Hauntings of Claverton Castle, Chapter 11

The spookiness and drama continue….

To begin at the beginning, with Chapter 1:

To access Chapter 10:

https://open.substack.com/pub/whimsicalwords/p/hauntings-of-claverton-castle-chapter-4b4?r=5m2is&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Hauntings of Claverton Castle, Chapter 11

Gasping, Samantha saw… Reginald behind his sister, his hand encircling Harriet’s throat until Harriet’s movement shook him off. Harriet stood and turned to put her hands on her hips and glare at her brother. “Reginald! You rogue!”

“Aye, I be a rapscallion!” Reginald hopped sideways and twirled his emptied wine glass. “Make that the ghost of a rapscallion! Ooooooooh!”

Harriet shrieked with laughter. Reginald put a hand under his armpit and recreated a sound like flatulence. Samantha shook her head and showed her back to the others. She wondered how much wine they had consumed.

Scarcely attending the banter between Harriet and Reginald, Samantha dwelled on the eerie whispers well after they had ceased. All her life, she had a mild ability to sense spirits. What she was experiencing here was more vivid. Prior to her arrival at Claverton Castle, she had never heard ghosts whisper.

Other Sensitives had much more impressive powers than she. Margot and Roland Montmorency, especially, were far more perceptive Sensitives. They could carry on long conversations with ghosts and often persuade them—and sometimes even demons—to leave this world for their own. Samantha did not have such vivid otherworldly experiences firsthand. She mostly saw specters out of her peripheral vision or sensed their presence.

The young Prendregasts and Samantha rose from the table, vacated the room with the dogs, and crossed the hall to the drawing room. The entire time, Samantha’s mind remained on the specters. Reginald babbled comically, and Harriet giggled almost nonstop.

In the drawing room, Samantha walked straight to the pianoforte in the far corner. Sitting and taking a deep breath, she placed her fingers lightly upon the keys. Without looking up, she felt aware of the siblings settling down before the fireplace.

Except when Samantha performed before an audience, her uncle complained about the racket she produced on her aunt’s pianoforte. Grateful to have escaped Uncle Bradford, Samantha now closed her eyes and lowered her fingers onto two keys. She scarcely knew what she was about to play before music emerged beneath her fingers.

She played a piece she composed herself—it had been running through her head since Aunt Roseanna died. In a minor key, the music was melancholy and conjured the mental image of furiously rocking ocean waves at night.

She had memorized this piece and didn’t need the sheet music she’d jotted out. Reaching the end, she paused. The drawing room was silent for an instant before Harriet and Reginald clapped, as though they had been unsure that the piece was finished.

Next, she played a concerto by the Scottish composer Sophia Dussek. A casual listener might have considered the concerto light and serene, but it contained a complex assortment of notes and occasionally plunged into turbulent minor keys. This piece preceded several others by composers far more famous than Samantha, before she played one more of her own, a soothing sonata.

Harriet and Reginald clapped after every piece she played. Their enthusiasm struck Samantha as lesser than her own; she felt unsure how she perceived this, other than the slowness and loudness of Reginald’s clapping. Perhaps she was imagining their lack of passion for her art because years with her aunt and uncle made her suspicious of anyone.

She began playing one of her favorite sonatas. With her eyes closed tight and her fingers gliding across the keyboard, Samantha reached the most dramatic point in the sonata… when she heard a loud, lion-like yawn. Her fingers fumbled on the keyboard, and she turned toward Reginald.

Harriet gasped. “Reginald! Behave yourself in front of my friend! I behave myself in front of your friends, lot of good it does me.”

“La!” Reginald stretched his arms. “It is possible for Miss Ponsonby to hit a wrong note, after all!”

“Only when a coxcomb yawns during her performance!” Harriet leaned forward and swatted his knee.

Samantha stared at Reginald with her mouth hanging open. She didn’t know what to think of his behavior and felt diminished. She hung her head, slid off the sleek polished bench, and rose. “I fear I have bored your brother, Harriet.”

Harriet, with hands fluttering, jumped with more emotion than elegance from her wing chair. “Nonsense, Samantha darling! Do not heed him. He can be quite provoking! Pay him no mind!”

Reginald drifted up off the sofa. “I think it is our turn to demonstrate our musical prowess, Harriet.” He skipped about in circles toward the pianoforte.

Harriet giggled, forgetting her annoyance with her brother. Samantha quietly glided away from the instrument and to a shadowy corner.

Reginald, in one delighted twirl, collided into a small square table, knocking over a bust of his father and grabbing the edges of the table before it smashed on the floor. “Come, Harriet, do join me!” Samantha wondered how much port he had consumed. Harriet, giggling, followed her brother to the pianoforte.

The siblings sat beside each other on the bench before the pianoforte. They comically played and sang on a less skillful level than Samantha. She shrugged and smiled at their humor. They both pounded on the keyboard, especially Reginald, and sang off-key in terrible German.

Listening to the siblings play, Samantha felt ill at ease, partly because of the ghosts in the dining room. She suspected Harriet and Reginald of ridiculing her, though she could not comprehend why. Did they consider her a less skilled musician than she did? She lowered her head. Her smile had become artificial; it faded to nothing, relaxing the muscles in her mouth, and she gazed at the floor. Perhaps she did play well, and they mocked her perfectionism. Melancholy settled around her like a mist, and she felt pressure on her heart. She recalled her parents praising her musical talent.

It was after midnight by the time everyone was ready to retire. Yawning and carrying a lit candle, Samantha entered the hallway and felt the presence of entities floating overhead. Raising the candle, she peered about in the silent hallway. She saw nothing until she spun around to the side and espied gray mist hovering near the ceiling.

Samantha gulped and faced forward. She resumed treading lightly in her evening slippers. Walking down the hallway, she comprehended numerous beings gliding directly behind her. They felt anxious and desperate, not hostile. Samantha’s heart pounded, and she tensed her shoulders. She glanced at the candlestick she carried and forced herself not to run; she did not wish to extinguish the candle. She treaded rapidly down the hallway, into the entrance hall, and up the stairs.

The spirits followed close behind Samantha and seeming like a group of agitated individuals. They were chasing her! She felt more and more panicked, espying doorways and resisting a temptation to dart into a room. She began running, after all, creating a breeze that snuffed out her candle.

Samantha smelled the candlewax and saw nothing but tiny wavers of gray smoke. She was engulfed in utter and almost palpable darkness. Even the sconces were unlit. Yet Samantha saw movement out of the corners of her eyes. Squawking, she again broke into a run.

Samantha headed toward her bedroom. A window at the end of the hallway supplied some starlight. Spirits continued lurking mere inches behind her, as others floated above her head. Hair stood up on the back of her neck. The energy these wraiths emanated felt more vivid and eerie than that of all her previous ghostly encounters combined. Even the creaking of a floorboard under Samantha’s foot didn’t deter the spirits. They remained close behind her and silent, not affecting the floorboard.

She reached the door of her bedroom and relaxed her jaw and shoulders, as though reaching her quarters would magically make the spirits disperse. The spirits’ energy felt like a roomful of children about to take an exam for which they had not studied. The phantoms struck her as neither sinister nor especially hateful; their nervousness sped up her heartbeat and impelled her to hide under the covers. She tried to convince herself this was irrational.

Samantha’s trembling fingers fumbled in the dark for the doorknob. The entities hovered around her and still caused her heart to palpitate. She grasped the doorknob. Her cold, sweaty palms slipped, but she twisted the knob. The door creaked open. Impatient, Samantha slipped through and slammed the door behind her.

The bedroom was silent. Pressing her back against the door, Samantha no longer felt the energy of the phantoms. She felt alone. Apparently, this room was beyond the region occupied by those ghosts.

Sighing, Samantha stepped away from the door and recalled seeing a tinderbox in the nightstand drawer. Setting one foot cautiously before the other and half expecting to bump into furniture, she crossed the room, found the nightstand, and removed the tinderbox. She lit the candle and sighed again, surveying the bed and nightstand. She scanned the nearest paneled wall and noticed the dressing room door.

She remembered Margot telling her about a ghost that emanated negative energy that proved contagious, causing intense anger and fear amid a customarily harmonious family. These nervous apparitions had a similar effect on Samantha. They apparently had no effect Harriet or Reginald. She smiled, remembering them hammering off-key.

Grateful to have escaped the ghosts, Samantha entered the dressing room and left the door between it and the bedroom open. Raising the candle, she scanned the room. Nothing looked suspicious. She felt as though the spirits were leaving her alone now that she had shut them out.

A maid had draped a white linen nightgown and a dressing gown upon a chair. Samantha set down the candle on the dressing-table and began undressing. She settled into a chair to untie and remove her silk slippers. She slipped out of her evening gown and began undoing her corset.

She felt as though someone were watching her.

She froze and scanned the room with widened eyes. Her heart raced. As soon as she was able to move, she snatched up the dressing gown and threw it on. The room was brightest around the candle and utterly Cimmerian in the far corners. The entity felt different from the agitated and misty ghosts. Its energy seemed more… matronly.

She scanned the room once more before awkwardly unlacing her corset without entirely removing the dressing gown. She slipped out of the confining garment, leaving on her chemise, and with trembling fingers removed her dressing gown. Picturing the ghost of a middle-aged woman in a mobcap, Samantha fumbled into the nightgown and hastily donned the dressing gown again. The entire time, her eyes roved around the room, and she continued feeling as though she was not alone.

She sat before the dressing table and reached up to unpin her hair. Peering into the looking-glass, she saw a shadowy, grayish figure standing behind her. Samantha felt a flutter of panic in her heart. The hair stood up on her forearms.