Dream House Page 8

  I tell him to sit still there and wait for me, and I run inside through the pouring rain. The camera is still on the table where I left it, so I snatch it up and, sheltering it from the rain with my body, hurry back round to Alfred. Before going into the shed I turn it on, empty the memory, and hit the Record button, then push open the door with my shoulder and point the camera directly at his face. He looks at me with a puzzled expression, but when he realises that I have a plan he gazes trustingly into the lens.

  I let the camera film for about thirty seconds, when it suddenly slips from my wet fingers and falls to the floor. I pick it back up, quickly checking for scratches to the body or the lens, but it looks fine. Relieved, I stop recording and play the clip back.

  Nervous to discover what the footage will tell us, I sit myself down next to Alfred and, with a shaky index finger, press Play.

  The screen shows the door opening, and then just an empty shed. Absolutely not a human soul appears, not even for a moment. When the clip hits the twentieth second, I pause it, having seen enough.

  That confirms it, then—Alfred is indeed dead.

  But one word keeps popping into my mind.

  How?

  I look at him, then at the footage, and I can see no logical or plausible connection between the two. How can this be happening? How is it possible? How am I able to see him?

  Pushing against the bubble of confusion that seems to be engulfing me, I ask myself what Alfred must be feeling: he doesn’t want this life, yet he’s stuck here. With me. Why am I the only one who can see him?

  Abruptly, a thought strikes me. Is Avery able to see Alfred, too? I remember our conversation about him, about the legend of the Derfla and the fact that he didn’t want me to get too close to the gardener—but why would he say that if he knew that Alfred was already dead? And how could he not know about Alfred’s death, considering how much he knows about everything else?

  Is he hiding something from me?

  I suddenly feel as though I can’t trust anyone but myself, and at the thought I get a feeling like a stomach cramp that makes me feel strangely nauseous and dizzy—so dizzy, in fact, that I start to stagger, and Alfred immediately jumps up, grabs my arm, and helps lower me down to the dirty shed floor between the piles of chipped plant pots and tins of weedkiller.

  My vision is blurring, growing darker and dimmer by the second, and the only thing I can hear is Alfred’s voice telling me to breathe deeply.

  And then I pass out.

  DAY 15

  WHEN I come back to my senses it’s way past midnight. Alfred is still next to me in the shed, waiting patiently for me to sit up. He’s holding out a glass of water.

  Seeing him like this, I would never have guessed that he was a ghost.

  Wait a minute—if he really is a ghost, how come he can hold things?

  I reach for the glass and grasp it steadily in my right hand, looking at the water trembling in time with my own shivers. As he steadies my head so that I can drink, I can’t help but compare this Alfred to the one that I’d previously met: he’s acting so differently, perhaps relieved by the fact that he doesn’t have to hide from me anymore.

  “So how did it happen?” I ask when I’m feeling better.

  “What would you like to know, exactly?”

  “Everything,” I say, a determined look in my eyes.

  He pauses for an instant, and then begins, haltingly, to tell his tale.

  “It happened nine years ago. It was the seventeenth of August. I remember that it was a really hot day, the temperature was well above the average. Damned hot. I’d taken a day off to stay with Lilly, my beautiful wife. She was in labour, you see. She was only twenty-seven years old, and I was thirty at the time.

  “It was supposed to be a special day, that day—the beginning of our family. And then later I was told the—the sad news by our trusted doctor.”

  He pauses for a moment.

  “The . . . bright side of the story was that I had two wonderful newborns, twins. Seth and Benjamin, we’d decided to call them. I took them back to the house, put them in the nursery that we’d done out. Well, it was Lilly who’d done it out, really.

  “I remember going into their room and watching them sleep. They were all that I had left. The morning after, I went to Lilly’s hometown to start organising the funeral. And when I got back that night, the person that I’d got in to look after Seth and Benjamin had gone. And so had my house. And my two kids . . .”

  His watery eyes show the agonised emotions that reliving these events is stirring up in him.

  “I’m sorry,” I manage.

  “People in the village started to blame me for it all,” he continues. “They started calling me all kinds of awful names, until they came up with the worst one of all—‘the Derfla.’ ”

  For a moment he stops fiddling nervously with the knotted piece of garden twine in his hands, as though his feelings are too much for him to handle. I keep quiet and wait until he’s ready to speak again.

  “I lost all my clients, one after the other, until I was working exclusively for the Bloom family. Reverend Bloom was the only one convinced that I’d been set up, that it wasn’t my fault. That I’d never have done anything like that to my own kids. Didn’t matter that the police had investigated me, didn’t matter that they’d cleared my name. Other than him, nobody else believed it.”

  He takes a deep breath before continuing.

  “But that was enough for me. I was just grateful to have someone on my side, especially somebody as influential as Mr. Bloom was. But then the practical jokes began . . .”

  “Like the picture,” I interrupt him.

  “Like the picture,” he confirms with a nod.

  “People wouldn’t look at me in the street. They’d just . . . just completely ignore me. And the kids! The kids would scream every time they saw me, run away from me. It was awful. In the end, I couldn’t take it anymore. I managed to keep going for four years, and then, five years ago, I decided to end it all,” he concludes.

  “And you’ve spent all of the last five years here?” I ask, curious about what happened.

  “Yes. I’ve never left the garden. And I’ve never gone into the house. I spend all of my time here. This shed has become my home,” he answers.

  “Why the shed? Why not another place?”

  “I’ve come to believe that there are two reasons for that: the first, which is the most obvious, is that I don’t actually have a home anymore. And the second . . . The second is because this is where I took my own life,” he confesses, casting his eyes upwards at the wooden joist from which the rope still hangs.

  “So you’re stuck in here?” I ask.

  “That’s one way of putting it. But even if I could go anywhere else, I wouldn’t leave. I don’t have anywhere else to go,” he says, brushing away a tear with the back of his leathery hand.

  Another question forms in my mind.

  “Don’t ghosts usually cross over, or something like that? Don’t you want to leave this place once and for all?”

  “I wouldn’t mind that, but I can’t leave,” he says.

  “Why not? What’s keeping you here?” I insist.

  “The Blooms were the only ones who were nice to me, and I let them down—I disappointed them. The least I can do is to keep doing what I promised I’d do,” he says, sounding a little bit too much like me for comfort.

  “Don’t you think they would want you to find peace?” I ask.

  “I can’t know that for sure. I have to stay here and do my job,” he replies, as though he has no choice in the matter.

  “I’ll help you,” I offer.

  But—suddenly switching back to the rude brute he was when I first met him—Alfred replies scornfully, “I don’t need your help.”

  I lie on my bed looking up at the pretty ceiling. I wonder why Avery never mentioned Alfred’s death. Is he really unaware of it? But he knows so much about everything else, how could he not know about th
at?

  Beginning to feel upset, as though suddenly certain that he’s lying, I walk to the living room, where the clock tells me that it’s now 10:24 in the evening. I turn the light on and off repeatedly, as Avery told me to do if I needed to talk to him.

  A split second later, the lonely window in the tower of his house, which I can only imagine belongs to his bedroom, comes on in answer, signalling his presence.

  I find my shoes and make my way round to the gate. It’s dark. I have no flashlight or candle to help light my way, and the wind blowing through the trees in the blackness makes the atmosphere sinister, but as I walk I trail one hand along the wall to guide me, and after the usual double left turn, I see the gate.

  Avery isn’t there yet, so I wait impatiently for his arrival.

  I spot him walking down the stairs of his front porch, but he doesn’t see me straightaway. When he reaches the gate, there’s a concerned look on his face, probably due to the urgency of my call, but he also flashes me a brief smile—that is, until he notices my serious expression. He looks at me questioningly.

  “Did you tell me everything about Alfred?” I begin.

  “Yes,” he answers, looking perplexed. “Why?”

  “Do you know what happened to him?”

  “I told you his story,” he says, seemingly sensing what’s about to come.

  “No, I mean after that.”

  “Would you mind being less mysterious?” he asks, mild irritation at the turn our conversation is taking beginning to creep into his voice.

  “Did you know that he died?” I ask finally.

  He pauses for a moment, as though picking his next words carefully.

  “Yes. Five years ago,” he admits.

  My jaw drops in disappointed shock at his admission. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?” I ask. “How could you have left that out? And more importantly, why did you bother telling me to stay away from him, if you knew he wasn’t even really here?”

  “Isn’t he?” he counters.

  My eyes widen with the realisation that Avery might know a lot more than he lets on. Does he know I can see Alfred? Is he able to see him as well? I have to know, but all I manage to mumble in reply is, “I don’t know, is he?”

  Looking disappointed by my attitude, he says no more, so I seize the opportunity to ask another question.

  “Can you see him?”

  He doesn’t answer. He just gives an evasive shrug, which makes me think there’s a chance that, like me, he can.

  By this time he’s looking quite upset. So much so that he starts backing slowly away from me. When I notice, I press him.

  “Why can’t you be honest with me? I know you don’t owe me anything, but you could at least try to help me.”

  The hurt and desperation evident in this last sentence seem to cut through his emotional fragility, and he looks me straight in the eyes and says, “We shouldn’t be talking about this.”

  “Something is going on in this house, and I can’t ignore it, Avery!” I tell him. “Maybe that’s how you’re used to living your life, just watching everything without doing anything about it—but I’m not like that.”

  Realizing how nasty I must sound, I open my mouth to apologize—but it’s too late. Avery has turned his back on me and is walking away without uttering a single word. Tears start welling up in my eyes as I stand there by the gate, trying to control all of my confused emotions.

  Finally, they force their way out as silent sobs.

  DAY 16

  AT 9:20 the next morning I open the door of my bedroom and walk out into the long hall. I feel tired and awful, but I know I can’t hide in bed forever.

  Shuffling like a zombie, I make my way to the kitchen, where I pick up one of the few remaining chocolate bars and take it with me into the living room. I sit there apathetically on the sofa, letting time pass by without me and staring out the windows in the hope of seeing Avery, tormented by yesterday’s spat.

  I know I was in the wrong. I know there was no justification at all for me behaving like that towards him, and that there’s absolutely no excuse for the things I said. I don’t know much about him, after all, yet even though we were complete strangers until a week or so ago, he has repeatedly been there for me.

  I look around the room, feeling an urge to keep myself busy so I can avoid dwelling on Avery too much, and find something that works perfectly: almost hidden away up in the top corner of the bookshelf, I spy the book that Marvin was reading the day we met—Spiritual Relief.

  I toss my snack onto the coffee table, walk over to the bookcase, and jump as high as I can in an effort to reach it. But it’s no use, so I drag over a chair from the dining table and climb up on top of that.

  My fingertips brush against the black leather binding of the book, and I slide it out from the shelf where it belongs. It’s not a big volume, but it feels heavy, and by the look of it I can tell that it’s pretty old. Inside the front cover, the blue title appears again at the centre of the flyleaf, followed by the authoress’s name—Vivien Bisset—and the date it was written, 1948.

  Turning it over, I find a list of the book’s contents: the various chapters, all dealing with spirits, divide the book into sections.

  The first chapter is called “Know the Spirit.” I flick to the page and read the sections into which it is divided: “Rudiments,” “Ghosts,” and “Spectres.”

  A quick skim through “Rudiments” reveals that there are different types of spirits with which we may come into contact during our lives. Some might be ghosts, some might be spectres, but in between these two categories are numerous other subtypes, each differing from the others.

  The book explains that when you come across a spirit, your awareness of its existence means that it notices you as well—until that specific moment, it may not have been aware of your presence at all. Acknowledging each other’s existence is the first step to take in order to understand which type of spirit you are dealing with.

  The page goes on to explain all of the various types, so I skim through it in search of a category that might fit Alfred’s case. When I reach the word “suicidal,” I stop dead in my tracks.

  The paragraph describes how spirits who have died a terrible death—caused, for example, by murder or suicide—should be considered dangerous, as they may be haunting the location in which they passed away, and their frustration at being stuck there and having to re-experience their death over and over again may result in constant anger and cause the ghost to be unwilling to collaborate.

  After the list of all the various other kinds of spirits, a new chapter called “Signs of Haunting” begins, describing all of the various things which might occur when one encounters a spirit. But, already fairly certain now of what Alfred’s situation is, I decide to skip over it.

  The third chapter, titled “Select your Spirit,” is where the authoress explains how a more-than-expected number of spirits might be gravitating towards the same area. Some may be aware of the others in their environs, while some may not be conscious of one another’s presence, their level of awareness being lower.

  A little confused by this last piece of information, I flick forward a few pages and find a section titled “Awareness” where Ms. Bisset talks about how some spirits, depending upon the circumstances of their deaths, may become aware of their situation, while others might remain completely clueless. In both cases, they may either cross over directly or find themselves stuck in a certain place or with a specific person. And for this very reason, it’s vitally important to be able to connect with the spirit you want to help or get rid of without bothering the other ghosts which might be in the same location but unaware of their surroundings.

  The book also underlines how important it is to be extremely careful when talking to a ghost, as it may well be ignorant of the fact that it has ceased to be alive (as in cases of sudden or unexpected death)—and in the rare case that you do upset it, it might react violently.

  I skip some m
ore pages and reach chapter six, which is titled “Talk to the Spirit.” As Alfred didn’t seem too keen to talk to me, this part might come in handy, but I decide to jump forward to chapter ten, the last in the book, titled “How to Help.” Here, the writer gives an exhaustive description of how to assist spirits in crossing over, depending upon their story and type.

  After running over Alfred’s case in my mind, I jot down a list of important points about him, following Ms. Bisset’s indications:

  1) Ghost

  2) Non-malevolent

  3) Suicidal

  4) Aware of his situation

  5) Unwilling to collaborate

  Now that I have a better understanding and a clearer definition of what type of spirit Alfred is, I can search for the section of the chapter that will tell me what to do.

  When I eventually find it, I’m relieved to discover that there is a solution. The authoress writes that good ghosts with a sad past might be holding onto the world of the living as a personal punishment, as if the pain they had suffered in life wasn’t enough and they needed it to continue after their death. Unable to find peace, they are usually unwilling to listen, which makes it harder to help them.

  She explains that the only way for them to let go is to be certain that they have been forgiven and accepted by the people they hurt during their lives.

  I slam the book shut.

  So that’s what Alfred needs in order to cross over—he has to realize that he has been forgiven. But forgiven by who, exactly? His family? They knew he wasn’t a bad person.

  Maybe the reason he’s stuck here is because of this ludicrous story of the Derfla—he isn’t able to forgive himself for it, even though it was other people’s judgement rather than his that brought it about. He just has to realize that he needn’t keep blaming himself for it.

  But how? How can he forgive himself if people won’t believe his story?