The Haunting of Ashburn House Page 15

  “No problem at all.” Sarah smiled as though she meant it as she pulled one of the boxes out. “The papers were weekly, as I recall, so there won’t be more than fifty-two in a year.”

  Adrienne nodded as she helped carry the box to the table. “And we probably only need to look at the front page of each paper. A local family’s murders aren’t likely to be buried inside.”

  Sarah pulled the box’s lid off. A small puff of dust exploded out with the motion, and she waved it away as they peered inside. The papers were badly yellowed, and some looked stained. Sarah carefully pulled a bundle out, laid them on the table, and flipped through. “They’re not in chronological order, but at least they seem to be from the same year. Want to work through a stack each?”

  “Sounds like a plan.” Adrienne took out a pile of her own and scanned the first paper’s headlines. "Crop Blight Returns: The McGregor Family’s Grief." "Young Crime: Officer Stacey Expresses Concern Over Increased Incidence of Loitering."

  The paper, the Ipson Chronicle, seemed to feature local news exclusively… of which there was very little. Each paper was between three and five pages long and occasionally included a eulogy, a house-for-sale notice, or a birth notice as the town’s population shifted.

  They worked in silence, scanning a paper’s headlines before placing it into a separate pile. Occasionally, there was news of a violent crime—most often, a fist fight outside the pub—but the only reported deaths were accidental or due to old age.

  Once the first box had been read through, Sarah refilled it with the papers, returned it to its spot on the shelf, and brought out a new box. The papers inside had been exposed to water, and some of the ink had bled. Adrienne was still able to read most of the articles, but it slowed her progress.

  They were nearing the end of the year 1929 when Sarah gasped. Adrienne looked up, hopeful. “Did you find it?”

  “It’s not a story about the murders—but it’s about the house. Here, read it.”

  27

  Monochrome Vandalism

  Sarah swivelled the paper to face Adrienne and pointed to a tiny article in the lower-right corner.

  ASHBURN HOUSE TO BE REOCCUPIED?

  Since the tragedy that transpired in our town’s most notorious house in the summer of 1918, the Ashburn property has lain dormant. Recently, however, there have been rumours of reoccupation. Mr Paul Grover reportedly sighted labourers carrying timber to the property. When asked what their purpose there was, they claimed to be hired to renovate the house. Some suggest the sponsor and intended occupant may be Miss Edith Ashburn herself, who would have recently turned eighteen and so inherited the property.

  “You’re kidding,” Adrienne muttered and glanced at the paper’s date: June 18, 1929. But that would make Edith over a hundred years old when she passed.

  Sarah was already kneeling beside the boxes and reading their faded labels. “It was a lucky find. Without it, we would have just kept going forward without realising we needed to look earlier.”

  Adrienne stacked the papers back into their box so that there would be room for the new crate Sarah carried over. She took the lid off, pulled the stack of papers out, and laid them on the table. This time, they searched through the yellowed sheets together.

  They only had to sift through four papers before they found what they were looking for. As Adrienne had suspected, the story filled the front page. The title, in huge bold font, read, “GRUESOME SLAUGHTER AT ASHBURN HOUSE.”

  But the text below made no sense; from what she could figure out, it was talking about a sheep-herding competition.

  Sarah lifted the page, and Adrienne’s confusion turned to surprise as she saw a rectangular hole in the paper. Someone had carefully, meticulously, sliced out the article’s body. The sheep-herding story Adrienne had been reading belonged to the page behind it.

  “Unbelievable,” Sarah hissed. “Someone must have cut it out as a souvenir.”

  All that was left of the front page was the title and a smaller article near the base: “Town In Shock.” Adrienne read that story, but it only contained interviews from neighbours expressing grief and alarm. There was no information about the deaths, probably because they’d been exhaustively covered in the main article.

  “Look in the next paper,” Adrienne said. “I’ll bet there will be articles following the investigation.”

  “Good call.” Sarah shifted the newspaper to one side, and they both made little upset noises when they saw the tabloid below had been vandalised as well. That paper didn’t even contain a heading; nearly half of the front page had been cut out. All that remained were unrelated articles.

  Sarah leafed through the paper while Adrienne moved on to the next, and then the one after that, and the one after that. Each Ipson Chronicle had been altered. Sometimes large chunks had been carved out, sometimes just a small side column. In every case, the cuts were surgically precise and straight.

  With each subsequent paper, the excised sections grew smaller as the story provided less new material, until at last, Adrienne reached a paper that hadn’t been touched. She flipped through every page, but there was no mention of Ashburn House.

  She turned back to Sarah and saw her face had grown pale and her lips quivered with quiet, restrained anger.

  “This is reprehensible,” Sarah whispered as she stared at the damaged papers. “These are historical documents—possibly the only copies left. To butcher them this way—if I ever find out who did this—”

  Adrienne didn’t know what to say. Sarah stared at the papers for a minute then exhaled and gave her a tight smile. “Would you like to keep looking?”

  “I don’t think there’s any point.” Adrienne peeked through a few more papers and saw another space where an article had been removed. She dropped them back into place. “Whoever did this was incredibly thorough.”

  Sarah rose. “I’m really sorry, Addy. I’ll ask around town to see if anyone else might have some copies, but—well, it was so long ago—”

  “Just shy of a hundred years,” Adrienne said as she helped stack the papers back into their box. “That’s a long time to keep old newspapers.”

  They slid the crate back into its space in the shelf, and Sarah turned towards the door. “I’d better go back out. Pam’s usually good about letting me take breaks, but I’ve been gone a while, and her patience has its limits.”

  “No problem. Thanks for helping me out.” Adrienne rubbed at the back of her neck. She also needed to know who was terrorizing her at night, but it was a difficult question to phrase. “Ah, as an aside—do you know of anyone in town who’s shown, uh, an abnormal interest in Ashburn?”

  Sarah’s eyebrows rose. “Well, Beth loves researching it, just like she loves all of Ipson’s mysteries. Few that they are.”

  Adrienne couldn’t imagine bright, cheerful Beth attempting to drive her off the property. “Anyone else?”

  “Not that I know of. People sometimes talked about Edith if they saw her in the street, but I think mostly they forgot about the house.” She tilted her head. “I hope this isn’t too rude, but is there a reason you asked?”

  Oh yeah, I think someone’s trying to frighten me away from my house. Either that, or there’s a serial killer who likes playing with their victims. No biggie. It sounded crazy even in Adrienne’s mind. She opted for a sanitised version of the truth. “Someone’s been coming around the last couple of nights. I’d like to know who so I could talk to them, if possible.”

  “Huh.” Sarah looked a little surprised but nodded. “I can ask about that, as well, if you like.”

  “That would be great. Thank you. I don’t have a phone yet, but, um, I’ll pop into town as often as I can. Or send a carrier pigeon or make a smoke signal or something.”

  Sarah laughed. She went to the door, opened it a crack, and peeked out. “Okay, Pam’s tidying the shelves. I’ll go out and distract her. Wait a minute, then sneak out and close the door behind yourself, okay?”

  Adrienne
gave her a thumbs up, so the young librarian slipped out, wearing a smile that was equal parts nervous and excited. Adrienne counted to thirty before cracking the door open. Pam, the older librarian, was facing away and speaking to Sarah, who was gesturing to a book enthusiastically. Adrienne made eye contact with her friend for a split second while creeping out of the room and to the main door.

  After being in the cool library for so long, the sun felt beautiful on her skin. She took a deep breath, savouring the clear air, and tried to formulate a plan.

  She’d been able to ask after Marion, at least, but the more pressing threads of enquiry had led to dead ends. Someone had gone to great lengths to remove the articles pertaining to the Ashburn deaths. That seemed significant, though she wasn’t sure in which way. The thoroughness with which the stories had been clipped spoke to a dedication that went beyond wanting a simple memento. Did the vandal have a motive for erasing the event from the town’s memory?

  Sarah also hadn’t known of anyone who might be a suspect for the nightly visitations. She would need to keep asking about that.

  Without any other clear course of action, Adrienne returned to the main street and followed it to the vet’s clinic. She’d suspected it might be too soon for the laptop to be returned, and she was correct. Peggy, the vet nurse—just as enthusiastic as she’d been the day before—said her brother was still working on it.

  “He says it’s something to do with the hard board or mother drive or something.” She was talking to Adrienne at the same time as filling out a form for a bug-eyed terrier called Lieutenant Doug. “He reckons he can save all of your documents but needed to order a replacement… oh gosh, it was, uh, a replacement… a replacement… thing. He says it should arrive tomorrow.”

  Ordering replacement things sounded expensive. Adrienne laced her fingers together and tried to avoid the terrier owner’s curious stare. “Um, did you get a chance to ask him about payment?”

  “Oh yeah, that’s the best part!” Peggy swivelled back to the computer and began typing the terrier’s details into the clinic’s database. “He says no charge—but he wanted me to ask for a favour.”

  A trade—that’s good. Trades are good. “Yeah?”

  “Well, there’s a shortcut to the next town that goes through the mountains. It saves, like, fifteen minutes off the highway. But the first part of it goes along Edith’s—that is, uh, your driveway. And Edith never let anyone use it. She’d block the road and, in my brother’s words, rain a hellfire of a lecture onto you. He wants to know if you’d be cool with him using that path.”

  Adrienne couldn’t believe her luck. “Yeah! Yeah, absolutely!”

  Peggy’s face opened into a huge grin. “Sweet. Pop back in the day after tomorrow, and your computer should be ready. Here we go, Mrs Carrow,” she said, addressing the terrier’s owner. “Lieutenant Doug’s all set.”

  Mrs Carrow thanked Peggy, gave Adrienne a polite nod, and carried her dog out. Adrienne waited for the squeaky hinges to subside before leaning closer.

  “Peggy, you probably know a lot of people around town, right?”

  “Anyone who owns a pet,” Peggy said, scribbling on the form. “Which is literally almost everyone. Oh, I hear you have a cat! We do free dental check-ups on the first Tuesday of every month. You should bring him in sometime.”

  “Great, I’ll do that.” Adrienne wondered how the news had reached Peggy. Was she friends with Jayne or her companions, or had it gone through multiple mouths? “I was wondering—is there anyone in town who’s shown an… er… unusual interest in Ashburn?”

  Peggy’s face scrunched up. “Well, like, most everyone’s at least a bit curious about it. But mostly in a glad I’m not its neighbour sort of way, if you know what I mean. People were really interested when you moved in. They wanted to know if you’d be much like Edith, being her granddaughter and all.”

  “Grand-niece actually,” Adrienne said. “I’m afraid I never met her. Did you?”

  “Nah.” Peggy’s face fell as though it were a great tragedy. “Saw her in town a few times but never talked to her. Apparently, she used to bring injured birds in when she found them, but that was before I started working here.”

  Everything Adrienne learned about her great-aunt was a contradiction. She never had guests. She prepared your room. She chased cars off her driveway. She rescued injured birds. The concepts were having a tug of war in her mind, and the rope felt dangerously close to snapping.

  She risked being candid. “I think someone’s been coming onto the property at night. But they won’t let me see who they are. If you had to guess who it could be, who would you say?”

  “Oooh!” Peggy was so excited she almost shot out of her chair. “It could be the ghosts!”

  Laughing felt painful, but Adrienne managed to chuckle. “Yeah, it sure could be. But, um, other than that…?”

  The vet nurse propped her elbow on the desk and leaned her chin in her palm. “Huh. Wow. I honestly don’t know. Mr Truscott asked me if I’d met you when he came in yesterday. He has a lovely Maine Coon. And I heard Suzy Delaney—she’s got a horse; we sometimes make house calls—had a bet with Rachel who owns the rabbits.”

  “A bet?”

  Peggy looked faintly embarrassed. “About… about when Edith was gonna die. I didn’t approve, you know? I thought it was pretty, uh, mor… mor… what’s the word…?”

  “Morbid?”

  “Yeah. Morbid. And not very kind. But Miss Ashburn wasn’t all that well liked, and she was getting kind of old and… yeah.” She huffed a sigh. “Sorry. Literally almost everyone in this town has talked about Ashburn at one point or another. But I wouldn’t call any of them preoccupied.”

  “That’s okay. I really appreciate you helping, anyway.” Adrienne turned to leave but caught herself. Jayne had already suggested some suspects for the night-time visits, and as hard as it was to imagine children being so obsessive, she needed to follow every lead she had. “One other thing—do you know the Crowther boys?”

  “Oh yeah, sure! They have two pit bulls.”

  Adrienne couldn’t shake the feeling that Peggy identified people by the animals they owned. “What are they like? Do they pull a lot of pranks?”

  “I don’t really know them well, sorry. But I don’t think they could be visiting Ashburn, if that’s what you’re wondering. They’re both staying with their grandmother in the city this week.”

  28

  Sun’s Arc

  Adrienne wandered without purpose for several minutes. The good news about her laptop had cheered her, but the lack of answers on everything else was becoming frustrating. All I want is to know whether I’m going to be murdered in my bed tonight. Is that too much to ask?

  The sun had passed its zenith and was beginning the slow glide towards the horizon. Adrienne needed to be back at Ashburn before sundown, which only gave her a handful of hours in town. She’d spoken to Sarah and Peggy, two people whose jobs put them in contact with large segments of the town’s population, and had zero leads to show for it. And she had precious few other acquaintances to impose on.

  She came to a halt and looked up. Her feet had carried her to the bank, not far from the vet, so she pulled her wallet out of her pocket. Without her laptop, she wouldn’t have any notification when her outstanding accounts were paid, but she could at least check her balance.

  It had been $3.49 when she’d left her friend’s house for Ashburn, and Adrienne felt relief bloom through her chest when the ATM told her she now had a little over sixty dollars. That meant the smaller of the two accounts was paid, bailing her out of immediate crisis.

  She withdrew the money and tried to plan a budget for it as she resumed her walk. There were a lot of items on her wish list, but she could only afford a few of them. The biggest priority was a mobile phone. At the moment, she had no way to contact the outside world if she got into serious trouble, and that was a terrifying idea.

  Her pantry had enough food to last a few days, but s
he felt that it would be wise to get more while she had the funds. And she needed some way to defend herself. The knife was better than nothing but would be close to useless if the stalker had a gun, an axe, or any other weapon that extended their range.

  Everything else on her wish list—including shampoo, new toys for Wolfgang, and socks that didn’t have holes in them—could be pushed back until the next couple of accounts were paid.

  Adrienne found her way to Ipson’s only phone provider outlet thanks to directions from two men playing chess outside a café. The store clerk rolled his eyes when she asked for help, so Adrienne leafed through the company’s brochure instead. The cheapest plan would take fifty-five out of her sixty dollars. She cringed.

  Getting a phone is really damn important. But so is not starving. Jeez, jeez, jeez.

  Adrienne eventually left the store empty handed. She’d forced herself to think through a worst-case scenario—a crazed axeman breaking into her house—and had come to the grim decision that owning a phone likely wouldn’t save her. The police station was in the town’s centre, which meant help would take nearly twenty minutes to reach Ashburn. She’d be chopped into mince by then. Finding an effective weapon was a greater priority.

  A gun would have been ideal, but at that point, she couldn’t even afford the license. Adrienne found the next best thing in the back of the general store, though: mace. The canister was small enough to carry in her pocket and had the bonus of being able to blind an attacker as well as hurting them.

  She also collected an armful of budget food, a cheap keychain torch, and batteries, and she splurged on a tin of wet cat food for Wolfgang. He deserves it after last night.

  June, the chatty store assistant, was more than happy to gossip about the town’s occupants. Disappointingly, she couldn’t offer anything except an increasingly long list of people who had spoken about Ashburn. She didn’t think anyone had shown an exceptional preoccupation with the house, and she hadn’t heard anyone talk about one day owning it. Adrienne thanked her and left the store, fifteen dollars remaining in her pocket. She looked at the sky. The sun was dropping much faster than she was comfortable with.