Colton Manor (6 page)

             
Getting off the lounge, she walked over and closed the blinds. The house was in such an isolated spot that she’d never worried about it before, but now she found herself imagining all sorts of scary things out there in the darkness. After she’d made sure no one could see inside and checked that the front door was locked she returned to watch the movie but she couldn’t shake the feeling something wasn’t right. She was just getting back into the film when a noise from the kitchen caused her to jump.

             
With her heart in her mouth Ursula got up and slowly walked towards the kitchen, hoping that she’d find Damien in there. Just like the previous night, he was nowhere to be seen. She thought she must be imagining things when she saw that the cellar door was ajar again, but this time when she heard a muffled sound coming from down there she didn’t stick around to find out what it was. If Damien was sleepwalking again, and he couldn’t remember anything about the last episode, who knew what he was capable of. She’d read news stories about sleepwalkers murdering people, and Damien had shown an angry side to himself tonight that she did not want to see any more of.

             
Taking the stairs two at a time she bolted to her room. Damien’s door was closed, but that didn’t mean anything. Once inside her own room she locked the door and tried to calm herself down by texting some friends and doing some sketches. If she had anywhere else to go she would have hightailed it out of there immediately, but the only person she knew in the area was Bonnie and she couldn’t just turn up there in the middle of the night. When she finally got into bed it took over two hours for her to drift off, and she didn’t hear Damien return to his room at all during that time.

             
Ursula had no idea how long she’d been asleep when she was awoken by a noise in the hall just outside her door. She assumed it was Damien finally going back to bed. She held her breath as she listened for the sound of his door opening and closing, but there was nothing. She figured she must have been dreaming and she was about to roll over and try to get back to sleep when a faint squeaking sound caused her to sit up in fear. In the dim light from the lamp she’d left on she saw the door handle move. Damien was trying to get into her room!

             
It seemed like time stood still as she waited to see what he would do next. She half-expected him to start pounding on the door, or even try to kick it in, but to her intense relief his shuffling footsteps moved away. She heard his bedroom door open and close, and then there was silence.

After her fear had subsided
a little her next emotion was anger. Just what kind of game was he playing? How dare he try and come into her room uninvited in the middle of the night. She did not want to think about what he had planned to do to her if the door was unlocked, and she made the decision that the next day she would ask him to leave. Even if he was sleepwalking, his behaviour was just too strange for her to deal with. She’d be better off on her own with the ghosts because they at least couldn’t physically harm her. Who knew what Damien Knight was capable of when he was sleepwalking, or if he was sleepwalking at all.

Chapter Four

Ursula was up very early the next morning. She hadn’t been able to get back to sleep after her scare, and now she just wanted Damien to come downstairs so she could break the bad news to him. She needed to get it over and done with so she could concentrate on her painting, but as she sat in the kitchen waiting for him to surface the hours ticked over and she feared he was going to sleep in till noon like he did the previous day. The cellar door was closed again and she couldn’t bring herself to look in there to see if anything had been disturbed. Instead she paced the porch and did some sketches, but by ten o’clock there was still no sign of him.

             
When the antique clock in the hall struck eleven she couldn’t wait any longer and she made her way up to his room.

             
“Damien, are you awake?” she said, knocking on the door, softly at first. When there was no response she knocked a bit harder. “Damien, I really need to talk to you about something important. Please get up.” Now she was beginning to lose her patience and she tried his door handle, but to her surprise the door was locked. “Damien, I know you must be awake. Please get dressed and come downstairs. You were sleepwalking again last night and we need to talk.” There was no response. “Damien, are you okay?”

             
When he still didn’t reply Ursula began to grow concerned. What if he was sick or injured? He’d been acting so strangely that anything was possible. For a moment she just stood in the hallway, unsure of what to do next. Then she remembered Bonnie. She’d known Damien for a long time and she had been the one to suggest he move in here. She was the best person to deal with this situation.  With a sense of relief she went into her room and retrieved her mobile phone before realizing she didn’t have Bonnie’s number. She tried to ring Yvette at the real estate agency to get it, but to her frustration the call went straight to message bank.

             
“Hi, this is Ursula St Clare. I urgently need to get in touch with Bonnie Forbes. Can you please call me back as soon as you get this?”

Ursula
sat on the bed and flicked through some new messages on her phone as she waited for Yvette’s call, but she was too worried to focus on anything. She got up and looked out the window, noticing through her distraction that it was raining again. A noise caught her attention and she was relieved that Damien had finally woken up. She went into the hall to wait for him, but then she heard the noise again. It was coming from downstairs. Damien definitely hadn’t come out of his room, so that meant he’d either been down there all morning, or there was someone else in the house.

With trembling legs she walked down to the ground floor, grasping the railing tightly as she went. She’d just reached the bottom step when there was a loud scraping sound from the kitc
hen. It was the same noise she’d heard the night before and it sounded like the cellar door being pushed open. Once again she did not stick around to find out what it was. Instead she hurried into the entrance foyer and grabbed her bag from the stand, and ignoring the rain she ran she ran across the drive to her car.

As she turned the car around she glanced up at the window and this
time there was no mistaking what she saw. Someone was definitely up there, looking down at her. They were standing behind the curtains so she couldn’t make out any more than the outline, but from the bulky shape she could tell it was a man. If it was Damien she’d heard in the cellar, he hadn’t had much time to get upstairs from the kitchen. If it wasn’t him downstairs, he could be the one watching her now, but why would he do that, and who was it in the kitchen? With a shudder she took off down the drive as the rain came down harder and a thick fog rolled in from the ocean.

****

“Well this is a nice surprise,” said Bonnie, wiping her hands on a dish cloth as she crossed the floor to answer the door. “I was going to drop around today to see how you and Damien are getting along. I was baking some cookies to bring with me.” The kitchen was filled with delicious aromas, and in another room she could hear the sound of children playing. It couldn’t have been more different from the house she’d just come from. Although it was sprinkling lightly here, the sky was much clearer and the fog had not made it this far.

“
I think there’s something wrong with Damien and I’m really scared,” she blurted out, “He’s acting really strangely.”

Bonnie’s brow wrinkled. “What do you mean? Is he in danger?”

“I don’ know,” said Ursula, wringing her hands. “I don’t know what’s wrong.”
She was almost in tears by now. Bonnie took her by the arm and led her to a chair in the kitchen.

“I’ll just put the kettle on and you can tell me all about it,” she said in a motherly voice. “I’m sure it’s nothing to be worried about,
Damien is a grown man who is perfectly capable of taking care of himself. If there was any danger he’d leave, he’s not that stubborn.”

“I don’t know if he’s in a very rational state of mind at the moment.
He’s been sleep walking, and last night he tried to come into my room.” When she’d finished recounting the strange events of the previous two nights Bonnie’s face was white.

“This is
so completely out of character for Damien. I’ve never known him to lose his cool like that, and there’s absolutely no way he’d try to get into your room in the middle of the night, under any circumstances.”

“It has to
be the house, then. It must be doing something to him, just like it’s done to everyone else who’s tried to stay there. Damien obviously doesn’t have a dark side or a reason to lose the plot like this, so there’s no other explanation.” She noticed Bonnie hesitation.  “What is it?”

She shook her head as if to dismiss the thought. “It’s probably nothing, but when
Damien and Tracey divorced just over a year ago some of our friends commented on how well he was dealing with it. He never showed any emotion at all, even when she got the house and a huge chunk of his money. Some said it wasn’t normal and eventually he’d have to snap.”

“
Wow, I didn’t even know he was divorced. Do you think this could be what’s happening to him now, that he’s having some sort of delayed breakdown?”

“I don’t know, but we really need to get back over there are see him. The only prob
lem is I’ve got the kids and my husband, Tom, won’t be back till this afternoon. Do you mind waiting till then? If you heard him moving around downstairs then he must be okay.”

“
The thing is I don’t even know if it was him down there, I really don’t know what to believe right now.”

“The best thing we can do is just wai
t a while. I’m certain there will be a rational explanation for all this.” Ursula didn’t bother to point out that Bonnie was the one had scared her half to death by telling her the house was haunted to begin with.

“What if his door is still lock
ed when we get there?”

Bonnie
thought for a moment. “Yvette has a spare set of keys at the agency to every room in the house. Why don’t you drive over there and pick them up. It will help to kill some time, and it will do you good to go for a drive into town and take your mind off things.”

“I tried ringing Yvette before I came here to get your number but the ca
ll went straight to voice mail.”

“That’s because she’s always gossiping on the phone. She’ll definitely be there. While you’re gone
I’ll ring around and find a sitter so Tom can come with us. I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to go over there alone.”

“That’s for sure. I’ll head into town now and get the keys, I guess, and I’ll see you soon.
”

“Okay, and try not to worry too much, Ursula, everything will be fine.”

****

Although
she knew it could be hours before they returned to the house, Ursula couldn’t shake the sense of urgency that overtook her as she drove towards Paradise. There was something very wrong at Colton Manor, and she wished they could go back there immediately and get to the bottom of it. Damien could be in real danger. Just because the ghost had not harmed anyone before did not mean it never would, there was a first time for everything. But was it something supernatural causing him to behave so weirdly, or did he have repressed anger from his divorce that was only coming out now? She was glad she hadn’t let things go too far with him the previous night because the last thing she needed was to become involved with a man carrying serious baggage.

Despite everything Ursula’s intuition
told her that Damien was not a person she needed to fear, and she had learned to listen to her inner voice over the years. Every instinct told her that he could be trusted, and that was why she believed Bonnie when she said his strange behaviour was completely out of character. The only other explanation was that there was something sinister going on at the house, and this conclusion did nothing to calm her fears.

The sun was shining brightly
for the first time since she’d arrived as she pulled up in the main street, but she barely even noticed it as she got out of the car and walked to the real estate agency. Yvette was on the phone, but she put it down when Ursula pushed open the door.

“Oh hi, I was just about to call you to give you
Bonnie’s number. I hope everything is alright out there.”

“Yes,
I decided to drive over and see her instead. I’ve just locked one of the doors upstairs and lost the key. Bonnie said you have a spare set here.” She decided against saying anything about Damien for the moment until they had a better idea of what was going on.

Yvette studied her face shrewdly, clearly suspecting there
was more to it than Ursula was telling her.

“You know, Ursula, Bonnie came in here the other day and gave me a bit of a talking to about letting you stay at Colton Manor on your own. I hope she hasn’t been telling you any silly stories about the house.”

“She’s mentioned a few things.”

“Oh, that woman is unbelievable.” Yvette shook her head as she retrieved some keys from her desk and handed them across the counter. “There’s absolutely no truth to anything she says. The rumours started a couple of years ago when a family rented the house and they kept being disturbed by noises at night. They moved out and told everyone the house was haunted, but turns out it was just a family of possums living in the roof.” She laughed shrilly, reminding Ursula of the first time she’d set foot inside the office to inquire about Colton Manor. “That’s all there was to it, but you know how people love a ghost story, and it just took off from there. They began rehashing stories from over a hundred year ago and now there’s no stopping them. It’s disgraceful of Bonnie to scare you like that.”