There's a Ghost in the Billiard-Room
A Narnia Fanfiction
Those first wet days at the professor's, when the Pevensie children couldn't go explore the grounds, led to a great deal of indoor exploration.
Susan had suggested reading – and the wireless – but even she began to see the sense in Peter's suggestion they look over the house instead; for, after all, when again would they be in a house this old or this size, owned by a man who did not seem to care what they did? Their only concern would be keeping out of the way of Mrs. Macready who'd told them they were not to make appearances when she was showing people over the house.
But, of course, children who have all day and who can poke in anywhere they like, not guided by a stern-faced woman scrutinising every corner their eyes might gravitate toward, let alone whatever they touch, will see – and feel – a great deal more in a house of that sort than ordinary visitors.
So none of them wanted to follow the grownups around, even if it were allowed.
One of the rooms Lucy found, when she happened to step away from Susan, who was admiring the storage system of a disused cupboard they'd come across, was for billiards.
Probably the professor did not play very much now – if ever he did – and Lucy herself did not know how, but she nonetheless found something quite nice about the room, about the cleanliness and brightness of the well-kept green baize and the glossy finished wood, the dark panelling, the tiny wooden boxes with the sliding lids, containing beautifully painted card decks and rainbow-coloured poker chips, and of course the sleek, well-polished cues hanging from racks just out of her arm's reach.
It was a calm sort of room, at a daylight hour, when there were no merrymakers to play and drink and smoke tobacco; there were dust-motes and a smell of lemons and resin.
Lucy, feeling her senses relax, sighed and dropped her shoulders, lightly trailing her fingertips along the table, when Edmund appeared in the doorway with a nasty grin on his face. "This room is haunted, you know."
"No, it isn't," laughed Lucy, halting, waiting for a joke.
But she was not sure.
"It is," Edmund insisted, grinning and gleeful in his spite. "This was the room the professor's uncle used to try to get guests alone in!" He strode over to her and put his mouth near her ear. "So he could tell them all about his criminal activities when he was younger." Placing a hand lightly – but not kindly – on her shoulder, which was beginning to shake, "His ghost lives in here now..."
Her eyes widened. Her teeth were starting to clang together. There were such noises in this house... This very odd house. Only a few days ago, it was Edmund himself who told her the noises she jumped at were only birds, but you never knew, did you?
What if her brother had changed his mind and thought there really were ghosts?
"H-how do you know?"
"The maids came in here to clean yesterday – I heard them talking. Things move about all the time in this room. Cues and other stuff. And it's not the professor – or the Macready – they don't come to this part of the house; they don't need to.
"It's the professor's dead uncle, just waiting to catch someone on their own!"
Lucy shivered and – though she didn't exactly believe Edmund – turned quickly on her heel and made a dash for the door, the peace of the room broken for her.
An hour later, Lucy stuck her head back into the billiard-room for another look.
A vaguely gauzy thing sprung up before her, moaning and waving something that fluttered a dingy white, going, "Ooooo. I'm the ghost of Andrew Ketterley... Oooo... Who dares enter this room without paying their reeeeeeeeespects!"
At home, she would have known the voice for Edmund's, and not that of a spirit, well before he threw the lace curtain he'd taken from an adjoining room off his head, laughing maniacally, but in a strange place...
Well, voices can sound very different in places you have never been before, or know only very seldom...
She did not think – she ran.
That night, when Lucy – wakened from a bad dream by an owl's hoot – scampered in slipper-clad feet into the boys' room and, leaping onto Peter's bed with a mighty bound whilst calling her eldest brother's name, shook him awake, sniffing how she was 'awfully afraid of Mr. Ketterley's ghost', Edmund got the telling-off of a lifetime.
But he'd had the many, many hours in-between the billiard-room incident and the unpleasant moment of being found out to bask in his successfully giving Lucy a jolly good fright.