Ghosts from the Past

by Bonnie Elizabeth

  Schilling Manor had been built in the early days of the nineteenth century, not long after Nova Scotia had gotten settled. It had originally been a two-bedroom house made of wood. The Schillings had done well, working in coal, and it was the discovery of a couple of small mines that had led to their riches. I had read much of that already when I’d researched Audra Schilling.

  The original manor, which was made up of the central wing, was built between 1830 and 1835. The addition of the east wing was done in the 1880s in two sections, which surprised me. The greenhouse wasn’t mentioned, but that could have been built at any time. There were three outbuildings, which housed the staff who didn’t live in the main house. Those had, I supposed, fallen into ruin.

  The Manor itself was unremarkable architecturally. Only its size was of any note. Cape Breton wasn’t known for its mansions and Schilling Manor was that, copied more after the styles of Old English Aristocracy. The Schillings themselves fancied connections to aristocracy at certain points in their history which, no doubt, had led to the Manor.

  Several names that might have been famous in the day, perhaps recognizable to better historians than me, had come to visit at the Manor, both from the United States and England. I found it interesting that few names appeared to be from Scotland, given that Nova Scotia was so heavily settled by Scotsmen.

  I searched out the origins of Schilling and found that it was a German name. I wondered how a German had come to Nova Scotia and why. That took me down another rabbit hole of research, but I found nothing to tell me when the Schillings had come across the Atlantic to land in Canada. Even knowing the approximate date that the first house had been built told me nothing.

  The lights had dimmed a bit while I worked, although I had done nothing to change anything. It was just that shadows near the corners were longer. I tapped my lamps. I even walked across the room and flicked the lights off and turned them back on, but they stubbornly refused to brighten back to what I had remembered.

  The house settled and groaned. Someone flushed a toilet but that familiar sound didn’t settle me at all.

  I went back to the bed and turned down the music on my laptop. It suddenly seemed too loud and I didn’t want to be noticed there in my bed, which was an odd thing to think of.

  The Manor became nearly silent for just a moment. Then, I heard a creak from outside, as if someone were walking down the hallway. More silence, like someone was trying to creep down the hall.

  My heart raced.

  I shivered, feeling suddenly cold. I drew the covers up around me, sliding down into the bed, not sure if I was doing so to warm up or to hide. The smell of dirt and the damp smell I always associated with moldy books hit me, as if someone had opened a door to a room filled with them.

  Nothing in my bedroom had changed.

  The knob of the door turned. It should have been locked but it opened all the same, without a squeak. A man walked in.

  He was dressed oddly, all in black. I didn’t think I recognized him. It was too hard to get a good look at his face to be certain. He walked past me and went to the wardrobe, bending down to look for something. He couldn’t have missed me. Did he not care that he was observed?

  He stood up from the wardrobe and then walked out of the room. He closed the door carefully behind him. The chill in the room lessened, although the smell remained, a lingering sort of thing.

  I slipped out of the bed, going closer to the door. I wasn’t sure what I intended to do. Was I going to look out in the hall to call after him? Call him a thief?

  I glanced down. The door remained locked.

  I froze in place. Had I just seen a ghost?

  He’d looked so real, not at all like they make ghosts look in Hollywood, all gauzy and see-through. The man was as real as I was or anyone else I’d seen around the place.

  I turned and walked back to the wardrobe and looked inside. I squatted down where he’d been. It was difficult to see in the dim light.

  I got up and grabbed the electric lantern which, upon turning it on, threw off a great deal of light, like a beacon.

  I walked with it back to the wardrobe and squatted down to look inside once again. I moved a pair of shoes and a backpack I had brought. I felt along the wood, which was smooth. I knocked here and there against the bottom, listening for any different sounds.

  One place sounded more hollow than the others.

  I started pushing and pulling in that area, trying to see if there was something that would open. I pushed down hard, thinking perhaps it was a spring. I ran my fingers over the wood searching for any sort of indent, like a lever, but nothing. I ran my hands up the wall to see if there was a lever there, but I could find nothing.

  I all but crawled into the space holding the light high to see what I could. There was the slightest difference in the wood in that small area, like someone had replaced it as some point.

  I began to try to slide the wood one way or another. Nothing.

  I kept at it, knowing that something had to work. I was nearly positive there was a hidden compartment there. I just didn’t know how to get to it.

  I was tempted to see if I had something heavy that would work as a hammer to break through the wood, but I wasn’t quite ready to destroy the wardrobe bottom just yet.

  In frustration I must have pushed down at just the correct angle because I felt the board move backwards, just a little. I tried again. It took some doing, but I finally got the little door to open.

  I looked inside. There was an old, perhaps ancient, pressed flower. I avoided touching it, lest it disintegrate. There was also a pile of what appeared to be letters tied with a ribbon that had once been red, but was now a pale pinkish color that I couldn’t imagine anyone choosing.

  I carefully picked out the letters and took them to the bed. The find had so excited me I had forgotten to be frightened. My heart wasn’t racing. Instead, I felt rather giddy, as if I had won a prize. I couldn’t wait to read the letters and perhaps find out who my ghostly visitor had been.

  Chapter 12

  Trying to read the letters kept me up far too late, and when I woke up to the loud buzzing alarm, I noticed that I was curled around them on the bed with all the lights still on. I was rather horrified with myself for treating the old paper that way.

  Fortunately, the paper was probably less than a hundred years old. The scent of rose still wafted faintly from it. My best guess was that they were letters between Audra Schilling and her young man. They weren’t signed, although one person used the initial A. The other used only an XO, which I assumed was for hugs and kisses.

  If Audra’s father hadn’t liked the match, certainly it would have been smart of them to not sign the letters. She could get away with the initial. After all, her father could guess they were from her, or from her mother, but the handwriting was likely to give her away anyway. The young man, though, had far more to lose.

  I’d started deciphering them and found that I was reading backwards in the pile, so I had turned it over and begun to read a second time. I had gotten through only two of the letters in that direction before sleep had claimed me.

  Audra had sent the first letter asking all sorts of questions about the war and hoping that his—whoever he was—health would be okay. Oddly she hadn’t used his name anywhere, though she asked many questions about what might have made him feel better.

  His reply was that he didn’t have the words to describe the horrors of war or his injuries but that he would be willing to discuss things with her in person next time he was at the Manor. He went on to talk about how lucky he felt that he worked in a place where the mistress cared so much about the people who worked for them.

  He didn’t sign his name in his letter either. It made me suspicious, and I wondered if something had gone on between them even before the war. Perhaps there were clues in Audra’s first letter to something that had gone on earlier. After all, the initial correspondence appeared quite innocent to outsider’s eyes, and the only issue
was the lack of the young man’s name.

  Like an old woman, the early morning Manor creaked and groaned. Light came through the split from the curtains that covered the windows. I looked out, pressing my nose against the cool glass. The sky was blue and clear. I doubted there would be fog or rain that day, although being from the south, I knew you could never really be certain when it would rain. The weather could change by afternoon.

  I was nearly dressed when I heard the soft closing of a door not far away. I wondered if it were Nathan or Jonathan who had left. I finished quickly, grabbing my key and my walkie-talkie. Just as I put my hand out to the knob, a door slammed nearby, making me jump.

  I opened my own door and wasn’t surprised to see Rachel hurrying by. She didn’t give me a second glance. I left more slowly, making sure my own door didn’t slam and then locked it.

  I had put the letters in a drawer with my purse so no one would disturb them. I knew I ought to tell Bethany and Nathan about them, but I didn’t want them taken from me before I read them all. I had no idea why. I suppose it was because I had seen a man dressed all in black placing them in the floor of a wardrobe where I’d found them.

  The dining hall smelled of eggs and bacon, and I saw that Pat and Bob had put out warming trays with poached eggs and Canadian bacon. There were English muffins to toast and even a small gravy boat filled with Hollandaise sauce for those who wished it. I put together my Eggs Benedict sans the Hollandaise, which I’ve never liked. I added a couple of slices of the tomatoes that were on a separate plate. I took that back to my place before grabbing my mug for coffee.

  Nathan and Jonathan both greeted me. Rachel ignored me as she came back to the table with her own mug but no food.

  As I sat, she got up and went to the sideboard.

  “How was your night?” Nathan asked.

  “It was fine. I didn’t get as much research done as I’d hoped,” I said. “How about yours?”

  Nathan nodded.

  “I can’t imagine doing research upstairs. I have a computer in the room they gave me as an office and half the time that’s excruciating,” Jonathan said.

  “We’ve done everything we could,” Nathan told him.

  Jonathan waved him off. He had a full plate of eggs and Hollandaise. No tomatoes for him though. “I know. I just don’t have Lara’s patience, I guess.”

  Nathan smiled. “You did when you first got here.”

  Jonathan nodded, thinking about that. How quickly things had changed for him. He seemed very settled in already and still seemed enthusiastic.

  “The power stayed on, which was good,” I said.

  Nathan and Jonathan both chuckled. Rachel came with her plate of food, just an English muffin, tomatoes and some fruit that I’d managed to miss.

  “I hate when they do eggs,” Rachel grumbled.

  “You hate that they won’t let you cook according to your daily diet,” Jonathan said. “It’d be easier if you picked one and stuck to it.”

  Rachel glared at him and dug into the food she had.

  “The day looks like it’ll be pretty,” I said, changing the subject. The eggs were perfectly done, not always easy to achieve with poached.

  “If you get an opportunity, today would be the perfect day to follow the path to the bluff,” Nathan said. “Perhaps when you need a break in the afternoon. It’s not a long walk.”

  Jonathan had a lot to say about the view and the ability of painters to capture it. Rachel was silent.

  I finished my breakfast and settled back with my coffee. I hadn’t slept any more the last night than I had the night before, but I felt more awake. Perhaps because this last night my sleeplessness had been more by choice. That didn’t mean I could keep my eyes open without a good infusion of caffeine.

  “Do they have sodas around for the afternoon?” I asked. “If not, can I ask for some?”

  “Pepsi in the fridge,” Nathan said. “You can just go grab one or ask Pat.”

  If it came in a bottle with a top, I could even feel okay about taking it with me over to the library. That would go a long way to keeping my mind fresh while I worked on the books.

  Jonathan excused himself and went out to make his way to his work area. Rachel got up to get seconds of her breakfast. Nathan was still sipping his coffee. His silence didn’t feel uncomfortable, just the silence of a man who had nothing else to say.

  I finished my coffee before he finished his. I hadn’t brought down my notes from the night before, so after saying goodbye I went back up to my room. I grabbed my notes, noting absently that whoever Maggie had hired to clean hadn’t gotten to my room just yet, not that I was expecting it or complaining. It was merely something I noticed.

  I locked the door behind me, pocketed my key, and considered which way to go. The hallway here had to run into the main hallway in the center wing. I decided to follow the corridor in that direction rather than taking the stairs.

  In the back of my mind, I recalled that Nathan and Maggie had both said it was better to have someone with you when you were walking through the Manor, but surely there were enough people working. I heard distant hammering that sounded like it came from above.

  I passed four more doors on either side of the hallway. The lights became dimmer. I looked back and noticed that the lights were only on to the end of those three doors but the hallway continued on. I continued walking. It wasn’t like I was suddenly going to be lost in the dark.

  The musty smell got stronger. Then I began to smell an old-fashioned floral scent. It reminded me of sachets I had fingered at an antique show. I wondered where it came from as I continued down the hall, which still ran straight, though I didn’t understand how it could be so long. It was darker than ever.

  I kept going. Although I was feeling cooler, I wasn’t freezing as if I had encountered a ghost. The floors looked darker and shinier. I wondered if they’d been refinished already.

  The wallpaper also seemed to have more color. There were red roses and sprigs of lavender and rosemary on the paper that ran above the chair rail. I paused, pressing my nose closer to the paper, looking for a scent of fresh glue, but there was nothing. Perhaps this part of the hallway was always in shadow so the paper hadn’t had a chance to fade.

  There was still no turn and I started to feel uncomfortable. There was something wrong.

  I heard a bell ring in the distance, like an old-fashioned dinner bell. I turned back the way I had come. The hallway seemed to stretch into infinity. I had had nightmares of this sort when I was going through school. Hallways that never ended or running towards something only to have it move ever further away. Had I fallen asleep in my room and I was dreaming?

  I walked quickly back the way I had come, wondering what was going on.

  “Don’t do it, Miss,” a woman’s voice said behind a door that I noticed was slightly ajar. There was even a trace of light coming out.

  I wondered if she was talking to me. I paused, not going any closer.

  “Don’t be silly, Marybeth. It’s just a letter.”

  “Your father…” The speaker, who had to be Marybeth, trailed off.

  I sucked in a breath. Was I hearing ghosts now? I crept closer to the door, wanting to look in, afraid of what I might see.

  When I peeked in, the room was empty. I stepped back.

  The floral scent was gone. I was left with the chemical smell that held a trace of lavender.

  The floor creaked. I jumped and turned.

  Nathan was standing in the hallway.

  “Were you looking for me?” he asked.

  “What?” I turned and glanced around. I was standing outside the room I had been assigned, facing the door to Nathan’s room. If he’d come up a bit earlier, he might have seen me trying to peer through a crack into his room, although, now that I looked, the door was shut tightly.

  “I think I may have had a moment where the Manor seemed to turn me around,” I said shakily.

  Nathan nodded but looked at me strangel
y. He paused to let me step away from his door and go to his room.

  I was still shaking my head.

  “Do you need to lie down?” he asked. The strange look had been replaced by one of concern.

  “I think I’m fine,” I said. “Thank you. I’ll just go to the library by way of the stairs.”

  Nathan nodded. “This corridor doesn’t link up with the main corridor in the Center Wing. There’s an upstairs drawing room that separates the two wings, so you have to go downstairs and around or up to the third floor, but there’s so much construction up there, I’d recommend down.”

  “It is a strange house,” I said.

  “Poorly planned, I’d say.” Nathan laughed. “I hope if I ever get rich enough to build a mansion I have the sense to design it a little better.”

  I smiled and turned to leave. I wanted to be alone even if I didn’t really want to be alone. What I really wanted was to call Tessie and leave the Manor. A hotel room in Halifax sounded great. I wasn’t sure Sydney would be far enough way. The problem was if I left, I might not ever come back.

  The stairs down to the kitchen were normal. The dining hall was normal. Rachel was still there eating. I exited the far door and walked down that corridor to the library. The lighting stayed the same, the floors creaked in a normal and consistent fashion compared to yesterday. No strange voices accosted me. No strange moments of cold.

  I breathed in and tried to calm my heart rate. Unfortunately, neither my heart nor my mind had any intention of being calmed. There was too much to take in.

  The lights were burning in the library when I got there. I immediately went to the computer and sat down. I had my pile of books which I needed to finish. I’d work until I got through the section I’d begun and then do some research online.

  It was easy to get lost in the work. I love books, all books. And these were just modern enough that I began to recognize authors. There was work by Dostoyevsky and Thomas Hardy. Neither was in particularly good condition, but they were both likely be worth something. I’d need to research a little more.