The Haunting of Gillespie House (4 page)

Despite Mrs Gillespie’s reassurances, I didn’t want to return to the upper level, especially with the light dimming, so I left the candlestick on the table. I was pleased to see it matched the chandelier nicely.

“Dinner,” I coached myself as I plundered the fridge and pantry, “then a shower, then reading, then bed. Don’t let the house get to you. This is fine.”

I found a red tapered candle in one of the draws while I was looking for skewers, so I lit it and stuck it in the candlestick. Its floral scent eased my anxieties as I watched the candle burn and ate my dinner in silence.

The slamming door woke me from disturbing dreams. I sat upright with a muffled shriek, and something heavy fell into my lap. I looked down and saw the book I’d been reading. I must have fallen asleep between pages. My bedside table lamp was turned on but did little to dispel the room’s shadows.

Pressing one hand over my thundering heart, I kept still and listened to the house. It was
breathing
again; a pipe rattled somewhere behind me then fell silent. The floor groaned as though weary of bearing its weight. More disturbingly, the scratching noise was back: it scraped, ground, and rasped through the walls around me, setting the hairs on my arms to stand up. The rogue door, at least, had returned to being silent.

It sounded so much louder than the first time,
I thought as I made a conscious effort to slow my breathing.
I guess because it’s on this floor. It really sounded like it was coming from just behind me, though.

I felt too jumpy to stay in bed, so I got up, wrapping my dressing gown about myself to protect against the icy night air, and pulled my slippers on. The floorboards groaned under my feet as I approached the room’s door and opened it.

Moonlight fell through the window at the end of the hallway, and I drew near to it like a moth to a lamp. The window overlooked the dead gardens, which had become a maze of shadows and dark stakes in the night-time. Beyond them, I could see the crop of trees that hid the graveyard. I stood there for a while, leaning on the sill and watching the light and darkness play across the ground in response to the trees’ swaying. I half-closed my eyes, and I might have believed I was seeing people walk through the woods.

“Enough of this.” I rubbed at my arms. “Either go back to bed, or do something productive.”

The scratching sound was still echoing in my ears, so I made for the stairwell. It was a risky climb down in the dark, but I made it to the ground floor without breaking my neck. I followed the now-familiar path to the kitchen and turned on lights as I went. A quick search through the pantry turned up cocoa powder and sugar, so I put a saucepan of milk on the stove to heat.

I’d intended to drink the hot chocolate while I read, but when I sat at the table with my book cradled in my spare hand, I found I couldn’t focus on the words. I slammed it shut with a sigh.

The candlestick, with its half-burnt candle, caught my eye.

Why not?
I lit the wick and held the bronze pole in front of myself with my right hand, carrying the drink in my left, and strode into the dining room.
Let’s explore the house in the dark. We’ll make it a proper gothic adventure.

The building felt completely different at night, and I looked on it with fresh eyes as the flickering light illuminated a small golden circle around me. Through the dining room, through the suffocatingly empty ballroom, and into the library, I took the chance to appreciate the building afresh.

Something stood out to me as I drifted from room to room. It had been a quiet awareness in the back of my mind since I’d first arrived, but it wasn’t until that night, while I was surrounded by smothering darkness, with the only sounds being produced by my footsteps and the house’s breathing, that it struck me as strange. The house was neglected, and although the furniture was clean and modern and the living areas were clutter free, there was a peculiar absence of evidence that a family lived there.

I hadn’t seen a single photo of the Gillespies, not even in the master bedroom. There were no knick-knacks or trinkets, no paintings on the walls, and no furniture that looked as though it were loved. Every single object in the house served a practical purpose, like a hotel room before the guests had unpacked their luggage.

“What does that say about the Gillespies?” I stopped in front of an empty stretch of wallpaper partway down the hall. It was exactly the sort of place that a painting—like one of the gorgeous oil portraits upstairs—would fill perfectly. In fact, as I leaned closer, I thought I could see a square of the wall slightly darker than the rest, as if a painting
had
hung there for many years before being taken down.

Clearly, the Gillespies didn’t have the world’s happiest marriage. They were both businesspeople, driven and hard-working, and simultaneously pulling in different directions. What were their evenings like? Did Mr Gillespie retire to his meticulously clean study while Mrs Gillespie walked the empty hallways, cleaned out her wardrobe, or worked tirelessly to eliminate any hints that feeling, breathing human beings inhabited the house?

It felt both cruel and crazy that such a rich, soulful building, with its multitudes of rooms and an attic full of decadent furniture, should be dehumanised like that.
Maybe it’s a deliberate choice by Mrs Gillespie. Maybe the house was
too
human
.

I wandered into the library and took my time strolling through the U-shaped room, admiring the bookcases. They seemed to be from the original furnishings; they were a rich, dark wood that shone prettily in my candlelight. They stretched to the roof, offering hundreds of shelves waiting to be filled… or maybe to have their books returned.

A shimmer of movement in the corner of my eye caught my attention. I turned too quickly, and the candle flickered and nearly went out. I froze, waiting as the flame regained its strength, scanning the area that had caught my attention. It was the corner of the inside part of the U-shape. To my left was a straight line to the door that led into the hallway. If I went ten paces to my right, I could turn left again to face the second door.

That suddenly struck me as strange. Why was there an indent in the room that was ten paces wide? What was in that inside section?

I put my half-empty cup of cocoa on the floor, walked around the bend in the library, then exited through the second door to get back to the hallway. I walked the distance between the two library doors, expecting to find a storage closet between them, but it was an empty stretch of wall. Even when I ran my hand across the paint, I couldn’t detect any sort of ridge or indent that would suggest a hidden door.

Back in the library, I scowled at the shelves. There had to be something behind them; there was no point in taking so much room out of the library unless it served a purpose. But if a room was hidden behind those walls, it didn’t seem to have a door.

I put my candle on the ground beside the cocoa then went to one of the shelves and tried to pull it out. It was fixed in place, either by bolts or cement. I went to each shelf in turn, tugging them so fiercely that I was frightened of pulling a chunk out of the wall, but the only thing my efforts got me was a splinter in my palm. I sucked at it furiously as I regarded the blocked-off area.

“What the hell’s wrong with this house?” I asked it. “Locked rooms, and now rooms without doors at all?”

I made to turn away, but a hint of movement attracted my attention again. It had come from the same corner where I thought I’d seen it before. I picked up the candle and moved in to get a better look.

A narrow gap, a centimetre at most, existed between the two shelves that overlapped across the corner. I raised my candle to it and stared into the black depths. There, so close that I could have touched it if the bookcases hadn’t been in place, a wide, manic eye stared back.

My mouth opened involuntarily as my body locked up in shock. I dropped the candlestick and heard the metal ring as it hit the wood floor. The blackness that had been pressing upon me all night overwhelmed me, pouring around my body and threatening to drown me in its icy embrace; then I started stumbling through the black, hands stretched out ahead of me, desperately seeking the exit before the thing in the darkness caught me. My hand hit a wall, and I stumbled then began rubbing my palms across it, searching for the light switch as I became convinced I could hear footsteps creeping through the room, gaining on me, nearly on top of me-

Then I found the switch, and light filled the room. I turned, hands raised to protect myself, but I was alone. The candlestick lay on the floor, still wobbling its way to stillness, its molten tip leaving a splattering of bright-red wax on the floor. The shelves all stood in place; the room inside remained closed.

My idea to explore the house with only the candle suddenly seemed ludicrous. I ran from the library, turning on every switch I passed, lighting up the house like a Christmas tree. Back in my bedroom, I grabbed my mobile off the bedside table and dialled Mrs Gillespie’s number. It rang twice before her smooth voice answered.

“Thank goodness,” I blurted, “There’s someone in the house.”

“—right now, so please leave a message.” The recording finished its greeting then gave a long, angry-sounding beep. I gaped for a moment, at a loss of what to say, then hung up.

It’s after three in the morning,
I reminded myself as I stalked back down the stairs.
It’s not unreasonable to set your phone to voicemail at night.

I stood in the hallway, faced with a horrible choice. I couldn’t leave the house at night. The dirt roads leading to the town weren’t exactly clear in normal daylight; if I tried to navigate them in the dark, even with a torch, I was more likely to wander into the woods and starve to death than make it back to civilisation.

I could call the police, but would they be able to help? There was a room with no door.
What do you expect them to do? Break down the wall?

Yes,
a little, desperate voice in my head said.
That sounds like a dandy idea.

And yet, I could only imagine what Mrs Gillespie would have to say when she heard about it.
What were my other alternatives?
I could go back to bed and sleep with the candlestick clasped in one hand… or I could confront whoever or whatever was inside the impossible room.

I hated, hated, hated the choice I knew I needed to make, but there was no way I was going to fall asleep, and I couldn’t justify calling the police until I was certain about what I’d seen.

The kitchen draws held many knick-knacks, including potato peelers, zesters, blenders… and a torch. I took the thin metal tube out and slowly, cautiously returned to the library.

Everything looked exactly how I’d left it. The candlestick lay on the floor; its wax had dried into a little blood-red puddle. I kicked the stick aside, and it rattled as it rolled along the floor.

“Hello?” I called. Just like that morning, when I’d thought the slamming door had been an intruder, I got no reply. I edged towards the bookcases, turned on the torch, and angled it into the gap between the two shelves. “Hello?”

I couldn’t see anything, but then, I was still standing farther away than I had been before. I crept closer to the shelves, inch by inch, my heart ready to burst from the pressure, until my nose was just barely touching the wood. I raised my torch higher—and saw it.

There was a wall behind the gap in the shelves. On it was a stain that could be mistaken for an eye when seen for a split-second in flickering candlelight.

I thought I might collapse from relief. I sagged away from the shelves, then jumped as the scratching sound started up again.

“Damnit,” I hissed as I accidentally kicked the candlestick a second time. “What sort of infestation does this place have? Rats?”

I picked up the candle and the stick, and cast a frustrated glance at the puddle of cold wax that would need scraping off the hardwood.
Tomorrow,
I decided, and left the library.

The kitchen clock showed it was nearly four in the morning. I trudged back upstairs to my room, but I could still hear the scrabbling sound. It felt as though it were trying to burrow into my head, to bury itself in a vulnerable part of my brain, and the idea of trying to sleep while encased in that noise made me feel sick. But exhaustion was dragging at me, and after sleeping so badly the night before, I knew I wouldn’t do well if I tried to stay awake.

I settled on a compromise and dragged my pillow and blanket downstairs. The lounge room was quiet, so I bundled up on one of the couches, hugging the pillow and watching the roving shadows until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer.