by Olivia Swift
“I brought dessert as well,” she said and produced two exotic-looking chocolate sundae pots.
“And I brought champagne,” he finished and produced the bottle. The cork went pop, and he handed her two glasses as he filled them up. “To us,” he said, holding up the drink.
“To us and this fabulous garden,” she answered.
Chatting over the meal, he told her about other ideas he had for the garden to give folks ideas for their own spaces.
“When you finish the garden, will you start the house?” she asked.
“Mmm,” he answered. “I’m not so sure of how I can manage that. I’m a gardener not a builder but small steps will do it, I guess.”
He asked what sort of house she would build if it was hers, and she answered immediately that it would be a house with an upstairs.
“I would have a veranda from the bedroom and sit with morning coffee to enjoy the view.”
“Not a bungalow?” he queried, and she shook her head.
“I’ve always lived in either a trailer or a bungalow. A proper house would be better,” she said. “I love Chestnut Hall.”
“Don’t think I can build anything as big as that.” He smiled. “But I made the foundations strong enough to take a second story.”
“Great minds, again,” he added as she cleared away the dishes. “Let’s look for this building.”
They settled side by side with tablet and laptop and searched for buildings in the area, and beside the waterfalls, and other combinations until something popped.
“There is a site called historic buildings of the area, and it has a picture of the building beside the river.” She looked over his shoulder.
“That’s the spot all right,” she said. “What is the place called?”
“Wait for it,” he said. “The Summer Place.”
“That’s a lovely name. I wonder why it feels so wrong,” she mused. “I wonder if anyone remembers it and knows why,”
“Mom helps out at a club for retired people. Some of them might know.” Kat fished out her phone and called her mom. “She’ll be there now, I think.” There was a delay, then Bev answered.
“Mom, are you at the club?” When Bev said that she was, Kat wondered if she could ask the members if any of them remembered The Summer Place building beside the waterfalls. “We’ve found out the name, and the place feels unpleasant if you know what I mean, but the name is lovely.”
Bev asked about why she felt it was unpleasant and then said she would see if anyone knew about it.
“I’ll get what I can,” she said and ended the call.
“We’ve done quite a lot today, really,” she said. “We know the name. We buried the stones, and the garden got well underway.”
“Would you like to take a walk around my wonderful estate?” he asked, and she joined him in an evening stroll around the site.
“Needs seats so that you can sit and enjoy the view,” she suggested, and he said that maybe he would get a couple in so that they could enjoy it straightaway. They meandered back to the trailer and settled on the long seat with their coffees.
“I don’t mind the television if you want to watch something,” she suggested, and they switched it on but turned the volume down. It was natural to nestle into the curve of his arm and feel relaxed and comfortable. They talked about this and that, and finally Kat drifted asleep in his arms. He smiled contentedly and closed his own eyes. The television switched itself off into standby after a time, and the sky was turning from day into night.
Suddenly she shot awake, and he jumped with the movement. She put her finger on his lips.
“Someone’s coming,” she whispered. The two of them remained as still as stones, and sure enough after a short space of time they heard a vehicle draw up at the edge of the plot.
“They’ll see the cars and know there is somebody here,” he whispered and crawled to the window to look out but stayed hidden himself. “Two people. A man and a woman,” he added quietly. Kat joined him at the window and they held their breath as the two figures appeared beside the parked cars.
The two newcomers obviously stopped in their tracks, looked at the vehicles and slipped back the way they had come. Ben stood up and switched on the lights in the trailer. He opened the door and looked out.
“Maybe I should have just walked out and asked them what they were looking for,” he suggested.
“I wonder why they were here,” Kat added. “I am pretty sure it was the same two people who parked by the waterfalls.” He looked at her in amazement.
“That puts another complexion on it,” he told her quietly. “Because that means they are looking for something in particular and not just here by chance.”
“There is nothing really to steal here except what is in the trailer. They could hardly steal a load of stone without heavy machinery.” They looked at each other.
“It might be something quite innocent—like something was in the building when it was demolished,” Ben reasoned.
“Why take off when they saw the cars?” Kat answered, and there was no explanation.
They sat back down and talked it over again and decided that they wanted to find out more about the pulled down building.
“I’ll see what mom says when I get back and call you in the morning,” she told him and moved into his arms for a last good-night kiss.
7
Ben was going to start the new garden for a client in the morning and texted Kat to tell her where he would be. She wrote back to say her mom had met two people who remembered the building by the falls and were happy to talk to them. They decided to wait until the next day to see when they could talk to the older folks and he hung up with a smile on his face.
Ben had known for a long time that he thought Katarina was special, but since the few dates that they had been on together, he was pretty sure she was the woman he wanted to spend his life with. He pushed the thought to the back of his mind and refused to even let himself think the love word. The last thing he wanted to do was throw a wrench into the works of the enjoyable time they were having together. He gathered the plans together for the next day and went to sleep with a smile on his face.
Ben had a yard where he kept his tools and materials for gardens, and he met up with Jinty there in the morning. They loaded the truck and set off to start the job. It was a blank canvas for two young people who had just married and had no idea what to do with the space around the house. The woman, Marley, had stayed home until they arrived and he told her what they would start that day. She was happy with that and left them to it. The whole place was down to grass, and they used a machine to cut the turf and then rolled it to take away.
In the course of the day, and as they stopped for a break, Ben told him about the stones he had bought and the weird things that had happened. Jinty was a young man with a cheeky disposition and Ben expected him to joke about it, but he didn’t.
“What? The Summer Place?” Jinty queried and Ben nodded. “My granny says it’s haunted and never to go there.”
There was a silence and then Ben asked if his granny said anything else about it. Jinty grinned and proceeded to phone his gran.
“She thinks she is still twenty,” he said, as the mobile rang and a cheerful voice asked how she could help her favorite grandson. “Your only grandson,” he retorted, before saying he had a friend who was curious about the building called The Summer Place. “He’s called Ben.” He handed over the phone and Ben had a most curious conversation with a woman who sounded young but must have been seventy.
“Son,” she said, “My mother always said to keep away from the place. Bad things had happened there and there were lights in the building when nobody was there. She wouldn’t go near the place herself and we were told that we would get a good beating if we ventured out there. We were too scared to go anywhere near it.”
“Did she ever say what the bad things were or who did them?” Ben asked, but Jinty’s gran was not sure about that.
/> “Something to do with the devil was all I ever found out,” she answered.
“Thanks for talking to me anyway,” Ben said and handed the phone back to Jinty who joked with his gran before ending the call.
Ben then called Kat and passed on what he had heard from Jinty. She told him that her mom said that she would introduce them to the two elderly folks who could remember when the building was there.
In the evening he went around to the bungalow. Bev said she would lead the way in her car and that would allow them to go for a drink or something afterward. Kat climbed in beside Ben and gave him a quick peck on the cheek.
“More and more mysterious,” she said, “hauntings and the devil.”
“What on earth have I bought in that load of stones?” he wondered. “That must have been why it was so cheap.”
Bev pulled up outside a residential home and led the way inside. She explained to the receptionist that Ada Delaney was expecting them as visitors and the woman showed them the way to the room. Ada turned out to be a very well dressed woman of a goodly age but still full of chatter and pleased to see new faces. She had asked the other person over who remembered the building as well. He was a thin-faced and scholarly-looking person with rimless spectacles‒and bizarrely‒wearing the white earphone leads of an iPod. He took them out of his ears and stood up to shake hands.
“I’m Harris Montague,” he told them, and Ada asked them to sit down. “We talked about this after Bev mentioned it,” Harris went on, “and we both remember the same things.”
“Why was it called The Summer Place?” Kat asked. Ada said that as far as she knew, it was where farmers stayed in the summer to collect the animals from the mountain slopes.
“That was before my time,” Ada added, “But the rumors were always there about it being a bad place.”
“Can you remember the houses that were built into the mountainside?” Ben asked, and Harris brought out a photograph album.
“Better than that.” He grinned. “My dad was a keen amateur photographer and I have photos.”
“Wow,” Ben said, and they all leaned over to see the black and white views of the mountain before the slide wiped it away. The caves had been hollowed out into what looked like houses, because they had spaces for windows and doors. It was the cream color of the native rock that made it look like the buildings were made from sand.
“I was just about twelve, I think, when the slide happened. There was a bit of an earthquake, and the side of the mountain gave way,” Harris told them. Ada remembered much the same thing, but she was slightly younger. They didn’t recall any casualties. The earth tremor was small and the whole thing was just something that was forgotten.
“But was The Summer Place there at that time?” Kat queried, and they both nodded.
“I don’t think anybody used it as a farm building anymore, and there were one or two accidents as I remember, from folks climbing about and exploring,” Harris said. Bev thought that maybe the accidents had started the rumors about bad things. Ada shook her head.
“No, the stories were there before the slide and it just added to the talk that the place was sort of doomed.”
“It was always said that you should stay well away if there was a full moon,” Harris added. “That was when the lights were seen.”
“It is such a beautiful spot,” Kat said. “What a shame it has a bad reputation.”
Ben took out a small piece of the cream stone from his pocket and was asking if they recognized it, when Ada backed away to the far corner of the room and Harris went to put an arm around her.
“Get rid of it,” she said and seemed genuinely frightened. “Take it away. Those stones are wicked.” Ben stood up and went outside where he left the rock to pick up on the way out. All was normal when he came back, and Ada laughed.
“I am sorry,” she said. “Old habits die hard.”
“Tell us why the rock frightens you,” Bev asked. The woman said that anyone who kept the stones had nasty things go on in their lives.
“That was something I do remember because it kept on for many years until the stones were never seen again.”
“I’m sorry I upset you,” Ben told her. “I wonder if local newspapers have stories about the stones.”
“Anyway, it has been so interesting,” Kat said.
“Thanks very much,” Bev told the two elderly folks. “I’ll see you at the next club night.” The three of them took their leave, Ben collected the dropped stone and then they stopped beside the cars to go over what had happened.
“There is a really nasty feeling around the foundations of the building, but the stones do not have the same effect,” Kat said. Bev took the stone in her hand and agreed that there was nothing to be worried about there.
“Well call me superstitious, but those stones are going,” Ben said. “It might have been coincidence, but I’m not taking any risks.” He asked Bev if she would like to come for a drink with them, but she said she had things to do and told them to enjoy the rest of the evening.
Shortly, over a drink at a local bar, Kat asked Ben what he would do with the stones.
“Well, we buried them in that hole for the time being, and I really don’t believe that there is a sort of curse on them, but should I not get rid of them completely?”
Kat laughed and joked about the superstition still being there even if he didn’t really believe it.
“But looking at it from a logical point of view, you don’t really need them for anything and it might put some people off visiting the garden.”
“Now, I hadn’t thought of it from a business point of view, but they might not be good if customers knew about the stories.” Ben replied.
“Maybe we could just throw the one in the car into the water,” Kat suggested. So they drove to a well-known lakeside where the sides sloped off in a sandy loam, and strolled to the water’s edge.
Ben took the piece of rock and threw it toward the lake, but surprisingly it fell short. He went and retried the throw from right beside the water, and the rock still landed on dry land.
“Heavens.” Kat laughed. “Let me have a go.” She threw with all of her strength, and the stone still went in a direction that she had not intended. After some time, they gave up, because the rock would just not go where they wanted.
“Well it’s not a nasty stone, but it certainly doesn’t want to go in the water,” Kat said at last.
“Let’s take it to the trailer and bury it with its friends. Maybe it will be happy then,” Ben said and then added that it was totally ridiculous to pretend that a lump of rock had a mind of its own. They drove to Eagle’s Cry and took the stone over where they had buried the rest. With a spade, he dug down and dropped the piece on top of the others and then shovelled the soil back over the top.
“That is so silly, that nobody would believe you if you told them,” Kat said and then added that Carly would believe it. “I’ll see what she says tomorrow.”
They cleaned their hands in the trailer and made a coffee.
“I wonder if those people have been back while we were away,” Kat remarked. Ben thought that if they were there for any length of time, the car should be parked behind the pile of stones.
“Then we could just jump out and ask what they wanted,” he added.
“We could do that, and we could have an adventure in the dark to see if anything was happening where the building used to be,” Kat suggested with a gleam in her eye.
“Whatever happened to the girl with her feet firmly on the ground?” He grinned. “We could look up to see if there are any stories online about the rumors.” Ben finished the list of possible lines of inquiry. “In the meantime,” he said, and draped an arm around her shoulders, “We could just have a quiet coffee and a bit of peace and quiet.”
Kat smiled and rested her head on his shoulder. She put her arm around his waist.
“I like that idea,” she said. The time slipped away and darkness had fallen when they had on
e last, lingering kiss and climbed into the truck to go home. They had driven off the land and onto the road when they passed a car going in the opposite direction. Kat clutched his arm.
“I think that was them. Turn around and let’s see,” she said. He found a place to turn and they hurried back to his entrance, but he drove past and parked. They closed the doors quietly, and holding hands, tiptoed back toward Eagle’s Cry. The car was parked in the entrance and there was nobody in sight, so they bypassed it and stayed within the shadows of the trees.
8
Peering out, they could just make out a couple of shadowy figures because they both had torches that were shining onto the heap of stones.
“I am going to just walk up and ask them what they think they are doing,” he whispered and drew himself up to his full height. Ben Carruthers was just under six feet tall but he had a very strong look about him. Many would have thought twice before tackling someone of his build. They were not to know of course, that he had never been in a fight in his life and didn’t want to be.
“Shall I come with you or stay here in case we need to call for help?” Kat whispered.
“Call Carly and tell her where we are, and then, if you don’t mind, come with me as back up,” he said, and she moved farther into the trees to make the call. In fact, she decided to text it to keep it quiet, sent off the message and found Ben was waiting for her.
“Come on, Batman,” she said. “Let’s surprise them.”
They walked briskly over to the pile of stones and Ben called out as he approached.
“Excuse me, but you are trespassing here. Can I help you at all?” The two people both jumped at the sudden appearance and the woman threw up her hands.
“I’m sorry. We are looking for something we lost. We aren’t armed or anything.”
“She’s right,” the man said. “We should have asked permission.”
“So, what did you lose?” Kat asked and the couple looked at each other.