The Folcroft Ghosts

by Coates, Darcy

  Tara stopped scrolling. The car site had been visited ten days before, just a couple of days prior to their mother’s accident. The user had reached it by searching “how car brake lines work.”

  “Tara Kendall?”

  She looked between the two police officers as fear made her stomach flip. “What happened?”

  “There’s been an accident,” the taller one said.

  The officer with the curly red hair and the too-bright teeth reached out to touch Tara’s shoulder. She was speaking, but the words sounded jumbled. Accident. Car’s brakes failed. In the hospital.

  Tara tasted a bitter, metallic liquid, telling her she’d bitten her lip too hard. A ringing noise filled her ears. She turned towards the shelves where Kyle sifted through the volumes. She opened her mouth to call him but then closed it again.

  Don’t get carried away. What did you tell Kyle last night? A series of coincidences can make a person paranoid.

  She looked back at the search results. “How car brake lines work.” She scrolled back up to the top of the list. The search result from the day before read “how payphones work.” The barber said the phones had broken that morning. Tara had watched Peter’s car pull into their property that morning. She’d assumed he’d been clearing the driveway, but he would have had plenty of time to take a trip into town before the stores opened.

  Tara stood. Dizziness made her stumble, and she grabbed at the computer’s desk. She closed her eyes while the sensation passed, then she turned towards the library’s door. Neither Kyle nor the librarian paid any attention as she left.

  16

  Bread and Myths

  She hesitated on the sidewalk and blinked against the sun. The morning felt calm, and she was alone on the street, save for an elderly lady coming out of the drugstore and a car coasting down the street. The greengrocer’s was to her left. She turned in the opposite direction. It didn’t take long to find the bakery’s sign swinging from its awning.

  The door’s bell jingled as she entered. The store’s small café portion took up the front of the store, and a display case of decorated cakes and fresh bread stretched down one wall. The cafe was empty. Pattie, the lady who’d interrupted Tara’s blogging, leaned on the counter as she chatted with a younger assistant. Pattie looked towards the door, and her eyebrows rose as she saw Tara. She said something to the assistant then came around the counter. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here. Everything okay?”

  “Sure,” Tara lied. She rubbed a hand over the back of her neck. “Um, do you have a moment to talk?”

  Pattie smiled, but the expression held a grim undertone. “Definitely. Do you want something? A drink? Cake?”

  “Water would be great. I don’t have long.”

  Pattie nodded to an empty table then disappeared into the back of the store. She came back with two cups of water and a plate of biscuits and set them on the table as she sat. “It’s Tara, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you’re staying with May and Peter with your brother?”

  “Kyle, yeah.”

  Pattie whistled. “You’ll have to forgive my surprise. After all this time, I was starting to think you were fictional.”

  Tara shifted forward. “What do you mean, ‘after all this time’?”

  “Well, May’s been talking about you for years. Her dear grandson and granddaughter. ‘He likes reading; she’s a photographer. They’re going to visit us soon.’ It was always soon—they’ll come and stay with us soon; you’ll get to meet them soon—but you never materialised. Most people wrote it off as the regular Folcroft weirdness.” Pattie squinted at Tara. “You’re not in any kind of trouble, are you? I don’t mean to pry, but…”

  “It’s fine. I… I’d rather not talk about it right now.” Tara took a sip from her glass to wet her tongue and calm the rushing in her head. “When you said regular Folcroft weirdness, what are you talking about?”

  Pattie made an uncomfortable murmuring noise. “I don’t mean to be rude. I’m sure they’re lovely people and good grandparents.”

  “Please, tell me.”

  The baker’s shoulders slumped as she exhaled. “All right. Well, the Folcrofts have been living in their little nook in the mountains for as long as anyone remembers. The late Folcrofts were some of the founding members of the town, but May and Peter have almost nothing to do with us anymore. They don’t have any friends. No one knows much of anything about them, except they rarely leave their home and they have two grandchildren who were coming to visit one day.”

  “May said you don’t like her because she beat you in a baking competition.”

  Pattie barked a laugh. “I’d like to see her try! No, she’s never joined any competitions. Or attended town meetings. Or come for the town parties. They drive in on Mondays to do their shopping, make a few minutes of small talk, then disappear for another week.”

  Tara chewed on her thumb as she tried to reconcile this knowledge with her impression of her grandparents. “Did you know my mum at all?”

  “Christine? Poor thing. We were around the same age, but I didn’t know her. She was hardly ever allowed in town, and when she was, she came supervised. I heard she ran away when she was seventeen. I wish she’d come to me—I would have tried to help her.” Pattie frowned. “Is she doing okay?”

  “Yeah.” Except for the coma… “She’s a legal secretary. People like her.”

  “Good. I’m glad to hear it. She deserves a nice life.” Pattie pursed her lips. “Sorry, I’m talking out of turn again. I guess if she let you come visit, she must have mended things with her parents.”

  “What else do you know about the Folcrofts?” Tara asked.

  “Uh… not much. I mean, there’s a whole pile of myths about them. But most probably aren’t true.”

  “Tell me.”

  She snorted, looking equal parts amused and uncomfortable. “You’re keen. All right. Supposedly, the late Mr. Folcroft came into a lot of money during the war. The rumour says that he made his fortune as a spy… for the other side. He sold state secrets in exchange for a small fortune. When the war ended, he went to ground, hiding in that mountain house that no one can find unless they know where to look. Some people say he was only a spy for the money. Others say he never dropped his allegiances and continued to harbour fugitives even decades after the war.”

  “Did you ever hear anything about…” Tara’s tongue refused to form the word ghosts. She swallowed and tightened her grip on the glass of water.

  “Tara, please tell me if this is out of line, but are you in some kind of trouble? Do you need help?”

  Yes. No. I don’t know.

  Pattie’s eyebrows were so high, they were nearly hidden under her frizzy fringe. She looked on the verge of saying something else, but then the bell jingled as the door slammed open. A sickening wave of dread washed over Tara before she even heard the voice.

  “Tara. Come here.”

  May stood in the doorway, her face blanched and her eyes unexpectedly cold. Tara didn’t dare hesitate but rose and crossed towards her grandmother as fear pounded through her veins. May scanned Tara’s face then shot a glare at Pattie. Taking hold of Tara’s shoulder, May pulled her onto the street.

  I screwed up. Tara tried to swallow, but her throat was too tight. Kyle waited on the sidewalk, his terrified eyes focussed on the asphalt. He flinched as the bakery door slammed closed. May’s eyes flicked between the siblings as she took a slow breath, then she said, “Get in the car.”

  Kyle shot his sister a sideways look, silently asking for guidance. She gave a tiny nod, and together, they walked back to the Jeep.

  May waited until their seat belts were buckled before climbing in the driver’s seat. A soft click told Tara the doors had been locked. Then the engine revved, and the car screeched out of the parking space and back towards the mountain.

  She’s furious. Tara dug her fingers into the car’s seats. I crossed a line. What’s going to happen to
us?

  May had only ever smiled and cooed at them before. This new, stony-faced, cold-eyed creature was foreign and frightening. Tara, desperate to mitigate the damage, cleared her throat. “Grandma May—”

  “I hope you don’t mind leaving early.” Her tone was upbeat, but it didn’t match her expression. “It looked like rain, and I remembered I had washing on the line.”

  The sky was clear, and Tara was certain the washing line had been empty when she’d taken her photos that morning. She glanced at Kyle then tried again. “I’m sorry, Grandma.”

  “Whatever for, dear?” May finally smiled, but the expression didn’t look right. “You’re old enough to explore the town on your own.” Somehow, the natural act was more unsettling than the anger.

  “Anyway,” May continued as she turned into their driveway. “We probably won’t be going back for a little while. It will do us good to spend some time as a family. Just the four of us. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes,” Tara and Kyle chorused as the trees closed in to block out the sunlight.

  17

  Bunker

  “Be careful,” Tara said.

  She and Kyle strolled across the open patch of ground in front of the house. Whenever Tara looked behind them, she saw May watching through the kitchen window.

  Kyle had his hands forced into his pockets. His walk would have looked relaxed except for the stiffness in his shoulders. “What happened? Why were you in the bakery?”

  “I was trying to separate imagination from fact. A bit like you with your dreams.” Tara pretended to kick a rock. She hoped, from May’s perspective, it would look like a casual stroll before lunch, not a rushed meeting. “You were right, by the way. Something strange is going on.”

  “I’ll save the gloating for later. Tell me what you know.”

  She looked at him. His glare was defiant. He deserves to have the truth. “I don’t think Mum’s crash was accidental. Someone looked up info on car brakes a few days before her car failed. And I think Peter tampered with the payphone, too.”

  Kyle made a noise that sounded somewhere between a sob and a laugh. “You’re lucky I’m already miles down the rabbit hole; otherwise, I’d call you crazy.”

  “I know. And it’s still possible this is all a coincidence. Right now, all I have is circumstantial evidence. Nothing concrete. No proof. But Pattie says the Folcrofts have always been weird loners.”

  “To be fair, both you and I could be classified as weird loners, too.”

  “True.”

  “But at least you have the internet as an excuse. May and Peter live up here with no computer, no TV, no jobs, hardly any books… not much of anything, really. Don’t they get lonely or bored?”

  Tara shrugged.

  “So what do you think happened?” Kyle asked. “Be honest. What’s the worst-case scenario?”

  “Worst case… May and Peter are crazy, control-obsessed sociopaths. They wanted grandchildren. They stalked our family for years. When they couldn’t kidnap us, they tried to kill Mum. And here we are.”

  Kyle blew out a breath. His shoulders were shaking.

  “Best case,” Tara continued, “all of this is a really bizarre series of misunderstandings and coincidences. Maybe Pattie does have a vendetta against May. Perhaps someone unrelated wanted to look up how to repair his car brakes. Maybe the accident really was an accident.”

  “If fiction has taught me anything, nothing’s a coincidence.”

  Tara shrugged. “In their defence, May and Peter haven’t done anything bad to us. They’ve been the textbook definition of perfect grandparents.”

  “That we’ve seen.”

  “Yeah.” Tara thought back to the presents on their first day at the house: a book and a camera. The gifts matched hobbies they’d both held five years previously—around the same time Kyle had seen the man below his window. “I’m not sure how many coincidences I can believe in, either.”

  They were nearing the forest edge but had to turn away from the trail that promised privacy. May had said she didn’t want them wandering off so close to lunch.

  Kyle rubbed his fingers through his hair, his forehead creasing with a frustrated frown. “Do we have a plan? Is there anything we can do?”

  “I’ll try to get our mobiles back when May and Peter aren’t looking. But I don’t know how easy that will be; May seems to spend most of her life in the kitchen. In the meantime, we stick together and look out for each other, okay?”

  “Yeah. We’ll keep sharing a room. Don’t let them separate us.”

  Tara gave him a tight, frightened smile. “And act like everything’s normal. If the worst-case scenario is our reality… I feel like things will only be happy as long as they think they have their perfect family.”

  “Children! Lunch!”

  They turned towards May, who stood in the house’s doorway and waved to them.

  “Okay,” Kyle said. He snagged Tara’s jacket hem. She let him hold on as they returned to their new home.

  Lunch was unpleasantly quiet. May made an offhanded comment about the weather being nice. Tara quickly agreed. Peter grunted. And the following fifteen minutes were spent in silence.

  Kyle kept his eyes on his plate. He ate quickly and pushed away from the table as soon as he was done.

  “Stay,” May said, extending a hand. Tara tried to read her expression, but she gave nothing away. “I want to show you something in a minute.”

  Kyle hesitated then sank back into his chair.

  May took her time finishing her meal. By the time she took their plates to the sink, Tara’s stomach was knotted into anxiety. She’d loved surprises before coming to the Folcroft house. But, despite their calm delivery, May’s words created a slow, steady undercurrent of dread.

  “We’re going outside.” May stacked the dishes then undid her apron and hung it on the pantry door’s hook.

  Peter looked up from his mug. “May.”

  She gazed at him, and Tara had the impression that a silent conversation was taking place.

  After a moment, Peter grunted and shrugged. “All right.”

  “Come on, children.” May took the key ring off the hook by the door then passed Tara and Kyle their coats. “It’s not far, but better that you don’t get chilled.”

  Kyle kept silent as they stepped into the yard, but his fists were clenched so tightly that the knuckles stood out white. Tara gave his wrist a quick squeeze. I’m here. We’re in this together.

  May led them towards the woods, in the opposite direction of the lake. Her strides were long and smooth, and she didn’t look back to check whether her grandchildren were following. As they neared the edge of the clearing, Tara realised they were heading for the concrete structure she’d noticed when she first arrived.

  They stepped through the copse of trees sheltering it, and she was able to see its form clearly. The concrete wedge rose out of the ground, its highest tip reaching slightly above Tara’s head, and a metallic door was fixed into the slant facing the house.

  May sifted through the ring then fitted one of the older, rustier keys into the door’s lock. The key screeched as it turned, and the door shuddered as its hinges tried to stick. May pushed the door wide open to reveal a staircase leading into the ground.

  “Inside, children.” The placid voice held no menace, but it terrified Tara. Kyle’s shaking fingers found her hand, and she squeezed back. She stared at the black opening, her heart fluttering unpleasantly and her throat squeezing tightly.

  May tilted her head to the side and raised her eyebrows. “Is something wrong? You don’t need to be afraid of the dark. There’s a light inside.”

  Will she be angry if we refuse to go in? Tara licked her lips. Kyle’s hand was sweaty and held hers too tightly. May watched, eyebrows held up, head tilted towards the door expectantly. There’s nowhere else for us to stay. We don’t have a choice except to do what she wants.

  Tara stepped into the stairwell. Cold air rolled
out of it, engulfing her and making her shiver. Kyle followed closely, his breathing quick and shallow.

  “Don’t be frightened,” Tara whispered, and the hushed phrase bounced off the walls squeezing around them.

  The stairs were too narrow for more than single file. As Tara peered over her shoulder, she saw May following them. That offered a small measure of relief. At least they weren’t being locked inside.

  “Keep going.” May’s voice echoed, making it seem like a dozen of her were speaking. “The floor evens out soon.”

  The farther they went, the less natural light accompanied them. Tara had to reach out a hand to feel the walls. They were dry but cold and rough—either stone or concrete.

  She stumbled as the stairs turned into a passageway. With Kyle and May blocking the retreat, her only option was to move forward blindly. She took a dozen steps before her shins banged into something solid. Tara grunted and bit her tongue.

  “Sorry, my dear. I should have warned you.” With a click, a single bulb came on above their heads. Tara blinked at her surroundings.

  They were in a small, narrow concrete room. The ceiling ended just above her head, and the space was barely long enough for the three of them to stand. Tara looked down and saw she’d walked into a wooden chair. The seat, the light, and three empty shelves on the back wall were the only furnishings.

  “This is our bunker,” May said. She stood, blocking the escape, with her hands pressed against the walls. “Peter’s parents built it during the war. They had to construct it quickly, which is why it’s quite small.”

  Kyle’s voice was quiet but clearly audible in the still air. “Why are you showing us?”

  “They made a mistake when they built it.” May closed her eyes and inhaled. “They made it airtight to keep toxic fumes out but forgot to install any kind of ventilation. And because it’s so small, a person can only stay in here for a few hours before suffocating.”

  Tara’s heart beat so loudly that she was sure the others must hear it.