The House on Widows Hill

by Simon R. Green

  ‘Always knew there was a good reason I hated mimes. All right, if the door won’t cooperate …’

  He tried walking through the wall next to the door, but didn’t fare any better. After that, he lost his temper. He raged round the room, throwing himself at wall after wall, only to be bounced back each time. He even tried sticking his head through the glass of the nailed-up window, but was forced to retreat, defeated and swearing viciously.

  Everyone else in the room was blind and deaf to the increasingly upset ghost in their midst. Lynn and Freddie were still sitting slumped in their separated chairs, Tom was still staring mournfully at his monitor screen, and Penny was going out of her way to look in every direction but mine. I closed the door and went to lean casually on the fireplace underneath the glowering portrait of Malcolm Welles. After a while, Arthur ran out of things to kick and swear at, and he stood in the middle of the room with his head hanging down. I think he would have been breathing hard – if he still breathed. He finally regained some of his self-control and came over to stand before me.

  ‘What’s going on, Ishmael?’ he said quietly. ‘Why can’t I leave?’

  ‘Something must be holding you here,’ I said. ‘I don’t think Harrow House is finished with you yet.’

  ‘Something?’ said Arthur. ‘What kind of something?’

  ‘Whatever is still inhabiting the house, after all these years,’ I said. ‘Presumably it has some purpose in mind for you.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ I said. ‘I’m new to this whole ghost business.’

  ‘Join the club! We have T-shirts and secret handshakes.’ And then Arthur stopped and looked around the room. ‘How come no one’s reacting to you apparently talking to yourself?’

  ‘Because I am talking very quietly and barely moving my lips,’ I said. ‘Just one of the useful skills you pick up in the security business.’

  Arthur scowled. ‘Why do you think I’m being held here?’

  ‘Perhaps because learning how and why you were killed will give us the answer to the mystery of Harrow House.’

  ‘Typical,’ said Arthur. ‘Even as a ghost, I’m just a minor player in my own story. I think I’m going to disappear and sulk for a while.’

  And he was gone.

  ‘Are you still here, Arthur?’ I said cautiously, but there was no response.

  Freddie suddenly launched herself up out of her chair and strode over to stand before me. She glared at me challengingly, her fists planted on her hips.

  ‘What are you up to, Jones? You’ve been behaving very strangely, ever since we got back.’

  ‘I just can’t help feeling that we’re not alone here,’ I said.

  Freddie scowled. ‘Wouldn’t surprise me one bit. The nasty atmosphere may have done a bunk, but this house still doesn’t feel right. I don’t think it’s finished playing with us yet.’

  ‘You think someone else might die?’

  ‘Don’t you?’ Freddie shook her head slowly. ‘This house wants something from us.’

  ‘Any idea what?’

  ‘No,’ said Freddie. ‘Nothing that’s happened so far makes any sense.’ She softened a little and turned to look at the spot where the body had been. ‘I can’t believe Arthur is gone. We were just getting to know each other, and then he was taken from me …’

  ‘Did you love him?’ I said.

  ‘No. But I might have. I think that’s what hurts the most – losing all the things we might have meant to each other.’

  Arthur appeared beside her. She just kept on looking at where his body used to be.

  ‘How could you leave me, Arthur?’

  ‘I didn’t mean to,’ he said. ‘Freddie …’

  He tried to take her hand in his, only to watch his hand ghost through hers. His mouth worked briefly, and then he disappeared again. Freddie pulled herself together and smiled brightly and only slightly artificially at me.

  ‘I can’t help feeling there’s something different about you, Ishmael. Are you psychic?’

  ‘No,’ I said, careful not to smile. Because Freddie thought only in supernatural terms, the idea that I might not be as human as I appeared simply hadn’t occurred to her. ‘I am most definitely not psychic.’

  ‘Of course he isn’t psychic!’ Lynn said loudly, from the depths of her chair. ‘If he was, I’d know. I’m the only one with gifts here.’

  And then we all looked round sharply, as scratching and scrabbling sounds issued from inside the cabinet that held the stuffed animals. Everyone rose to their feet as the sounds grew louder and more definite, like sharp claws digging into the inside of the wooden doors. I could hear what sounded like the scuffling of small feet. And then the doors swung wide open, and one by one the stuffed animals turned their heads to look at us. Slow trickles of sawdust ran down from their mad glass eyes, like grey tears. Mouths opened wide with soft tearing sounds, and thin lips cracked as they pulled back to reveal sharp teeth.

  ‘Lynn,’ Freddie said quietly, ‘what have you done?’

  ‘This wasn’t me,’ said Lynn, staring numbly at the stuffed animals. ‘This is nothing to do with me.’

  ‘You’re the one who called out to the house to answer you,’ said Freddie.

  And then she broke off as the stuffed animals started talking in rough, harsh voices. Horrible sounds that grated on the nerves, from unliving objects forced to take on the attributes of life.

  ‘Why won’t you listen?’ said a fox.

  ‘You must listen,’ said an owl.

  ‘There’s something in the walls,’ said a squirrel.

  I stepped forward, and all the stuffed heads turned jerkily to look at me. Their gaze was horribly empty, but I had no doubt they could see me.

  ‘Who’s speaking?’ I said. ‘Is this the house or something in the house?’

  ‘You know us,’ said the squirrel. ‘And we know you. Why won’t you listen?’

  ‘What do you want?’ I said.

  The squirrel’s mouth opened even wider, as though trying to force words out, but the jaw suddenly broke and dropped open, hanging uselessly. The squirrel reached up with its small stubby arms and clawed deep furrows in its face. And then all the animals turned on each other, biting and clawing in a horrid frustrated rage. Sawdust streamed from gaping wounds. Until finally, one by one, the animals fell still … as though they’d exhausted themselves in trying to talk to us.

  I slowly approached the open cabinet and prodded a few of the torn and savaged bodies with a cautious finger, but none of them moved. They were just badly stuffed objects again. I carefully closed the cabinet’s doors.

  ‘What the hell was that all about?’ said Penny.

  ‘It’s the house,’ said Freddie.

  ‘But nothing they said made any sense,’ said Tom. ‘Why make such an effort to talk to us, just to speak gibberish?’

  Freddie frowned hard. ‘The squirrel said, “There’s something in the walls.” You said the same thing earlier, Lynn.’

  ‘Did I?’ Lynn seemed honestly surprised. ‘I don’t remember that. I have no idea what it might mean.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Freddie. ‘Think, Lynn!’

  ‘I am thinking! And don’t shout at me!’

  ‘If the house is so keen to communicate with us,’ said Tom, ‘why use stuffed animals?’

  ‘Maybe the house is insane,’ said Penny.

  Nobody liked the sound of that. I cleared my throat, to draw everyone’s attention back to me.

  ‘Perhaps this mention of a secret hidden in the walls is a clue to where the treasure is?’

  ‘There’s treasure in this house?’ said Tom, trying hard to sound only scientifically interested.

  ‘Could be,’ said Freddie. ‘Ghosts and treasure often go together.’

  ‘You would think that,’ said Lynn.

  ‘Hush, child,’ said Freddie. ‘Adults are talking.’

  ‘Are we supposed to break the walls open?’ said Penny.

 
; ‘I’ve got some really big hammers,’ said Tom.

  ‘What treasure are we talking about?’ said Lynn.

  ‘The lost fortune of the Welles family,’ Tom said impatiently. ‘It’s in all the books. Something in the walls … Could the animals have meant somewhere in here?’ He moved over to the nearest wall and tapped it here and there, but there wasn’t even a suggestion of a hollow sound. Tom scowled, thinking. ‘Maybe there’s a clue somewhere inside one of the walls as to where we should look for the treasure?’

  ‘And maybe that’s not it at all,’ said Freddie. ‘Does anything about our experiences suggest this house has our best interests in mind? We can’t trust anything it says. It killed Arthur.’

  We all stopped talking out of respect for her loss, and that was when we heard new soft scratching sounds.

  ‘Now what?’ said Freddie.

  We looked around the room, searching for the source of the quiet noises. In the end, Penny pointed with a perfectly steady hand at a tall standing mirror. Dark figures were moving inside the glass, drifting this way and that as though caught in some deep underwater tide. Now and then one of them would reach out to touch the inside of the glass, making the soft scratching sounds. We moved over to stand before the mirror, and once we were all in place, the figures suddenly snapped into sharp focus, as our reflections. All the faces in the mirror were horribly distorted, as though our reflections had suffered terrible experiences. Arthur’s reflection was there too, snarling back at us. I glanced behind me, to see if his ghost had joined us, but there was no sign of him.

  ‘Is everyone seeing this?’ said Tom.

  ‘Of course we see it!’ said Lynn.

  ‘Then what does it mean?’ said Tom.

  ‘It means the house isn’t finished with us,’ said Freddie.

  Our reflections crowded together, pressing up against the other side of the mirror. Their hands scrabbled against the glass, and then they beat on it with their fists, as though the mirror was a window into our world, and they wanted out. As though they were determined to get to us – whatever it took.

  ‘Why are they doing this?’ said Penny.

  ‘Perhaps they want to pull us through the mirror,’ said Lynn. ‘So they can take our place here.’

  ‘Is this real?’ said Tom. ‘I mean, really real?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ said Freddie. ‘Why is Arthur there?’

  And all the time our reflections were desperately trying to speak, to tell us something important, but not a sound reached us from the other side of the mirror. I stepped forward, standing directly in front of the glass, and immediately all the reflections fixed their gaze on me.

  ‘What is it?’ I said. ‘What are you trying to tell us?’

  ‘You sure you want to know?’ said Tom.

  ‘Yes!’ I said. ‘This has to mean something!’

  My reflection suddenly lashed out with his fist, and the inside of the glass cracked. And just like that, our reflections were normal again. Just five people staring at themselves, and no sign anywhere of Arthur. We all backed slowly away from the mirror, not wanting to take our eyes off it, but it stayed just a mirror.

  ‘I’m getting really tired of all these spooky parlour tricks,’ said Freddie.

  ‘The house is trying to communicate with us,’ I said.

  ‘What could it have to say to us that we would want to hear?’ said Tom. ‘Think of everything it’s done so far!’

  ‘I’m tired,’ said Lynn. ‘I don’t want to think about this any more.’

  She went back to curl up in her chair again, like a small child who’d stayed up past her bedtime.

  Tom shook his head, one fist banging frustratedly against his hip.

  ‘None of this makes any sense!’ he said loudly. ‘Maybe the house really is crazy, and we’re all trapped inside the mind of a mad thing.’

  He went back to his screen, where at least he could feel as if he was in control of something.

  ‘I want to know why Arthur was in the mirror!’ Freddie insisted.

  ‘Maybe because he’s still with us, in spirit,’ I said.

  She rounded on me angrily, and then stopped herself and went back to sit in her chair and stare at nothing. Penny came over to join me.

  ‘Sorry about the little outburst earlier,’ she said.

  ‘What outburst?’ I said, and we shared a smile.

  ‘I don’t like losing my temper,’ said Penny. ‘It never solves anything, and it always makes me feel bad afterwards. Maybe something really is getting inside our heads and messing with our thinking.’

  ‘Wouldn’t surprise me,’ I said.

  ‘You did see Arthur’s ghost, didn’t you? And talk with him?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think I’d be happier if I could dismiss him as an hallucination, but when stuffed animals start talking, and our own reflections try to break out of the mirror, ghosts don’t even register in the weird happenings stakes. And if Arthur was murdered, we need to find out who did it, to help him move on. Why are you smiling?’

  ‘Just when I think you can’t surprise me any more … You won’t let anyone down, will you? Even when they’re dead. Are you still convinced Arthur’s killer is someone in this room?’

  ‘I haven’t seen the house do anything yet that I would call actually threatening,’ I said. ‘But people can always be dangerous. And since there’s no evidence anyone broke into the house before we arrived, the killer has to be someone in this room.’

  ‘Any motives you feel like mentioning?’ said Penny.

  ‘Arthur said he was going to expose Lynn as a fraud,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘And it’s always possible that Freddie wanted something from Arthur that he was unwilling to give. Hell hath no fury …’

  ‘What about Tom?’

  ‘We were all right there when Arthur died, but no one saw anything because we were too busy concentrating on the darkness in the door,’ I said. ‘Maybe someone arranged for that to happen. And which of us knows enough about science and technology to arrange something like that?’

  We both looked at Tom, sitting cross-legged on the floor before the screen, his laptop balanced across his knees. His fingers moved slowly across the keyboard, with no obvious purpose.

  ‘And yet no one touched Arthur,’ Penny said firmly. ‘We all saw that in the recording. No one was even looking in his direction when he died.’

  ‘We must be missing something,’ I said.

  ‘Maybe that’s why Arthur came back,’ said Penny. ‘Because we weren’t getting anywhere.’

  ‘Then why am I the only one who can see and hear him?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Penny. ‘Because you’re … not from around here?’

  ‘Then why have I never seen a ghost before?’ I said. ‘After all the sudden deaths I’ve been involved with, I should be hip deep in the things by now.’

  ‘Perhaps because death doesn’t mean the same thing to you as it does to us,’ Penny said slowly. ‘To us mere humans.’

  ‘Penny …’ I said carefully. ‘Let’s not get caught up in that again.’

  ‘I have to,’ said Penny. ‘Because you’re not listening. It’s because humans know we only have three score years and ten that our lives have shape and purpose. We’re driven to get things done, because we know we won’t have enough time to do everything that needs doing. But you don’t have that problem. You can always take the long view because you have all the time in the world.’

  ‘I don’t know that,’ I said. ‘I could die tomorrow, from accident or malice, just like everyone else.’

  ‘And yet you don’t,’ said Penny. ‘You just keep going. You haven’t aged a day in more than fifty years … Can you die? Does death mean the same thing to you, to your other self, as it does to a human? I’m going to grow old and die, and when I do, you’ll just move on and forget me.’

  ‘I would never do that!’

  ‘You know that’s not true!’ Penny met my gaze fiercely. ‘You’ve walked out on people
before, because you thought they were a threat to your secret existence, or just because they were getting too close. You don’t know how to be close to anyone. Maybe I need to walk away from you, if only for my pride’s sake. I won’t be an old woman clinging to a young man’s arm and wondering why he’s still there.’

  ‘Penny …’

  ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘There’s a reason why all the old myths agree that mortals should never love immortals. Because it isn’t fair on either of them. Whatever happens in this house, whatever the truth turns out to be, we’re done, Ishmael. It’s over. For both our sakes.’

  She walked away from me, and didn’t look back once.

  FIVE

  Things Seen and Unseen

  I didn’t go after Penny. I couldn’t – not until I had some kind of answers to the questions she’d raised. The only thing I was sure of was that I had no intention of letting her walk out of my life. Because she was my life, in every way that mattered.

  On top of all that, I still had a murder to solve. It had been a long time since I’d had to work a mystery on my own. I’d grown used to having Penny at my side, as a sounding board for my ideas and to point out the subtler areas of human interaction I still sometimes had problems with. I couldn’t ask any of my potential suspects, so that meant there was only one person left I could turn to.

  ‘Arthur?’ I said quietly. ‘Are you still hanging around? Because I could really use your help.’

  He appeared beside me, shaking his head disbelievingly. ‘You don’t just need help; you need a whole couchful of relationship counsellors on speed dial.’

  I looked at him accusingly. ‘You were eavesdropping.’