Ghosts from the Past Read online

  Ghosts from the Past

  Bonnie Elizabeth

  My Big Fat Orange Cat Publishing

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  About Bonnie Elizabeth

  Also by Bonnie Elizabeth

  Chapter 1

  I’m sure there are better ways to fill out a resume and heal after a divorce than running off to the tip of Nova Scotia to work in a possibly haunted Manor set on the coast on the edge of nowhere. This is particularly true, if as a child, one has been told that one is sensitive to ghosts. Not that anyone told me that there might be ghosts at the Manor when I took the job, but all the same, one should always think ghosts when one thinks of an old house. Still, I can only say that at the time I made that decision I wasn’t in the clearest frame of mind.

  I was at home alone, as always, since my husband of ten years had left me, sitting on our once white sofa, which was now more of an ecru and smelled faintly of his aftershave. The white leather had never been my choice. Kyle, however, had loved it. Still, here it remained in the condo we had purchased together and that he had given up to run off with his boy toy.

  It’s not that I was upset that he left me for a man. I had always known that he had no particular preference when it came to the sexes. It was that he left me for someone ten years younger than I was just as he neared forty. Plus, all those things he had to have, like the sofa, that I had hated because of their impracticality, remained in the condo with me.

  The glass coffee table, a perpetual trap for fingerprints and water splashes, faced the sofa. Also Kyle’s idea. Only the sixty-inch flat screen that had once hung over the fireplace had gone with him. In its place I had a humble twenty-four inch thing that didn’t quite fill out the space. At least the frame was black to match the black granite that surrounded the gas fireplace.

  At thirty-eight, I was a failure. I was a failure as a woman, clearly, because my husband no longer found me attractive. No matter that I might know his equal fondness for men—we’d often shared a few jokes and a bit of leering at good-looking guys in bars—it still made me feel a bit weird that I’d been thrown over for a boy. Or young man. Or whatever you wanted to call him.

  Then, as I’d begun to throw myself into my work at the library, I’d been passed over for a promotion I had thought I was a shoe-in for. Instead, I learned late in the game that they’d decided to look outside the library structure and hire someone new. Bring in new blood and new faces.

  So, on the fateful night that I learned about the job set in Schilling Manor, I was sitting in the silence of the room. I was a thirty-eight-year-old woman with a television that didn’t match the dimensions of her living room, alone with too many fancy bottles of wine sitting empty around on the kitchen counter, and a half-full one on the coffee table.

  Tessie arrived that night with news that would change my life. She was my best friend since pre-school. If we were younger, we’d say “BFF,” but as a librarian, I hate that sort of abuse of language. I think such things should be spelled out. Tessie laughs at me.

  “You can’t stop time, Lara,” she’d say.

  She arrived to the sound of a key in the lock. For a moment I thought of Kyle, but quickly remembered it couldn’t be him.

  Tessie flounced in, dressed up as if she were going dancing instead of coming here. She’d asked for a key when Kyle had moved out. I’d given it to her. I knew why she wanted it, and later on, she confirmed it. She’d wanted it in case I stopped answering the door and her phone calls. She was afraid of what I might do. The ease of which I’d given away a key suggested I was, too.

  “Another bottle of wine?” Tessie asked. It wasn’t a judgement, just a question. Her flirty red dress flapped around her long legs as she took in the room. Her long brown hair, which normally curled, had been ironed flat and colored to a deep auburn that looked beautiful with her hazel eyes.

  “Only one,” I said. As it had been each night. I’m not normally much of a drinker. Another change for me.

  “If you’re going to wallow, you ought to at least put on music,” Tessie said. She flopped down, her dress hitching so that I got a look at her bare thighs.

  I shrugged. “Aren’t you going dancing?” I wasn’t dressed for it. I was in sweats that had needed washing last Thursday, but I was too depressed to take on the task. I barely kept my work clothing clean.

  I still went to work even without the promotion. I had to pay the bills, which my salary did—just. Kyle had been the real breadwinner and he’d been kind when he’d signed over the condo to me alone. He probably even thought he was being kind leaving me with the furniture I hated.

  “I am, later,” Tessie said. “But I saw something online that you have to see.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s the perfect job. It will get you out of here. Out of these memories. You can rent the condo out for a bit more money to put aside and you’ll get a good salary there. You are perfect for it!”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  Tessie smiled. She knew I’d sort of hunted around for a job. But it had been a half-hearted look at Indeed and Glassdoor without ever putting in a resume. More of a hope or a wish. It was all I had the energy for at that time.

  She pulled up her phone with its rhinestone case and set it in front of my face. She leaned closer and her perfume drowned out the smell of Kyle’s aftershave.

  “Look. ‘Seeking research librarian. Must understand valuation of old books…’” Tessie read through the description even as she forced me to see it on her phone. Perhaps she was worried I had had so much wine that I couldn’t focus.

  I had to admit, as she listed the criteria, she was right. I was perfect for it. The downside, to me, was that it was in Cape Breton, which my wine-fogged South Carolina mind had to spend a few moments parsing before I realized that was the northern part of Nova Scotia.

  “I’m not a Canadian citizen,” I said.

  “No excuses,” Tessie said. “I bet, considering this is a U.S. website, that they’re willing to work with you on the work permits. It’s a one-year job and the pay is twice what you get now. Plus you’re doing a variety of things that will look great on your resume. And the change of venue will be good for you.”

  “You trying to get rid of me?” I mumbled, feeling near tears.

  Tessie hugged me. “Oh, no. I’m trying to get you back.”

  In later days, Tessie would wonder how I had survived my ghostly and non-ghostly encounters to come back to her at all. I suspected she thought perhaps she should have let me heal in my own time.

  Chapter 2

  Six and a half months later, as the days lengthened into summer, I rounded the last bend and got my first look at Schilling Manor. My clothes felt lived in after six days on the road, stopping only at night to sleep and shower. I had changed the clothing, but after a long day in the car, I felt like the stale French fries my Honda smelled of.

  I’d spent so much time in the car listening to my usual music selections that I’d gotten bored with them and had t
urned on classical. As the sun was setting behind low gray clouds that signaled rain was coming, the radio blasted Rachmaninoff’s “Prelude in G Minor.” It reflected the mood of the Manor.

  Sydney, Nova Scotia, a small port town known for its famous fiddle which sits on the wharf greeting cruise ships, was the nearest town to Schilling Manor. I could stock up on food there but I’d shopped earlier when I’d noticed that Sydney would take me a few miles out of my way and I just wanted to stop driving. I had easy-to-eat snacks as meals were provided.

  “Bethany wants us to provide meals as the kitchen is kind of an electrical hazard,” Nathan told me.

  Nathan was the boss, overseeing the full valuation of everything on the estate. It was a long process involving me, an antiques dealer, and an art expert of some sort. The Manor was full of stuff that needed evaluation and cataloging. Other experts had done the valuation for the estate taxes, but Bethany wanted further information on everything there, specific information on each item her aunt had left her so she could more easily determine whether she sold, donated, or kept them.

  They’d determined that cataloging the books and sorting them would take six months to a year, which suggested the collection was rather large. I’d seen pictures of the main library and was told there were a few boxes in the upstairs schoolroom as well as a smaller personal collection.

  I’d hesitated about the job at first. After all, a job for six months or a year was fine, but then what? Fortunately, I had enough seniority at the university to request a sabbatical. At my staff level I was eligible just like a faculty member. That allowed me to jump at the chance to go. I’m sure my coworkers were thrilled to see the back of me given that I’d hardly been myself since Kyle had left me.

  There was a whirlwind of work permits, storing my possessions in Tessie’s basement, and finding a good broker to manage to my condo in South Carolina. My parents, who lived just outside of Pittsburg, were perplexed by my choice to live in Nova Scotia for nearly a year.

  “It gets cold up there,” my mother said. As if this was news. “Do you even have a winter coat anymore? You were horribly under dressed when you came home last Christmas.”

  “I’m sure I can purchase one there. It’s not like I’ll need it right away,” I said. And anything I purchased in Sydney was likely to be a darn sight warmer than what I could buy in Columbia, where I lived. After all, who needs a winter coat in South Carolina? A rain jacket maybe.

  “That’s your Pittsburg blood showing,” Tessie laughed.

  We’d both gone to Clemson to escape the cold winters and had stayed in town after graduation. I’d gone to Chapel Hill, a few hours north, to get my masters in library science but then I’d come back and found work at a college nearby. Tessie had immediately found work in South Carolina’s government, despite her rather liberal leanings. It had been a joy to know that she and I would be living in the same city.

  We had lived for weekends away in Myrtle Beach and Beaufort. Even when I was married to Kyle, we’d had girls’ weekends away. Now, I often wondered what he was doing during those same weekends.

  I knew I could handle cold even if I didn’t love it the way I loved the sun and, secretly, even the humidity.

  Now I was leaving that.

  Because of Kyle.

  Sitting in my car, smelling of old food, looking at the Manor, its old red brick and thick white mortar that looked half crumbled, made me long for the perfectly kept historical relics in Charleston. This was anything but perfectly kept. In fact, I worried that it would fall down around me if I sneezed when I went to bed.

  The trees lining the drive that curved inward were bare of leaves, despite it going into summer. Their skeletal arms reached out to grab at visitors, but only half-heartedly as there didn’t even seem to be enough life in them to be properly frightening.

  The gray light made everything about the manor seem sad. It was easy to imagine a woman on the widow’s walk that sat on the highest portion of the roof. She’d have looked out behind me as waves crashed against the shore, wondering if her husband had come home from the sea.

  The road had been just far enough inland so I hadn’t seen those waves, but I could imagine them. I carefully followed the drive, which was mostly gravel with weeds sticking up through the rock here and there. How long had it been since anyone had cared for the place?

  I glanced at the place again, noting that the doors were painted white, which seemed to glisten and I wondered if someone had replaced those. How much of the Manor needed to be replaced or repaired? How much had been done? The long, tall windows that let in narrow strips of light inside were covered with drapes that looked gray from this angle, told me nothing. The old brick and cracked concrete that made up the three low steps that led to the white front doors told me little else.

  The Manor was three stories, at least, if I was counting correctly. There was an attic as well. The widow’s walk came out of a door that appeared directly over the entry, out from what once may have been an attic dormer. The roof was covered in black plastic tarps held down by something I couldn’t see. Clearly it was under repair.

  It made me wonder about the library. I’d seen pictures but I’d pictured a stately old room with clean wooden shelves filled with antique books that I’d catalog. Now, I worried the pictures I had seen and my imagination had given me the wrong impression. Still, they were books, my passion.

  I’d studied antique books and book making. While I loved research, this kind of study was slightly less popular, offering me more job opportunities. The book making was more of a hobby than anything of use, though.

  My studies were the reason I worked at a university level library, the assistant to the head of the archives. I knew that had I become head of the archives, it would have meant more political and managerial work rather than the restoration and cataloging I loved, but I had hoped—no, I had expected—that I would get the job and still be able to keep my hand in.

  I’d even had to train the new head of archives before leaving on sabbatical. She’d been a little hesitant about the timing of my leaving but this way she could sink or swim on her own.

  Looking at the condition of the Manor, I was regretting this. In the archives, books were cared for. If the building wasn’t any more cared for than this, what about the books?

  I pulled up close to the front of the large building, noting where the window ledges were cracked, the shutters hanging askew, and even a few bricks were looking less than stable. Safety issues, once again, crossed my mind.

  A curtain twitched on the second floor.

  I drove slowly around the building, following the track. There, I saw that a long wing jutted out the back and it was in slightly better condition than the front, but it still wasn’t the sort of place anyone would call move-in ready. There was a large square of weeds and gravel filled with an assortment of cars and trucks.

  Behind that was an outbuilding that might have been a carriage house a hundred years ago. That was definitely falling down with gray wood and roof tiles falling in halfway across the building. Weeds sprang up around the outside of the walls.

  I parked next to one of the other cars, a gray SUV. This one was from Quebec. Not quite so far as I was, I didn’t think, at least not in terms of different weather, but still a long way to travel. I wondered which one of the workers it was.

  I climbed out of my car and started across the gravel. Rain began to splatter lightly. It was more of a mist and it didn’t seem in any hurry to fall harder. There was a sort of portico on this side, with a raised ramp going up to an enormous door with ten small panels.

  As I got closer, I saw that the panels were carved images of leaves and flowers. It was beautifully done, if a bit faded. I looked for a bell. The brick here was red and black and even some white. There were splatters of mortar as if someone had done a sloppy job of repairing and some of that was darkened with time.

  I finally spotted a bell, almost hidden in all the clutter of splatters and brickwo
rk. I pressed it, wondering how they’d fastened it and if there was electricity to run it.

  I seemed to recall Nathan telling me that while internet service could be spotty and the man who ran the cable was practically living there trying to keep it more on than off, they did have electricity. He’d said it with an excitement I hadn’t understood until just this moment.

  There were empty sconces above the bell, rusted metal that had once probably held candles. I suddenly realized that Bethany’s fears about the kitchens were probably because whatever wiring had been done had no doubt been done long after the house was built.

  I swallowed as I waited. Thunder sounded, echoing around me. I nearly jumped.

  The door creaked open and a woman stood there.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “I’m Lara Rochester. I’m here to sort through the library?” I said.

  “Lara!” she said. “I’m glad you made it. They’re saying the storm coming in is going to be a bad one.”

  She practically pulled me in the door as if just by being inside I was safer. The entry here was rather dim but it was almost as formal as I imagined the front to be. It was rather narrow, though. The wall behind her was covered in thick dark paneling. A rather plain light was on the wall behind her but it didn’t do much to push back the shadows.

  “I have my things packed in the car,” I said.

  “Give me your keys. I’ll have Jimmy bring everything up to your room,” she said. “Don’t worry. It’s part of his job. Nathan will help if need be, and so will I. You’ve been driving.”