The Haunting

by Lindsey Duga

  Mr. Thornton’s frown deepened. “Why haven’t you been sleeping well, Emily?”

  Before she could respond, Miss Greer waved her tongs at the master of Blackthorn Manor. “It’s that dog of hers! Getting up in the middle of the night, roaming around and scratching and whining. Why, I heard him just the other night whimpering away.”

  “Hmm.” Mr. Thornton rubbed his whiskers. “Maybe we should keep him outside for a—”

  “No!” Emily tried not to shout, but her voice was louder than it should ever be at the supper table. All three adults stared at her. “I mean … no, please. I’ll keep him in my room tonight. I’ll lock my door. It’ll be fine—I promise.”

  Mr. Thornton glanced at his wife, then nodded as if the matter was settled.

  That night, Emily stayed awake. She kept the candle going, and when Archie got up from the rug, slinking away toward her cracked door, she quietly got out of bed, grabbed the candle, and hurried after him.

  She had to find out where her friend was going every night.

  The dog moved through the house like he was hunting for something. She knew English pointers were a hunting breed, perfect for foxhunts. But having raised him from a pup, Emily knew he’d never hunted for sport. Besides catching the occasional rat at the orphanage, hunting wasn’t something he did, although apparently it was bred into him.

  As they mounted the stairs to the third floor, Emily grew colder. Once again, she wished she’d worn slippers or a robe, but it was too late to turn back now. She had to keep going no matter how terrified she was, and no matter how tight her stomach clenched.

  At the top of the stairs, Archie stopped and sniffed the air. Then he bent his head and turned down the west wing. Emily’s heart skipped a beat.

  At the end of the hall was the forbidden room. The room that Archie had gone to their second day at the manor, and the room that seemed constantly to be at the edge of her thoughts. Maybe she should’ve guessed that it was that door Archie returned to every night. It was certainly the door that Emily was aching to be behind most. But she had kept her promise to the Thorntons. She’d made sure not to go there, regardless of how much she’d wanted to, regardless of how often she’d thought about whatever resided above the room in which she slept every night. Archie was moving toward it, continuing his hunt. She’d followed him for a reason tonight, and she couldn’t go without finding out why.

  Maybe it was nothing at all. Maybe a cat lived in that room and the Thorntons didn’t want to show her.

  Or maybe it was the source of the shadows and all the coldness and whispers. Maybe it was the lair of the monster that was not supposed to exist.

  Go—it’s just a room, Emily told herself.

  Yes, and shadows are just shadows.

  Steeling herself, Emily followed Archie down the hall. From her candle’s glow she could make out the state of the corridor, and it was awful. Wallpaper peeled at the tops, bottoms, and halfway down in the middle. The moldings looked black with, well, mold. Then there were large discolored patches on the wall in the shapes of portraits long since taken down. Maybe so they wouldn’t be destroyed by the same ruin that seemed to have fallen upon the rest of the hall.

  “Turn back.”

  Emily stopped, hearing the whisper echo in her ears, pinching her shoulders tight in fear. Could that be inside her head this time? Maybe it was her conscience—her fear manifesting into words that told her to stay away from the evil that lay ahead. But unlike the other times, instead of beckoning her forward, the voice was telling her to leave. Should she heed it? After all, whatever was whispering to her seemed to enjoy luring her into danger.

  Maybe she should do the exact opposite this time.

  Plus, she couldn’t just leave Archie.

  Emily’s hands trembled as she followed Archie farther and farther down the corridor, making the candlelight beam jump and shake. Which, of course, didn’t help the idea of shadows coming to haunt her.

  With each step she wanted to turn back, just like the voice had said, but her feet carried her forward, her gaze locked on the door where Archie had stopped. He stood still, one paw up, nose down, pointing at the door’s threshold.

  Then a buzzing reached Emily’s ears. It was very soft at first, then grew louder with each step. Her hands and skin turned colder. The seconds seemed to stretch as the buzzing morphed into whispers that prickled the hair on her arms. The voice whispered again, but this time, she couldn’t make out the words. What was it saying?

  Archie whined, scratching at the door, breaking through the whispers. Emily stood next to him now, transfixed by the sight of the door. It was … pristine. White and clean and beautiful—a stark contrast to the tragic state of the rest of the corridor.

  This room was different.

  As she reached for the door’s handle, a freezing wind swept from underneath the door, blowing out her candle and lifting the hair off her shoulders. The whispering came back like a roar, loud as a thousand voices trying to speak out at once—each one vying for her attention.

  It was completely dark, and at any moment she felt like the shadows would come and devour her. But she knew where the door was. She knew its handle was inches from her fingers. Utterly terrified, yet strangely compelled, Emily grasped the door handle.

  It was like touching ice.

  The whispering vanished, silent for a beat, and then:

  “GET. OUT.”

  The shrill words blasted through Emily like an ocean wave in a storm. She was on the ground, skidding across the damp old carpet.

  Archie barked and ran toward her, growling and snarling at nothing at all. Except Emily knew there was something. Something evil and filled with hate.

  Emily scrambled to her feet and ran with Archie back down the hall to the staircase, not looking back—not ever looking back.

  Emily ran down the hall like there was a monster after her. With everything she’d seen and heard, it probably was a monster. Regardless of what it was, she just knew she had to get away. If she could, she’d run out of this manor all the way back to London to escape whatever evil thing lay beyond that door.

  Just as Emily rounded the corner to the grand staircase, she collided with a pair of legs. Falling onto her backside with Archie whining and licking at her cheeks, she looked up, still shaking terribly, to see Mrs. Thornton standing above her, holding a gaslit lantern.

  “Emily?” Her voice was high and wavering in the vast silence of the manor.

  Now that Emily had stopped running, she was finally aware of how quiet it all was.

  “What are you doing up here? Why are you out of bed again?” she asked, looking down at Emily, then stepping around the corner and lifting up her lantern to cast a sphere of golden light down the haunted hall.

  Haunted.

  Could that be what it was? Were all of these incidents—the shadows, the decay, the chill, the objects falling—the work of some kind of evil spirit?

  She remembered the girls at the orphanage telling ghost stories as a way to pass the time. She’d never paid much attention to them. She preferred her stories of fairy tales and princesses and knights, not of poltergeists and tales of murder.

  Of course, the idea that this was all the work of some ghost was somehow even more frightening than a monster.

  A monster felt imaginary. A ghost … a ghost felt real.

  “Emily? Emily dear, what is it?” Mrs. Thornton pressed, bending down and taking Emily’s shoulder and squeezing it.

  “I … I … There was …” Emily could barely speak. Fear took hold of her throat and was squeezing it much too tightly to get any words out. How could she tell her new mother that she believed a ghost lived at the end of the hall? No, best only to tell her mother what she’d experienced. Despite everything, she didn’t want to leave her new parents and her new home, no matter how scary it was. And if she claimed that a ghost had been haunting her, they may think her mad enough to return her to Evanshire’s.

  “I—I was f-follow
ing A-Archie,” Emily stuttered. “He stopped at a door at the end of the wing, and the door was all white and pretty. But the hallway is so awful-looking.” She was talking faster and faster to make sure all the words got out before she lost her nerve again. Archie nuzzled her hand. Wrapping her arm around his neck, she drew strength and comfort from his warm body and continued onward. “And then there was all this buzzing—like a bunch of voices whispering at me. Then it suddenly got really, really cold and there was a big gust of wind and—”

  “Charlotte?” Mr. Thornton came up the steps in a dark green robe, holding a candle, and when his gaze went from his wife to his new daughter, his brow furrowed in either anger or confusion. “Emily? What the devil is going on here?”

  “Robert!” Mrs. Thornton exclaimed, gripping the key around her neck tight in her fist. She looked desperately at her husband, then glanced back down the hall. The lantern she was holding was trembling. Trembling so hard the light beams jumped around, making the shadows once again look alive.

  Emily shivered, wrapping both arms around Archie this time.

  Mr. Thornton seemed to understand his wife’s reaction better than Emily did, because he turned to Emily and gave her a look angrier than she’d ever seen from him. “Emily, what are you doing out of bed?” There was an iciness to his words.

  Quickly, Emily repeated what she’d just told Mrs. Thornton. “Then there was this really big gust of wind and my candle went out and it was all dark and then—”

  “Enough!” Mr. Thornton shouted. His voice was so loud it echoed throughout the manor, carrying through the wings and down the staircase.

  Emily shrank back from her adoptive father and felt Archie growl. Any trace of Mr. Thornton’s kindness from the past few days was gone.

  “I will hear no more of this nonsense. It was just a bad draft and your childish imagination,” he snapped. “I told you—no more nighttime escapades. I expect you to keep your promises, Emily. We gave you those keys because we trust you, and now you’ve betrayed that trust by going back on your word.”

  “I—I’m sorry,” Emily murmured, tears springing to her eyes. She felt weak and silly for crying again. But the monster—the ghost—whatever—had scared her senseless, and now the Thorntons didn’t believe her. Not only that, but Mr. Thornton was exactly right: She’d betrayed their trust. He had every right to be angry at her.

  Even so, Emily knew what she’d seen and what she’d felt. It wasn’t her imagination anymore. There was no need for doubt. It was real. Although she’d been terrified, and disobeyed her father’s orders, she didn’t regret going to the third-floor west wing. She was relieved to know that it all wasn’t in her head.

  It didn’t make her feel much better. In fact, it just made her cry harder. It probably also had something to do with the fact that she’d made Mr. Thornton yell at her. Miss Evanshire had yelled at her constantly, and she’d never once cried—or really cared, for that matter. But now that it was Mr. Thornton, a man whom she respected and cared for … suddenly, it made all the difference in the world.

  As Emily sniffled and hung her head, trying to wipe her tears away with her sleeve, she sensed Mr. Thornton take a step toward her, then bend down on one knee, dropping to her level.

  She peeked up from the crevice of her elbow to see that Mr. Thornton’s face had changed to one of concern. “Now, now, my dear. There’s no need for tears. I think we’re all just a little stressed over the bad luck that’s been following us around. I think what we need is some life in this house, a little celebration.” He brushed Emily’s unruly dark hair away from her face and tucked it affectionately behind her ear.

  Emily was too stunned to reply. Going from yelling to suggesting a celebration was entirely different than Miss Evanshire’s way of scolding children.

  “A party, Robert?” Mrs. Thornton seemed equally surprised. She also kept glancing back down the hall as if she expected someone or something to come walking out of the shadows. Her hand still clutched the key at her throat like it was her most precious thing in the world.

  Mr. Thornton stood and looped a strong arm about his wife’s waist and took the lantern from her shaking hands. “Yes, Charlotte. I think it would be good for us. We’ve never really celebrated Emily joining our family, not officially, anyway. We should have one in her honor, don’t you think?”

  Mrs. Thornton looked over her shoulder at the dark hallway, then back at her husband’s face. Biting her bottom lip, her fingers slowly loosened their hold on her necklace. “Yes, I think we should do it.”

  “It’s settled,” Mr. Thornton said with a nod, then he kissed his wife’s forehead. “Well, let’s get back to bed. It’s the middle of the night and now we have much to do. I’ll talk to Miss Greer first thing tomorrow morning.”

  Mr. Thornton guided Mrs. Thornton back toward the stairs, and as they started down them, Emily, too, took one more look at the hallway. She was terrified, but just like how she’d reached for the door, Emily was oddly compelled to look even though she felt as if she’d never want to again.

  If her eyes weren’t deceiving her, she could’ve sworn something moved within the darkness. This time, though, it wasn’t just the shadows wiggling and twitching against the walls. It was a dark shape, like a figure or a silhouette.

  Archie growled and tugged at her nightgown.

  Unfreezing from her terror, Emily turned and ran down the stairs to catch up to the light of the Thorntons’ lantern and the warmth of their company.

  That whole week, poor Miss Greer was worked to the bone preparing for Emily’s welcome party. It was a strain that she put on herself, however, since Mr. and Mrs. Thornton insisted that she need not trouble herself with the extra work.

  The Thorntons didn’t seem to care much about the dust and the cobwebs and the ruin of the house in general. It was as if they were impervious to seeing the true state of their home, the dire shape it was in.

  The second day of Miss Greer’s attack on the house with a mop, broom, and duster, Emily asked the housekeeper why she was working so hard if the Thorntons didn’t ask her to. To Emily, it seemed like she had plenty of work already without the added labor of cleaning the entire first floor from head to foot.

  “I won’t let the guests see the manor in such a state,” Miss Greer fussed as she dragged buckets of soapy water to the dining hall and the main entrance to wash every corner of the floor.

  Emily rolled up the sleeves of her smock and dunked her sponge into the soapy water. “Why don’t the Thorntons hire more help? It’s clearly too much work for one person.”

  Miss Greer gave her a warm smile, then sighed and shook her head. “Grief will make a person blind, and it will drive away others, even when you need them most.”

  “What do you mean? Why are they sad?” Emily took the sponge out of the bucket and big droplets of soapy water fell onto her apron. Could there be a very important reason behind Mrs. Thornton’s strange mood swings? Was it not her health at all, but her heart?

  Miss Greer paled a little in the warm yellow glow of the hall and pressed her lips together in a thin line. Wagging a finger at Emily, she said, “No one likes a nosy child, Miss Emily. Now, this floor isn’t going to scrub itself.”

  Still curious, but knowing that Miss Greer wasn’t going to say anything more, Emily went back to her task. Even if it was cleaning, she was glad to have something to do while her parents hardly paid any attention to her.

  Mr. Thornton locked himself in his study and Mrs. Thornton kept to her room. Occasionally, Emily would sneak past her mother’s room to see her sitting on a large chair by the fire, not even lit, fiddling with her necklace. She’d just sit there, staring at the ash and remnants of burnt wood, her fingers rubbing the metal teeth of the odd skeleton key about her neck.

  While the Thorntons were distracted and aloof, Emily helped Miss Greer clean. She didn’t mind the chores one bit. In fact, she welcomed the busyness of the routine. It helped keep her mind off the fact that a ghost was
hiding up in the corner of the manor. Spending time with Miss Greer helped drive away the evil chill and the whispering voices. It was as if working in the sunlight with another person warded off the evil spirits, or at least made it harder for them to appear.

  Also, while helping Miss Greer clean, Emily saw less and less of Kat. The girl only showed up when Emily was completely alone, and as soon as Miss Greer called for Emily, Kat would run off.

  Even though many of her adventures with Kat had been fun, they had also been dangerous somehow. So she was both relieved and only a little bit disappointed when Kat would leave and Emily was left to her chores.

  At night, Emily had Archie sleep in her bed with her, not caring about dog hair in the sheets, and she had multiple candles going to help drive away the shadows.

  They helped, but she wondered how much longer she could keep this up. She wouldn’t be able to sleep with Archie every night or work with Miss Greer all day long. At some point she would have to be on her own, and what would happen then?

  Emily was scared to think of it.

  The morning of the party, Mrs. Thornton herself came in to wake up Emily. The shocking presence of her new mother was enough to wake her out of her sleepy daze, and she sat up in bed with Archie still tucked under her sheets, his tail thumping.

  Mrs. Thornton smiled pleasantly and deposited a breakfast tray on the vanity seat. “Good morning, dear. I thought we’d have a little breakfast together.”

  Still trying to shake off her surprise, Emily crawled out of her covers to sit on the edge of her bed.

  “Um, thank you, Mama.”

  Mrs. Thornton beamed at that and gracefully poured Emily a cup of tea. As Emily accepted the cup, Archie’s head popped out from under the covers, and he panted happily at the sight of another person.

  Laughing, Mrs. Thornton shook her head. “Oh, dear, we best not tell Miss Greer about that. She won’t be too pleased at Archie’s sleeping arrangements.”