Day Seven:

My ears are ringing. When there aren’t any macabre serenades or otherworldly screams the whole castle can descend into an eerie silence that folds itself around the building in a whole separate dimension from the land of the living.

In New York I don’t think I’d heard complete silence in a decade. Even in fortified walls, or relaxing spas, or on top of the empire state building, I don’t think there was real silence.

Here it’s like an element of nature, as powerful as the wind or rain. It’s thick, like fog, and loud like thunder. I wish I could love it, that I could embrace the fact that I have tinnitus and I’m finally experiencing something that most people in Manhattan dream about while falling asleep to the honking of taxis and rats scurrying through their walls.

But as odd as it sounds, and it sounds odd to me, I miss the organ music. I won’t tell Master Hellion that, mostly because we’re still not on speaking terms. But even if we gossiped on the regular I don’t think that it would be a good idea to let him in on that type of information. You know what I mean, the type that gives him power over you. 

I have however been able to eat my soup and grapes. It half makes me wish I’d bothered to get something a little better than chicken noodle. Pilfer has stopped stealing my food and moved on to stealing my clothing. I’m down to the last few pairs of underwear that I came with, and I’d been hoping to do laundry here too. I didn’t cart over my entire life. I took a suitcase and figured I’d decide after a week or so. I think I’ll be waiting for the “or so” before I make my next decision.

Oh, but most importantly: I’ve found an eighth ghost. 

I say that a bit like I’ve discovered an eighth continent. When you think you know what the world looks like and a whole new part of it appears it can definitely leaving you a little breathless. The dangling corpse, that played a part in it as well.

I had finally made it up to the attic in hopes that I could diagnose where the dripping blood was coming from. I had changed into a pair of overalls, that’s how serious I was about solving the problem. I’d also brought with me a roll of duct tape and a hammer, because those were the only useful tools I could think of, and bringing a tampon would have only been a fun joke to write about later.

This time I didn’t run into Figure, or any more frightened bats. Although now that I was partially vaccinated against their possible disease I didn’t find myself worrying as much. It was relatively freeing. Made me wonder why I hadn’t gotten a rabies vaccine years ago.

The attic was located seven floors up. At a certain point the wide stone of the staircase turned into narrow, moldy wood. There were moments where I didn’t think the boards would be able to hold my weight. It made me wonder if the structure had been built to let anyone with a pulse adventure above. 

The space did open up after a flight, leading into one of the building’s largest spires. The rafters hung open and dusty against the three round windows that sat wearily along the edge of the ceiling. My flashlight could barely illuminate the entire space, it was so massive and fogged by floating filth that I felt more like I was underwater than above a mansion.

It was only when I took a couple of steps forward, passing through a stretch of filtered sunlight, that I saw something swinging back and forth.

It didn’t look like a ghost- it had weight and shadow and wasn’t floating. It was hanging, limp and lifeless, from a rope attached to the rafters. My heart thudded into my throat. For some reason the phantoms of the long dead did little to cause a visceral reaction in me, but the idea of a truly deceased body hanging above me this entire time made my skin crawl with imaginary bugs.

Was that were the blood had been coming from? I tried to listen for a telltale ‘drip-drip’ but all I heard was the ringing of silence and the slight creaking of the wood floorboards under my feet.

I don’t know what came over me, but for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to stand directly under the dead hanged man. I looked up and watched him sway from right to left. No blood drips. In fact, he seemed a dry, desiccated husk of a body. And I only assumed he was male because of the pinstriped suit he was still dressed in. The rest of his body didn’t hold any clue to his identity. 

It looked fake. 

I’d never seen a dead body before. Sure, there were the funerals where they opened the casket for everyone to get a look, but I decidedly stayed far away from those. I don’t know what the appeal is, honestly. Because I trust the coroner that the person in question is dead. I don’t know why I’d need to confirm it considering my low level of expertise.

I was tempted, when my father died. I thought about peering in, not for any sort of confirmation, but for a last look. But then I thought about all of the makeup and vaseline and tanning spray that went into preparing his corpse and I decided against it. I’d rather imagine my father the way he was when he was alive, stern and withholding. I wasn’t going to let any mortician trick me into thinking he had a rosy disposition.

At least my uncle was sensible enough to be cremated.

It looked like no-one had touched this body in years. How many, I couldn’t tell. 

And that’s when another thing came over me, originating from deep within, a desire to reach out and feel the texture of dead flesh against my skin. I imagined it like touching an old book that was about to fall apart, dry and dusty. I was worried that a tap of my finger would disintegrate his entire leg, but then again, what did he care? He was dead.

His suit pants exposed a bit of flesh at the ankle. Transfixed, maybe even possessed, by the desire I reached out with a hand, trembling as I did so. Every part of my brain told me to stop. I’d just gotten a rabies shot, what other diseases could I contract from being so close to a corpse? The dead were sacred. They were scary. They were-

The corpse began to writhe.

I jumped back as it shook to and fro, dancing in some sort of eternal pain. A deep scream filled the attic and as I covered my ears I began to miss the silence I had only moments before disdained. I sank to the floor, hands over my head, dropping my hammer and tape completely, apparently too terrified to even think to run.

“You were really gonna touch a dead body? You’re all kinds of messed up, ya know that?”

All at once the screaming had stopped. I let myself breathe for a moment before chancing to stand up.

In front of me, floating side to side, was the ghost of a man dressed in a pinstripe suit. The corpse was gone, but I noticed a rope slung around his neck like a tie.

“I coulda had rats living in me, a hundred rats. How would you have liked to have a hundred rats scurry down your arm and eat your eyes out, huh?” 

His accent had a familiar Brooklynn tilt, but with a transatlantic speed. Above his lips sat a pencil mustache, thinly styled and freshly waxed.  My heart rate slowed. New Yorkers tend to hate other New Yorkers unless they find each other outside of New York, in which case an instant bond is formed.

“I don’t know,” I admitted truthfully, “I just wanted to, I guess, make sure?”

“Make sure I was dead?” he took a ghostly cigar out of his pocket and lit it with a ghostly match. “You couldn’t have figured that out by the fact that I was dryer than a doornail?”

“Deader than a doornail you mean?”

The ghost narrowed his eyes at me and took a few long puffs on his cigar, blowing smoke rings expertly out of the side of his lips. He lowered himself so that he was level with me, instead of floating above.

“I like you kid. Most people are more afraid of me as a ghost than as a dead guy. Which is okay with me because being a corpse tires ya out, ya know what I mean?” He held out a hand for me to shake. 

He did have one thing wrong. I was much more afraid to touch him as a ghost than as a dead body. I’d never made physical contact with a spirit before. What if it instantly knocked me dead? What if it reversed my rabies vaccination? What if it was cold and slimy and gross?

“Whatcha waiting for? I don’t bite. Though there is a ghost downstairs that does.”

I closed my eyes and reached out my hand. 

Nothing happened. 

I finally peeked, curious as to the results. My hand went right through his with no extra sensation. But where our palms met his form began to dissolve like mist disseminating during a sunrise.

“Huh, I’ve never done that before. Guess that’s what happens,” he pulled his hand away from mine and it reassembled itself. He examined it loosely before shrugging and taking another draw in of his cigar. “What a weird world we live in. Or- used to live in.”

“So do you stay up here most of the time?” Now that I had the undivided attention of a ghost that was more like a cartoon character than a haunted house horror I needed to take all the opportunity that I could to talk with him.

“Most of the time, yeah,” he nodded, “There’s too much drama downstairs. They’re always in arguments or playing organs or making thunderstorms. I dunno, I enjoy the pleasantries of relative silence. Plus or minus a few bats banging around up here.”

“How many of you live here in the manor? You’re the eighth I’ve met.”

“I think there’s nine,” I couldn’t believe how honest with me he was being, “Ten if you count the manor herself. And you probably should.”

“Does the ninth one drip blood from the ceiling?”

“No, the house just does that from time to time. She’s more alive than any of us. That’s why I wasn’t gonna say she’s a ghost. No, she’s somethin’, that’s for sure. But what, who’s to say?”

“Maybe when something’s around so many ghosts it turns… well it turns into something,” it was just a theory I had, and an uneducated guess at that. 

“I think it’s the other way around. I think that this place is why there’s so many ghosts,” he had a habit of shrugging, as if everything he said should be taken with a grain of salt, “You should watch out before it starts to do something to you.”

It wasn’t a threat, or an ominous omen. He was simply offering the best advice he could. In fact, he seemed more interested in his cigar, which never seemed to burn down no matter how much he smoked, than in me. 

“So do you think I should move out?”

The ghost’s eyes widened.

“You mean to tell me that you live here?”

I nodded, following his form as he raised into the rafters.

“Why in the great green yonder would you do something like that for? You seem a woman of means, isn’t there some other house or bungalow or yacht you might want to take up your residence in?”

“Oh, I have other houses. Three, if you really must know. But none of those have ghosts in them.”

“So you’re a supernatural guru? Gonna exercise us into another part of the afterlife? The great, great beyond?” he rose higher still.

“No, at least, not for now,” I didn’t want him to think me a pushover. He seemed to admire people who stood their ground.

“Then why here? Why now? Why you?”

It was the three very questions I’d been asking myself.

“Well, when you were alive did you believe in ghosts?”

“Of course not,” he began to lower back down toward me as he calmed, “What do you take me for, a lily-livered liverpooler?” I wasn’t sure what half of the words he said meant, but I didn’t stop him from saying them, “If I was afraid of ghosts do you really think I would have come all the way out to Whitlock Manor to hang myself?”

He tugged on the rope that was around his neck and I swallowed uncomfortably. 

“If you had seen a ghost, way back then, would it have changed anything for you?” Was that the right question to ask him? Maybe it wouldn’t help him understand, but it might help me.

“I dunno. Might have decided to wear the noose a little earlier if you want the honest truth out of me.”

“But not everyone becomes ghosts,” I pondered the thought. “At least, not that I can see. Just here.”

“What? My company ain’t good enough for you? You hopin’ to see somebody in particulars?”

My jaw clenched down tightly. That was it. I didn’t want to admit it, did I?

I still don’t want to admit it now. Even though no one is reading this and no one ever will (I plan to burn it eventually). I don’t even like the idea of writing it out in plain black and white words.

What if he was here?

Six years ago I’d started touring mansions again, the older the better. Sordid past? Sign me up. Horrid double homicide? The more gruesome the better. There’s lists and books of places that they say are haunted. I visited on full moons. I stayed overnight in places where experienced “ghost hunters” could barely make it a few hours. I holed myself up on haunted decommissioned naval ships. I once even tried to find a ghost in an outhouse that a Florida crocodile farmer told me contained the spirit of his dead mother.

But I didn’t see a single one.

I started to believe that my memory had played a trick on me. Perhaps it was all fake. I had been eleven, after all. And I’m not exactly one to put all my faith in the memory of an eleven year old.

That’s why I had to find out.

And I know he didn’t die here. So the chances are so very slim. But I would pour the entirety of my developed fortune into anything if it meant I might find a way of talking to Uncle Valentine one more time.

So there it is.

I didn’t tell him, Rafters, as I’ve decided to call the ghost who hung himself up in the attic almost a hundred years ago. I didn’t know what to do, so in the end I went downstairs to make myself more soup.

I ended up getting lost, a very regular occurrence for me. It happens a couple dozen times a day. I managed to wander into a hallway I’d never been in before. The walls were papered with long violet stripes alternating in tone. Light, dark, light, dark, light, dark.

There were six doors, three on each side of the passage. I had became weary of opening random doors when last time I found a room completely covered in monarch butterflies. When I closed the door and reopened it, they had vanished completely. The sight disturbed me just as much as the bathing room that was completely upside down, or the drawing room that was painted entirely in glossy, black tar.

But the last door on the left was moving. The handle was jiggling back and forth and I could hear a loud series of thumps coming from within. I hated the fact that everything in my nature drew me toward the door. I couldn’t help but want to open it and see what was inside.

Bracing myself I turned the handle and threw it open, wanting to get things over with quickly. 

A ghostly figure zipped past me, faster than I could even see, chuckling as he did so. He was gone down the hallway before I could even process what had happened.

I turned back toward the now open threshold, only to see myself standing face to face with a mountainous pile of cans of soup.

Everything that Pilfer had stolen from me in the last week was stored in the room: clothing, food, utensils, makeup brushes, and even some things I didn’t own. There were gold watches, some jewelry, candlesticks, hats, and most peculiar was a box of walkman tape recorders. 

I grabbed what I could carry, and then a few more items, and decided that I could use a walkman so I grabbed one of those too. 

I was certain Pilfer would simply find another room to horde his stolen possessions in, although the chances of me being able to find that particular room again were incredibly slim. But I couldn’t help a smile at the fact that I had solved at least one mystery of the manor.

As I left the room, arms full to the brim, a large, gelatinous drop of blood dropped from the ceiling and right onto the top of my head.

Day Five:

Today I went into town. And that girl who was being burned at the stake, the one that has been etched into the back of my vision since I encountered Figure, well I think I might have an idea what she felt like.

I drove my car, and perhaps I should have chosen to port over a less luxurious model, into the town square for the main purpose of meeting with Dr. Darner. It felt that each car that drove in front of me slowed down to a glacial pace when they noticed who was trailing them. And when I parked and made my way into the medical offices the glares I got seemed hot enough to light me on fire. I tried to imagine, to help me through it, what each of the townspeople who stared at me so blatantly would look like in the face of Figure. That, in the very least, tempered my anxiety for a moment. That is until I began to think of Figure again, and then it all ended up going up in nerves and smoke.

Doctor Gwendolyn Darner was on the fourth floor, so I decided to treat myself and take the elevator. I’d forgotten how nice it was to have machinery lift you from one place to another instead of trekking wildly along passageways that I’m almost positive rearrange themselves on an hourly basis.

A square-jawed, pale faced woman with spindly blonde hair greeted me at the reception desk.

“You’re late,” her voice grated on the unusually cold office air.

“There was… traffic,” I reasoned. If traffic meant six or seven assholes who felt slowing me down on my way to get a rabies shot was effective payback for purchasing their town’s prized possession.

“Take a seat.”

I thumbed through a few of the aged magazines that had been left on the table but my brain couldn’t latch onto any of the content. It just slipped back into anxieties. And they were all full of nonsensical drivel anyway. Perhaps a few weeks ago I would have at least found the socialite section of the tabloids interesting, as some of my acquaintances were bound to grace the pages every so often. But ever since I’d let the island of Manhattan those things felt small and worthless now. 

The fluorescent lights above me glinted off the glossy pages. The slight flicker to their glow made me feel a little sick. I had gotten used to fireplaces and candelabras. Suddenly being in this artificially sterile environment felt closed in and wrong. How could a crumbling mansion full of seven happy haunts feel at all better?

I almost missed them calling my name as I silently listed each one of them on my fingers.

Doctor Darner was an older woman, distinguished and challenging. Her gray hair was tied up in a bun and a pair of maroon glasses hung over her nose. She looked at me both under and above them, as if trying to discern me from every angle before speaking.

“Were you able to find the bat?”

“Bats,” I corrected her. “It was a lot of bats. Not just one.”

“Well, if animal control or any exterminators haven’t found the bat we can’t be sure that you are in danger of the rabies virus.”

“Considering what I’ve been through trying to get the electricity turned on in the last week I don’t think pest control or any town service is going to be making their way up to Whitlock Manor any time soon to come to my assistance.”

The doctor nodded in understanding. The hint of her lips lifted in a knowing smile. She wasn’t angry at me, I could tell, but she certainly was getting amusement out of my frustration.

“Are you from England?”

“No,” I always hated sitting on the tables in doctors offices. Even with the parchment over the seat the metal was just too cold for comfort. “But I did go to a boarding school in London for a few years.”

“Ah, that would explain it,” Doctor Darner tutted, looking down at her clipboard.

“Do people from England have a higher rate of bat related incidents?” 

“No,” She set the documents down on the counter and turned to me, arms crossed, “But you do speak with a slight accent.”

“Boarding school will do that to you,” I shrugged. This line of questioning wasn’t going to cure me of rabies.

“So you called in concerned you’d contracted the virus? Are you quite sure you had blood contact?”

“Honestly, I’d rather not wait around to find out. Can’t you just… you know… stab-stab, squirt-squirt?” I mimed taking a syringe and squirting the contents into the side of my arm. I was growing impatient. I knew that there was a countdown, a short number of hours before the vaccine would lose all effectiveness.

“We have to be absolutely sure. The process is quite painful, and they’re very expensive medicine.”

“Let me assure you, I can pay any amount of money. It’s really not even a matter of question. If insurance won’t cover it, which god knows they should, I’ll take out a checkbook and write it out to cash in your name if that’s what it takes.”

“It’s not a good idea to tell your doctor that you’re willing to bribe them,” Doctor Darner shook her head disapprovingly, but she still never lost that smile. She was playing with me, stoking my fire, and my fuse was shortening.

“I’d bribe the devil himself if it meant I wasn’t going to get rabies,” I hopped off the table at that point. I couldn’t take sitting lamely aside while being insulted for my insistence.

“There we go,” she nodded, “Lost the accent a bit when you’re angry. I have a theory that you’re putting it on, maybe even subconsciously, in order to appear more intelligent, more sophisticated.”

“That’s-“ I wanted to tell her that it was an insane assumption. That my manner of speaking was absolutely natural. But then I heard myself in my head and it began to echo like a voice calling out into a cave. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is that I receive life saving medical care, and that I receive it in a timely manner.”

“Then we’re both in agreement,” she turned her back to me and began preparing a vial that was sitting on the counter. I had missed it when I entered. “I’ve already called ahead for the drug. And ran your insurance. We can administer the first shot today.”

“But…” she had caught me off guard in a rather clever parry. I was suddenly very uneasy about letting a woman who’d played with my emotions so thoroughly send a shot right through my skin.

“Did you really think that a medical professional would deny you treatment just because you bought a stupid building? I know that there are people in this town that want you out of it, and maybe a little worse than that. But I also don’t want to be responsible for starting a human borne rabies epidemic now, do I?”

“I wouldn’t, if I were you.”

“Lift your shirt and lay down, there will be some pain in the area where this is applied, but the topical anesthetic I’m using will help.”

I did what she asked, despite the fact that I didn’t trust her in the least. I wasn’t worried about the pain, that I could take. But the thought of a needle descending deep into my stomach crunched against my brain like gravel.

But as she prepared the numbing anesthetic and cleaned the site the smell of iodine calmed me. There was something about that sterile scent that brought me back to an untapped memory. I couldn’t place it, but I let it offer what little comfort it could. I closed my eyes.

“How much does it cost?”

“Your insurance covers almost all of it, you’ll only have a copay that you can take care of before you leave.”

“No, I know that,” I could hear her preparing the needle. I clenched my fists as tightly as I could. “But before insurance, how much does the vaccine cost?”

“Well, you’ll receive four shots, each around five thousand dollars. You can see why we don’t just hand these out like candy.”

I gritted my teeth as I felt the needle pierce my flesh. A five thousand dollar syringe filled with five thousand dollar liquid. And I couldn’t help but smile at the fact that I had somehow managed to spend more here in the small town of Hilltown in an afternoon than I could have possibly spent back home.

*

I realized, as I entered the grocery store, that I should have shopped before getting an agonizingly painful injection into my abdomen. I used the grocery cart to prop me up as I spent thirty minutes filling my cart with frozen meals before I remembered that the ice box wasn’t working because I didn’t have any electricity.

I then dumped all of the boxes of TV dinners into one freezer and decided that it would be more canned soup for me. I made a mental reminder to buy double of everything I purchased, foresight suggesting that Pilfer was going to steal half of what I bought.

I passed the produce section and longingly thought of the meals my chef would prepare back in my brownstone. I had thought about bringing him along with me, but he was a very superstitious man, and I really doubt he would have lasted long with Cassandra whispering into his ear while he prepared soufflés. 

Regardless I decided to chance buying a bag of grapes. On the off chance that Pilfer did get ahold of them then at least a few would fall from the vine onto the floor and I’d be able to pick from the scraps.

Right when I was thinking about the strange and depraved depths that my life had come to a cart slammed into the back of my knees.

“Are you gonna get some grapes or are you just gonna stand there and wait until they get ripe?”

I turned around and was greeted by the gruff snarl of a bald old man, who held his shopping cart like it was a weapon he wasn’t afraid to use. He pulled it back toward him as if he was readying to launch it toward me and finish what he’d started.

“Well now that you mention it, I do think they look rather dreary. Maybe I should look for a better batch,” I set down the group of grapes I was holding and slowly picked up a new vine to inspect. Now I understood the simple gratification that the townspeople got from blocking my car.

“They don’t have grapes in England then? First time you’ve ever seen them?” He pulled up next to me with his cart, cornering me in the produce section.

“Not from England,” I mentally replayed my own voice in my head, trying to scan it for traces of Britain. I guess boarding school had been introduced to me in the formative years of my life. Was my manner of speaking really that noticeable? “From here, actually.”

“I highly, highly, highly doubt that,” the man winked at me and popped a grape into his mouth, although the move was far from charming. It made me wince to see his wrinkly skin fold at the corner of his eye.

“At least now I am,” I grabbed a plastic bag from the turnstile and began to fill it with grapes. “Just moved in.”

“So that’s you?”

“You didn’t even know and you still treated me like a pariah? You must have good instincts,” I tossed the grapes in my shopping cart. Canned soup and grapes. The most rounded of diets.

“Creative types sometimes do,” I could tell he was inviting me to ask why he was a self described ‘creative type’, but I didn’t want to take the bait. I just wanted him to back up his cart so I could leave.

“Would you mind?” I pushed my cart against his as gently as I could without seeming hostile to indicate that if he didn’t move soon I might get a bit more aggressive. Passive aggression before outright aggression, I always say.

Instead he turned his cart and pressed even harder into mine, shoving me against the bin of grapes.

“You should be careful in this town,” he gritted his teeth as he said so, a grim warning indeed. He was one step away from becoming a come to life Scooby-Doo villain. 

“I’ve gathered that, thanks,” I pushed back into his cart, shoving metal against metal so that it ground together and made an awful sound. “Luckily I have more pressing things to worry about than the asshole residents of Hilltown.”

“Got to go check the stock exchange? Worried that the Nasdaq went down while you were out shopping for-“ he stopped speaking to gaze incredulously into my cart, “Soup? Do you have someone you have to feed with a straw back in that massive home of yours?” Finally he had let up on his cart. I made one large push and was able to get past him.

“As fun as it is to stand here and be insulted by you, I think I’ll take my leave.”

“Take your leave? What are you, a character in a Harry Potter book? Are you gonna take out your wand and curse me?”

“If only you knew,” I muttered darkly, deciding that he wasn’t worth my time to continue talking with. I had a manor full of seven ghosts that I had to deal with, not to mention the constant blood falling from the ceilings. Wherever it comes from. Whosever blood it is. 

*

On the drive back I decided to check my PO box. The only thing inside was an electrical bill for an old balance of $2,014. I wondered if they were waiting to come and turn on my electricity until I paid the previous owner’s bill. Well, in that case I decided that I wouldn’t pay my bill until they turned on my electricity.

*

I feel the need to note the obvious here: the mansion was much spookier to come back to once the sun had set. The combined time sink of dealing with the residents of the town drained all of my productive daylight hours. I’m not exactly sure what type of productivity I was aiming for, but I haven’t had any major self revelations recently, so I’m bound to run across one sometime or other.

Whitlock Manor sits atop a hill, probably the ‘Hill’ in ‘Hilltown’ if I took a wild guess. Perhaps that has something to do with their hostility. It stretches up taller than anything in the rolling New England landscape, and the spires of the castle fill the sky even further. 

It was built in the mid 1800’s, harnessing all of the gothic flare it could muster. I could see Dracula or the Adams family being right at home amongst the spiral staircases and secret passageways. Assuming there are any secret passageways; I haven’t found any yet.

The facade is a dark stone, the roofing brown oak shingles. Whatever isn’t stone in the castle is made of wood. And anything that isn’t made of wood is most likely a ghost. 

There are gargoyles keeping watch over the eaves, and gargoyle eggs on top of each spire. I didn’t know that gargoyles hatched from eggs, so that’s one lesson I’ve been able to take away from this experience.

However I still think the most impressive aspect of the entire estate is the front gate. Wrought iron spikes twenty feet into the sky, piercing with swirls and arrows that loop together in perfect symmetry. I wish I were a creative type, so that I could more accurately explain it. Maybe the old man at the store could have been more eloquent than me.

And then, second best, is the massive oak door, carved with some grotesque biblical scene along the rim, that separates the mysteries of the manor from the outside world. Although I do wish it would separate more of the draft from the outside world as well. Even when closed the wind howls awfully through the crack at the bottom created by uneven stonework. 

Luckily the building is absolutely rife with fireplaces. A fact that’s apparent when you look at the roof and notice the two dozen pipes and chimneys that sit above it. My favorite is a large, curved brick one that I suspect goes right to the main hall.

Still, it takes a few hours just to get the fires going in the rooms you want to frequent, never mind the upkeep that goes into keeping so much wood alight. 

When I came home tonight it was all I could do to drag my freezing ass up the three staircases to the master bedroom, trying not to focus on the horrific organ music, and start one lonely fire that went out twice before it grew to a mediocre size.

I’m writing this in the master bed, curled up under three blankets, journal and pen balanced at the tip of the small space between my sweaters and the covers. As I look out the window I can see that it’s started to snow. I know that the weather report didn’t call for freezing weather and flurries so I wonder if this is my own personal snowstorm. I guess not many other people have had the weather changed just for them.

Day Four:

I think I might have to move out.

There’s a seventh ghost, and this one is worse than all the others. I’ve named him Figure, because that’s all he is. A shadow in the darkness. He’s fear incarnate. He’s the thing that you dream about that makes you call your dream a nightmare. 

This morning I decided that I was going to explore the attic. Mostly to determine where all the blood was coming from, if there was even a source to be discovered. I had barely made it to the fifth floor when a bat swooped out from behind a railing on the staircase above. It soared over my head, fluttering its broad wings and stirring up dust from the banisters. And just when he’d escaped down the hallway another and another followed. Dozens of them brushed the tip of my head, messing up my hair and scraping my scalp. My first thought was, immediately, that I now had to get a rabies shot and the town doctor wasn’t going to be happy to see me considering she was on the board for the historical society.

My second thought was, what are all of those bats flying away from?

That’s when I saw him emerge from the shadows, a shuddering mass of darkness. The shade separated from the recess near the railings and pulled itself into what was left of the light. The air around him became stiflingly hot, as if it were the flames of hell that lit his devilish eyes. And for a second I imagined I saw the outline of a skeleton hot against the coals as he drew closer. 

I lost my voice entirely. There weren’t words for what he was. I could only step backwards and hope that I didn’t fall perilously down the stairwell. My throat muddled through a cry of horror which barely phased him as he moved toward me.

My vision swirled and I swore that in the space where the light was most absent with his form I saw a young girl burning in flames. Her skin, waxlike, began to melt. I didn’t know that flesh could melt like that, falling off your bones like chocolate left in the sun. The fire cooked her organs until they burst, and in only a few seconds all that was left was charred bone.

I knelt down on one knee and shielded my face with my hands, but even with my eyes closed I could see her skeletal jaw locked in death, still silently screaming.

And finally when I didn’t think I could stand it any longer the vision faded, and when I stood Figure was gone.

I had miscounted the total number of ghosts, and maybe that’s what really startled me. Although it could have also been the terrifying hallucination. Yes, it was probably that.

That afternoon I called the town doctor, Gwendolyn Darnell, and set up an appointment for the rabies vaccine I more than likely need now. I’ve heard it’s a series of painful injections into your abdomen. Maybe that’s the price I need to pay for the type of hubris that leads you to the attic of a house that drips blood.

The good news is, if you can call it good news, is that I’ve already lost some weight. When a ghost steals half of your food and you are left with wandering the endless hallways and stairwells of your mansion for entertainment you tend to burn more calories than you input.

The bad news, if I had to choose just one piece of bad news, is that I’m almost out of cans of soup, so I’ll have to venture into town soon. I’m not exactly a chef, hence the cans of soup, but maybe Pilfer would be less likely to steal some blue cheese and foie gras. Unless ghosts actually enjoy foul tasting food better than mild. I’m not exactly sure what their predilections are. I wish there was a book on the topic. Maybe, when all this is over, I’ll be the one writing it.

Day Three:

There are six of them in total. 

True, there’s no way to know for certain, but it’s the best I can do for now.

I woke up yesterday with a hangover the size of Texas and vowed to never drink again, so that’s why I’ve brewed myself a large vat of coffee and have decided that I’ll become a caffeine addict instead of an alcoholic. As if you can make these decisions. As if you can control anything at all.

The music started yesterday a little after midnight and hasn’t let up for over 7 glaring hours.

Deep, dark, dramatic organ music.

Yes, one ghost plays organ music. Although I won’t be the one to tell him how ironic it is. How horror-movie it is. I don’t think Master Hellion, which is what I’ve decided to call him due to the very nature of his otherworldly being, would be very happy to know that he fits perfectly into a Halloween stereotype. 

And I won’t be the one to tell him because he’s one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever seen.

I also haven’t figured out where the organ is. If I ever do perhaps there’s a way to unplug it, although the organ more than likely isn’t electronic. Which actually makes sense considering I’ve been without electricity for three days.

I put in a request with the local Hilltown electrician before I even moved in, and they assured me they’d get the power set up well before I got here. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that when I called in with my cell phone they said they’d gotten backed up on other orders and it might be as long as a week before they can came out.

It’s fine, I can manage on candlelight and fireplaces alone. It’s the fall, so at least I don’t have to worry about snow. At least… I don’t think I do.

I woke up this morning after a strange organ-fueled half-sleep, and in a remarkable blow to my sanity… it was raining.

I guess that’s not the insane part. The insane part is that when I walked down the long path to retrieve my mail there was a point at which the rain completely stopped and the sky was blue and sunny. I grabbed the bills from the box and noticed the same shift in natural systems in reverse when I made my way back up to my door.

It appeared as if a line of rain surrounded the perimeter of the manor. From the perspective of my mailbox I could almost make out the line of darkness in a circle above the hill.

It stopped, after a while, and it was finally sunny. However I can’t help but wonder if it’s really sunny, or if it’s actually rainy and for some odd reason the sun is shining over the house and the house alone.

Master Hellion has a wife, from what I can tell. I’ve taken to calling her Lady Hellion, and she’s the second most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen.

I stumbled upon her in one of the most lavish bathrooms upstairs in hopes that I would be able to get in a peaceful bath. The water was already drawn, and her ghostly figure, frilled dress and all, was sitting languidly in the tub as if she’d recently drowned and then come back to some sort of un-death without much fanfare inbetween.

She looked up at me with a wry smile on her blue lips, before turning the entire tub to ice. Her smile intensified behind her sapphire eyes as the ice started to spread down the bathtub and along the tiles. I could see my breath start to form in front of me as I backed away from the threshold. 

“Really, I just wanted a bath,” I told her, although I don’t think it helped. Her eyes began to emit a threatening light, casting long shadows on the surrounding furniture. Her silent smile, wrapped pointedly around frigid anger, was enough to send me running. But I staid as long as my bathrobe-ed body would allow before my toes started to become numb. I had chosen this house. I had to stick it out as long as I could muster.

Eventually I had to relent. I was iced out and made my way to the much less cozy bathroom on the third floor, where the water also had trouble reaching a comfortable degree.

I’m used to being constantly cold now. Cold and creeped out by organ music.

Their daughter, at least I assume she’s their daughter, appears terrifying but isn’t nearly as mean spirited as her parents. I met her in a landing trying to go upstairs to brush my teeth. She didn’t say much, but it did sound as if the wind howled through her long dark hair, rippling her nightgown and casting her ghostly figure in the moonlight. I think I’m slowly becoming desensitized to all the spook in this world of mine. I walked right past her and up the staircase to reach the sink.

That might be the oddest thing of all about the castle. The bathrooms seem to be broken up into component parts. One room might have a sink, but lack anything else that might define it as a bathroom. Another would have a toilet, another a bathtub, but heaven forbid they all make it into one room.

I’ve mapped out the most efficient route for all of my routines. And as long as I’m not on the fourth floor, which has no sink at all, I am able to survive.

I brought groceries from the town when I first moved in, but over the course of three days the majority of them have gone missing. That’s how I met ghost number four.

At first I thought it might have been the rats, but then I noticed that there weren’t any rats. That fact was surprising on its own. Even my incredibly overpriced Manhattan apartment would have a rat from time to time. I had assumed that the grungy castle would have been full of them.

But Whitlock Manor’s rats must have been scared off long ago. That doesn’t stop there from being any bugs though. The little beetles are on every windowsill and bedpost. I need to call the Hilltown exterminator, but I’m worried they mysteriously won’t be able to book an appointment for over a year.

Who knows if I’ll last that long with my groceries being slowly stolen right under my nose. What’s worse is that I’ll come into the kitchen and take my ingredients out of the cupboard, whatever ingredients I have left, and then set them on the wooden chopping table. Then I’ll turn my back for only a few seconds to grab a knife and everything I set out will be gone.

I only saw him for a second during breakfast, but as soon as my eggs and toast went missing out of the corner of my eye I saw a snapshot of the hunched figure of a man, his outline blurry with a hint of fog, rushing into the shadows. I decided to call him Pilfer. But what ghosts need food for I don’t have a clue.

I was on my way to do laundry when I stumbled upon the fifth ghost. The laundry room mostly consists of large barrels in which to wash your dirty clothes, and lines on which to hang them up to dry. I had acquired a large mass of things that needed to be washed mainly because I’d have to change three times a day at least. Not only were there cobwebs to walk into, dusty chairs to accidentally sit on, rainstorms to suddenly appear, or frozen bathrooms to escape, but very occasionally the ceilings would drip blood.

I know that even as I write this how bizarre and awful that sounds. But I don’t think it’s anyone’s blood in particular, so I’ve convinced myself not to worry about it too much. 

The large wash-barrels fill with tepid water through spouts from the ceiling, and there’s detergent powder that I’m assuming is at least half a century old. But I don’t believe that soap has the ability to go bad. Especially when it’s dry powder to begin with. So I worked with the tools I was given. 

I was halfway through the scrubbing, which is definitely the worst part, when a young woman’s voice started to whisper in my ear. At first I imagined it was just my own thoughts manifesting loudly in the organ-less silence. It barely startled me. But the longer the voice spoke the more my body tensed and the hair on the back of my neck bristled until I realized there was a spirit hanging right above my shoulder. I can’t remember exactly what she said, but it was along the lines of, “The dripping of the blood signals a rebirth of the goddess. She will see to the extermination of your world, and all worlds that you love.” Or something like that.

I immediately turned to see a mousey girl in a maid’s uniform floating behind me, eyes wide in surprise that I could see her. She fled almost instantly, sailing off in the type of zig-zag pattern that might denote insanity. I’ve decided to call her Cassandra.

The last of them, the most familiar and the ghost I was most excited to see, was Dailey. I’ve made up names for all previous ghosts, which might be rude of me, but there’s no way to tell for sure without being more rude and questioning them. But Dailey told me his name.

I don’t know what urged me to return to the dressing room in the master bedroom, still full of antiques and not at all furnished with clothing, but I thought that maybe I could repeat history. Maybe I could relive that same pivotal moment from my childhood and everything would come together clearer than before.

I sat down on the settee, still broken from when I’d fallen years ago. It’s silly, but I sort of hoped that someone would have fixed it by now. It creaked as I sat, threatening to give way and fall apart completely. I was a large child, tall for my age, so most of the damage I could do to it was done nineteen years ago. The green fabric was falling apart. I took a piece and examined it in my hand.

It had probably been upholstered in the mid eighteenth century. The fabric looked French in make. I’ve been to France and admired the same heavy fabric on chairs in castles reserved for royalty. Whomever had decorated the manor wanted to seem as important as possible. I’m not sure if it was Master Hellion himself, or some long forgotten original owner. I’ll make a note to do more research when I don’t have to commit it by candlelight.

“So you’ve come back to ruin my furniture even further now, have you?” Dailey appeared floating beside me where a moment ago he wasn’t. I wasn’t frightened by his presence like I was the others. There was something about him that was comforting beyond his stern and upturned expression. His appreciation for old and useless antiques reminded me of my uncle.

“It’s my furniture now. If you haven’t heard I own this whole house,” however I did set down the broken piece of fabric, trying to push it into the space where it had come from as if it might magically reattach itself.

“Whitlock Manor isn’t something you can own,” Dailey’s posture stiffened. “She’s a wild beast in and of herself.”

“Well, I can own wild beasts too if I want,” I crossed my arms, “I have more than enough money.”

“You have a deed. A piece of paper that’s good in the legal realm and nothing more. You’re in the spirit realm now, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t reign destruction down in every corner of this place if you are serious about staying put.”

I couldn’t help but smile even wider.

“So you’re letting me stay?” 

“It’s not up to me. It’s up to her,” Dailey looked upward at the ceiling, and I couldn’t tell if he was referring to the house itself or another ghost entirely. 

“It’s because I can see you, isn’t it?” I had a feeling that he wasn’t one for sticking around for long conversations, so I hurried it up to get to the good part as quickly as I could.

“I can make myself known to intruders. As Quentin Dailey in life I would run this house, and as Quentin Dailey in death I shall do the same.”

“But that’s not what’s happening here,” I stood from the settee and felt a whole layer of dust cling to my backside as I detached. “Because you didn’t want me to see you. Something else is going on that you don’t know how to fix. I’m special, aren’t I?”

I wanted it to be true. It couldn’t be a coincidence, or an accident. It had to be a gift. It had to.

“I must have had my guard down,” Dailey was floating to my right, drifting slightly despite trying to remain stiff and resolute through crossed arms. “You’re nothing more than a snobbish investor who will soon tire of the manor and run back home and sell the property to the next person who imagines they can turn a profit at our expense.”

“Hey,” he might have been right about me being a snob, I can’t exactly help that part of my personality, but he was very wrong about me turning around and selling to the highest bidder. “I’ve been dripped on by blood today. I don’t know whose blood it was. But it dripped down my back and all the way down to my underwear.  And do you know what? I couldn’t even take a warm bath because that ice queen was hogging the one good tub. And when I went to go wash my clothes, do you know what happened then? A crazy little maid whispered apocalyptic prophecy in my ear while I was scrubbing. And to top it all off when I went to go eat I couldn’t even take a bite before everything was stolen, literally, right off my plate. I haven’t had a full meal in three days. And I’m still here. So if you think that I can’t handle six ghosts, one of which is just an uptight butler, then you don’t know me.”

Dailey laid a hand on his cummerbund and laughed heartily. “Six ghosts…” he repeated, shaking his head and chuckling. “We’re not a test you must pass,” he finally nodded. “We’re here for an eternity. We don’t give much care to what you’ll be doing for your brief stay.”

“Well, if you don’t care about what I’m doing, then you don’t have to admonish me for sitting on a settee, even if it is worth well over $3,000 broken.”

A spark of a smile ignited in Dailey’s eyes. Perhaps I was imagining it, but there’s a very real possibility that he even winked. “If you have such an appreciation for baroque upholstery I recommend, if only for your sake, you try not to ruin it.”

“I’ll try to keep my butt off of the good stuff,” I grabbed a railing post on the base of the spiral staircase that led upward and spun myself around. Dailey had disappeared by the time I’d made a full revolution.

So that was it. Dailey was the ghost that had sparked my hunt. The hunt had led me here. And so the moment I’d been wanting to relive for 19 years fell upon my shoulders and dripped down them, making me shiver more than disembodied blood ever could. 

It wasn’t the cathartic reunion I’d been hoping for.

I resisted the urge to sink back down into the decrepit settee. He wasn’t about to give me any answers. None of them were. It didn’t help that I wasn’t exactly sure what my question was. But one thing was clear- if I was going to find out anything I was going to have to find it out myself. 

Day One:

It took me nineteen years to find my way back. Of course I knew where it was on a map, I could plot it with precision, and I was intimately acquainted with the longitude and latitude. But it was never more than that, a place held in the back of my mind like a document in an old filing cabinet. I had never expected to pull out the file again. 

I wasn’t unhappy. 

I feel like that’s important for you to know.

It wasn’t like I went home to my brownstone and cried myself to sleep every night. It wasn’t like I’d get drunk at parties and end up puking out my problems in the bathroom three hours later. It was like- watching a movie, this really great film, and being in a completely empty theatre. And turning to your side to see if the person next to you was also laughing, but then you’d remember that you’re alone. I guess it was a little like that.

And then you start to enjoy the movie just a little less until you hate the fact that it’s just actors and sets cobbled together under a budget less than your net worth. It’s a loneliness of sorts. I would often wonder if in the next theatre over all the rest of the world was watching the same film, laughing and crying together. I wondered why I had a ticket for a separate show.

Greg once said to me “You’re on a whole other planet, you know that?” and I never quite understood what he meant until now. So that’s why I’m here. Trying to find Earth, you could say.

I came here once before, when I was eleven years old.

Each summer Uncle Valentine and I made a distinct couple driving around the eastern seaboard and visiting bed and breakfast, after mansion, after castle. Sometimes when we’d check into a hotel we’d get raised eyebrows as if we echoed Dolores and Humbert on their infamous road trip. I didn’t fully internalize, until years later, why he wouldn’t buy me a pair of heart shaped sunglasses I had so earnestly pined after. Needless to say, we could afford separate rooms.

But my uncle was the kindest man, the type who could have something nice to say about a dilapidated pile of rubble wrapped in faded wallpaper. He loved to compliment strangers as we walked through small towns. He could connect to the people of a place he’d only just stepped into. Even if he didn’t fit, he’d find a way to fit in.

Uncle Valentine was a large man with a tiny camera. He carried around the polaroid, looped on his neck with a strap, to every location we visited. As the tour guide brought us through hallways and along banisters my uncle would level his camera searching for the one shot, and he would only allow himself the one, that perfectly encapsulated each historical home.

“I could fix up that chair and sell it for three-fifty, maybe four-hundred dollars,” he’d tell me as we wandered behind the group, often trailing the slowest. Uncle Valentine was always admiring the fine details of our tours. He appreciated the value of every rug and sconce and chandelier. His one photograph, even though it was printed on a tiny photo sheet, would somehow be comprised of everything about the place that made it wonderful. 

In all honesty I don’t remember many of the hundreds of buildings we visited. His photos are sitting somewhere in a house in Phoenix, under stacks of legal documents and postcards. I could find them if I wanted, but I don’t really care for the warm dryness, sunny dispositions, and scorpions. 

But there was one castle I remembered. Castle might be too grand a word. “Manor” is in the title after all.

It was a large feat of architecture hosting countless rooms. We must have only visited a small fraction during our tiny tour. Each corner of the building was capped with a spire. It was built in the mid 1800’s in a gothic victorian style by a man who didn’t earn his money and who apparently wanted to live out his life in the dramatic flair of European architecture. It never would fit with the skyline of the small town it resides in. But not much would.

I’m sitting in that castle now. 

In fact, I own it.

I like writing that. I like saying it out loud. I own Whitlock Manor. It’s mine.

I didn’t set out in life to have the means to afford Whitlock Manor, but if I’m being completely honest with myself it’s always been a keystone in the framework. Uncle Valentine gave me a love for real estate that ended up staying with me way past our summer trips. Way past his death, even.

But there’s something else I haven’t told you. I am afraid you won’t believe it because I barely believe it myself. And when I look at it and hold it up to the light it exists in striking black and white. The evidence is there no matter how underdeveloped the negative.

My uncle was working on finding his one shot as we were led down the spiral staircase that connected the master bedroom to a tall dressing room, the walls filled with old books and artifacts instead of clothing. The light from the bedroom above cast tall shadows in gold across the staircase and against the wooden floor. I think that was going to be his photo. If I were him it would have been mine.

I was mentally creating the frame in my head, looking at all the different angles he had available. I brought my hands up to my eye and made a square as if I too were looking through the lens of a camera. I took a step backward and my heel caught something fateful, and I stumbled. Luckily there was a dusty green settee to catch my fall- although it wasn’t so lucky for the settee. The frame cracked loudly underneath me.

“Get up you useless girl, before it crumbles to pieces!” A man hovered a foot from where I’d fallen. He was cast in a blueish, smokey hue, and when he moved the edges of his frame blurred in green and red chromatic aberration as if my eyes weren’t used to looking at something like him. And they weren’t. 

He glared at me as I peered up at him, but his eyes softened into confusion as he read the fear in my face. 

“You can… how can you see me?” he asked, his voice muffled slightly as if he were speaking to me from behind a pane of glass. 

And then he disappeared. There was a burst of light, and I remember a puff of smoke. Even if there wasn’t one, that’s the form the memory took. I’ve mulled the moment over enough that little details might have dulled, but the important bits have at least stayed bright.

If you think about it, and I have, extensively, it was only a few seconds that shaped my entire life. I have also spent a lot of time wondering if that’s normal. Have other people warped their entire existence around something that only took a few seconds of time? Something that could easily have been a hallucination, or a corrupted memory?

I guess it’s useless to wonder if this was the right decision as it stands, because it’s a decision I’ve already made.

They weren’t happy about my purchase, the town, but they also couldn’t afford to turn down my eight million dollar offer. It’s not my fault that they’re in a financial tailspin still climbing out of a hole knocked into the fiscal landscape by the recession. I should be regarded as the Hilltown hero. I’m afraid I might be remembered as a villain- my evil deeds taught in their school classes like Columbus- who turns out wasn’t that great of a guy after all.

So, the thing that you may be wondering, and that I was wondering, and at large the entire world wonders at some point is this:

Are ghosts real?

It was important that I find out, that I change and uproot my entire life to understand because, well, I feel like there’s something more. I’m not sure what. Something beyond the theatre where the images are being projected for us to watch. And maybe in that answer is the answer to the problem of loneliness. 

Or maybe that’s a whole load of bullshit.

I’m not sure what to tell you. I’m a few glasses of wine in and I’ve started writing this to keep me sane. Also I’m pretty sure that they can’t read, or at the very least don’t care about reading. So keeping record of my sanity in these pages seems like the best way to keep it intact. 

They don’t seem to have much interest in me yet, although that makes me even more on edge than before. I’m waiting for my introduction and wondering what they’ll think of me. What if they want to drive me out as much as the town does? And perhaps even worse, what if they don’t want to let me leave?

Yes, ghosts are real. Very real indeed.

“Whitlock Manor” is a fictional tale told through the journal entries of a woman who bought a castle in order to understand one of life’s greatest mysteries- is there life after death? Spoiler: Yes, ghosts are real. Very real indeed.