Love Notes from Vinegar House

by Karen Tayleur

The boat had swung around a little and now I could see someone hanging onto its side. Someone in a red windcheater.

  “Freya!”

  Rumer is my least favourite cousin. Have I told you that? Even so, I couldn’t leave her to drown at Seal Rock. But I didn’t know what to do. I was too scared to go to the house for Luke, just in case Rumer was gone by the time I returned.

  I stamped my foot. “Rumer!”

  I looked around for help. There was no way I could throw the dinghy rope out to her. She was too far out in the water and I wasn’t such a great aim either. And I’d heard far too many stories of someone jumping in the sea as a rescuer only to drown themselves, so I wasn’t about to dive into the water after her. And then I saw it – the half-chewed foam surfboard that I’d thrown up onto the rocks during one of my beachcombing sessions.

  By now the dinghy had moved closer to shore, which should have made things easier, but the light was fading and all I could think of was the chunk of missing surfboard.

  “Freya! I’m slipping.”

  “Oh, shut up,” I hissed. I took off my shoes and peeled off my layers until I was just in my underwear. It was already cold and I wasn’t even in the water yet.

  I grabbed the surfboard under one arm and waded into the water.

  “Hate. You. Hate. You. Hate. Hate. Hate,” I droned. I could see my skin was turning blue.

  The waves were choppy but small and the adrenalin was helping my legs to power through the water.

  “Freya!”

  Even in her panicked state, Rumer managed to sound annoyed with me. I didn’t bother to answer her but concentrated on kicking.

  By the time I reached the dinghy my feet could no longer touch the sand. The boat swung slowly in the water and suddenly I saw Rumer’s face, which was a mix of terror and anger.

  “What took you so long!” she demanded.

  “Why didn’t you get back in the boat?” I asked.

  “I couldn’t,” she said. “And I’ve lost the oars.”

  “Come on,” I said. “Grab hold of this and we’ll paddle back to shore.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  I waited a whole minute before I nudged her. “You can let go now, Rumer. Grab hold of the board.”

  “I know,” she said.

  And still she clung to the side of the boat. By now twilight had slipped into night. A rumble of thunder sounded closer than before.

  “I wonder how many sharks they get around here?” I asked.

  Rumer let go of the dinghy and grabbed the surfboard. I moved over to give her more space.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  “Now we kick,” I said.

  I won’t bore you with how long it took us to get back. How scared I was that we might not make it to shore at all. Luckily the power was back on at Vinegar House and it shone bright like a beacon. Back on the beach I shoved my clothes on then prodded and poked Rumer to get her moving.

  “I’m numb!” she whined, but began walking anyway.

  She complained all the way back home. As we drew closer to the house I realised that the light was coming from the attic window, but I was too tired to wonder why someone had left a light on up there.

  When we reached the house and I flicked the light switch in the kitchen, I realised that the power was still off.

  I got Rumer into the kitchen then fumbled about in the dark until I found some matches and a candle. I placed the candle in a glass, lit another candle and held it up to Rumer’s face.

  “I want a bath,” she said.

  “There’s a shower down here,” I said. “Have a shower. It’s closer–”

  “I want a bath!” she repeated.

  I didn’t want to go to the upstairs bathroom, but I didn’t want to stand there all night arguing with Rumer, either.

  “Stand next to the wood stove and get warm. I’ll go upstairs and run the bath.”

  She nodded.

  I left her with one candle and took the other with me. As I left the kitchen she said, “Freya?”

  “Yes?”

  “I just want to say … thanks. Thanks for saving me. And sorry about Luke. Sorry about everything. I hope you’ll forgive me …”

  Of course, this didn’t happen.

  What she really said was, “Freya?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can you get me one of those pink towels? The white ones are too scratchy. I’ll need two, one for my hair. And make sure you don’t make the water too hot. I can always top it up once I get in.”

  “Rumer?” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “Shut up,” I said.

  Then I left.

  If you ever want to mess with someone’s head, it’s easy. I do it to myself all the time. If I know I’ve left my drink bottle at home when I go out, suddenly I need a drink of water. I need it really badly. There is nothing that I can think of except that sweet water sliding down my throat.

  The same goes for spooky houses.

  I had managed to live at Vinegar House for around ten days without once thinking the word spooky. Now that it was just Rumer and me in the house with no electricity, the only thing I could think of was spooky. This house was spooky. It was old and spooky. When the hall clock chimed once, I jumped and sent out a little, “Eeek.”

  Then I felt embarrassed.

  As I walked up the staircase, the candle threw monster shadows onto the wall and wind rattled the stairway windows as it gusted about the house. A loose shutter slapped the wall – bang-bang.

  I paused at the top of the stairs. There was a noise coming from further down the hallway. It was coming from the bathroom – the sound of water splashing into the bath. The water pipes clanged as the heated water ran through them.

  “Come on, stupid,” I whispered loudly to myself.

  I pushed open the door, which was slightly ajar.

  I waved my candle about the room, but there was no one there. The curtain was drawn about the bath and although I wanted to leave then and there, I knew the taps needed turning off. Just a problem with the plumbing, I thought. Just like Mrs Skelton said. And the stupid plug that kept falling into the plughole.

  I don’t know how long I stood there but finally I reached out and pulled the curtain back, and just for a moment, in the dim light of the candle, I saw Rumer lying beneath the water looking up at me. But then no, not Rumer, it was her mother – the girl in the striped top. A scream caught in my throat, but as I pushed the candle closer I saw there was no body – just the sloshing of water in the cracked porcelain bath. I turned off the taps.

  The bathroom door creaked, and I quickly turned, but there was no one behind me. A low growl from behind the clothes hamper turned me to stone. It was a long drawn-out sound and it definitely wasn’t human.

  It was like being in a nightmare where you want to run but you just can’t move. And just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, the hamper shook and a large furry thing shot out from behind it.

  It was one of Grandma’s mangy cats.

  I sat on the floor with a laugh. “Stupid cat,” I said.

  And that’s when I heard a loud noise above me. It was the same noise I’d heard earlier. It sounded like Rumer was in the attic, though I hadn’t heard her walk past the bathroom.

  “Rumer!” I called out.

  The noise stopped and all I could hear was the sound of a tap drip, drip, dripping into the bath.

  “Rumer?”

  And then something occurred to me that didn’t make sense. I’d heard the same loud noise before. I’d heard it earlier when I thought Rumer was upstairs. But Rumer had been hanging onto a dinghy near Seal Rock when I’d first heard the noise, so it couldn’t have been her.

  “Rumer?” I whispered.

  Then I heard the sound again.

  Chapter 25

  I don’t know how long I stood in the bathroom, but it was long enough for Rumer to come looking for me.

  “What are you doing?” she asked. “Is that bath ready
or what?”

  I think I’ve already mentioned I don’t have a poker face. Well, there must have been something in my face that stopped Rumer talking and then she heard it too – the loud noise of moving furniture from the upstairs attic.

  Rumer’s face filled with alarm. She pushed me out into the hallway, and I followed her into the Blue Room, our candles casting long shadows that jumped about like goblins on the wall behind us. Then Rumer leaned in and whispered into my ear.

  “Something’s here.”

  I noticed she didn’t say someone.

  Lightning turned night into day for a beat. Thunder cracked loudly rattling the window and a loose shutter downstairs set up its crazy beat against the outside wall.

  We listened to the sound of the floorboards as they creaked overhead. I tracked their progress from one end of the hall to the other, then heard the scrape of the attic door as it opened. I wished there was a lock on the bedroom door.

  “It’s coming!” I whispered.

  “Murder in the Dark!” said Rumer, cryptically. Then she blew out her candle.

  I felt her drop to the floor beside me and scuttle away as I blew out my own candle. I groped my way across to the window and pulled the curtains together, then I too dropped to the floor and slid into my secret spot under the low chair up against the tallboy.

  And waited.

  I heard the rattle of a doorknob up the hallway, then the clinking of something that may have been keys … or chains. I imagined a chained ghost looking for revenge. I thought of the slip of paper I’d found in the tree house – murderer – and I began to shiver. I wondered if one of dead maids from the laundry room fire had come back to haunt us. Or the dead groomsman back for revenge.

  There was a thud in the room next door then a low moan. I felt the darkness of the Blue Room push down on me. I opened my eyes to its oily blackness then closed them again at the sound of another thud. I felt the old panic of being in a confined space. A door slammed. Thunder rumbled. Then I heard the rattle of the doorknob to the Blue Room and pressed myself further into my hiding space.

  I could hear loud breathing, and it wasn’t mine.

  There was the sound of the dresser drawers being roughly pulled out and the chink of metal. I thought of the stolen notes in my drawer in the next room. Did the ghost know about the notes? I should never have taken them. I opened my eyes and peered out from under the chair. Another flash of lightning lit the room and I watched in horror as Rumer scuttled to a different hiding place as a figure approached the wardrobe. I thought the nearly instant clap of thunder that followed masked her frightened shriek, but in the silence that followed I could hear more heavy breathing and then a grunt.

  I heard footsteps leave the bedroom and the clunk, clunk, clunk of something being quickly dragged down the stairs.

  Then someone called out, “Hello? Freya? Rumer?”

  It was Luke.

  I scrambled out of my hiding spot and fumbled to the hallway.

  “Are we having dinner tonight or am I on rations?” he said with a grin.

  I held a finger to my lips. There was the sound of something being dragged on the floor downstairs then the front door slammed.

  “What–?”

  “Has it gone?” Rumer asked as she crept into the hallway.

  “What’s going on?” asked Luke. “Who was that?”

  “That,” said Rumer, “was the ghost of Vinegar House.”

  Chapter 26

  “What’s going on?” Luke repeated.

  “I think it was a ghost,” said Rumer. “An unhappy ghost.”

  The door to the Blue Room slammed shut behind us.

  Rumer jumped. “See!” she said.

  “Just a draft,” I said, hoping I was right. “I need to see the attic. I need the torch.”

  “Which means we all have to go,” said Rumer. “I’m not sitting here without the torch. Wouldn’t you rather just go downstairs and lock the doors. In case the thing comes back?”

  “Good idea,” I said. “You go down and lock the doors, and I’ll go to the attic.”

  “But–”

  “Luke will go with you.”

  I didn’t stop to argue but moved along the hallway and up the stairs to the attic.

  Another thing you should know about me is that sometimes when I get an idea in my head then I act on it straightaway, just so I don’t have a chance to change my mind.

  It wasn’t until I reached the stair landing that I realised Luke and Rumer were right behind me.

  “How did they unlock the door?” I said.

  “Ghosts don’t worry about doors,” said Rumer.

  “The door’s open,” said Luke.

  The attic looked like my bedroom on a bad day – a mess. The neat tower of boxes had toppled to the floor. Old clothes and toys were thrown about in a colourful jumble. And standing in the middle of the room was the locked chest, which hadn’t been opened.

  Luke gave a low whistle, and Rumer picked up a few things, then put them down again. When I leaned against the floor-length mirror an idea hit me like a jolt of electricity. I knew where the key to the chest was.

  “Wait here,” I said, then I took the torch back to the Blue Room, grabbed the trinket box from the dressing table, and took it back to the attic.

  “Don’t do that again!” complained Rumer. “It’s too dark!”

  I pulled a small key out of the trinket box – the same trinket box I had knocked over in the Blue Room all those years ago. I fitted it to the padlock on the trunk and the lock sprung open. I threw the lid back to reveal some old photo albums and letter bundles tied up with kitchen twine.

  “Boring,” said Rumer. “Shine the light over here, Freya.”

  “Use your phone,” I said. Then I realised Rumer’s phone was under water at Bluff Beach.

  “Very funny,” she snapped.

  “Are there any other torches?” asked Luke.

  We moved in a knot of three to the library where we found a torch each. I locked the front door while Rumer rolled her eyes at me and said, “As if that will keep a ghost out.” Then we all returned to the attic.

  While Rumer searched through the chaos, Luke went downstairs again to try the phone, and I checked out the letters from the chest

  “What a mess!” said Rumer. “What was it looking for?”

  “It was definitely human,” I said. “A ghost couldn’t make this mess.”

  “Heard of a poltergeist?” said Rumer.

  “Where were you tonight?” I asked Rumer.

  “You know where I was,” she said. “I was hanging onto a boat in the middle of the ocean.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “None of your–”

  “I need you to tell me the truth,” I said.

  Rumer flicked a strand of hair from her face. “Why?” she said finally.

  “Rumer!”

  “Gerard,” she said. “I was supposed to meet with Gerard. He’s staying at Homsea with his parents for the holidays. We’ve seen each other every day since I got here. It’s a secret. We promised our parents we’d take a break. They just wanted us to concentrate on school this year. Luke knows about us. He saw us one night down by the tree house.”

  “Gerard,” I repeated. “The speedboat …” I remembered pointing out the boat to Luke when we were sitting in the tree house.

  “It’s his father’s boat,” said Rumer. “And when he didn’t come this afternoon …” She shrugged. “I thought I’d take the dinghy and meet him. And then I lost an oar. And then, when I tried to get it, I fell out of the boat. You know the rest.”

  “But what about Luke?” I asked.

  “Luke?” She laughed. “What about Luke?”

  I untied a bundle of letters. The top envelope was not addressed to anyone. It just held the distinctive letter R I’d come to know.

  “Have you seen these before?” I asked.

  Rumer took the notes from me and looked at them by the light of the torch. “Not th
ese ones,” she said after a moment. “But I have some in my bedroom. They just, kind of, arrived. They’ve been arriving, under my door, since last week.”

  “Did Luke write these?”

  “Luke?” She laughed. “Luke did not write these, Freya.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I asked him. I had to know because … well … I didn’t want him thinking that I was interested in him.”

  “Oh.”

  “I thought it was you,” she said. “I thought you were playing a practical joke. So I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want you to think I cared.”

  “I would never do something like that,” I said hotly.

  She looked at me carefully. “No. No, I don’t suppose you would,” she said. “Then, I don’t understand …”

  She unfolded a letter and began to read it by torchlight, while I pulled out a photo album. The first few pages showed a happy blond baby with curls; then later photos of the baby as a toddler, school photos and finally a Rumer look-alike proudly showing off a baby bump.

  “What have you found?” asked Rumer, holding out her hand for the album.

  I handed it over, and she looked carefully at the photo.

  “That’s my mother,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s me,” she said, pointing to the bump. “These are her letters,” she said slowly.

  “But these letters are addressed to–”

  “My mother’s name was Rebecca,” said Rumer. “My dad’s name is Lawrence. R and L. I can’t believe he wrote these to her. They’re … they’re … so … personal.”

  “Still no signal,” announced Luke as he climbed the attic staircase.

  I suddenly realised that Luke Hart had not hooked up with my cousin Rumer and my heart did a happy dance.

  “The dining room’s a mess. The cupboards are all open–”

  “The silverware!” I said.

  “You think it was a robbery?” asked Rumer.

  “I wonder what else they’ve taken?” said Luke.

  “You mean the ghost?” said Rumer.

  While Luke and Rumer squabbled about the robber/ghost, I pulled out a flimsy blue envelope. Inside was a letter on tissue-thin writing paper. I held the torchlight close to shed light on the page.