The Asharton Manor Mysteries Boxed Set (Books 1 - 4)

by Celina Grace

  When I went to my Weightwatchers meeting the next week I was disappointed to find out that I hadn’t lost any more weight. “Don’t be discouraged,” said Mrs. Miller, the group coordinator, cheerfully. “Always happens when you’ve been ticking along nicely – you hit a plateau. If I were you, I’d up your exercise for a bit, that can kick-start the process.”

  With her words ringing in my ears, I decided that afternoon to go for a walk. The weather was good, sunny but not too hot, and it wasn’t my day at the library. As I locked the door of number thirteen and set out along Manor Close, I reflected that I hadn’t got very far with finding a new, better-paying job. Not that I actually needed the money – even despite our new mortgage, there was still plenty of Mum’s money left to support us. Perhaps we could treat ourselves to a nice holiday this year, I pondered, once I’d lost enough weight not to dread the thought of wearing a swimming costume.

  I walked through the little grove of beech trees at the end of the street and into the pine forest. As I stepped into the serried ranks of the trees, the light seemed to dim a little and the sounds of the forest became more hushed. I walked on for about thirty yards, my footsteps gradually slowing. Once I paused and looked behind me at the crack of a twig, sure that I could sense someone walking behind me, but there was no one. I walked on for another few minutes, forcing myself forward. In the end, I stopped, panting. I was in some sort of clearing, about twenty feet across, with an overgrown clump of bushes in the middle of it. I walked slowly towards it, not really knowing what else to do. Then I cursed and lifted my foot, having stubbed my toe on something hard.

  I looked down and saw a lump of stone. It was shaped into a rough sort of cube. How odd, to find something man-made right in the middle of the forest. It must have been part of the original house, I decided, but it didn’t seem possible that the house had extended this far back. As I bent to rub my sore toe, I was suddenly aware of how cold I was, despite the sunshine. My ears buzzed. I straightened up in a hurry and turned. My lungs seemed to be shrinking inside me, making it difficult to catch my breath. Panic began to set in and then I was running, despite my breathlessness, running back to the path at the side of clearing. I thought I could hear, very faintly over the thunder of blood in my ears, something that sounded like a woman screaming. I was almost sobbing now myself, panting, focused on nothing else but getting out of this wood.

  I finally stumbled back on the tarmac of Manor Close, scarlet, running with sweat and with my legs beaded with blood from bramble scratches.

  “What on Earth happened?” asked Mike, who had just arrived back from work when I virtually fell through the doorway of number thirteen. He sounded alarmed.

  I tried to explain as best I could. Now I was back in familiar surroundings, my panic sounded more than a little stupid. What had I actually been afraid of? A lot of trees and a piece of old stone? For a moment I felt a quake of something that was more than superstitious fear. Was I actually losing my mind?

  Mike seemed to echo my thoughts. “Perhaps you should go back to the doctor, Bea. Maybe they should up your medication? What do you think?”

  I’d been on some low-dose anti-anxiety medication since Mum died. I nodded, chastened. Perhaps the strain of moving house was getting to me.

  The weather was lovely that evening and we sat out on the decking with a glass of wine, watching the sunset, just as I had imagined when we first viewed the show home. I gradually relaxed and eventually propped my feet up in Mike’s lap, sighing with pleasure as he began to massage my toes. Then I caught sight of Mia, standing by the French doors of her kitchen next door, staring out at the sunset too. Something in her posture caught me. She was holding herself tightly, staring almost blindly across the garden with what looked like – could it be? – fear. She looked rigid with it.

  I sat up, withdrawing my feet. “I’m just going to see if Mia’s all right,” I told Mike, who looked surprised but didn’t protest. I hurried around the front of the house and rang her doorbell. She took a long time to answer and when she finally did, I was shocked at the drawn look of her face.

  “I was just wondering if you wanted to come round for a drink,” I asked, wondering if I should ask her what was wrong.

  She blinked and seemed to come back to life. She even smiled, faintly. “Actually, I’d love to, Bea. Can I come straight round now?”

  When she was seated at our table on the decking, I poured her a generous glass of wine. Mia responded politely but automatically to Mike’s general pleasantries and then lapsed into silence once more.

  I took a deep breath. “Are you all—“

  She cut across me. “Can I ask you guys something?”

  “Of course,” said Mike, just as I was saying the same.

  Mia hesitated and then burst out, “I think my house is haunted. Don’t laugh—“ She warned, although neither Mike or I had shown any sign of amusement. “I didn’t want to believe it – it sounds so stupid saying it out loud – but I don’t know what else to think. I mean, what other explanation is there?”

  “What’s happened?” I asked, leaning forward across the table.

  Mia looked close to tears. “I keep seeing things, just flickers in the corner of my eye. Dark shadows, but every time I actually go to look, there’s nothing there. And things keep moving. I thought it was just me being absent minded at first, but now I’m sure that my things keep being moved around. It’s getting ridiculous. I found my necklace in the oven the other day. And there’s whispers, like a sort of constant underlying whispering…” She trailed off. Mike and I were looking at her, mutually aghast.

  There was a moment’s silence.

  “You found your necklace in the oven?” asked Mike and, although his tone wasn’t sarcastic, Mia flushed.

  “I told you it sounds stupid,” she said. “But I’m telling you, strange things keep happening in my house. Bea, are you sure you haven’t seen anything else since you saw that shadow?”

  Now they were both looking at me. I bit my lip.

  “I don’t think so,” I said but even as I said it, I was trying to remember if that was the truth. Had I ever seen anything else? I thought about the weird experience I’d had in the woods but decided not to mention that. It would have almost have sounded as though I were competing with Mia.

  Mia had almost finished her wine. She tipped the last mouthful into her mouth and began to speak again, breathlessly, telling us in more detail what had actually happened. Strange patches of coldness she kept walking into. Ornaments moved around from shelf to shelf. Dark shadows that flickered into life in the corner of her vision, only to die away when she turned to confront them.

  When she mentioned, yet again, the strange mobility of the inanimate objects in her house, Mike shifted uncomfortably.

  “Oh, come on,” he said, in a tone that he probably thought was reassuring. “It’s probably just kids getting in and messing things around. Teenagers having a laugh.”

  Mia and I both gave him a look, and we both spoke at almost the same time.

  “That’s supposed to make me feel better?” Mia asked.

  “There are no teenagers here on the estate,” I said sharply.

  Mike shrugged. “Well, okay, but there’s probably a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of this.”

  Mia laughed, a half-bark that sounded completely mirthless. “Oh, yes, I know. It’s me losing my mind.”

  I bit my lip. Hadn’t that been my exact thought, after my bad experience in the woods?

  “No, I’m sure it’s not that,” said Mike, awkwardly. He seemed about to say something else for a moment but then lapsed into silence.

  Mia stayed with us for most of the evening. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask her if she wanted to stay the night but at about half past eleven, it was as if she’d read my mind and jumped up, saying firmly that she was fine now and it was time she went home.

  “I’m pissed enough to not be scared anymore,” she said, putting a brave face on it.
“Thanks, guys, you’ve been great.”

  “Mike, why don’t you walk her back, just – just check everything’s okay?” I suggested. Mia had her back to Mike and I saw him give me a long-suffering eye roll, but he said in quite a straight voice, “Yes, okay.”

  Mia gave him a grateful look. “Oh, would you mind?”

  “Not at all,” said Mike, ushering her before him through the living room door. “I shall bring my pocket exorcism kit with me.”

  We’d all had enough wine to find this quite funny. I kissed Mia on the cheek at the front door and said goodbye, shutting the door behind them. Then I turned, not really thinking of anything, my gaze travelling upwards, drawn to the light at the top of the stairs.

  The black shadow was there again, bigger and blacker than before. Its arms – what I thought were its arms - were raised and waving wildly, like seaweed undulating under water or black ribbons flapping in a stiff breeze. I froze, drenched in an icy wave of shock. My fright was so great that for one awful second, I thought I was going to lose control of my bodily functions.

  Somehow I managed to make it into the living room. I put every light on, until the room was blazing with light and cowered in an armchair, wrapping my arms about my body and rocking backwards and forwards. I thought, if I hear the stairs creaking, as if someone is walking down them, I will die. I will actually die of fright. But, after long, long minutes of terror, there was nothing. I huddled into the sofa cushions, pulling them over me like a protective shield. I waited there, chilly with cold sweat, but I heard nothing more and eventually my eyes closed and I gradually stopped shivering. By the time Mike returned, I was fast asleep.

  The next morning, I decided against telling Mike what I’d seen. He’d had enough of dealing with all my mental health issues after Mum died, and I didn’t want him to think he was in for another bout of depression, anxiety, or worse. Besides, sitting in the kitchen with the sun pouring in through the French doors, it was hard to imagine why I’d been so afraid. Again, I was making light of it, telling myself that it had been a trick of the light, a momentary lapse in my perception, something innocent and explainable.

  I had my shift at the library that afternoon. It wasn’t very busy (it never really was in Midford) and I was idly turning the pages of The Times when my eye was caught by an obituary. It was for Cody Brown, the drummer for the seventies rock band, Dirty Rumours. I’d just about heard of them – not Mum’s cup of tea music-wise, she preferred Simon and Garfunkel – but what made me catch my breath and read it from start to finish was the mention of Asharton Manor. I hadn’t realised that the fire which had killed every band member of Dirty Rumours except Cody Brown had been the fire which had razed Asharton Manor to the ground. Cody had been the only survivor apart from a band groupie called Eve Hanlon, who’d been killed in a car crash the year after the fire. According to the obituary, Cody had never worked in the music industry again and lived the rest of his life as a recluse, before his death from lung cancer at the age of sixty-five.

  Intrigued, I turned to the computer and brought up the Wikipedia page for Dirty Rumours. There was a link to another page for Asharton Manor and I eagerly clicked on it. The page loaded but only hosted the bare minimum of information and featured a plea from the website for anyone to add and verify more information. I tapped my fingers on the desk for a moment, thinking. Then I typed ‘Asharton Manor’ and the name of the local paper into the search engine, and scrolled through the links the search brought up. There were quite a few and I went through them, one by one. Topmost were several articles on the recent building of Asharton Estate, most obviously pulled from Phoenician Building press releases, by the look of it. I kept reading. In the eighties, there had been a nasty spate of rapes in and around the forest surrounding the manor, and one girl had been killed. I vaguely remembered that from my childhood; how my mother had forbidden me to set foot on the manor grounds or even leave the sanctity of the village itself. Given Mum’s attitude to personal safety, it was something of a miracle that she’d even allowed me to leave the house. There were a lot of articles from the seventies on the fire and the resulting deaths of the members of Dirty Rumours, as well as several other people. I clicked on through the links, back through time. In the early sixties, two children had gone missing, at separate times, in the vicinity of the forest, and had never been found. I frowned as I read on. Perhaps it was coincidence, but there did seem to be an awful lot of serious crime associated with the area. But perhaps that was normal for such a large amount of publically accessible ground? I imagined you would have to dig into various crime statistics to make a true comparison, and I wasn’t about to do that.

  I went back as far as the war years and read with interest that Asharton Manor had become a convalescent home for returning soldiers after World War Two ended. Then a headline caught my eye with the word ‘murder’ in flaring black capitals. Two murders had been committed at the house by a man pretending to be a doctor. He’d been hanged for it, once found guilty. I remembered Mr. Spencer, when we were signing the paperwork for number thirteen in his office, talking about his grandfather who’d been a doctor at the manor. I wondered whether Mr. Spencer senior had known the murderer, perhaps worked alongside him. If I ever saw our Mr. Spencer again, I would ask him.

  Someone came up to the desk then, wanting to order a book, and I had to give my attention to them. But I thought about what I’d read as I walked home that afternoon. So many strange happenings over so much time…

  Mia was in her front garden when I arrived home, weeding her flowerbeds. She waved her muddy trowel at me in greeting.

  “Listen, thanks for the drink the other night,” she said, sitting back on her heels and wiping her face with the heel of her hand. She had a smudge of earth on one cheekbone. “And thanks for listening to me. I was starting to think I was going doolally.”

  “That’s fine,” I said, reaching for my front door key. I remembered the shadow I’d seen that same night and felt a little tremor of fear. It’s nothing, I told myself. It was a trick of the light. “Has anything else happened?”

  “Not recently,” Mia admitted. “Thank God. Perhaps I really was imagining things.”

  You and me both, I replied silently. Then I said goodnight before I went in through the front door, purposefully keeping my eyes from the landing upstairs.

  The house was quiet and I’d made sure I’d tidied up before I left for work. I switched the kettle on and looked around for my Kindle, which I’d left on the kitchen table that morning. I was halfway through a really good thriller and thought I might spend the next hour reading, out on the decking. It was a fine evening and the light would be good for another couple of hours. I couldn’t see my Kindle anywhere. Had Mike moved it? But how could he have done, when he’d left the house before I did that day? I knew I’d left it there, on the kitchen table by the pot of pens that stood in the middle.

  Muttering, I went upstairs to check the bedside table, too annoyed to worry about seeing the shadow on the landing this time. My Kindle wasn’t on the bedside table either. What the hell had I done with it? Had I put it in my bag, absentmindedly? I stomped downstairs and checked my handbag. It wasn’t there. Where the hell was it? By this time, I was starting to think that I must have put it in my bag and someone must have swiped it. I clambered back up the stairs, looked again in the bedroom, as if it might have magically materialised in the meantime. Of course, it wasn’t there. I flung open the door of the second bedroom, which was currently empty except for Mike’s computer and desk. Not there. I only opened the door of the third bedroom because - well, because I just did. My Kindle was there, lying right in the middle of the floor.

  I stood in the doorway and looked at it for a moment. It was placed precisely in the middle of the carpet, as if it were being exhibited. What on Earth…? After a minute, I walked slowly over to it and picked it up. What was it doing there? I knew I hadn’t put it there. Why would Mike leave my Kindle in the middle of the empty third bedr
oom and more importantly, how had he done so, seeing as he’d left the house while I was still reading the damn thing at breakfast?

  I walked slowly downstairs. The water in the kettle had cooled enough in the time I’d spent looking for my Kindle that I’d have to re-boil it. Once I’d finally made my cup of tea, I took the cup and the Kindle out onto the decking, just as I’d intended, but I didn’t read my thriller. Instead, I looked out over the garden and sipped my tea and puzzled over how my Kindle had got into the third bedroom. Then I remembered what Mia had told us the other night. Things keep moving. I thought it was just me being absentminded at first, but now I’m sure that my things keeps being moved around…

  No. No, I was not going to accept that. I must have gone into the third bedroom this morning, for some reason I couldn’t remember, and dropped my Kindle and just not realised. Just because I couldn’t remember doing it didn’t mean it hadn’t happened. Oh hell. Why couldn’t I remember doing that? Was I going mad?

  Again, like the shadow, I didn’t mention anything to Mike. I remembered the way he’d reacted to what Mia had told us. Looking back, I could see now that he didn’t believe her. Well, I could understand that. He held my hand as we watched television that night and I made another resolution to stop worrying about all the strange things that were happening. Perhaps I should go back to the doctor and talk about my current medication. I squeezed Mike’s hand affectionately and settled back against the cushions, dismissing my worries and concentrating on the television programme we were watching.

  I had to work again the next day and I womanfully resisted the temptation to start searching out more macabre news reports on Asharton Manor. I had been leaving my car at home and walking to work in an attempt to get a bit more exercise – I hadn’t been back to the woods since that strange experience the other week – and tonight was a beautiful evening, the sky slowly infusing with pink and gold, a little breeze tempering the heat so it would be a pleasure to walk. It was so nice that I decided to walk back the long way, for a change. Mike was taking a work client out for dinner so I would have the house to myself. There was no reason to hurry. I tried to walk briskly, to burn off a few more calories, but the golden evening light didn’t encourage haste. Eventually, I reached the turning from the main Bristol road into the estate. There was a narrow pavement on one side of the road and I let my tired feet follow it, unhurriedly. I was quite interested to know how far the rest of the development had progressed since we’d driven past it all those months ago, when we first came here to view the show home.