Haunted Happenings
Page 47
“Yeah, I’m not as much of an outdoors person as you are.” She smiled. “As long as there is a bed to sleep in then I’m happy to go with you, Hun. It’s much better than being without you for two months. I don’t know if I would survive the kids that long.”
“They being little hell raisers again?”
“Aren’t they always?” She smiled. “But I’m sure they would like your summer adventure idea. They are more outdoorsy than I am. You may even get some free labour out of them.”
“You know, I hadn’t even considered that,” he mused and watched her roll her eyes. “You’re so smart.”
“It’s why you married me.” She gave him a kiss. “Now get out of my kitchen so I can finish this.” She waved her hands at the stove. “You’re very distracting.”
“As you wish.”
Chapter 4
Unwanted Guests
* * *
It took them less than a week to get everything sorted. They packed up the essentials and Danae and Drew headed out to York. They left the kids with Danae’s mother for the first week, until they could get settled in. There was no sense in tossing two small children into the mix when it was already set to be a rather chaotic time.
By the time they reached the abbey it was early afternoon. It really was an impressive building. It was clear by the design that it had been standing for a long time and it was in great condition.
Drew couldn’t say the same for the grounds, but that was after all why he was there. They needed serious work, and not just to get them the way the new owners wanted; they needed serious work just to be workable.
He was glad that he was getting paid good money for this job, or he would have turned it down. A pay rate any lower than the offer would not have been worth the time and effort required to set this place back to rights.
He was happy that his employer had offered him a good rate for the job. He was excited to get started on it, but he knew that would have to wait until tomorrow. There was no way Danae was going to let him go play in the yard when there was unpacking to do. Her patience with him had its limits.
They hadn’t brought a great deal with them to the abbey. After a lengthy conversation with his employer, he’d found out that the house was fully furnished and operational. That mean they’d just packed the basics, mostly clothes.
He’d been glad they hadn’t had to move everything. They planned on returning to their home once they were done, and it was just easier to regard this more as a vacation and less as a complete move in.
He couldn’t tell what Danae thought about the whole situation. She’d been rather closed lipped about it since he’d proposed the idea. She’d been very project oriented, focusing mainly on getting things packed and the kids situated. But she hadn’t said what she really thought.
He kept an eye on her as they put away their belongings, and she seemed relaxed enough. She would comment on an item of furniture or a piece of artwork every now and then, but she seemed comfortable in the abbey.
It wasn’t until they were debating what to have for dinner that he finally worked up the nerve to ask her. Having decided on Chinese take aways, he took her hand and pulled her attention to him.
“Darling, what do you think about all of this?” He waved his hand ambiguously, gesturing to everything around them.
She pursed her lips as though considering. “It’s a lovely house. I can see why your employer wants to make the outside match the inside.”
He let out a big sigh. “You know that wasn’t what I was asking.”
She smiled. “I know, but it’s fun to watch you sweat sometimes.” She gave his cheek a pat. “I am fine with all of this, love. It’s less hassle than I expected it to be, which is a bonus, and I’m sure the kids will have a great time. I might even get some reading done while they bother you for once.”
He gave her a kiss. “How did I get so lucky?”
“We may never know.” She grinned. “Now let’s get food before I decide this whole thing was a terrible idea.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
When they’d had their fill of take away Chinese, and finally packed away all their personal things, they settled into bed. They were both exhausted although it was only just nine, and Drew wanted to get an early start on things the next day.
He had a great deal of assessing and planning to do. He would need to create an order list and verify the items and prices with his employer. He’d likely have to rent equipment to begin the major overhaul, but that would also need to be verified. He didn’t want to come out of this with less money than he’d started with, and in order to avoid that, his employer would have to pre-confirm the expenses.
They’d talked about it briefly at the outset, but Drew liked to cover all his bases. He didn’t like loose strings and he didn’t like assumptions, which only got him into trouble. So he always asked his questions more than once and kept all necessary copies.
Still, that was a problem for tomorrow. Now all he wanted to do was curl up in bed with his wife and enjoy a good night’s sleep.
So that is what he did.
And he did enjoy curling up in bed with his wife. He was well into a peaceful night’s sleep when he was suddenly pulled from his dreams by the sound of music.
His brow creased in confusion as Georgia on My Mind floated to his ears accompanied by the sound of voices and clinking dishware. He drew in a deep breath and released it slowly. Perhaps he was still dreaming. He pinched himself for good measure but all he felt was a pain in his arm.
Nope, he was definitely awake, so where the hell was that noise coming from?
He glanced over at Danae who was fast asleep. She usually wasn’t a deep sleeper, but when she knew the kids weren’t home, it would take a marching band to wake her. She never missed an opportunity to sleep deep and sleep long when the kids were away.
He smiled softly down at her. He was glad that she was getting some rest. He knew she needed it and deserved it, but what was that noise and where was it coming from?
He crept out of the bedroom on the second floor and headed towards the stairway. As he approached, the sound of music and conversation increased. He could hear the click of high heels on the floor and the stomp of boots. He could hear bits and pieces of people’s conversations but they made no sense to him out of context.
The music reached a crescendo as he was half way down the stairs, but the minute he reached the main floor, the noise cut off completely. He turned on the lights to the main floor and looked around the open concept design. Nothing and no one was there.
The music wasn’t playing, there were no voices. It looked exactly as he’d left it when they’d headed up to bed.
Drew scratched his head and pondered the situation. Had he actually heard what he’d thought he’d heard? Was he still dreaming?
He pinched his arm again for good measure but the pain was as present as it had been the first time. He was clearly wide-awake, so what was happening in the house?
He went down to the main floor and checked all the exterior doors to ensure that they were locked. He looked in every corner to make sure no one was hiding there. He checked in the cupboards.
When he was satisfied that the house was indeed empty, he let out a sigh. Perhaps the stress from the move was getting to him. Perhaps it was just his mind playing tricks on him because of the new environment. He knew that the mind was capable of many things. His imagination could be working against him and he was willing to accept that.
Just as he had decided it was time to go back to bed, Drew heard the voices again. This time they were coming from upstairs.
His brow creased again in confusion. First he had heard music downstairs and now he was hearing voices upstairs. And they weren’t conversational voices like the ones he’d heard at first. Whoever was now talking, was clearly engaged in an argument.
The voices echoed down the stairwell, raised in anger. The words weren’t exactly clear to him but he could hear the tone of the
conversation clearly. Whoever it was, was not the least bit happy.
Drew moved towards the stairs. He looked up, anticipating someone standing at the top, but there was no one. He took the steps one at a time, but when he reached the second floor, the sound of arguing disappeared.
He looked down the hall, but there was no one there. He looked back down the stairs but there was no one there either. Behind him was just the darkness of the main floor.
He rubbed at his eyes and wondered what could be going on. He would have to put it down to lack of sleep or stress. It had to be his imagination.
With one last glance down the stairs, he returned to the bedroom and crawled into bed with his wife. Danae woke for a moment when he lay down.
“Where’d you go?” she asked, her voice heavy with sleep.
“I thought I heard something.” He gave her a kiss. “I’ll explain in the morning, love.”
“Hmmm,” she mumbled and was instantly back asleep. Drew didn’t take long to follow her there.
Chapter 5
Consulting Professionals
* * *
At breakfast, Drew and Danae settled in the kitchen to eat left over Chinese food. They knew that they would need to buy groceries that day, but it was a good enough breakfast for the moment.
Danae picked at her chow mein, and looked at her husband across the counter. He looked tired. She could tell from his expression that he hadn’t slept well. She worried at her lower lip and picked at her food.
“So what kept you up last night, dear?” She ate a mouthful of food and chewed while he debated his response.
“It’s going to sound silly when I say it out loud,” he mumbled, looking down at counter. “It seems silly in the light of the morning.”
She tilted her head to the side and considered him for a moment. “Since when have you ever hesitated to tell me something silly,” she joked and got a small smile out of him.
“I suppose.” He drew in a deep breath and began. “I was woken by the sounds of Georgia on My Mind coming from downstairs. It sounded like there was quite a party going on downstairs. I heard the music and the voices and the sound of people walking around. So naturally I went down to investigate.”
“And?” Danae continued to eat her food as she listened.
“There was nothing downstairs. The minute I made it to the main floor, all the sounds stopped like it had never happened. I thought I was going crazy until I heard the voices coming from upstairs, like people arguing.” He ran a hand through his hair as his thoughts returned to last night’s encounter.
“So, you went back upstairs?” she inquired.
He nodded. “Seemed the only thing to do. But when I went upstairs I found no one. The arguing stopped and the hall was empty. No one was downstairs and there was no one upstairs. It was the strangest thing.” He paused to reconsider the events. “Perhaps it was just my imagination.”
Danae shrugged. “You do have a pretty good imagination. But I don’t think we can blame it for this.” She chewed on her bottom lip. “Sounds to me like you were experiencing some kind of haunting, like something out of a movie.”
“That’s what I thought.” His eyes were wide as he spoke. “So what the heck do we do about it?”
He looked to her for a solution. He always looked to her for the solution. She often had the answers and he had no clue where to start on this one.
Danae seemed to consider for a moment. She only knew what he’d told her, but she’d had paranormal experiences in the past. Her parents’ house had something off about it for years; when she was a teenager, she’d eventually convinced them to have someone come in to inspect.
“We need to find a spiritualist,” she told Drew as her mind drifted to the one she’d hired to look into her parents’ house. That spiritualist had identified the spirit trapped in their house and she hoped one could do likewise in York.
“A spiritualist? You really think this place is haunted, dear?” the scepticism in his voice was real. He was a practical man who didn’t often drift into the fanciful or the superstitious. But he trusted his wife and if she believed that this was the course to take, then he would go along with it.
“How do we find a spiritualist?” He asked after a moment of contemplation.
Danae gave a slow nod and her eyes were thoughtful, “We find them the same way we find anything else in this day and age. We look on the Internet.”
He chuckled, knowing that she was dead serious. “You can just search spiritualists online?”
“You can search for anything online, dear.” She grinned and went to grab her laptop from the living room. When she re-joined him in the kitchen, he was smiling. “What are you grinning at?”
He shrugged. “This just seems like the most preposterous situation. I mean, I came here to landscape and now we are researching a spiritualist. I’ve clearly stepped into a movie.”
“Oh don’t be so dramatic.” Danae rolled her eyes. “It could just be your imagination, but if the kids are to be here from next week, I want to make sure nothing is amiss in this house. I don’t need two scared kids on my hands as well as a scared husband.”
“Who said I was scared?” He protested and had her laughing. “I was just a little put off.”
“Uh huh,” she rolled her eyes.
Silence fell between them for a moment as she continued her research. Finding a seemingly credible site, she rang the number listed from her cell phone, and waited several moments while the phone rang and was glad when someone finally picked up.
“Spiritualism and Mystic, how may I help you?”
She paused, contemplating how she might begin to explain to the person on the line what had happened. She tried to collect her thoughts and stumbled through an introduction.
“Hello, my name is Danae. I wanted to ask some questions regarding recent encounters in my house.” She rolled her eyes. How had she gone from a confident, competent individual to this person who could barely put a sentence together? She gave her head a shake and tried to pull herself together.
“Well, I’ll do my best to answer your questions, ma’am. It’s sometimes difficult without being in the actual house, but I’ll see what I can do.”
She nodded, even though he couldn’t see the action. “We were woken up last night by the sound of a party inside our house, but naturally, upon investigation no one was there; then there were the sounds of an argument upstairs and again, no one was there.”
“Hmmm, that is quite unusual,” the voice on the phone said. “Did anything in the house move? Were their cold spells? Did the lights flicker at all? Did doors slam?”
Danae covered the mouthpiece on the phone and looked at Drew. “He wants to know if anything particularly ghostly happened aside from the noises.”
Drew shook his head. “Just the noises,” he affirmed.
“Nope, nothing like that. Just the sounds of a party and an argument.” She told him.
“Well then it sounds like you’re experiencing a residual haunting,” he said to her.
Her brows creased in confusion. “And what exactly is that?”
“Sometimes something happens within a home that is so tragic, it leaves an imprint on the space. It is different than the house being haunted by a person. A residual haunting is just the house reliving that moment in time. Spirits are not trapped in your home, but there is a strong emotional energy surrounding whatever happened there. The past event replays in the present so that the present can learn from it.”
She considered what he was saying for a moment. It seemed to make sense, as ridiculous as it all sounded. “But how do we get rid of it?”
“Now see, that part is a little tricky. That really depends on what the past is trying to tell you. It will continue to loop until you learn from it. History will replay until the present knows what happened in the past.” He seemed to consider it for a moment. “You need to learn the story of your home, ma’am. That’s really the best I can offer you.”
She said thank you and hung up the phone, the information she’d been provided sitting fresh in her mind. She tapped her cell phone against her hand and considered what he had said.
Meanwhile, Drew sat anxiously awaiting her answers. He hadn’t heard much of the phone conversation, and now he really wanted to know what had put the contemplative look on her face. He waited a few moments, but when she showed no sign of actually telling him what had happened, he asked.
“So, what’s the verdict?”
His voice jolted her out of her thoughts and she glanced over at him. She had no idea how long she’d been sitting, thinking about what she’d been told, but it had clearly been long enough to get him antsy.
“We are apparently victims of a residual haunting,” she told him. “How much do you know about this place?”
Drew shrugged. “It’s an old abbey. It’s been around for hundreds of years. I’m sure a lot of things have happened here.”
“Be that as it may, something that happened here was intense enough to leave a mark. We need to find out what it was.” She continued to tap her cell phone. “How willing do you think your employer would be to sit down and have a chat?”
He met her gaze and contemplated the question. “I can give him a call and try to set something up. I don’t think it will be any time soon.” He gave a half shrug. “Are we in any danger if it takes a while?”
She mimicked his half shrug. “I don’t think we’ll be sleeping well, but the guy on the phone said there are no ghosts here. This is all just an imprint of the past trying to tell us something.”
“Us or the owners of the house?” He inquired.
“That is a mystery we will have to figure out.”