The Horror of Halloween Night in a Haunted Home (Part Two)

It was happening as I knew it would. A terrible ghost, spook or spectre was going to make its way up the stairs, carrying its heavy chains behind it, moaning uncontrollably and wearing one of those cloths wound round their heads that ghosts don’t seem to wear anymore.  

No, I told myself, trying to search for some resolve inside. I had fought far more concrete threats in my time in the navy. I would not fall foul to a floating phantom!

I turned into the stairs that led down unto the wide hall below. There was nothing there. No creaking or shuffle of any kind. I found I could hear my own course breath in the (eerie) silence.

Then I realised I had been holding my breath for a few moments now.

‘Would Sir like some tea?’

I cried out in one sharp yelp and slammed myself against the wall, dislodging a tapestry hung across it. Slowly lifting the tapestry from my head, I saw a thin sallow-cheeked woman of middling years, carrying a tray with a china tea set on top. Her hair of jet was pulled back rigidly in a bun and she wore a simple black dress with a white apron. She didn’t look the most jolly of folk but she was clearly flesh and blood and so I glad to see her.

‘Who are you?’ I asked, attempting to look respectable whilst removing a tapestry from my head.

‘I am Mrs Pretorius,’ she said. ‘The housekeeper.’

 I sighed with relief. Damn that mysterious man; he could have told me he had hired some help.

‘Where was sir going?’

‘The lava-’ I began, and then realised I didn’t need to anymore. It was quite the scare.

I walked past the woman and back into the drawing room. My cheeks were now flushed with embarrassment at the new conviction that I had been a fool to believe in such superstition.

‘So you’ve hired a housekeeper, I see? I asked Silas as I returned to his company.

‘I have?’

‘Oh, don’t start the ‘my past is enigmatic’ tune. If it’s now going to include what you did yesterday, then it really is very absurd.’

‘My dear Smedley,’ he said. ‘I really don’t know what you are speaking of?’

‘Your housekeeper, Mrs Pretorius,’ I divulged. ‘I …bumped into her outside. Severe-looking woman. I suppose you think she fits the ambience of the house.’

‘Smedley, I have not hired a housekeeper of any kind.’ I could tell by his earnest eyes he was sincere.

‘Then who…?’ I darted outside into the hallway. The woman was gone.

‘I daresay you’ve had an encounter with a remnant of this house’s own dark past. That’s why it and I get along so well, you see.’

I had already left the room before he had finished his sentence.