The Ghost of Hargreaves Manor

Listen closely, little children, 

Can you hear it call your name?

Don’t head the call to Hargreaves Manor.

Or you’ll end up in your grave. 

In the small town of Pinewood, it was known that Hargreaves Manor was haunted. It was one of those tales that everyone grew up with. The kind that was whispered about at sleepovers and that adults used as a threat to make their children behave. It was the first story told when someone new moved to town—not that it happened very regularly, mind you.

 It was folklore. A legend. A ghost story. 

And it most certainly was not real.

That was what Cecelia told herself as she glared up at the looming building. It stood alone, tucked away on the very outskirts of the town, miles from any other house and backed by the dense pine forest that bordered Pinewood and gave the town its name. It was three floors of crumbling cobblestone interwoven with trailing ivy, which she was convinced was all that held it up. The glass conservatory, which sprawled across the manor’s west wing, had become an oriental iron skeleton with all the glass panels smashed out. The clay tiles that once neatly lined the roof were scattered across the cracked driveway, and the wooden beams supporting it had grown lax and slumped, making it seem as though something had taken a bite out of the roof. 

“You don’t have to do it, Cece.” Zaya, Cecelia’s childhood best friend, had followed her through the rusted gates, begging her not to go in. 

Cecelia turned to Zaya. The dying sun illuminated her cloudy hair in a caramel halo around her head. Cecelia grabbed her hand. “I have to. I’ll be in and out.” She curled her pinky finger around Zaya’s. “Promise,” she whispered before turning back to the house.

Cecelia dodged the fractured stones on the ground so as not to trip and brushed away the overgrown weeds spilling into the path. 

Zaya skipped after her. “Cecelia! I’m being serious. It was just a stupid dare. They will understand if you don’t do it. They’re your friends.” She paused, looked up at the house, and shivered. “Besides, you know the story.” 

Cecelia scoffed. “I’m not scared.” Although, she had to disguise the tremble that ran through her body with a cough. 

“Please, don’t go. If not for the ghosts, then your safety. The place is falling apart.” Zaya pulled at Cecelia’s arm. 

“Zay!” She batted her off. “I want to. It’s the last day of summer. I’m leaving for university. I don’t know when I will be back in this stupid little town, so I might as well go out with a bang.” 

Zaya huffed and crossed her arms over her chest. Worry lingered in her chestnut eyes. She had always been the more reserved of the two, working weekends in the local library and never making any other friends apart from Cecelia. It was surprising, considering her parents ran the only pub in the town, which was the hotspot for all the fun in Pinewood. Cecelia, however, was wild and could not wait to leave the countryside and meet new people. She always dreamed of more, of adventure and seeing the world. So this dare was simply a way to say goodbye. 

And to give the townsfolk something to talk about, of course.

“Okay. Good luck.” Zaya passed over a torch and a digital camera. “Remember to take a photo of something, or this will all be for nothing.”

Cecelia nodded. “See you on the other side.” She saluted with a grin. 

She marched on sturdy legs towards the front door. A grand, unsurprisingly pine wood door sat undisturbed compared to the rest of the manor. Not a split in sight. The only unusual part of the door was the stop sign nailed to it. Someone had obviously taken it from the road and stuck it on to ward off trespassers. As she stood before it, all the warnings and all the stories about Hargreaves Manor flooded her brain. All the people who were said to have never come out. The candles that flicker inside the windows at night. The strange pull that people have to the house. The mystery of what happened to the Hargreaves family over one hundred years ago. She brushed them aside and pushed open the door. It didn’t creak. In fact, it didn’t make a sound. Cecelia turned, and Zaya was sitting down by the gate, waiting. Cecelia gave her a slight wave before stepping into the house.

The door slammed shut behind her, and she jumped out of her skin, the force of it vibrating through her body and chattering her teeth.

“Jesus. You’re really going for the haunted house vibe, I see,” she murmured. 

The air was dusty, filling Cecelia’s lungs and weighing them down. Or perhaps it was just the panic settling on her chest at the reality of the situation she found herself in. 

The hall was more magnificent than she could have dreamed. Beneath the dirt, a blue marble floor shone through, leading to a vast dark oak staircase. The bannister was torn down, and the stairs bowed in the middle, a few steps missing completely. Yet it was still beautiful. The smell, however, was not so lovely. It was what she imagined her grandma’s attic smelled like, musty and slightly floral like someone had sprayed perfume and it imprinted on the air. Each step Cecelia took into the manor left a mark on the layer of thick grime on the floor. No one had been inside for years. After the disappearance of the Hargreaves family, the manor was passed to Mr. Hargreaves’s brother, yet he never did anything with the property. Whom it belonged to now, no one knew. It had been abandoned and left to the elements to do with it as they pleased. 

Cecelia stood for a moment, taking it all in. Then, somewhere in the distance, a dog barked. It was probably Posey, Mrs. Gardener’s poodle. The whole town knew of her never-ending bark. It echoed about the houses. But apart from that, the house made no sound, completely settled in its foundations. Cecilia walked into the closest room. The last few rays of the sun filtered through the large sash window; they danced across the walls illuminating the peeling and yellowed wallpaper, and the walls beneath were covered in odd green stains. In the corner of the room, a piano sat wrapped in a white sheet, and Cecelia half expected it to start playing music by itself. She chuckled at her stupidity. 

An intricately embellished fireplace sat in the center of a far wall, bricks and rubble pouring out of it and scattered across the red rug. Above the fireplace, a painting hung from the wall in a heavy golden frame. A portrait of the Hargreaves family, the tag said. They looked happy, the mother and father sat side by side, and the little girl perched atop the mother’s knee, clutching a porcelain doll. Both the girl and the doll shared the same tight ringlets, the color of pure sunlight. The same color as Cecelia’s. The more Cecelia stared at the portrait, the more she noticed the odd similarities between herself and the girl. The way only one dimple appeared when they smiled, how their left eyebrow was higher than the other, how their eyes turned a deep jade when shadowed. Of course, the girl in the painting was at least ten years younger than her, but the similarities were eerie. It was just the light, surely. The sun had said goodbye to the world, and dim twilight shifted the view of everything in the manor. That was it, she assured herself. 

From the pocket of her hoodie, she pulled out the digital camera and took a quick photo of the painting. The flash blinded her momentarily. At that moment, the strangest thing occurred: A peach light bathed the room, glimmering, and then the cloth covering the piano flew off. A woman in a powder blue dress sat at it, and her eyes fluttered closed as her fingers moved expertly over the keys. She smiled softly, and a pang of something unfamiliar speared Cecelia in the heart. All of a sudden, as though it never happened, Cecelia was back in the room, no light to be found, and inhaling the dust and cobwebs. She squeezed the camera in her hand until her knuckles turned white. Her face was wet, and when she reached up to touch her cheek, she was surprised to find a tear rolling down it. 

“How weird,” she whispered. She had what she needed—the evidence she had been inside Hargreaves Manor—and now she could leave. 

She strode towards the door and tried pulling it open, but it wouldn’t budge. She pulled and pulled to no avail.

“Damn.” She pounded her fist against it. Over and over and over.

The night had leaked into the house, so it was useless even as she stood in the window next to the door and screamed to Zaya. She couldn’t see into the house, and even as she shone her torch out, its radius only reached the bottom of the steps, nowhere near where Zaya was slumped. Cecelia grabbed her phone hoping that at least one bar of signal would pop up, but it was useless. She knew it would be. Pinewood only had signal at the hill on the east side of town on a good day, and she was in the north.

Cecelia turned back to the door. A green “go” road sign was pinned right where she had previously stood. Her elegant brow turned in confusion. 

“I swear you weren’t there before.” She pushed the door again, but it stood sturdy, “You won’t let me go!” she grunted. 

She turned and leaned against the door, shining her torch around the hall. At the bottom of the staircase was another road sign pointing up the stairs. She knew for certain that it hadn’t been there when she entered. 

She wasn’t alone in the house.

“Zay? Ha ha, very funny! You can come out now.” Her voice bounced through the building. She received no reply, so she ran back to the window, and there was Zaya, her silhouette against the gate. 

“Who’s there? You won’t scare me with some cheap trick.” She received nothing, not even the shuffle of a noise to indicate anyone was in the house with her. 

Allowing her eyes to adjust to the dark, Cecelia focused on her breaths. Blood roared in her ears, but behind it, she heard it. Something moved upstairs. Whatever it was, whoever it was, she needed to find out.

She sprinted up the stairs, pure adrenaline taking over her soul. She wasn’t scared of much. When she was a child, her mother always worried that she would get herself killed because she had no sense of fear. If her mother could have seen her, she would have had a heart attack, no doubt. 

She took the stairs two at a time and skirted around the hole as gracefully as possible. As she reached the curve of them, however, a wave of dizziness sent her knees plummeting toward the floor, and she had to clutch the wall to keep herself steady. A flash of white light blurred her vision, and she tried to gulp in as much air as she could, but the air was as thick as jelly. She clawed at her throat. Suddenly, she could breathe again and tentatively clambered up the rest of the stairs, where she found a no-waiting sign. She moved onward. At the end of the hall, a door was open ajar, and flickering light filtered out into the hall. 

Her breath caught in her throat. Candles.

With each step Cecelia took toward the room, the scent of chrysanthemums filled her nostrils. She realized it was the scent she’d smelled when she first entered the house, but it had been muted and subtle. Her steps were heavy, and she knew whoever was in the room would hear her coming, but she wasn’t scared. On the contrary, she was intrigued despite her heart beating as if it would burst through her chest.  

She wasted no time when she reached the door, and it swung open with a gentle tap. The room was small. Only a rocking chair sat next to the biggest sash window she had ever seen. It filled almost the whole wall. Covering the windowsill and the floor, hundreds of candles flared in sync. What kept her rooted to the spot, however, was the man. He was crouched over, lighting a candle, a tailored black suit decorating his limber frame, and his six-foot-tall form filled the room as he stood. His presence, his shadow, felt as though it would swallow her whole. 

“You’re trespassing, girl.” He turned slowly. A hard calculating look in his steel eyes as he observed her. Eyes she didn’t doubt had seen great pain and suffering. His lips turned into a sly grin. “Or maybe you aren’t.”

Cecelia crossed her arms. “Who are you?”

He sat in the chair, crossing his leg with cat-like elegance over his knee. His shoe was shiny and well-polished, and there was no doubt of his unearthly beauty. 

He almost growled. “I go by many names.” He lifted a hand and wiped it through his white hair. 

She didn’t move from her position in the doorway as he relaxed back into the chair. “You don’t scare me.” 

He chuckled. It was like thunder. “As you stated downstairs.” He was like a phantom himself, with transparent skin stretched taut over the sharp bone of his cheekbones. A thin cane leaned against the chair, and he clutched it in his hand. It was black and polished, with a silver cat head on the top. He stroked it as though it was real. 

Cecelia looked around the room. “You’re the one who lights the candles every night?” 

He nodded slowly. 

“Why?” She wondered if he wanted to feed into the town’s stories.

A forlorn look crossed his features. They were hard in the fluttering light. “It is important to remember our dead.” He cocked his head. “Don’t you think?”

Cecelia gulped. “I guess so.”

He stared at her, soaking her in. She shifted on her feet under such intense scrutiny. 

“Well. I must head off.” He glanced down at the watch on his wrist, gently gliding out of the room. “My shift starts soon.” As he passed her, a cool breeze settled on her skin, it was comforting and allowed her to breathe deeply for the first time that evening.

She looked out at the all-consuming darkness. What shift could he possibly be doing in the middle of the night? “Wait!” she called out, running after him. 

“Don’t fall,” he said as she reached the curve on the stairs where she had been standing earlier. There was now a hole and a straight drop into the darkness below. 

“That was close.” 

He let out another chuckle. It was low and carried with it the hint of a secret. He held out his hand, and she clasped his cold, almost glowing skin. 

As they reached the bottom of the stairs, she turned to him, “Can you open the door for me?” 

He shook his head. “The front door is not the exit you seek.” 

She began to ask what he meant, but he turned her body to a door she hadn’t seen before. As she looked around, all the other doors were gone, and the walls were covered in blue road signs, all pointing toward a perfectly white, inconspicuous door with an ornate gold knob.

“Just follow the road signs, and you shall be free from here,” he promised.

She stared, the road signs all ominously glowing despite the lack of light reflecting off them. She stepped toward it. “This is another way out?” 

His icy breath tickled her ear. “I shall see you soon, Cecelia.” 

And with that, Cecelia clasped the knob and pulled open the door.

Featured image by Mike Smith.