Haunting, 4

Chapter 4

Eleanor had texted Henry last night when she got back to campus, and she called him in the morning when he didn't respond. His initial grogginess turned into grouchiness at Eleanor’s barrage of questions. Finally, he barked at her that the ghost was named Catherine and she had drowned in the pond in the backyard.

Before Eleanor could properly apologize for badgering him, Henry told her he needed to go. He hung up without waiting for her goodbye. Then he swung his legs over the side of the bed and tried to figure out what to do next.

He hadn't really thought about how the ghost had died before. Not really, maybe slightly. Something gentle and nonviolent like old age, or maybe a vague illness or even a complication related to pregnancy that was always killing people off before modern medicine had come along. Not at the hand of another human being. Not like his mother.

Henry put on a clean set of clothes and left, not bothering to lock the door and not daring to look into the sitting room on his way out.

He went back to see Aunt Grace. She greeted him just as warmly as when he was with Eleanor.

“I'm so sorry for bothering you again today, Aunt Grace, but I wanted to ask: do you remember Catherine Morland?” He decided to go straight to the heart of the matter.

“Catherine?” the frail old woman repeated.

She misunderstood him and called over an attendant named Cathy Powell. Henry explained to this other woman that he was Grace North’s great nephew and was currently staying in her old cottage.

“And I found something at the cottage last night,” he continued, stumbling over how to explain a message spelled out over a ouija board. “Some letters!” he said, in a moment of cleverness. C, A, T, H, E, R, I, N, and E were letters, after all. “Letters that belonged to a Catherine Morland. I was hoping Aunt Grace knew of her so that I could return them to the Morland family. Do you know anyone named Morland?”

“You don't want to give them back to Miss Morland yourself?”

“Of course not, she's dead.”

The words slipped out before Henry could soften them. The nurse's face puckered in distaste. Many of her patients had one foot in the grave and here he was mentioning dead people with callous insensitivity.

“I mean, the letters looked very old. I just assumed she had, um, passed,” he corrected, latching onto that benign euphemism with vigor.

She glared at him flatly and he readied himself to be thrown out of the building but Miss Powell merely called a few coworkers to ask if they knew of a Morland family.

They did not. Nor did any of the patients who still had reliable memories.

Henry thanked them and left.

.o8o.

He parked on the gravel in front of the cottage and just sat in his car. He didn't really want to go inside. He didn't want to remain sitting stupidly in the car. He really didn't want to look at the pond in the backyard just now.

He dialed Eleanor, figuring he owed her a better conversation than the one from this morning.

“Are you feeling better?” She was gentle, accommodating, whatever.

“Her name was Catherine Morland, and she died in the pond out back, murdered,” he said. He had told her this much already, hadn't he? He just needed to get it out of his system again or for the first time. “And I went to see Aunt Grace this morning and she didn't know who I was talking about, nor did anyone else there. It's like she never really existed and I am now wondering if I've made it all up.”

He breathed shakily.

“Did my imagination make up a ghost to help me get over Mother's death?” he asked.

“Henry! No,” Eleanor assured him, her voice in his ear while the rest of her was impossibly distant. “She was real. I felt her too. Just because no one at Aunt Grace’s facility has heard of her doesn't mean anything. Here, I'm googling her name right now --”

“Don't bother,” Henry scoffed. “I've already looked. You're not going to find anything useful.” Google search was about as worthless as expired coupons for a defunct business in an obsolete currency.

“Well,” Eleanor said, admitting defeat after scrolling through the first page of sponsored ads and tangentially unrelated search results, “what are you going to do?”

Henry sighed deeply and prepared to get out of the car. “I'm going to get over it. That's my only option, right?”

.o8o.

He got over it by avoiding it. A good therapist would probably tell Henry that this was not a winning long-term strategy but Henry had fired his old therapist and hadn't yet bothered to find a replacement.

In the absence of improving mental health, he worked on his physical health and the house. He devoted himself to fixing up the old place to make a home for himself and Eleanor. Every morning he worked on the interior until he could no longer ignore the feeling that he wasn't alone. At that point, it was warm enough to go outside and beat the garden into shape.

He paid no attention to where he put the silverware or spices. He had no memory of whether he had left the lights on or off. He didn't set up any board games. He switched to a coconut-scented shampoo and didn't keep track of how much was in the bottle. He frequently burned a strongly scented candle so that the whole house always smelled of lavender. If a ghost named Catherine was haunting the cottage, Henry wouldn't know what she was up to.

Now that he no longer allowed himself to talk to ghosts, he texted his brother back a few times and eventually worked up to answering his calls. Neither he nor Frederick knew how to speak of delicate topics to each other so they stuck to the here and now. These conversations lacked the openness that Henry felt when sharing details of his life with a figment of his imagination, and there were probably subjects that would always be taboo with his brother, but this superficial reconciliation felt like progress and only needed time and trust to deepen further.

Henry typically avoided the pond but there were some days -- so bright and warm and vibrant -- that he couldn't feel any residual darkness or fear. He pushed the old gas-powered mower as close to the water as he could, avoiding the clumps of bulrush and the mud.

As he cut off the engine, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye and his heart clenched momentarily. It was not a ghost, however; it was worse.

“Hello, Henry,” said his father.

---

Dramatic chord! I'll wrap up the story in the next post.