Ghosts of Oaklight Hall

Chapter 2

Chapter 2I was left alone for fifteen minutes or more before Greaves finally came and retrieved me. He led me up narrow stairs and winding corridors and made no offer to carry my bag for me. The only light was the single candle he held, and I had to remark upon the unlit gas mantles.

“Been cut off,” he said with a despairing look at me that was the closest he had yet come to comradeship.

At last we came to a broad corridor with black beams overhead and uneven floors that reminded me of one of those crooked houses they have at funfairs. There was a single window at one end covered by a faded curtain. One of the panes was cracked, and a stiff draught blew through it, making the thin drapery flutter. My room was at the very end, with a low lintel so that I had to duck to enter. Greaves grunted something about breakfast that I couldn’t catch, then left me to it.

The room was small and shabby, with peeling chintz wallpaper. The outside wall featured a narrow crack, which ran ominously from floor to ceiling. There was a tiny hearth, again unlit, through which a lonely draught was blowing. I looked at it suspiciously for a moment, but no unexpected words flowed from it. What furniture there was, consisted of a bed, a dresser covered in old-fashioned carvings, and on it, a single candlestick. A withered aspidistra pushed forgotten into a corner was the room’s only concession to homeliness. Underneath the narrow bed was a cracked chamber pot that I would have to be very careful about sitting on.

I consoled myself that the room was least the size of the captain’s cabin aboard Steadfast and had a better view. Rubbing my elbow on the window to make a porthole in the grime, I could make out the lake, and beyond that, even in the evening gloom that had now settled, I could make out the nearby Derbyshire hills.

A sudden knock at the door startled me. Barely waiting for me to answer, a figure entered that I had not yet met, carrying a bowl of hot stew on a tray.

“Albert told me you were a guest here but didn’t know if you had eaten.”

“Albert?” I said rather stupidly.

“Mr Greaves; my husband,” she explained, putting the tray down on the dresser. “I’m Mrs Greaves, but you can call me Miss Ruby; that’s what everyone calls me. It was my stage name back in the day when I was in the music halls. I used to be quite well known; perhaps you’d heard of me?”

I shook my head. The woman seemed to want to make up for the others in the house not wanting to talk to me by talking at length.

“Oh well,” the woman went on. “That was before Mr Greaves made an honest woman of me!” she said, waggling her wedding ring finger in front of me, directly under my nose. “I’m the housekeeper here. Housekeeper, cook, bottle washer, most things really!” she said, giving a surprisingly deep laugh for a woman.

Although the smell of the stew called to me, I took a moment to take in her appearance. Her hair was piled into one of those double doughnut shapes, with the smaller one on top, and bound together with a lethal-looking hatpin that would have served any east-end gang-lander proud. Something about the hair screamed wig, but what it was that made me think so, I couldn’t say. Unusually too for a domestic servant, she wore thick makeup as if her skin suffered from some sort of complaint she wished to conceal.

“Well, eat it up!” she said, indicating the stew and wiping her hands on her apron. I looked again for a chair, but there was none, so I ate standing at the dresser. The woman made no move to go. Hoping, I suspected, of learning more about my mission here.

“Albert tells me you’ve come up all the way from London,” she said as I began spooning the very good stew into my mouth, confirming my thought. But that was all right, there was little about my business that couldn’t be guessed, and frankly, I appreciated the friendly company.

“That’s right,” I said, between mouthfuls.

“Will you be here long, do you think? Just so I can plan the meals ahead, you understand.”

“Perhaps a few days,” I went on. “To have a look over the books.” The books had not been professionally examined for years, not since the decline in Lord Oaklight’s mental health had forced the remaining family members to put the estate’s finances under the control of the Trust. The will stipulated that Lord Oaklight’s heir would not officially inherit until the age of thirty. My father seemed to think this was a simple job and would make a good initiation for me into our own family business.

Having almost drained the stew, this seemed like a good time to do a little digging of my own.

“I’ve not yet met the new Lord Oaklight; when would it possible to pay my respects?” I put my spoon down into the now empty bowl with a clink.

“Oh no, sir. That won’t be possible,” said Miss Ruby, pursing her lips. “Young Master Matthew sees no one. He’s most strict about it. Suffers from his nerves, you understand.” I had heard the young master was a bit of a recluse, and opinion around the office was that he was as cracked as the rest of the family. I imagined one of those effete wasters I saw at university before I’d had enough of it. Spoilt toffs, flouncing round, with more money than they knew what to do with, getting drunk on champagne at three o’ clock in the afternoon and declaiming Emerson or Whitman under the Dean’s window at midnight. However, part of my brief was to establish whether the new Lord Oaklight was within his wits and likely to succeed to the family fortune.

“I really would like to meet him,” I persisted.

“Well,” she havered, not wishing to argue. “I’ll ask him. But I wouldn’t get your hopes up. The young lordship never goes out and hardly ever talks to his poor sisters. I have to take him his meals, as he won’t come down to dine with them.”

“What, never?” I said incredulously. I could only too well imagine not wanting to spend time with one’s family. But never leaving the house seemed difficult to believe.

Miss Ruby shook her head firmly. “Oh no. The young master suffers from a most grievous affliction of the nerves. Any attempt to leave the house sends him into a terrible palsy. Awful to behold for the poor boy,” she said, wiping her eye. “I was his nanny, you know,” she added as if this explained her distress.

“And how long has he been like this?” I was pretty sure that the fellow had gone to university. If I guessed his age aright, he should still have been there.

“Two years, sir. Shortly after he started at Cambridge. It was terribly sad seeing him brought home. Lady Flora was fur…terribly upset, to see his career cut short so.”

There seemed no point in pursuing it further. I was determined to find my way to the young master one way or another, but it could wait another day. I pushed the tray with its empty dish towards her to show that I was finished.

“Thank you, that was really very good. And very kind of you to think of me. I would’ve happily joined you and saved you the trouble of bringing it to me.”

“Oh, no, sir. That wouldn’t be right, a gentleman like yourself eating with the domestics like. That wouldn’t be proper at all. I always had to take his lordship’s meals up to him as well as the young master’s, so it’s no trouble.” She gave a slight sigh as if the feeding of Lord Oaklight brought back memories.

“Lord Oaklight, was he trouble?” I prompted, remembering the tale of him being fed from a nosebag and biting the ankles of the unwary.

“Well, the old gentleman, sir,” she began guiltily, as if anxious not to decry her late employer. “No one else would take him his meals,” she went on, then lifted her skirts, not in impropriety but in explanation, to reveal calf-length leather boots that showed clear signs of having been gnawed around the ankles. “His lordship was the very devil for hiding behind the doors when I brought him his meals, sir.”

After Miss Ruby had gone, I was left alone in the cramped room with nothing to do but prepare for an early night. The doors of the dresser were stiff but came open with an effort. I plonked my Gladstone bag inside and pushed the door to but found that it would no longer close, so dropped it at the end of the bed instead. Looking closer, I guessed the dresser to be centuries old and left here when it was no longer fashionable.

Finding some matches on the windowsill, I lit the candle and bent to examine it more closely. The carvings on it looked hand-done, of forest animals and human faces with lolling tongues that in the flickering candlelight, I found frankly disturbing. I found it strange why people didn’t dump old junk like this and buy modern Victorian furniture.

There was a pitcher, stood within a washbasin, but no water. It seemed too much effort to go downstairs and fetch some, so I decided to do without for one night. I took another look at the cracked chamber pot but couldn’t bring myself to trust it not to leak through the floorboards into the rooms below. So, I did the only thing a gentleman could do in the circumstances and pissed in the flower pot.

The aspidistra looked dead. Its soil was cracked and shrunken away from the sides of its pot. The pot itself was ugly, of syrupy red and chipped gilt, with a couple of daft-looking nymphs painted on either side. I had been on the train for hours, and I have to say, I had a full bladder, so gave the plant the best watering it had probably had in months.

There was no curtain against the window, and it was not quite dark outside. But that was okay by me. Since the loss of the Steadfast, I had preferred not to sleep in complete darkness. I heard a rumble of distant thunder, although I could see no sign of clouds from the window.

The thunder rumbled again, reminding me again of the shell bursts around Steadfast. I remembered again my terror as black water rose silently in the turret. It often surprised people that as a navy man I had never learned to swim and possessed a mortal dread of drowning. But the only open water near where I had grown up had been the Thames, and only a complete i***t would swim in that. So, I never learned.

The thunder rumbled once more, though further off. The distant booming finally fading from the sky, if not my imagination, as I snuffed out the candle and climbed in between the cold and slightly musty sheets for the night.

* * * *

I slept soundly, for I don’t know how long, only to wake with the room in darkness and the sure knowledge that I was not alone.

I lay still, my face inches away from the wall. I held my breath, but as yet, there was no sound, only the dread certainty of a presence behind me. You may think me coward for failing to turn around and confront the visitor, but I could not. I had no need to turn or even shine a candle’s light upon the visitor. I smelled cordite and seawater, just as I had in those last minutes inside our gun battery.

To my fear and shame, I had no doubt of whose presence now approached me. His name was Kit, and he had been my man aboard the Steadfast.

I heard a sound—the slap of bare feet across the floorboards. The attack by the American navy had caught us on the hop, and there had been no time to put on our shoes. Then I heard the soft drip of saltwater falling from sodden clothes. The creature or phantom, call it what you will, came closer to the side of my bed. My breathing became laboured as I struggled to resist the thing, knowing it willed me to look at it, but I would not. Could not. Many times it had visited me since Steadfast had sunk beneath the waves.

But why here? I had suffered no such appearance for many months and had hoped that its visitations were at an end. I would never have feared that it would follow me here. Unless I dreamed it? There had been several moments lately that had brought my old ship to mind. The subconscious plays tricks, quietly recording the events of the day, only to play them in lurid form while we sleep. But no, this I felt sure was no dream. Its presence was as real as anything I saw whilst awake. I could feel the creature’s lifeless eyes boring into me. Demanding that I speak to it, plead forgiveness for why I had left him to die…but I could not.

At last, I heard again the sound of its feet padding across the floorboards as the creature walked away. I held my breath. If I turned now, would I see a trail of water across the floor, just as the phantom passed through the solid wall? I waited for almost a minute until I could be sure the spectre had passed, then lay back flat, gasping and sweating. Forcing my breathing to slow, I gradually calmed myself, until at last, I slept once more.

It must have been in the small hours of the morning that I awoke once more. More sounds, this time of a determined scratching, which I first thought to be a rat. But this was no furtive scampering; this was regular and frantic, as of broken fingernails clawing at stone. I lay and listened to it for almost a minute, trying to pinpoint its source. I felt no fear this time, only curiosity and an annoyance that it seemed I was destined to have my sleep continually interrupted.

I sat up in bed, turning my head every which way, but although the sound became ever more insistent, I could determine no particular direction to it. As I listened, I felt the night air bring goosebumps to my back; I had nothing on after all but a pair of drawers.

Then the sound changed. Against the sound of scratching, I heard the sound of water. The sound of running water gradually grew stronger. The scratching noise seemed to fade into it. I put my ear against the wall, thinking a pipe had burst, allowing me to hear the water but not to see it. Some instinct told me the water was close but somehow unreachable, but I cannot say how I knew this. The scratching that had woken me could still just be heard but was weaker now, as if it sensed that the rivulet of water that ran and gurgled so merrily could never now be reached.

The sound of water began to fade, but even as I listened, came yet another sound, a creak against floorboards. I confess, I swore. Was my time here meant to be beset with phantoms?

The sound came again, and this time, even with my damaged hearing, I could pinpoint the direction as coming from outside my door. I leapt up from the bed, determined that this was one phantom that I would confront. I was still in my underpants as I crossed the room to the door. Modesty hardly seemed something that I should be concerned about with some creature from beyond the grave, if that is what it was.

I yanked open the door, nearly pulling it from its hinges in my determination to confront the spectre. And saw nothing. Another creak, and I stepped out into the corridor, feeling an icy blast from the broken windowpane at the corridor’s end.

It was then that I saw it. The spectre, if spectre it was, stood in mid-turn as if about to flee along the corridor to its right, its arms held out in pirouette. It was the figure of a young man dressed in a simple nightgown, the draught from the window blew the garment out around him, even as he turned. A little starlight made it through the window, past the flapping curtain and for a moment, I saw the figure’s naked form in clear silhouette through the almost transparent fabric of its gown.

For a moment, I stood transfixed, taking in the smooth lines of his legs and curve of his behind. For an instant, I even thought I saw the outline of his c**k before the figure’s movement turned him away from me as he made to move along the adjacent passageway. I felt a familiar twitch with my underpants. If spectre this was, then it was undoubtedly an attractive one.

Ignoring my arousal for a moment, I made after it, determined that I would establish if this creature truly was of this world or the next. The spectre seemed to hesitate as it too perused me, and I gained the advantage on it, even as it paused. I locked one hand on the creature’s arm, and although cold, it felt solid. It tried to pull away from me, giving me a moment to study its face. His hair was cut short at the back and sides in the American fashion. It spilled in soft curls across his high forehead, although in the pale light from the window, I had no idea what colour it was.

Restrained by my grip, I felt my phantom turn back towards me. I saw full lips open as if to speak. Was that living breath upon his lips? It seemed I was already half imagining kissing him. However, there was little time to ponder it as in the next moment; I felt the phantom’s right knee connect with my groin.

“Ahh f**k!”

I cursed and doubled over in sudden agony. My grip now broken, I clutched at my throbbing balls, tears leaking from my eyes and a strangled whimper emitting from my throat, something I could not have managed since puberty.

Taking advantage of my incapacity, the creature, I no longer had any doubts about its corporality, disappeared down the darkened passageway before me. No longer willing or capable to chase after it, I somehow staggered back to my room, walking slightly crabwise and cradling my bruised testicles to spare them any contact or abrasion.

With no water to bathe myself, I pulled open the window and lay back on the bed with my legs wide, letting the blessed night air do the job of healing. The sound that I had heard before had resumed, though softer than before. I fell asleep to the sound of scratching and the slightly hypnotic sound of running water.