Category: Fantasy Publisher: Self
ISBN-10: 1499380402
Type: Fiction
Pages: 136
Copyright: May 2014
ISBN-13: 9781499380408
Price: $8.99 (eBook)
Meet a romantically confused professor, a 250 year old five year old ghost, a graduate student with little inhibition, and a group of other mysterious ghostly characters residing in an Inn that is more than half-ghost itself.
Nicholas Pim rents an old Inn to spend the summer writing a book. He meets a small group of spirits and learns their stories. His own relationship with one of his students captivates the ghosts' interest, and leads to a surprising and life-changing conclusion for everyone!
Excerpt
Sometime in the night, he became aware of giggling. He looked around the room, and saw, seated on an old wooden chair, a small, pretty girl with long brown hair, wearing an old-fashioned sleeping dress, swinging her bare legs and naked feet as she looked at him.
‘Ohmygodwherethehelldidyoucomefrom?’ the learned professor blurted as he shot upright, out of his sleep (or so he thought).
‘I’ve been here all along,’ the little girl answered. ‘You’ve even seen me a couple of times!’ She smiled sweetly.
Nicholas shook his head. ‘I’m here by myself,’ he said.
The little girl giggled again. ‘Not really.’ She swung her legs some more. ‘There are a lot of us here.’ She rubbed her nose. ‘You’ve seen me in the corner of your eye, during the daylight. I like you. You remind me of my papa. He was nice like you; he looked like you, with a moustache and longer hair. You even smell like my papa—he smoked a pipe too.’
‘There’s a lot I’m not understanding, especially why a little girl would be sitting at the foot of my bed. Explain yourself, please!’
The little girl looked at the ceiling coyly, and shot a breath toward her bangs. ‘I live here. I have lived here all my life. In a way, you are my guest.’ Some of her hair stood away from her forehead, and she brushed it back in place.
‘And who are you?’
‘My name is Lucinda, and I am five years old.’ She giggled. ‘I’m a conundrum, or maybe I mean paradox.’
‘”Conundrum” and “paradox” are pretty big words for a five-year-old girl, and how did you get into my bedroom please?’
‘I’m a conundrum or maybe a paradox because I’m both the youngest and oldest person in this house,’ Lucinda explained. ‘And really, I’m not in your room, I’m in your dream. You are dreaming now. That is how most of us manifest ourselves.’
‘Sorry, not following.’
‘I hate this part,’ Lucinda murmured. ‘I’m a ghost. You’re staying in a house that is filled with ghosts; it’s part ghost itself.’ She closed her eyes and waited. Then she opened one eye. ‘You aren’t going to scream?’
‘Of course not,’ Nicholas sniffed. ‘If this is a dream then you’re nothing to be afraid of. All I have to do is wake up and you’ll be gone.’
‘Gone with your dream, but not gone from the house,’ the little girl teased. She jumped down from the wooden chair, which really was too high for her, and her head almost completely disappeared from view. He heard the pad-pad of bare feet, and she appeared at his side. ‘Come with me, and I’ll show you my home.’
‘I’ve been here for several days,’ Nicholas protested as he struggled to sit up and reach for his robe. ‘I’ve seen the house already.’
‘You’ve seen the living house,’ Lucinda corrected. ‘There are your slippers,’ she pointed.
Dressed suitably for a midnight ramble through what he had expected to be familiar territory, Nicholas followed Lucinda to the bedroom door, which opened of its own accord. She took his hand and led him down an unfamiliar corridor. Ordinarily, the bedroom opened onto the main room.
She had the voice of a small child, but the vocabulary of an adult, so it was a little perplexing to hear her say she loved puppies and used to have a big doggie, and in the next breath talk about the architecture of the structure having been repeatedly modified and enhanced in the course of the last two centuries, as per the desires of the contemporary owners of a particular era.
Lucinda explained that the house had been built on the hill in the early 18th century, and had been visited by sailors and their ‘girlfriends’, other travellers, and some famous artists and writers whose names she did not remember. There was the cellar, of course, and the ground floor which Nicholas was occupying, but there had been an additional storey, with a large flight of stairs off the main room, which had originally been the public room of the tavern. There had been two wings to the place. Over the decades, there had been mishaps and accidents, damaging one part or another of the structure. Instead of rebuilding, the owners (she wasn’t sure how to describe her relationship to them, since they were the distant descendants of her brothers) had closed off the damaged sections, and eventually torn them down.
‘Why is that?’ Nicholas asked.
‘The house is a living thing. If you lose a leg, you don’t grow it back,’ Lucinda explained. ‘The house lost rooms; anything they might do to replace those rooms wouldn’t really be part of the living house, any more than a peg leg would be part of your real body. It’s simple.’
‘Then how are we here? I’ve never seen this corridor—there is no corridor in the house where I’m living!’
‘Just because the house changes in the living world doesn’t mean it does in the spirit world.’
‘And you’ve been here all this time? Isn’t it lonely for you?’ he asked.
‘I’m not alone. I was born in the bed in which you are sleeping right now. I died there too. I’ve always been here, watching the visitors. Some I can talk to, especially children. Some visitors stay here, even after they’ve left. And I’m not the only ghost here.’ The conversation was becoming esoteric, so he decided to steer it in a more simple direction.
‘How did you die?’
Lucinda stared for a moment. ‘Oh well,’ she said quietly, ‘you weren’t to know.’ Taking her guest’s hand again, she led him to the staircase, and as they moved to the floor above, she explained, ‘There are rules. You can ask us our names, we have to tell you. But never ask a ghost how he or she died or questions about our lives. You can say you’re interested, but you must never ask those questions directly. If we want you to know, we’ll tell you. We’re supposed to answer direct questions, but those details are very’ she whispered ‘secret.’
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