The Haunting of Ashburn House (9 page)

Adrienne finished drying the fork and slotted it back into the drawer. The grandfather clock had chimed three times during her meal, which meant she had another four hours to fill before nightfall.

She went upstairs and unpacked her suitcase, slotting the clothes and spare sheets into the wardrobe and fussing over how to arrange her book and hairbrush on the bureau. She was low on possessions, and the task took less than twenty minutes. When she finished, she turned in a circle, surveying the immaculate room and feeling completely lost.

Her next ghostwriting job was due the following week. The project was nearly finished and could be wrapped up in a couple of hours, so she grabbed her laptop off the desk and brought it to the second-floor study.

She got as far as placing the computer onto the study desk and pressing the power button before hitting an obstacle. Her laptop was out of power, and there was no electricity on Ashburn’s second floor.

Grumbling under her breath, Adrienne carried the laptop downstairs to recharge it in the lounge room. Not having power on the second floor was inconvenient but not completely disastrous for her plan of using the study. The laptop’s battery could last a full day; she’d just have to remember to recharge it on the ground floor at night.

She plugged the computer in and watched the screen light up. The round table was at a bad height to write at, so she left the laptop there to charge and began pacing through the house.

Edith didn’t own a TV or radio, as far as Adrienne could see, and most of the books in her shelves were printed before the turn of the century. She picked up a scrap cloth from the kitchen and dusted the rooms she passed through, but she didn’t know how much good she was doing. The particles just swirled through the air, making her sneeze.

She ended up in one of the upstairs rooms, swiping the cloth over a floating shelf mindlessly as she stared out the window.

Whose grave is it?

Long, wine-red curtains created an elegant frame for the view: a patch of weedy yard, sloping gently downhill, soon merged with the gnarled, blackened trees. The woods were dense and sloped away for a distance before rising up again as the hill joined the mountain. The little clearing and its grave were just a dozen metres past the edge of the woods. Adrienne thought she could even see the narrow opening of the path she and Jayne had emerged from earlier that day.

It’s getting late.
The sky was darkening as the sun approached the treetops, but it was still a little way from true dusk.
But the grave’s so close… there’s time to go there and back, surely?

She glanced behind her, feeling a little like a naughty child about to break curfew, then threw the cloth down.

It’s for my own good,
she told herself as she jogged down the stairs.
I’ll have enough trouble sleeping
without
a mystery on top of everything else. I need some closure about who’s buried on Edith’s property.

She snagged her jacket off the back of the fireside chair. Wolfgang, full and content, was sprawled over the rug and gave her a lazy blink before going back to sleep.

Isn’t that odd; I still think of this house as Edith’s, though it’s technically mine now. I suppose it’s hard to expunge a lifetime’s habitation overnight… but something tells me I’ll still be thinking of this as Edith’s house in fifty years’ time.

She slipped through the front door and rounded the property. That morning’s search had been so panicked that she couldn’t clearly remember where the pathway was, though she knew they’d emerged near the back of the house. She approached the forest’s edge and began walking along its border, looking for the narrow opening.

She found it between two patchy, dying trees. It was unidentifiable as a trail until she was facing it head-on and noticed the dirt track snaking between the great trunks for a few metres before disappearing from view.

One final look at the sky reassured her that, although sundown had started, she still had time to make the journey before night fell. She stepped between the trees and entered the other world of the forest.

The change was instantaneous. While she stood on the grass, the sunlight felt bright and warm. Inside the woods, though, it became muted and greyed. Many layers of shadows wrapped around the trunks and grew over Adrienne’s limbs, chilling her. She zipped up her jacket, folded her arms over her torso, and began marching.

It was hard to be certain whether the path had been intentionally created or if feet had worn down the vegetation over decades to create the track. It was too narrow to follow without ducking and weaving, and the tree roots criss-crossing the path were squashed and scuffed as though they’d been trodden on hundreds of times.
By Edith?

Birds cackled around her. They sounded angry and impatient, and she wondered if they feared sundown as strongly as she did.

The path wasn’t long. It widened then abruptly opened into the clearing. Adrienne stopped at the edge of the natural border to stare at the gravestone.

It poked out of the ground like an abomination, the only man-made feature in sight, isolated from the trees as though they bent away from it. No weeds or plants grew there; the only thing covering the clearing’s floor was a layer of decomposing leaves.

Adrienne took a step nearer. The dirt immediately ahead of the stone was bare and raw, still dark with moisture from where Marion had scrabbled at it. The indent was shallow, but it really did look as though she’d been digging a hole for a coffin to slot into.

It would have been a lot of work for a freezing and delirious woman, especially after walking so far.

Adrienne pictured her friend lying there, skin waxy and empty eyes staring towards the interlaced boughs above. She shuddered then moved closer to the grave marker.

The stone was deep, sombre grey and looked old, though the forest had protected it from most weathering effects. It had been built in the traditional rectangle-with-curved-top shape, and a decorative groove that ran around the edge kept it from looking too plain.

Words were carved into the stone’s smooth face. Adrienne took another step forward and bent to read in the failing light.

E ASHBURN

FORGOTTEN BUT NOT GONE

She mouthed the twisted phrase and felt her eyebrows pull together. Was this a joke? Had some prankster come along and cut the words into the headstone? No, they couldn’t have—the grooves were too neat and precise to be made by an amateur.

Did Edith request this epitaph? And for that matter, why is her grave here? I would have thought she’d be buried in town.

Adrienne straightened and rubbed her hands over her sides. The cold was biting at her, which was strange, considering it was a mild day and she was wearing a jacket.

The hairs along her arms stood on end as a prickly, electric sensation touched her. The forest had fallen quiet. The angry bird chatter from earlier had died away, and even the trees’ rustling was hushed.

She shot a panicked look upwards to where small holes in the boughs’ lattices let her glimpse the sky. It was dark—darker than she’d expected—but not quite black. It was still twilight.

I can feel it
.
It’s like… electricity… conviction… stimulus…

Her mind was struggling to find a way to define the sensation. She felt it physically, in the same way she felt altered when she stood under power lines, but at the same time, the effect was emotionally based—like wanting to scream but having no way to draw breath, or the urge to cry without cause. She understood with absolute certainty that she must run, flee the woods, escape the area before it was too late, but she had no comprehension of why.

And the feeling was growing stronger.

She backed away from the grave, feeling nauseous. Her hands were shaking. She breathed in shallow and laboured gasps as her pulse spiked, preparing her for a fight, pumping adrenaline through her limbs and shorting out the rational part of her mind.

A noise was edging into the periphery of her awareness. She thought she wouldn’t have heard it under normal circumstances, but with the sounds of the woods reduced to a deathly hush, the subtle scratching, scrabbling wormed through her ears and into her brain.

Run.

It was the first coherent thought she’d had since the sensation had started. She turned and tore into the forest, neither paying attention to her direction nor searching for the narrow pathway. The woods were thick and tangled. She became caught in branches and fought to break free.

Above her, twilight was fading into night. The tinges of colour on the horizon would cling on for another minute, then the moon would once again reign over the sky.

She was having trouble breathing. Leaves crunched and bushes rustled as she pounded through them, but they weren’t loud enough to block out the infernal muffled scratching noise.
Like fingernails being dragged through soil.

Her whole awareness was focussed on getting inside Ashburn. The house offered safety; a firm wall to withstand attack; shelter and warmth and light. Outside, she was vulnerable. Outside, her ankles could be grabbed at by the fingers that scrabbled, and she could be dragged, screaming, back into the heart of the woods.

She broke through the forest’s edge. Her wild run had taken her off course but not by much; the house stood like a monument to her right, and she dashed towards the door, her breath ragged and her heart ready to burst. She turned the handle, fell through the doorway, and kicked it closed behind her.

The birds exploded out of the woods in a cacophony of screams.

Adrienne came back to her senses slowly. She was lying face down on Ashburn’s entryway rug, knees tucked under her and arms thrown over her head. She felt vaguely sick from exertion and fear, and the stinging pain across her hands and face told her she’d scratched herself on the trees.

She rolled back onto her heels and blinked. The house was dark now that the sun had set, and she stretched a hand up to the patch of wall beside the door to turn the light on. Her fingers were shaking, and it took a few seconds to flip the switch.

“What was that?” She stared at her hands. Her heart was slowing, but the jitteriness lingered. She couldn’t remember ever experiencing something so frightening. A couple of horror movies had scared her so badly that she’d been shaking as she left the theatre, but they were nothing compared to the feeling she’d experienced in the clearing and during the run back to the house.

She pushed strands of hair out of her face and got to her feet. Her legs were like jelly, but she made it into the lounge room. Wolfgang sat in the centre of the red rug, tail wrapped around his paws and ears tilted back just enough to tell her he wasn’t happy.

“You felt it too, right?” She bent to scratch his head, but he didn’t lean into it as he usually did. “How about a fire? Looks like you might need it, buddy, and even if you don’t, I certainly do. You wouldn’t believe how badly I scared myself out there.”

She knelt in front of the grate and began scrunching up sheets of newspaper to light the kindling with. There was enough wood in the holder for another few nights, but she was almost out of kindling. She wondered if Edith had a stash of aged wood on the property. A ninety-year-old surely wouldn’t be cutting her own.

The thought of her great-aunt returned her to the earlier confusion.
Why was Edith buried on the property? And with that inscription?

Unless…

The tombstone had looked old, and its markings only said “E ASHBURN.” If Edith’s mother or aunt had names beginning with E, the grave could belong to one of them. Adrienne also considered the possibility of an even older ancestor, but the gravestone looked less than a century old, which would place it about the time of the family’s murder.

That creates another question, though. Why bury one family member here but not the others? If they all died at the same time, wouldn’t they be buried in the same place or at least laid to rest alongside the husband?

The newspaper curled up into black soot as the flame licked through it. Soon the kindling, old and well dried, caught as well, and Adrienne began feeding larger sticks onto it as she chewed over her conundrum. Wolfgang came to sit beside her, and she gave him a pat while the flames built.

There’s one other option. The grave could be empty. There’s no rule saying a gravestone has to mark a body. Edith certainly did many odd things during her lifetime; perhaps creating a fake grave was one of them.

She shivered and shoved a fresh log onto the growing flames. Sparks spat onto the rug, and she used the heavy glove to flick them back into the hearth before they could burn the fabric.

“I’m getting morbid, buddy,” she said to the cat poised beside her. “I think this house is a bad influence. Soon I’ll start dressing in gloomy clothes and dying my hair and painting my lips black to join the local goth society.”

Wolfgang was unimpressed and told her so by ignoring her. She scratched behind his ears, where she knew he liked it, then rose. Her legs were steadier, and her hands no longer shook, but she still felt disoriented. She went to put the kettle on, turning on every light she passed.

She’d gone to the grave to satiate a curiosity that would have kept her awake. But having visited it, she doubted she was going to get any extra sleep. Adrienne exhaled a humourless chuckle as she leaned on the kitchen bench and stared towards the woods. The trees’ silhouettes were barely visible against the sky. And hidden amongst the trunks was a gravestone marking a mystery she didn’t think she would ever solve.

I’m not sure I want to stay in this house.

It was the first time she’d had the thought. Ever since hearing that she’d inherited Ashburn, she’d imagined herself living in it, integrating into the town, and building a life in her great-aunt’s home even if it was cramped or badly insulated or quirky.

But Ashburn went beyond quirky. The wallpaper that had appeared charming on first sight was starting to make her claustrophobic. The groaning pipes and creaking floorboards spoke less of the building’s character and more of invisible threats.
And now this twilight phenomenon.

Adrienne, suddenly exhausted, rubbed her palms into her eyes.
If I don’t like the house anymore, should I sell it?

The kettle finished boiling, but she didn’t approach it. Instead, she folded her arms and chewed on her lip as she looked around the kitchen, picking out misshapen faces in the cupboard’s whorls and the dents in the pots hung on the opposite wall.

Would anyone buy it? The house is old, and it’s a twenty-minute drive from Ipson, which is tiny. Half of the building doesn’t even have electricity. And there are all of these rumours about its history: a bizarre owner, murders, children daring each other to climb up to the porch… who wants that?

Except for me?

Adrienne’s chewing graduated from her lip to her thumb. As soon as she’d begun thinking about selling, the idea of losing Ashburn struck her as repulsive. Edith might have been strange, but she’d cared enough for Adrienne to prepare her bedroom. And the house wasn’t without charm. Adrienne had always liked the old-fashioned-roses aesthetic. Even if Ashburn’s fittings were a little dulled from age, there was no denying the antique furniture and fine china were way more decadent than anything she could afford to buy herself.

And if she moved, where would she go? She had no living relatives that she knew of. Her high school friends had scattered across the country in the years following graduation, and she’d lost touch with most of them. Ashburn was the only place where she had any history, incidental as it was.

The nightfall phenomenon, though…

Adrienne looked at her hands. They’d finally stopped shaking, but her chest still felt tight, and the stress had created a low-level headache. Her mind was becoming clearer, though, and with that came doubt about what she’d experienced.

Nothing had been chasing her. She wasn’t hurt except for what she’d done to herself by dashing through the trees. And the only physical, tangible manifestation of the phenomenon was the birds scattering out of the trees.

But I’ve never felt fear so acutely before. That couldn’t have been all in my mind, could it?

She looked back at the window. The moon, fat and heavy as it moved towards full, infused the outside scene with a cool, calming glow.

Her brain felt too full to think anything through clearly. Adrienne exhaled a sigh, turned the kettle back on, and focussed on preparing the tea. By the time she returned to the lounge room, Wolfgang had stretched himself out on the rug in front of the fire. The blaze was comforting, and its light helped shake some of the shadows out of the room. Adrienne took the fireside chair, placed the tea on the round table beside her charging laptop, and stretched her legs towards the blaze.

I don’t have to stay.
She extended the tip of her sneaker to scratch down Wolfgang’s back. He arched into the contact and huffed a happy, grumbling purr.
But I think I’d like to.

She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. Her mind was still buzzing, so she made a conscious effort to purge all thoughts and relax. The back of her eyelids were empty for a second, then they filled with the memory of helping to fold Marion—stiff, silent, and cold—into the car.

Fresh anxiety rose through her, and Adrienne moaned. What had happened to the friendly vet student? Was she still at the hospital, back at home, or…?

Not the morgue. Don’t think like that.

Adrienne fought the impulse to rise and pace. If she’d had a phone, she could have called Jayne. Instead, she was stuck with her conjectures and overactive imagination until someone drove up to Ashburn to see her, or until she walked to town.

I’ll go early tomorrow. I can’t afford to buy anything, but at the very least, I can hear how Marion’s doing and check my email.

She brought her attention back to the giant tabby at her feet. He’d contorted into what she called his
roadkill pose
: on his back, legs pointed towards the ceiling, head twisted at an awkward angle, and lips peeled back to show two white teeth and the tip of his tongue. Adrienne chuckled. He’d adapted to Ashburn surprisingly quickly. The fireplace upgrade might have helped with that.

Watching Wolfgang’s little twitches and shifts let her finally relax, and it didn’t take long for her eyelids to feel heavy. Adrienne had only planned on staying in the lounge room until she was calm enough to go to bed, but her limbs felt heavier with every minute that passed, and she was half-asleep by the time the grandfather clock struck nine.

— § —

She fastened her bony fingers around a low-hanging branch. Her muscles had atrophied, and she had to expend both physical energy and willpower to drag her withered body forward. She gained ten inches and released the branch. Drew in a rattling, bone-aching breath, though her lungs were far past the point of being able to process air. Reached forward. Gripped a new branch.

Dirt still caked her, filling every crevice in her wrinkled skin. Her hair had been long in life but had grown longer in death. It dragged behind her like a long, matted blanket, catching in the leaf litter and branches.

She hadn’t expected to be so weak. But she had been buried much longer than she had anticipated, and she had been interred deep.

Moonlight was not far ahead. She could see it through the trees, glimmering across the lawn and over the face of her dear Ashburn. The moon would revive her and give her the strength to quell the occupant, that arrogant child, to drag her down, peel the skin from her frame, drown her screams in flowing blood, crack her bones, and taste her still-pulsing flesh.

She drew her lips back from rotting teeth as anticipation quickened her breath. Fixed her fingers around a new branch. Pulled.