Bitterhall by Helen McClory (story books to read .txt) 📕

really think you could be remembering it wrongly. Surely they called the police? And you were six – it’s just, this idea that you played with her, this ghost, with your toys, without getting scared – and you said you wanted to eat her dress and you put it in your mouth.’

‘You find it hard to believe?’

‘Very. Most children would have been sobbing and peeing themselves, I think. Most parents would have broken down the door.’

‘Maybe it was my upbringing. Maybe my parents were different from most people’s. I feel like I asked the cold bitch, “are you looking after me?” And I understood that she was, in her own way. Like, she was confused what I wanted, but that she knew I wanted something from her and tried to give it.’

‘Were you that lonely? Did your parents care that little?’

‘Her energy was positive towards me. Kindly, even. Or at least, not hostile.’

‘You’ve lost me,’ said Daniel, ‘It’s all a lot of granular detail for you to remember after all this time.’

‘So. Well, I don’t have to impress you or convince you. I know what happened to me.’

‘You mostly know what happened to you. You’ve filled in, elaborated and expanded the incident, whatever it was, over the years. Your parents, for whatever reason, are reticent to talk about it. Perhaps an incident of neglect they feel guilty about.’

I crossed my arms and kept quiet.

‘It’s a huge amount to have happened,’ said Daniel. ‘Most hauntings are, like, an unexplained knocking. A cold spot. Some little imaginary face flitting past a window.’

‘The rules of the world as you understand them are innocent until proven guilty,’ I said, ‘that’s your game. The world is innocent of spirits until there’s proof – but the proof you want is not the kind that spirits give. By nature they are ephemeral and leave marks only on the mind.’

‘Of the young or eager to believe. Playful, imaginative minds.’

‘Fine,’ I said, ‘let’s get down off this hill. I’m cold.’

‘Cold bitch . . . ’ said Daniel, with laughter in his voice, ‘it’s colourful though.’

‘Tease,’ I said.

A Star Objects to Its Discovery

By the time we got back to the house, it was getting dark. Tom hadn’t texted me all day long. I knew he would not be there, and sure enough, he wasn’t. I should have gone back to my flat then, but I didn’t know how to leave Daniel.

In the kitchen, the empty chair Tom had been sitting in when we left had a guilty look. Pulled out from under the table, a wooden statement. I believe furniture can be haunted – it is haunted and smeared – even sodden – with the residue of human feelings. Somewhere Tom was guiltily and a little madly walking out alone in the darkening October dusk with the diary in the pocket of his coat. I went and washed my face and Daniel made us tea, which I took with gritted teeth and tipped into a plant pot on the window sill.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘very good.’

‘It is very good!’ I answered. ‘Oh, what was the point of going out? We’ve lost him somewhere.’

‘I don’t think we needed to be minding him,’ said Daniel.

‘This morning you did.’

‘Let’s watch some TV. Badr will be home soon. You’re welcome to stay for dinner.’

The offer was pleasant and full of brittleness underneath, and underneath the brittleness the strain of the day’s events and underneath that, a kind of hope that I would stay and – I think, under all that patina – a little fear too, for our new friendship, and for Tom.

‘What’re you making?’

‘Pasta and cheese,’ said Daniel.

‘So definitive.’

‘Well, that’s me,’ he said.

While the water was boiling in the kettle I opened the back door and went out. I wanted quiet – Daniel followed me.

‘You know, he’ll be back soon. Last night was—’

‘Like a dream. I know,’ Strange intimacies, and now getting dark and all too much. I hugged myself. Even with my jacket on I couldn’t keep back the creeping cold. In the bushes the dark was pooling, beginning to suck out the blue air. I turned and looked at the house. Briefly wondered if it was the house that was haunted, and not Tom. Consider: the age of this place suggests at least one person must have, at some point, died within its walls. Consider: its strange inhabitants and the kind of atmosphere that builds up over time like fat at the bottom of an oven. Old man Minto, the hermit of the downstairs room. Badr, who seemed to tend to the building like it was a kind of mistress, in his polish and adjustments a kind of devotional aspect. Daniel – for all that he swore for scepticism and against the spooky, just look at him. Clearly, a wispish, sensitive person of his type would be drawn to the ley-line feel of this place. Tom was the odd one out. He moved here because the rent was good, housemates seemed nice and they accepted his cat. Does anyone write a PhD thesis on a house? Not, just generally: specifically scale and map out a house like codicologists map the uniqueness of an old book. Does anyone truly have that kind of love in them for a house that is of neither historical or architectural significance? But a haunted house is the vessel and the text.

I wanted to ask Daniel what he thought of that, and what he felt about Tom, but I didn’t have the energy. I took some gulps of the cold air and felt my own feelings clear with it, cold clouds out through chapped lips. Daniel laughed, covered his mouth. He also did not want to hurt me.

‘Moon’s up,’ I said.

Daniel was beside me. He put his arms around me, suddenly.

We stood together in the hug. I hadn’t thought him capable, but he was assured at it. With me in the moment of it as it opened up. I did not cry, but I thought about it.

‘Forget it