The Ghost of Shapley Hall Read online

  “Do your parents know that you're taking the house apart like this?” I asked.

  “Don't worry,” she said with a smile, having taken the hammer out of her mouth. “As long as I find the right documents, they won't care how I get them. The new owners'll probably rip the place apart, anyway. Why don't you go to the library and start looking through Henry's papers? Just keep an eye out for anything that looks like a will.”

  “His will?” I frowned. “I thought we were searching for property deeds?”

  “That's what I meant. If you're in doubt, just put stuff aside and I'll check it later.”

  I watched for a moment as she began to work on the next panel.

  “Rachel -”

  “Damn it,” she muttered, as a beetle crawled onto her hand. Without hesitation, she swatted her hand against the wall, crushing the bug and then wiping its remains on the side of her jeans. “I hate those things so much!”

  “There are plenty of them around,” I pointed out, a little shocked by how quickly she'd killed the beetle. She'd always seemed like the kind of person who wouldn't hurt a fly.

  “I'm kinda busy,” she replied, sounding just a little irritated. “We don't have long, and I really want to just push on. Please, it'd be a huge help if you could go start work in the library. I understand if you want to get some breakfast first.”

  “Aren't you hungry?”

  “I'll be fine,” she muttered, before starting to hammer the next panel.

  Realizing that she seemed determined to take the entire wall apart, I made my way back over to the door, although I couldn't help glancing at her once again. She seemed so single-minded, but I genuinely didn't understand why she thought the documents would have been tucked behind panels that looked to have been in place for a century or more. Still, I knew better than to argue with her, so I made my way through to the kitchen to find something to eat, although the first thing I found was that several beetles were crawling all over the apples I'd left out overnight.

  “Hey fellas,” I muttered, swatting the bugs away. “Not yours. Mine.”

  The sound of Rachel hammering at the panels could be heard throughout the entire house.

  ***

  “Contract,” I muttered, holding up yet another old document before tossing it aside and grabbing the next. “Contract...”

  I'd been in the library for a couple of hours now, going through piles of paperwork that seemed to consist of nothing more than contracts for various minor jobs that had been carried out around the estate. As far as I could tell, Rachel's uncle had fastidiously kept every receipt, every document and every checkbook-stub for the past fifty years. I was sure that someone somewhere would probably be interested in a five-page document outlining the sale of twelve pigs, but I was definitely not that person, and my interest was starting to flag.

  Unlike Rachel, who could still be heard hammering away, although the pitch of the hammering sound had changed a while ago, indicating that she'd switched her attention from the wall to some other part of the house.

  “Contract,” I said with a sigh, holding up another of the damn things, “contract, contract -”

  Sighing, I leaned back, feeling as if my head was about to melt. Getting to my feet, I wandered over to the far wall and took a look at some framed photos. Most of them were pretty old, showing stiffly-posed people standing outside the house, but after a moment I spotted a couple of pictures that seemed much more recent. In one, a group of young girls stood on the steps that led to the front door, and someone had written a series of names in careful handwriting at the bottom.

  “Alison, Maya, Elizabeth...” I read out loud. “Rachel.”

  Looking at the girl on the right, I realized she did look a little like Rachel. She was the only one of the girls not smiling, which was a surprise given that she always seemed to me to be one of those people who remained buoyantly happy in public, and she'd always made her childhood sound idyllic. In fact, the more I looked at the photo, the more I began to see something else in little Rachel's eyes, a kind of sadness that seemed to mark her out from the other girls. After a moment, however, I noticed that her right arm was held in some kind of heavy sling, as if she'd hurt herself. Her stories of her childhood had always been so -

  Suddenly I heard a loud thump over my shoulder. Turning, I looked across the room, but there was no sign of Rachel. I waited, but after a moment I realized that the sound had come from the window. Making my way past the desk, I peered out and saw nothing but the vast, empty lawn, although as I peered more closely at the window-pane I began to see some kind of smudge on the outside of the glass, as if a hand had been pressed against the surface just a moment ago. Even as I saw the hand's outline, it was already starting to fade, until finally it was gone entirely.

  I waited, but of course there was no sign of anyone. Even the hand-print, which had seemed so clear a moment ago, might just as well have never been there at all.

  Heading out of the room, I figured I should go and take a look, just in case some yokel from the nearby village had decided to come and play games. I saw no sign of Rachel as I made my way to the front door, although I could hear her still hammering away in the depths of the house, which meant she definitely hadn't been outside.

  To be honest, it felt good to get out of the house and leave the oppressive atmosphere for a few minutes, and as I walked down the steps and around the side of the building I couldn't help feeling that Rachel seemed a little obsessed with finding her uncle's documents. Finally I reached the window that looked into the library, and I immediately saw that the frame was heavily scratched, as if something had been tearing at the wood. I ran my fingers against the scratches, finding that they were pretty deep, and then I peered through the window and saw that, instead of the library, I was actually outside the banquet hall.

  Heading further along the side of the mansion, I finally reached the window that looked into the library, and once again I found scratches all around the frame. In fact, as I checked more and more windows, I found similar scratches, and eventually I began to make my way all around the house, examining each and every window on the ground floor and finding that each of them featured the same furious scratch-marks.

  I have to admit, for the first time since arriving at Shapley Hall I was starting to feel genuinely concerned. Not because I believed in ghosts, but because it was pretty damn clear that something had been outside. Turning, I looked across the lawn and saw the distant tree-line, although there was absolutely no sign of anyone. I waited, just in case I might hear an errant giggle or spot someone scurrying through the undergrowth, but the entire scene seemed completely still and silent. The only sign of life was the village in the distance, perched several miles away on a far hill.

  “Kids,” I sighed, before making my way around the side of the building and reaching the front door again.

  Chapter Ten

  “Jesus!” I muttered as I stumbled to the bottom of the basement steps and tried the switch on the wall. The electric light didn't work, of course, so I used the flashlight app on my phone and began to make my way across the cold, bare room.

  Every few steps, I felt cobwebs brushing against my face.

  Finally I reached a door at the far end. Just as I reached down to turn the handle, I saw that although the door was made of wood, it had been reinforced in several places with large pieces of metal. A large crack ran through the main part of the door, and the wood was bulging out slightly, as if at some point it had been hit hard from the other side. When I tried to get it open, I found that the door itself was slightly out of shape, not quite fitting the frame properly, and it took a moment before I was finally able to pull it free.

  Sure enough, there were more metal plates on the door's other side. At some point in the past, someone had carried out a pretty hefty repair job.

  Stepping through into an even colder, darker room, I held my phone up and saw more cobwebs hanging from the ceiling. Something small moved nearby, and I turned j
ust in time to see a couple of beetles scurrying across the concrete wall. The light from my phone was most likely the first they'd seen for a while, and I couldn't help noticing that the beetles down here were larger and beefier than the specimens in the main part of the house. I could hear their legs clicking as they hurried away into the darkness.

  “Sorry to disturb you, guys,” I muttered, making my way forward through the room. “I'm looking for...”

  Before I could finish, I spotted the fuse-box ahead. Heading over, I stopped as soon as I saw several more beetles resting on the surface, their antennae quivering slightly. Looking around, I saw some old pieces of newspaper on the floor and I quickly picked them up, using them to brush the beetles away from the fuse-box's casing. The sound of their hard little bodies hitting the floor wasn't exactly endearing, but I quickly got rid of the damn things and then pulled the fuse-box's door open, only to find dozens more beetles making their home between the wires and cables. Realizing that it would be hopeless to scare them all away, I tossed the newspaper aside and then peered more closely at the main panel, hoping to maybe find some quick and easy way to bring power back to the house.

  It took about three seconds for me to realize I didn't have a hope in hell.

  Back in my parents' cramped house, I learned pretty young how to fix the fuses. I had two brothers and a sister, so becoming the fix-it kid was my way of standing out. I was good at it, too, but the fuse-box in a three-bedroom terraced house wasn't exactly the height of complexity. Shivering in the basement of Shapley Hall, with bugs crawling over my shoes, I found myself facing a bodged-together collection of panels and systems from several different eras, with wires that looked as if they should have failed decades earlier. I reached toward one of the panels, figuring that it looked vaguely familiar, but then I pulled my hand away, worried about getting a shock. Deep down, I'd been hoping to fix the house's power and impress Rachel, but now I just tried flipping a few switches before sighing and stepping back. Frankly, the beetles crawling all over the wires probably had a better shot of sorting out the mess.

  Hearing a shuffling sound over my shoulder, I turned and shone my phone's flashlight across the darkness. There was no sign of anyone, although there were plenty of beetles crawling across the cold concrete floor.

  Turning back to look at the fuse-box, I tried one more half-hearted stab at a few switches before finally giving up. Swinging the casing shut, I began to make my way back over to the door. A couple of beetles dropped down from the low ceiling, landing on the back of my neck, and I muttered a few opportune curse words as I brushed them away. I was trying my best not to step on any of the little guys, but they weren't exactly making my life easy. Every time I took another step, several bugs scurried out of the way. I could hear a faint chorus of clicks and cracks all around, which I assumed came from hundreds – maybe even thousands – of scratchy little legs crawling all over the concrete.

  When I reached out and pushed the door open, I found that it was once again wedged into the frame. I put my shoulder against the wood and gave it a shove, finally getting it free, but at the same time I heard another shuffling sound nearby.

  I turned and shone the flashlight back across the room. All I saw were the beetles scuttling about on the floor, although after a moment I noticed that they seemed to be avoiding a small area just a few meters away. I watched for a few seconds, and sure enough not one beetle dared cross two small foot-sized patches on the floor, as if they thought someone was standing there. The effect was a little eerie, but I figured they were just bugs being bugs, so I stepped through to the next room and tried to push the door shut before realizing it was too badly damaged.

  Leaving the door wide open, I fumbled my way toward the steps that led back up into the main part of the house.

  Chapter Eleven

  “I'm sure you can take thirty minutes off for lunch,” I told Rachel as I stood in the doorway, watching her pulling up another of the library's floorboards. “Do you really think your uncle would've stored documents under there?”

  “They have to be somewhere!” she gasped, before slipping and falling back. She landed hard on her ass and let out a gasp of frustration, before starting to rub her shoulder.

  “Pain?” I asked.

  “Stupid thing,” she muttered, taking a moment to carefully flex and un-flex the fingers of her right hand. “You'd think it wouldn't still do this after so many years.”

  “How'd you break your shoulder again?” I asked, thinking back to the photo of her with her arm in a sling.

  “Oh, it was just...” She paused, staring at her hand for a moment, before smiling at me. “It was nothing. Kid stuff, you know?”

  “But if -”

  “I need to get on with this,” she continued, grabbing the hammer again. She winced, clearly in pain, but she began to crawl over to another spot on the floor and then she started pulling on another floorboard.

  “Come on,” I said, seeing the almost manic look in her eyes, “let's get lunch. Then you can work all afternoon and all evening if you want. Rachel -”

  “Damn it!” she hissed, dropping the hammer and grabbing her right arm.

  “You need a break,” I continued, stepping over to her and reaching down to help her up. “You'll work better and longer this afternoon if you take a pause for half an hour.”

  ***

  “What's through there?” I asked casually, glancing at a door in the corner of the kitchen. I checked for beetles in my sandwich and then took a bite, before glancing at Rachel and seeing that she seemed almost to have frozen as she stared at the door.

  I waited.

  “Rachel?”

  “What?” She turned to me, clearly flustered. “That's just the basement.”

  “Another way down, huh?” I muttered. “It's creepy down there. No lights, all those beetles... That's one part of the house I have no desire to see again.”

  “What do you mean again?” she asked.

  “I was down there earlier,” I replied, taking another bite of my sandwich. “I figured I'd check out the fuse-box, see if I could get the power going again. Obviously I failed, but -”

  “Why did you go down there?” she stammered, interrupting me with a hint of panic in her voice. “I didn't tell you to go to the basement!”

  “No, but I just thought -”

  “Jesus...” Getting to her feet, she stepped around the table before stopping suddenly, staring at the door in the corner. After a moment, she turned to me. “Did anything happen while you were down there?”

  I smiled. “Rachel -”

  “Did anything happen?” she asked again, raising her voice as if she was on the verge of panic.

  I opened my mouth to make some dumb joke, before realizing that there was genuine fear in her eyes.

  “I failed pretty miserably at Being a Man 101,” I told her, “but that's about it. I didn't see any ghosts, if that's what you're wondering.”

  “Was the broken door still shut when you went down?”

  “The one that looked like it had been repaired? Sure.”

  “And you shut it again when you left?”

  I paused, realizing that I hadn't. “Sure,” I told her, making a mental note to go down and shut it after lunch. I hated lying to her, but at the same time I didn't want to get her upset over nothing. “What happened to that thing, anyway?”

  “I...” She seemed a little calmer now. “I don't know,” she muttered, cautiously heading back around the table and re-taking her seat. “This is an old house,” she continued, “I guess lots of...”

  Her voice trailed off.

  Again I waited, but she seemed lost in thought. Giving up, I looked back down at my sandwich and then took another bite, only to realize after a moment that I could hear a sobbing sound from the other side of the table. Glancing over, I saw that Rachel had buried her face in her hands, and her body was shuddering as tears dripped down onto the counter-top.

  “Hey!” I said, hurrying aro
und and putting a hand on her shoulder. “What's wrong?”

  She shook her head, but she seemed too upset to say anything.

  “Don't you think you should tell me what's really going on?” I asked. “Something's not right here, and I'm starting to think you -”

  “I saw her,” she blurted out suddenly.

  I opened my mouth to reply, but deep down I already knew what she meant.

  “You saw... Georgette?”

  She nodded.

  Sighing, I realized that she really seemed to believe this nonsense. I was starting to think Rachel's quirkiness might have much deeper, much darker roots.

  “Okay,” I continued cautiously. “When? During the night? This morning?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then when exactly did -”

  “Years ago,” she stammered, sniffing back tears as she looked up at me with watery eyes. “Twelve years ago, when I was here as a little girl. When I was eleven.”

  Somehow I managed to keep from sighing, but the truth is, I was starting to seriously wonder about Rachel's mental state. I figured we needed to get the hell out of Shapley Hall before she went completely off the deep end and tore the entire house apart.

  “It was late one night,” she continued. “Everyone else was in bed and -”

  “Maybe we should leave today,” I replied.

  “Everyone else was in bed but I couldn't sleep. I got up to -”

  “Rachel? Did you hear what I said?”

  “I got up to explore and -”

  “Rachel!” Stepping back, I put a finger under her chin and gently tilted her face until she was looking at me. There was fear in her eyes, and her whole body seemed to be trembling slightly. “I mean it,” I told her. “We need to leave. Being here isn't good for you.”

  “I saw her,” she whispered.

  “I heard you the first time,” I replied, “but this isn't healthy.”

  “She was on the lawn,” she stammered, “where she died.”