#albeit one who can be mollified (heh) with good kitchen habits
Note
I just read your tags on the home inspectors post about the Nightingale-being-a-ghost AU and i just wanted to ask if you have any plans for finishing it? Because when I read those tags I gasped out loud, it sounds like SUCH a good idea.
First of all I need to credit @stardust-rain who told me I should write this, er, several years ago now. I would like to finish it, and occasionally I go back and re-read the bits I’ve written and then get indignant that if I want the rest of it I have to finish it myself????, but I’m currently stuck on 1) a plot, but not TOO much of a plot, and 2) having written most of it pre-THT and Lesley subsequently featuring as an ambiguously terrible friend instead of an unambiguously terrible friend. I have to sort out which she should be.
But, since you’re not the only person who’s asked me about this, have a scene:
The house was so totally un-renovated that the stairs at the end of the back hallway led down to a kitchen in the basement, literally belowstairs. It was a mild spring evening outside, and the building wasn’t too chilly as a whole, but as I descended it got colder and colder – you did expect that in basements, as the surrounding earth insulated the space from warming or cooling, but this was so cold I wished I’d been wearing a jumper as well as my coat. I was getting goosebumps. As I reached the bottom of the stairs, the lightbulb on them gave out entirely, and I was left with just my phone and the dim light coming down from the open door at the top. Which was – judging by the gradual reduction in light – slowly swinging shut.
I don’t believe in ghosts, but I’ve watched the odd horror movie in my time and I’m not immune to getting creeped out, so I fumbled out the mini-LED torch I kept on my keyring – nothing spectacular but good for finding keyholes in the dark. It illuminated an old-fashioned cast-iron stove – gas, not wood. It must’ve been there for at least sixty years. As I ran my torch around the room, trying to get a sense of the space, it ran across a person, standing maybe two meters away from me, on the other side of the wide wooden preparation table that took up the centre of the room. I flicked the torch back, but they were gone.
I’m not ashamed to admit I let out a bit of a yelp. It echoed dimly. There were no other sounds – no footsteps, no movement. Just my breathing.
“Hey,” I said out loud, “The owners have just asked me to take a look at this place, all right? I’m not here to bother you.”
It would be a bother and worse than that, of course, for any poor buggers who were squatting here, but I couldn’t do much about that, and unless there was a secret drug lab down here or something they were unlikely to do me any harm. And I doubted that. It’d been a while since I’d done any chemistry, but I was pretty sure it would smell a lot worse. Cannabis wouldn’t, but there’d be lights. My biggest problem either way would be if the police decided I was responsible for it, never mind that I’d never been here before today.
Nobody answered me, and there was no other noise, but it felt like it was getting colder and colder – there must be a draft down here. I wasn’t sure where from. The click of the door at the top of the stairs finally shutting, as the last sliver of light vanished, sounded like thunder. The draft felt, almost, like someone was breathing on my neck.
I made a judicious retreat up the stairs, which is to say I went so fast I tripped and shinned myself. When I reached the door at the top I was certain for a sickening moment that it was going to be locked, but it opened with only the resistance you’d expect from an old, un-oiled door. I stumbled back out into the hallway, heart pounding, and already ready to laugh at my own moment of panic. I turned around. I should go back down there and –
The door shut itself. Not the slow swing from when I’d been down there, but a firm and final slam. And I heard footsteps, the click and thud of someone in a hard-soled, heeled shoe, going down the stairs. I ran back and pulled the door open again, and shone the torch down the stairs, but – nobody.
The thing was. I could still hear the footsteps.
I shut the door again. I was beginning to get some idea of why the disposition of this place might, as Beverley’s sister had put it, been a matter of some debate.
*
In an effort to remind myself that everything was fine, and maybe work up the nerve to go back down there – there was a basement door, and maybe somebody had got into the house that way – I looked through the other rooms on the ground floor. They were the victims of some truly terrible sixties carpeting, and don’t even ask about the curtains in the front parlour, but there was no obvious rot or damage. The main problem, so far as I could see, was that there was only one phone jack – in the hall – and I sincerely doubted the place was wired for cable.
The first floor was much the same as the ground, though the rooms were obviously bedrooms – or a bedroom and a study, given the built-in bookcases and the big desk that someone had clearly decided was too much trouble to move in one – plus the bathroom. That was also decidedly of its time; a big claw-footed tub with no shower, and no sockets for an electric razor. But the way the rest of the place looked it seemed like I was lucky to be getting indoor plumbing.
The prickling feeling of being watched had gone, now, and the second floor revealed nothing more than another two bedrooms, both empty, and a box room. The biggest problem with this place was going to be furniture; I didn’t have much. It wasn’t the end of the world, but I’d have to see what I could borrow or scrounge, since I didn’t want to acquire stuff I’d maybe be getting rid of again. Actually, Abdul might not want to take some of his up to Glasgow. I should ask.
I realized I’d pretty much decided to take don’t-call-me-Cecelia’s offer. The kitchen thing had to have been my overactive imagination. I’d go in through the basement door, let some light in. That would fix whatever had gotten me while I was down there. But on my way back down the stairs, my eye was caught by what looked like movement in the study door. Except when I looked properly it was shut, the way I left it.
I went in anyway, and the room was still empty, except for a large old desk which you’d have had to disassemble to get out. I walked over to the window, which overlooked the small back garden. That, too, was clipped and mown and somehow barren, despite the technical presence of grass and shrubs and things. They looked sort of leggy and old. I hoped I wasn’t supposed to look after it – I didn’t know the first thing about gardening; they hadn’t exactly been a feature of the Peckwater Estate and my dad wasn’t the allotment type. (My mum was very clear that she had moved to London to get away from places you had to grow your own food.) But Cecelia had said something about that, hadn’t she? So that wasn’t a problem.
As I looked one of the squares of light illuminating the garden went – somebody closing their curtains or turning a light off – and I turned away. I’d wedged myself slightly in beside the desk to look down at the garden properly, and as I wriggled back out my foot nudged something under it. It was hard, so I thought it was a bottle or some other piece of detritus, but it turned out to be a walking cane, the kind that you might see on an earlier episode of Downton Abbey. It was carved from a dark wood, with a silver top only distinguishable as such by its thick coat of tarnish. It covered my hand in dust and gunk, picking it up, and then I didn’t know what to do with it; I left it lying on the desk.
There was another draft in the study, as bad as the one in the kitchen, though at least it didn’t feel like someone breathing on my neck this time; just cold.
“Fuck,” I muttered, and rubbed the back of my neck. If the insulation was this bad – but it was spring, coming into summer; I wasn’t going to be here in winter. It probably wouldn’t make any difference. And free accommodation was, after all, free.
There was a dull thud as the cane rolled off the desk and back onto the floor, to trip up the next passer-by - probably me. I propped it up against the side of the desk, instead, and this time it stayed.
I still needed to go and check the kitchen again, but – worst case I could eat a lot of takeaways. The kitchen could wait until morning, or whenever I came here next. Whatever I thought I’d seen down there, I hadn’t.
I re-armed the alarm system on the way out, to be polite. Also to be polite, I called out “See you later!” as I left.
Nobody answered.
#rivers of london#my fanfic#haunted house au#peter grant#thomas nightingale#molly from the folly#molly is also a ghost#because molly makes such an excellent terrifying ghost#albeit one who can be mollified (heh) with good kitchen habits#...eventually#Anonymous
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