Brackentree

Brackentree

©2003 Ian Hobson

Mack wandered into the master bedroom and looked out of the window in gloomy anticipation. He hated visitors; they upset his routine and disturbed the peace and quiet. At least for these past few months, and even during Christmas for once, he had had the place to himself. Apart from when the cleaner, Mrs. Donald, had come to disturb him, with her scrubbing and polishing and hoovering. Though he had to admit, she was good at her job; quick, but thorough. And because he liked the place to be clean and tidy, he always kept well out of her way; usually in the attic. She never came up there; even when she did the two-day spring clean, which she had just finished the day before. The gardener had been, as well. He was less thorough. Mack turned his head to watch as a small flock of sparrows alighted on the newly cut front lawn, pecking at it and playing aerial leapfrog with each other.

He turned his attention back to the driveway. Saturday afternoon. Now it would surely start. Visitors. Mack hated them. Especially the large family groups with children. Poking about in every nook and cranny. Hiding and then jumping out at each other, pretending to be ghosts. Mack had never believed in ghosts. Never understood why perfectly ordinary folk would start to ramble on about ghosts and hauntings, just because they happened to be staying in a beautiful old house. Mack had lived at Brackentree for more years than he could remember. Ever since his wife, Beatrice, had inherited it from her uncle, back in the fifties.

'Why ever did she leave me?' Mack asked himself, and not for the first time. 'She only had a bad cold. People shouldn't die of bad colds.'

'And why did she will Brackentree to Gerald?' might have been Mack's next question, but he had learned to stop asking himself that one. It upset him to think that his wife could have betrayed him so; leaving the house, lock, stock and barrel, to their money-grabbing son. But then, before she died, she had become very odd. Hardly ever talking to him and never listening properly to what he had to say.

It wouldn't have been so bad if Gerald had come back to live at Brackentree. But no, without even consulting his father he had turned the place over to letting agents; after first installing central heating, and new plumbing, and new kitchen cupboards, and all manner of shiny white machines that hummed, gurgled, whined and vibrated as though about to explode.

Just as Mack stepped back from the window, a vehicle pulled into the driveway. To Mack, it looked like a cross between a car and a minibus. He remembered that a family the previous year had had one just like it; a Renault-something-or-other. He couldn't remember. The sound of rubber tyres on gravel startled the sparrows and they flew off into the trees. The vehicle ground to a halt in front of the house, but just far enough away from it for Mack to watch without stepping back over to the window. As the doors were flung open, a young couple climbed out, soon followed by three children; two girls and a boy. No dogs, Mack noticed. Good. Dogs were a bloody nuisance.

The man stretched and rubbed his back, looking the house over as though he was trying to estimate its value. The woman came and stood beside him. 'It's big, isn't it,' she said. Her accent was English. Northern, but well below the Borders, Mack decided.

'Well, it sleeps eight,' the man replied. Another northern English accent. 'Where did they say the key was?'

'Under a plant pot beside the door.'

'I'll find it, Mum!' said the boy. He was the youngest of the three children. He ran towards the front door and Mack heard a scraping sound as the boy tilted the large terracotta pot that stood beside it. 'I've got it!'

'Be careful with that pot, Edward,' warned the boy's mother. Mack heard the pot rock back into place.

The rest of the family disappeared from view as they too approached the house, and Mack heard the key in the lock and the sound of the front door opening. He left the bedroom and went to stand in the shadows near the top of the stairs, looking down on the family as they entered the house. There was a time when he would have gone down to welcome them. But he had soon learned that visitors had been instructed to ignore him. He could just imagine what had been said. 'Take no notice of the boring old fart that lives in the attic. He won't bother you, if you don't bother him.' People were so rude these days.

'What's that pong?' the eldest girl asked, as she followed the rest of her family inside.

'It's just a bit musty, that's all,' replied the woman, opening the nearest door and discovering the lounge, complete with colour television and video. 'We might be the first to stay here this year. It'll be alright when we've had the widows open a bit.'

'I bet it's haunted,' said the other girl. The man stepped behind her and grabbed her shoulders, mimicking deep rumbling ghostly laughter.

'Get off, Dad!' The girl shrugged her father's hands off her shoulders. 'It might be haunted, anyway.'

'Well, if it is, perhaps the ghosts would like to give me a hand with the suitcases.' The man turned and walked back outside.

'Where's the bathroom?' asked the older girl, moving towards the staircase. 'I need a pee.'

'So do I,' said the younger girl, following.

'I need one first,' said Edward, pushing past his sisters and racing up the stairs.

'No you don't!' they shouted, in unison, chasing after him.

'There's supposed to be two bathrooms! But let Edward go first.' The woman turned and walked along the corridor, her sixth sense guiding her unerringly towards the kitchen.

As the children reached the landing, Mack backed into the doorway of what used to be his son's bedroom, lingering just long enough to stick out his foot and trip the boy. He didn't like boys. Edward went sprawling across the floor, and began to cry loudly but unconvincingly.

'Now what's the matter?' The man was at the foot of the stairs, a suitcase in each hand.

'Naomi tripped me!' the boy managed to say, between howls.

'I didn't!' exclaimed the oldest girl. 'Did I, Melanie?'

The boy got to his feet, momentarily unable to speak or cry, as his lungs were now empty. He gulped air and then began to howl again.

'Oh, shut up, you big baby,' said Naomi.

'He did seem to trip over something.' Melanie was examining the carpet. 'But I can't see anything.'

'Well, put a light on or something,' said the man, as he carried the suitcases up the stairs. 'It's dark up there. You'd think they'd have painted the walls a lighter colour.'

Naomi opened the nearest bedroom door, and the light from its window illuminated the landing. 'I want this room, Dad,' she said, as she looked inside.

The old wooden flooring creaked as her father came and stood behind her, looking over her shoulder. 'You and Melanie can share it. There are twin beds, look. Feels cold though. I think we better put the heating on for a bit.'

'I want to share a room!' exclaimed Edward. He had stopped crying. 'I don't want to sleep on my own if there's ghosts.'

'I'll share with you if you like,' said Melanie.

'There's no such thing as ghosts.' The man put the suitcases down and lifted his son. 'Are you alright now?'

'You should see the kitchen.' The woman was back at the bottom of the stairs. 'It's got a microwave and a tumble dryer and everything. And the view from the window is brilliant. You can see right down to the loch¦ Have you found the bathroom yet? I've found one next to the kitchen.'

The girls began to open more doors, soon finding the upstairs bathroom and disappearing inside. Edward wriggled out of his father's arms and ran down the stairs to his mother. 'I want to use the one downstairs.'

As the man picked up the larger of the two suitcases and carried it into the master bedroom, Mack came out of his son's old room and made his way silently along the landing towards the one remaining closed door. This was marked 'Private' and led to the attic stars; and as Mack climbed to his retreat he sighed to himself and wondered how he would get through another season. Bloody visitors!

***

Despite it being only mid April, the weather had turned very warm, and the visitors - the Bradshaws, Mack had soon learned - were making the most of it. There was just the one tiny window in the attic, but from there Mack could see the two adults and the eldest girl sunning themselves in the back garden. The younger children had discovered the orchard and were playing their own version of hide and seek, which for some reason unknown to Mack, included a lot of screaming. Worse than that, only two days into their holiday, Mrs. Bradshaw had started to use that unspeakably noisy contraption in the kitchen.

Suddenly the high-pitched whining of the automatic washing machine stopped and all was quiet. Mack, realising that at least for the moment, the house was his, made his way down to the kitchen. There were plastic bags full of groceries lying on the table; the proceeds of an early morning foray into town. And the little oven thing, with the glass door, was humming gently, with a chicken on a glass plate rotating inside it.

Mack thought about helping himself to something from the fridge. He opened the door. The shelves were piled with all manner of things, mostly in colourful plastic tubs and wrappers. 'What on earth is Muller Light?' Mack wondered. There was nothing there to tempt him; not even the cans of Foster's lager. His appetite these days was not what it was. A symptom of old age he thought. And he had never liked lager. Whiskey was a man's drink.

Hearing footsteps approaching from outside, Mack quickly retreated to the corridor. Mr. Bradshaw entered the kitchen and stopped as he saw that the fridge door was wide open. 'Edward!' he shouted, sticking his head back through the door. 'How many times do I have to tell you to stop leaving the fridge door open!' He stepped back to let Naomi in through the doorway.

'He can't hear you. He's right down at the bottom of the garden. Mum was in here last, anyway¦ What's for lunch?'

'You better ask your mum.' Mr Bradshaw walked over to the fridge and reached inside. 'I'm just after a beer. Do you want a Coke or anything?'

'I'll have a lager.' Mrs. Bradshaw padded barefoot into the kitchen. 'I can't believe how warm it is. And that view. I think I could sit and look at it for the rest of my¦ Oh, now what?' Outside Edward had begun to scream and clearly this was not part of the game he had been playing with his sister.

Naomi looked through the window. Melanie was racing up the garden path towards the house. She burst in through the door. 'Edward's been stung by a bee!' Naomi rolled her eyes and shook her head as Melanie and her parents rushed back outside.

'Serves him right,' said Mack, as he reached the bottom of the stairs and began to climb them.

Naomi turned towards the corridor. 'Creepy old house,' she said, before taking a bottle of diet coke from the fridge and closing the door.

***

Edward's bee sting had done him no permanent damage and by the evening the swelling had gone down. After a chicken dinner, the family gravitated to the lounge, where Mack heard them arguing over what to watch on television. Eventually they agreed to watch a video: Nightmare on Elm Street. Mack had seen this one before and thought it thoroughly ridiculous. He recalled the time another family had watched it and the subsequent screams in the early hours of the morning when he had inadvertently wandered into an occupied bedroom and sat on the bed. He stood outside the lounge door, chuckling to himself at the memory.

'Who's there?' Melanie was coming along the landing towards the top of the stairs, carrying a teddy bear. Mack hadn't realised that she was up there. As she reached for the light switch, Mack shrank back into the shadowy corridor.

'Dad, if it's you, you're not frightening me,' said Melanie, as the hall light came on and she walked resolutely down the stairs. Just then the lounge door opened, so Mack slipped into the dinning room.

'Come on, Melanie. You're going to miss the film.' It was Naomi. 'We're not waiting any longer.'

'I thought I heard a funny noise,' said Melanie.

'It'll just be the wind or this creaky old house,' replied Naomi. 'I heard a funny noise before.' But at that moment there was a crash as something in the dinning room hit the hardwood floor and shattered. The two girls stood and looked at each other. The rest of the family immediately joined Naomi, who was still standing in the lounge doorway.

'Now what have you broken?' asked Mr. Bradshaw.

'I think there's someone in the dinning room,' said Melanie. 'I think it's the ghost.'

'There's no such thing as ghosts.' Mr. Bradshaw headed towards the dinning room, immediately followed by his wife and the three children. He switched on the light and looked inside. There was no one there and the door to the kitchen was closed. One of Edward's toys was on the floor at his feet, and close to it lay a shattered vase. 'It's just that vase that was on the little table beside the door. It must have fallen off.'

'Things don't just fall over by themselves, Dad,' said an obviously worried Naomi. 'I think you should search the house.'

'It's kind of you to volunteer my services.' Mr. Bradshaw suddenly seemed a little less confident.

'I'm not staying here while you search,' said Melanie.

'An I'm not!' Edward's eyes were beginning to fill with tears and he tugged at his mother's sleeve until she lifted him onto her hip.

'Shall we search together?' she suggested. 'All of us?' Though she didn't lead the way. She left that to her husband.

Meanwhile Mack was in the kitchen. He had trodden on Edward's toy and then knocked the vase off the table. Now he felt like a sneak thief in his own¦ well, his son's own house. And as he heard the family hesitantly approaching the connecting door he slipped out and walked stealthily along the corridor and back into the hall.

He had meant to go back upstairs but, without knowing why, he opened the front door and looked out into the semidarkness of the moonlit evening. He hadn't been outside for a long time. He knew that there was a reason for this but it had slipped his mind. Another consequence of old age, he reminded himself; memory lapses. He stepped over the threshold and quietly closed the door, but then it came back to him. There was something wrong with outside; something frightening. It began immediately the door was closed. It was like being in a violent storm. Wind tugged at his clothing. Leaves fell from the sky and swirled about him. Yet there was no sound and the moon or some other light source had become so bright that he could hardly see.

He turned to go back inside but a female voice called his name. He remembered hearing her call before, but fear had always driven him back inside; back into the safety of the house. As she called again he steeled himself and turned towards the sound. The shadowy figure of a woman was walking along the drive towards him. And she walked straight through the Bradshaw's motor vehicle as though it wasn't there.

'Don't go back inside, Mack,' said Beatrice. Her voice was clearer now and her Scottish lilt sounded so sweet to him. She took hold of his hand and together they walked away, and Brackentree was haunted no more.