The Ghostly Past

Chapter 15

"So I'm going out of town for the weekend." Harriet said, perched on Clara's bulky wooden desk, swinging her cherry coloured boots back and forth. "I promised I'd go home and see the parents, so I'm catching a train after I grab my bags. My grandma is coming apparently, so I have to not be such a geek. Oh and I have to sing for her too."

"Singing is your life." Clara pointed out, head deep in the score of a Mahler symphony. It was Friday. "Have you performed this before?" She asked, holding up the hefty book of Symphony No 4, gesturing at the soprano solo of the fourth movement.

"University Orchestra." Harriet nodded, "Didn't enjoy it. German is not my thing. Give me French or Latin or Italian to sing in any day. I just can't get my tongue around German. Ask Laura, she's fluent, she'd do it." She rummaged through her phone for her friend's number. "And it doesn't matter if singing is my life. It's just so cringe inducing to stand in front of this woman I barely know and her croaking out platitudes while I sing at her, like a performing monkey."

"You're over thinking it." Clara smirked. "Enjoy it. Free food."

"I suppose so. What are you doing this weekend? Anything death defying this week?"

"You're funny." Clara rolled her eyes, packing books into her briefcase. "I don't know."

"You're not seeing the beautiful Max Henderson, are you?"

"Harriet!"

"Oh come on, the two of you are always looking at each other." Clara thought of the rose she still had in water in her room, even if it was fading now. Harriet held her hands up. "Okay, okay, I'm going! I'll catch you on Monday." She sloped out of the office.

The truth was, Clara knew exactly what she wanted to do. She just wasn't sure that she would be permitted to do it. She needed to research. After the memories, the weird dreams, everything she'd seen, she needed to understand what the heck was going on in Gloomsdale.

As she walked out of the building, she called Leo.

The next morning, after another night of strange fitful dreams that melted away as she came to, she hiked her way across Grey Gardens, laptop in her bag. It had taken some amount of pestering but Leo had spoken to his father. He met her on the front steps with Jess. "You are the most persistent creature I've ever met."

"He means it as a compliment." Jess laughed, "We're heading out for the day. There are no decent clothes stores anywhere near here."

"Have fun." Clara laughed. "Thank you," She addressed Leo, "I appreciate this."

"My dad thinks I'm nuts letting you in, but he won't bother you. The staff know to let you in and out. I don't know what you're looking for though?"

"Me neither." Clara said determinedly. "But I'll know it when I see it."

She stepped into the wide hallway, her eyes widening. She knew this place. She had been here before, placed her hat on that table, stared at those paintings, paced back and forth across this floor. The ghost in the frock coat had been here, and it unsettled her. She took a few tentative steps up the stairs and then turned around. From that angle she saw from Amelia's perspective, seeing the other little girl Eve, kissing the boy in that corner.

A fit of shivers broke out across her.

Leo had described the way to the library but even if he hadn't, she just knew it herself, instinctively. The hallways felt absurdly familiar, the old paintings, the wooden floors, knowing without thinking that the next step would creak.

Was all of this what Max had described to her? She wasn't sure. Her dream about being the girl Amelia didn't make sense in that respect. Amelia's ghost had never touched her. And then there were the other dreams too, about being the man in that strange foreign land.

This was why she needed to research, to try and make some sense of all the craziness.

The library was beautiful, if dark and musty. The walls were lined with deep mahogany shelves, crammed with books both old and modern, from crumbling leather bindings to the latest publications in their glossy covers.

There were several desks, with curved glass reading lights, and cabinets spread across the centre, their glass cases firmly locked.

Incongruously, there was a desk with a sleek desktop computer on it, a printer and photocopier beside it.

"Okay." She murmured, loading her laptop up on one of the desks. "Let's get to work." There were old village newsletters in bundles boxed up, books of council meetings records from several centuries, old journals and letters. It was a historian's dream and she didn't have a clue where to start.

The latest minutes of the village council from the last two decades weren't accessible, it seemed so she'd have to look to the past. She started scanning through book after book of meeting notes. They were tedious in the extreme, one after another, domestic disturbances, flower shows, baking competitions and village fetes. Noise complaints, reports of licentious behaviour in young people to be discouraged. The same petty themes echoed over and over. Some things clearly never change, she thought.

Finally in the book of 1982, she found an emergency council meeting pertaining to the spiritual problem. So it had happened then too, she noted, taking a photograph of the entry and making notes. The entry was limited but it imposed a curfew and the use of flashlights throughout the town, as well as reinstating the town watch until the crisis passed.

She moved further through the entries. There were meetings regarding several deaths in the area from exposure. Then there was a quiet, understated piece in a new hand, recording the deaths of four members of the community and the arrest of two others for murder. "With this," the writer had put, "the cycle ends once more and we pass the motion to lift the village curfew until the cycle begins once more."

There it was again, the mention of a cycle. She put the book back on the shelf and started reading again. It took decades worth of books, as the next example she found of a curfew was back in the 1940's. It was followed again by only one recorded death from exposure and then a number of deaths of other village residents before the curfew was ended.

It took her all day, save for a brief trip downstairs to have some lunch. No one bothered her. She heard occasional footsteps but otherwise the house was silent and still. By the evening, when Leo and Jess returned she was still poring through several hundred years of council notes but had made a comprehensive list, going back to 1830 of various curfews and the events following them.

With the heavy curtains closed and the dim lamps on, she hadn't even realised the time until Leo walked in. "You're still here?" He frowned, "it'll be dark outside soon."

"What?" She looked up, cracking her neck. "Wow, that's insane."

"Go home!" He ordered her. "How is this your idea of a good Saturday?"

"Will do." She sighed, standing. Her legs wobbled beneath her for a moment before carrying on past him, laptop in its case. "I really appreciate this, Leo."

"You'd probably break in and do it anyway, so I'm probably saving myself a broken window." He joked.

"Can I come back tomorrow?"

"Are you serious?" He stared at her incredulously. "Sure, why not. The library is open to you. Pop in when you need to."