The Haunting of Gillespie House (2 page)

My toothbrush clattered as I dropped it into the small blue cup perched at the edge of the sink. I used my hands to scoop the running water into my mouth. Even the tap water tasted different than it did in the city; it was crisper and less sanitised. I closed my eyes, imagining I was drinking from a stream.

My face had become pasty and pale, I noticed as I blinked at my reflection in the mirror. I would have to sit in the sun a few times while I had the chance. My freshly washed hair was beginning to frizz as it dried, and my white pyjamas looked too bright against the dull-grey bathroom walls.

“Who paints a bathroom grey?” I asked my reflection. The entire house seemed shrouded by a feeling of gloom, as though the long years had muted and drained its colours. It didn’t help that all of the lights were dim, either by design or because of a lack of cleaning, and shadows encroached on the rooms with a cold persistence. I didn’t mind too much, though; I found something pretty about the house’s dark aura.
In the same way funeral flowers can be beautiful.

“That’s enough morbidity for tonight,” my reflection told me. “Bedtime.”

I glanced at the stairwell to my left as I exited the bathroom. The wooden steps leading upwards disappeared into shadow after the first meter, teasing me with possibilities. I hadn’t visited the upstairs rooms yet; figuring out how to start the stoves to cook dinner had taken a frustrating forty minutes. Then I’d gotten distracted reading one of the books I’d brought. By the time I closed it, it was well into the night, and I could hear owls calling to each other outside the window.

We’ll explore tomorrow.

My room felt welcoming, maybe because of the dozen novels I’d stacked on the desk and beside my bed. I took a final look out the window. The pines’ silhouettes stood proudly against the sky as the half-moon cast a thin white light across their tips.

“Goodnight,” I whispered, half to myself and half to the house, then I turned out the light and crawled into bed.

A rasping, scratching noise permeated my dreams, where I walked long hallways without doors. Turning around corner after corner, like a rat in a maze, I chased the sound but never gained on it.

I turned a final corner and saw the hall had led me into a graveyard. Bleached-white headstones stuck out of the raw dirt like crooked teeth, and when I tried to back away, I found my escape blocked by a cold stone wall.

I woke with a jolt.

The dream hadn’t quite been a nightmare, but it had been disquieting, and my heart was racing. I rubbed my hair out of my face and fumbled to turn on the bedside lamp. It took me a moment to realise part of my dream hadn’t ended with my waking: a soft scraping sound was barely audible over my ragged breathing. I held still, listening as hard as I could. It sounded like nails clawing at wood.

The cold night air made me shiver as I stumbled out of bed and pulled on my sneakers. I grabbed my jacket out of the wardrobe and tugged it over my pyjamas before slinking into the hallway.

The walkway to my left ended in a large window overlooking the woods. The moon cast just enough light for me to see without searching for a switch, so I walked through the house slowly and carefully, searching for the source of the noise. Now that I was listening, a multitude of other sounds crept into my awareness: deep creaking from below my feet; occasional rattling from the floor above my head; then a moaning, grinding sound from inside the wall, where the plumbing became active.

I’d heard it said that some old houses
breathed
, and the Gillespies’ building certainly did. The house felt like a living creature, resting in the middle of the countryside, whiling away its years in hibernation. The windows were its eyes, the shingles plated its back.
That would make me… what?

“A parasite.” I snorted in laughter. The sound echoed strangely in the empty hallway. My hand landed on the glass doorknob of the room beside mine, and I gave it a twist just in case. As it had during the day, the lock stayed resistant.

I took the stairwell down to the first floor. The wooden steps whined under my feet as the plumbing farther back in the building gave a final rattle then quieted. The house looked completely different at night. What was dim and dingy during the day became almost luminous under the effects of the moon and stars. The wallpaper seemed more vivid, the wood seemed a richer colour, and the secrets hidden in the darkness felt a thousand times more alluring—especially when the shadows writhed across the floor and bloomed out of every corner.

I let myself out of the front door without thinking about what I was doing. The desire to see the outside of the building—
the whole of the house
, I thought,
the true house
—had been growing without my even realising it. Standing on the lawn, I was able to look at its three-story facade. Its black windows watched over the driveway like dark eyes.

Icy dew from the grass stuck on my ankles and the hem of my pyjama pants as I walked through it. Like the inside of the building, the outside hadn’t been maintained well, and the grass grew thin and too tall. Tiny insects, shocked out of their sleep, flicked away from me as I walked through their homes. A solitary owl called from behind me.

I rounded the corner of the building to have a closer look at the woods. Their branches moved in the breeze, a mess of shadows that could hide innumerable monsters. I looked to my right, away from the woods, and gazed at the side of the house.

My window was easy to find, located nearly at the end of the building, on the second level. I’d left the bedside light on, and the square of glass glowed like a beacon. The window next to it belonged to the locked room. It was different from the others; while every other window in the house sat flush against the wall, that one extended out in a bay shape. I tried to picture it from the inside: there was probably a seat below the window, so that whoever stayed in the room could sit there with an unmatched view of the outside world.

It seemed bizarre that the door was locked. Every other room I’d tried, including the Gillespies’ personal bedroom, had been left open.
What’s in there?

I started to lose track of time as I gazed at the window, mesmerised by its possibilities. Everything was so perfectly still that when the curtains fluttered, I actually jumped.

It’s just the breeze catching them
. I watched the pale shapes hidden behind the glass swirl and sway for a moment before falling still again. The shock had jolted me out of my sleepy daze. I became acutely aware of how cold the wind was and folded my arms across my chest, shuffling on the spot to try increase the circulation to my numbing feet.

The owl above my head hooted its displeasure at my presence, and I took that as my cue to go back to sleep.
You may rule the world by day, but the creatures of the night demand their privacy.

A frying egg popped and spat hot oil at my exposed forearm. I glowered at it and used my spatula to squash the yolk, spilling its golden contents out like blood. “That’ll teach you.”

Between my midnight excursion and the persistent, gruelling dreams of being followed by a scratching noise, I doubted I’d gotten as much as three hours’ rest.

Still, it was my second day of solitude, and it had been a welcome change to wake up without hearing the thunder of the tenants in the room above mine as they used their treadmill.
If you’re going to jog, at least do it outside,
I’d thought on some of my worse mornings
. Otherwise, you’re no better than a mouse on a wheel.

I flipped my mangled egg onto the plate next to the bacon and sat down beneath the chandelier. The sun was doing a half-hearted job of lighting the house that morning, and I’d had to turn on the lights in order to see clearly. As I ate, I toyed with the idea of going back to bed and sleeping through the rest of the day, but one thought kept me up: I would be able to search the upstairs rooms. The familiar tingle of excited curiosity cheered me, and I finished my breakfast quickly.

As soon as the dishes were dried and put away, I took the stairs to the first floor then turned the corner. I climbed the second flight more slowly, taking my time to savour the exploration. Partway up the narrow stairwell, the wallpaper changed from the sickly grey shade to a dark maroon with intricate gold designs a little reminiscent of the paper in my own room. I reached the landing and found myself in a hallway not very different from the one downstairs. The main change was the lights—or, rather, the lack of them. The only illumination for the hallway came from the square window at the end.

Good thing I didn’t try to explore up here last night,
I thought as I ran my hand across the patchy, peeling wallpaper.
I would have been as good as blind.

The wooden floor had a carpet runner down its length. The fabric was scuffed, and the dirty grey base showed through in many patches. Small puffs of dust appeared around my feet as I stepped on it.

An aura of neglect hung over the entire upper level. Dead beetles lay curled in the grime that had accumulated around the skirting. Cobwebs lined the ceiling, though their arachnid occupants seemed to have moved on or died a long time before. As I approached the first door, I noticed even the handle had collected a layer of dust.

It’s like the rooms up here haven’t been seen in decades.

I brushed the sticky dust off the doorknob and twisted it. The hinges whined and stuck partway through opening, and I had to put my shoulder against the door and give it a good shove to get into the room.

My breath caught in my throat as I gazed at a sea of off-white fabric. The room was filled with furniture, all of it covered with dust cloths. I glanced behind myself, feeling as though Mrs Gillespie might pop out of the hallway at any moment and reprimand me for snooping. She didn’t, so I took a hesitant step into the room and pulled the nearest cloth off its ward, revealing a grand piano made of black wood, with yellowing ivory keys. I reached out and pushed a key down, and a single haunting note filled the room.

“This is gorgeous,” I said to the empty room as I ran my hand across the wood. “Why’s it hidden all the way up here?” I dropped the cloth back into place and moved on to look at the next hidden treasure.

Beautiful antique furniture filled the room. I found wardrobes, mahogany tables and chairs, two slate-grey mannequins, and pouffle seats and armchairs.

My eyebrows rose as I pulled the cloth off a stack of oil paintings near the back of the room. They’d been sat upright, leaning against the wall so that I could pull each towards myself to see the one behind it. Most of them depicted people: army colonels with dense grey moustaches; families dressed in Victorian garb; a woman with dozens of strings holding hundreds of pearls hung about her neck; a young, doe-eyed girl who stared out of the canvas imploringly; and a man with a frown set about his eyes as he leaned forward on his desk, reading a letter. The final painting showed an elderly woman, her dark hair streaked grey, her rich maroon dress heavily shadowed. The brightest part of the painting was the large blue teardrop-shaped crystal hung from a necklace, which her right hand caressed as her dark eyes stared out of the painting and transfixed me.

I laid the paintings back into place and rearranged their cloth. I thought about the downstairs rooms and how bare many of them felt. I wondered why such rich—and probably expensive—furniture was hidden in the attic.

The next room was very similar: nearly fifty objects sat about the floor, hidden under dust covers. I set to work exploring them, uncovering drawer sets, a large box of silver cutlery and crystal glassware, tall-framed mirrors, and boxes upon boxes of moth-damaged blankets and hand-made crochet. By the time I was done, swirls of dust filled the room, catching the sickly light coming through the window, and it was a little after lunchtime.

My back ached, and I leaned against the wallpaper to give it a rest, rubbing dirty hands on my jeans. I tried to picture the downstairs rooms filled with the deep mahoganies and rich curtains.
The grey walls wouldn’t look so stark and awful… and that crazy chandelier wouldn’t seem so out of place, either.

Had the Gillespies moved the furniture up here, or had they simply never moved it down after buying the house? I hadn’t had long to talk to Mrs Gillespie before they’d gotten into their car and left, but I’d had the impression she’d only lived in the house for a few years. She’d said she missed the city.

I went back into the hallway and paused there, glancing to the left and to the right. I could keep exploring the rooms—there were another two to my left and three on the opposite wall—or I could go downstairs and refuel with some lunch.

The dust was all over my clothes and in my hair, but my desire to look through more of the mysterious upstairs rooms was insatiable.
Just one more, and then I’ll take a break.

I opened the door to my left and felt a rush of disappointment when I saw it was empty. I’d been hoping to uncover more of the gorgeous furniture, but the only thing in the room was a dead mouse, coiled on its back with its tiny paws held up towards the ceiling.

My feet kicked up more dust as I walked inside and looked about the bare walls. I’d been stupid to expect every room to be filled with stored furniture—what I’d already seen was probably enough to comfortably fill most of the house—and I supposed it was a little relaxing to not be cloistered amongst the ghost-white dust cloths. I held my arms out to the side, stretched my back, then walked to the window to admire the view.

No wonder the light is so bad,
I thought as I gazed at the rolling cover of clouds poised above the treetops. Being on the highest floor gave me a slightly better view of the forest. It seemed to stretch on for quite a way. Even though the ground dipped and obscured my view, I guessed it had to continue until it reached the mountains, where fog had gathered several kilometres away.

A door slammed beneath my feet.

I shrieked and leaped backwards as I felt the floor’s reverberations through my shoes. My left sneaker landed on something lumpy and brittle, which made a faint crunching noise. I scuttled away from it and saw I’d stepped on the dead mouse, squishing it quite a bit flatter than it had been.

My heart thundered. I pressed both hands against my chest, trying to silence my heartbeat while I listened for more sounds from the floor below.
Is someone in the house? Is it a break-in?

Silence. My fingers shook as they pressed into my blouse. I looked towards the door, which I’d left open a crack, and felt irrational paranoia rush through me.
There’s someone in the hallway.

A hundred thoughts ran through my head.
Can I climb out the window? Should I call the police?
But they became increasingly irrational as fear overrode my ability to think. If I tried to climb out the window, I would undoubtedly fall to my death three floors below, and I’d left my mobile on the dining table.

I took a halting step towards the door. Icy sweat built under my arms and across the back of my neck. I didn’t dare breathe as I took a hand away from my heart and nudged open the door. Half certain that I was about to die, I leaned through forward to look into the hall.

It was deserted.

“Get a grip, Elle.”

I moved the lower half of my body into the hall, too. The hairs on my arms prickled as I faced the stairwell.
What if someone knew the Gillespies were leaving, and came to steal what they could while the house is empty? Would they bring a knife? A gun?
An image flashed through my mind; I saw myself running down the hallway, trying to escape the hulking intruder as he grabbed my ankle, tumbling me to the dust-coated carpet. He brought his butcher’s knife down to sink it into my chest again and again and again…

“Get a grip,” I repeated. I wrapped my arms about my torso, and my mouth was too dry to form the words properly.

I could stay on the upper level until he leaves. I could hide under a dust cloth and pretend I don’t exist while he loots the house.
Except that I’d screamed when the door had slammed. That wasn’t a noise that could be passed off as the house breathing. If he’d heard me, he knew I was there—and he would either flee, or come looking for me.

I turned to the nearest room to my right, where the furniture was covered in yards of off-white cloth. With a final glance at the stairwell, I ducked into the room and pulled the coverings off until I found what I’d been searching for: a crate filled with heavy bronze candlesticks. I picked one up then, holding it like a bat, crept back into the hallway and towards the stairs.

The floor groaned under my weight, and I cursed at it. If the stranger downstairs was listening for me, he would have more than ample warning that I was coming.

Don’t be a coward. The Gillespies left you here to mind their house—now mind it!

I took the stairs slowly, my watering eyes fixed on the poorly illuminated landing below, craning my head forward and hoping to see any threat before it had a chance to maul me. My body was alive with adrenaline, and I was becoming dizzy from the excess oxygen my lungs were dragging in to prepare for flight-or-fight.

The landing stayed empty. When I reached it, I looked around the corner. My eyes scanned the shadows that clustered about the edges of the hall, but it was empty.

“I know you’re there.” My voice escaped as a pathetic whine. I swallowed and tried to put more force into it as I took the first step down the hallway. “I have a gun, but I won’t shoot if you show yourself.”

I counted to ten, but the only noise was my ragged breathing and racing, overworked heart. There was nothing for it; I took a second step down the hallway, then a third, my eyes flickering over the closed doors, my ears straining to hear any sounds.

The first door to my left was the Gillespies’ bedroom. I hesitated, wondering if I should peek in cautiously, but I knew I’d lost any element of surprise a long time ago, so I gripped the doorknob, twisted quickly, then kicked open the door with more force than I probably should have. It banged against the wall then sprang back, threatening to close my view of the room, but I extended my spare hand to keep it open. The room looked empty; the closet door still stood open, as I’d left it before, and the bed had a base that extended to the floor, eliminating any hiding space beneath the mattress.

I backed out of the room and took two more hesitant steps towards the bathroom. “Don’t make me hurt you!” My voice was too loud that time, echoing through the hallway and bouncing back at me. I yanked open the bathroom door and stepped into the room, candlestick held high. I caught sight of movement from the corner of my eye and brought the heavy bronze stick down, slashing blindly, but it only hit the shower curtain, which had fluttered in the breeze caused by the opening door.

Back in the hallway, I burst through the second door to the left, the empty storage room. The broom still stood against the wall, looking forlorn.

The next door belonged to the locked room. Tingles ran through my spin as I gripped the doorknob and twisted. Premonition, or maybe superstition coupled with the fear roaring through me, told me to expect the door would open, and I felt a little surprised and disappointed when it didn’t.