The Midnight Estate
by Charity Wilkie
Silas and Marie drove through suburban areas for a while, then through hours of winding mountain roads, with expansive, thick
bush land and steep mountains as far as the eye could see. They emerged into open countryside, with rolling hills and a wide
expanse of land peppered with eucalyptus trees.
Marie was thousands of miles away from Rupert already, but now she thought herself to be disappearing from his view, dissolving
somehow into the expanse of this strange new country. Every now and again she’d glance at Silas and feel a combination of
gratitude and confusion.
Every action he’d taken since he came to her door several days earlier seemed to be rooted only in kindness, but was anyone
really so kind? Her whole life was in his hands now, and that was exactly the scenario she’d been in with Rupert just a few short years
earlier. Her guard would be up and it would have to stay up. Silas had given her no reason to suspect him, but the minute
she could extract herself from his care to stand on her own two feet, she would go.
In the meantime, all she could do was to sit back and enjoy the strange experience of driving through a country she’d only
vaguely known existed a week earlier. Eventually, the land became very flat, and she was surrounded by seemingly endless fields
of young wheat, or massive herds of sheep, roaming through waving grasses.
“Almost there,” Silas said wearily as he turned off a main highway.
They passed a few farmhouses, dotted here or there, and then through a set of massive wrought iron gates, hung from a high concrete fence.
There were palm trees scattered around a neat front yard.
And beyond all of that, the largest house Marie had ever seen.
“Where are we?” she asked uncertainly.
“Home,” Silas said, and he parked the car beside one of the palm trees and gave a sigh of relief.
“You . . . you live here?” she said, staring up at the house in shock. Then she blurted, “I assumed you were well off because you paid for my flight
but . . .”
“I’ve had a lot of good luck in my career,” he said simply.
Silas stepped from the car and retrieved the suitcases from the roof rack. He led the way to the massive double front doors,
then rested the suitcases on the ground as he fished his keys from his pocket. He used a large metal key to unlock the old
doors, then pushed them open to reveal an enormously wide staircase right in the center of the foyer, with a massive chandelier
right above it.
“After you,” Silas said, and Marie stepped into the house and spun in a circle, almost unable to believe her eyes.
“How old is this house?”
“1880s.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“A bit over five years,” he told her, and then he scooped the suitcases up again.
“Why this house? I know all houses here aren’t like this—we saw perfectly ordinary homes all the way here.”
“Do you remember the house Maeve and I lived in when we were young?”
Marie nodded. It was small and simple, and more than a little run-down.
Silas gave her a self-conscious shrug. “When I was proposing to Christine, I felt like I had something to prove. You’re right that most Australian houses aren’t like this.
It’s the largest in this town and I wanted that for Christine. Maybe I wanted that for myself.”
Marie shut the door behind him, and automatically followed him as he mounted the stairs. She couldn’t help but notice how
dirty the place was—a thin layer of dust over the floorboards, a random cobweb here or there between the lines of the balustrade.
She wondered how long it had been since Christine moved out.
At the top of the stairs, Silas pointed to one door, then another.
“These both open into my office, which is also the library. And my rooms are all at the western end. We don’t use the eastern
end much, so you can take your pick of the rooms down here.”
Marie took a hesitant step towards the eastern end of the house, but was immediately distracted by a stained glass window
at the end of the hallway, almost as tall as she was, in striking shades of green and gold and red. She looked into the first
bedroom, the one beside Silas’s office, and saw a cast iron bedframe, with a mattress covered only by a white sheet. There
were bedside tables and a lamp on one side. A large antique dresser and closet stood against the wall beside the bed.
“I know it’s basic,” Silas said, suddenly shifting self-consciously. “There are so many bedrooms, and we scarcely used this
end so it’s a little neglected. But I have linens . . . downstairs, I think, in the cupboard off the laundry. Besides, it’s
a roof over your head, and you’ll be safe here.”
Something of her hesitation must have shown on her face and Marie was embarrassed that she might seem ungrateful.
“It’ll be just fine,” she said weakly. “I’m eternally grateful for your help, Silas. This is lovely.”
“Come on, let me show you the rest of the house.”
Some parts of the house amazed her—like the beautiful bathroom she would have all to herself in the eastern wing, with black-and-white
tiles and the enormous claw foot bath. And she loved Silas’s library, even if it was in a state of utter chaos.
“How do you stand the echo in here?” she asked, and he looked at her blankly.
“There’s an echo?”
“And it’s so . . .”
She looked around and tried to think of a diplomatic way to say disquietingly untidy. She counted no less than thirteen mugs around the room, plus at least as many plates, and although there were shelves just
about everywhere, half of the books were on the floor or on the enormous writing table. Even those that were shelved seemed to have been shelved in no particular order.
“It’s clearly a creative space.”
She was fascinated by the multitude of living rooms in the downstairs area, and that massively long kitchen, with the glorious
windows all along one side, and the old table right in the middle at one end.
But when she walked to the back door off the kitchen, she gasped—startled by the beautiful gardens that spread across the
large backyard, but even more so by the cluster of granite headstones in the back corner.
“Do people bury their dead at home in Australia?” she asked uneasily.
“This property was originally a very large farm, and the owners wanted to be buried here. At the time, I suppose that wasn’t unusual, but no, it’s not the done thing now.”
“Isn’t it disturbing living so close to those graves?” she asked, wrapping her arms over her chest as a chill seemed to move
through the room.
“There’s certainly no danger in living beside a small cemetery like that. Why, the town cemetery is hundreds of times bigger
and there are houses around that too! When I first moved here, people kept telling me this house was haunted. I don’t believe
in ghosts, but I do understand why some do. Life is so short, it makes good sense to me that people would enjoy tales about
it being longer and more complex than it really is. Besides, I don’t mind that people think this house is haunted because
if there is one thing I quickly learned when I moved here, it is that everyone wants to know everybody else’s business. So
if there is a myth about me being some odd American man who lives in a house full of ghosts, and that amuses or entertains
people, what’s the harm in that? I never discourage the myths.” He touched the side of his nose and winked at her. “They only
add to my air of intrigue.”
“And Christine doesn’t mind that?” Marie asked hesitantly.
Silas gave her an odd look. “Why would you ask that?”
“It’s all well and good for you not to believe in ghosts, but plenty of people do. Is she afraid to stay here, especially
when you’re not here? This house is very impressive but it’s also enormous. I imagine it might feel lonely at times.”
“Lonely . . .” Silas repeated, frowning.
“What I’m saying is, if people think there are ghosts here, they might be less inclined to visit. If you know what I mean.”
Silas stared at her a moment too long, then he sighed and turned back to the cemetery.
“Yes,” he said heavily. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. I hadn’t considered it like that.”
As he drove Marie towards the town, Silas thought about her thoughts on the mansion. He did understand that Christine was
unhappy there, and he knew that when he spun his tall tales about the ghosts that supposedly shared the space with them, that
she would go very quiet, and sometimes she would snap at him to stop it.
But he liked that they rarely had visitors. He’d even rather enjoyed the way that other people in the town would speak about their home
as if it was some impressive but inaccessible landmark.
Silas loved nothing more than to be at home alone, except to be at home with Christine and Ernest. He had always been almost
entirely self-sufficient, and truth be told, there were times when he would close the door to his office so that he could
focus on his work, fully aware that he was shutting Christine and Ernest out of his space and his attention too. If he ever
thought about that, and he often didn’t, he would tell himself that Christine knew what he was like and that she knew the
importance of his work. She was supportive. Understanding. So it was all fine.
Except that it wasn’t.
“I can’t live like this, Silas,” she’d wept when she told him she was leaving.
“Like what? I’m not even sure what that means.”
“I need space.”
“There’s plenty of room for—”
“Silas. I think—no, I know—we will both be happier on our own.”
So she took a suitcase and their son and she drove herself to her mother’s house. Silas felt like his head was swimming and
try as he might he couldn’t make sense of what she’d said.
I need space.
They lived in a house with eight bedrooms, five enormous living spaces, plus a library. How much more space could she want?
He told himself that she would calm down and she would come home—that this was probably one of those mysterious moods she
had from time to time, when her emotions made so little sense to him that it was like she was speaking a foreign language.