Blurb:
Q: When is a haunting not a haunting?
A: When the ghost is helpful and tidy and willing to play chess.

Desperate to get away from his old life after the death of his mother, Henry Tilney moves into a remote cottage that turns out to be occupied by a friendly ghost. Modern AU. Haunted house. Not really scary but hopefully you think parts are suspenseful.

Chapter 1

Protecting one's mother felt like the reverse of the natural order. It was the parents’ job to protect the children after all, or the older, stronger, and bigger to protect the younger, weaker, and smaller. One could easily forget that little children grew up while mothers were as big as they were ever going to get but that didn't make Henry feel better.

Henry tried explaining this to his therapist repeatedly only for the bespectacled man to gently counter that Henry was not in fact responsible for his mother's death. Henry knew that. On one level, he absolutely knew it; he hadn't killed her; he hadn't watched her die. But on another level he still felt guilty: for cutting ties with his father while his mother stayed in the marriage; for not calling back that night; for a thousand little betrayals sprinkled over his life. Even when Henry's father was charged and held until the trial, there was the grim knowledge that justice would never bring his mother back.

His therapist recommended a grieving support group and a concerted effort to reconnect with his father as Henry's only surviving parent. As if his father had not been responsible -- allegedly -- for Mrs. Tilney’s premature and violent demise.

It should have struck him as gallows humor but he was too depressed to laugh.

He declined to schedule another appointment with his therapist and decided that it was time for a break in his routine, something to get him out of his head and habits, give him a new perspective and other self-care patterns corrupted into unhealthy choices.

When he mentioned to his manager the desire to take an extended leave of absence so soon after all the time he had already taken for bereavement and the media circus that surrounded the murder case, the woman had been almost relieved. An indefinite leave of absence sounded so much better than termination.

Henry headed into the last two months of the year with no plans for holiday cheer. He visited his mother's family not to celebrate but to mourn with them.

“What are you going to do?” asked a cousin named David.

He shrugged. He had a small savings. If he could find a way to live frugally until his mother's money was no longer tied up in court, he'd probably be able to coast for the rest of his life on the inheritance. To a depressed young man, that dim future would suffice. But he was currently “between lodgings” and he wanted to provide Eleanor with a home after her graduation if she needed it. Heaven knew he wasn't letting her go back to their father's house.

“What about Aunt Grace’s cottage?” David suggested.

Henry's Great Aunt Grace was frail and her memory was slipping; it was not safe for her to live alone. She was currently residing in a senior care facility and the old cottage where she used to live was standing empty. Henry could stay there if he wanted. In fact, he'd be doing the rest of the family a favor as the cottage was remote and it was difficult for people to find time to go out to the property regularly to maintain it.

He was so overwhelmed by the generosity of the offer that he accepted it, then and there.

---

Henry moved into his great aunt's cottage in early January. It was drafty and creaky, and he couldn't get an electrician to modernize and ground the wiring until the end of the month, but it wasn't his father's house and that made it perfect. He also had over five months to get the property into shape so that his sister could move in with him at the end of the spring term.

His mother's family had already sent an exterminator to clear the attic of bats and the cellar of mice, but they were too old or too employed to help Henry move in. He had spent the first day getting the kitchen and bathroom unpacked and sorted with no support. His sister was at school, his brother was a lost cause, and his friends -- his so-called friends -- weren't so friendly anymore. Which was fine, really. He didn't have to worry about where anyone had unpacked his bottle opener, or how carelessly they cleaned the glass panes in the old windows, or whether they gouged the walls or floors while moving things around. He could do this; he would do it, and it would be all the more impressive that he'd done it by himself.

That first night, wearing two layers of clothes and socks, huddled on the decades-old mattress with every blanket and towel he owned piled on for warmth because the furnace had died unexpectedly, he had second thoughts.

Thankfully, Cousin David knew the repairman who came early the next morning. Henry felt the heat trickling through the vents before long. Convinced he'd feel better after a real breakfast, he gave his thanks and payment to the repairman and then drove to the town center.

There was a lesson to be learned about not shopping on an empty stomach but Henry had been starving and with no food in the house besides granola bars and whatever canned food his great aunt had left in the pantry from too many years ago. Really, he'd had no choice at all as he piled various foodstuffs into his cart.

Finally back at the cottage as the winter sun hung low above the horizon, he fumbled at the front door, fighting with the lock with one hand while the other tried to balance a cardboard box full of food. As he staggered over the doorstep, he wondered why he even bothered to lock the door in such a remote place.

Then, of course, he saw the intruder.

There was a woman in his kitchen, standing in front of his sink with her back to him and staring out his window. Henry was momentarily paralyzed, his arms full of groceries as he just looked down the hall from the entry into the kitchen as a strange woman did as she pleased.

Someone had broken into his new home, and just after he decided he never needed to lock the place. This had never happened to him in the city. The intruder filled a glass with water -- he could hear the faucet turn on then off -- and took a drink. Something must have caught her eye because she turned suddenly to face him.

She screamed in surprise. He was sure she screamed. He could hear it, piercing and frightened. He could hear the sound of the glass hitting the floor and shattering.

And yet there was no one there, there was no sound.

Henry stood at the entrance, staring down the hall at his kitchen sink and the window to the back yard, and he was alone in the quiet cottage, heart racing, eyes wide, and breath caught.

He spent a full minute just staring at the gapingly empty normalcy where the woman had stood before he built up the nerve to go to the kitchen. He spent the next fifteen minutes just calling out, trying to get an answer, but there was no response. She wasn't hiding in the pantry or the cellar. She hadn't snuck outside to the backyard. Her water glass wasn't shattered and scattered across his kitchen floor.

A poorly timed call from his brother was sent straight to voicemail. Frederick was still inclined to give their father the benefit of the doubt. After everything Henry saw the night their mother died, that support was inexcusable. In addition to firing his conciliatory therapist, Henry had decided that he had no more time for his apologist brother. The phone soon buzzed to inform Henry that he had a new voicemail message, and again a minute later to tell him about a new text. He swiped away both notifications then stared at his phone for a moment.

Henry didn't think he believed in ghosts but he called his cousin anyway. He told David again how much he appreciated this, told him that the furnace was working now. He cleverly joked that he would blame all future drafts and noises on the ghost in the kitchen even as his voice threatened to shake.

“Ghost?” David exclaimed in the patronizing intersection of skeptical and amused. “Who told you there's a ghost in the cottage?”

David seemed to find the very idea laughable but softened Henry's humiliation by telling a few stories of being surprised by a fox or chased by a goose, mundane and natural things that might frighten someone unaccustomed to rural life. There was no further mention of the ghost -- kitchen or otherwise -- and Henry was too much of a coward to ask again.

Henry thanked him once more and rang off. He put the groceries away, checked the locks, and tried to turn his attention to the sitting room.

Chapter 2

Henry focused on the house, on doing the repair work that fit his limited skill set and on researching tradespeople who were needed for everything else. He received weekly emails from a lawyer about his mother's money and his father's incarceration, and the status of neither of them changed. He texted with Eleanor almost daily albeit not on important topics. He didn't want to weigh her down with thoughts she could do nothing about. Repeated attempts at contact from his brother were ignored.

A month passed and he'd almost convinced himself that he had wanted the ghost for company. It was terribly lonely in the cottage and while he wasn't about to answer his brother's calls, he couldn't stop himself from having imaginary conversations. The whole scenario would be less ridiculous if Henry thought he wasn't talking to just himself. The ghost, however, hadn't appeared again and anything else she might have done -- rearrange the silverware drawer, leave the toothpaste cap off -- could just as easily and more justifiably have been done by Henry himself. Still, he decided to call her Fanny -- short for ‘Phantom’ -- and routinely teased her for being a bad housemate. It made him feel less isolated.

He slept in on the weekends as a treat, as if he needed to view the endless list of home improvement tasks as a regular job. It injected some variety into his schedule and helped mark the passage of time. Mornings and evenings were so dark in February, and his mind and body both needed the extra time. As he was laying in bed, not quite committed to getting up and yet too awake to go back to sleep, he heard a noise coming from the bathroom. If he didn't know any better, he'd swear that someone was taking a bath, sloshing water gently in the old claw foot tub.

He continued to listen fully alert for a few minutes. The sounds only made his original hypothesis more likely. Someone was in his house. Someone was in his bathtub. They were humming something tuneless rather than haunting but Henry was creeped out just the same.

Finally screwing up his courage, he got out of bed and padded silently to the bathroom door. As he gripped the door knob, the noise coming from the bathroom sounded only more real. Was it actually a ghost? What if he walked in on some stranger taking a bath? Why would anyone break into this cottage in the middle of nowhere at some godforsaken hour just to take a bath while he was sleeping in the next room? When he thought of it like that, it actually made sense to imagine a ghost in his tub.

“Fanny, is that you?” he asked weakly. If it was a living, breathing intruder, maybe they'd decide he was barmy and quietly sneak out before having to deal directly with his madness.

“Fanny!” he repeated with more force. “Quit using my shampoo!” He rattled the knob once in warning then threw open the door. The room was dark and empty and humid.

The drain gurgled at him.

.o8o.

After that, Henry paid closer attention and decided that his ghost was an organizer who was set in her ways. She liked to move things around, not big things, but yes, she and Henry were in a mild tug of war about where a few things should be located and she'd reordered his spices a few times. He didn't understand why she had trouble with the toothpaste tube when she always managed to close his cereal boxes. She liked lavender if the scent that clung to the empty vase by the front door was any indication. She was a fiend for vanilla, and he went through vanilla-scented shampoo far quicker than someone with short hair ought.

He started talking to her in earnest: long rambling monologues about his childhood; character studies of his former coworkers; criticisms of the plumbing videos he had watched; detailed retellings of therapy sessions. He knew he had crossed a line when he started imagining what Fanny would say in response but he also knew it wasn't real, not really.

The ghost never replied, never stopped him to give him her real name, never called him out on his hyperbolic characterizations, never reminded him that both his siblings could bear to hear these things from him without judging him too harshly. He never heard her voice beyond that first scream in the kitchen when he had surprised her. At her worst, she swapped the cinnamon for the paprika and stole the hot water for his morning shower.

Eventually, he told her about his mother and finding her body; it wasn't exactly therapy but in the middle of nowhere his choices were limited. In keeping with precedent, she did not speak to him to offer advice or commiseration. There was no warm gust of comforting air, no gurgling pipes to mimic soothing words. Henry was forced to do all his own thinking, and would occasionally, briefly admit that he was not at fault. He was not yet ready to share this breakthrough with Eleanor; he still had never replied to Frederick’s calls or texts.

Maybe the ghost and Henry were each having their own separate conversations with each other, spilling all sorts of secrets and emotions, completely unaware of what the other was trying to say. Maybe while Henry was coming to terms with his mother's death, Fanny was making peace with her own afterlife. It should have felt more tragic than this.

Henry snuck down to the kitchen one night for a glass of water and caught a blur of color in the sitting room. He stopped in his tracks and retraced his steps slowly and silently. Fanny was there, sort of. A vague shape that was probably her head was bent over a square on the table, a dim shadow that might have been her hand was hovering over it.

Was his ghost playing a game?

He must have made a sound -- gasped or something. Fanny looked at him and for a moment he could actually see her outline, maybe even the color of her hair. Before he could begin to register the details, she was gone.

He found the old chessboard the next morning. Half the pawns were missing but there were enough checkers to patch the gap so he set up the board on Fanny’s table and made the first move. When he sat down after dinner, he could see that Fanny had joined him in the game.

.o8o.

Eleanor surprised him in March. Her car pulled onto the gravel just as he made his morning move on the chess board. He was outside to greet her before she got out of the car. He hugged her tightly and asked, "What are you doing here?” in such a joyful tone that she had to laugh and squeeze him back in response.

His morning plans happily derailed, he invited her in and gave her the tour. Eleanor was perfectly attentive and if she couldn't fully appreciate all that Henry had already accomplished, she could certainly sound suitably impressed. Henry saved the second bedroom for last, opening the door with a flourish and offering it to her. He offered apologies as he still had a few projects to finish in that room but Eleanor was truly enraptured and wouldn't leave until she had inspected and delighted over every detail.

Again, finally they settled in the sitting room and at last their excited chatter began to move from the subject of home improvement to other topics.

“How long are you staying?” Henry asked. “Do you have time to stay for dinner? Do you want to eat here or go into the town?” Town was 30 minutes away by car and had three restaurants.

“I need to be on the road by 10 tomorrow so I can stay if you'll let me sleep in my room tonight,” Eleanor said.

“Of course you can stay! That's the whole reason why I moved here,” he told her. “I just wish you had given me a little warning and I would have hung the curtain rods this week.” But once he began to think of it, he worried how Fanny would treat Eleanor.

It would probably be alright.

Fanny had never acted out before.

“What's wrong?” Eleanor asked, watching the concerns play across his face.

“It's fine. Everything's fine. I'm just worried you're going to steal all my hot water,” he joked. Fanny was a well-behaved ghost, and he was sure that he had nothing to worry about.

He made some ploughman's sandwiches for lunch and then they went to visit Aunt Grace, then came back to the cottage and Eleanor helped him with the curtain rods and a few other projects that went faster with a second pair of hands. When the sun began to sink they washed up and gathered again in the sitting room before getting back in the car to go to the best restaurant in town.

“Frederick tells me that he's been reaching out to you,” Eleanor told him as they bounced along the road.

Henry frowned. “He's been trying ,” he said.

Eleanor paused, trying to phrase this next bit correctly. “The way Dad played favorites -- the way he neglected you and me -- that was wrong. It hurt us both. But I know it hurt Frederick too.”

“Eleanor,” Henry said coolly, “our father murdered our mother and Frederick is defending him.”

“He's not,” Eleanor protested, “not really. He grew up brainwashed into thinking that Dad was the greatest man alive. He was desperate for recognition from the one person who would never give it. Did I tell you about how he wished that he had been named Henry Junior? He hated being named for our grandfather while you were named after Dad. It's really hard to overcome that kind of programming, but Frederick is trying. He just needs some support and encouragement from people who aren't Dad.”

Henry grimaced but kept silent. He wasn't ready to forgive just yet.

Eleanor knew better than to expect Henry would change his mind in an instant so she wisely changed the subject. “I noticed the chessboard. Do you have a game going with someone?”

The new topic caught him off guard and Henry looked a little flustered as he answered, “Maybe.”

Eleanor’s eyes widened as she instantly picked up on his reticence. She rapidly jumped to all sorts of conclusions. Henry had been practically colorless with depression since the initial shock of their mom's death had worn off. If he was now blushing at the thought of a chess game, Eleanor wanted to know why.

“Have you made friends with a neighbor who comes over to play chess with you?” Eleanor asked. “Am I interrupting your game? Is she a girl? Are you dating someone?”

“ Dating someone?!” Henry yelped in alarm. “Absolutely not!” The idea was mad. Fanny was a ghost !

“Then who is she?” Eleanor asked, feeling more confident in her choice of pronoun.

“I'm trying something new,” he said, completely ignoring her direct question to answer something else. “I only move once per day. It encourages me to be mindful. I think it's improved my game.”

“Who are you playing against?” she restated.

“Someone I've never met, someone who doesn't live here,” said Henry, lying with the truth.

“What's her name?” Eleanor persisted, convinced that this mystery person was a woman.

“I don't really know,” he replied, growing exasperated with his sister's badgering. Before Eleanor could ask her next question, he supplied, “I call her Fanny .”

Eleanor sputtered in indignation at the name. “Do I even want to know what kind of website you found her at?”

Henry agonized for another breath before deciding to trust his sister with the truth as he knew it. “Fanny is short for Phantom. She's a ghost. She doesn't live here because she's, you know, dead,” Henry finally admitted. He stared intently at the empty road in front of them, waiting for Eleanor’s reaction.

There was a blessed beat of silence before his sister was nearly shouting her questions at him. There was a ghost , an actual ghost ? Who died? How long has this been going on? What exactly did the ghost do? When was he planning to mention that the cottage was haunted ? He had to be pulling her leg, right?

“I didn't want to tell you because I didn't want you to freak out,” he said matter of factly, lightly scolding her. “I don't know who she is, which is why I call her Fanny . I tried to mention it once to David but he didn't know what I was talking about, so I just shut up about it because I know how crazy it sounds. She's not evil or wicked or even tortured, I think. She likes to organize things and I've figured out she can play chess, albeit very slowly. Don't worry about her, Eleanor; she won't hurt you. You probably won't even notice her.”

“Is it safe to sleep in the cottage?”

Henry actually scoffed at that. “I've been there for a couple months and the worst that has happened that I can blame on Fanny is that she woke me up early because she was taking a bath.”

The silent response to that tidbit was pointed and Henry ignored it.

Chapter 3

Henry was pleased and dismayed at the same time that he had finally told someone about the ghost. It was a relief to admit it was real, and Eleanor deserved to know about the ghost before she moved into the cottage. But Fanny became the primary topic of conversation for the rest of the evening.

Henry was forced to catalog every interaction and suspicion he had about Fanny. Eleanor would then judge how plausible it was to credit or blame Fanny for the lavender scent that lingered around the front door and the shampoo bottles rapidly emptying in the bathroom, and whether the action implied a spiritually malicious intent. Eleanor also insisted on renaming her to something less juvenile. It was with relief that Henry wished his sister a good night and went to bed.

The next morning he found Eleanor in the sitting room, ensconced in the armchair in front of the chessboard, wrapped in a quilt and sleeping soundly.

“Eleanor,” he said, gently touching her arm to wake her.

She blinked and scrunched her face and yawned in the process of waking while Henry surveyed the board.

“You moved the pieces,” he told her. He wasn't annoyed yet, but he thought he might become so.

“I wanted to get her attention, see if I could talk to her,” Eleanor admitted groggily.

Henry's eyes nearly popped out of his skull. “You did? What happened?” he demanded.

“I saw her. She's real,” Eleanor said, stretching until the quilt dropped away. She hadn't even changed out of her clothes from yesterday. “But I couldn't understand her. I think we're going to need a ouija board or something.”

Henry just stared at his sister. “Why do we need to understand her?” He and Fanny had been getting on quite well with their parallel lives… Parallel life and death.

“She's a ghost , Henry,” she said as if that explained everything. “She's not supposed to be here anymore. We need to find out what has trapped her here and free her so she can move on.”

He wanted to argue with Eleanor. What she said made sense in that it fit spooky stories told around the bonfire, but it was nonsense when compared to fact or science. Besides, Fanny had already died once. Asking how she might be destroyed a second time seemed like blatantly unfriendly behavior in a housemate.

Rather than dig in his heels, however, he changed the subject. “Why don't you go take a quick shower and get changed into some clean clothes while I make breakfast. You said you wanted to leave by 10.”

Eleanor took one quick look at her watch and dashed off to comply. Later, she was able to tell Henry nothing new about Fanny as they cut into their pancakes. She was still not done with her theories when Henry gathered her bag and put it in her car. As he watched her settle into the driver's seat, she looked at him seriously. “Get a ouija board,” she told him. “And then tell me all about it.”

“Drive safe,” he said, “and text me when you get home.”

.o8o.

Deciding to humor Eleanor, Henry checked a few shops in town for occult paraphernalia before he picked up his groceries. Country towns weren't supposed to have ouija boards but one of the stores did, along with a few packs of tarot cards, sage bundles, charms, and candles. Henry bought some scented candles with the board as if to hide his true purchase amid the rest of it. The clerk made some comment about not leaving burning candles unattended and wished him a good day.

At home, he packed away the chess set and set out the ouija board. He skimmed the instructions but mostly recalled what he'd seen in various scary movies, then went to work sanding the wainscoting in the dining room.

That evening, after showering and eating, he settled in the sitting room and stared at the board, trying to make up his mind. He wanted to try it but he knew it wouldn't work. He wasn't fond of feeling stupid but he didn't want to disappoint his sister. He didn't want to banish the ghost, but maybe Fanny was finally ready to move on. Maybe he and Eleanor were the only ones who could see her because they were the only ones who could help her. Maybe it was time for Henry to get a new therapist and start actively working on his issues rather than inventing imaginary friends to make him feel better about himself.

After a while, he lit the candles -- lavender, one of her favorite scents -- and pulled out his phone, determined to forget about all of it until he had a better idea.

The plan worked. He got completely absorbed in the news and only stopped when something unexpected tickled his nose.

Was that toast? Why did it suddenly smell like toast? Not that there was anything wrong with that! A local bakery set up a booth at the weekly farmer's market and Henry was currently addicted to their sourdough. He'd toast a thick slice of it and spread a layer of salted butter on it for breakfast usually, or add a bit of jam on top for an easy and satisfying dessert. But he hadn't made any today; Eleanor's surprise visit had disrupted his plans and he'd skipped the market entirely. He was out of bread, actually, so it should have been impossible.

Was Fanny doing this, making it smell like something he liked just as he had lit the scented candles?

Warily, he set his phone down and approached the ouija board. Nothing had changed since he had set it up, but he wasn't sure what he was expecting. In movies, the living humans always gathered around the board and called on the spirits to guide their hands.

He sat down in the arm chair and pulled it closer to the table. With a deep sigh, he placed his hands on the planchette and rolled his shoulders. The planchette moved with his arms but not from any supernatural influence.

Without Eleanor there to correct him, he opted to refer to his ghost by her usual name. “Fanny? Are you there?” he called to the empty room.

He fought down the feelings of ridiculousness and asked again, more loudly.

The candles didn't flicker and the house made no noise but just for the briefest moment, he felt the planchette tug under his fingers.

His mouth suddenly dry, he swallowed and tried to chase after the tug. It was faint but eventually he found it hovering over the letter A. He felt the tug again and followed it to R. When the tug came again, it was almost easy to end up on E.

A - R - E. “Are,” Henry said aloud.

With another tug, he was going to the other side of the board to land on Y. If he and Fanny were going to spell out everything from are you there to good night , this was going to get tedious quickly.

Without waiting for the next letter, Henry dragged the planchette to YES.

Stillness hung for a bit and Henry wondered if Fanny could follow him the same way he could follow her. Then the planchette began to move again and Henry hoped the ghost knew to conserve her words.

W - H - O.

Aha! She was a fast learner. He smiled in concentration and dragged out H - E - N - R - Y - T - I - L - N - E - Y. If he moved slowly, he could feel the slight resistance of Fanny trailing after him. He paused for a moment to let Fanny read his letters then he sent back the same query: W - H - O.

It was getting easier to follow her now. C - A - T - H - E - R - I - N - E - M - O - R - L - A - N - D. How was it possible that they both had four syllable names yet Fanny's was so long?

“Catherine,” Henry repeated aloud. Eleanor would be pleased that they could stop thinking of her as Fanny now. “Catherine Morland.” He made a mental note to call his great aunt tomorrow to see if she had ever heard of the name.

A - L - O - N - E, came the next question. He answered it with a succinct YES. It might have been foolish to admit that he was the only one there, but if she was hoping for more time with Eleanor, Catherine would need to wait until after final exams.

Henry thought of his next question. Now that they were actually communicating, there was so much he wanted to know! He wondered when she had been born, how she had lived, how old she was when she died, and what still tethered her to the cottage.

H - O - W - D - I - E - D, he asked through the planchette then waited.

And waited.

Perhaps she didn't know. Maybe it was the mystery that held her. He knew her name now; maybe his great aunt knew what had happened to Catherine Morland. If Henry could find out how she died, if he could tell her, maybe she'd find the peace and strength to move on.

He tried to think of another terse question to ask when the planchette began to move again. It was jerky but the letters were unmistakable: D - R - O - W - N - E - D - P - O - N - D - M - U - R - D - E - R - E - D - W ---.

Henry yanked his fingers off the ouija board when the words sunk in. The twitch sent the planchette rolling to the side and off the table where it clattered loudly on the floor. He stared at the board, wide-eyed and breathing hard like he had just witnessed something shocking. In a way he was shocked but it shouldn't -- couldn't -- compare to him witnessing an actual death. But hearing of one death brought his mother's own violent end to the forefront of his thoughts.

Enough. That was enough for one night. He blew out the candles and left the room, leaving the planchette on the floor.

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.

Chapter 5

Henry Tilney, Sr. looked haggard but very much alive. Behind him stood Henry's brother Frederick, looking weak or mortified.

“Sir,” Henry replied automatically as he felt his chest constricting. “What are you doing here? How did you find me?”

Henry Tilney, Sr. looked at his older son who only folded further in upon himself. “I have my ways,” he said, directing a deprecating smirk at Frederick.

Henry felt the betrayal like a physical blow. He had been a fool to confide anything to his brother.

Then Mr. Tilney looked again at Henry and any humor drained from his eyes. “You told everyone that I killed your mother.”

“You did kill her.” His voice was quiet. His lungs didn't have enough air to yell and in any case there was no one around to hear him.

“You wound me, Son,” his father said gravely. “You walked in on an admittedly disturbing scene and your first thought -- your first thought -- was that I had killed her. And then you told that absurd fantasy to others without once considering the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English. She was my wife, a part of me; I could no sooner hurt her than I could hurt myself. But you imagined something horrible, and you told anyone who would listen. And they believed you… for a while but not anymore. Now it's clear that you can't prove it and here I am, a free man. I think you owe me an apology, Son.”

“But I saw --”

“You don't know what you saw,” he spat. “You think very highly of yourself, Henry, but consult your own understanding, your own memories of what happened that night. You're not as smart as you think you are if you can imagine me capable of such a thing when I am constantly in the public eye, observed by my colleagues and neighbors. How could I have done anything without a witness?”

By the time Henry noticed how close the older man had gotten, there was no easy path around him. He took a step back and his boot squelched in the mud that ringed the pond. He tried to pull it out but for a moment he was held fast and he had a fleeting thought of Catherine dying violently in this same place and how her life was forgotten and her death erased, like she had never existed. The sun no longer felt warm and the land no longer felt vibrant, and Henry didn't want to be near the pond either. If he lived through this interview, he'd set up the ouija board again.

If he lived through this.

Mr. Tilney lunged at him. Frederick -- they had both forgotten about Frederick by then -- called out a warning but Henry's heel was still caught in the mud. Together, Henry and his father toppled into the water. Henry's breath was knocked out at the first impact and then his father was on top of him, holding his head under the surface of the water. It wasn't very deep but it was deep enough to drown in, deep enough to be murdered in.

Henry fought. He swung his arms, clawing at his father whose strength might have faded during his incarceration but whose determination was even more resolute. He thrashed and kicked, sinking further in the mud. His father kept both hands on Henry's throat until Henry's swings grew weaker.

He felt his consciousness fading at the edges and in a moment of clarity wondered if this was why he had formed a connection to Catherine: they were destined to share the same death.

Then the weight pinning Henry lifted and the grip on Henry's throat disappeared. Frederick Tilney had roughly shoved his father away from Henry when it became clear that the old man wasn't going to stop.

By then, Henry was barely conscious and too weak to rescue himself. It was up to Frederick. He prised Henry from the mud and blew air into his lungs until the pond water poured out. While Henry was puking and gasping, Frederick called for emergency services.

Only then did Frederick realize that their father was not also recovering on the edge of the pond. Henry Tilney, Sr. had always seemed like an indomitable pillar of strength to his children, and Frederick had never recalibrated his expectations. After shoving him off Henry, Frederick had left his father to founder while he completed his rescue. By the time Frederick could spare any thought for his father, the old man had needed to be saved as much as Henry had.

.o8o.

Henry was not like Catherine after all. He did not drown in the pond.

He was, however, hospitalized for nearly drowning. Then an infection set up residence in his lungs briefly -- something about pond water and bacteria. Luckily, he was young and healthy and had access to modern medical care.

His father was not so fortunate. Perhaps no more needed to be said on that topic other than the police pressed no charges against Frederick Tilney.

The detectives who investigated the incident had thought it was suspicious when Henry had remarked in a daze that this was the second life taken in that pond. “What other life?” they wanted to know, but Henry stuttered nonsense and then fell silent. He couldn't mention Catherine. His sanity couldn't afford the blow of hearing that he had imagined her all over again.

The day he checked out of the hospital, Frederick and Eleanor drove him back to the cottage. His brother only stayed for the day before leaving him exclusively to Eleanor’s care. They two settled into whatever this new phase of life was. It was a colorless, tasteless half-life that included far too much well-meaning pity and absolutely no ghosts. It lasted until the end of summer when Eleanor went back to school and Henry moved with her.

He didn't share a flat with her but it was tremendously comforting to be in the same city, to be able to meet for dinner and complain about the traffic. He still texted his brother occasionally but neither tried to call the other. He started using his mother's last name to avoid recognition and got a job. He even found a new therapist.

The court finally released his mother's money and Henry upgraded to a nicer flat. It was still within his means but it felt like life wasn't a continuous struggle, and that was a real luxury.

He got a text one day from Cousin David: Aunt Grace had died in her sleep. This was sad news but not entirely unexpected; the woman had only gotten older since the last time Henry had seen her. He called his cousin and the two reminisced for a while before David got to the heart of the matter: Aunt Grace had willed the cottage to Henry since he was the last family member to live in it.

“I couldn't possibly accept it,” Henry started to refuse.

“If you're worried that she might have been too forgetful to be of sound mind when she signed it, don't be,” said David. “A few of us cousins got together and decided that none of us wanted it. Mari and I both signed as witnesses. No one is going to challenge it.”

“But I don't want to live there,” Henry said. “If no one else in the family wants it, I'll probably just sell it.”

David laughed at his honesty. “I'm sure you aren't fond of the place, given what happened to you there,” his cousin continued, glossing over an attempted murder. “We don't expect you to move back but you don't need to get rid of it right away either,” David told him. “Those of us who live closest decided to try to rent it out after you had fixed it up and we had a tenant sign a one-year lease about five months ago. That should give you some time to decide what's next. And you'll also get a few pennies from the rent, after I deduct my maintenance fees.”

Henry protested that this was unnecessary but David stated that it was legally required and, besides, the rent was terribly modest. “Despite everything you did to the place, we couldn't charge much for it. It's remote and half of the rent is paid in labor, you know? Making sure the place doesn't fall into disrepair again. If she wasn't living there, we'd have to draw lots to see who had to drive out every weekend just to check on the place. Thank goodness for the Department of Rural Affairs!”

That felt like a non sequitur and Henry had to ask what his cousin meant by that.

“The tenant is working on a research project for the Department of Whatnot and Rural Affairs, counting migratory bird species in the area over a twelve month period. She almost rented a place 50 kilometers to the northeast but I let slip about your ghost and she was hooked.”

“You did what?” Henry was instantly defensive. “I never told you there was a ghost.”

“It was heavily implied,” David said, the eye roll audible. “And it worked out in the end. Honestly, I think it's silly, inventing paranormal explanations for the usual old-house noises and forgetting where you put things. But she’s a big fan of spooky stuff. She doesn't mind if the cottage has a ghost, says he moves stuff around on her, got cheeky once when she was taking a bath, but he's never tried to scare her. She claims he even played chess with her. She calls him Tom , short for phantom if you can believe it.”

Henry tried to laugh but merely wheezed. This woman was living with his ghost. It had been real after all.

“Well, she doesn't mind most of the time,” David said, warming to the subject. “She did call up once in the dead of night in a bit of a panic. She had been playing with tarot cards or something and was convinced that your father's spirit was trapped in the cottage.”

Henry felt an unnatural shock. “My father ?”

“She must have googled famous deaths near me , when she moved in,” his cousin said dismissively. “She probably found a bunch of tabloid articles about Henry Senior, the murder investigation, and how he died after nearly drowning in the pond, and her subconscious finally connected some random dots. It took me a few minutes to calm her down, but eventually I told her that he'd never been inside the cottage and had died at the hospital miles away.”

Henry tried to make sense of this story. His own subconscious was trying to connect a few seemingly random dots.

“Anyway,” David continued after a pause, “the service is this weekend. Say you'll come?”

The question felt like another non sequitur and it took him a moment to gather his wits. “Of course!” he agreed at last. “Eleanor and I will both come.” He'd mention it to Frederick too but wouldn't insist on it.

“Wonderful! I'll text you the details. A lot of the family will be there, and everyone from the facility. And Cathy, of course.”

“Who's Cathy?” Henry asked, barely following along. His mind was still stuck on the ghost of Catherine Morland.

“She's your tenant,” David explained: “Cathy Morland.”

Henry didn't notice when his cousin had ended the call, he just stood there, blind and deaf while his mind rioted. He'd gotten it wrong after all. It had always been a haunting in reverse.

---

I hope you read Northanger Abbey after this. It's my fave.