Chapter 14
Cameron
The Chaotic Plan
“Okay. Here’s what I’m proposing: we convince the village we’re possessed by Brodie and Mairenn Fraser.”
I set my notebook on the living room coffee table.
My handwriting sprawls across pages covered with notes I spent two hours taking this afternoon instead of working on the urgent files waiting on my desk.
Brilliant ideas.
Revolutionary ideas.
Completely insane ideas.
But mostly brilliant.
Clementine looks at me as if I’ve just informed her the Earth is flat.
Hamish, stretched out on a rug near the window, briefly lifts his head in my direction before setting it back down with what appears to be profound resignation.
I gesture toward my notebook with the dangerous enthusiasm of a man about to pitch a paranormal hoax to a perfectly sensible woman.
“You’re serious?”
“Completely. Listen, the village wants to believe the manor is haunted. They’re already looking for signs everywhere. So we’re going to give them some.”
“By pretending we’re possessed?”
“Not all the time. Just... occasionally. Subtle changes in behavior whenever we’re in public. Strange looks. Things we’d never normally say.”
I flip through my notes, increasingly excited by my own concept.
“We could refer to ourselves in the third person every now and then. Have little ‘episodes.’ Mention memories we shouldn’t possibly have.
For example, you could stare out a window and say something like, ‘Brodie used to love looking at the garden at this hour.’ Or I could have an inexplicable emotional reaction to some object in the manor and say that ‘Mairenn chose it especially for me.’”
I look up from the notebook, proud of my preparation.
Clementine folds her arms.
Not defensively.
More like someone trying to determine whether I’m joking or if I’ve genuinely lost my mind.
“How much time did you spend planning this?”
“Two hours. Maybe three. Timing is crucial, you understand? We can’t overdo it right away. It has to build gradually. A coherent narrative arc.”
“Cameron.”
“Yes?”
“We just need to act differently when we’re together. The village will do the rest of the work on its own.”
I stop cold.
She’s right.
I just spent three hours constructing an elaborate plan for a lie that only requires simplicity.
“Okay,” I say slowly. “But we still need details. Real ones. Not just the village’s contradictory legends. If we want this to be believable, we need to actually know who Brodie and Mairenn were.”
Clementine glances at the ceiling, then back at me.
“Maybe there’s information about them in the room upstairs. The one I’ve never opened.”
I frown.
“Why haven’t you opened a room in your own manor?”
“That’s a long story involving a lost key, strategic procrastination, and the fact that I was only supposed to stay here for two weeks.”
There’s something in her voice.
Something subtle.
As though the original plan is beginning to crack.
I don’t mention it.
Maybe I imagined it.
“Shall we?” she asks, getting to her feet.
We head upstairs.
The room in question is at the very end of the hallway.
The wood of the door is darker than the others, as though it has absorbed decades of secrets.
Clementine tries the handle.
Locked.
As expected.
I pull out my phone, switch on the flashlight, and inspect the lock.
Old mechanism.
Nothing sophisticated.
“We could force it,” I suggest.
“Or we could look for the key like civilized people.”
I turn toward her.
“You haven’t already looked for it?”
A faint blush touches her cheeks before she answers.
“I never planned on staying, so whatever’s inside that room...”
We head back downstairs and search through kitchen drawers, the small secretary desk in the living room, and the old sideboard in the entryway.
Hamish follows us from room to room, apparently fascinated by this improvised treasure hunt.
Or maybe he’s bored and has nothing better to do.
With Hamish, it’s impossible to tell.
In the end, it’s Clementine who finds the key.
It’s hanging behind a picture frame in the downstairs hallway.
A small tarnished brass key attached to a faded ribbon that must have been red a very long time ago.
“It’s strange there aren’t more old keys in this manor,” I comment.
Back upstairs, Clementine slips the key into the lock.
The mechanism resists.
Groans in protest.
Then finally turns with a dull click that echoes through the silent hallway.
The door swings open.
The room beyond is frozen in time.
Not eerie.
Just abandoned.
Preserved inside a quiet sort of dignity.
A four-poster bed draped in a white sheet dominates the center of the room.
A massive wardrobe covers most of the far wall.
A dresser with a spotted mirror reflects the beam from my phone.
“This was their room,” Clementine says softly.
“You’re sure?”
“Look.”
She points toward a frame resting on the dresser.
I step closer and blow the dust from the glass.
Dust swirls through the flashlight beam like fragments of the past suspended in midair.
The photograph is sepia-toned.
A couple.
The man is tall and bearded, wearing the serious expression all men seemed to have in old photographs, as though smiling cost money.
The woman is smaller.
Her gaze is direct despite the stiffness of the pose.
They aren’t touching.
Yet there’s something in their posture.
Something in the way they lean subtly toward each other.
As if they’re trying to resist the pull between them and failing.
Without hesitation, Clementine picks up the frame, turns it over, and carefully removes the photograph.
“It’s definitely them,” she says. “Brodie and Mairenn. It’s strange putting faces to the ghosts we’re about to impersonate.”
She slides the photograph back into the frame and returns it to the dresser.
Then she crosses to the wardrobe and opens it carefully.
Inside are a handful of clothes.
A man’s jacket.
Two dresses.
A few accessories.
Everything worn by time and dampness.
She gently closes the doors again, as though disturbing those belongings would be an intrusion.
I examine the dresser.
Inside the top drawer, I discover a small wooden box.
It contains tarnished silver cufflinks.
A simple brooch set with a green stone.
And something unexpected.
A wedding band.
Only one.
I lift it toward the light.
The ring is delicate, engraved with intricate patterns nearly erased by time.
“Why is there only one?” Clementine asks over my shoulder.
I don’t answer.
I have no idea.
Was the other buried with one of them?
Lost?
Given away?
In the bottom drawer, Clementine finds a leather-bound notebook.
When she opens it, the pages are almost entirely illegible.
Years of moisture have blurred the ink until only scattered words remain.
Tiny islands of meaning floating in an ocean of forgetting.
She squints and reads aloud.
“...the garden today...”
She turns a page.
“...hasn’t changed his mind...”
Another page.
“...construction completed in May...”
With a sigh, she closes the notebook.
“It’s frustrating. We have their room. Their photograph. Their belongings. But not their story.”
“We have fragments. That’s enough. The best legends are the ones missing pieces. It leaves room for imagination.”
I pick up the photograph again.
Study it more closely.
Brodie’s hand rests on a walking stick.
The other hangs at his side.
Mairenn’s hands are folded neatly in front of her.
Neither of them is smiling.
But there’s something in their eyes.
“He built this place for her,” I say. “That’s what everyone says. That much we know.”
“And they stayed,” Clementine adds. “For a long time. No children.”
“Just the two of them.”
Silence settles over the room.
As though the room itself remembers.
I carefully place the photograph back on the dresser.
“We’re not taking anything,” Clementine says. “That wouldn’t feel right.”
I nod.
This room isn’t a prop for our plan.
It deserves respect.
These people lived here.
They existed.
They aren’t just a marketing concept or a local ghost story.
We close the door carefully behind us.
The click of the lock sounds almost like a promise to keep their secrets.
Back downstairs, the atmosphere feels different.
Seeing the room.
The photograph.
The belongings.
It made Brodie and Mairenn real.
They aren’t ghosts anymore.
Just two people who loved this manor.
I settle onto the sofa.
Hamish briefly lifts his head to look at me.
Verdict: I’m not interesting enough to hold his attention.
“Maybe we should test the plan,” Clementine says after a while. “Just to see if it’s believable.”
I agree immediately, curious where she’s going with this.
“Okay. What do you have in mind?”
“We just try to act like them. Like Brodie and Mairenn might have behaved.”
She gets to her feet and stands in the middle of the room, clearly thinking through her approach.
I start by attempting an accent.
Something older.
More formal.
It comes out horribly wrong and sounds less like an early twentieth-century Scotsman and more like a drunk Irishman.
Clementine bursts out laughing.
“What was that?”
“A historical accent.”
“You sound like you swallowed a windmill.”
“Very funny.”
Her turn.
She attempts a haunted stare, eyes unfocused and fixed on some invisible point.
Mostly she looks like someone suffering from stomach pain.
“No,” I declare. “That’s not working.”
“Thank you, Mr. Critic.”
I stand up.
“Maybe we should try something simpler. Like... holding hands. As if it’s natural.”
The words leave my mouth before I realize what a terrible idea they are.
Clementine looks at me for a second.
Then she holds out her hand.
I take it.
We stand there in the middle of the living room, hand in hand, staring at each other while the awkwardness steadily grows.
“This is weird,” she says.
“Very weird.”
Yet neither of us lets go.
Her hand is warm.
Smaller than mine.
Her fingers fit naturally between mine.
Which is precisely the problem.
“Maybe we should walk?” I suggest. “Like Brodie and Mairenn might have. See if it looks believable.”
We cross the living room hand in hand with all the grace and flexibility of military recruits on parade.
I’m painfully aware of every movement she makes.
The way our arms swing.
The distance between us.