by Amy Cross
I lean down and tilt my head slightly, until I can read the three words on the piece of paper.
“Leave this house,” I whisper.
I pause, wondering whether I've mis-read. After all, the writing isn't exactly easy to decipher, but after a moment it becomes clear that I was right the first time.
“Leave this house.”
The note has its lower edge closest to the window, almost as if it was designed to be read from outside.
Reaching down, I take hold of the edge and start to gently lift the note off the desk. As I do so, however, I notice that although there's lots of dust on the note itself, the dust around it seems to have been disturbed fairly recently, almost as if the note was at some point turned around so that it faced the window.
I turn the note over and check that nothing is written on the other side. Clearly it was left behind by someone who came here long ago, and it should be possible to get it dated pretty accurately once we're back at the lab. Now that I'm holding the note and can feel it's texture, I can tell that it's clearly written not on paper but on traditional calf skin vellum, which means it's most likely at least a century old. I know someone back at the university who could probably date this to a specific period and manufacturer, so I guess I should take it with me, but I can't help wondering who it was originally designed to warn, and how it ended up here on this desk.
Glancing out the window, I try to imagine my face staring in last night. After a moment, however, I spot something in the distance, and I realize that there's a rectangular arrangement of old bricks nestled in the grass. With a shudder, I remember one of the darker details that I once read about Blackwych Grange.
About the people who called this place home. And about a woman who died here.
Chapter Seven
“Here lies Elizabeth Jane Marringham,” Helen reads out loud as we stand in the still-damp grass, staring down at the cracked and fallen grave-stone. “1821 to 1853.”
A biting wind is blowing in from the moor as I crouch down to take a closer look at the moss-covered stone. Tucking some stray strands of hair behind my right ear, I squint a little as I try to make out the rest of the words, but after a moment I have to reach closer and scrape away the moss.
“In God reside,” I read, “that God might reside in thee.”
“It's kind of pathetic, if you think about it,” Helen mutters. “Living out here, thinking that some fictional father figure is going to watch over you and make sure you're okay. Religion has always been the last refuge of scoundrels.”
I scrape more moss away.
“Sorry,” she continues, “I forgot to check, you're not one of those God-fearing fools, are you?”
“I don't know,” I whisper.
“I'm sorry?”
I turn and look up at her, and I can see the surprise in her eyes as she stares down at me.
“I never really...”
I pause, trying to work out how to explain.
“I never really decided...”
“You don't know whether you believe in God?” She rolls her eyes. “Well that's a first. Most people at least have an opinion, even if they're demonstrably wrong.”
“Not really,” I reply. “I think a lot of people are like me.”
She steps around the grave, as if she wants to see it from another angle.
“I'll give you a hint,” she says with the weary tone of someone explaining things to a child. “The correct answer is that, no, you don't need some kind of spiritual crutch. We're all alone down here, and anyone who thinks otherwise is just suffering from a bad case of delusion. We're all alone out here, too, and in the house. Just the four of us. No ghosts or spooks or poltergeists. Just us.”
I use my thumb to chip away a little more of the moss that has grown in the stone's letters.
“Of course, even the gravestone tells a whopping great lie,” Helen continues. “Here doesn't lie Elizabeth Jane Marringham would be more appropriate.”
I look up at her. “What do you mean?”
“You don't know about that? I thought you'd studied the house extensively.”
“I focused on the period when it was built. I didn't read much about the people who lived here.”
“More interested in the house than its people?”
“No, I just... I had to start somewhere.”
“Figures.” She smiles. “The story goes that about ten years after Elizabeth Marringham died, this grave was dug up so that it could be moved. And when they got all the way down there, they found a rotten, partially collapsed coffin. And when they pulled the lid off the coffin, they found that it was empty.”
“So where was the body?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Everyone swore that she'd been in there when the damn thing was lowered into the ground, and no-one could explain where she'd gone. Obviously someone was lying, but anyway, pretty soon the inhabitants of the house were starting to report strange bumps in the night, creaking doors, all the usual cliched ghost bullshit. After that, it didn't take long before a fully-fledged legend started to emerge concerning the house and its mysterious paranormal occupant. People even claimed to see Elizabeth wandering the corridors, and over the years the story evolved until you ended up with the tale of black-eyed woman.”
She turns and looks back toward the house.
“There's no limit to the extent of human superstition,” she mutters finally. “Or human stupidity.”
“But the body was never found?” I ask.
“Maybe she's haunting the house, tormented for eternity until her mortal remains are given a good Christian burial,” Helen suggests, although it's clear that she's extremely skeptical. “Or not. Maybe it's all just bullshit. That's a useful lesson for you, Paula. If something sounds like bullshit and smells like bullshit, the answer's pretty clear.” She watches the grave for a moment longer. “If you ask me, Matthew Marringham knew more than he left on. He was the son of the great Sir John. It's said he fled the house in fear, refusing to return for several years until finally he came back to claim his inheritance.”
“The body had to have gone somewhere,” I point out, getting to my feet again. “There's a church in the village. Why wouldn't Elizabeth have been buried there, like everyone else?”
“Because she was supposed to have been a naughty girl,” Helen replies with a faint smile, “and back then, naughty girls weren't allowed to rest in hallowed ground. So she was most likely denied a place in the cemetery as a kind of punishment, with the idea being that her soul would be left to suffer for eternity.” She looks down at the grave for a moment. “That's what they did back then to girls who got pregnant out of wedlock, especially when the father was rumored to be the local priest.”
***
“It's certainly vellum,” Toby mutters a short while later, as he examines the note I found earlier. “Most likely written by a woman, too.”
I frown. “How can you tell?”
He turns the note toward the window, as if he needs a little more light. The sky outside is already darkening, as the first touches of night begin to draw in and shade the house. I keep telling myself that I don't care about darkness falling, that I'm completely rational about the whole thing, but every few minutes I catch myself glancing at the window again and feeling another stir of discomfort. I hope Helen knows how to keep the lights running all night, and I hope she has back-ups for the back-ups.
“The slope of the handwriting is a dead giveaway,” Toby mutters, squinting as he peers more closely at the note. “The curves are distinctly feminine, as are the loops. This was written by someone who'd been educated, someone who'd been trained to act as a lady. I'm going to guess that whoever wrote this note, they were born in the late eighteenth century or the first half of the nineteenth.”
“You can tell all that from from the handwriting?”
“And from the color of the ink. I studied graphology in my spare time when I was a student. See? I can be useful sometimes.”
He t
ilts the note again, and this time I see that the black ink in fact has traces of a dark plum color.
“You don't think women were allowed to write in black ink, do you?” he continues. “God forbid! In some of the stricter, more traditional households, women were always to use ink with a purplish hue. Partly because black ink was reserved for the serious business of men, and partly so that no woman could ever write a letter and pretend that it came from the mighty desk of a man.” His smile grows. “They were quite particular about that sort of thing in some parts of the country. Not everywhere, not usually in London or the other cities, but out in the provinces there were some weird people with weird ideas.”
I take the note back from him and look at it for a moment.
“And now you're wondering why it was left on that desk?” he asks.
“I haven't seen any other notes in the house.”
“Maybe the ghost of Blackwych Grange is trying to warn you, Paula,” he continues. “Maybe it's time to reconsider your plan to stay tonight. How about you and I head back to the village and see about finding rooms at the pub? It's getting dark now, in another couple of hours it'll officially be night and then...”
His voice trails off.
“And then what?” I ask.
“Well do you fancy spending the night here?”
“That's what we -”
“I know it's what we agreed,” he continues, interrupting me and lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I know it's what we signed up for, but hell... The place isn't exactly welcoming, is it? I told Mac, I said to him, we could stay in the village and just come out during the day, but he insisted that we have to camp out here like a bunch of feckless idiots. I get it, he's trying to do exactly what Doctor Pullman did a few years ago, but I was thinking that maybe the rest of us could leave him to it and stay in the village instead.”
He pauses, clearly waiting for an answer.
“What do you say, Paula?” he adds finally. “Doesn't that sound like a better idea? Let's blow this joint and spend the evening at the local pub.”
I open my mouth to tell him that we have to stay, but for a moment the idea of leaving for the night is actually tempting. In fact, I think maybe we -
“Did someone take my folder?” Helen asks suddenly, appearing in the doorway.
We both turn to her.
“The folder with my calibration notes for the equipment,” she continues, and it's obvious that she's annoyed. “It was on top of the red-hinged toolbox all day, and now it's gone. I need my notes, or it's going to take me hours to get everything set up.”
“I haven't touched your bloody folder,” Toby tells her. “Are you sure you didn't leave it in the van?”
She scowls at him.
“Then the ghost moved it,” he continues. “Obvious answer. The ghost of that black-eyed lady, Elizabeth Marringham, has nothing better to do with her time than piss around with your folder. Seems like an entirely rational thing for a ghost to be doing, huh?” He turns to me with a grin. “Am I right or am I right?”
“If I don't find it,” she replies, “I'll have to re-calibrate every monitor manually to make sure they're aligned with the cameras. It'll take a long time. Plus one of the cameras is on the blink. No-one dropped anything on the way in, did they?”
“I can help you look,” I tell her, stepping past Toby.
“Just make sure the lights are up and running,” he mutters. “That's the most important thing. If we're gonna spend the night here, we at least need some bloody lights.”
“He's driving me nuts,” Helen says under her breath as we head through to the drawing room. “I can't stand people who don't know when and how to shut the hell up. And as for his so-called attempts at humor...”
“Wait,” I reply, glancing over my shoulder and seeing that Toby is heading the other way, through to the old library, “we shouldn't leave him alone.”
“He'll be fine.”
“But Mac said -”
“Mac said no-one should be left alone,” she continues with a sigh, “and then he went off upstairs by himself. So I think it's probably okay.”
When we reach the hallway, there's still no sign of Mac, who has now been upstairs for a couple of hours. We've heard a few creaks from up there, and footsteps once or twice, so at least we know that he's still around, but it's a little odd to think that he's been all alone as he goes from room to room. I didn't see him taking any equipment when he went up, although he had Josephine Pullman's yellow notebook. Whatever he's doing up there, he seems to be keeping himself very busy.
“The folder definitely isn't here,” Helen mutters, and I can hear the irritation in her voice. “Somebody took it.”
“Maybe you just misplaced it,” I suggest.
“I don't misplace things. I'm not an idiot.”
Turning, I see that later afternoon light is streaming through the windows, casting longer and longer shadows across the floorboards. Night is coming.
“It has to show up,” I tell her. “It probably just got moved by accident.”
“This equipment is mine,” she continues, taking a step back. “Right from the start, I made it very clear that I'm the only person who touches any of it. Unless I give very specific instructions, the rest of you are supposed to leave it all alone. How the hell am I supposed to work in these conditions?”
“We've only been in a few rooms so far,” I point out. “There really aren't that many places it could have gone.”
She sighs.
“We'll split up,” she says after a moment. “I'll go through to the library and the rear of the house, and you look in the drawing room and other part that leads around to the old kitchen. If we just work methodically, we're bound to find the folder.”
I feel a shiver of concern. “But -”
“Please, Paula,” she continues, “do not remind me that Mac told us to stick together. I really, really do not need to hear that right now!”
I open my mouth to tell her that we wouldn't lose much time if we checked the rooms as a team, but it's pretty clear that she's furious at the moment.
“Just find my goddamn folder,” she snaps. “Jesus Christ, there's a time and a place for bullshit superstition...”
Turning and heading to the door, she's already muttering something under her breath, and I think it's fair to assume that she's not exactly in a good mood. I think I hear the words “disrespect” and “amateurs”, and she's still grumbling to herself as she heads off into the next room.
Suddenly I realize that despite Mac's warning, all four of us are now alone in different parts of the house. Still, I guess there's nothing I can do about the situation, even if I feel a little wary, so I wander through to the drawing room and try to track down this elusive and oh-so-important red folder. There aren't that many places it could have been left, so I figure the search won't take too long, but once I've checked the drawing room I head through to the old study, where once again plenty of old books and other documents were left behind by the last people who lived in the house.
And then, just as I'm about to go to the next room, I spot a familiar yellow notebook on the floor near one of the bricked-up windows.
***
“The process of setting up the equipment has been painstakingly slow,” I read from the notebook a few minutes later, while sitting on a chair behind a large oak desk. “Maybe I'm too busy worrying about the project as a whole. I should have brought a more able technician, someone who could do this work for me.”
Pausing, I look once again at the front of the notebook. Although it seems like the same book Mac has been carrying about, I can tell now that it's subtly different. Still, it's definitely a record of Doctor Pullman's work here at the house, and I can only assume that she left this volume behind. If that's the case, I guess even Mac hasn't read these notes yet.
“I've already lost a couple of items,” I read after turning to the next page. “Just small things, here and there. Each on their own could
be an accident, but together they amount to a pattern. I suppose it's possible that I'm rather distracted, but I can't help wondering if some light-fingered spirit is trying to cause me problems. I've told the rest of my team to double-check everything they do, and I've also had to remind them that under no circumstances should any of them go off alone in the house, even for a few minutes. That's the number one rule, the only rule that must absolutely never be broken. I think they understand now, after some early resistance. It's for their own safety.”
Looking across the room, I realize that the house seems completely quiet now. I can't hear any of the others, although I know they're about somewhere. A moment later, however, there's a faint bumping sound in the distance, and I feel a faint flash of relief.
“We spent last night outside the building,” the notebook continues, “so tonight will be out first night spent in the house itself. And then -”
I turn to the next page, only to find that the rest of the notebook is stained brown. The paper is slightly warped as well, and when I sniff the pages I realize that there's a faint smell of coffee. There are no more notes, and most of the rest of the book is stuck together, so I figure that Doctor Pullman spilled coffee and ended up abandoning this notebook and moving onto another. It must be the other book that Mac, the later volume, that Mac has now, although I suppose he'd probably like to read this one as well.
Getting to my feet, I'm about to walk away from the desk when I spot a set of scratches on the side. Taking a closer look, I realize that the scratches are in the shape of letters. I crouch down, but I have to wipe some dust away before I'm about to read the three words.
“Leave this house,” I whisper.
I stay completely still for a moment, staring at the words.
“Leave this house.”
Getting to my feet, I tell myself to stop letting my imagination run wild.
“At least the place is consistent,” I mutter, before turning and heading over to the door on the far side of the room. I can't help glancing over my shoulder, however, and wondering who sat at that desk and carved those letters into its surface.