Early morning sunlight fell through the flimsy curtains obscuring the French windows, bathing the sitting room in a golden radiance. Amanda lying full-length on the settee, still wearing her jeans but having taken-off her sweat shirt, sleepily felt its warmth gather around her.
The light was not what had awoken her from her sleep though, but the gentle clatter of someone preparing breakfast in the kitchen. There was a light knock on the door and then her father’s voice.
“Amanda are you awake, I’ve got you some breakfast.”
“Yeah, just wait a sec.”
Finding her sweatshirt, she pulled it over her head and, lacking a comb, roughly brushed her hair with her fingers. She called out that she was ready and her father entered holding a tray with a steaming cup of coffee and a bowl of cereals. With a perplexed but concerned look he put it down on the glass table in front of the settee and sat next to his daughter.
Feeling awkward for a few moments, Amanda took sips from the mug of hot liquid, her body hunched up, her head lowered, while her father gazed intently at an ash tray which he moved from side to side.
“What was going on last night Amanda,” Jonathan eventually said. “You were very upset about something.”
“Dad, do you believe in ghosts.”
“I don’t know. I suppose so”
Taking another sip from her coffee, she tried to shape in her mind what she was going to say next. She desperately wanted to talk about her fears but at the same time was wary of scepticism from her father. She too not so long ago, for all of her interest in the occult, would have been cynical.
“Well last night, I saw a ghost.”
She realised she had seen more then a ghost, had stumbled into an enactment from the past. Some experts in psychic phenomenon had postulated that terrible and emotionally charged events in a building’s past were stored in an unknown physical medium or force, hitherto unexplained by physics. This ‘energy’ was then picked up by sensitive or disturbed souls, usually adolescent girls, and experienced as a ghostly event.
Relief suddenly washed over her . She was the conduit of a potentially scientifically provable energy source, not the prey of malign forces beyond the grave.
Before her father could reply to her blunt statement, there was a knock on the door and Moonbeam asked if she could enter. A glower of annoyance briefly crossed Amanda’s face and she was about to say something but thought better of it.
“Of course, come in, I was just having a fatherly chat with Amanda.”
Entering dressed in a beautifully embroidered skirt reaching to her ankles and a tie-die cut off top, her luxurious blonde hair tied back in a long pony tail that fell down her back, she gave Amanda a smile (condescending she thought) and sat herself in the deep armchair beside the settee.
“I hope I am not interrupting anything,” she said, rubbing her hands nervously together. “Is everything alright, Amanda; you seemed a little distraught last night.”
“She’s seen a ghost and I think it’s shaken her up a bit,” Jonathan said, when Amanda remained silent, staring stonily ahead instead.
“Not surprising, this place is supposedly riddled with them,” Moonbeam said, laughing awkwardly. “But I am surprised you’re disturbed by it. I would have thought a mere ghost was tame, what with those ’video nasties’ you’re into.”
“What I saw was anything but,” Amanda replied, refusing to make eye contact with her, but then she quickly changed the subject.
“Can you get the book on haunted houses for me, dad, it’s in my suitcase upstairs.”
“Amanda, if you want that book, why don’t you get it yourself,” her father said, irritation in his voice now.
“I don’t ever want to go in that room again!”
“I’ll go and get it” Moonbeam said resignedly, getting up and walking out.
Shaking his head, Jonathan stood up.
“You know I am in love with Moonbeam don’t you, so you might as well get used to us being together.”
“I just wish she wouldn’t stick her nose into everything I do.”
“She’s only concerned about your welfare, Amanda. She’s got strong opinions about violent films and their influence on impressionable young minds. But she’s a liberal at heart; she won’t stop you watching horror films or listening to metal-just don’t fluent it in front of her.”
Yeah” Amanda said without commitment, shrugging her shoulders.
“Would you like to come for a walk with me to the old church,” Jonathan said, changing tack, his face softening. “You can tell me all about your terrifying experiences on the way.”
“That might be a good idea,” she replied in a deadpan voice, irked that her father was not taking the events of last night seriously. But maybe when he had heard the whole grisly story he would. “I can show you that mirror in the greenhouse if you want.”
“Sure, I’ll have a shower first and then we’ll head off.”
At that moment Moonbeam returned, carrying the hardback book in her hand.
“Well, I don’t know what you two are going to be doing for the rest of the day, but I am going to do some more work on my painting,” she said, passing the book to Amanda. “You know there is something strange about this house-the grounds are full of frogs. I stepped out the front door just before breakfast and they were hoping all over the driveway. I wouldn’t have thought the area was supportive of such a large amount of wildlife. ”
“Maybe it’s the mating season, they must be coming from the pond,” Jonathan said, moving towards the door leading into the main hall. “We’re going to visit the church, the graveyard is supposed to be very picturesque. I’ll meet you in the hall in about an hour's time, Amanda.”
When both her father and Moonbeam had left, she read the chapter on Ashbury Manor while spread out on the settee. By the end of her reading her blood had turned cold.
St. Mary’s with its two cemeteries was everything that Amanda expected of a typically English Medieval church.
Like Ashbury Manor it was as if a small patch of the past had survived the invading banality of modernity. Entering the church grounds via an iron arch supported by reddish brick gateposts, both arms of the arch grasping an elaborate metal lampshade, she escaped Abbey Street’s traffic-ridden confines and was enclosed within a shaded area of timeless yews, toppling tombstones and statuary, loomed over by the bulk of the church tower. One gravestone at its top was shaped into a macabre skull and crossbones. Other symbols of mortality, the hour-glass and the scythe, could be discerned on many of the variously carved stones.
Staring up at the grey higgledy-piggledy brick work of the tower and around at the grass-covered, fungus encrusted gravestones, hung over by the ubiquitous yew trees, she felt she was on the set of one of her favourite Hammer films. All that was needed to give shape to the cheesy gothic gloom was a dry-ice machine to produce floating wisps of mist, and a well-endowed actress, supplied with false fangs and attired in a low-cut, flimsy night-dress, behind one of the tombstones. Except for the sound of rooks clacking, the rustling of the wind in the trees and the not-so distant bustle of the encroaching town, stillness reigned. No one disturbed Amanda and her father in this bubble of melancholic seclusion except for one hunched up figure, an old lady, almost ready to join the dead in their graves, sitting forlornly at a bench and feeding some pigeons.
On the walk from the Manor she had described the experience of the night before. Her father was incredulous but at the same time she could tell he half-believed her. But standing in this rustling zone of age-infested stones, towered over by the stern edifice of the church, their amiable conversation had dried up. Worst of all she now doubted the comforting explanation that this ’ghost’ was merely echoes from the past.
The book about haunted houses had told a lurid tale of murder from the 1890’s. She had read that in the year 1896, a crime was committed by the unlikely figure of Dr Samuel Boswell, a resident of Ashbury Manor-the grisly killing of his eighteen year old daughter, Sarah. The trial had been one of the shocking sensations of the late 19th Century, mainly because Dr Boswell was the physician to Queen Victoria.
The prosecution and defence version of events at his trial were basically identical. The wealthy surgeon had been driven to commit murder by the shame of his unmarried daughter’s pregnancy (the unborn baby’s father was unknown). They agreed on the method of bloody slaughter too. The esteemed Doctor had stabbed Sarah with his own surgical instrument and hid the body that was never found, but leaving the room smeared with copious amounts of blood. But they had differed in their interpretation of Samuel Boswell’s state of mind. The defence pleaded insanity on the behalf of their client, hoping to avoid the death penalty, while the prosecution claimed he was quite sane, although under the influence of drink.
Doctor Boswell had sat through the whole proceedings benumbed as if in a daze and only answered yes and no to questions. But when the verdict was read out declaring his insanity and his immediate confinement to an asylum for the criminally insane, he broke down, sobbing uncontrollable and then screamed he was innocent, pleading that death by hanging was preferable.
On the 25th of April, 1897, by court order, he underwent experimental brain surgery and was confined to a cell for the rest of his life, a mute and passive shell. His wife always stood by her husband, claiming his innocence until the day she died, visiting him once a week. But she occasionally muttered that there was still a dark sin that Doctor Boswell had to atone for, a sin too dreadful to mention. She moved away from Ashbury Manor, the day after the tragedy, to her father’s estate, becoming eventually a reclusive figure. But not before removing the looking glass from her daughter’s room and its abandonment in the greenhouse.
If this was a true account of an appalling crime and if what Amanda had seen in the ghost room was a literal flashback to the past, then why had she not seen Doctor Boswell murdering his daughter? Instead, in her vision, Sarah had been holding the knife to her breast as if to commit suicide, hypnotised by the evil mirror that seemed to have a life of its own. Dreadful though the murder was, it was preferable to a looking glass that was sickeningly alive; a mirror that had such a baleful influence that it could force a young woman to a horrendous suicide, not only of herself but her unborn child.
“The grave of William Barrett is in the New Cemetery,” her father said, breaking through her reverie. “I think it’s this way.”
Earlier in the greenhouse, while her father studied the ruinous mirror, they had decided to visit the grave of the last owner of the Manor, the eccentric recluse Sir William Barrett. Amanda had read about him as well. At the end of Sir Williams’ life he had become obsessed by the darkly magical theories of the 16th century architect and cult leader, George Browne, the founder of Ashbury Manor. Eccentricity turning into madness, he had locked himself away in a forgotten room in the house and slowly starved to death, resorting to self-mutilation to feed himself, or so the inquest into his death reported.
Here was another spirit to add to the list of demented ghosts that supposedly spooked her new home.
Surrounded by tombstones half covered in ivy and grass, their inscriptions mostly illegible, and stone angels with limbs and heads missing, they moved through the Old Cemetery at the back of St Mary’s.
“Dad, do you think it’s a good idea to get that mirror fixed up.”
“Of course it is. It is an extremely valuable antique. It will look great with the others in the library-we’ll put it there.”
“But…” Amanda said, stopping beside a green hummock with its lichen plagued gravestone, the roots of a gnarled oak beginning to encircle it. She stared intently at her father.
For a moment he was unable to look at her, staring vacantly at the iron gate leading into the New Cemetery.
“It was merely an echo of a terrible event from the past. It can’t harm you physically. We can find you another bedroom if you want.
“But if it was an echo, why didn’t I see Dr Boswell kill his daughter and what about the face I saw in the mirror?”
“Maybe these echo’s are mixed up with hallucinations coming from your own mind. Maybe the face was just a trick of the light.”
She jumped when a rook resting on the branch of the oak directly above suddenly cawed, flapping its wings. “I hate this place, dad, I really hate it. I wish we were back in America.”
Her father put his arm protectively around her shoulder and squeezed affectionately, sighing deeply. “Just give it some time. I must admit I still don’t understand why you’re not lapping it all up. You love this stuff; you’ve got so many books on black magic and those horror films you watch…”
“It’s fine in the movies but in real life…You didn’t see what I saw last night, dad.”
Passing through the gate, they departed the sombre world of dilapidation of the Old Cemetery and entered the larger, far more ordered realm of the New. Unlike the Old Cemetery this was mostly unmarked by the ravages of nature, but the pall of melancholic ethereality hung over the gravestones, crosses, scattered table tombs and statues of angels, like a thick curtain.
As if drawn there, they walked towards a secluded corner at the back of the graveyard. Here the ground sloped up towards a rusty iron fence overgrown with holy. Below the fence in deep shade, overhung by clustered yew trees, lay a horizontal stone slab marked by years of plentiful rain fall and the green and pale yellow defacements of fungus. This was the final resting place of Sir William Barrett, plain and ordinary. His name, the dates of his birth and death (1868-1929) and Rest in Peace in chiselled writing, its only inscriptions.
The day had grown increasingly hot, too hot for the leather jacket Amanda wore. She peeled it away from her arms and slung it over her shoulder, looking down at her father, who, crouching on his haunches, was parting the grass that covered the lower half of the gravestone.
“That’s odd, take a look at this.”
Crouching down like her father, her heart skipped a beat when she saw what he had uncovered-a later edition to the carved letters. It was a crude engraving of an eye placed in the lower section of the slab, which had been obscured by the grass and weeds. If you looked closer you could see within its pupil tiny lines like organic tendrils or vines. Beneath the eye were five capital letters spelling out a nonsense word or a set of initials: OOTAO.
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