Chapter Two

I walked around the perimeter of the house until the restaurant opened, serving breakfast to the guests who wanted it. I was the first in and I ordered a coffee, which I nursed until the hot food came out.

Having missed dinner last night, I heaped my plate high, ignoring everyone else as they came in. I was too preoccupied with what was happening to mind the social niceties.

I decided to head into town and see what I could find out about the history of the house, and the family. I wished I'd thought to ask my ghost if he was a member of the family.

I left at 8.45 and was waiting on the steps of the small library when it opened at 9am. I'd seen this place while shopping for groceries and thought that would be a good place to start.

"Someone's keen," the librarian smiled at me.

I smiled back. "I'm hoping you can help me with something," I admitted.

"Come on in and we'll see."

I followed her as she headed back to the desk.

"I'm writing an article on the renovated Crimson Peak and I wondered if the library had any details about the history of the house and its residents, or if you can point me to someone who does."

"You've come to the right place," she assured me. "We scanned in all our newspaper archives about a year ago, so I'll set you up with the database."

She led me to a computer, opened the program and told me how to search.

"Everything's tagged by names, places, dates and any events in the articles," she explained. "If I recall my ghost stories correctly, the names you want are Sharpe, Cushing and McMichael."

"Do you believe in ghosts?" I felt compelled to ask her.

"I don't rightly know," she admitted. "All I do know is that when I was dared to go there as a child, I felt awful for days afterward. I never went back."

"You didn't see anything?"

"No, the place was all boarded up, so all I had was a torch light and I never got further than the front hallway. Are you staying there?" she asked me.

"Yes." I wondered if she could see the fear in my eyes.

"You be careful," she told me. "Halloween is less than a week away now, and people always say that house gets worse around then."

Oh fantastic! I hadn't even thought that Halloween was soon; it's not like I go trick or treating or anything. But that was supposed to be the time when the dead could cross over, no?

Shit!

"Well, thank you."

She smiled sympathetically at me. "Just click here if you want to print anything, its ten pence a sheet."

She left me and I began my search through the archives, printing off every reference to them that I could find. I would read and sort them into date order later. Right now I didn't need to scare myself any more than necessary.

I sat in a small café, sipping a latte and sorting the articles into order of their dates. Once done, I could delay no longer and began to read the contents.

Records went back to the 1840s and there were only sparse references in the papers from the first few decades. A Lady Sharpe, a grandmother had died of old age, a young man announced his engagement, an advert for a ladies maid, Aanother three deaths, all servants at the house and all from the same illness. I doubted the deaths of individual maids would be noted in the paper, other than possibly an obituary, but three was probably noteworthy in a small parish. A birth announcement, then a second birth announcement. Another death, another Lady Sharpe, this time just a young woman though, not a grandmother, rather mother to the two children. She died of… causes unknown?

What could have killed a young mother and not leave any signs? I checked the birth announcement, just to be sure, but the last child was born a year prior and besides, childbirth was a common cause of death among women back then so had that been the cause, it was unlikely to be listed as 'unknown'.

Even to primitive Victorian medicine, most forms of death would leave a sign. A fall would leave injuries, an attack would show violence, an illness would have a fever and possibly other symptoms. Perhaps something like a stroke or an aneurism? Did they autopsy bodies then and if so, did they even know to look for a bleed or clot in the brain?

Speculating was pointless without more information so I moved on. Perhaps the local court would have a record of her inquest, which might hold clues that modern medicine could identify.

There were more deaths, mainly among the servants, and lots of accidental deaths, it seemed. There were five advertisements for governess's, which seemed awfully high, and then the death or Lord Sharpe, husband of the Lady Sharpe who had died from causes unknown.

I turned to the next page and the hairs on my arms stood up.

'THE MARRIAGE OF SIR THOMAS SHARPE TO MISS EDITH CUSHING.' Was the headline of the paragraph. Edith was from Buffalo, New York, according to the announcement.

Sharpe and Cushing, those were the names the librarian said to look for.

I turned to the next print out.

'MR CARTER CUSHING DROWNS IN BATHTUB, INQUEST RULES ACCIDENTAL'

My hand went to my neck. Accidental my arse!

It had happened only a few weeks after the wedding announcement, poor Edith had lost her father to that… thing. No wonder she went mad… or had she? Had she been telling the truth about ghosts? Or was I succumbing to the same insanity she did?

I turned to the next article.

'EDITH SHARPE FOUND WANTERING AFTER DARK AS FAMILY GOES MISSING'

Edith had been discovered, in her night gown, walking towards the town. She was bloody and battered, clutching a knife in her hand, but when authorities returned to the house, it was empty. The fires were burning, there was a still warm pot of tea found and some signs that a struggle might have occurred, but no family, no servants, no bodies, nothing.

I moved on to the next articles and discovered that the prevalent speculation was that Edith had lost her mind after seeing her family slaughtered. No one knew who had slaughtered the family or how they had removed the bodies so quickly, nor where they had dumped the bodies, but everyone had a theory.

Once Edith was released from the mental institution, even she couldn't elaborate on what had occurred that night, with the doctors speculating that her mind had hidden events from her, first with false memories, then with amnesia.

I suspected she had been telling the truth from day one.

There were a few more articles, written over the intervening century, but most were just speculation. Only one was useful; written in the 1960s, the author had gained access to Edith's records from the mental institution and included some excerpts.

Edith claimed that Thomas had married her under false pretences, and that his sister, Lucille was demonic, and she and the house were connected somehow, and that the house was alive.

Ghosts I could just about believe, although that was a recent conversion. Demons… eh, after the last few days, why not? A living house though, well that did sound insane.

I turned to the next article, which actually included a picture of Sir and Lady Sharpe on their wedding day. Being a printout of a scanned article with a copy of a photograph, it wasn't a great image but it was clear enough to make out his main features. Was he my ghost?

The phantom following me had dark hair and Victorian garb, but his features were never clear, as if he was varying degrees out of focus. I thought they were probably the same person though.

I wondered what the false pretences Thomas Sharpe had used to marry her were, and what his real motivation was. He said he didn't want to harm me, but could I trust him?

There was no more information in the articles, so I packed up and returned to the library. I had my laptop back at the hotel but I wasn't ready to go back there yet. Back on the computers, I opened Google and began researching ghosts, hauntings and séances, suddenly wishing that I had watched Most Haunted and the like, because I was worse than a novice at this stuff.

I soon fixated on contacting the dead, because until I knew what was going on, I couldn't decide how to proceed, but my ghost did seem to want to help me, so perhaps he would explain events to me.

Every article I read from mediums about contacting the dead, said never to try and engage in two way conversation, unless you are a trained medium. Of course, they wanted your money, so they would say that.

I read everything of this with the sceptical eye on a non-believer, which is the mind-set I'd had for 28 years and was hard to break.

I eventually realised that there were no tricks or tips; how can there be when mediums were surely as fake as ghosts were (okay, I was ready to rethink ghosts, but not mediums, I'd seen too many of them exposed. And I wasn't forgetting that there was a fairly decent chance I could be going crazy). I decided to make my own Ouija board, it seemed as good as anything else.

With that decided, I stopped in at the store and picked up a new bottle of Tia Maria (the strongest liqueur I could stomach neat) and headed back to the house.

As I drove up, the house looked even more imposing than when I had first arrived, almost foreboding.

It was with a heavy heart that I approached my apartment but as I opened the door, everything was quiet.

I stepped inside and looked around, then placed my bag on the hall table, by the door, which is when I noticed a book lying there. It was leather bound and looked not only old but well-worn and I picked it up with trepidation.

The faded title on the spine said Archidoxes of Magic. I opened it and looked through the index and although some of the language was odd, I understood enough to find a chapter on communicating with spirits.

The book advised entering a transcendent state through the practice and use of meditation. It sounded like it could be time consuming but I had little else to do, so I might as well try it.

The idea of succeeding was frightening, so I poured myself a glass of Tia Maria, and put the bottle away in a cupboard this time, then as I reached for the glass, it moved away.

"You have got to be kidding me? What are you, a Quaker or something? I need to calm down before I do this, okay!"

I reached for the glass again and this time, it flew off the counter and shattered on the floor.

"Okay, this is getting really fucking old, really fucking quickly, Mr Ghost!"

I looked around for a reflective surface and in the microwave door, I saw him standing behind me. He actually looked sorry.

"Don't give me that puppy dog look, do you have any idea what alcohol costs these days?" Of course he didn't, I was just ranting to cover my fear.

"All right, let's do this. But if I'm too stressed for this to work, I'm blaming you."

The bedroom was the best place for this but having had so many nightmares, I chose the sofa instead, propping my head up with cushions until I was comfortable. Then I closed my eyes and tried my hardest to clear my mind of everything except my goal.

It felt like I had been lying there forever when I heard a voice.

"Katherine?"

With a gasp, I sat up and saw my ghost standing before me, only I could see him properly now and in the flesh, so to speak, he was stunning. I might almost say beautiful but not in the sense of femininity, more in the sense of artworks, things crafted to be both attractive and compelling,

"What's going on?" I seemed to be still in my apartment, albeit slightly darker than when I laid down, but there definitely hadn't been a Victorian gentleman there earlier. How was he managing this?

"You've entered a different plane of existence," he explained.

"I haven't moved."

"Your body hasn't, no, but your mind has."

I turned so I was sitting on the sofa and placed my head in my hands while I tried to assimilate all this stuff.

"I don't understand any of this."

"I know, and I'm sorry." I looked over to him as he sat beside me, looking around. "We have to be quick, I don't know how long we'll have until she realises."

"She?"

"I don't know what it is, exactly, only that it wore my sister's face for many years."

"What does she want?"

"To be reborn."

Was that supposed to make sense?

"I don't understand."

"I know, but I can't go into details. We don't have the time."

"Make the time!" I insisted.

"I can't. If she finds you here…"

"Then be quick."

He sighed. "The creature that lived in my sister inhabits the bodies of others and has done since at least when this house was built, 1714. It was constructed using the dark arts to mirror the structure of this realm and capture the souls of the dead, instead of releasing them into the afterlife, and the creature used their power to sustain herself, and give herself more power."

"So is the house alive?"

"Not exactly, but there are so many souls here now, that it might as well be, they have given the house a life of sorts, to do its mistresses bidding."

"The creature?"

"Yes."

"So are you Thomas Sharpe?"

"I am."

"What happened to you?"

"That is a very long story."

"Tell me!" I insisted.

"If she catches you here, you will die and she will take over your body, with no need to wait until Samhain to do so."

"Samhain?"

"All Hallows Eve, when the veil between worlds is at its weakest."

"She wants my body?"

"Yes. It's not ideal, she prefers children, but without a pregnant woman in residence, she will make do and once she has a hold in the mortal world, the carnage will begin again."

"Why me?"

"You were conceived on the first of May, and children conceived then grow up to wield great power and knowledge, and are said to be healthier than any other."

"How do you know when I was conceived?"

"I don't, but she can tell."

"Then I'll leave."

"When you bled, the house got a taste of you. You can leave, but she can summon you back."

"How do you know?"

"Because she could do it to me," he admitted.

"I still don't understand all this. How can I see you? I don't even believe in the supernatural."

"You have power, Katherine, due to your conception, and that power gives you some latent psychic ability and allows you to see me."

This was all so confusing and I didn't know what to ask next.

"Aren't you a good judge of character?

I nodded.

"And hasn't your intuition always served you well?" he asked.

I nodded.

"Your power, the slight psychic impressions you got from people and the universe, is why."

"So… what happens now?"

"Lucille will take your body on the October 31st, unless you can stop her first."

"How do I do that?"

"I don't know," he admitted, looking over his shoulder.

"How did you stop her last time?"

He turned back.

"I managed to trap us both here, in the spiritual plane, and allow Edith a chance to escape."

"How?"

"I don't know. We both fell from the balcony, and we ended up here. Lucille died soon after, leaving only the creature that inhabited her body alive."

"How do you know she wasn't your sister?"

"Because my true sister's soul resides here also. She is trapped like everyone else."

"Okay, but if there's two hundred and fifty years of dead people here, why are you the only one I can see?"

"Because I'm not dead."

"You're still alive?"

He nodded.

"How can that be? You'd be like, a hundred and fifty years old or something."

"Things are different here, we exist outside the universe and time, to us, is just a concept, not a reality." He got his pocket watch out and showed it to me "It hasn't moved since I got here, no matter how much I wind it. I move from experience to experience, but I have no way of knowing if a day or a millennium has passed between them. With the approach of Samhain, I can see into your world more easily, and there's been more to watch since they began renovations, but Time doesn't pass here, we just… are."

"Okay, so what about the other ghosts?"

"No one on the mortal plane can see ghosts, no matter how powerful they are. You can sense them sometimes, hear their thoughts, but because they have no physical form, no one can actually see them, not even you. But because I'm alive, sometimes when the veil is thin, you can see me, and I can affect the mortal world to some small degree."

"But people claim to have seen ghosts here."

"They see me, trying to frighten them, moving things around, trying to scare them away."

Moving things reminded me. "Why do you keep breaking my alcohol?"

"Because you need your wits about you if you are to succeed. Drowning the fear with spirits might seem tempting but it doesn't solve the problem and as Samhain approaches, it makes your mind weaker, makes it easier for her to enter your mind and eventually, force you out. Until then, it will make you more suggestable."

"Suggestable?"

"Unlike ghosts, Lucille had some sway over the mortal world, especially as Samhain approaches. If she can make you compliant, then things will be easier for her."

"You mean like hypnotism?"

"Yes, similar."

He looked over his shoulder. "She's coming," he told me. "You must leave now."

"I can't see anything."

He placed his hand on my forehead and it didn't touch me, exactly, the contact stripped away my vision of the room we were in and in its place, I saw a dark, dilapidated version, with the walls weeping unnatural fluids. The house almost looked pustulent, and the only light was a kind of unnatural glow with no apparent source, which didn't help the surroundings to appear any more salubrious.

I could also hear a kind of thudding, almost like an off time heartbeat, which even made the room pulse slightly. It was unnerving.

"How do I get back?"

"You just have to want to wake up."

"I do want to!" I was getting panicked now.

"Your spirit is here," he told me. "You need to think about your body, about getting back to it, and then you will wake up."

I was too frightened to think clearly and the door burst open. There wasn't much light but whatever was standing there was coal black and grotesque. I screamed.