Chapter 6
Fiona
I set down The Midnight Estate on my lap and stare at it in disbelief.
You live in Australia, don’t you? . . . In that small town way out in the middle of nowhere with the kangaroos. And how could
I forget, it has the same name as the magazine!
It’s Forbes—it has to be. What other town would meet those criteria? I fumble on the bedside table and pick up the ring, staring at the daisy-shaped diamonds, and then I flip all the
way back to the description in the earlier chapter and confirm again that it matches.
There is unquestionably a connection between this book and my uncle. I reach for my phone to check the time. It’s only 10:30
p.m., and my cousin is a night owl. Before I start texting him, a creaking noise sounds somewhere out in the hall and a full-body
shiver runs right through me.
I’m not going to tell Jon that I’m jumping at shadows—I don’t want to worry him, especially since he’s already got himself
tied up in knots about that nightmare.
Instead, I ask, Have you heard of an author named Charity Wilkie? Perhaps one of Tad’s friends?
He replies right away, Never heard of her. I assume you’ve googled her?
Jon’s idea is a good one, so I swipe out of the messages to my browser. I quickly discover there is no Wikipedia page for
Charity Wilkie, and she doesn’t have a website. There are no news articles or even links to online bookstores where someone
might buy a new copy of this book—it isn’t even available in any digital format. All I can find online is a handful of old listings for the book at secondhand stores and a few references to library catalogues.
All based in the UK.
I don’t know much about publishing other than what I learned from Jon and Uncle Tad, but I know enough to deduce that this
book was not exactly a best-seller. Maybe it went out of print quickly after it was released in early 2000. My phone hums
with a new text from Jon.
Why do you ask?
My thumbs hover over the screen as I think about how to respond. There’s nothing particularly alarming or exciting here; it’s
just a ring I—somehow—found under a vanity that also appears in a book that probably references Forbes. And do I tell Jon
his dad bought twelve copies and might have wanted us all to read the book? Jon would be very excited about the possibility of one last gift from Tad, just as I am. He’d be parsing every line looking for hidden meaning.
Just as, I suppose, I am.
I’ll tell him, of course, but I will wait until I finish it. It’s not like he can start reading right away anyway—I’ll have
to post his copy down to him. Maybe this is just a story Tad enjoyed and wanted to share, or maybe there’s some message in
this novel that he specifically wanted us to see. If there is, I’ll want to prepare Jon before he dives in.
Started reading a book I found here at the house. I was just curious if they knew one another.
Jon replies, If Charity Wilkie was one of his author friends, you’ll find letters somewhere.
Uncle Tad took great pride in ignoring the phone most of the time, especially before caller ID. In his later years he did
get a little better—he’d answer family, at least, and calls from his Elsie and Rita most of the time. He preferred to write to just about everyone else.
Do you think he would have kept all those letters?
Definitely—your mum made sure of it. They’re probably in his storeroom. Knowing Ginny, you’ll find a box labeled “letters
from author friends” and it will be in perfect alphabetical order by surname.
Mum has flaws, but disorganization is not one of them. I’ve barely looked in the storeroom since I came home, but tomorrow
I’ll take a peek.
I put the phone back onto the nightstand and turn off the light. I’m thinking about poor Marie and Silas but growing sleepy,
far too sleepy to dive back into the book.
As I drift off, I hear a sound from somewhere in the house and this time I’m sure it’s the sound of something falling. Not glass, something . . . lighter. And not in the kitchen, someplace closer. Maybe the
parlour, or the formal dining room.
A flush of frustration suddenly comes over me. This is absurd. There has to be a simple explanation for all of this.
I flick the lamp back on and walk briskly to the door of my bedroom, but as I stick my head out into the hallway, my bravado disappears and in a heartbeat I’m spiraling into lonely paranoia.
I’m alone in this enormous house and something is moving things when I’m not in the room, and how did I spot that ring tonight, and did I really forget to turn the heater
on last night?
“Hello?” I call, timid. There’s another sound from downstairs.
Not a voice, but a skittering—plastic rolling over hardwood floors, then movement—not footsteps, just something is moving in this house.
I look around for a weapon but the only thing I can think of is the wand off the vacuum cleaner, and that’s still in my bathroom.
I walk briskly along the hall. My hands shake as I break the thing down to free it. I tell myself I’m shaking from the cold
but I’m not; I’m scared—I’m properly scared, and I have to walk downstairs on my own to figure this out.
I tug the hallway light on then make my way down the stairs, wishing that chandelier were functional so I didn’t have to walk
into the foyer in the semi-dark. I keep moving, and march straight to the parlour, tugging the light on as I step into the
room.
And I see the source of the noise immediately: I left a bucket sitting on the circular coffee table—a clean, dry cloth inside,
ready for tomorrow.
The bucket is now on the floor on the other side of the room. The cloth is metres away—a distance that makes no sense, even
if a freak draught did knock the bucket off the table. I briefly convince myself it’s rats or possums and while I’m not excited
about the possibility, it does give me a moment of relief—until I realize that there’s still not a single fresh dropping in
this house.
Toilet-trained rats or possums?
I give out an uneasy laugh, shaking my head as I look around, then I laugh again as I recall the ghost stories Tad used to
tell me.
There were vague spectres who didn’t have names and others who did—Clarence the farmer died doing some work on a paddock next door and now roamed the halls looking for his wife, Nancy, desperate to confess that he did not like the blue hat she wore to church, unable to face eternity having lied to her every week for most of their marriage.
And Mitchell, a cheeky child ghost who would leap out at Uncle Tad sometimes and laugh when he startled.
There was Bethany, a floating woman in long nightgowns who would sometimes appear when he was writing but only to offer criticisms for his sloppy grammar, and Doris, who was once a housekeeper and was distinctly unimpressed with how messy Tad was.
One night, when he was up working late, a whole family of ghosts appeared sitting on the chesterfield lounges in his study, having a full-blown conversation about how boring it was living with an author and how they wished Tad did something more exciting for work.
He never mentioned ghosts knocking over buckets and glasses, but it’s just the kind of silly mischief he would have come up with.
As a kid, I always assumed Tad was telling the same stories to people in town, and that’s why everyone got that startled look
on their face when they first learned where I lived. In that long stretch of summer between high school and university I buried
myself in the town’s historical society archives and researched Wurimbirra. It always struck me as odd that this house, surrounded
by farms of hundreds of acres, sits on precisely one acre, so I was curious about that but also, I wanted to learn everything
I could about Charles and Flora Fowler.
I thought I’d find a quaint tale about a wealthy couple who were more interested in reading than farming.
Instead, I discovered a story of racism and mass murder, and a family torn apart by shame.
It’s no wonder most of Forbes thinks this place is haunted—great-great-great-grandparents probably warned their children of the dark past of this house, and over the generations, the detail just got lost. Uncle Tad bought the house in the fifties, he heard whispers about a haunting and he put his own spin on it, making the story a fun one to try to put Jon and me at ease, but he had no idea where the myth originated.
By the time I learned the truth I was old enough to have concluded that ghosts do not exist and I’ve dealt with plenty of
upsetting history in my career and never once felt the echoes of it lingered into the present day in any supernatural way.
That was before things started moving of their own accord right in my own house.
History doesn’t always stay in the past, Fiona. I hope to God you know what you’re doing.
Mum’s words circle through my mind as I walk through the ground floor, checking every room. It’s freezing and my teeth are
chattering and I’m clinging to that vacuum cleaner like it could actually help me protect myself if I did run into something
nefarious.
I check every single room. Every window and door is closed. I don’t see anything out of place, other than the bucket and the
cloth.
The house is still, just as it has been for ten years, and it’s empty, just as it should be, except for me. It defies all
sense of reason or logic, yet somehow, I know that something else now calls Wurimbirra home.
I manage to make it out of bed at sunrise the next morning, but not because I’m well-rested enough to wake easily. I heard
the grandfather clock chime every single hour last night, until I promised myself I wouldn’t wind it again today, so it falls
dormant again and stops chiming the change of hours. I used to sleep right through the chimes the first time I lived in this
house—in fact, I barely even noticed them during the day, but that was when I felt entirely at ease here. Things have certainly
changed.