I Confess

by Alex Barclay

  ‘Daddy, I bought the manor! I changed the finials! They’re matching, Daddy! They’re like me and you!’

  She drove towards the inn, picturing it through the eyes of her friends as they arrived for dinner later. It would be dark by then, and they would love the warm glow from the lights at the foot of the trees, and how the leaves made a canopy that softened the straight line of the drive. Everything had changed so much since they had all known it; she had made sure of that, because it had to change. She had walked the rooms and hallways on the day of the viewing, transforming them in her mind’s eye in a way that felt magical. It was as if, with a flick of her wrist, she was plucking paintings from the walls, whipping tiles off the floors, rolling up carpets and then, with a sweep of her arm, replacing them with her vision of the future.

  She wished she could be with her friends as they saw its newest incarnation. They would feel differently about it now – it was beautiful.

  Edie’s breath caught, and her hand went to her chest. She glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw, reflected back at her, the upward-tilted chin of her mother and the fastened joy in her eyes – the look that reminded Edie of things on shelves that, if you break them, you have to pay.

  She felt a stab of anger at her blind faith in Johnny in the day of the viewing that, if he could see beyond the dark history of Pilgrim Point, then she could too. Johnny, who didn’t believe in dwelling on the past, yet, she now realized, still saw them the way the outside world saw them when they first met – she the beautiful, privileged daughter of a wealthy English businessman and his devoted homemaker wife; Johnny, the handsome privileged son of the local doctor.

  It didn’t matter how absent Edie’s father was nor that his adoration appeared like seasonal blooms in a vast lonely landscape. It didn’t matter how remote Johnny’s father was or how desperately lonely his mother was, or that she had moulded her son into as close as he could be to the husband she really wanted, watching as her efforts were chipped away at by the husband she actually had. They saw what they wanted to see. And Johnny believed them.

  As she came to the end of the drive, Edie caught sight of Johnny, standing in the conservatory with Terry Hyland, the contractor. Terry was a short, springy, gnarly-faced, man – the same age as Johnny, but looked a decade older. Johnny, at six foot two, towered over him, clearly questioning something, clearly unhappy about it, which was his default setting when it came to Terry. Terry had his arms folded as Johnny spoke, then would unfold them and stab a finger at the ground when he was responding to him. They glanced up, and pretended that they hadn’t seen her. She guessed it was because they were both on a roll, and that if they could see her, that meant she could see them, which meant she might intervene.

  She had no intention of intervening – there was too much to do before everyone arrived. The inn was closed for the season, and she hadn’t brought any staff in for the night – she wanted to do everything herself, and to keep their evening with friends a private one. Her parents’ dinner parties had been like that – hushed and behind closed doors … until they got rowdy and spilled out into rooms or hallways close enough that Edie could wake to the sound of their voices or the smell of their cigarettes.

  She used to watch her mother prepare the house for guests, and she would always be given a job that, each time, she would carry out as if she didn’t know that at least some part of it would be taken away from her or redone. The older she got, the less it happened, and, by the time her mother sent her out in to the world, she was proud to. When Edie was asked in therapy to think of something she might thank her mother for, that was it.

  When she was fifteen, Edie had sat with her father at the table by the rocky shore at the end of their garden and told him that she hated her mother. He raised an eyebrow, but let her talk.

  ‘You don’t know what it’s like when you’re not here, Daddy. She’s so strict. She has to control everything – what I eat, what I wear, who my friends are, what we do. She likes Helen. And she likes Jessie, but she never lets me go to her house. She hates Laura because she thinks she’s “unrefined”. And she thinks Murph’s a … what’s that word?’

  ‘Boor!’ said her father, laughing. ‘I like Murph! He’s a fun fellow, isn’t he? A bit rough around the edges, like all the best people.’

  ‘Yes!’ said Edie. ‘And his father is the sweetest, gentlest man.’ She paused. ‘What, Daddy?’

  Her father frowned. ‘Nothing. He is, he is. He’s the stone chap, isn’t he? Built those marvellous stone walls.’

  ‘Daddy, you used to go fishing with him,’ said Edie. ‘Jerry Murphy.’

  ‘Ah, Jerry Murphy,’ said her father. ‘Of course, of course. It’s been a while.’

  ‘All he does is sit in the house and read about history now,’ said Edie. ‘But he drinks a lot, so Mummy doesn’t like that.’

  Her father’s gaze drifted out over the water. ‘But he’s a heartbroken man, isn’t he?’ he said. ‘Lost his wife, lost his job.’ He let out a breath. ‘We’d give the man a pass for that, surely.’

  It was the first time her father had crossed the united front he and her mother usually presented.

  ‘Oh, Mummy does like Clare,’ said Edie, ‘but I think that’s only because she’s rich too.’

  Her father leaned back from Edie a fraction and that one small move made Edie’s stomach flip and the blood rush to her cheeks. She had never felt ashamed in his presence before.

  ‘I’m sure your mother and I have both failed you along the way,’ said her father, skipping past it, ‘and I’m sorry that we did. But my advice to you is this – think of the past as a great big sea. It has delicious things we can feast on, a pearl here or there if we’re lucky. There are other things that are best left there, though. And conditions are not always favourable – unseen currents, waves waiting to crash. It’s best to take a quick dip, never wallow there, and certainly don’t drown.’ And he had smiled.

  Her father was a prescient man. Edie still dived into that childhood sea, and fed on those creatures until she was sick. She had wallowed in the waters, crying into them, stirring up waves. There had been times when she hoped they would drown her.

  Edie looked up at the walls of the inn. The rain on the granite had always looked to her like an oily film that could fall away from it in a single sheet. She had woken that morning, heaving and sweating, having dreamt that it had, and that she had watched, helpless, as it slid to the ground and rippled across the gravel towards her, and that she had stood, rooted, as it wrapped around her like a cocoon, and that she hadn’t made a sound, even when it started to tighten around her neck. When she woke, she felt that she hadn’t shaken it – not that she was bound by it, but that it hung over her like a threat. Daddy, what was I thinking?

  Tonight, she and Johnny would be welcoming five of her closest childhood friends – Murph and Helen and Clare and Laura and Patrick. She waited for the joy to fill her heart. Instead, a thought came in to sink it: Five friends. No sixth – no Jessie.

  All she could think of then was: I am the Ghost of the Manor.

  3

  EDIE

  The Sisters of Good Grace Convent, Pilgrim Point

  31 October 1988

  Murph, Helen, Edie, Laura, and Clare were gathered at midnight by the chapel gate.

  ‘Happy Hallowe’en!’ said Murph.

  ‘Where’s your mask?’ said Clare. ‘You were the one obsessed with us wearing masks.’

  ‘The elastic broke,’ said Murph.

  ‘The size of the head on him,’ said Laura. ‘As if they wouldn’t know you if they looked out. Consolata up there closing her curtains: “Surely, that’s not that six-foot-four Liam Murphy goon running across my lawn. If only I could see behind that tiny plastic circle on his face – then I’d definitely know.”

  ‘Have you seen the selection down in the shop?’ said Murph.

  ‘I think we have,’ said Clare, looking around. They were all holding green Frankenstein masks.

>   ‘Monsters, the lot of us,’ said Murph. ‘Is there no sign of Jessie?’

  ‘I wouldn’t hold out much hope,’ said Laura. ‘She was down town earlier, pasted.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Helen. ‘On her own?’

  Laura nodded. ‘Apparently, Consolata was at her again, the silly bitch.’

  ‘All the more reason for her to come,’ said Murph.

  ‘I told Jessie I’d meet her,’ said Helen. ‘I don’t know why she couldn’t have walked up with the rest of us.’

  ‘Leave her off,’ said Laura.

  ‘She needs to ease up a bit,’ said Helen.

  Murph nodded. ‘She needs to get a grip … on these.’ He held up a bag of cans.

  They all laughed, but Edie knew they were all thinking the same thing – Jessie shouldn’t be drinking, not as much as she did, not on her own, not at sixteen, not after everything she had been through.

  Murph looked up the road. ‘Here she is now. A dog to a bone.’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Clare, turning to Laura. ‘You were right.’

  Jessie waved with a can of cider as she swayed towards them, a white plastic Hallowe’en mask pushed up on top of her head.

  ‘She shouldn’t be climbing a wall in that state,’ said Helen.

  ‘Laura can heave her up one side,’ said Murph, ‘and I’ll catch her on the other.’

  They all put their masks on.

  ‘Frankenfuckinglosers,’ said Jessie, spreading her arms wide. She pulled her mask down. ‘Boo!’ She stopped like a soldier in front of them. ‘But what’s even scarier is I’m out of cider.’

  They climbed over the stone wall, and ran alongside it, then slipped through the trees, and came out by three flat-roofed buildings that were derelict now, but were once part of the industrial school run by the nuns in the sixties and seventies. Murph stopped at the long, narrow dormitory block, crouched down by the door, and pulled out a key from under a rock next to it. He stood up and flashed a smile at the others, then unlocked the door. They followed him into the pitch-black hallway. Clare closed the door behind her.

  ‘Ladies,’ said Murph, turning on a torch, ‘this way.’ He kept the beam low as he shone it on the door to the left. He pushed it open, then stood with one foot over the threshold. ‘The living quarters of whoever had to prowl the dorm at night,’ he said.

  They others took a look inside. It was a make-shift storage room now, with a timber countertop that ran along three walls and was covered with broken electrical equipment, cardboard boxes, crates of empty bottles, containers, and paint cans. There were more stored under the counter, along with rolled-up carpets and paint-spattered sheets.

  ‘Now,’ said Murph, ‘can I ask you all to adjourn to the hallway for five minutes?’ He looked at them solemnly. ‘I need to prepare the room.’

  When they came back in, there was a picnic blanket spread out on the concrete floor, with church candles on two sides, and three more on the counter above. Everybody sat down.

  ‘Right,’ said Murph. ‘Gather round.’

  ‘Story time!’ said Jessie, leaning sideways, steadying herself with her hand.

  ‘Take the candle away from her,’ said Laura.

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Jessie. ‘Relax.’

  Murph pulled it towards him when Jessie wasn’t looking.

  ‘Right,’ he said, leaning in. He lowered his voice. ‘It was a bright sunny day—’

  ‘I thought this was a ghost story,’ said Laura.

  ‘I’m going for “contrast”,’ said Murph.

  ‘And bad things still happen on sunny days,’ said Jessie. She knocked back a mouthful of cider.

  Everyone exchanged glances.

  ‘Relax,’ said Jessie, lowering her can. ‘I’m just wrecking you. You can hardly never mention sunny days again for the rest of your lives because of me!’

  Murph let out a breath. ‘OK … I’m going traditional: it was a wild night in Beara – raging storm, high seas, trees toppling, roads cut off. Five girls: HELEN, CLARE, EDIE, JESSIE, AND LAURA—’

  ‘Noo!’ said Edie. ‘Not our real names! You’ll jinx us.’

  Laura rolled her eyes. ‘Fuck’s sake.’

  ‘Leave her alone,’ said Helen.

  ‘And I want to star in this, if you don’t mind,’ said Clare.

  ‘Me too!’ said Jessie.

  ‘Fine, then,’ said Edie.

  ‘Five girls,’ said Murph. ‘HELEN, CLARE, JESSIE, LAURA, and BABY EDIE … were driving out of town when, right in front of them, a towering oak fell from the skies and landed inches from their car. Laura tried to reverse, but behind them the hedge over the ditch split wide open and a river of mud and branches and stones poured through it, filling the road. The girls were trapped! What were they going to do? They were exhausted and so far from home. Then lightning struck, and pointed, like the needle of a compass, to … Rathbrook Manor – no more than a mile from where they sat.

  ‘“Why don’t we stay there for the night?” said Laura. “There may be a boy inside that I haven’t kissed yet!”

  ‘“Nonsense!” said Clare. “There’s not a single boy in Beara that girl hasn’t kissed!”

  ‘“Yes – let’s stay at the manor!” said Jessie, cracking open her fifth can of cider, looking up at the spires of the manor, which were a total blur, and, in fact, a tree.

  ‘“No!” screamed Edie, screaming hysterically. “I’ll scream if you make me stay there!” she screamed. Hysterically.

  ‘“Don’t tell me you believe in the Ghost of the Manor!” said Laura.

  ‘“Of course I don’t believe in ghosts!” said Edie. ‘It’s just … I have nothing with me! How can I possibly wear the same outfit two days in a row?”

  ‘The girls agreed that the manor was NOT haunted and so they decided to stay there, and they set off to walk the mile to the door. When they arrived, the manor was all locked up and in total darkness. Edie screamed. Laura punched her in the face and they walked on through the grounds until they stumbled across a dormitory. They peered in the window and saw row after row of iron beds, all of them empty. As they approached the door, it creaked open, and they all walked in. They each took a bed, side by side, and after hours talking about some ride they knew called Murph, they finally drifted off to sleep.

  ‘In the middle of the night, Laura woke with a start to find herself staring silently at a ghost standing three feet from the end of her bed. Beside her, Helen woke with a start to find herself staring silently at a ghost that stood three feet from the end of her bed. The same happened to Clare, and then to Jessie. The last bed in the line was Edie’s. When she woke to find a ghost standing three feet from the end of her bed, she was instantly hysterical, and she screamed at the ghost: “Who are you?”

  ‘And the ghost replied: “I am the Ghost of the Manor. And I am yours.”

  ‘Edie turned slowly to her left, and realized that each friend had a different ghost at the end of her bed.

  ‘As each girl stared at the ghost before her, all five ghosts stepped forward into the silvery moonlight that slanted across the ends of the beds like the blade of a knife. Each ghost had died a different way: Laura’s was bruised and broken, its eyeballs dangling from their sockets; Helen’s was covered in tyre tracks, its limbs at odd angles; Clare’s had half its head missing; Jessie’s was pristine; and Edie’s was covered in burns.

  ‘The friends’ mouths opened wider than a mouth naturally should, and their screams emerged as though ripped by the claws of a bear from the centre of their soul. But the source of their terror was not simply the apparitions that stood before them, nor the horror of their wounds. It was because each girl’s ghost looked exactly like her, just … older – maybe ten years, maybe thirty, maybe fifty. But the likeness was unmistakable!

  ‘Across this group of friends rippled the same realization: they had been RIGHT: the manor was NOT haunted. And this would be proven when, after they left, wherever they went, their ghost would reappear … some would say “without
warning”. But, of course, each ghost DID carry a warning, a GRAVE warning. For it was not the Ghost of the MANOR. It was the Ghost … of the … MANNER … of DEATH.

  ‘And on that first night, as the friends were faced with the terrifying spectacle of the death that would befall them at some point thereafter, they were all struck by one thing: EDIE’S ghost, despite the burns that marked it, looked … the YOUNGEST.’

  Everyone gasped, then gasped again as smoke started to rise around Murph.

  Edie pointed. ‘Oh my God – smoke!’

  Murph was unperturbed. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m serious!’ said Edie. ‘There’s actual smoke!’

  ‘Where?’ said Murph.

  ‘All around you!’ said Edie.

  ‘There is!’ said Laura.

  Murph turned and looked. ‘Oh Jesus, lads. I was warned! If you tell this story on Hallowe’en night, it’ll come true.’

  ‘What?’ said Edie, getting to her feet. ‘Why did you tell it? What do you mean, it’ll come true?’

  ‘Unless,’ said Murph, ‘we all say “Sister Cuntsolata” three times backwards.’

  Everyone looked at him.

  Murph burst out laughing. ‘It’s a smoke bomb. Special effects, lads. Special effects.’

  ‘You prick!’ said Laura. ‘Where did you get your hands on a smoke bomb?’

  ‘I made it!’ said Murph. ‘A bit of this, a bit of that.’

  Jessie reached into Laura’s bag for another can. She turned to Murph. ‘Can I still say Sister Cuntsolata three times?’

  ‘You can, of course,’ said Murph. A rush of white smoke appeared behind him.

  ‘Right!’ said Clare. ‘Open the door, someone. I’ve seen my cousins with these – there’s a reason you’re only meant to use them outside.’

  ‘Jesus – I know,’ said Murph. ‘Relax. It was only for a minute. Then I was going to fuck it out across the grass. I even have my protective glove lined up.’