Unexpected Visitors

Oliver had been alone for a very long time.

Memory was not an ally in his old age, but he knew it had been a good number of years since he had lived with others; his family had long since moved on to greener pastures, and they had left him alone in this big house with nothing but spiders for company.

Even Oliver’s own wife had left eventually, her heart less stubborn than Oliver’s. She couldn’t take the emptiness of the big house once all her beloved children and grandchildren had gone away for good, and so left to follow them.

And so, Oliver had been alone for a very long time.

This was why, when one day on the big second floor landing he saw two oddly dressed children playing a game he had never seen before, he naturally concluded that he had obtained some ghosts.

“Strange” he thought, standing behind the safety of the study door, peaking out at the children from between the hinges. “I wonder why they’ve only popped up now?”

He had heard some strange voices coming from the entrance hall a few days before. At the time he had blamed them on his deteriorating mind. They must be echoes, he had concluded, of his own voice, distorted by the long hallways of his home. Echoes of words he had forgotten he had said. Maybe he wasn’t so mad after all.

Oliver wondered what the ghosts wanted.

“Perhaps they thought the house finally empty, as I have been sleeping so much these days,”

It was true he now spent a lot of time sleeping. The tall staircases had grown too much for his aging body and going up and down all day exhausted him, worsening his endless fatigue.

“If only,” he thought, “I had someone to move my bed downstairs, then I could take over the sitting-room near the kitchen and leave the rest of the house to the ghosts.”

“I won’t bother them” he thought, “I hope they don’t bother me”, he thought again, but this time with edges of fear in his mind.

- - - - -

A time later and Oliver awoke from another long slumber.

Carefully he raised himself up, fighting slightly against his bed-covers. They were tightly tucked in, just like his wife used to do, he thought with a generous effort from his memory.

He let himself sit up for a few minutes, begging the pieces of his mind to fall into line. His mind used to be as disciplined as a sheepdog. These days it was more like trying to round up chickens with a hammock.

Oliver let his cloudy eyes look around the room. Startled, he realised he was no longer in the bedroom he had slept in for almost his entire life, and had woken up in every morning.

“That’s strange” he mumbled. He noticed the thick, green velvet curtains, filled with dust, drawn tight across the familiar sitting-room window.

He sat still for a long time, taking in this fresh information.

“They must be wish-granting ghosts” he decided finally, before slipping his weak ankles into his favourite slippers and shuffling off to light the enormous fireplace.

- - - - -

Days, or perhaps weeks, passed by.

Oliver felt safe, at least inside his new bedroom. The fireplace kept the chill out of his bones much better than the old oil heaters upstairs, and it seemed to stay lit without him ever having to tend to it. “More ghost magic” Oliver concluded.

The spirits never came near the sitting room, they even spoke in hushed voices as if hesitant to disturb him, or remind him of their presence. They respected his space, at least.

“They must want me to stay in here, so they can haunt the rest of the house,”

Oliver wasn’t sure how he felt about this. This was his house, and he did not like to be told what to do inside of it. However, he wasn’t sure how one could confront a ghost, let alone a family of them. It also scared him to learn what a being capable of moving his big four-poster bed down the stairs without waking him might do to an elderly man. Especially one who complained about the situation. So far the ghosts had seemed relatively friendly, and he didn’t want to change that.

He watched quietly from behind the sitting-room door. It was true the ghosts mainly kept to themselves in the upstairs rooms, although one seemed drawn to haunting the kitchen at night. He wondered if the family had lived here once, before they died. Perhaps they now haunted the rooms they lived the most in.

He sat down on the edge of his bed, trying hard to remember if he had ever known anything about the family who lived here previously. Behind dry, parchment eyelids he tried to sink into that well of memory that eluded him more every day.

It took a considerable, concentrated effort, but he pulled from its waters a name. Boylston. Yes, something to do with the Boylstons. A bad thing, he recalled, the details of which were just out of reach, if only he could stretch just a little further. It was all too much for one day.

Maybe if he kept watch he would gain some clues into their story and be able to remember. If he remembered, perhaps he could figure out how to make them leave, without making them angry.

He took up his post again, keeping the door just slightly open to peer through- as much as his fear would allow.

- - - - -

After a few weeks of quiet observance, Oliver noticed a pattern emerging with the ghosts. The footsteps began at dawn. Two heavy thumps from above his ceiling each morning sent dusty plaster falling onto Oliver’s sleeping face. He listened each morning to the sounds of the ghosts calling out to each other in faraway voices. Usually they did not sound pleased, so Oliver was extra careful at these times.

“At least they have each other, if they have to be dead” he thought generously. It had been a long time since he had heard children’s voices in the halls, the sound distantly reminded him of better times. They reminded him of his own family that had once filled the house, and he thought of them for the first time in a long time.

“I should call them”, he thought. “I could ask them if they remember anything about the previous owners. They might remember what happened”. But alas, the telephone was upstairs, and even if his knees could get him up there, he was afraid of going where the spirits did not want him to go.

A short while after sunrise the ghosts would descend the staircases dressed in strange clothing Oliver did not recognise. The younger ones spoke in a language Oliver couldn’t follow, and the elders seemed to be unhappy with everything and everyone. Oliver stayed silent, not wanting to remind the ghosts of his presence and draw their frustrations towards him.

For much of the rest of the day the house would go quiet, allowing Oliver to emerge briefly from his sanctuary. Haunting was more of a night-time activity, Oliver decided. Perhaps they grew weaker in the daylight. Or was that vampires? He frowned, thinking hard. He couldn’t remember.

It was in this fashion that, for a time, Oliver lived in a delicate peace with the ghosts residing inside his house. He could almost tolerate the situation, he quietly admitted to himself, as long as they didn’t bother him. They seemed to want a peaceful afterlife, and he could respect that, for the time being at least.

He wondered if his family had called recently, but he couldn’t remember if they still did that. He hoped they did, and that they would notice that he couldn’t answer the phone and come to check on him. He would so like to see them again.

- - - - -

A chilly spring gradually gave way for the warm summer breeze that swept through the house, rattling the windows and slamming doors at all hours.

Oliver heard strange noises coming from upstairs.

Loud banging, strange metal wailing, and altogether a lot more noise than had been in his house in a very long time. The unnatural sounds made him anxious, he worried that he had upset the ghosts, perhaps he had already forgotten what he’d done.

The house was no longer at peace during daylight hours, and Oliver now feared to leave the sitting room at all. He decided these ghosts weren’t as keen on a quiet afterlife as it first appeared. Suddenly they were yelling at each other over the din, the children running around screaming during all the chaos. Oliver feared they had begun to tear down his house in their fury; perhaps whatever bad thing had happened to the beings now haunted them as they haunted him. He wished he could remember their story, perhaps he could release them from their torment. He wanted his peace back.

Oliver’s anxiety now trapped him inside his room with nothing but the dust and cobwebs for company. He wondered again if his family would check up on him. He desperately wished they were here to help him evict these ghostly tenants that had settled in their old family home.

His memory seemed to grow weaker every day, and he struggled to remember much about his family. Names eluded him, and their faces were fuzzy in his mind. He could no longer tell what parts of his mind were memory, and what was fiction made up to fill in the blanks.

“What if they aren’t real, what if no one is coming?” he trembled at the thought.

Then he recalled the few items they had left behind, stored upstairs in old closets and under old beds. He wondered if the items were still safe, or if the ghosts had destroyed them in their anger. He wished he could hold them again, one last time, just to know for sure his mind was not yet that far gone.

As if by some new ghostly miracle, Oliver got his wish.

Mustering up his courage during a rare quiet moment, he dared to peak out of the sitting-room door once more. There had been a great load of noise in the entrance hall, and Oliver had spent most of the day cowering with fear behind his bed. Peaking again through the door, he saw what it had all been for. Lying in a heap at the bottom of the staircase was a pile of belongings. He recognised a few of them- old toys of his children, clothes of his wife’s, even some of his own knick-knacks he had not looked at in decades.

Oliver was thankful to the ghosts for fulfilling his wish, although he soon realised the reality of the situation.

“They can hear what I think!” he realised, shutting the door again in fear, not wanting to risk leaving the room even to investigate the pile. He’d better not think more about his family, lest the ghosts seek them out and stop them from helping him. He settled back behind his bed, trying to think of only pleasant things.

- - - - -

After an eternity of crashes and bangs, screaming and wailing, the house suddenly went quiet.

By now it must have been Autumn, for Oliver could see the green of his once luscious front lawn now covered in the reds and golds of fallen leaves. He could not remember the last time he had stepped on the grass, so long had he been trapped inside, only ever daring to leave the sitting room in the hours before dawn, when the ghosts seemed to be subdued.

The sudden quiet lasted a whole day. And then another. And another. With much trepidation, Oliver risked a small look out of the door once more.

The house seemed still. More than that, it sounded empty.

Oliver was very used to the sound of an empty house. Usually it made him feel sad, anxious, like he had missed something he should never have missed.

This time he greeted the emptiness like an old friend, letting it envelop him with its security.

The ghosts, it appeared, had gone. Perhaps they had become dormant again, tiring themselves out with the months of violently haunting the upper portion of the house. Oliver hoped this was the case, although his fear did not allow him to assume he was safe.

Cautiously, Oliver opened the sitting-room door wider than he had allowed in months. No change came over the house with this audacity, so he swallowed hard and resolved to take his chance.

He took one trembling step out the door, then another. Oliver clung to the door like a shield, allowing it to support him as he entered enemy territory.

The air smelt fresh compared to the stuffiness of his safe-hold. He took deep breaths, the vast space of the entrance hall intimidating him after such a long time in the same four walls.

Relief surged up in him- he was free! He took three more slow steps. Oliver turned back briefly to make sure his sanctuary was still there, that he could still return if the ghosts suddenly appeared. As he looked back at what once was his sitting-room, he now saw an empty room, blackened with soot, the curtains ragged and burned. No sign of his months of confinement remained, or even his large four poster bed.

“Just ghost tricks, just ghost tricks...” he tried to tell himself, knees shaking in his worn out slippers.

He noticed for the first time the tape that covered his door.

“Caution? Danger?” he wondered. Even with his cloudy eyes, he could read the giant black words stamped across the bright yellow tape. He wondered why the ghosts had put that there. Was it possible that the ghosts feared him the whole time? The thought bewildered him, but he decided that it was probably a good thing. Perhaps he had scared them off, and had forgotten how he did it, and now they had left him alone once more.

The thought didn’t make him entirely happy.

He continued on, emboldened by this discovery.

“I will call my family, tell them not to worry” he thought. He noticed the ghosts had removed the pile of his family’s belongings from in front of the staircase, granting him easy access to the upstairs rooms.

He took the stairs slowly, one by one, willing his knees to pull him up with every step. He listened out for any further noise, but still, the house was empty.

Finally, making it to the landing, Oliver noticed a strange smell that now filled the second floor. A familiar, artificial odour, but one he hadn’t experienced for many years.

“Were the walls always this colour?” he said out loud, squinting at his surroundings. The floor, too, seemed different- he had thought they used to have carpet up here, but now his slippers stood on polished wood. He was not in his house, he panicked. Where had the ghosts taken him?!

He tried to calm down, his nerves already on edge.

“I must be confused again...”

He looked up desperately, and there, as he unknowingly expected, was the arching, scorched ceiling. He did not remember why, but the presence reassured him somehow. Yes, this was his house.

Oliver stepped quietly towards his study, the last place he could remember leaving his phonebook. He discreetly cracked open the door (an expert at this by now), making sure there were no spirits lingering inside. This room too had changed, this time he was sure of it. Once filled with books and cluttered furniture, the room was entirely empty bar his old oak desk.

“Even the ghosts couldn’t get that through the door” he thought proudly, surprised to find that he could remember building that very desk inside this room long ago; he’d made sure it fit perfectly in the space between the large built-in bookcases.

Gently his hand reached down, remembering the way by itself, and tried to pull open the third drawer on the right-hand side. Locked, dammit.

He paused, his brow furrowed in thought. Then, without thinking, he passed his hand through the wood.

Oliver was pleasantly surprised to find his phonebook still inside, a shabby leather-bound thing much thumbed through once upon a time. He pulled it out, not pausing to wonder how, and cradled it in both hands. Holding this personal artefact soothed his nerves, as if it somehow assured him of his existence.

Gingerly, he opened the cover and carefully read the first page, scrawled in his ancient but familiar handwriting;

This Book Belongs To Oliver Boylston

Husband of Mary Boylston

Born August 8th, 1895.

If Found Please Return to 51 Bury Road

Oliver... Boylston... Mary... fragments of the past reformed in his mind.

For once he was not glad to remember. He dropped the phonebook now, desperate to escape the memories that came back to him- of his family kids and grandkids all, and the last, horrible moments they had spent together in the house. In the sitting-room. With the fireplace. How hot it had been, that night in the depth of winter.

How, afterwards, they had lingered on together, and then how they all faded away one by one. Leaving him alone in the big, empty house.

“Oh,” he said faintly, “no, I suppose I can’t call them.”