his subjects better than they understood themselves.

  The girl, apparently her daughter, arrived after an hour of the woman’s pacing. She put her mother to bed, and gave her a pile of glossy magazines selected from the groaning piles downstairs. The mother asked her to choose a radio station, explaining that the modern pop music would keep the spirits at bay. The daughter chose a station playing something
tinny and idiotic. Fowlis agreed with the mother. Contemporary music annoyed him, with its poorly constructed poetry and false sentiment. Its lack of genius could drive old Sam Coleridge to tears if he heard it during a haunting. Or maybe he has, and that’s why he’ll only haunt libraries now.

  The girl consoled her mother, finally leaving the room once her mother settled. Fowlis relished the prospect of haunting her, especially after her reaction in the drawing room. Her curiosity made her an open, if slightly easy, target, but he didn’t want her to believe too easily. He needed fear, not faith. His mind strayed to daydreams of the Haunter’s Cup. He couldn’t imagine a year when he wouldn’t win it. So many other spectres lacked his vision, content to stay in the same assignments, decade after decade, glad of the routine but too familiar to mortals to generate much fear.

  Not me, by Jove. He preferred temporary assignments. The thought of falling into a haunting rut terrified him. A slovenly ghost wasn’t the only bad ghost – there were dull ghosts too. It was no surprise that the Veil showed alarming signs of disintegration. All of this modern technology and science got in the way of good old-fashioned fear of the unknown.

  Fowlis decided he’d best start his own haunting with the mother. He stood up from his seat and crossed to the stereo. It sat on a crocheted doily on an antique dressing table. A panel of buttons covered the front of the machine, but he couldn’t work the controls without manifesting. At least that’s the excuse I give at HQ—I just can’t stand the irritating things.

  He swiped his hand through the main body of the device in anger. The stereo squealed in protest and white noise replaced the music. The woman dropped her magazine. She climbed out of bed and crept towards the table. She turned a dial on the side of the stereo, scanning the stations for music. He removed his hand, and the static was replaced by the plaintive violins of a concerto—Vivaldi, if he wasn’t mistaken.

  On a whim, Fowlis stuck his hand back into the body of the stereo and chuckled. To his surprise, the chuckle issued forth from the speakers. The woman’s hand sprang away from the dial.

  “Well hello, my most esteemed madam!” Fowlis’s voice filled the room.

  The woman screamed. He chuckled again and pulled his hand out of the stereo. The electrical contact tickled his palm. The machine squeaked once and fell silent. The woman stared into each corner of the room. Fowlis couldn’t resist blowing onto the side of the woman’s face before launching himself onto the curtains. He yanked them from one end of the pole to the other, their rings screeching in protest against the wood. The woman ran to the door. She scrabbled at the woodwork, searching for the handle.

  The door burst open, and the woman threw herself into the arms of her daughter, burying her face in her daughter’s neck. Her daughter positively glowed with excitement.

  After a moment, the woman jabbed her finger at the stereo and gabbled about a possessed radio. The girl put her arms around her mother and led her back to bed. She tucked her in and drew the curtains closed around the four-poster bed. She murmured words of encouragement, and promised to bring some nice hot tea. Fowlis stood back to admire his handiwork. That must have been worth at least eighteen points. Still, electricity tired him out, and a break from haunting would be a good idea. Both he and the mother needed rest. The daughter could wait.

  Fowlis ventured up to the attic, a room that sprawled across the top floor. Dust sheets covered more furniture, with tables and cupboards crammed into every corner. In some places, they reached the slanting ceiling. Bats hung from the rafters at the gable end, squeaking when they saw him. Animals liked having ghosts around, enjoying the nearby manifestations of energy. Only cats disliked ghosts, but Fowlis had seen no felines in the castle.

  He located an ornate chaise longue near the bats and used the last of his strength to manifest long enough to remove the dust sheet. He stretched out on the threadbare brocade and enjoyed the feel of the material under his rapidly fading fingers before he dissolved into sleep.

  Chapter 3

  Sarah woke early the next day to the sound of bird song outside her window. She lay in bed for a few minutes and enjoyed the silvery notes. The bird celebrated being alive and Sarah smiled.

  Such a lovely way to start the day. I didn’t get that in the old house. Just sirens and bin lorries.

  She threw off the covers, climbed out of bed, and discarded her pyjamas in favour of jeans and a blue, long-sleeved T-shirt covered in lilac birds. Maybe the colour would lighten her mother’s mood and lift the atmosphere in the drab old house.

  Sarah wandered downstairs to the library and sought out the mirror. All she saw was the reflection of the empty library. Sarah prowled around the library as her laptop booted up. She ran her fingers along the dusty spines of the books on the shelves and found herself in front of the mirror again.

  Why this particular mirror? Who even needs a mirror in a library?

  There was a mark on the glass that looked like a thumbprint. Maybe her father had moved the mirror when he was in here the other day. She pulled her sleeve over her hand and wiped the surface but the mark didn’t disappear.

  The laptop chimed at her to tell her it couldn’t find a signal. Sarah sighed and forgot about the mark on the mirror. She missed the wi-fi at her old house, but until they had a new line installed, the sporadic mobile dongle was the only way she could get online. She didn’t start her A Levels for another three weeks and she wanted some kind of human contact before then. Her father didn’t understand her frustration, but she could barely get him to use a smartphone, let alone wi-fi.

  Sarah moved the laptop around the large table. The dongle only found a signal when she sat at the other end of the table, facing the mirror. She sat down and tried to concentrate on logging in to the various social media sites that she used, but she kept glancing upwards.

  What am I expecting to see?

  Her chat list was almost empty, save her online friends in Australia. Her London friends were probably still in bed, although she double-checked her friends list to make sure no one had unfriended her during the night. No one had, but it spoke volumes that only her friends on another continent had bothered to like her photos of Cransland House.

  Sarah left comments on various updates, and posted a few links to weird gadgets she’d found on her favourite blogs. She repeatedly refreshed the chat list, hoping Jamie would come online. After half an hour, she sent him a message about the events at the meeting with the Campbells. She concluded by asking his advice on what to do, or where to look for information. She’d met Jamie on an online forum discussing horror movies, and saw him as something of an authority on all things weird. If Jamie didn’t know…then maybe she’d turn to Twitter. The tech teams from various ghost-hunting shows had accounts. They might be able to help.

  A shadow passed across the mirror. Sarah looked up from the laptop and paused, her cursor hovering over the ‘shut down’ option. She stared at the mirror, watching the shadow pass in the opposite direction. She didn’t need to look around the library to know she was the only one in there.

  Besides, that shadow isn’t passing across the mirror on this side. It’s inside the mirror.

  “Hello? Hello, is someone there?” Her voice wavered. “Is that the cavalier from yesterday? From the painting?”

  Cold air broke across Sarah’s face in a wave and she gasped. The atmosphere in the library shifted, and Sarah shuddered. She looked around the room, oppressed by the weight of an invisible stare. It didn’t feel like the atmosphere in the drawing room. The cavalier’s presence had been sparky and almost friendly; this was distinctly unpleasant. The image of a growling Rottweiler popped into her head. The hairs on the back of her arms stood to attention and her calm of the previous day dissolved into abject fear.

  “H-hello?”

  The temperature plummeted, and the severe cold turned her stomach to ice. Animosity emanated from the mirror, though Sarah saw nothing beyond the glass. She tried to move, but she was rooted to her chair, held the
re by the invisible stare. She tried to call out, but her vocal cords strained with the effort, her voice frozen in her throat. She thought of the Eye of Sauron, sweeping across the peaks of Mordor to spot the hobbits, and gulped. Suddenly, the gaze from the other side of the mirror broke contact, and moved towards the bookshelves on the far side of the room. Sarah threw herself out of the chair and made a run for the door.

  She hurtled down the corridor and burst into the morning room where sunlight streamed in through the open curtains, and fresh flowers filled the air with their delicate scent. Sarah heaved a sigh of relief. Sunlight warmed her face through the glass, and she basked in the morning glow. She rubbed at her arms, cold even at the thought of the invisible stare in the library.

  Sarah switched on the TV, desperate to hear human voices. Stories about missing sheep, a cake contest and a village fête flickered before her, but she took no real interest. A pile of home and garden magazines lay on the table, still in their cellophane wrappers. Sarah tore open the plastic on the nearest copy and settled down in a comfortable armchair beside the window, pleased she could fold her legs under her without her mother asking her to keep her feet on the floor.

  I could get used to Mum being too busy to notice what I do.

  Sarah flicked through page after page of insipid interior design. Her earlier fear ebbed away and she chastised herself. What a baby, reacting like that! She’d been so curious during the cavalier’s shenanigans. Why was she so jittery about a mirror?

  “And in a bizarre twist, a local family is claiming that one of the oldest houses in our area is in fact haunted.” A distinctly cynical voice boomed out of the TV. Sarah’s head jerked up just in time to see the news camera pan from a smug Southerner in a navy suit to the Campbell family.