The Haunting of Gillespie House

by Darcy Coates

  I rounded the corner of the building to have a closer look at the woods. Their branches moved in the breeze, a mess of shadows that could hide innumerable monsters. I looked to my right, away from the woods, and gazed at the side of the house.

  My window was easy to find, located nearly at the end of the building, on the second level. I’d left the bedside light on, and the square of glass glowed like a beacon. The window next to it belonged to the locked room. It was different from the others; while every other window in the house sat flush against the wall, that one extended out in a bay shape. I tried to picture it from the inside: there was probably a seat below the window, so that whoever stayed in the room could sit there with an unmatched view of the outside world.

  It seemed bizarre that the door was locked. Every other room I’d tried, including the Gillespies’ personal bedroom, had been left open. What’s in there?

  I started to lose track of time as I gazed at the window, mesmerised by its possibilities. Everything was so perfectly still that when the curtains fluttered, I actually jumped.

  It’s just the breeze catching them. I watched the pale shapes hidden behind the glass swirl and sway for a moment before falling still again. The shock had jolted me out of my sleepy daze. I became acutely aware of how cold the wind was and folded my arms across my chest, shuffling on the spot to try increase the circulation to my numbing feet.

  The owl above my head hooted its displeasure at my presence, and I took that as my cue to go back to sleep. You may rule the world by day, but the creatures of the night demand their privacy.

  SECOND DAY

  A frying egg popped and spat hot oil at my exposed forearm. I glowered at it and used my spatula to squash the yolk, spilling its golden contents out like blood. “That’ll teach you.”

  Between my midnight excursion and the persistent, gruelling dreams of being followed by a scratching noise, I doubted I’d gotten as much as three hours’ rest.

  Still, it was my second day of solitude, and it had been a welcome change to wake up without hearing the thunder of the tenants in the room above mine as they used their treadmill. If you’re going to jog, at least do it outside, I’d thought on some of my worse mornings. Otherwise, you’re no better than a mouse on a wheel.

  I flipped my mangled egg onto the plate next to the bacon and sat down beneath the chandelier. The sun was doing a half-hearted job of lighting the house that morning, and I’d had to turn on the lights in order to see clearly. As I ate, I toyed with the idea of going back to bed and sleeping through the rest of the day, but one thought kept me up: I would be able to search the upstairs rooms. The familiar tingle of excited curiosity cheered me, and I finished my breakfast quickly.

  As soon as the dishes were dried and put away, I took the stairs to the first floor then turned the corner. I climbed the second flight more slowly, taking my time to savour the exploration. Partway up the narrow stairwell, the wallpaper changed from the sickly grey shade to a dark maroon with intricate gold designs a little reminiscent of the paper in my own room. I reached the landing and found myself in a hallway not very different from the one downstairs. The main change was the lights—or, rather, the lack of them. The only illumination for the hallway came from the square window at the end.

  Good thing I didn’t try to explore up here last night, I thought as I ran my hand across the patchy, peeling wallpaper. I would have been as good as blind.

  The wooden floor had a carpet runner down its length. The fabric was scuffed, and the dirty grey base showed through in many patches. Small puffs of dust appeared around my feet as I stepped on it.

  An aura of neglect hung over the entire upper level. Dead beetles lay curled in the grime that had accumulated around the skirting. Cobwebs lined the ceiling, though their arachnid occupants seemed to have moved on or died a long time before. As I approached the first door, I noticed even the handle had collected a layer of dust.

  It’s like the rooms up here haven’t been seen in decades.

  I brushed the sticky dust off the doorknob and twisted it. The hinges whined and stuck partway through opening, and I had to put my shoulder against the door and give it a good shove to get into the room.

  My breath caught in my throat as I gazed at a sea of off-white fabric. The room was filled with furniture, all of it covered with dust cloths. I glanced behind myself, feeling as though Mrs Gillespie might pop out of the hallway at any moment and reprimand me for snooping. She didn’t, so I took a hesitant step into the room and pulled the nearest cloth off its ward, revealing a grand piano made of black wood, with yellowing ivory keys. I reached out and pushed a key down, and a single haunting note filled the room.

  “This is gorgeous,” I said to the empty room as I ran my hand across the wood. “Why’s it hidden all the way up here?” I dropped the cloth back into place and moved on to look at the next hidden treasure.

  Beautiful antique furniture filled the room. I found wardrobes, mahogany tables and chairs, two slate-grey mannequins, and pouffle seats and armchairs.

  My eyebrows rose as I pulled the cloth off a stack of oil paintings near the back of the room. They’d been sat upright, leaning against the wall so that I could pull each towards myself to see the one behind it. Most of them depicted people: army colonels with dense grey moustaches; families dressed in Victorian garb; a woman with dozens of strings holding hundreds of pearls hung about her neck; a young, doe-eyed girl who stared out of the canvas imploringly; and a man with a frown set about his eyes as he leaned forward on his desk, reading a letter. The final painting showed an elderly woman, her dark hair streaked grey, her rich maroon dress heavily shadowed. The brightest part of the painting was the large blue teardrop-shaped crystal hung from a necklace, which her right hand caressed as her dark eyes stared out of the painting and transfixed me.

  I laid the paintings back into place and rearranged their cloth. I thought about the downstairs rooms and how bare many of them felt. I wondered why such rich—and probably expensive—furniture was hidden in the attic.

  The next room was very similar: nearly fifty objects sat about the floor, hidden under dust covers. I set to work exploring them, uncovering drawer sets, a large box of silver cutlery and crystal glassware, tall-framed mirrors, and boxes upon boxes of moth-damaged blankets and hand-made crochet. By the time I was done, swirls of dust filled the room, catching the sickly light coming through the window, and it was a little after lunchtime.

  My back ached, and I leaned against the wallpaper to give it a rest, rubbing dirty hands on my jeans. I tried to picture the downstairs rooms filled with the deep mahoganies and rich curtains. The grey walls wouldn’t look so stark and awful… and that crazy chandelier wouldn’t seem so out of place, either.

  Had the Gillespies moved the furniture up here, or had they simply never moved it down after buying the house? I hadn’t had long to talk to Mrs Gillespie before they’d gotten into their car and left, but I’d had the impression she’d only lived in the house for a few years. She’d said she missed the city.

  I went back into the hallway and paused there, glancing to the left and to the right. I could keep exploring the rooms—there were another two to my left and three on the opposite wall—or I could go downstairs and refuel with some lunch.

  The dust was all over my clothes and in my hair, but my desire to look through more of the mysterious upstairs rooms was insatiable. Just one more, and then I’ll take a break.

  I opened the door to my left and felt a rush of disappointment when I saw it was empty. I’d been hoping to uncover more of the gorgeous furniture, but the only thing in the room was a dead mouse, coiled on its back with its tiny paws held up towards the ceiling.

  My feet kicked up more dust as I walked inside and looked about the bare walls. I’d been stupid to expect every room to be filled with stored furniture—what I’d already seen was probably enough to comfortably fill most of the house—and I supposed it was a little relaxing to not be cloistered amongst the g
host-white dust cloths. I held my arms out to the side, stretched my back, then walked to the window to admire the view.

  No wonder the light is so bad, I thought as I gazed at the rolling cover of clouds poised above the treetops. Being on the highest floor gave me a slightly better view of the forest. It seemed to stretch on for quite a way. Even though the ground dipped and obscured my view, I guessed it had to continue until it reached the mountains, where fog had gathered several kilometres away.

  A door slammed beneath my feet.

  I shrieked and leaped backwards as I felt the floor’s reverberations through my shoes. My left sneaker landed on something lumpy and brittle, which made a faint crunching noise. I scuttled away from it and saw I’d stepped on the dead mouse, squishing it quite a bit flatter than it had been.

  My heart thundered. I pressed both hands against my chest, trying to silence my heartbeat while I listened for more sounds from the floor below. Is someone in the house? Is it a break-in?

  Silence. My fingers shook as they pressed into my blouse. I looked towards the door, which I’d left open a crack, and felt irrational paranoia rush through me. There’s someone in the hallway.

  A hundred thoughts ran through my head. Can I climb out the window? Should I call the police? But they became increasingly irrational as fear overrode my ability to think. If I tried to climb out the window, I would undoubtedly fall to my death three floors below, and I’d left my mobile on the dining table.

  I took a halting step towards the door. Icy sweat built under my arms and across the back of my neck. I didn’t dare breathe as I took a hand away from my heart and nudged open the door. Half certain that I was about to die, I leaned through forward to look into the hall.

  It was deserted.

  “Get a grip, Elle.”

  I moved the lower half of my body into the hall, too. The hairs on my arms prickled as I faced the stairwell. What if someone knew the Gillespies were leaving, and came to steal what they could while the house is empty? Would they bring a knife? A gun? An image flashed through my mind; I saw myself running down the hallway, trying to escape the hulking intruder as he grabbed my ankle, tumbling me to the dust-coated carpet. He brought his butcher’s knife down to sink it into my chest again and again and again…

  “Get a grip,” I repeated. I wrapped my arms about my torso, and my mouth was too dry to form the words properly.

  I could stay on the upper level until he leaves. I could hide under a dust cloth and pretend I don’t exist while he loots the house. Except that I’d screamed when the door had slammed. That wasn’t a noise that could be passed off as the house breathing. If he’d heard me, he knew I was there—and he would either flee, or come looking for me.

  I turned to the nearest room to my right, where the furniture was covered in yards of off-white cloth. With a final glance at the stairwell, I ducked into the room and pulled the coverings off until I found what I’d been searching for: a crate filled with heavy bronze candlesticks. I picked one up then, holding it like a bat, crept back into the hallway and towards the stairs.

  The floor groaned under my weight, and I cursed at it. If the stranger downstairs was listening for me, he would have more than ample warning that I was coming.

  Don’t be a coward. The Gillespies left you here to mind their house—now mind it!

  I took the stairs slowly, my watering eyes fixed on the poorly illuminated landing below, craning my head forward and hoping to see any threat before it had a chance to maul me. My body was alive with adrenaline, and I was becoming dizzy from the excess oxygen my lungs were dragging in to prepare for flight-or-fight.

  The landing stayed empty. When I reached it, I looked around the corner. My eyes scanned the shadows that clustered about the edges of the hall, but it was empty.

  “I know you’re there.” My voice escaped as a pathetic whine. I swallowed and tried to put more force into it as I took the first step down the hallway. “I have a gun, but I won’t shoot if you show yourself.”

  I counted to ten, but the only noise was my ragged breathing and racing, overworked heart. There was nothing for it; I took a second step down the hallway, then a third, my eyes flickering over the closed doors, my ears straining to hear any sounds.

  The first door to my left was the Gillespies’ bedroom. I hesitated, wondering if I should peek in cautiously, but I knew I’d lost any element of surprise a long time ago, so I gripped the doorknob, twisted quickly, then kicked open the door with more force than I probably should have. It banged against the wall then sprang back, threatening to close my view of the room, but I extended my spare hand to keep it open. The room looked empty; the closet door still stood open, as I’d left it before, and the bed had a base that extended to the floor, eliminating any hiding space beneath the mattress.

  I backed out of the room and took two more hesitant steps towards the bathroom. “Don’t make me hurt you!” My voice was too loud that time, echoing through the hallway and bouncing back at me. I yanked open the bathroom door and stepped into the room, candlestick held high. I caught sight of movement from the corner of my eye and brought the heavy bronze stick down, slashing blindly, but it only hit the shower curtain, which had fluttered in the breeze caused by the opening door.

  Back in the hallway, I burst through the second door to the left, the empty storage room. The broom still stood against the wall, looking forlorn.

  The next door belonged to the locked room. Tingles ran through my spin as I gripped the doorknob and twisted. Premonition, or maybe superstition coupled with the fear roaring through me, told me to expect the door would open, and I felt a little surprised and disappointed when it didn’t.

  The last room was my bedroom, and I broke into it with the same burst of energy I’d used to tackle the bathroom, waving my stick at the shadows. It looked exactly the way I’d left it; my books were stacked on the desk and my bed was half-heartedly made. I quirked up the quilt to look between the bedframe and the floor and checked in the closet, but my room was empty.

  I wandered back into the hallway, letting the candlestick sag down by my side as I rubbed my dusty sleeve across the sweat that drenched my face.

  The noise had definitely come from this floor; it had been too loud and too close to have been on the ground level, and the stairs creaked so badly that I would have heard someone trying to sneak down them.

  I looked at the ceiling—yellowish splotches stained the paint around the edges where water had seeped in—and tried to work out where the noise had come from. It had sounded as though it was directly under my feet, and I’d been in the second-to-last room, which was…

  Above the locked room.

  “Of course,” I said bitterly. I walked down the hallway to stand in front of the door and tried the handle a final time. It still stuck.

  I got onto my hands and knees, dropping the candlestick, and looked through the crack between the door and the floor. The light was very poor; I remembered the window had curtains over it. Coupled with the cloudy sky, they gave the room a level of light similar to twilight. Even so, I could make out a number of shadowy shapes; the room definitely had furniture in it. I crouched there, straining to see, trying to make out any sort of motion among the swimming shadows.

  Then creaks, loud and persistent, rose from the floor below my hands. I pulled back with a jerk and listened as the floor moaned. The noise moved away from me, towards the opposite side of the hall.

  I grabbed for my candlestick, fumbled, and dropped it. The brass made a hard metallic thunk as it hit the wooden floor.

  “Damn, damn, damn it all,” I said under my breath, and clambered to my feet, clutching the candlestick against my chest. My heart felt ready to explode.

  I took the steps quickly, almost recklessly, against my common sense. Once I was on the ground floor, I turned and scrambled towards the room below the hallway, which turned out to be the library.

  The bare shelves seemed much starker and more hostile than they had the day be
fore. The room was U-shaped, with the middle protrusion filled with bookcases. I edged around the perimeter, keeping my back to the shelves as I held up my weapon and checked around the stiff dingy-blue couches and the curtains.

  It was empty. I felt lost, so I went back out the way I’d come, into the dining room. I checked the kitchen and the hollowed-out ballroom on the way past then ended up in the living room. I grabbed my mobile and the slip of paper off the coffee table then hurried to the front door and the safety of the outside.

  I didn’t start breathing properly until I’d put two dozen paces between myself and the front porch. I stopped under one of the elm trees that flanked the driveway and scanned the front of the building with my eyes. There didn’t seem to be any sign of a break-in. Not that there would have been—I’d left the front door unlocked. The only motion I could see came from the bushes and trees that moved lazily in the breeze.

  I flopped down in the tall grass and dropped my candlestick. I took a moment to close my eyes and breathe in the oxygen, which tasted sweet and fresh compared to the dusty upstairs rooms. Then I held up the slip of paper Mrs Gillespie had given me and punched the number into my mobile.

  “Yes?” a cool voice answered after the fourth ring.

  “Hi, uh, Mrs Gillespie,” I stuttered, feeling incredibly under-qualified to explain the situation adequately. “I, uh, think someone broke into the house.”

  “What, Elle?” she barked. “What happened?”

  “I was in the top floor when I heard a door slam,” I said. “I, uh, went downstairs but couldn’t see anyone.”

  “Is there a car outside the house?” she asked.

  I scanned the front lawn as though a car might have materialised in the minute I’d been talking to Mrs Gillespie. It hadn’t.

  “No, sorry.” I cringed and pressed my palm into my forehead. Why am I apologising for the lack of cars? My brain had shut down under the coldly critical tone coming from the other end of the phone call.