This week’s flash fiction takes us into the master bedroom of the haunted Davis Hall. Enjoy!
“You wouldn’t make it through a single night. You hate sleeping alone.” John’s gentle teasing had degenerated into blunt “home truths” over the evening, and he laughed off my claim that I could survive on my own if I had to.
“I could if I had to. I could get through a night at Davis Hall, if I had to.”
“Alone?” he scoffed.
“I wouldn’t be alone at Davis Hall, would I?” I batted my eyelids suggestively to turn the argument back into a game.
He held me to it, though. He wanted me to back down as usual.
When I wouldn’t, he argued with me all the way to the preserved hulk of Davis Hall the following evening, listing reasons I couldn’t possibly go through with it.
Nobody ever stayed the night.
We had planned on going to brunch the next morning, I wouldn’t be in the mood after a bad night’s sleep.
I’d only scare myself.
What if the ghost really was real?
I didn’t need to prove anything.
But I did. And I’d had butterflies all the way over, until I realised that he was scared, too.
All I had to worry about was getting through one night with a ghost lurking behind the curtains of the master bedroom at Davis Hall. But John would have to deal with the fact that if I could do this, I might be able to do a lot more without him, too.
John offered to come to the door with me, but I refused and pushed my way through the bushes that overgrew the gap in the fence and made my way to the door. I waited for John’s car to roar as he sped home. Instead, he sat in the car, his quiet presence pulling insidiously at me as the damp wooden front door pushed silently open and I entered the hallway, which smelled of green moss and damp plaster.
I had my purple sleeping bag under my arm, with a rucksack full of extra blankets and clothes, a book, a camping light, a flashlight, and a tin of pepper spray still pinned between its cardboard backing and plastic bubble.
In my Thermos was green tea, and there were lettuce, and egg sandwiches in a night-sky blue Tupperware box, and packets of new biscuits.
I staked my claim to the master bedroom with them, deciding that a space near the door, with a good view of the curtains, was mine for the night, and arranged my items like totems around me.
It was a late summer evening, and the light was fading, blurring the shadow of tree branches as they beckoned me to come out to the garden to play. The curtains were tied back to either side of the window, and I had wedged the door open to make sure I had a clear run to the front door in case I needed it.
I took a lonely tour of Davis Hall, wondering how many people had been here over the years to explain the piles of bitter-smelling dry leaves in the centre of the empty rooms. I took my shoes off when I arrived back at camp, which is when I heard a car driving away.
My original idea had been to take energy drinks and caffeine tablets to stay awake until I realised it would be better to sleep. Let the ghost appear behind his shroud of curtain while I slept until the alarm woke me at seven the next morning.
It was supposedly one of Mrs Davis’ lovers who hid all night behind the curtains of the Hall, having been driven to suicide when she stayed with her husband. But he did nothing other than lurk behind the drawn curtains, holding his vigil over the deserted room.
When I woke in the submarine blue of my camping light during the night, the curtains were closed. I woke confused from my surroundings by the pain in my back from sleeping on the floor. Between the sag of the drawn curtains and the floor, two neat black leather shoes pointed at me. The ghost had not pulled the curtains tight and a black gap about an inch wide promised to reveal the ghost if I cared to look deep enough, close enough, into it. I stayed where I was, listening to my harsh panicked breathing, hoping the illusion would reverse itself, or that I’d fall asleep.
It felt like ages.
When I tried holding my breath, I realised the sound was coming from behind the curtains, a strained breathing sound, regularly uneven, impatient.
I kept my eye on the dark gap. Whatever had happened—whatever he’d done to himself—he didn’t want to be seen, and the room was empty with nothing else for him to hide behind if I kept him in view.
I pinched the mound of flesh at the base of my thumb to avoid falling asleep again.
Several times, though, the sly squeak of leather woke me as he tensed to move.
A chill woke me as the dawn lightened the darkness in the room. Though the curtains were still drawn, the shoes were gone and the gap between was empty, simply a grey gap.
I groped around for my sleeping bag, wondering at the cold. I couldn’t see the sleeping bag in the murk and pushed myself up on my elbows, to see where it had got to..
In the corner behind me, some odd rectangle shape moved.
Even as I turned towards it, the leather shoes poking out from the mouth of my upside down sleeping bag squeaked as the ghost closed the distance between us in a rush.
