Exerpt from the Times, Wednesday, February 12th, 1902 – Disaster at Allerdale

It was been reported that earlier this week a disaster had occurred in Cumberland.

Allerdale Hall, owned by the Baronet Sir Thomas Sharpe, has been put under a great cloud of sorrow. Sir Thomas, recently married to heiress Ms Edith Cushing of Buffalo, NY, has perished in an accident on his land along with his sister, Lady Lucille Sharpe.

Reports surfaced that a mining machine that he had been working on to restart the famous Allerdale clay mines experienced a malfunction of disastrous proportions. The machine is said to have exploded during a demonstration. It killed Sir Thomas and his sister Lucille while injuring his wife Edith and a visiting friend of the family, Dr Alan McMichael, also of Buffalo NY. The injuries to Ms Edith Sharpe and Dr McMichael are not said to be threatening to life, though the former is also said to be suffering from a prolonged illness that Dr McMichael had travelled from America to treat. The injuries suffered by the now deceased Sharpe siblings are too graphic to describe in this publication. Our condolences go out to the bereaved Ms Edith Sharpe at this time.

The funerals of both Sir Thomas and Lady Lucille will take place on Friday the 21st of February at Cumbria Cathedral.


Time had no more meaning as I sat on the floor, my cheek resting against the cold frame of my bed. I was sick. I had to be. But who could I tell? There was no way that anyone at school could be let into my dirty little secret. Linda would tell me it was stress and would give me some incense to burn before I went to sleep. Mrs Snow was a good teaching coach, but not very personable when it came to anything outside of the classroom. I didn't even want to give the notion of telling Wilma Hall any thought. There was no-one. I was utterly alone in my own madness.

Perhaps I would book myself an appointment to see a Doctor. A horrible image of them dragging me away in a strait jacket popped into my head, as though I were a victim of a bad horror film. I tried to be reasonable about it, they probably wouldn't drag me away then and there. They might talk to me, listen to me. Then they would hand over medication that would render me incapable of functioning normally. That, or they'd drag me off into a nice room where all the sharp corners had been rubbed away.

My bedside light flickered again and I closed my eyes against the oncoming terror. Oh God, not again. Was my light even flickering, or was this some rapid failing of my optic nerves?

I opened my eyes and my heart stopped dead in my chest. Before me was the pale figure, crouched down as though approaching a frightened, wounded animal. Thomas. The smooth stone of his brow was creased, his eyes full of concern. He reached out to me with one of his marble, translucent hands.

"You're not real," I whispered to the manifestation before me. My voice caught in the expanse between anger and despair. "Go away. I am sick and you are the sickness. You are not real!"

His cold fingers brushed imperceptibly against my forehead as he swept aside the still unfamiliar yellow hair that has been plastered against my forehead with sweat. But he feels so real. My delusion was so quick to progress that I was able to imagine phantom touches. He held out his palm again, and I was too tired, too scared, too lost to refuse. We repeated the motion from before and he began to transcribe on my palm.

Not sick. He told me. Real. Ghost.

Ghost? I sat up a little straighter, lifting my face off the metal bed frame. I had never given the possibility of ghosts real consideration. They were made up fantasies to terrify siblings and explain anomalies you were too lazy to investigate. But this revelation could be everything. I grasped at this notion, this life raft, to keep me from drowning in my hopelessness.

If ghosts were real, then I was not mad. If ghosts were not real, then I was sick beyond help. The rational part of my mind wrestled with these thoughts. Do I give up on all that I've known just to believe that I am well? Or do I doggedly refuse to accept the possibility of spirits and leave myself in the cold resolve of madness? All the while, I stared into the tawny eyes that lay level with mine, sunken into two dark hollows.

Could you be real?

I reached out my hand, up to touch his fractured cheek, willing, for the sake of my own sanity, to feel something. My fingers made contact and the small gasp that followed was involuntary. He was so cold. He closed the two dazzling eyes and leant into my hand. A lost child finally receiving comfort. The pressure against my palm increased slightly and I couldn't tell if I had taken another sharp breath, or he had made a noise akin to contentment.

"How can this be real?" He reached out his hand and held my face in a mirrored image. The breeze against my cheek was refreshing. Struck by a sudden and unconscious urge, I pressed harder onto his cheek. How real is real? I tipped the balance between what his manifestation could support and my fingers passed through. It felt like scraping the thinnest layer of morning frost off a window pane. His skin parted like smoke, splitting apart into wisps that reformed as soon as I withdrew my hand. Until then I hadn't imagined it possible for him to have looked any more broken, but I was mistaken. The look in his face shattered my fragile heart.

"Does it hurt?" I asked dumbly. I immediately scolded myself. There is no such thing as a dumb question. I always told my students that, and it was time that I lived by my own rules. When you were discovering something for the first time, any scrap of information, no matter how seemingly ridiculous, was invaluable.

He shook his head and took his hand away from my face as though he couldn't bear to touch me any longer. Slowly, he settled down into a sitting position opposite me, his legs folded underneath him. He watched me then, patiently, a chess opponent awaiting my next move.

"Okay." I huffed out a quick breath as I readied myself to accept this new information. "You're a ghost? You're dead?" He nodded, twice, each movement a slow but definite bow of his head.

"You're Sir Thomas Sharpe? You lived in Allerdale Hall?" I had to get the facts straight before I could interrogate anything new.

His face crumpled again and I half expected a ghostly tear to run from his spectral eyes. He held out his hand again, a desperate longing on his face. Again, I let him take my hand.

Edith. He wrote. Remember. Please.

For some reason, he seemed to think that I was his wife. Edith Cushing. The woman who had torn down the ancestral home of her husband and turned it into a school.

"Can't you speak?"

He retrieved his hand and placed it on the smooth curve of his throat and closed his eyes. With a violent gesture his lips peeled back and his jaws opened wide in a guttural mime of a scream. But it was silent. Powerless. He composed himself again and looked back to me with sadness weighing down his features. As if to confirm what was already apparent, he shook his head. He reached out again, tapping my hand impatiently. More ghostly letters were carved into my palm.

Edith. Remember me? This time he even punctuated our crude method of communication. I raised my eyes, trying to hold my own composure for his sake. It was nearly impossible to not feel the shattered yearning from his expressive face. But I had to tell him, didn't I? Had to let him know that he'd gotten it wrong

But, what if he went away? If the only thing keeping this spectre tethered to earth was the knowledge that his wife was still here, would he just slip away into the ether? If he left, then there would be no more nightly visits. I wouldn't be able to discover what exactly he was. This could be revolutionary. In the history of the earth, no-one had managed to prove the existence of supernatural beings. By very definition they defied nature. But what if I could change that?

I considered my words very carefully. Clearly whatever he was, he was sentient. He could understand words, could process thoughts and had palpable feelings. How did one go about lying to something like this?

"I… I'll try." The words caught in my mouth, like they were made of syrup. I had always hated lying. "To remember. I'm sorry, it's been so long."

His face lit up, his lips carving into a smile that was even more crushing than his sadness. It was infectious though, and despite myself, I began to smile also.

Until I remembered her. Clearly my expressions were as transparent as his. He stopped smiling. Distress replaced delight.

"If you're real," I began, the words spilling from my lips as they entered my head, "Then so is that thing."

He turned his head away then, not wishing to look at me. It was all the confirmation that I needed. The demonic void that had pushed through my door, hissing malice, was real also. Was that the real Edith? Had she died under horrific circumstances? Doomed to haunt the halls of knowledge she had so selfishly created? Was this why Thomas had convinced himself that I was his wife? Because he would rather lie to himself than face the truth of being trapped in the afterlife with the vile thing that had crashed into my room? I tried to swallow but fear had lodged itself in my throat and refused to let go, strangling me from the inside.

I'd rather be mad. If I accepted that the pale, sweet Thomas was actually real and not some manifestation of a sickness in my brain, then I also had to accept that vile skeletal monstrosity. The terror was returning, creeping up into the back of my eyes where it burned with threatened tears. I couldn't go through that again.

"Don't let her hurt me," I begged. My pleading tone of voice made me feel weak. He kept his chin out over his shoulder, his eyes cast to the floor. Then, almost imperceptibly, his colour began to fade and I realised too late what was happening.

"No!" I half screamed, lunging forward into the space where he was. I slammed my hand against my mouth, hoping to muffle the thunderous noise that I had just made. By the time I had flung myself into the spot on the floor, he had completely gone, vanished like fog burnt off by the morning sun.

"Come back," I whispered to the emptiness. I reached out and touched the floor, feeling the cold left in his wake. "Don't leave me alone."

I waited, but what for, I wasn't sure. On the wall, the seconds hand of my clock ticked slowly from one position to another, each juddering click sounded like thunder in the sudden expanse of nothing. My small room had never felt so large and empty.

"Thomas?" I pleaded. If I hadn't been mad before, I certainly was now. Pleading to a vacant room for one ghost to protect me from another. If the terror hadn't been consuming me, it would have been such a ludicrous notion that I would have barked out a laugh.

One last try. "Please."

In answer, the torch that I had dropped on the floor earlier rolled slowly towards me, as if pushed by unseen hands. Its progress was painful, but as it reached me and fell gently against my leg, it turned on with a strong, bright beam of light. Anger filled my chest. How on earth was this lump of metal meant to protect me from things beyond the grave, things beyond my comprehension? I picked it up anyway, my meagre weapon against the vengeful dead and held it tight against my chest before climbing back into my bed.