“What did you do about it?”
“We talked through it mainly. There are different kinds of spirits in our world. They manifest differently and they therefore respond to different treatments. He would explain to me what he was experiencing so we could work out exactly what needed to be done. He was concerned the spirits were going to get worse, he was worried for his family. I discussed the possibility of needing to have the house cleansed.”
“If he was coming to see you for a few months, why didn’t you cleanse the house in that time?”
“He wouldn’t let me. He said he didn’t want you to know what was going on yet. He was afraid you would be scared and want to move. I urged him to tell you so we could put an end to it and help the spirits cross over. On the other hand, I respected his decision to shield his family. He said he’d tell you when the time was right.”
Cate went quiet. Charlie filled the silence and took over the questioning. “Did you work out what kind of spirits they were?”
“I haven’t been to the house so I haven’t had any one-on-one contact with them yet. However, from my discussions with James, they seem to be earth bound spirits. They are the ones that are trapped on the earth plane for some reason. They will generally be open to interactions with living people and quite active in their habitat.”
“Could they be trapped here if they were murdered?”
“That’s a possibility. Sometimes they feel the need for justice, sometimes they just like the place and don’t want to cross over. My understanding was that James lived in quite a grand home. A house like that can house many spirits that feel emotionally attached to the house and see it as their home forever. They don’t cross over because they don’t feel a need to. Then, of course, you have the spirits that don’t understand they aren’t actually living anymore. They are the trickiest to get rid of.”
“How do you get them to cross over? It seems like they are getting worse in the house. We really need to do something.”
“As I explained to James, the first step is a séance to try and communicate with them. That will tell us why they are grounded and causing so much trouble. The next step is to perform a ritual with the help of our spirit guides. That will show them the light and allow them to walk towards it. The last step is to cleanse and protect the house from any other spirits so that you can live happily ever after,” she beamed at Rahni as if reciting a fairy tale.
“A séance? Is that really necessary?” Cate asked curtly.
“It’s the only way to fully understand them,” Melanie replied matter of factly.
“Is there anything we can do in the meantime to protect ourselves?” Charlie queried.
“Try talking to them. Nothing patronising. Just have a conversation with them as if you were their friend. Sometimes, if they understand you aren’t trying to hurt them, they will go easy on you. Remember, they were people too once and have the same emotions as you or I. The only difference is that they can’t express themselves and be heard like we can. Can you imagine how frustrating that would be? Talking all day long and no-one being able to hear you?”
“What do I say?
“Try asking why they are here, or if they used to live in the house. You can ask them anything. They just might reply.”
“I think that’s what I’m afraid of. Do we need anything special in order to carry out the séance?” Charlie asked.
“I bring a bag full of supplies. That is all I will need. You should be able to help me so I won’t need to bring my assistant.”
“What do you mean? What will I have to do? I don’t mind helping, of course. It’s just that I scare easily.”
“You will mainly be helping me to communicate with them. You live in the house so you already have a relationship with them. Plus, you are quite talented in this area yourself so it will be easy to use your guides.”
“I’m not ‘talented in this area’. This kind of stuff freaks me out, to be honest. No disrespect of course,” Charlie defended.
Melanie looked her directly in the eyes. “You know you have a gift. You’ve known ever since you were a small child. You might have forgotten about it as you’ve grown older, but it’s still there. You just have to know how to use it.”
Cate was losing patience. “Can we make an appointment for this séance then? Preferably the sooner the better.”
Melanie broke her stare from Charlie and pulled herself out of the arm chair. She picked up a book and pen from a nearby desk and sat down again. “I’m afraid I’m all booked up for the next few days or so. How about the nineteenth?”
“That will be fine,” Cate stated.
“Okay, I already have your address. I will be there at 7 p.m. Please make sure the little one isn’t in the house. It’s best not to scare the children.”
They all stood to leave. Cate swung her handbag over her shoulder. “Thank you for your time Ms Lucas. We will make sure we are prepared for your visit.”
Melanie showed them back through the tiny shop and out the front door again. The bell tinkled as it opened. She waved at them from the door until they turned the corner back out onto the street. Charlie could tell from her demeanour that Cate hadn’t enjoyed the experience. She couldn’t work out why. Melanie had been a really nice woman. A bit eccentric maybe, but it was obvious she thought highly of James. Charlie considered that Melanie had handled the situation as well as could be expected. Not once did she disrespect James’ memory, or Cate for that matter.
They walked quickly to the car, the pace set by Cate’s long strides. Rahni almost had to run to keep up with them. She didn’t say a word until they were in the car and tightening their seat beats.
“This is complete nonsense,” she said, a faint quiver to her lip.
Charlie was taken aback. “What makes you say that? After everything we went through last night, you’re just going to dismiss it as fictional?”
“I’m not saying that. It’s that woman, going on about auras and gifts. She didn’t know James, she couldn’t have. She had no right to share secrets with him. I bet they talked about me and what a delicate disposition I had.”
“I bet they didn’t. I bet their conversations were all about the spirits in the house and what they could do to help them pass over. If James spoke to her about you, then it would have been purely in a protective way. You know that,” Charlie tried to talk her sister around and out of her stubborn mood. However, she believed in everything she was saying too.
“I’ll just be glad when this whole thing is over and done with. I shouldn’t have to be out here and speaking to mystics,” she started the car and negotiated it onto the road.
“She wasn’t a mystic, she’s a psychic. I’m sure there’s a difference somewhere. After the séance, you won’t have to see her again.”
The rest of the journey was made in complete silence between the two of them. Besides the occasional question from Rahni about whether they were nearly home yet, the only other sound was coming from the radio.
That afternoon they attended to tidying the house from the night before. After surveying every room on both stories, they concluded the living room had suffered the brunt of the attack. Luckily this time, nothing was broken. Piece by piece, they started to clear the floor of the clutter. Cate made sure each book was placed back in the same slot that it had come from. James had made sure it was alphabetical and she would do the same.
Charlie heard the rumble of a motor and looked up from her position on the floor. She saw Blair’s car coming down the driveway. It was almost dark again, she had hoped he would be back before nightfall. She quickly replaced the books she was holding and went to the door to greet him.
“Hey honey,” she gave him a hug and a kiss. “Is your father still alright?”
“He’s going to be fine. Besides being a bit sore, he’s back to his old self again.”
She led him into the living room and started to pick up books again. Cate uttered a hello.
“What happened here?�
� He asked.
“We had a visitor last night,” Charlie replied.
“Was it the Incredible Hulk by any chance?”
“No, more along the lines of the invisible ghost type. It was insane, scared us half to death.”
“What was it doing?” Blair bent down to help with the books.
“It turned all the lights off and we couldn’t get them back on again. We went to bed and there were these knocking sounds all around the house. Then there were footsteps up and down the corridor. It just went on and on, all night. When we got up this morning, this room was a mess with books all on the floor,” Charlie explained.
“All the cupboard doors were open in the kitchen too,” Cate added.
“Gee, I go away for one night and all hell breaks loose.”
“That’s true,” Charlie was jolted back to her conversation with Harold, remembering what he had said about the house. “You don’t think it was your absence that caused all this?”
“I was only joking.”
“No, I’m serious. Remember Harold said the house didn’t like women? Maybe it was trying to send us a message last night. He’s too much of a coward to try anything while you were here but as soon as it’s just us girls, he let us have it. That’s a scary thought.”
“Well, I guess we’ll find out. If everything is quiet tonight it’s either a coincidence or a valid theory.”
They finished tidying the living room and had a light dinner before retiring to bed early. All of them were sleep deprived, even Blair who had spent most of the night sitting in an uncomfortable hospital waiting room chair. Charlie snuggled up to Blair and fell asleep easy, happy he was back.
Chapter 10
Cate woke up in a much better mood the following morning. She greeted them with a hot breakfast and declared that she wasn’t going to worry about it anymore. The ghosts could have the house today, she and Rahni were going to take in a movie and have some ‘girlie’ time shopping. It was a nice change to see her in such a positive mood.
Blair was keen to get back into working out the puzzle of the house after his day away. He insisted they work on it first thing after breakfast. But before that, he told Charlie he had a surprise for her and retrieved something from his car. He came back carrying a black bag and a big smile on his face.
“I picked up my laptop from home. No more library visits!” He said proudly. They walked through to the conservatory and set the computer on the coffee table, plugging it in at the wall.
“Brenda is going to miss us,” Charlie joked.
“I’m sure she’ll live without our regular visits. Although, I think we’ve been keeping her in a job this past week. Now, I was thinking about this yesterday on the way home. In the early eighteen hundreds, they kept pretty concise records about who immigrated, mainly because most of them were convicts. I’m sure there is a website that has records like that open to the public.”
“So many people are trying to trace their family tree these days there is a real market for that kind of stuff,” Charlie agreed, understanding where he was going.
“Precisely, my dear Watson,” he waited until the computer had booted up and connected to the wireless internet. He went directly to Google and started a search on immigration records. There were hundreds of hits. The first one looked promising, an official government website on the subject. He clicked into the link and read through the pages until he found what he was looking for.
All the names of the legal immigrants were listed right from when the Endeavour arrived in Botany Bay on January 26th 1788 to the early 1900’s when the Second World War began. Apparently the records got a bit disarrayed in wartime. The list of names was prepared in a chronological order. They cast their eyes to the top and worked their way down the list of names.
It only took a few lines to find Lord and Lady Richard and Elizabeth Reign and their three daughters. They had immigrated in 1800, very early in the history of modern Australia. They continued down the names, trying to see if anything else seemed relevant. A couple of dozen lines further down, they saw the name Thomas Rochester Reign.
“There’s another Reign,” Charlie pointed out. “It sounds familiar too.” She got up and ran upstairs to where she had put the family tree that Mrs White had given her. She hurried back downstairs and unfolded the pages. She scanned through the tree limbs, trying to match the name. “There he is. He’s on the same level as Eve.”
“What relation is he?”
“He’s Richard’s brother’s son. So I guess that makes him Eve’s cousin. When did he come over?”
Blair checked the screen again. “You’re not going to believe this. He arrived in Australia in 1806.”
“The year Eve was killed.” Goose bumps ran up and down Charlie’s arms as she made the connection.
“I think we may have found suspect number two,” Blair closed the screen and went back to the Google search engine. He typed in ‘Thomas Rochester Reign’ and hit the find button. There were only three exact matches to his search query. He clicked into the first one. It was the same government website they were already using, however it was a different area. This one had more details about a few of the immigrants. Thomas was logged as entering the country in 1806 and then leaving again in 1807. His status while in Australia was listed as ‘visitor’.
“He couldn’t have intended to stay very long if he was only listed as a visitor. Notice the others listed are marked as a permanent resident?” Charlie observed. “Why come all that way and only stay for a year?”
“It would have been a horrible journey too. So many people died on the boats that they would be full of disease. To go through all that only to turn around and do it all again? Our Thomas here sounds like he must have had a good reason to get out of the country again.”
“If I killed someone I would want to flee the country as soon as I could,” Charlie said, then thought better of it. “We shouldn’t jump to conclusions though. Why would he come over and then kill his cousin? She would only have been a child the last time he saw her. Surely she couldn’t have done something so terrible to him as a young girl that warranted her murder?”
“Just a thought, but a lot of cousins used to marry each other back in those days. They thought it created a nice pure bloodline.”
“That’s true. Maybe one of the daughters was earmarked for him and he came to claim his prize. With three daughters, they would have wanted them to marry well so the family fortune could be handed down appropriately. They didn’t have any sons, so a cousin would be the perfect heir. Surely though he would have been better suited to the oldest, Joanna?”
“I’ll try and find his date of birth, see how old he was when he came over. That might shed a bit of light on it. If he was very young then we might be completely off track.” Blair opened another Google screen and found the website of the births, deaths, and marriages website in the United Kingdom. “They want ten pounds for the record!”
“I’ll get my credit card.” Charlie hurried to her purse and read out the number as Blair typed it into the white boxes on the screen. Within a few seconds it has been processed and a PDF of the report displayed on screen.
“Thomas Rochester Reign was born in Cheltenham in 1785. He was only twenty-one in 1806. That’s young enough to be eligible for any of the daughters. It would make sense that he was arranged for Joanna. Doesn’t the oldest child usually inherit the estate?”
“Usually. Unless they had a better offer for her. I can’t imagine that though. There wouldn’t have been too many eligible bachelors walking around Pickerton in the 1800’s.”
Blair suddenly remembered something he’d learnt at school when they studied colonial Australia. “There was a major shortage of women at the time because most of the immigrants were men. I think it was something like twenty men to every woman. They set up a campaign in England to try and get more women over here.”
“I wish we had those odds these days! Is there anything else about Cousin Thomas on the web
?”
Blair returned to his original Google search. The second link was back to the immigration list where they had first found his name. The third link was to the archives section of an English newspaper. The archives were apparently meticulously kept with copies of articles going back to the newspaper’s inception in 1845. Quite impressive for a regional newspaper publication. They read through the article.
Lord Thomas Rochester Reign was featured in the business section for his contribution to the community. He had the largest horse breeding business outside of London. It had been in the family for generations but it took Thomas’ command for it to really reach its full potential. His horses were sought after for their quality both in horse racing and working farms. They could command prices in excess of any of the competitors.
The article went on to mention that he was married to Lady Cecelia Reign and they had a grand total of five children - three boys and two girls. The eldest son, Markus, was already encased in the business by training horses for showjumping events. He was apparently a ‘chip off the old block’ in Thomas’ words. They all lived in the family estate in Cheltenham, known as Honeysuckle Cottage. They had plans to keep building the business before eventually passing it down to their son.
“Well, at least we know he didn’t marry Joanna or Violet,” Charlie commented.
“It looks like he did well for himself.”
“It certainly does.”
* * *
That evening after Rahni had been tucked into bed, the three adults of the household were sitting around the kitchen table having a glass of wine. The conversation had started off by discussing whether the attic room could be used as a bed and breakfast room but soon drifted back to the unseen forces in the household. They were never far from any of their minds lately.
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