Barkley House

1.1

"I really don't think it's a good idea to be seen showing interest in a house we're planning to burn down," Jasper said as Gabs eased the van into a slightly too small parking spot outside of the Bronson Valley's sole real estate agent's office.

"It'll be fine, I know what I'm doing." Gabs put on the parking brake and jumped out before Jasper even got his seatbelt off and dashed into the rustic little building. It was small, just like everything else in Bronson Valley, including the parking spaces.

Jasper muttered something to himself and followed her in. She was already at the desk talking to the receptionist.

"...saw a photo on your website, it looks exactly like what we're wanting."

The receptionist was looking skeptically at the young woman. She was not the picture of a first home buyer. She looked to be in her early twenties, her head was shaved on one side and the rest of her hair was electric blue, and she had a whole cluster of piercings in one ear.

When Jasper joined her at the counter the receptionist raised one eyebrow. Jasper was even less the picture of the first home buyer, with his badly cut hair and badly outdated op-shop clothes.

Altogether they made a suspicious picture, but they both stared her down until she looked away, embarrassed. "I'll just let the agent selling it know you're here. I think she's in."

She got up and hurried upstairs.

A couple of minutes later a middle aged woman in a smart skirt suit hurried elegantly down the stairs. She held out her hand for Jasper to shake. "Amanda Vintner," she said, "pleased to meet you."

"Jasper Devereaux. This is, um, Gabriel.” He gestured to his partner, whose last name he suddenly couldn't remember, and who was looking miffed at being passed over for a handshake by the agent.

Amanda Vintner was professional enough not to show any skepticism at their appearance. She also must have caught Gabriel's look, because she held out her hand to her.

"I hear you want to look at Barkley House?"

"That's the one. Looks like a nice light renovation job."

"Yes, it was last renovated in 2005, so it's been a little over a decade. It could use a fresh coat of paint and some interior decorating. The kitchen hasn't been renovated since 1988, so for a really modern look you'd be wanting to replace that as well, but considering it was first built in 1890 it's in extraordinary condition."

Amanda led them over to a reception area with a couple of couches while she described the house, and they sat across from her. "I assume you'll be wanting to view the house before making any decisions."

"Of course. Would it be possible to see it today?"

"We could go soon if you like. I'd just need to pop upstairs to get the keys and quickly finish some paperwork, would you mind waiting five minutes?"

"Not at all, that would be great."

"We can just go over the road and grab a coffee while we wait," Gabs said, standing.

"Sure, I'll meet you over there in five or ten minutes?"

1.2

Jasper and Gabriel followed Amanda's sensible little hatchback in their van, Gabriel still sipping a latte despite claiming it was disgusting. They wound their way out of town and up into the hills where there were larger estates; vineyards, orchards, some wooded areas, a couple of small mansions with large grounds. It was about a twenty minute drive to Barkley House, which was an old manor house. It was about half a mile back from the main highway, off a little asphalt road and then a long gravel driveway that wove through a small pine grove.

It looked well for a house that had been largely uninhabited for the past sixty years. This was thanks to the excellent value of the property and the craftsmanship of the manor itself: Every few years a brave homebuyer who didn't buy into ghost stories would purchase the house for a song, begin renovations, and within six months sell it for less than they paid for it when the noises and visions became too much.

The history of the house was full of tales of missing pets, writing on the walls in blood which never showed up in photographs, the sound of screaming and crying after dark, phantom fires. They had come across a particularly interesting account of a woman with a lantern whose light revealed secrets; where its light fell it showed the past, moments best forgotten.

They pulled up in a gravel parking area out front. There was a separate double garage which looked like it might have once been a coach house and stable, but the garage doors and modernisation had stripped it of most of its character.

"It's even more lovely in person, it's it?" Amanda asked as they climbed out of their vehicles.

"It's beautiful," Jasper agreed sincerely.

"Come on, I'll show you around." Amanda led them up a set of stairs onto a porch with carved wooden railings and fitted a key into a discordantly modern lock. "The most recent owner upgraded the security of the house. There are locks on all of the windows as well as new deadlocks like these on the four external doors."

The interior was dusty and smelled a little musty, and it felt huge and cavernous without any furniture in it. Amanda led them through the downstairs first; dining room, living room, kitchen, laundry room, bathroom. "In the seventies the owners at the time upgraded the whole house with indoor plumbing and gas water heating. They're the ones who got power lines run out to the building as well; you have them to thank for the working electricity. The property includes a water tank fed by rainwater from the roof and a septic tank just down in the valley."

The kitchen looked retro; lots of chrome and horrible pink patterns. Gabs pointed to the pink stovetop and mimed barfing while Amanda was busy unlocking the back door to show them the yard. "There's a walled area here. It's part of the original structure. The first owners kept goats on the property, so they fenced in their garden here to keep in safe. It would be good for if you have a pet you don't want running off into the woods."

The garden was overgrown and packed with thistles. It would probably be best served by a small, contained fire and starting again from scratch.

On the second floor there was an office, another bathroom, three large bedrooms and a huge master bedroom with an ensuite. There was a steel set of stairs that led up into the attic, which was entirely empty aside from the dust and spider webs, and another set of wrought iron stairs which spiraled up into a tower room, which was large enough that it could be another bedroom. "Over the years this room has been used as a library, an observatory, an office... even once very briefly a rec room. One of the previous owners though this place might make a good bed and breakfast, but it was too remote."

Jasper wandered around the tower room, staring out of each of the windows. "It gets a fantastic view, doesn't it?"

1.3

Finally they were done with the tour, just as Gabs was starting to get bored. Amanda insisted on telling them every single detail of the manor's history of renovations, and consistently failed to mention why any of the owner had left. Not a single mention of the ghost stories.

Gabriel made sure she was the last one out, and she left a post-it-note with a small symbol drawn on it in sharpie stuck to the inside of the door. Amanda locked up behind her.

Then they gathered in the carpark next to the van. "I hate to ask this," Jasper told Amanda hesitantly, "But it's a beautiful house, and the owner isn't asking even half of what it's worth. It makes me wonder..."

"What's wrong with it?" Amanda said, grimacing. "There's nothing wrong with it. It's just... it's an old house, and it's isolated. People find it spooky. Whenever someone puts it back up for sale they say they've been hearing noises at night, scratching and whispering and so on. It's just the wind, but you know how people are."

"Yes, well, we don't believe in ghosts," Gabriel lied.

"That's very sensible."

"Has anyone ever died in the house, to spark ghost stories?"

"Well, I've looked through the manor's history all the way back to 1905. There's been one elderly lady pass away in her sleep in 1954, but aside from that nothing. No murders, no suicides, no one dying mysterious deaths."

"What about before 1905?" Gabs asked. "You said it was built in 1890. That's fifteen years unaccounted for."

"As far as I've been able to find out, the house was largely unoccupied during that time. The records aren't well preserved for that time period here. I know it was originally built by the Barkley family, who ran a very successful furniture business. All I can find reference to in the old town newspaper for why they stopped living there was a brief mention of the Barkley's eldest son leaving for New York. My guess is they decided they didn't like the country life as much as they thought they would."

Gabs nodded. "Well, thank you very much for the tour, Miss Vintner, would you mind if we took a night to think it over and stop by tomorrow with our final decision?"

"Of course. I'll be in any time after nine tomorrow, although I am showing a young couple a house in town after lunch."

"We'll come in in the morning then. Thank you again."

1.4

They followed Amanda's car all the way back to town and then headed back to their motel room for the afternoon. They didn't bother unpacking much. They weren't planning on staying for long. They spent the afternoon sitting on the bed playing a card game, then when the light started to go they walked around town until they found a burger joint that didn't look too grubby and bought themselves some dinner.

"When should we head out?" Jasper asked, carefully wiping burger grease off his fingers with a paper towel.

"Wait until it gets quiet out. But not after, say, ten, people would think it was suspicious and notice us if we're the only ones on the road." She didn't bother with the paper towel; she wiped her hands on her trousers then her face with her sleeve.

After dinner they put away the cards and brought out Gabriel's laptop. Jasper still didn't really understand how it worked, but he definitely appreciated how useful they were. They went through the plan one last time, looked over blueprints of the house they'd found on a historical architecture website, then changed into their work gear.

Gabs didn't travel light: a tac vest covered in pockets, a belt covered in pouches, cargo pants with their pockets stuffed. She had a little sack hanging off her belt which was intended to hold climber's chalk, but instead contained a large amount of salt and rosemary.

Jasper’s preparations, by contrast, included pulling a black hoodie on over his t-shirt and tying his hair back.

This time Gabs let Jasper drive, since the road was almost deserted, and he carefully puttered his way out of town and into the hills.

Driving motor vehicles was a skill he hadn't bothered to obtain before the war because he hadn't considered it useful for a spirit who could run as fast as any car, but here in the twenty first century it was becoming increasingly necessary that he learn.

Finally they pulled up on the gravel outside Barkley House, taking much longer than they would have if Gabriel was behind the wheel.

Gabs climbed out and checked all her equipment was still in place while Jasper opened up the back of the van to retrieve the petrol cans.

“Leave those here for now,” Gabs said.

“What? Why?”

“I'm gonna try something else first.”

Jasper narrowed his eyes. “What are you up to? And does it have anything to do with the fact that you insisted on pretending you wanted to buy this house?”

“You'll see.”

She marched up to the front door and scribbled on the wood with some chalk she produced from one of her many pockets. The symbol matched the one she'd left inside the door on a Post-It note, and between the two symbols caused the door to suddenly unlock itself.

The electricity was off in the house so she had a heavy duty flashlight in one hand. She led Jasper into the living room, which had a polished wooden floor, then produced her box of chalk again. “Hold the light, please.”

“You're not gonna actually summon the ghost are you?” Jasper asked, slightly alarmed now.

“Yup. Keep the flashlight steady.” She knelt down on the floor and started drawing symbols in a wide circle. They were haphazard and wildly different from the polished glyphs Jasper was used to seeing at Keeper Halls, but he could tell they were every bit as binding. Gabs had developed her own language of wards and binding symbols before she ever learned of the Keepers, which was an incredible thing for a human to do.

“This is explicitly against orders, Gabs. We're supposed to exorcise it, not talk to it. What if it gets loose and starts terrorising people in the town or something?”

Gabs sat back for a moment and looked up at him. “Tell me, Jasper, what do you know about ghosts?”

“Uh… Not that much, really. Dead humans aren't my area of expertise.”

“Well, they're sort of mine. And in my experience, ghosts usually have a good reason for what they do. And they're usually stuck in a loop, reliving their trauma endlessly. That would mess anyone up. And, sometimes, if you disrupt that loop enough, you can free them from it. So sure, we could burn it away with salt and fire, but why not at least have a go at helping it first?”

Jasper looked at the complex design she'd chalked on the ground. He'd only ever come across one ghost before, and it had been burned out of the Caves of Ember by a Keeper specialist before he moved in to guard the Key. He'd never wondered why that ghost was there, but it must have died in a horrible way to become stuck between life and the afterlife.

“Ok,” he said, sighing, “How can I help?”

“Hold the torch steady.”

Jasper watched her weird glyph language spread across the floor. In some ways, it was even more efficient than the Keeper language, but in other ways it was not, adding unnecessary redundancies or complicated workarounds to simple problems.

And then she added one last line and the ghost was just there, appearing out of nothing.

She looked real. Solid, not transparent like Jasper had been expecting. She was a young black woman in a sensible but flour stained black dress with an apron, the kind a servant would have worn a hundred years ago. She was holding a lantern aloft, and its supernatural light illuminated them both.

The lantern light reveals secrets best kept hidden. That was the story they'd heard. Jasper could see on the wall behind Gabriel, where her shadow would usually be, the image of a small child sneaking out of a nice house carrying a duffel bag, glancing back towards the silhouette of a large, scary looking man standing in the window. Gabs didn't seem to have noticed it, and Jasper didn't want to point it out to her.

He looked over his own shoulder to see which of his own secrets were being played out on the wall. There he was, much younger, in the Caves of Ember before the war destroyed the beautiful caverns, the Key he was guarding in one hand, reaching the other hand out to shake a Bargainer's hand. He shuddered. It would be bad if Gabs saw that.

Thankfully, she seemed focused on the ghost.

“Hello,” Gabriel said.

“Leave now,” the ghost said, “or I will kill you.”

“We both know you can't do that,” Gabs said in a reasonable tone, “so how about we have a civilized chat instead?”

The ghost frowned and then flickered, her image rapidly shifting between her living appearance and an image of her with a large gash in her neck and an axe buried in her chest.

“Nice try, but you can't scare me off that easily.”

Jasper wasn't sure he could say the same thing, having taken several steps backwards. He crept forwards again to stand behind Gabs, putting one hand on her shoulder. The contact made him feel safer.

“I won't let you stay here,” the ghost said, “this place is mine now.”

“What's your name?” Gabs asked, ignoring the threat.

The ghost stood silently for a long time, her lantern shining in their eyes.

“Hettie,” she said at last, “Hettie Baker.”

“Hettie. That's a nice name. We don't want to take this house from you, but we have been told to stop you from revealing the supernatural to normal people. It's kind of our job to keep the peace. We're Keepers.”

“I won't let anyone come here. You can't stop me.”

“We can, actually, but we'd rather not. We'd like to help you.”

The ghost sniffed disbelievingly.

“We really do. Do you want to show us how you died?”

The words had an immediate effect on the ghost. She flickered again, and the room around them changed. They were standing in the kitchen behind her as she stirred a pot on the stove, in the dark aside from the light from the stove and a lantern perched on the counter beside her.

Then she looked up suddenly at the sound of a door crashing open.

She picked up the lantern and padded quietly to the kitchen door, opening it a crack and peering through.

Gabriel and Jasper crowded behind her to see what she was seeing.

There was a young white woman and child in the living room, both fully clothed despite the late hour, and a suitcase lay discarded a few feet away. Standing over them was a large, red-faced man in a nightgown.

“You think you can take my child away from me?” he shouted, his words sounding distant, as if he was a hundred meters away.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” the woman was sobbing, over and over again, her words more distinct than the man’s.

As the man raised his hand to hit the woman, Hettie yelled, pushed open the door and her lantern suddenly lit up the room. Jasper recognised them from Gabriel’s research--John Barkley and his wife Martha.

His fist knocked the woman over and she collided headfirst with the mantlepiece. When she hit the ground, she didn’t move again. The child started screaming while Hettie stood frozen for a brief moment.

Then the man saw her watching and ran at her.

She gasped and fled back through the kitchen, past where Jasper and Gabs were watching, and out the back door, into a tidy and well kept garden.

Jasper and Gabs had to run as well to keep up with the memory, and they watched from the back door as Hettie tried to open the garden gate, only to find it locked. When the kitchen door slammed open again she turned and her lantern lit up John Barklay once more as he picked up and axe from the wood pile.

He hit her twice.

Then the scene flickered again, and the tidy back yard was replaced by the bramble thicket they'd seen yesterday.

Gabs and Jasper walked back to the living room, where Hettie's ghost was waiting for them.

“So, John Barkley killed his wife,” Gabs said.

Hettie nodded. “He got away with it. He put our bodies in the forest and he kept tormenting his son and then he moved away when he couldn't ignore me any longer and I couldn't follow him. He  never suffered for this. At least I can have this house to myself, stop anyone else from benefiting from that monster's work. Stop people from disturbing mine and Martha’s grave.”

Gabs took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You were badly wronged,” she said at last, “and you have every right to be angry.”

Hettie smiled thinly. “I know.”

“But is it worth it to stay here trapped in your own traumatic memories just to spite him? He's dead, his son died without any children of his own. His line has ended. No one related to him will benefit from this house. I think it currently belongs to a woman from Chicago who was way too enthusiastic about the idea of country living.”

Hettie frowned. “He's dead?”

“Yes. He's dead. You've been here for about a hundred and thirty years.”

Hettie's frown deepened, as though she was having trouble processing that information. “But… it just happened.”

“No. You're stuck in your memories of it. You need to move past that moment, otherwise you'll be reliving this for the rest of eternity.”

“A hundred and thirty years…” the ghost muttered.

Gabriel stayed quiet for a while, letting the ghost work through her thoughts.

“How… how do I know you're telling the truth? You could just be trying to make me leave so you can have this house all to yourself.”

Gabs looked stumped by that question, and Jasper quickly stepped in. “Haven't you noticed all the weird new technology in the house?”

“What do you mean?”

“I'll show you!”

1.5

Ghosts tend to see what they expect to see, so when Jasper took Hettie on a tour of the house to show her marvels of modern technology such as a flush toilet or electrical stove, it took her a while to actually see what he was pointing at, but once she did she was awestruck.

She flushed the toilet about a hundred times before she finally agreed to open negotiations with Gabs and Jasper.

But finally the three were sitting in the living room together, Jasper and Gabs on the floor, Hettie on a chair that appeared when she went to sit down.

“Let me buy the house,” Gabriel said, “and we could share ownership of it. You can have whichever rooms you want, and I'll stock the house up with books and a tv and whatever you want, really. I'm off working most the time, so you'd mostly have the house to yourself. I'd also keep it in good repair, so you'll always have somewhere to live, for however long you remain in the world before moving on.”

“Can you repaint the kitchen?” Hettie asked, “The colour is horrible.”

“Yes. Absolutely. I completely agree.”

Hettie thought about it with her eyes narrowed for a long time, then eventually she nodded. “Alright. You can buy the house and I won't drive you out. I want the back garden, the first and second bedrooms upstairs, and one of the bathrooms.”

“Why do you need a bathroom?” Jasper asked, “You're a ghost.”

“I like the flusher.”

---

Gabriel went into the real estate office the next morning and got the paperwork underway. After a week the sale went through and was finalized, and Amanda Vintner handed over the keys.

On the way out of town back into the hills Gabs picked up a colour wheel from the only hardware store in town so that Hettie could look at paint colours, and got a new sign made.

They pulled up to find Hettie standing in the driveway waiting for them. She seemed to have snapped entirely out of her ghostly habit of seeing what she expected to see, and as soon as they got out of the van she started asking a thousand questions about everything from cellphones to the automatic door on the garage.

Gabs and Jasper answered them as best they could while they took down the sign over the door which said “Barkley House”.

“What does the new sign say?” Hettie asked.

Gabs held it up so she could read it.

“Baker House.”

The ghost of Hettie Baker smiled.