by Lauren Smith
She pushed the unsettling thought aside and retrieved her briefcase and purse. Tucked safely inside were her notebook and the latest letter she’d received last week from Sebastian Carlisle. She’d memorized every word.
Dear Ms. Seyton,
Thank you for your interest and inquiry into the Carlisle ancestral home, Stormclyffe Hall. As its caretaker and heir, I am very pleased that my ancestry has found merit in the esteemed Cambridge halls from where you write.
Your dissertation subject is a very interesting one, and I do see how it might benefit your study to have access to my family’s documents, and I would welcome your educated account of my home. However, I am currently overseeing the restoration of Stormclyffe, which includes the preservation of those documents that you seek, and having a scholar under the roof while that roof is being mended might prove distracting for both you and the restoration staff. You are more than welcome to visit once the restorations have been thoroughly completed. However, any access to personal and private papers and documents that are the property of my family are not open for public viewing. Weymouth has an excellent library with plenty of sources you might consider as an alternative avenue for research.
Please feel free to contact me, or the office of my steward Mr. John Knowles, in the future should you have any other questions.
Sincerely,
Weymouth
Jane’s heart skittered. Weymouth. He hadn’t even bothered to sign his usual title “Earl of Weymouth.” Just Weymouth. It rolled off the tongue so nicely.
It had taken a half-dozen letters to his office and more than thirty emails to finally get his attention. His reply letter had been very British, polite and yet firm. It was obvious he didn’t want her to come, at least not in her capacity as a researcher, but only as a tourist. Ha! He had no idea what he was in for. She was going to get into those documents.
The drive to Stormclyffe was beyond breathtaking. Weymouth was a charming harbor town, dotted with multicolored buildings that faced the edge of the water inlets like merry greeters. The forest of sailboat masts rose and fell as the sea rippled beneath the boats, lifting and dropping them in an endless waltz that enchanted her as she drove past. It was a place she could see herself living in for the rest of her life. She loved the idea of the cozy little place nestled next to the vast acreage of the Weymouth estate. She looked forward to leaving Stormclyffe on little breaks to pop down to the city and eat at the local pubs or visit the little shops and historical sites.
She drove past Weymouth Beach. The jubilee clock at the edge of the parking lot separated the beach from the shops and businesses. Its blue-and-red painted tower held the clock aloft for the residents to see the time at a distance. It painted a beautiful image, the clock at the edge of the shore, facing both sea and village. It stood as a silent sentinel over the flock of tourists that frolicked on the sand and in the shallows.
The twenty-minute drive to the estate took her on a narrow road that paralleled the edge of the coast. Although it was October, the grass was still green on the hillsides, and storm clouds were only a vague outline on the horizon. The landscape gave way to a slowly rising hill and a mass of distant trees, gnarled and knotted together tight as thorns. Just beyond was a glimpse of the castle. It was a massive edifice that stood stark against the sky and trees, towering over the fields, and she couldn’t help but stare.
The countless photographs she’d collected over the years hadn’t prepared her for the raw beauty and power of the structure. The worn battlements were still fully intact, facing the sea like warriors, ever defiant in the face of nature’s force on the coast. The steep cliffs merely half a mile from the castle loomed, dark and threatening.
No fence lined the cliff edges. No warning signs guided visitors away except one that read Private Property. Heavy Fines for Trespassing. She repressed an achy shiver as a cloud stole across the sun’s path, dimming all light.
The gray stones of Stormclyffe stood stalwart and proud, challenging her to drive closer. The road turned to gravel and thinned even more, leaving only enough space for her car.
Sheer desolation seemed to pour off the structure as she pulled into the castle’s front drive. If not for the five work vehicles that obviously belonged to various handymen, she would have thought the castle was devoid of all life.
Strands of hair stung her face as the wind whipped it about. There was an unsettling silence on the grounds, like something unnatural muffled the sound of the sea. No crashing waves, only the violence of the wind against the castle’s stones.
The house seemed to be wrapped in an invisible layer of thick wool, where sight and smell were dulled. The wind’s icy fingers crawled along her shoulder blades and dug into her hair, making her tense with apprehension. The castle walls were pitted with small chinks in the stones like fathomless obsidian eyes that stared at her, sized her up, and found her wanting.
The hairs rose on the back of her neck. The eerie sensation of eyes fixed on her back sent a cold wave of apprehension over her skin. She whipped around to look at the deserted landscape, suddenly fighting off a rush of panic at being alone out here.
Her heartbeat froze for a brief moment. A woman in a long white nightgown, hair loose down to her waist, stood hesitantly on the cliff’s edge, half turned toward the sea. She stared at Jane. Her skin was grayish, and her eyes were shadowed with black circles as though she hadn’t slept in years. Something wasn’t right about the way she looked, or the fact that the nightgown looked far too old in style for any modern woman to be wearing. Not to mention a woman in a nightgown in broad daylight wasn’t right either…
Sadness filled Jane’s chest, choking her. It was as if she were infused with the same lonely desperation evident on the woman’s face. Surprisingly, Jane felt no fear, merely the overwhelming grief that had come the moment she locked eyes with the woman. As though pulled by an unseen force, she took a step in the woman’s direction. The skies above darkened to a black, thunderous storm on the verge of breaking. Before she could get any closer, black roots burst forth from the rocks below the woman’s slippered feet, winding up her calves and digging into her skin like thorns.
Jane had no time to react—her breath caught in her throat as the woman’s eyes widened. Jane struggled to move, but her body wouldn’t obey. Every muscle was tensed and yet frozen like stone. The woman opened her mouth, a silent scream ricocheting off the insides of Jane’s skull. Then the thorny roots pulled her off the edge of the cliffs and into the sea.
“No!” A gasp escaped Jane’s lips, barely above a whisper. Her skin broke out in goose bumps, and she shook her head, trying to clear it of what she’d just seen. Her hand shot to clutch her necklace, a pendant gifted to her by her grandmother.
Before she could even run to the edge, a voice cut through her shock. “She isn’t real. Just a phantom.” The quiet voice intruded on her terror.
She glanced over her shoulder. A handsome man in his mid-thirties dressed as a gardener approached, carrying a pair of huge shears. The sight was so unexpected after what she’d just witnessed that she wasn’t quite sure how to react. Brown eyes studied her with a mixture of pity and concern.
“What did you say?”
The man sighed, set his shears down, leaning them against his knee while he rubbed his palms on his brown work pants. “What you saw there, was the lady in white. She’s haunted these cliffs since her death.”
Her death? The woman she’d just seen was a…ghost?
“You believe in ghosts?” Jane turned her face once more to the cliffs.
The gardener turned his head toward the sea, his eyes focusing on something from the past. “I believe that evil leaves its mark on a place. Burns itself in the stones so deep that only something truly pure and good can get it out. These old stones have so much evil buried in them, I doubt the castle will ever rest. It isn’t safe here, not for you.” The gardener bent to pick up his shears again. “You should go, return to wherever you’ve come from, and forg
et this place.”
She swallowed, a metallic taste still thick in her throat, focusing back on the gardener. “How often have you seen her? The lady in white?” Even as she spoke, the image of the woman’s face flashed across her mind, and a chill swept through her entire body. She rubbed her hands over her arms.
He shrugged, eyes facing the cliffs as he answered, “She appears there on the cliffs whenever her kin return home.”
She looked toward the hall, trying to bury the memory of sorrow and fear on the ghost’s face. Anyone else might have been panicking after having just seen what she’d seen. But the nightly visions plaguing her had slowly forced her to accept that there were things beyond her explanation. Like ghosts.
“So the earl is here?” The earl was in residence. This was good news. She had been a little worried that he might be monitoring the estate from London.
“Yes. Arrived seven months ago. Been trying to restore the place. Not much good will it do. The ghosts are stirring again. He’s upset the balance.”
“The balance?” A sense of warning niggled at the back of her head, but she forced herself to ignore it—and to ignore the sense that she was losing her mind.
The gardener appeared to really see her for the first time. “The balance. Between the evil and the good. Evil rules the castle. Stalks the halls and torments those who dare to live inside.”
Icy fingers raked down Jane’s back.
“Is Lord Weymouth in danger? Being in the house?” It only occurred to her after she asked that the gardener might be right, and she might be in danger, too.
The gardener looked out to sea, his eyes dark. “I don’t know. But if you plan to stay here, watch yourself, miss. Evil isn’t always what you’d expect. It can take many forms.” His voice dropped. “Many forms.”
He turned and walked away. The momentary comfort his presence provided her vanished as she gazed upon his retreating form.
She wanted to know what he meant, but she doubted she’d get much more from him. She turned her attention back to the castle. The high windows reflected the sunlight as it started to peek out from the clouds.
The image of the lady in white flashed through her mind again, blinding her to the present for a brief instant. Her heart clenched in sadness, and fear rippled through her in tiny little waves, enough to keep her on edge. Had she witnessed a true apparition, or had her own imagination run away with her? She’d half hoped her dreams of being pushed from the cliffs had been only nightmares, yet that woman looked so familiar.
She had always believed in supernatural things. She was no longer a practicing Catholic in the churchgoing sense, but her faith was strong enough that she respected the truth that there were things in this world she couldn’t understand. Like ghosts. And now she was going to enter a place bleeding with evil. She reached up to clutch the medallion of the archangel Michael that hung around her neck. The metal was warm from lying against her skin. It was a small comfort in the face of the looming castle and the fears of what might lurk in its shadows.
Chapter Two
He was cursed. There was no other explanation for it. Bastian Weymouth glared at the expensive toilet in his bathroom. Arms crossed over his chest, he shot a glance at the portly plumber who quivered in the doorway.
“What has you so agitated? I see nothing wrong.” Bastian studied the room again, searching for signs of the disaster that the plumber insisted had taken place just a few minutes before he’d run to find Bastian.
The plumber gulped and took a deep breath. “The toilet was in place, and I was just tightening the pipes when the water exploded out of the bowl. It flooded the whole room!” The plumber waved his wrench about.
Bastian’s displeasure deepened. The room wasn’t wet. There wasn’t one drop of water outside the bowl to confirm the plumber’s story.
“I swear on my life, my lord! Water up to my ankles.” The plumber jabbed at his pants where it showed the fabric soaked clear through up to his calves.
Yet the entire room was completely dry, and the plumber had only fetched him a moment ago to explain the flooding. Flooding, which by all appearances, hadn’t ever occurred.
It was just one more irritation in a long line of complications that had occurred during the renovations, which began when he’d moved back to Weymouth and Stormclyffe seven months ago, after his family’s fifty-year absence. Leaky roofs, windowpanes shattering just hours after being installed, birds finding their way inside and dying when they broke their necks against the walls trying to escape. There were even workers talking about seeing a woman in a white dress along the cliffs. He’d never seen anything like that here. It was utter nonsense, but the list went on from there, each thing more frustrating than the last. All of it worsened the superstitions of the locals, especially the ones he had hired to repair everything. If he could just get the repairs completed, all of the superstitious nonsense would have to stop. The mutterings of “cursed” as he walked past local shops in the town would have to stop, too. He was tired of the black label his family bore in Weymouth because of the tragedies in their ancestral past. Restoring Stormclyffe, fixing it was the key. Something deep inside him compelled him to save the Hall. It was an almost tangible need to see the broken glass panes of the windows mended, the rooms dusted, and the broken stones replaced. Maybe returning the Hall to its former glory would make it look less like a tourist attraction for ghost hunters, and would make the townspeople stop spreading tales about it Then he might have a chance at a somewhat normal life, rather than be the target of village gossip.
His grandmother had been convinced that if he could fix Stormclyffe, there would be no more problems, no more tragedies, no more lost loved ones, like his father.
“It is fine, Mr. Tibbs. I’ll compensate you for your services. I trust you’ll stay here to see to the remaining water closets?”
“Thank you, my lord, but I have to say I don’t feel comfortable staying here after dusk.” The portly man shifted on his feet, eyes darting around the lavish bathroom. “I’ll return first thing in the morning.”
Bastian didn’t blame him. It was obvious Tibbs was a superstitious sort, and given the bloody history of Stormclyffe…well, that wasn’t a surprise. Bastian’s newly married grandparents had fled the castle in 1962 after an upstairs maid was found hanging from the rafters of the great hall. And they hadn’t been the first to leave over the Hall’s last two centuries.
The authorities hadn’t been able to figure out how the girl had gotten out to the center beam to hang herself; there was no way it could be reached without an impossibly tall ladder. Yet the maid had been discovered swinging all the same. Nessy Harper, the victim, had been a local girl, and his family’s reputation with the nearby town had been blackened. The coroner’s report had read suicide, but there had been talk about his grandfather driving Nessy to it in some sort of doomed love affair. Bastian knew it was nonsense, but it didn’t make the sting to his family’s honor and pride any less significant.
Bastian’s grandmother, who’d spent her last days in their London town house, had died murmuring about Nessy. He grimaced at the memory of her last moments when he’d been alone with her.
“Beware the shadows Bastian…they hold evil. Stay away from the castle. Poor sweet Nessy, milk-white eyes…she was so scared… Touch not the heart of evil… What once was broken must be mended.” The frail old woman exhaled, and six-year-old Bastian had screamed. Her words had never made sense, but he’d always wondered if she’d meant that the castle shouldn’t lay empty and crumbling. His grandparents had been the last heirs to live in the castle after all, and the guilt of leaving it behind might have weighed upon her in her final hours. Many people suffered from delusions and superstitions in their twilight years.
“Tibbs, I’ll pay triple your price if you get this toilet up and running before sunset.”
The plumber’s eyes bugged out in surprise. He nodded and rushed off to collect more tools.
Bastian left the wat
er closet and headed back downstairs, ignoring the chaos of repair people and staff he’d hired to help with the upkeep of the castle.
“My lord,” his butler, Randolph, announced. “The stone mason has finished repairing his work on the bell tower, but he said to advise you that if you wish to have the bell working properly you’ll need to replace the clappers since all of the bells are missing them.”
“Fine. I’ll add it to the list of things I need to fix.”
When Bastian turned to leave, his butler coughed politely. “One more thing, my lord. You have a visitor. I put her in the red drawing room.”
Bastian cocked an eyebrow and scowled. “A visitor?” That was the last thing he needed.
Randolph swallowed, his eyes shifting away. “Er, yes. She said she is here to do research on the house, and you invited her in a letter. She’s American.”
American? For a second he couldn’t imagine who Randolph was talking about. When the butler handed him the letter in question, obviously taken from the visitor, he studied it.
“Er…Yes. I remember.” He scanned the note he’d hastily written several months ago. It all came back, the numerous e-mails and phone calls from the American woman named Jane Seyton. He’d asked her to wait until renovations were complete before she visited, yet here she was, showing up in the middle of numerous disasters. He’d made it abundantly clear she wasn’t allowed any access to his family’s archives. Apparently Americans didn’t understand blunt honesty. No surprise. He crumpled the letter in his fist, failing to quell the sudden frustration.
As if superstitious workmen weren’t enough to cause him trouble, having the American here would prove to be one more irritation. She would have to be supervised to make sure she didn’t pry into his family’s documents and that nothing was taken intentionally from the house.