Ghost

by Helen Grant

  “Seventeen years,” I said in a low voice, and he nodded.

  Both of us looked at the other stone coffin. My eyes had fully adjusted now and I saw that there was something lying on top of it, something withered and unidentifiable.

  Tom saw it at the same time, and put out a hand, touching it gingerly with his fingers.

  “I think it might have been roses, once,” he said. He ran his hands along the rim of the stone lid, testing it, seeing whether it would move. Then he looked at me, holding my gaze, his face serious. “I’m going to open this. If you want to go outside, now’s the time.”

  I stared back at him. My heart was hammering so fast that I was afraid I would pass out. Terror swarmed through me, to my very fingers’ ends. I wanted to scream at Tom that he shouldn’t open the stone casket, that we should not have come here. I wanted to go backwards, to be back in the kitchen at the moment when Tom said, “Will you show me?” I would scream, “No, no!” I would fling the key into the deepest part of the forest or the depths of the waterfall before I would let him use it. I wanted to squeeze my eyes shut and make it have happened that way.

  But it wasn’t possible, any more than it was possible for me to go back in time to when Grandmother was alive. I could not make myself believe any more in a War that had long since ended. I could not bring Grandmother back.

  I looked at Tom and very slowly shook my head. I’m not going outside.

  Tom paused for a second, studying the stone slab that formed the lid of the coffin. He put out both his hands and gripped it by opposite edges, adjusting his grip until it felt right. Then I saw his arms and shoulders strain as he heaved at the stone. There was an ominous grating sound and Tom gave a gasp. He pressed his lips together in a hard line and heaved again. I broke from my paralysis and squatted on the cold floor so that I could help him.

  It was not the weight of the stone that made it hard to move; it was the rough stone surfaces which caught together and would not let the slab slide freely. When it began to move, it did so all at once, and both Tom and I had to move back sharply to avoid it landing on us. I sat back with a jarring impact that sent pain through my tailbone, and at the same moment I heard the slab hit the floor with a grinding thump.

  Tom was up before I was, peering inside, and he began to turn towards me, his eyes wide, his mouth beginning to open to tell me to look away, don’t look, but it was too late.

  I looked into the sarcophagus and there was the ugly thing I had expected to see, brown and yellow and withered, the mouldering remains of clothing tented by the sharp outline of bones underneath, the eye sockets dark and corroded craters above the grim ivory smile of naked teeth. There were thin hands folded over the bowl of the pelvis, but they were more like the talons of birds, with the flesh gone and the length of the bones exposed.

  I had expected to see something like this – yes, I had known I would see it, and had steeled myself for it. But I had not expected it to be female.

  Because it was female; I saw that at the first glance, even though the soft parts of the body had long since rotted away. The stained and spotted covering was the remains of a dress, with tiny buttons and delicate pintucks on the bodice. A slender chain with a pendant on it, both tarnished almost black, encircled the vertebrae of the neck. And there was hair. Lots of hair. The browning skull nestled in it, like the great round body of a spider crouched in a cloud of spun gossamer.

  I could not breathe. There was a scream building up inside me but it would not come out; I was choking on it, my chest hitching painfully. I kept looking at that dreadful head, the grisly brown remains of the face. The hair. It was familiar, that was the terrible thing. The more I looked, with eyes that felt as though they would start right out of their sockets, the more I could see the lines of the decayed face in the contours of the bones.

  I know you.

  Something broke inside me. The scream erupted at last, it burst out of me, scouring my throat, raw and hot as blood. It raged through me like a storm; my whole body shook with it, my hands clenched into fists. I could not see Tom, I could not see anything but the horror. It was as though I was being dragged over the edge of a great black pit.

  Tom grabbed me by the shoulders, his face pale and set, his eyes wide.

  “Ghost–”

  I tried to wrench myself away. “It’s me!” I screamed. “It’s me!” I struck at him wildly. “Can’t you see? It’s me in there!”

  “No – Ghost, it’s not–”

  Tom spoke to me earnestly, trying to make me look back at him, but I was past listening. I raved and struggled in his grasp, and all the time I kept seeing it: myself, lying there in the stone coffin, crumbling into a brown and disgusting heap of decay.

  At last Tom put his arms around me and simply held me as tightly as he could, turning so that I could not see the sarcophagus and its ugly contents.

  “No,” he kept saying into my hair, “It’s not you, Ghost. It’s not you.”

  When I had worn myself out, he half-dragged, half-led me out of the mausoleum. The rain was still coming down heavily; when he took my face in his hands and turned it up to his, I could feel the raindrops running down my cheeks like tears. I blinked against the drops in my eyelashes, gasping as I pushed back the wet hair from my face.

  “Ghost.” Tom made me look at him. “It’s not you in there. Understand?”

  “The hair...” I wanted to explain properly but I was suffocating, the tightness in my chest seeming to crush all the air out of me.

  “I know. I saw it too.”

  “My hair.”

  “Not your hair. It’s your mother – it has to be. That’s why the hair is like yours.”

  I stared up at him dully. It can’t be her, I wanted to say. She’s not dead. But the words wouldn’t come. The rain streamed down our faces as we stared at each other.

  “Can you stand here for a minute?” said Tom. He pushed me gently back a step or two until my shoulders touched the wall of the mausoleum and I sagged back against it. He brushed a strand of hair out of my eyes with cold fingers. “I have to go back – inside. Just for a moment, okay?”

  I nodded, swallowing. Nothing would have induced me to go back in there at that moment. I turned my head to watch him, the stone wall cold and damp against my cheek.

  Tom ducked inside the doorway again. He was gone for no more than a few seconds, and when he came out again, pulling the door closed behind him, he was holding something. There was a tight, revolted look on his face. He said, “Let’s go.”

  The ground was spongy now with the rain. Tom did his best to support me as we made our way back to the house. It was not easy; there was barely room for one person to make their way along the route we had trampled down through the undergrowth, let alone two, one supporting the other. Wet branches slapped at us. Our feet slipped in mud turned almost liquid by the water running off the hill. Rain was running down inside the collar of my coat now, and my clothes were sticking clammily to my back.

  When we came out from under the trees it was easier going underfoot but there was no protection at all from the rain. The full fury of the skies was poured out on us. Tom dragged me bodily across the lawn and the gravel and into the stone porch. By now he was breathing hard and both of us looked as though we had been hauled out of deep water; our skin and hair were shining with wet.

  When we got into the hallway, Tom helped me take off the waxed coat. I dropped it on the black and white tiles and together we stumbled down the passage to the sanctuary of the warm kitchen. I sank into a chair and stared at the room as though I did not know it. Nothing was as I thought it had been. Lies were piled on lies, deceit on deceit. I could not believe that I had been living alongside the mausoleum and its grisly contents without knowing, without ever suspecting. Disrespectful to the dead. I remembered Grandmother saying that, and I wanted to be sick, to scream, to beat my own head again
st the wall until I had beat the memory out of it. But I had no energy to do any of it. I was dropping down into a deep, dark well inside myself, and I would never stop falling.

  Tom put something down on the windowsill, something that made a brittle little click as he put it on the hard surface, and then he came over and squatted down by me, trying to look into my face.

  I knew the expression he wore. Worried, that was it. It didn’t seem to mean anything to me; I couldn’t understand why he looked like that.

  He took my hand in his and said, “You’re freezing,” and I just looked at him. After a moment, he let go of my hand and got up. I suppose he went upstairs to one of the bedrooms then, but I barely noticed he was gone. I stared ahead of me, and my teeth chattered, and I dared not close my eyes because of what I saw when I did. After a while Tom came back with a bedspread and put it around my shoulders. Then he made tea, exclaiming impatiently over the length of time it took for water to boil on top of the kitchen range. I said nothing. I did not want the tea, but when it came I drank it anyway. There was no milk – Tom had not found the powdered stuff – and he had heaped in the sugar so that it was unbearably sweet. All the same, I began to feel a little better, and my hands were less numb after they had cradled the hot cup for a while.

  Tom sat next to me, his own cup in his hands. He had taken off his jacket and there were dark patches on his shirt where the rain had run down inside it. For a long while neither of us said anything. The rain still rattled at the windows. Tom’s jacket, hanging over the back of a chair, dripped water onto the kitchen floor.

  “Tom?” I said at last. “Do you really think that was...? I mean...” I faltered, not wanting to say, my mother, not when I was speaking of the brown and foul thing in the mausoleum.

  Tom nodded. “Yeah.” He looked down, at the floor. “I think that was your mum.” He paused. “I’m sorry.”

  “Do you think...?” I hesitated. “Do you think my father is in the other one?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I mean, the other one was all cemented up. Look, I took something out of the coffin. Maybe we should look at that.”

  I watched as he got up and crossed the room to the window. When he came back he was carrying something. I saw that it was a rectangular tin with a lid, the kind that might have been used for biscuits or sweets; it had been embossed with a design that might have been flowers or ferns.

  Tom held it out to me, but I hesitated to take it. “This was in the coffin?”

  “Yeah. By the feet.”

  “Can you open it?”

  “Are you sure?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  Tom sat beside me again and I watched as he struggled to open the tin. At last he managed it. The lid came off, and we both peered at the contents of the tin.

  Paper. Folded paper. A letter.

  Whoever had placed it in the tin had folded it very carefully so that the words at the beginning of the top sheet were clearly visible.

  To whom it may concern.

  “That’s Grandmother’s writing,” I said.

  Christmas Eve, 1999

  To whom it may concern:

  I, Rose Elspeth McAndrew of Langlands House, Perthshire, wish it to be known that I am of sound mind and that the contents of this document are as accurate a representation of the facts as possible.

  If you are reading this, then the body of my daughter Elspeth Janet McAndrew has certainly been discovered. I killed her on November 29th, 1999. I did not report her death to the authorities. Owing to the frozen earth and winter weather I was unable to bury the body by myself, so I placed it inside the Langlands mausoleum, in an unused stone coffin.

  These bare facts will be obvious if Elspeth’s remains have been discovered. However, if my granddaughter Augusta Elspeth McAndrew is alive at the time when her mother’s body is found, I would like her to understand the circumstances of what happened, in the hope that she may find it in her heart to forgive me.

  I was born in Edinburgh in 1935, four years before the War broke out. During the war years, when it became dangerous to stay in the cities, my parents sent me to stay at Langlands House with relatives. I am an old woman now, but in all my long life I do not believe there was ever a time when I was happier. For a city child, the Langlands estate was a wonderful, exciting place to explore. We ate well too, in spite of rationing, because of all the space given over to growing fruit and vegetables, and the abundance of game in the forest.

  I do not suppose that an old woman’s memories are of interest to anyone else. I mention them simply to explain why I came back to Langlands later.

  Father was killed in 1944, and after the War, my mother moved to Perthshire permanently, to be closer to her relatives. So I ended up within a few miles of Langlands, although I never lived there again until a long time afterwards. Mother’s relatives were growing older, and as it became harder for them to maintain the house and grounds, they welcomed visitors less often. After their deaths, the house was closed up, although by then I had moved to England with my new husband.

  Angus died in 1981, aged only 50. The marriage was a successful one, I think, and I grieved very sincerely for him. We had only one child, Elspeth, then in her teens, and she became the centre of my life after that.

  I have asked myself whether it was my fault that Elspeth became entangled with such an unsuitable man. Was she overprotected? Perhaps. I had nobody but her. Angus left me well off, so there was no reason for her to be exposed to the harsher side of life, and having lost him so early, I was determined to look after her and protect her as best I could.

  Of course, losing her father must have had an effect on her, too. It may be part of the reason that she fell for a man so much older than she was, although Angus was never so arrogant nor such a bully. Elspeth could not see these things; she thought he was “tough” and “confident”. But I could see them. I was suspicious from the beginning, and of course he saw that. He kept his cloven hooves well-hidden until after the wedding, and then he did his best to keep us apart. I don’t think what he felt for her can be called love. He simply wanted someone to tyrannise.

  The first time she left him, I remember her huddled in my sitting-room with the bruises still fresh on her arms where she had pushed the long sleeves back, and telling me with tears in her eyes that he hadn’t really meant to do it. She said he wasn’t cruel, he couldn’t help himself; he was like a little boy inside.

  I agreed with her, but I didn’t think he was a nice little boy. I thought he was like one of those boys who tortures animals for fun.

  She went back to him that time. I begged her not to, but she went almost before he had had time to notice that she had gone. I think that’s what she hoped, that he would not know she had come to me.

  Later that night, the telephone rang it and was him. He said terrible things about what he would do if I tried to lure his wife away from him. I threatened to call the police and he hung up. After that sometimes the phone would ring and when I picked it up, there would be silence at the other end, and I knew it was him.

  That was only the first time. There were other times, of course, and it got worse, and it became harder too for me to see Elspeth at all. When she became pregnant, she had to telephone to tell me when he was out; she went out to a call box to do it, so that he wouldn’t see the number on the telephone bill. She was crying all the time she was telling me, because she knew he wouldn’t let her see me. I didn’t hear a thing for months after that. I was worried sick.

  Then one evening the doorbell rang and there she was on the step, and a taxi was disappearing off up the street. She was big by then, because the baby was nearly due, but the first thing I noticed was that she had a black eye.

  Of course, I knew he’d come after her, and he did. An hour and a half later he turned up, and I let him in so that he could see for himself that she wasn’t in the house.
He broke a few things searching for her, and he gave me a few bruises too. I pretended to be terribly frightened and promised to persuade her to go back to him if she came to me. In truth I was actually frightened. He wasn’t like an out of control little boy, he was an ogre. But I had no intention of telling Elspeth to go back to him.

  I hardly slept that night. I had too much to do. The following day I liquidised as much of my money as I possibly could, picked Elspeth up from the hotel I had sent her to, and we left London for good. The house could be sold later; I dared not make it obvious that we had left, so we simply took the things we needed immediately.

  We drove north for a long time, and then we stopped for a while because I was too tired to drive anymore. I slept for a few hours and then drove on through the night, until we reached Langlands.

  I was shocked when I saw the house again. It wasn’t the way I remembered it – of course it wasn’t, because nearly six decades had passed since then. But it was an ideal hiding place, and I thought we could make do for a little while.

  Elspeth’s baby, my granddaughter Augusta, was born in the house. I suppose people will be shocked by that. But when I was young, it was common for babies to be born at home. I went for a doctor, someone I had known myself when I was younger, but when we got back to the house the baby had already arrived.

  I am not going to name the doctor in question. If his identity is deduced anyway, I wish it to be known that he is entirely blameless. He tried to persuade me to take Elspeth to the hospital in Perth for the birth, and when we found that the baby had already arrived, he tried to persuade me to take them there to be checked over. I refused. I accept responsibility for that too.

  The baby was born healthy, and gradually Elspeth recovered physically from the birth. I hoped to persuade her to start divorce proceedings against her husband, but she put me off; she said she wanted to think about it a little longer. I think she was not well – in her mind, I mean. She found living at Langlands difficult. Elspeth didn’t love the place like I did, and she hated having to look after the baby without any of the modern things she had come to rely on. Her moods became unpredictable. Sometimes she would be silent and low in spirits for hours; at other times she would lose her temper at the slightest thing. Once I found her crying bitterly over the baby in her lap. She said it was terrible to think that Augusta would never know her father, and that he had never seen his daughter. I was angry then. I know I was wrong, but it was too much to listen to her talking as though her husband was some poor misunderstood creature. We quarrelled, and then we didn’t speak for a whole day.