Laying a Ghost

by Jane Davitt

  Nick didn’t say anything, but John knew that he was looking as they went past. The long drive that led up the hill to the house was winding, and John was well aware that it made the place look rather like something in a storybook ‑‑ idyllic, pastoral.

  He kept a careful eye on the road, driving more slowly than he normally would have. For some reason John couldn’t quite put his finger on, something that went deeper than his instant attraction to Nick, he found himself fascinated by this man, wanting to know his story and unconvinced that he ever would.

  Their houses lay maybe fifteen minutes apart, if one was willing to walk over heather and knew where the boggy parts were, where the ground turned soft beneath your feet, water oozing up, brown and rich, between the bright green grass, but by road it was a good two miles. When the gray stone walls of Rossneath House came into sight, John found himself sighing with relief. The man would surely have to open his mouth now. He sent the car bumping along the rough track that was all that was left of a driveway and pulled up by the front porch, although to get that little-used door open, they’d need a stick of dynamite rather than a key.

  “Well, here you are,” he said, turning his head to look at his passenger, mildly exasperated that not even the sight of his house had coaxed a word from Nick. His next words died on his lips.

  Nick was asleep, his shoulder hunched up defensively, as if even sleep offered no refuge, his head half-turned so that John could see the clean line of his jaw through the prickle of stubble and the hollowed curve of his cheek up to the slash of a dark eyebrow.

  Caught off-guard, John swallowed, close enough in the stillness that had descended when the engine had shuddered its way to rest that he could see a dozen details Nick’s restlessness had hidden from him before. He’d had his ear pierced at some point; the tender flesh of the lobe was healed over, but the indentation was still there. And under the tan, his face was pale with fatigue.

  John bit his lip and glanced away. He’d have liked to have looked his fill, but it didn’t seem right. Not while the man was sleeping. Without undue noise, he left the car, pushing the door to without slamming it, and went around to the back door. He knew where the key was, and if it’d gone, there were plenty of ways to get in. Let the man sleep.

  Chapter Two

  There was a sharp smell, something acrid like a chemical. It felt like it was pounding at Nick’s temples, trying to get into his head, and he gasped and twitched. As soon as he did that, the ache that had been un-ignorable in his arm flared to life, white-hot and stabbing, his nerves screaming from fingertips up past his elbow. Nick whimpered and tried to curl up around the pain, but he couldn’t move.

  He opened his eyes. It was dark, and his chest hurt, too, but not half as much as his arm. Where the hell was he?

  Memory came flooding back, leaving him gasping. In the road ... and he’d swerved, he had to have. He couldn’t remember that part, but he did remember the screech of tires on the road, the way the wheel had felt in his hands, stuttering as the car spun out of control, and then there’d been ... nothing. He couldn’t remember anything else.

  No, that wasn’t true.

  He remembered Matthew’s muttered curse.

  “Matthew?”

  Nick turned slowly, rolling his head toward the passenger seat because there was no way he could try to move the rest of his body, and ...

  Nick woke up with a gasp and a start, his heart racing, the light pressure of the seatbelt across his chest immediately sending him into a panic. He was on the left-hand side of the car and that was just wrong; he didn’t sit there anymore. Even thinking about it was enough to make his breathing shallow and his heart pound. At least the latch for the seatbelt was on the right and he could get to it with his good hand, which he did, fumbling at the unfamiliar button in his haze of dream-memory until it clicked and he was free.

  Too late, though. The panic had already taken over, and there was nothing to do but ride it out. The appropriateness of that phrasing made Nick give a gasp of laughter as he reached across his body with his good hand and opened the car door, wondering where the hell the guy driving the car had gone as he tumbled out onto the hard packed earth, luckily managing not to catch his weight on his left hand as he fell. He was making little scared sounds with each breath, trying not to lose it completely, reminding himself that this was just adrenaline and it would pass. It had been a while since it had been this bad, but it would pass.

  On the springy turf that seemed to lap at the walls of the house a man could walk quietly, and it wasn’t until John’s boots struck the hard-packed earth of the driveway that Nick heard him coming. He’d regained just enough self-control to guess at once who was coming, but as he tried to stand up and stammer out some excuse about falling, the green of the grass and the gray of the house spun around him wildly and he sank back.

  John squatted beside him, and he felt a warm, callused hand take his, strong fingers wrapping around his and holding on.

  “You fell asleep,” John murmured, in that lilting voice that reminded him of his mother’s when she was excited or angry. “It’ll be that jet lag, isn’t that right? Your body’s here and your head’s still thousands of miles away.”

  He sounded matter-of-fact and completely undisturbed by Nick’s inability to do more than stare at him, but the hand holding Nick’s tightened a little as he carried on talking, not stopping long enough that Nick had to answer him, which was just as well.

  “Want to try standing up again? I’ve opened the door and a few of the windows. It’s not so bad. The beds were stripped, but I’ve found the sheets and put them out on the line to air. We’ve a few hours before the rain comes in and this wind will have them fresh by then.”

  “Just give me a minute,” Nick said roughly, not letting go of John’s hand even though he probably should have. The world was feeling a little bit too bright and sharp just then, making him slouch in on himself, keeping himself small, protected. John’s presence, undeniably solid and real, was a comfort that he couldn’t quite bring himself to surrender.

  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The air was salt-tinged and crisp, and Nick blinked at John, still squatting across from him, watching him with a concern that did more to warm him than the sunshine. John’s eyes were blue, and his lips were thin and curled up a little bit on one side like they were used to smiling. They made Nick want to do things to make John smile, to make John smile at him. He was more drawn to John than he could have explained.

  “Okay.” Nick got up with John’s help, although the other man released his hand once it was clear that he was steady on his feet now. “Sorry,” Nick offered. “It was ...” No, there was no way he was ready to describe what it really was. He might never be. “Like you said, jet lag, I think.”

  “Aye.” John gestured towards the house, seeming happy to accept that as an explanation. And it wasn’t a complete lie. Getting from New York to a remote Hebridean island involved a complex coordination of planes, trains and ferries that had left Nick either racing along corridors to make connections with minutes to spare, or spending hours sitting waiting for the next stage of his journey to begin; he’d been traveling for so long that it was no wonder the earth felt as if it was spinning too fast. “Well, there it is. Rossneath House. If you want to go in, I’ll get the shopping from the car. I started a kettle boiling, so you’ll be able to have a drink, if you’d like.”

  “Thank you.” Nick absently took a look at the house for the first time, as the wind ruffled his hair.

  It was bigger than he’d expected it to be ‑‑ not a huge house by any means, but still larger than what he’d been picturing. The exterior paint on the trim, a medium gray, was peeling in some places, no doubt from the wind that came up off the sea. Nick was turned around and unsure where they’d come from, but he’d seen maps of the island and knew that wherever they were, the sea wasn’t far off.

  There were white shutters that looked functional rather than decorative, a
nd he noted that one of the windows on the second floor was cracked. He hoped the glass wouldn’t need to be replaced right away ‑‑ actually, he was hoping that there wouldn’t be too much he’d need to do to the place right off the bat. He was so tired that all he wanted to do was sleep and get settled in. Then he’d deal with whatever needed to be dealt with.

  John walked past him with two handfuls of shopping bags, and Nick went back to the car and took out the last few bags with his good hand, leaving the one that contained John’s groceries, and following him into the house. As they walked, he let himself study John from behind, noting the way the man’s clothes fit. It wasn’t, Nick told himself firmly, anything more than curiosity.

  Inside his new home, Nick paused on the threshold, letting the dusty smell of the place wash over him, and waiting.

  There was nothing, and he sighed with relief and walked over to John, glancing around the kitchen, which looked pretty much as if it had been abandoned for a couple of years, a thick layer of dust and grime on top of the stove. “This is so weird.”

  John finished rinsing out a mug and shook it free of water before setting it aside to dry. “Seeing it for real, you mean? Is it not what you were expecting then?” John glanced around the kitchen, at wooden cabinets and a solid, functional table and chairs, and didn’t seem to find it bare, or ill-equipped. Nick tried to picture his mother in this house, in this kitchen, and failed.

  “I guess.” Nick set the bags down on the table and just stood there. He felt like a stranger; the house felt more like John’s than his. There were things in those cabinets that had belonged to his uncle, sometimes talked about but never seen. Some of those things had probably been his grandparents’, things that his mother had used when she was growing up here, anxious to leave school by the time she was fourteen. She’d talked about it a lot; about how she’d hated living here. She’d always encouraged Nick to live a casual existence, teaching him that setting down roots just meant stagnation, leaving him stuck to the earth instead of free to roam, to do whatever interested him.

  They’d been lessons he’d taken to heart, words he’d lived by until ...

  Nick cleared his throat. “No.” John was putting the eggs into the small refrigerator and fiddling with the temperature dial. “It’s not what I was expecting. I think I’d been picturing it empty. Furniture, sure, but not ... his whole life is here.”

  “He left knowing that he wouldn’t be coming back.” John slammed the fridge door. “I’m sure of it. But even so, he insisted nothing be changed and the house be locked up and left alone. My mother went to visit him now and then, and she says the first thing he asked was always if the house was safe, and she’d tell him it was. It was all he had left, you see. While it was waiting for him, just as it’d always been, he could picture it and know what he saw in his head was true.” John rubbed his hand over the back of his neck, flushing slightly. “Och, listen to me run on. Sit down and I’ll make you a drink and then leave you in peace.”

  To his mild surprise, Nick found himself obeying, sitting down at the table. He knew from previous experience that peaceful wasn’t a state that he was likely to achieve when John left. Matthew had understood and hadn’t left him on his own for the most part, which was something Nick had always been grateful for, although maybe not quite as grateful as Matthew would have liked; Nick knew that his friend had wanted more from him.

  “That’s nice ‑‑ that your mother went to visit him, I mean. Were they friends?” Nick was struck with a sudden desire to know more about the man who had lived in this house.

  “Friends?” John frowned. “Not as such, no.” He walked over to the kettle and with a minimum of fuss produced a cup of instant coffee, bringing it over to the table and setting it down in front of Nick before dragging out a chair for himself. “He was just ‑‑ he was from here, d’ye see? And she knew fine that he’d be missing the place. She’d take him the local paper, tell him what’d been going on, smuggle in a drop of whiskey too, if I know her.” He smiled. “She’s not one for following rules when they don’t suit her.”

  Nick smiled at the thought, and then realized that he was looking into John’s eyes a little too warmly and dropped his gaze. If he was going to stay here, the last thing he needed to be doing was making anyone uncomfortable with unwanted attraction, even if it wasn’t Nick’s fault that John was warm and charming and much, much sexier than he seemed to realize. A small community like this, one made up of families that had been here for generations ... it would be asking for trouble to open up. “Did he have any friends? Anyone I could talk to?”

  “Start with my mother,” John told him. “She’ll know. But I think you’ll not find many he was close to. He wasn’t unhappy, not exactly, but he was a lonely man.” John pushed back his chair and stood up. “I’ll bring in your cases, shall I? And it’s a little chilly in here; when it’s aired out a little, you’d best light a fire or two. There’s peat stacked behind the house ...” John paused and chuckled at himself. “Imph. You’ll not be knowing how to build a peat fire, now will you?” He pursed his lips in thought. “Look; if you’re wishing me long gone, say the word, but I’ve nothing I was planning to do this afternoon and I can help you get settled in if you’d like.”

  Almost pathetically thankful, Nick nodded. “If you don’t mind, that’d be great. I don’t even know where to start.” He drank a good third of his coffee in one swig and stood up. “But I can help with the bags. And if you could show me where the peat is?”

  They went outside into the fresh air. Some clouds were threatening, but not enough that rain seemed imminent. Nick realized that he really needed to go through the house and find out where everything was. If they lost power, he’d need candles, or a flashlight at least. He’d need to know how to work the chimney ‑‑ he knew vaguely that there was something called a flue, but he wasn’t sure what it did ‑‑ and if there was a washing machine. He hadn’t planned this properly. All he’d thought about was getting as far away as possible, and Traighshee had seemed to fit the bill.

  “If you plan on staying, and you’ve got the money, you might want to think about installing radiators,” John told him as they walked back to the car and got out Nick’s luggage. “The smell of a peat fire doesn’t make up for the dust they make, and if the peat’s damp, you’ll be choking on the smoke.” Nick’s face must’ve been more expressive than he’d intended, because John grinned again. “There’s a water heater, and that’s electric, so you’ll be able to have a hot bath tonight ‑‑ oh, and the water will likely be brown, but that’s the way it comes up here, so don’t panic.”

  “Is that why you drink so much tea here?” Nick hitched the strap of his bag over his shoulder ‑‑ God, it was heavy; he should have had all of the books shipped, instead of trying to bring some of them with him ‑‑ and watching as John closed the trunk of the car again. “To hide the color of the water?”

  John’s mouth twisted in a smile as he picked up Nick’s suitcase. “Maybe,” he agreed, beginning to walk back to the house. “But the best way to do that is to put it inside a dram.”

  Nick had been doing a fair amount of drinking himself in the past month, once he wasn’t taking what felt like a small arsenal of pills every day ‑‑ painkillers, anti-inflammatories, antibiotics ‑‑ so he was no stranger to a good glass of whiskey. The thought that the water in said glass of whiskey might be brown, though, noticeable or not, wasn’t all that appealing. Maybe he’d switch to vodka.

  Inside again, Nick considered putting the bag down, but realized he’d just have to move it upstairs anyway. Might as well do it now. “Have you been upstairs?” He gestured toward the staircase that he could see through the doorway between the front hall and what seemed to be a sitting room.

  “The first time was when I helped carry your uncle down them,” John replied. “But, aye, I went up there when I brought down the bed linen, remember? There’s a bathroom and three bedrooms. Only two beds though; your uncle wasn’t much
for visitors and I know he had one room shelved for his books, for it was my father who put them up for him.” John stepped back, allowing Nick passage. “After you,” he said with a courteous inclination of his head. “And while we’re up there, I’ll take a look at the water heater.”

  The thought of having a room just for books was appealing; the discovery that his uncle had cared for books, something that Nick had never known, made him smile. He started up the stairs carefully, feeling the creak of solid old wood underneath his feet, noting the scars and scratches in the finish.

  He kept going when he reached the top of the stairs, making room behind him for John with the heavier suitcase and glancing into the room that overlooked the front yard, which had only a single bed in it along with a bureau and a small bookshelf.

  At the top of the staircase to the left was the bathroom, painted a pale shade of gray and containing an old-fashioned claw foot tub as well as shower fixtures. The hallway was larger than Nick would have expected, with another, taller bookcase full of books and a bench with a padded seat that appeared to open for storage. At the back of the house were the other two bedrooms ‑‑ the makeshift library on the left behind the bathroom and the master bedroom to the right.

  Nick moved into the master bedroom and set his bag down onto the mattress, which was covered with a thin mattress pad but otherwise stripped. There was a phone on the bedside table, he noted.