by Saber Vale
I laughed.
“What’s funny?”
“Nothing is haunted,” I said, “ghosts aren’t real.”
“You don’t believe in them?” he asked, still smirking, like I was amusing him.
“Do you?”
I tilted my head to the side and smirked right back at him. What kind of goofy idiot was I talking to?
“I keep an open mind,” he said, shrugging “but no, generally I guess I agree with you. No such thing as ghosts.”
I nodded.
Whew, I could like him again, continue to fantasize that he wasn’t the complete idiot most men turned out to be.
Not that it mattered.
“What do you do?” I asked him, “what kind of business brings you to Griffenberg?
“I’m into a little of this, a little of that,” he said.
“Hmm,” I said, noticing that he was no more forthcoming with me than I was with him, “that’s not very specific.”
“Ok, well,” he sighed heavily, like he was tired of talking about his job even though he hadn’t started, “if it were up to me, I’d be surfing in Bali right now, so can I say that I’m a surfer?”
“Your tan says surfer, but your suit says international business,” I said.
“I do a little business,” he admitted coyly.
“Like what?”
“Just deals for my family’s little organization,” he said, “nothing exotic or interesting, nothing like being a writer.”
“You don’t know what I think is interesting,” I told him, “I may be fascinated by… buying and selling stocks, or making deals… or whatever you do.”
He laughed.
“You don’t sound like you’re that interested,” he said.
I thew up my hands as if to say ‘you got me’ and smiled at him.
He smiled back, and just looking at him I felt warm through and through.
“Money isn’t interesting to me at all,” I admitted.
“Avoiding making money and then not having it is just as hard as making it,” he said, cocking an eyebrow.
“Cool, it sounds like you know everything about me,” I said, immediately clamming up.
He wasn’t anything but a rich asshole after all, I realized. Eye candy, maybe, but nothing more.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
I remembered I needed to get to the castle, that night was falling quickly. I had to get out of there.
“Well, it was nice to meet you…”
I paused, hoping he would fill in with his name.
“Nice to meet you too, Astrid,” he said, nodding and standing up.
I stared at him for a moment, blinking.
Had I told him my name?
He walked out of the cafe quickly, confidently, before it even occurred to me to stop him.
What the fuck?
Chapter 2
I had no idea how to get to the castle other than walking, but I knew I shouldn’t pay for a hotel for the night, and I wasn’t even sure there was one in Griffenberg.
Finally, after dithering and trying to come up with any kind of alternative for almost an hour, even asking a few people for rides, (I could have been asking them if they could please help me hide a dead body…) I just started hoofing it in the newly-falling rain. The winding road that lead up the mountain, where the castle had been built so long ago, seemed like it went on for miles and miles.
Dragging my frumpy, busted-up suitcase behind me, my tennis shoes sticking in the mud, I felt pretty pathetic.
My mother had always turned to her noble title in our more humiliating moments, reminding me that I was technically the daughter of a baroness, we still owned the castle, and that titles can’t ever be taken away. I wasn’t entirely sure any of that was true, but I certainly never felt like a baroness.
My mother had told me vague, elaborate stories of coming to the castle as a girl, the nobility she’d met, exaggerating the waning luxury of the poorly maintained castle. I had held Griffenberg, and my noble title, in my mind like an amulet that kept me safe from the disapproving sniffs of other students in school who noticed that my shoes were dirty and second-hand, or other parents who looked at my mother, often dressed in threadbare designer clothes, like she was crazy. They didn’t know the truth. That we were noble. Special.
In America, nobody cares if you’re a baroness, or how many castles you have, if you’re broke, and until my mother got married we were always broke.
I grew up moving from one rich, older boyfriend’s house to the next, sent to my room, forgotten about, only traveling to the castle when my mother could convince her boyfriend, whoever he may be at the time, to take us their on vacation.
That’s usually when the fairy tale of her royal bloodline began to fade in the minds of her suitors, even as it blossomed in mine. The castle was in disrepair. It needed a massive amount of upkeep, and one room after another had been shuttered, locked, sealed, to make the job for the grounds-keeper a little bit more manageable. My mother needed someone to pay to fix up the castle, and there was no way she could afford to do it herself.
The grounds-keeper and his wife, Siegfried and Hilda, an elderly couple who lived in an apartment over the unused equestrian stable (turned garage), took care of the castle in exchange for free rent and the money they made letting history students like myself tour the grounds.
Offers had been made to buy Griffenburg, but every one had been turned down by my mother, no matter how dire our financial situation had become. Sometimes I’d been bitter at her for it.
As I trudged towards the castle, staring up at it, I felt the same awe and excitement I’d always had as a child, but also I felt a resentment, an anger at my mother for never selling, even if it would have meant avoiding eviction, buying school clothes for the year, eating something other than macaroni and cheese from the box for dinner.
I supposed, as the rain poured down until my dark hair hung around my face like a witch’s, that if she’d sold, the money would have been gone years ago, and I’d survived, hadn’t I?
Now, I could do whatever I wanted with it.
Sell it. Live in it. Knock it down.
Finding myself nearly broke and suddenly orphaned, I thought I could at least live in Griffenberg for a few months while I worked on my first book. After that, if I couldn’t afford to keep it, I’d probably try to donate it to a historical society or something, pending my stepbrother’s required permission, which I was certain he would grant. I imagined that to a billionaire investment banker (or whatever he was) the castle would be worthless and annoying. He would probably be glad I was dealing with it.
From town, the castle looks closer than it really is, and it took me almost three hours to climb the winding switch-backs up the hillside to the main gate. On the gate there was a buzzer that was supposed to alert Siegfried of arriving guests, but when I pressed the button it seemed to do nothing. It may have been dead for five years. It had been seven years since I’d been to the castle, and I wasn’t sure my mom had come at all in that time.
I shuddered to imagine the kind of shape the castle would be in if there wasn’t a groundskeeper. I pushed on the imposing iron gate, but it was locked, a heavy chain looped around it, and of course, a castle being a military safe-keep for the whole town, the gates and walls around it were towering and impenetrable, daring me to find a way inside.
“Hello!?” I shouted, knowing no one could hear me.
The actual castle was hundreds of yards from the iron gate, up on the bluff that lead down into Lake Astrid (yes, that’s where my name comes from).
I could shout all night and, even if there was someone there, nobody would hear me.
I wasn’t even sure the grounds keeper was still there. With a shock of shame, I realized that I wasn’t sure he was even still alive.
The sun was setting and, as it did, the wind was picking up, howling over the lake below, the castle spires, and down the mountainside. I w
as high up above the town, where the winds from the lake could chill you to the bone, even in late spring. I hadn’t made a plan for getting to the castle, and I hadn’t made a plan for coordinating with Sigfried about getting in to the castle either. I had simply bought a plane ticket and bus ride with my last dollar and packed my things, thinking that I was the owner of the castle and it would all surely work itself out when I arrived, the prodigal baroness returning home.
In the back of my mind I’d known it was a stupid plan, but I’d been afraid, I think, that if I’d actually looked into it, my plan would fall apart and I’d realize that I shouldn’t even come. I’d been in denial.
I sat down on my suitcase, and the rain picked up even more. I felt, suddenly, like crying.
My mother was dead, I had nothing but this stupid castle I couldn’t even get into, and I was supposed to be writing a book about women in the middle ages that I hadn’t even started.
I put my face in my hands and shuddered with a sob, but willed myself not to cry. I had to figure out what I was going to do. I couldn’t sleep in the road in front of the castle, even though the thought of walking back down to the town seemed almost unbearable. I didn’t even know where I’d go if I went back into town.
When I looked up, feeling hopeless, I realized that a pair of headlights pierced the dense fog and rain and were heading towards me. A car was coming, hopefully the caretaker. I jumped up and put my hand over my eyes to try and see who was driving, my whole body filled with shattering relief. If nothing else, whoever it was could give me a ride back to Griffenberg.
The car was black, an expensive looking Audi SUV, and definitely not what I thought the caretaker would be driving, but I couldn’t be certain. It crept towards me, it’s lights reflecting the heavy raindrops, it’s beams trained right on me.
I stood in front of the gate, smiled weakly, and waved as the shiny, black car pulled up and, very slowly, rolled down a window.
A familiar, smirking face looked back at me from inside the car.
As I looked back at the man from the coffee shop, I could almost hear my brain ‘click’ with understanding.
“Hello, there, Astrid,” my stepbrother said, smiling at me.
“Cormac Spalding,” I said, feeling myself deflate with disappointment.
Of course.
He’d figured it out, why hadn’t I? Of course that’s how he knew who I was. It also explained his accent, explained what he was doing in Griffenberg. It was so obvious that I was amazed it hadn’t occurred to me it was him.
“Do you need some help getting in?” he asked, flashing a key.
“Yeah,” I sighed, “that would be great.”
“Well, climb in.”
Cormac jumped out of the car and grabbed my bag, tossing it in the back of the SUV as I got into the passenger seat. He opened the gate, hurrying to stay out of the rain, jumped back in, and drove the car through, leaving the gate open as we drove up the winding driveway, over the small mote bridge, to the castle.
“You’re going to leave it open?” I asked, turning to see the the heavy iron gate swinging in the wind.
“No one is going to come up here tonight,” he said, “and I don’t want to end up as soaked at you are. How could you walk in this weather? What were you thinking?”
I ignored him.
“What are you really doing here?” I asked, imagining he could ruin my plans to stay at the castle for the summer in any number of ways.
“What are you doing here?” he asked in return, parroting my question.
“Pretty much what I told you, coming to work on a book,” I said.
“Right, but you didn’t say you were staying at the castle,” he said, “you pretended not to even know very much about it.”
“People get weird when they find out you own a castle,” I said with a shrug, “it’s not something I lead with.”
“Well, technically you don’t own a castle,” he reminded me, “you own half of one.”
“Hmm,” I said tersely, “I suppose that’s unfortunately true.”
“So tell me the truth, what are you really doing here?” he asked once more.
“Really, I told you, I was going to stay here, work on my book, see about selling or donating it to a historical association when I was done. I can’t afford to keep this place up, or pay the taxes even...”
“You didn’t think about asking me about it?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“No, frankly, I figured you were a millionaire…”
“…billionaire…” he corrected.
“Ok, cool, billionaire,” I said, rolling my eyes, “and you wouldn’t care about a run-down castle in the middle of nowhere.”
“Well, it looks like you were wrong about that,” he said, “because here I am.”
“Yep,” I said shortly, “here you are.”
We pulled up to the imposing front door to the castle, heavy wooden barriers meant to keep out invading armies as a last resort. In the dark I couldn’t see much, and tried to remember how the main tower of the castle had looked years before. In the rain-drenched dark, the small gardens I remembered seem like nothing but weedy shrubs, unkempt and uncared for.
“Did you get the key from Siegfried? How long have you been here?” I asked.
“No, I got it from Siegfried’s daughter, in Berlin actually,” he said, “I just got here this morning.”
“Oh, is Sigfried…”
“Dead? No,” Cormac said, interrupting me again, “he’s living in a retirement community on the beach in Portugal, he left the castle two years ago. How exactly did you plan to get in without getting in touch with anybody first?”
I shrugged. I would have figured it out, probably.
“Is this your first time at the castle?” I asked, watching him struggle with the ancient skeleton key in the enormous iron lock.
“Yes, I had to take care of some business today,” he said, “and there’s no Internet here, or even cell service I guess, so I had to wrap some business up before I came up.”
“It’s pretty cut off up here,” I said, looking up at the towering spires, disappearing into the dark, clouded sky. We were extremely isolated, the only two people for almost a mile in every direction.
“I don’t know what we’re going to find,” he said, “Sigfried’s daughter seemed to think I shouldn’t plan to sleep here until I got some of the furniture replaced. She said it was pretty run down.”
“You’re planning to sleep here?” I asked.
The thought of sleeping in the same place with him came as a peculiar shock, though not an entirely unpleasant one.
“Do you really think I’m going somewhere else at this time of night?” he asked with a sarcastic laugh, looking at me incredulously.
“We’ll figure it out,” I said, shaking off my shock, worried that the few well-cared for, finished rooms may not be as shabbily charming as I remembered.
Finally, the door opened with a heavy creak into the pitch-dark main hall of the castle. A musty smell emerged, like a room that hadn’t been opened in years, and Cormac and I each stood in the doorway waiting for the other to make a move into the cobwebby, cavernous mouth of the castle.
I suddenly felt a cold chill, and my heart started beating faster and faster as I peered into the unrelenting darkness.
“Is there electricity?” Cormac asked.
His voice echoed through the dark chamber, the word ‘electricity’ bouncing back in mocking quiet.
“I mean, there used to be in the eastern tower,” I whispered, “but who would have paid the bills?”
“Well, the owners,” Cormac said with a short laugh.
“I certainly haven’t,” I said, stepping into the darkness.
Cormac reached out a firm hand and stopped me.
“Let me go ahead of you, just to be safe,” Cormac said, “hold on.”
I rolled my eyes again and crossed my arms.
He reached into his pocket and slipped out an iphone
. He tapped his thumb over the screen and brought up a bright beam of light, the camera’s flash, and slowly scanned the room. Tufted, busted chairs leaned against walls, missing their legs. A oil-painted portrait hung askew, the face of the subject covered in a grotesque pattern of black mold. Cobwebs and dust floated eerily as moths, disturbed by the sudden light, fluttered towards us.
“Jesus,” Cormac said quietly, “this is like a horror movie.”
“I grew up coming here,” I whispered, slightly offended by his disgust.
“Follow me,” I said finally, whipping out my own cell phone, bringing up the light.
“Some of the castle has finished walls, windows, real lights…” I explained as we made our way slowly through the hall into the enormous main dining room, which lead to the western tower, “I know there are some lanterns and things in the old kitchen, or there used to be, for taking to the beach or whatever.”
In the ancient kitchen, huge cauldrons still hung from iron hooks in the pantry, and an ancient iron stove sat rusting against a far wall. I opened some of the huge wooden cupboards to find lanterns, matches, and a greasy, dusty bottle of lamp oil. Every time I opened a cupboard I thought a rat or a mouse would pop out, and I felt jumpy and unsettled.
“You know your way around here pretty well,” he said, noticing how confident I was as I moved about the room.
“I came here a few times for the summer when I was growing up,” I said.
“Your grandfather lived here?”
“Only as a child, his mother died when he was young and he went to boarding school and them moved to the US,” I said quietly, “it was only ever used as a vacation home.”
“He’s the one who murdered the woman?”
I winced at the word murder.
“No, that was his father, my great-grandfather, who I never met. He died before I was even born,” I said, “and there was absolutely no evidence of a murder.”
“I heard she was strangled to death,” Cormac said.
“Yes, well, he said, she said…” I muttered.