The Haunting of Ashburn House Page 7
She shook herself free of the thought and increased her pace. The incline was steep enough to make her breathing laboured but not so bad that she needed a break. She thought it would be easier if her baggage weren’t so heavy. Edith’s daily walk into town might be a habit she should adopt; that way she would only need to buy what she planned to eat that day.
The path took a sharp turn around a tree, and Adrienne found herself facing a row of zigzagging steps leading up a nearly vertical incline. The stairs were lined with stones but uneven and narrow enough that she had to watch her feet as she ascended. She was thoroughly winded by the time she reached the top of the cliff and returned to following the gentler pathway.
Edith must have been fit to take those stairs every day. Maybe the cardio workout helped prolong her life.
The trees had grown darker and spindlier. When she looked over her shoulder, she could still see the lush emerald greens that grew near the town. It was a striking contrast to the dark-grey woods surrounding her.
The path took one final bend, and Adrienne found herself facing Ashburn House. She hadn’t expected to reach it so soon. Jayne’s estimation had been right; even at a leisurely pace, the walk hadn’t taken much more than fifteen minutes.
When she bumped the front door open, she found two glimmering green eyes in her path. Her heart lurched unpleasantly, then the eyes blinked, and Adrienne laughed as she slumped against the wall. She’d accidentally left the living room door open, and Wolfgang had emerged from his sanctuary.
“Well, I guess you were about ready to see more of Ashburn, anyway,” she said as she nudged the front door closed with her foot. “Don’t worry—I got more food. Not that you need it, tubbo.” She bent to give his ears a friendly scratch then turned toward the kitchen to unpack her haul.
12
Sanctuary
Nearly half of Adrienne’s twenty dollars had gone to cat food. She didn’t know how soon she was likely to be paid, but it would be less painful to go hungry herself than to see Wolfgang sitting by an empty food bowl.
She’d spent the rest as frugally as she could: six cups of instant noodles, thanks to a buy-two-get-one-free special, plus a bag of rice and a packet of lentils for protein. The cupboard looked less pitiful than it had, but it hardly held a stockpile. Adrienne sighed and returned to the lounge room. She’d sent an invoice reminder to both of her outstanding accounts just two days before, but things were dire enough that she was prepared to dip into aggressive territory and send another.
She sat on the lounge chair, which was still covered in blankets from the night before, and opened her laptop. An angry red “no Wi-Fi” emblem appeared in the toolbar.
“Oh, crap.” Adrienne opened the settings. Her laptop was supposed to be its own mobile hotspot, but the unhelpful diagnosis tool told her there wasn’t coverage in her area and to call support if she needed additional help.
She snapped the laptop closed, glowered at the cold fireplace opposite, then slid off the chair and returned to the hallway. The Wi-Fi would have a greater chance of working in town, but she was tired and hungry from the walk, and she didn’t want to have to retrace her steps so soon. Besides, sundown is only a few hours away. I should try to figure out a bedroom; I’d rather not sleep on the lounge chair again if I can help it.
Adrienne fetched herself a cup of instant noodles. Wolfgang followed her into the kitchen, and she watched him nose about the dusty corners as she waited for the kettle to boil and poured the water into the Styrofoam cup. She considered sitting at the head of the table—it was closest to the benches and faced the window—but felt uneasy about occupying Edith’s seat. Instead, Adrienne sunk into the chair at the table’s side.
IS IT FRIDAY
LIGHT THE CANDLE
She tried not to read the phrase carved into the tabletop, but her eyes wandered back to it anytime she wasn’t consciously focussing elsewhere.
I could sandpaper them out if they were shallow, but some of those scratches look too deep. Maybe I could cover them with a tablecloth… when I can afford one. Unless—
She put her fork down and crossed to the drawers she’d looked through when searching for cups the day before. Adrienne gave a small hum of triumph when she found the cloths stacked neatly in the cupboard beside the fridge. She took the top one out and flipped it open. Age had sapped away its sharp white hue, and it was too long to fit the table properly, but Adrienne still draped it over the wood.
It’s a shame to cover furniture this nice, but I don’t think I can live with that phrase staring at me every time I want to eat.
“Better, right?” she asked Wolfgang. He’d risen up on his back legs to sniff at a stain on the wall and turned to give her a dispassionate stare when she spoke to him.
Adrienne finished her lunch, washed the fork, and returned to the hallway. The sun was already edging close to the treetops, and she wanted to find somewhere to sleep before it became so dark that she needed the lamp.
As she climbed the stairs, Adrienne ran through the possibilities. She was certain she didn’t want to move into Edith’s room. She’d given it some thought during the walk back from town and had decided it would be best to leave the space untouched as a sort of memorial to the strange, controversial great-aunt she’d never known. She was only one person living in a huge house, after all; it wasn’t as though space was in short supply.
But would there be any other bedrooms? If the townspeople’s reports were accurate, Edith had never allowed guests into her home, which reduced the chance of a guest bedroom to almost nil.
However, there was a chance that Edith had preserved one or more of her deceased family’s bedchambers. If she had, that would create a new dilemma. The family had been killed. She didn’t know how, where, and by whom, but Adrienne had to face the possibility that they’d died in their beds. Could she sleep on a mattress where another person had been murdered?
She’d reached the top of the stairs and began opening doors under the paintings’ watchful eyes. She’d already looked into several of the rooms when looking for the shower but checked again just to be certain. Storage room, storage room, Edith’s bedroom, the office—which looked glorious with the heavy golden late-afternoon light streaming over the desk—the bathroom, empty room, empty room.
Only one door remained at the end of the hallway, next to the flight of stairs that led to the attic. Adrienne expected another empty space and was shocked by what she found when she looked inside: a clean and unexpectedly modern bedroom. Unlike the rest of the building, the walls were covered in eggwhite paint rather than wallpaper. A plush, clean rug filled the centre of the room, and a single bed with a blue-and-purple bedspread sat below the window.
“Wow.” Adrienne stepped farther into the room and blinked at the empty bookcase and wardrobe. A bureau was propped against one wall, and although it didn’t have a mirror, there were no scratches on the wall behind it. Only a fine layer of dust lay over the surfaces, which meant they must have been cleaned not long before Edith’s death. She had found the guest room she’d convinced herself wouldn’t exist.
Most mind-boggling was how modern the furniture seemed. Everything else in Ashburn was vintage, possibly dating to as far back as when Edith’s parents had occupied the house. But the bedspread was a modern cotton blend, the desk looked expensive but streamlined, and the rug had a pattern that couldn’t have been more than a decade old.
A surreal sensation washed over Adrienne. She felt as though she’d stepped into a different world as she floated about the room, examining the fixtures and trying to tell herself it was too good to be true.
A white square stood out against the pillowcase, and Adrienne approached it. The shape turned out to be a piece of paper that had been scrawled on with a shaky but elegant hand. Her heart gave an uncomfortable lurch as she read the brief note.
Adrienne,
I hope you like your room.
Aunt Edith
13
Candles
>
As Adrienne reread the note, her shock began to morph into an overpowering, almost painful emotion. She pressed a hand over her mouth and blinked at the wetness in her eyes.
She’d grown to believe Edith had left her Ashburn on a whim or to keep the house from falling into the possession of someone she didn’t like. Adrienne had thought that Edith hadn’t cared about her beyond dropping her name into her will. But the note proved otherwise.
It meant the decision to give Adrienne the house had been deliberate and premeditated. More than that, Edith had anticipated Adrienne’s sleeping dilemma and had prepared a bedroom for her—a room she must have dusted and aired frequently over many years to ensure it would be ready for Adrienne’s eventual arrival.
The cold, hostile visage in her mind morphed once more. The severe face shifted to something softer and gentler, and the glittering eyes became warm. Her imaginary Edith smiled, and Adrienne wiped her tears away as she smiled back.
I don’t care what the townspeople say about her. Edith was kind. She cared about me. And I love her for it.
She rubbed her thumbs over the short note. Even the fact that it had been signed “Aunt Edith” felt significant. She hoped she wasn’t reading too much into it by imagining that Edith had wanted to be a surrogate grandmother to her as much as Adrienne had wanted to have one.
“Thank you,” she whispered and propped the note upright on the bureau in place of where the mirror would normally stand. She wanted to remember this kindness.
The window above the bed was large and cleaner than most of the other panes. She crossed to the glass and looked out to see the dark woods that grew near the house. Ashburn had been built at the top of a hill, and the woods sloped downwards for a distance before they rose into the mountain beyond to tower high above the house. Subdued nature sounds filtered through the glass, and Adrienne undid the latch and cracked open the window to let some fresh air in.
Her heart felt full. The sleeping situation had been resolved better than she could have ever hoped. Edith’s generosity and forethought meant she not only had a bed but blankets and furniture to go with it.
A sudden desire to see the rest of the house rushed through her. She had a small hope that Edith might have left her more messages. She hadn’t seen any loose sheets of paper downstairs or in the other rooms on the second floor, but there might still be something in the highest level of the house—the attic.
She gave her room a final, grateful look before slipping back into the hallway. The stairs rose immediately to her right, but only fifteen steps were visible before they followed the house’s corner and turned out of sight. Once again, there didn’t seem to be any light switches, but the sun had only just begun to set, and Adrienne thought she could make the trip without needing the lamp.
She jogged up the stairs, one hand pressed to the wallpaper to keep herself stable, and tried not to pay attention to how the house groaned as though her footfalls were almost too much for it to bear. It was a solid building. There weren’t any signs of rot or strained supports; the wood was just old and liked to complain.
She turned the corner and found her path flooded with shadows as the natural light from below struggled to refract up the stairwell. She could barely make out a door above her, and it was unlike any other door she’d seen in the house.
Most of Ashburn’s fixtures fit their environment: classic, tasteful—though dated—and usually made of deep-mahogany wood paired with light fabrics and rose patterns.
The door she stood in front of had been stained until it was nearly black. It was oversized, taking up the entire width and breadth of the hallway, and Edith had scrawled a new message into its front.
The scratches were more erratic, bordering on frantic, and Adrienne had to climb until she was only a few steps away to make out the words in the gloom.
LIGHT THE CANDLE
YOUR FAMILY
IS STILL
DEAD
She licked her lips, reached for the weighty bronze doorknob, and turned it.
The room seemed to exhale as she opened the door, and a cold breeze buffeted her hair away from her face. The surreal sensation returned. Save for a faint red glow, the room was dark.
Did the sun set so quickly?
The expedition no longer felt exciting. Part of her wanted to run down the stairs, back to where logic and light and warm feelings lived, but she remained rooted to the highest step. Déjà vu crashed over her. The space, although dim enough to blind her, felt familiar; something about the scent, the weight of the air, and the feel of the wood underneath her feet called her back to a moment in her childhood. She tried to fix on the memory, but it slipped away from her as she attempted to catch it.
She blinked, and the moment was gone. It was just the attic, the final unseen room in the house and the most notorious. The townsfolk had seen a light shining there every Friday, acting as a beacon for unknown reasons.
Adrienne stepped over the threshold, hoping her heartbeat wasn’t as loud as it felt. Her palms were sweaty, and she clenched them as she blinked at the red-tinted room.
The attic was large, not quite as big as the house’s footprint but certainly more spacious than any of the rooms below. Adrienne looked towards the nearest wall and found the reason for the low light. The sun hadn’t set after all but had been blocked out by black curtains nailed over the windows. They didn’t completely block out the sunset but muted it and darkened it so that a surreal red tinge was thrown across the room’s contents.
Adrienne crossed to the nearest window. The cloth had been fixed at its top, but nothing secured the base. She flipped it up, coughing as dust swirled around her face, and managed to catch the lower edge of the curtain on the nails. Brilliant, sharp light cut through the gloom, and she stepped back to see the space.
Close to three dozen crates were stacked around the perimeter. Near the middle of the room was a strange, shiny, chest-high shape, and beyond that, in the exact centre, was a table.
Adrienne’s breaths were shallow as she approached the table. Two items waited on its age-stained crochet cloth: a framed photograph and a box of matches.
She turned to get a closer look at the shape between the chair and the table. It was bubbly and odd, like a sculpture gone awry, and had a vicious metal spike sticking out of its top. Adrienne bent closer to squint at it and exhaled a long “Ooh” as she realised what it was: a candleholder.
The stand rose a little higher than the table, the exposed spike waiting for a candle to be impaled on it. What had confused her was a pale, shiny substance flowing from the spike to the floor. When she was close enough to see the individual frozen globules, she realised it was old, melted wax—not from one candle but from hundreds of them; a lifetime of candles all allowed to melt over their holder until the wax stalactites and stalagmites met and it formed a solid mass.
She was looking at the result of Ipson’s best-known legend.
IS IT FRIDAY
LIGHT THE CANDLE
Edith had nailed black drapes over the windows to hide her flame, but they hadn’t been enough to mask the glow at night. If the curtains had been thin enough to let the sunset in, they were thin enough to let candlelight out.
Adrienne turned back to the table and bent forward, hands on knees, to see the photo more clearly. It was immediately recognisable; she was looking at the same girl who had been recreated repeatedly in the portraits lining the hallway below. The picture showed the girl walking through a garden that towered over her, one hand extended towards a bloom. Her body was angled away from the camera, but her head had turned to see it, and the round eyes and barely parted lips suggested the photo was a surprise.
She was a pretty child. Adrienne smiled at the photo of her great-aunt. The picture was grainy black and white, as was normal for photos from the turn of the century, but it seemed to capture her personality well. Her thick, dark hair cascaded down her back until it brushed her waist, and she wore a pretty striped dress with a plush b
ow tied around its middle. Her wide eyes and round face hinted at a mix of innocence and mischief, and Adrienne thought she looked like a lively child.
The photo must have been cherished. The frame was ornate and well made and looked heavy. Pictures taken back then were expensive, weren’t they? Edith’s family must have been wealthy to risk a candid shot.
She stood again and scanned the room. The light was failing quickly, dipping her into near black, but she still wanted to understand the crates stacked about the room. She crossed to the nearest one and found the lid had already been cracked off. She lifted it, hoping she wouldn’t collect too many splinters from the rough wood, and squinted inside.
Candles. Dozens of them. Thick and round, they’d been packed amongst wood shavings for protection. Adrienne pulled one out and turned it in her hand. It was unlabelled but looked expensive and was weighty enough to feel like a brick in her hand. She turned back to the candleholder and thought the shades of wax matched.
She carefully placed the candle back in its box and scanned the room. There were dozens of crates, all identical to the one she’d just opened. She crossed to another box and nudged its lid off, just in case, and wasn’t surprised to find more candles.
There must be thousands of them. A lifetime of candles. No, more—generations worth of candles. What an odd investment. Even odder that she burnt one every week, and only one—and with no apparent purpose except to illuminate her own photo.