Evie's Ghost

by Helen Peters

  I just about managed to stifle a snort.

  “I’ll find you some sheets,” she said, and disappeared.

  I walked over to the window, which was the only nice thing in the room. It was wide and tall, with a carved stone frame, and the glass was divided into dozens of tiny panes. Outside it was pitch dark. I couldn’t see a thing. Which was a relief, since the room apparently overlooked a graveyard where the bodies were being dug up.

  As I reached out to close the curtains, I noticed a cluster of scratches in one of the panes near the bottom of the window. Scratches that looked like writing.

  I crouched down and peered at them more closely. It was writing. The letters were curly and old-fashioned.

  Sophia Fane

  Imprisoned here

  27th April 1814

  The hairs on my arms prickled. Imprisoned? In this room? Why would somebody have been imprisoned in here?

  I stared at the writing for a while, trying and failing to make sense of it. Then I remembered the pamphlet Anna had left on the mattress. It was called A Brief History of Charlbury House. I picked it up and skimmed through the pages, looking for a mention of Sophia Fane, but I couldn’t find anything about her.

  Anna came in, holding a pile of crumpled bedding.

  “Do you know anything about that writing on the window?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes,” she said, dumping the bedding on the mattress. “There’s quite an interesting story there.”

  “What is it?”

  “Well, Sophia was an only child, and her father, Sir Henry Fane, apparently arranged a marriage for her with a very wealthy friend of his. Sir Henry was in a lot of debt, you see, so he needed Sophia to marry a rich man to restore the family fortunes. But Sophia fell in love with one of the gardeners instead. And when her father told her she had to marry his friend, she refused. So he locked her up in her room until she repented.”

  I felt myself turning cold. “In here?”

  “Yes, apparently this was Sophia’s bedroom. Well, part of her bedroom, I imagine. The rooms were all altered, of course, when the place was turned into flats, but this must have been her bedroom window. The legend has it that when she was locked up, she scratched those words and the date when she was imprisoned into the glass with her diamond ring.”

  “So did she repent?”

  “Not as far as anyone knows. Anyway, she was already engaged to the gardener. Her father didn’t know that, of course, but he soon found out.”

  “How?”

  “Well, it turned out that when he locked her up, she was already pregnant.”

  “Pregnant? So what happened to the baby?”

  “Apparently the baby was taken away from her while she slept. It was a little boy, they say. Nobody knows what became of him.”

  I imagined Sophia waking up one morning and discovering her baby was gone. I imagined her pleading to know where they had taken him, and being met with stone-faced silence. How awful must that have been?

  “What happened to Sophia afterwards?”

  “That’s the strangest thing of all,” said Anna. “Nobody knows.”

  “What do you mean? Somebody must have known. Her father must have known.”

  “There are all sorts of rumours, and there have been ever since it happened. Some people say she ran away and changed her name. Obviously there were no photographs in those days, so it was quite easy for a person to create a new identity without being traced. But other people think she was kept locked up for the rest of her life, and died of a broken heart. There’s even a rumour that she was murdered by her father.”

  “Murdered? In this room?”

  “It’s all just speculation,” Anna said, “because nobody has ever known the truth. But whatever happened to her, she was never seen again, and she was the last of the Fane family. After her father died, the house passed to a distant relative who kept it as a country retreat, but hardly ever used it. It wasn’t lived in properly again until it was turned into flats a few decades ago. Right, I’ll find you a towel. And is there anything else you need?”

  Yes, there is, I thought. Several things, actually. A decent bedroom. My phone. My own home.

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I’m fine.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Girl in the White Nightdress

  I turned over in bed and shook the pillow again. The pillow was hard and lumpy and the duvet was thin and lumpy. The mattress was chilly with damp. I was freezing cold.

  The clock on the living-room mantelpiece had struck eleven a while ago, but I couldn’t sleep. Since Anna had told me the story of Sophia Fane, I couldn’t stop thinking about her, locked up in here, grieving for the baby who was stolen from her while she slept.

  There was a hideous moaning, whistling sound coming from behind the wall opposite the bed. It had freaked me out so much earlier that I’d made Anna come and listen to it.

  “It’s just the wind in the chimney,” she said. “There would have been a fireplace there, you see, before the house was turned into flats. The fireplace was blocked up but the chimney’s still there behind the plasterboard.”

  It didn’t sound like wind in the chimney. It sounded like a pack of ghosts, howling in the walls. It was the most horrible sound I’d ever heard.

  I turned over again and thumped the pillow. The ghosts in the chimney howled even louder.

  As if this room wasn’t uncomfortable enough already, when I took out my things to get ready for bed, I realised I’d forgotten to pack any pyjamas. Anna insisted on lending me a nightdress. I didn’t know nightdresses still existed. I thought they’d died with the Victorians. It was made of white cotton and came down to my ankles, with buttons at the front and a high frilly collar. It felt really weird to wear, and it smelled weird too. A strange, old-fashioned smell.

  A high metallic strike made me jump. But it was only the living-room clock. It struck twelve, and the last stroke faded away.

  And as it faded away, the wind stopped whistling in the chimney. The water stopped gurgling in the pipes. The breeze stopped rustling in the trees.

  I had never known such silence. It was as though the world was holding its breath.

  I realised I was holding my breath too. I forced myself to breathe.

  The howling in the chimney started again: a terrible, desolate, lonely, wailing sound. I covered my ears with my hands.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  I screamed. Something was rapping on the window.

  I burrowed down into the bed and pulled the duvet over my head, whimpering with terror.

  The wailing grew louder. Skeletal fingers knocked on the glass. Tap, tap, tap.

  My teeth were chattering and I shivered uncontrollably. I thought I might die of fright. I wanted to run but I couldn’t move.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  I made myself breathe. It was just a tree branch, tapping against the window, I told myself. There must be a tree outside the window.

  I couldn’t just lie there whimpering all night. I had to be brave. I had to go and see.

  I forced myself to get out of bed and walk across the pitch-black room. I held my breath and pulled the curtains open.

  A girl in a white nightdress was staring in at me. A girl with long dark hair and a desperate look in her eyes.

  I shrieked and jumped back, my blood pumping, my heart racing.

  Then I realised. It was my reflection. It was just the nightdress that had scared me. I wasn’t used to seeing myself in a nightdress.

  I forced myself to look again. My reflection looked back at me.

  Except … it didn’t look exactly like me. And it didn’t look like a reflection.

  Don’t be stupid, I told myself. Of course it’s your reflection.

  From somewhere outside the house came a whirring noise. And then another clock started to strike, with a deep, resonant sound that lingered in the air.

  That was strange. I had heard the living-room clock strike every hour this evening, but I was sure I
hadn’t heard that other clock before.

  The clock continued to strike. And my reflection raised its hand.

  What?

  I hadn’t raised my hand. Had I?

  Then the hand…

  No. It couldn’t have done.

  I was stone cold. Goose pimples prickled all over my body.

  I must be going mad, I told myself. I must be hallucinating.

  Because I was sure the hand had beckoned to me.

  Had I just beckoned without knowing it? Was that possible?

  Ice-cold with dread, I raised my arm.

  The girl in the window didn’t raise hers. She just stared at me with a pleading look in her eyes. As I lowered my arm, flooded with terror, she reached hers towards me and beckoned again.

  “Help me,” she mouthed.

  I screamed, yanked the curtains back together and ran from the room. There was no way I was going back in there. No way I was staying in this flat. I would wake Anna and make her take me back to London, back to my own home, right now, this minute.

  As I ran through the doorway, I had the weirdest sensation. For a moment, I felt as though I ceased to exist. It was as though my body had dissolved into thin air.

  Then, as the door slammed shut behind me, the sensation faded and I felt solid and whole again. It must have been some sort of fainting fit, I thought, only without the toppling-over part.

  But something was different. My clothes felt different. I looked down.

  What the…?

  Instead of Anna’s nightdress, I was wearing a long brown apron over a long grey dress and black boots. There was a tightness around my ribcage, as though I had some sort of corset underneath the dress.

  What on earth was going on? Was it a dream? But I hadn’t fallen asleep. Had I?

  I needed to wake Anna. I had my hand on her bedroom-door handle when suddenly I stopped and stared.

  All the doors in her flat were modern and white, with cheap-looking handles in a dull-coloured metal.

  But this was a door of polished wood, elaborately carved and panelled, and instead of a cheap chrome handle, my hand was clutched around a sphere of shining brass.

  Still clutching the doorknob, I looked up and down the corridor.

  Everything was different.

  The doors were all of carved and polished wood, with gleaming brass doorknobs. The walls were no longer a dirty cream colour, but a lovely deep blue. Instead of the nasty brown carpet, I was standing on a beautiful patterned rug that ran right along the middle of the corridor. Around the edges of the rug, polished floorboards gleamed in the light of flickering wall lamps.

  I was trying to take this in when Anna’s bedroom door was flung violently open, knocking me into the opposite wall. A thin, tight-faced, middle-aged woman wearing a long grey dress marched out of the room. Her eye lit on me and she frowned.

  “Are you the new housemaid?” she asked in a strong French accent. “What are you doing up here? Did Mrs Hardwick send you?”

  I stared at her, speechless. She tutted. “Another brainless idiot,” she said, shaking her head. “Where does she find such hopeless girls? Get back to the kitchen. Polly is on fires tonight.”

  I didn’t move. I couldn’t move. The woman gave me a shove in the small of my back, propelling me down the corridor.

  “Get along with you, girl. This is no time to stand around dreaming.”

  Head spinning, I walked away from her down the corridor.

  I pinched my arm as hard as I could.

  It hurt.

  But I already knew it would. Because this didn’t feel one bit like any dream I’d ever had. Was I having some kind of crazy hallucination? Or had I gone completely mad?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Polly

  I opened the door that should have led out of Anna’s flat to the landing. It did lead to the landing, but the landing was different. The walls were white now and the brown carpet had gone, leaving bare wooden boards.

  In a fog of confusion I gripped the banister rail and started to walk downstairs. The boots rubbed my toes, and whatever was on my legs itched like mad. I hitched up my dress and saw that I was wearing long thick woollen socks. And my hair was different too. I put my hands to my head. My hair was pinned into a tight bun.

  I couldn’t even begin to make sense of this. My brain was unable to form a single coherent thought.

  Delicious food smells wafted up the stairs and there was a distant clatter of pots and pans. As I got further down, I could make out muffled voices among the other noises.

  At the bottom of the staircase was a stone-floored passageway with three doors leading off it. I was trying to decide which one to go through when the door behind me swung open and a huge hand grabbed my arm.

  I shrieked, whirled round and found myself facing a man dressed like one of the footmen on Cinderella’s coach. He stank of body odour.

  “Let go of me!” I said, trying to shake off his hand.

  He tightened his grip. “What on earth do you think you’re playing at?” he said, almost knocking me out with his terrible-smelling breath. “They’ve been wanting you in the scullery for hours.”

  At least, I think that was what he said. His accent was so strong that it was hard to make out his words. Also, I was distracted by his hair, which was long and grey, and curled like a judge’s wig. And yet his face didn’t look older than a teenager’s.

  “Nell’s been taken sick,” he said. “Cook needs you to do the pots and pans. Have you finished the bedrooms?”

  I gaped at him dumbly. “Er…”

  “Are you half-witted?” he said. “Stop gawping and get yourself to the scullery if you still want a job in the morning.”

  “Er … where’s the scullery?”

  He shook his head, as though he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “Follow me.”

  He led the way down the passage and I took in his extraordinary clothes. He wore a dark-blue velvet tailcoat trimmed with gold braid, velvet knee-length knickerbockers, stockings and gold-buckled shoes. It really was like he’d just stepped out of a fairytale.

  He opened the door at the end of the passage and led me into an enormous old-fashioned kitchen. It was boiling hot. A big open fire burned in the centre of a massive black oven. A great long wooden table ran down the middle of the room. At the far end of it, a fat woman sat in a high-backed armchair facing the fire.

  “Take those knives to the pantry, Alice,” she snapped to a skinny, exhausted-looking girl in a filthy apron. “And all the dirty pots to the scullery.”

  “Yes, missus,” muttered the girl, collecting up an assortment of lethal-looking knives from the huge table. The woman heaved herself up from the chair with a groan. As the girl passed her, the woman, for no reason that I could see, hit her on the side of the head. The girl whimpered and disappeared through a doorway, past another girl scraping food scraps into a metal bucket.

  “And don’t you even think about going to bed before this place is cleaned until it shines,” called the fat woman, hobbling out of the kitchen. “I’m off to my room. My legs are fair murdering me.”

  “Not surprising, with all that weight on them,” muttered the girl scraping plates, as soon as the woman was out of earshot. I laughed and she looked up. She had a lively, expressive face and I liked her straightaway. She looked about my age, and she was dressed exactly the same as I was.

  Her eyes widened with surprise when she saw me. Then she turned to the curly-wigged man, raised her eyebrows and gave him a sly grin.

  “Ooh-er, George, this your new fancy piece?” She had the same strong accent as he did.

  “Give over, Polly Harper,” he said. “You mind your cheek.”

  Polly winked at me.

  “You’ll be the new girl then,” she said. “You took your time.”

  The girl in the dirty apron came back through the door. “This is Alice,” said Polly. “She’s the kitchen maid.”

  Alice shot me a look of suc
h hatred that I turned around to see who was behind me. But there was no one. That look really had been directed at me. What had I done?

  Polly didn’t seem to have noticed. “And this is the new housemaid,” she said to Alice. She turned to me. “What’s your name then?”

  “Evie.”

  “That’s a pretty name.”

  Alice scowled.

  “Foreigner, she be,” said George. “Addle-pated too, I shouldn’t wonder. Probably dropped on her head as a baby. I’ll leave her to you, Polly. I’ve got better things to do than stand around making introductions.”

  He left the room and Polly nodded her head in the direction of the door in the corner. “Scullery’s the first door on your left,” she said. “Best get started on those pots and pans if you want to get to bed before midnight. I’m off to check the bedroom fires. I’ll come and see how you’re getting on in a bit.”

  According to the big clock on the wall, it was nearly eleven. But for me, it was well after midnight and I suddenly felt exhausted. I had no idea what was going on but I wished it would stop. I pinched myself again, as hard as I could bear. It hurt, but nothing happened.

  The scullery was a small room, lit only by one weak lamp. The wooden draining board that ran all along the far wall was piled high with dirty pans and utensils. If they were expecting me to wash up that lot at eleven o’clock at night, they had another think coming.

  “So you’ve arrived at last,” said a harsh voice.

  I wheeled around to see a broad-shouldered, very upright woman standing in the doorway. Her grey hair was scraped back in a tight bun and a huge bunch of keys hung from a chain at the waist of her plain black dress.

  “Well, have you nothing to say for yourself?”

  I stared at her. What did she expect me to say?

  She raised her eyes to heaven and shook her head. “So, I’ve been sent another halfwit. Where do they find these girls?”

  “I’m not a halfwit,” I said.

  “Oh, so you can speak when you choose,” she snapped. “We’ll be having none of that chat from you, missy. When I speak to you, you say, ‘Yes, Mrs Hardwick.’ The rest of the time, save your breath for your work. Is that clear?”