Page 16 of We Live Here Now

I glance again to the blackening wood. It’s taking a while to burn given how hot the fire is. As if it’s fighting it.

“Maybe you should speak to Dr. Canning.” He’s watching the flames rather than looking at me.

The fire spits loudly at us in our awkward silence and finally the board succumbs and joins the flames. It was damp, that’s all. Nothing supernatural about it.

21

Freddie

More frost comes overnight, hardening the earth like concrete, and my breath hangs in crystals as I hurry to my car in the midnight blue of the early morning, the moon still bright in the sky overhead. In front of me the moor could be an ocean, it’s so dark.

I didn’t wake Emily to say goodbye, instead leaving a note in the kitchen. She’s still pissed off at me for burning the Ouija board, even if she wouldn’t come out and have the argument about it, instead just giving me the silent treatment. Always the victim, Emily. How she loves playing that role. Even though I lost a child too.

There are plenty of things about Freddie I used to find charming but now just annoy the shit out of me so much I could happily strangle him.

The front door hadn’t been closed properly when she and Russell were talking outside, and when I brought Cat’s bag down for her, it creaked open in the breeze, carrying Emily’s quiet sentence inside. I didn’t hear more, Cat and Iso clattering down the stairs too loudly, but the words stung, and as she went back to bed to sleep the day away, I was left alone in the cold of the old house and had plenty of time to think about all the things I used to find sweet about her that if I’m honest drive me mad now. My thoughts were bees buzzing in my head. And what was thatFind itbusiness? Did she suspect something? I don’t even remember fetching the Ouija board to burn it, but god it felt good pushing it into the flames and knowing how much it would piss her off.

I pull out onto the road, relieved to be leaving Larkin Lodge behind, and as the miles go by my head clears in the morning air.When I finally reach the motorway, my mood toward Emily has lifted. I was stupid to react so badly. She didn’t say anything too terrible, and she’s right—people do end up irritating each other. I shouldn’t have burned her Ouija board, however stupid I think it is. Aside from anything else, I can’t risk annoying her too much right now. I don’t want her getting suspicious of me.

That makes me turn my thoughts to the much more pressing situation I’ve got myself into. Despite all my promises to myself to stop it, I somehow got in deeper over the weekend, and I can’t even understand why.

The only thing I do know is that I need to get myself out of this shit one way or another.

22

Emily

I wake up to a text from Freddie apologizing for burning the board and being so shitty and wishing he could be here to look after me, and I fire one back hoping he has a good few days in London and to enjoy it while he can before the Exeter transfer is finalized.

Still in bed, I stare out at the cold day and wonder how I’m going to fill mine once I’ve done my physio exercises. I have a pang of missing work again but quash it.At least I’m alive, I remind myself. And at least they paid me for the year, and given how long I was in the hospital my bank balance is pretty healthy. We’ve got the profits from the sale of the London flat too, so all in all, we could be in a lot worse of a situation. Who knows, maybe when we’ve got the grounds sorted and modernized a little inside, we may even make a profit on this place when I’ve persuaded Freddie to sell it.

I’m thinking about dozing for another hour when a racket from downstairs startles me upright, goosebumps immediate on my skin. It’s the study, I know it is, and with my heart thumping and nerves on fire, I force myself downstairs.

When I reach the room, the door is wide open and I gasp slightly, stepping backward. The books are on the floor.Allthe books, scattered as if thrown in rage around the room. There are only four volumes left on the shelves. I know exactly which ones they’ll be, but still I pick my way gingerly over the mess until I reach them to confirm it.

It’s as I expect. The four that came off the shelves before—Die orDietby Dr. Ella Jones,Will You Love Meby Mhairi Atkinson,Here Come the Clownsby Armond Ellory, andYouby Caroline Kepnes.

I take photos on my phone of the mess, proof to myself that it’s real, and then look back at the four books. What have they got to do with anything? IsFind itto do with these? I flick through them, wondering if there might be messages scrawled in them, but they’re just ordinary books. I put them down on a coffee table and start picking up the rest to reshelve. I can’t see any gaps in the wall or wood that might cause some crazy wind, nor any slope that might have made them fall, nor anything else that would prove a logical—if tenuous—reason for my books to have been thrown around the room. There is no reason. It wasn’t me, I’m sure of it.

I consider calling Dr. Canning to talk it through, but I don’t have any of the main symptoms listed for post-sepsis, and thinking the house is haunted doesn’t make me crazy. This isn’t something he can help with. Plenty of fully functioning healthy people believe in ghosts and hear weird things in buildings. I know absolutely that this mess wasn’t me, and until I can find something concrete to explain it, I’m going with what my gut believes.

Were you murdered in this house?The planchette was moving toYes, I could feel it. It wasn’t me and it wasn’t Iso. Something is haunting this house.

Find it.Find what? And where to start?

I close the door on the study and go back upstairs to get dressed. When I get to the landing, the window is open again. I didn’t open it. I’m pretty sure Freddie didn’t unless he’s trying to drive me insane, and why would he do that?

I close it carefully and then stare into the quiet hallway, my mouth dry with nerves, but I stay calm. I feel tasked with a mission. A way to fill the day. I’m going to research the history of the house. Find out who died here.

At the kitchen table, with the warmth of the Aga behind me and the front door close enough that if something happens in the house that really frightens me I can get out as fast as my damaged body will let me, I’m disappointed at first that all I can find from asearch on Larkin Lodge is an old Zillow listing and something to do with a place in America. But then, after a second coffee, I go into the library website hub for the area and find that a trove of local newspapers have been uploaded and archived.

Before long I’ve zoned out everything around me as I dip into history, scanning from one report to another as I search for Larkin Lodge. I can’t get even so much as a hint about any murders, but I do find some information about the house.

There’s an obituary from 1864 of Christopher Hopper, the man who bought the house after the previous building was gutted in a fire. He was quite a famous surgeon in Exeter who opened missionary hospitals in Indian slums, so when he died in 1887 there were several print obituaries. They stated that he’d rebuilt the house, but within a year he and his wife had left to start their missionary project. He died fifteen years later, and his wife, Hannah, died of a broken heart only two months after him.

There’s nothing more until an article from 1958. “Actress Fortuna Carmichael buys country retreat.” This one does have a picture. A glamorous woman, all curves and lipstick, lies across the bonnet of a fabulous car parked in Larkin Lodge’s drive, with a tall, handsome man standing casually beside her, smoking a cigarette. The caption underneath says, “Fortuna Carmichael and husband Gerald, the fiery couple as famous for their spats as for their romance, settle into country life at Larkin Lodge.”

I scan the piece. She was a theater actress who’d done a couple of B movie thrillers, and he was a producer. In the picture they both look completely fabulous and certainly not haunted. The Lodge in the backdrop is almost exactly the same as it is now, except there are flowers bursting from beds around the drive and some creeping plants clinging to the stony facade. I look at the grainy top-floor window, a dark blot looking down on this picture of joy.

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