Despite her instincts and the protestations of her parents, she took the job as housekeeper because she was broke, recently graduated and desperate for work. Cleaning? Her mother asked, distraught. The economy had changed somewhat since her mother had gone to university. Work was work, and her father admired her ethic, in the end.
It was a garish, cold, unwelcoming house, filled with shadows and sadness from times gone by.
She disliked it when she approached the wrought iron gates every day and had to press the buzzer. The camera zoomed in on her face every time as she waited for someone to let her in. A faceless eye, knowing all about her and her knowing nothing about it.
The walk up to the house was exhausting. She didn’t have a car but luckily, she lived nearby. She often thought how strange it was that she hadn’t known about this place before now. It was a stone’s throw from the village where she had grown up.
The driveway curved dramatically on an incline, each section hidden by tall trees and hedges kept in place by nothing but unbroken habit and natural stubbornness.
Near the door, thick, scarlet blooms rested heavily on thorned stems; their polliniferous fragrance contrasting with the iron spiked fences of the structure they clung to.
In the gentle breeze that shushed through old trees, their delicate, papery petals scattered across the gravel like confetti that, with the wet turn of the weather, would stick to the tiny stones like droplets of blood.
The house cast its hideous shadow over the widest part of the driveway. Gargoyles crouched ominously over the high, arched doorway and the curved eaves of the roof. Some mornings, she could swear she saw their eyes following her to and from the house as she emptied bins and cleaned steps. They watched with stoney faces, the curves in the corners of their horrid mouths suggested they enjoyed watching her shudder.
Winthrop Hall had been described as a seventeenth-century mansion once belonging to some cousin of one of the county’s ancient families. A family whose name had faded into oblivion, briefly sparking again only thanks to the job advertisement.
Winthrop Hall had its own mausoleum on the grounds. There the dead Winthrops lay, listening, perhaps. Nothing much happened here.
She wondered which of the Winthrops had been responsible for the latest alterations to the house. If a building could glower at visitors, she felt that it would have been this one.
Strangely, she had taken the interview for the role in London. The solicitor interviewing her was a family friend of the client, or so he said. Lord Winthrop was an elderly man and very ill and she was not to bother him. She had asked if he had any family nearby. He had none. She was to tidy and clean the rooms, tend to any other affairs; sorting through Lord Winthrop’s mail, tending to his rabbits and liaising with the gardener once a fortnight. She would clean everywhere, except for the rooms in the East wing. Condemned. Best avoided.
It was just cleaning. Meals were already dealt with. She did not know if he was currently living there or not. It was none of her business.
She was instructed, in no uncertain terms, to leave the house every day before dark. Something about electricity being limited. As she had to pass through woodland to get home, she felt this was reasonable and asked no questions; she needed the money, and her student friends had had stranger jobs than this.
On the day when it was time to polish the mahogany stair rails, she would look up at the imposing portraits that decorated the walls of Winthrop Hall with their exquisite, gilded frames from eras that had spanned well before her time. All were of handsome lords and ladies. Some posed with dramatically large feathered hats, rifles, swords or hounds. Others held their children on their knees whilst wearing enormous powdered wigs. The most recent one, she had guessed, was a portrait near the bottom of the stairway. It was of a young man with large, sad eyes, a carefully carved square jaw and tightly curled, jet black hair that had been combed back to reveal his widow's peak. Beneath his cleanly trimmed facial hair she could see a deep dimple in his chin. She had often wondered if this portrait was the elusive Lord Winthrop as a young man. She felt that the painting had seemed ageless albeit more modern than its acquaintances. It would be the last painting, probably. His name, like his home, might fade into obscurity beneath a blanket of ivy. If he was lucky, he might end up in some portrait gallery for school children to draw a terrible imitation of for their art teacher, or history teacher. It all depended on whether he mattered to anyone.
In the parlour room, there was a grand, turn-of-the-century piano that had been long neglected. She dusted it with the care one would reserve for a loved one. As she was a graduate of music and had yet to discover a room that inhabited her employer, she couldn’t help but try the keys each afternoon. She would find herself absorbed by Mozart, Chopin, Brahms and Handel. Just one song, she thought. Each day for a week, it was one song. It had become quite apparent that apart from the rabbits, she was the only one there on that day of the week.
Until she found the note.
It had been left on the piano. A handwritten request.
Her heart stopped, momentarily separating itself from her sweating hands. Handwriting. She hadn't seen handwriting for a long time. It was as natural as pebbles on the shore. Seldom perfect; always real, always changing shape because nature willed it so.
Do you know Moonlight Sonata?
She felt her face flash with heat; her fingers tingled. The butterflies in her stomach finally subsided and she inhaled slowly. Look at the keys. She couldn’t do it. Weeks of playing while believing herself to be the only person in the house did nothing for her confidence. Someone was listening, and she could never play as she did again.
She slammed the cover over the keys, grabbed her bag and left.
The following week, she returned. It was quite possible that it was all a misunderstanding, and it was an old note from some other time. She could deal with that.
But she’d had that tune in her head for an entire week.
She sat down at the piano. No note this time.
Freely, she played the composition, almost closing her eyes in the euphoria. Her focus was on nothing but the keys, until a shadow fell in her peripheral.
Someone was behind her.
She stopped abruptly, adrenaline jolting her body away from the piano. Run.
“Wait!” She called to the shadow that passed the parlour doors as quickly as she had turned to catch a glimpse. “Please, wait!” She ran after it into the hall. There was no one there.
The following week, she approached the piano again. There was another note.
I am sorry for the disturbance. Please, play at will. Don’t mind me.
She played again, passionately. She played as though she was under the spotlight. All eyes in the house were on her; she could not let them down.
Weeks passed this way. Sometimes she would find notes. Other times, she would pull something out of a box or bag and gasp, refusing it until it was made clear to her that they were hers to keep. If she’d been pragmatic, she’d have taken them home, never coming back to clean parquet floors and crystal chandeliers. She could have bought her own piano. She could have gone anywhere in the world, never feeling the need to come back.
She ate her sandwiches alone, on the steps outside the back door. Across the lawn, some Greek or Roman goddess—she could never tell which—with a bow and arrow watched her from the barren fountain, an arrangement of flowers neatly laid at her marble feet.
Most of the time, the girl would watch the rabbits hop around in their large run. Sometimes, there were many. Other times, only one or two were in there. Foxes must be a nuisance here, she thought. It was the countryside, after all.
On a sunny afternoon in October, she played Moonlight Sonata again. That was when she finally saw him. He lingered in the shadows of the room, hiding like a child who had been told multiple times to go to bed and leave his parents to entertain guests. “I love to hear you play,” he said in a hoarse voice.
She didn’t look straight at him, but maintained her focus on him through the corner of her eye. It was as though he knew she couldn’t help but turn her head. He stopped her, raising a long-nailed hand in protest.
“Please, don’t look at me.” He said, his voice breaking. “You would never return if you did.”
“I’m not afraid,” she said, still looking at the piano, her back straight. She was a liar. There was a pause. He knew she was a liar, too. He could hear it in her chest. Fear.
“It is almost dark. You had better go.”
In her defiance, she turned to look at him but he was gone, leaving nothing but a startled drape in his wake. The sun was going down. Leave the house before dark.
It was already dark when she was standing in the hallway with her coat on, looking up at only one portrait: his. Had she seen the same eyes looking at her while she played? It was impossible.
In that moment of indulgence, she didn’t see them opening the sash windows with their crowbars.
She screamed as they beat her down to the ground and bound her hands. In the twilight, they were terrifying. Clad in all black with balaclavas, they had left a white transit with its lights off on the driveway, ready to leave as soon as they had what they wanted.
There were so many of them until there were none. In the darkness, they yelped like frightened dogs as claws slashed their skin and an incomprehensible force took their knees from under them. Their blood and his, pooled on the floor of the hallway.
Effortlessly, he untied her and carried her to the chaise longue in the parlour. Though shocked at first, she did not question what she saw. She accepted him as he was in the dim candlelight. He asked nothing of her. By the power of a low, crackling fire warming the room and her trembling limbs, she slept.
By dawn, she had limped to the windows of the parlour room, following the trail of blood that he had left behind him. She knelt down and held his head in her hands. He was no longer a creature of the night hiding in the shadows but the bleeding, young Lord Winthrop as she had seen him in his painting. Her eyes looked across the blood-stained clothes. She couldn’t see where it was coming from.
He didn’t seem to be in any pain. He felt the fingers that had played music so beautifully comb through his hair. He looked into her eyes and with his chest rising slowly, released his last breath.
She wiped her face. Oh God, was she crying? Why was she crying? She didn’t know him. “So sorry,” she said, wiping one of her tears from his face. They were getting everywhere, but she couldn’t stop them. She’d miss him.
She woke up on the chaise longue again, not knowing if the incident involving her dying employer was a dream or a reality so distressing that she fainted because of it. She sat up, looking around for bloodstains on the carpet. There were none, but the patches where blood had been were still dark with shampoo. She stood up and approached the French doors, curious to see the sun waiting for her.
All was still in the main garden. Near the patio, rabbits hopped around, entering and exiting the hutches. The fountain, still devoid of water, was missing a goddess.
That was it, she’d lost her mind after all.
Too much time alone in strange houses.
But then she realised it was all real. On the piano, there was a note.
If it’s too much, I understand. If not, a walk around the grounds might suit you. Please join me at noon.
She looked over to the mantelpiece and read the clock. She smiled, and sat down at the piano, opening the cover. She had forty-five minutes.
You might recognise this one, or not. I delved into the vault and wow, you can come so far from where you started. This story has changed slightly, but I’m happy with the alterations.
Thanks for reading. If you like my fiction, I currently have three novels out in the world, but I’m particularly excited to show you The Ring, which is out now!
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Loved how gothic it all was. Really nicely done.
I like this one (well, I like all of them but hey). Sort of Beauty & the Beast thing I'm guessing.
Lovely ending especially.