Chapter 1
Daisy’s POV
It’s so quiet. The moon is so alone in the dark sky. Just like me. I just wish someone would come. Or something would happen. It’s been so long that they all went away. Maybe I should too. But how?
A creaking of the wooden floor in the entrance hall breaks me out of my gloomy thoughts and I immediately feel myself prepare for yet another intrusion. These people should just learn their lesson and leave me alone. Why do they keep coming to disturb me and disrespect someone else’s property? Before a living human can blink, I move from the attic above the first floor of the house to the entrance hall, hiding among the curtains. I wouldn’t have chosen to hide, being a ghost and all that, but with my almost hundred years of being a ghost, I have almost lost control over my form. And I would rather not scare this intruder away… just yet.
From between the red velvety curtains, which are now covered with dust and spider webs, I peek carefully at the intruder. A teenager. He seems about the age I was when I died. And his height is about six feet, two inches taller than me. From my angle of view though, I can only see his brown hair. I look around to see if there is a girl around as well. Today’s teenagers think that people abandoned haunted houses just for them to have a place to make out, and more. I had seen a lot, not to the level of becoming a pervert though, and scared them away as soon as they let their guard down. This time, though, there doesn’t seem to be a girl around. Turn around. Show me your face.
It is as if my words compel him and he turns in my direction. The first thought in my mind is that he looks so scared that even the sound of wood creaking beneath his feet might make him wet his pants. No, I remind myself, not pants. Jeans. After that I notice how his aqua blue eyes dart around the place in fear, looking for something, probably me. His eyes pass over my hiding spot and I feel a bit of affection of how nice he looks. The thought is accompanied with a frown and mental shake. This un-ladylike behaviour isn’t fitting of a lady, even though this lady has been dead for a century. Besides, he has nothing on my George.
After a few more minutes of staring around for a sign of my presence, he closes his eyes and takes a few deep breaths. With the help of the advanced ability of hearing, I now focus on his heartbeat, which is still beating quite erratically. I am tempted to just come out and make him run but these silly pranks are not how I was raised. Death is not an excuse to forget manners. Still I doubt him making through the hour with me.
Of course the resolve to be a well-mannered lady flies out the window when I notice a half-burned candle near the entrance, which is just in edge of sight of the mortal boy. With one wave of hand, I burn the wick of the candle of a flame several feet long and feel like a kid again when the mortal yelps and runs away from the door and the now-extinguished candle while clutching his chest as if to stop his heart from escaping. In my defence, I never really was a true lady. I loved pranks. Which ultimately brought to this point of my existence.
The thought is sobering and becoming serious once again, I look at the mortal boy once again. He is panting in fear as he still looks around the place for a sighting. All the while, he leans against a long couch covered with a white cloth. For one small second, a part of me, though small, desires to raise the white cloth in the shape of a ghost. Logic penetrates and I stop for no reason other than to not give him a heart attack.
After gathering courage, which takes several long minutes, he begins to walk towards the stairs for the sleeping quarters of the owners on the first floor of the ruins. It is a pathetic reason but the only reason I don’t pull off another prank and speed him up from snail’s pace is that the wooden stairs are old and probably decaying. Caution is a good thing to have against this place. Being a ghost, even I couldn’t save this place from the ill-effects of time and disgusting insects. I want him scared, not dead.
Moving through air and space is now quite easy for me as a ghost. Occasional quirks aside, I can get exactly where I want without being displaced by even an inch. As he makes his way up, I sift through the air and appear in the hidden passage in the wall. I hadn’t even known about these until after I was a ghost. My killer had, though, and would have gotten away if I hadn’t disclosed its existence to others. And all of this because she couldn’t control her greed.
Through the painting of my alive self, I watch him as he climbs up the stairs and finally reaches the first floor. I almost announce my presence to him when I see his face from such a close distance. It’s him. He’s back! But how? A part of me is still watching me this strangely familiar scared teenager in the twenty-first century but another part of me is lost in the time that is now a century old.
“Samuel. Do not dare to hit my horse with that stick or I swear I will beat you with it myself before handing you over to father.” I scream at the scrawny young boy who teasingly holds a thin branch in his hands.
“Princess.” He uses my nickname and I groan at his defiant tone. He is definitely going to do it. “Just because I am your horse-keeper’s son doesn’t mean I am your servant. Or that I am not your best friend.” And with that, he hits my innocent horse in the rear with quite some force. As my horse runs away with a shriek, I scream that I will kill him. And he responds that he would look forward to it.
An hour later, both of our fathers stood in my father’s office scolding him while I looked at him with equal parts smugness and equal parts sadness. I never meant to report what he did but neither one had expected my horse to veer towards his father. Mr Cullingham almost had a heart-attack when he saw me on a panicked horse. Even now in the middle of scolding, he often looked my way to see if I was injured in any way and was hiding it to treat it later on my own. “I’m sorry. I swear nothing was going to go bad. I was already following her on foot to make sure of that.”
“That doesn’t excuse the fact that my daughter was on a panicked out-of-control horse!” Dad roared and even I flinched. My dad in a temper was a sight best left unseen. Our entire house, a two-storeyed Victorian house shook from the basement to the attic, at the harsh sound of dad. Even Mr Cullingham took a step back in fear. Samuel opened his mouth to speak but his eyes caught me shaking my head in denial and he stopped. Dad was already outraged. Nothing he could say to help his side. It would be wise to just let things go uninterrupted.
“If you weren’t my most trusted employee’s son AND my daughter’s best friend, I swear I would have handed you over to the authorities.” All three of us sucked in harsh breaths in the fear of how determined he was to punish him. Samuel even shook a little. Both I and Mr Cullingham were about to defend him when dad delivered the brutal blow of punishment. “Still, I have high hopes of you. You have the potential of becoming a gentleman if you work hard enough. But for that you need discipline. I am personally going to go ask Colonel Whitting have you enlisted in the army. The discipline and self-control would be good for you.” There was a stunned silence for a moment and dad didn’t hesitate before declaring the final words. “This is my decision. He must serve the nation and learn some discipline to survive in the world.” Being four years older than me, he was already eighteen. Before that moment, I had never really felt the distinction being pointed out that clearly. All three of us left without any useful words and though Mr Cullingham kept apologizing, Samuel refused to even look at me. And that loss of connection hurt.
This was the year 1913. It was the last time I ever saw Samuel before the First World War began. The last time before my marriage was fixed. The last time before I was killed in my sleep by my maid of honour. The last time before my funeral.
In January 1918, I saw him again. He was no longer scrawny brash impulsive kid but was a well-built disciplined gentleman now. Even my father wept on his shoulder at my funeral. His father couldn’t even stand up to stare at my lifeless form. In one night, all the celebratory mood had turned into a mourning. No one had noticed how lifeless Samuel had looked in the eyes. Or how there had been defeat written all over his form.
I h
adn’t known how to control my form, as I had already chosen to stay by then, and so had watched helplessly shed tears in the dark loneliness of the upper level of the stable in the back fields. And then he had pulled out two items that had stopped my dead-heart. In one hand of his was a portrait of mine he had paid a professional artist to make, even though it took all his savings of several years to pay his fees. In the other hand was a gold engagement ring with a small but beautiful diamond embedded. For a moment I wondered why he was holding it right now. But then he spoke, “I’m sorry. I loved you. Always. But I never could be strong enough to say it. I waited to be strong enough. I waited too long.” My heart broke into thousand pieces at his words. They also brought a realization that before my fiancé, I had loved him too. It was probable that I had loved him more than my fiancé.
It had been not even a year since my funeral when news had come that he had died in action in Argonne Forest fight in France on November 3, just few days short of the end of the Great War. When his personal belongings were brought back home, everyone had finally found out about his feelings towards me via the unsent thousands of letters of love, including one after my funeral. But it was none other than the portrait and the ring that drove the house into another month-long mourning.
And in all of his unsent letters, which I managed to read in private and then preserved in a safe place, he mourned that last fight we had. Along with the letters, I had a necklace kept safe there as well. His engagement ring held in a golden string with intricate embroideries to be forever safe in my bedroom vault.
And now, after almost a decade, here he was. Standing in front of me again. He looked the same but in modern wear and a pain, that could have been physical if I had been alive, filled me as he stared at these familiar walls without any sort of recognition. Treading carefully through the rusted wood, he walked towards the room that dad, and later my brother and his children, had occupied. He entered the room tentatively, as if I would scare him upon opening the door and if he didn’t resemble him, I probably would have done so. I let out a silent whisper to see if he remembers me. “Samuel?”
He doesn’t seem to hear me. Surprised to see me and shaken by the memory, I was so off-balance that I didn’t realize that my voice was so low that he wouldn’t have heard me even if he stood next to me.
My invisible form was now stable but I still cautiously followed him to see him going through the empty cabinets and wardrobes. What is he looking for? A part of me wondered if he was a thief. Anger rose as I considered a thief going through my family mansion but I controlled it. Only because he resembled Samuel, I didn’t want to refuse him the benefit of doubt. As he finally left the room, with no success in whatever he sought, I tried again. “Samuel?” I mentally berated myself for letting hope fill in my voice.
He froze where he stood and I knew he had heard me. I walked to see him face-to-face and saw only fear. There was no recognition. I felt a stabbing pain in the place where my heart would have been as I stared at his pale face and lifted a hand to caress his face on an impulse.
It was that moment I lost stability over my form and became visible once again.