The Stolen Ghosts Read online

  “Are you going upstairs?” asked her mother.

  “I’m just going to put my laptop back in the library.”

  Her mother pursed her lips but said nothing. She and Sarah’s father headed upstairs and Sarah padded back to the library. She left the laptop on the table and gazed around the room. Her heart swelled with affection for the dusty old books and the scratched table. A shaft of moonlight peeked through the curtain, throwing a narrow strip of silver across the floor beneath the mirror. The looking glass looked different somehow, its surface almost rippling.

  A rumble of thunder rolled around the sky and Sarah jumped. The weather forecast hadn’t said anything about storms.

  Will that affect the investigation?

  A shadow fell across the pale shard of light. Sarah looked around but the library was empty. Her heart thumped but she backed away from the moonlight to make sure it wasn’t her own shadow.

  The ominous patch of darkness remained still. Sarah stared at it. Was it coming from something outside? A storm cloud, maybe? No. The shadow only blocked the middle, opposite the mirror. She hurried across to the curtains and pulled them back anyway. The stream of moonlight widened to a lake, and the shadow remained. More of the outline came into view. The figure was male by the width of the shoulders.

  “Is…is that you, from the painting?” Sarah’s voice sounded tiny in the silence.

  The shadow vanished. The mirror dulled, and Sarah squeaked. She inched towards the glass and held out a trembling hand. Her fingertips brushed the cold, hard surface.

  Footsteps in the hall stopped at the library door. Sarah froze. No one could make her go to bed. She wasn’t a child.

  Even so, she dropped to the floor and crawled under the table. She peered between the heavy carved legs, eyes wide in the darkness.

  The door swung open. A pair of legs clad in black combat trousers appeared in the doorway. Sarah bit her lip. She wasn’t sure Tim would accept her help. Or even believe her.

  He closed the door behind him. His black legs melted into the darkness of the room. Tuneless whistling filled the air, accompanying the monotonous, scratchy whine of the EMF meter. She used the sounds to chart his movement around the room. He circled the table and the EMF meter squealed.

  He’s reached the mirror.

  “What the—”

  A sudden wave of cold rippled along the floor. Sarah hugged herself, pulling her knees in close. The temperature continued to plummet and she struggled to stop her teeth chattering. The EMF meter dropped to the floor with a thud.

  “Bloody hell, this is not right,” said Tim.

  Goose bumps like golf balls stood up on Sarah’s bare arms. A bloom of frost skittered across the floor, sending tendrils of ice crystals spiralling up the legs of the table. The air filled with the staccato scream of an EMF meter and the frantic beeps of a digital thermometer. Tim snatched up the meter and his feet crunched across the frozen floorboards.

  A thick blanket of dread settled across the library. Sarah fancied she could see it dripping from the edge of the table. Panic fluttered in her chest. What should she do? She wanted to crawl out from under the table and run upstairs. Tim didn’t even need to know she was there – he might think the library door opening and then closing was part of the phenomena. Could that carefree cavalier in the morning room really be behind this sudden indoor winter?

  Sarah tried to rock onto her hands and knees. Her palms made contact with the floor and she winced. She shuffled towards the side of the table and peered through the gap between the chairs. It would only take seconds to crawl out and cross the room.

  Which way is the door?

  She peered into the room but the shadow had spread to engulf the shaft of moonlight. Total darkness filled the library, and she couldn’t remember in which direction the door lay. Sarah tried to calculate the room’s layout based on the table but every time she worked it out, the thought skittered away.

  It’s like the room doesn’t want me to leave. Or rather, whatever is in here doesn’t want me to leave.

  Sarah retreated to her previous spot beneath the table, the patch of unfrozen floor slightly warm where she’d been sitting. The EMF meter continued to screech off to her right. A camera shutter snapped behind her, a reminder that Tim was still in the room.

  “This is way beyond—”

  Something toppled over in the darkness and Tim swore aloud. A sudden draught crawled across Sarah’s back and she guessed he’d knocked over the chair behind her. His boots slithered on the ice-encrusted floor. Scrabbling came from the far corner – Tim must have found the door at least.

  Light flared on the other side of the room, casting his short figure in silhouette. Before Sarah could crawl out and make a run for it, the door closed again, sealing off the warm rectangle of yellow light.

  The darkness beyond the forest of table legs faded and the edges of the furniture reappeared in the dim glow of moonlight. The bloom of frost retreated away from her, racing across the floorboards. Her breath no longer hung in clouds around her, and the goose bumps faded on her arms. Sarah crawled out from beneath the table into an ordinary library. A mundane mirror hung on the side of a bookcase nearby, its regular reflection barely visible.

  Sarah risked switching on the lamp in the centre of the table. The electric light chased away the shadows, revealing her beloved library in all its threadbare glory. Without the intense cold or inexplicable dread, Sarah’s fear ebbed away.

  Floorboards creaked above her head. Empty rooms lay on this side of the house, so it couldn’t be her parents. Tim must be investigating. Sarah frowned. She’d probably run into him if she went upstairs now.

  Her gaze fell on the folklore books across the library. She remembered what her old history teacher, Miss Bigsby, once told her.

  Folklore was a way of preserving nuggets of truth so the incredulous wouldn’t find them.

  Sarah crossed the room to the bookcase and browsed the spines. Folklore and Superstition of the British Isles seemed as good a place to start as any. She pulled the book free and carried it to the table.

  I’ll only read until Tim comes back downstairs.

  She opened the book and began.

  Chapter 10

  Warm fingers of early morning sunshine crept across Sarah’s face and pried open her eyes. She mumbled and tried to cover her head with her arm. She reached for her duvet, but felt only thin air. Everything felt wrong. Why was she slumped forwards? Why did her bed feel like a hard wooden chair?

  Sarah peered around her and jerked upright. She sat at the table in the library, a leather-bound book still open in front of her. The electric lamp threw weak light over the yellowed pages, which detailed superstition and folklore about mirrors and reflections.

  I must have fallen asleep while reading.

  She looked up at the mirror but it only reflected the library. Sarah slid off the seat and closed the book. She flicked the switch to turn off the small electric lamp. A grandfather clock chimed somewhere in the house and she paused.

  How long was I asleep? Did anyone notice I didn’t go to bed last night?

  She counted eight deep tones. Sarah frowned. Had Tim finished his investigation?

  Sarah returned the book to the shelf and left the library. She opened the heavy curtains as she went, letting sunlight stream into the house. After the events of last night, the warmth of the sun on her face calmed her nerves. She basked in the sunlight in the entrance hall, squidging her toes in the thick burgundy carpet. For a moment, she could pretend she stood on a beach, wet sand beneath her feet.

  Her phone beeped on the telephone table, jerking her from the daydream. She checked the screen and sighed. She should have put it on charge last night.

  Sarah pushed open the door of the morning room and slipped inside. Tim sat on the sofa hunched over his laptop, a steaming cup of black tea on the coffee table. He wore massive headphones and peered at blobs of green and blue on the computer screen. Sarah plugged in her phone
and crossed the room to the chair opposite the sofa. It took Tim a few moments to realise she was there.

  “Oh. Morning. I didn’t hear you come in.” He took off the headphones and picked up the mug.

  “Clearly. How did it go?”

  “Well, there is something here, but…”

  “But what?”

  “Perhaps I’ll wait until your parents get up, then I can share my findings with you all.”

  “So there are findings?” Sarah already knew the answer, but she was curious how Tim had perceived the events in the library.

  The door squealed as it swung open. Sarah’s father entered carrying a glass of juice and a mug. He turned and pushed the door but it swung open again as he took two steps into the room.

  “That door and I are going to fall out,” he said.

  “It’s often things like that which make people think their homes are haunted. You wouldn’t believe the number of disturbances that come down to wonky door frames,” said Tim.

  “Does our house fall into that category?” asked Sarah’s father.

  Sarah’s mother came in and perched on the arm of the sofa, close enough to Sarah’s father for him to squeeze her knee.

  “At first I thought so. I tried everything; EVPs, EMF, infrared, thermal imaging, temperature readings, the ghost box – even the positive ion meter. The only rooms I didn’t investigate were your bedrooms, the office, and the cellar, because the door was locked. I got nothing in all but one of the rooms.”

  Sarah didn’t need him to finish. “The library.”

  “Yeah. It was beyond weird in there. I’d already checked the room during my initial sweep and found nothing, but the minute I shut the door during the investigation, it was like something was following me around the room, and the meter was going crazy. The temperature dropped by 15°C, which is a massive drop for a room whose windows are painted shut and which isn’t on the side of the house that the wind batters.”

  Her father raised his eyebrows. Sarah said nothing. The temperature change was obvious even without the thermometer.

  “I took these photos with the infrared camera.”

  Tim turned his laptop around to show them four photographs he’d taken. The images were dark and grainy, but a clear shadow fell across the mirror. Sarah squinted.

  Actually, that’s not a shadow across the mirror. That’s a shadow in the mirror.

  Tim flicked to another image, this time taken with the thermal imaging camera. The rest of the room showed up in shades of green, but the mirror glowed so blue it was almost purple.

  “How cold was the mirror when you took that photo?” asked Sarah’s father.

  “10°C colder than the rest of the room, and that was even after the temperature plummeted.”

  “Did you get any EVPs?” Sarah wanted to compare any voices Tim might have recorded with the disembodied voice she’d heard around the house. Somehow, she knew the owner of the voice had nothing to do with the events in the library.

  “No, they came back negative, but the rest of the evidence is pretty…well…weird.”

  “Any thoughts?” asked Sarah’s father.

  “I’m not sure yet, I’d need time to think about it, and I want to review all of this again on my proper set-up. Maybe if I clean up the audio recordings I’ll find something, I don’t know. But I’m happy to say there’s definitely something going on in there that’s not easily explained.”

  Mrs McKenzie grimaced. Her father talked shop with Tim as he packed away his gear, asking questions about his equipment, and the conversation turned decidedly scientific.

  “I wish we hadn’t sold the house in London.” Sarah’s mother gazed at the fireplace, but her eyes didn’t seem focused on anything specific.

  “You want us to leave?”

  “Don’t you think that would be for the best? Oh, it doesn’t matter anyway. We don’t have anywhere to go. We’d have to sell this place to afford somewhere else, somewhere more…normal. The solicitor said we were right to turn this into a business, there isn’t much appetite for houses this large at the moment. It could be on the market for months.”

  “What about Dad’s salary?”

  “It’s tied up in the renovations for this place.”

  Sarah didn’t reply. The thought of moving again filled her with dread.

  “Sarah?”

  “Yeah, Mum?”

  “I don’t want you going in that library again.”

  Chapter 11

  Tim left soon after packing up, promising to email any more evidence that he found. Sarah cornered him out by his car.

  “I know you said you’d email but what can I do in the meantime?” she asked.

  “I suppose it would help if you researched the house and its history. My sister usually handles that side of things for me, but she’s on holiday right now, and I think you’ll be pretty good at it.”

  Tim climbed into his car and drove away, waving until he was out of view around the bend in the driveway. Sarah wanted to go straight to the library, but her parents kept her busy with chores all day. Her mother kept reminding her not to go into the library, and Sarah kept reminding her it was the only room in the house where she could get online. Her thoughts kept returning to Tim’s project for her, but evening had descended by the time Sarah finally sat down at the table in the library, her laptop open in front of her. She typed ‘Cransland House’ into the address bar of the search engine and hit enter.

  The engine returned three pages of results. Sarah scanned the list, but it was just pages from the local council’s website. She clicked through to the next page, and found newspaper archive websites that listed some of the society events held at the house during the 1940s. Grainy black-and-white images showed groups of well-dressed people laughing and smiling in the entrance hall, or standing in small clusters in the gallery. She saved them into a folder on her desktop.

  The laptop chimed at her and a tab flashed in her browser. She flicked across to the tab, smiling to see the chat message from Jamie.

  “Hey, SM. How’s it going?”

  “Not bad. You?”

  “Likewise. Not seen you online in a couple of days. Everything ok?”

  Sarah typed a short message detailing the events of the previous couple of days. Jamie replied with an assortment of ‘surprised’ picture icons.

  “You were actually IN the room when it all kicked off????”

  “Yeah. Under the table. It doesn’t seem so bad looking back but I was too scared to even move at the time. And now the investigator has asked me to look into the history of the house,” typed Sarah.

  “Found anything yet?” asked Jamie.

  “Look at this.” Sarah sent the link to the society photographs to Jamie. She clicked through them while he looked at them at his end. One photograph showed a man in a pinstripe suit posed with a cocktail glass and a cigar. He stood in the library, his head tossed back in a laugh. Sarah looked straight past him to the mirror on the wall.

  “Pretty cool photos, SM,” said Jamie.

  “Look at number 23. Do you see anything weird in that photo?”

  “Your guy from the mirror!”

  Sarah smiled. The mirror in the photograph dated 1942 clearly showed the ghostly haze of a bald man in profile.

  “Whoa, this is weird.”

  “You’re telling me!” typed Sarah. She got up, went over to the mirror, and ran her hands over the carved frame. Paint flaked away beneath her fingers. The thumbprint still marked the glass. She rubbed it with her sleeve but it refused to budge. Sarah ran her finger over it and frowned. The print seemed to be in the glass, rather than on it.

  “Is there anybody there?” She looked into the mirror and tried to see beyond the reflection of the dark-haired, grey-eyed girl.

  The laptop chimed and she started. Sarah frowned at herself and returned to the table.

  “What are you going to do?” asked Jamie.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  A soft knock at
the door made Sarah start. She swore under her breath; she’d never been this jumpy in London. She looked up as the door swung open and her father poked his head into the room.

  “Gosh, it’s freezing in here. Aren’t you cold?” he asked.

  “No – I didn’t realise it was cold until you mentioned it,” replied Sarah. Icy fingers prodded exposed skin and she shivered.

  “Well, your mother wanted to make sure you’re not going to stay up too late…and I know she asked you to stay out of here.”

  “It’s the only place I can get a signal for the mobile dongle.” Sarah pointed at the slim black rectangle plugged into the laptop.

  “Hm. I forgot to call the phone company again, but I think it’ll be a while before we can get wi-fi out here. I’ll see if I can find some way of boosting the signal in the morning room.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “But in the meantime, be observant, yeah?”

  “Yeah, Dad. I’ll go upstairs now,” said Sarah.

  Dr McKenzie nodded and withdrew. Sarah sighed, and the puff of breath hung suspended in the frozen air for a second before bursting. She glanced at the mirror but saw nothing. She didn’t feel the weight of a stare this time.

  “J, I have to go now,” typed Sarah.

  “That’s ok, me too. Keep me posted?”

  “You bet.”

  Sarah logged out of the site and shut down the laptop. She unplugged it and headed to the door. She paused on the threshold to look back into the room.

  “I know you’re real,” she said.

  Sarah padded upstairs, yawning as she went. The oak bedroom door squealed in protest when she pushed it open and she groped around on the wall for the light switch. Warm light flooded the room, then she glimpsed someone opposite her and gasped.

  Sarah realised her curtains were still open. The ‘someone’ opposite was her reflection in the dark windows. She crossed the room and peered out into the night before she pulled closed the heavy drapes. Her room felt smaller, and somehow safer, when the thick folds of velvet blocked out the rainy night beyond. Windows held a certain element of unease for her. If she could look out of them, what stopped anyone else looking in?