Julia's House of Flowers

They said all women were found the same: mesmerised by their own visage looking back at them, immortalised in death. And always in that room.

Julia had always been passionate about flowers. It was not just a phase that all girls went through, it was more of a secret language she knew how to speak instinctively. She did not grow out of it as time got on, but grew more into it. She could pair textures and colours to tell a story, no matter what it was. She could bring to surface grace and beauty even in the saddest, most heartbreaking moments in one’s life. Which is what made her name stand out from all other florists in the county. And it was why she was there today.

‘No, Maurice, we cannot have the hortensias there. We must place the lilies there, and the chrysanthemums should really go right next to the casket, which is around...here. The hortensias go by the window.’ she directed her assistant with quick waves of her hand. He moved around the catafalque in a way that suggested he avoided it like one would try and avoid touching something contagious. The casket wasn’t even there yet.

Maurice looked and sounded a little bit dazed. He wasn’t used to organising flower arrangements at funerals. He did not like them, not since his mother and sister died in a horrible accident when he was eight. He had hated chrysanthemums ever since, the flower of death and sorrow.

‘Julia’s House of Flowers’ was a happy, cheerful business; they did weddings, birthdays, charity galas, glamour not death. Not funerals in creepy mansions with even creepier histories of blood and murder. 

‘Are you sure you are all right?’ the question came next, in a voice of kind concern. Julia looked at him, smiling gently, but her eyes really said ‘I really need your help today.’

Maurice loved Julia. He’d never told her, but he was utterly and irrevocably in love with her. So, for her, he would step over his own heart if he had to. He was going to carry on working there, if it meant he was near her. He was going to brave through being in that place where he felt watched by evil every minute.

‘It’s this house.’ He answered, trying to reciprocate the smile, but only managing a grimace. ‘It all looks so…cursed, it’s sending shivers down my spine. Do you not find it ghastly that we’re here? And for…this?’ he said in something close to whispers, looking at the twisting spirals carved into the cherry-wood beams that spread like vines across the walls around him and held the roof together.

The Granholm manor, now fairly dilapidated, had been a true Jacobean jewel back in its prime years. At their origins, The Granholm family were tea merchants who did a great deal of business with the East India Company. They were incredibly wealthy, as expected, and renowned around the royal court for their elitist balls and celebrity parties. Their good name became tarnished, however, around the year 1670, when Lord Granholm was found guilty of an atrocious murder: that of his wife and daughter. They were discovered one morning, sat in front of a full-sized mirror in the old dining room, throats slit and blood smeared all over the walls, in unintelligible writing.

Julia walked around the sumptuous flower arrangements that sat tall at the sides of the catafalque. She put her hand on Maurice’s shoulder. He shuddered lightly.

‘We go where there’s money.’

Maurice blinked blankly. Julia could be very blunt when it came to their work.

‘Besides’ she added, moving past him, through the rows of wooden chairs placed for all those who were invited to the funeral later on. ‘The Granholms are not only rich, but high society and we can always benefit from having such clients. They hired us directly. We cannot refuse work simply because it makes us uncomfortable.’ She added matter of factly, slightly opening the heavily ornate door and pushing some flower wrappings through with the tip of her green velvet stilettoes. ‘Ours is a very visual trade, Maurice. We do our job, we do it well, people praise us, pay us and recommend us. Easy!’

Maurice sighed. Julia’s could be a very business oriented mind and she saw no struggle in simplifying matters and stripping emotion to its commercial core. He was the opposite of that and he guessed that was why Julia insisted on him being her assistant all those years ago, despite his lack of experience. His care, his empathy, his display of soul and morals made him see aspects of humanity where she could not. They made a formidable team.

But he knew she did not feel for him the same way as he did for her. Despite her use of sentiment when matching flowers, she was unable to use the same subtlety of feeling with people. Maurice was a friend, her assistant, but could never be her lover. She liked him, but he was her emotional aide.

‘Does the story of all the women who died in here not trouble you at all?’ Maurice questioned.

Glimpses of light found their way through the wide squares of glass behind Maurice, and reflected charmingly on Julia’s dark-toned skin and in her hazel eyes. In her black, ankle-long, plump-skirted dress, Julia looked for a moment like the lady of the manor; elegant, distinguished. Maurice was both excited and shaken by her image.

‘Do I think what happened in this house, in this very room, is an absolute tragedy? Of course I do! But the whole possessed by the devil thing…it’s just a story, Maurice.’ Julia shrugged. ‘Don’t let it get to you, people die all the time.’

‘Hmpf…’

He sneered. It wasn’t just a story, how could it be? Everyone knew the Granholm manor was haunted, everyone knew that the reason why all those women died in there was because of Iain Granholm’s vengeful spirit was still trapped inside that house, breathing through its walls, existing in every speck of dust; watching, waiting for his next set of victims.

Maurice’s eyes travelled around the dark, sombre, almost baren space surrounding him. That used to be the old dining room. A lot of the furniture had been auctioned off over the years. The money raised had paid to keep the building standing, but it was barely a carcass of its former self. After the funeral of the last descendant of the Granholm bloodline, the house was going to be demolished. As there was nobody else left to claim it, the council had decided they did not wish to endure the sick popularity of that place any longer. Some legends needed to be forced to rest.

Maurice found it strange that, despite the ceiling-high windows, it seemed very little light came in. There were scratches on the hardwood floor around the door frames and windowsills that made him think of something or someone desperately trying to get out, only to be dragged back in again. The image made him shiver.

Only two years before the murders, Lord Granholm had travelled to Congo with the East India Company, with the purpose of slave buying. In spite of the advice received, Lord Granholm took a local boat down the river Congo, and adventured into the jungle. He had always been a man of wild interests and little wisdom, but he called himself adventurous. His wealth allowed others to suffer his decisions.

On that trip, he got his crew of five killed and he was captured by so-called savages, tribes who had not been exposed to the ways of the west. He was held for a full month. On the last Sunday of the month, he was found by troops patrolling the river, delusional and feverish.

He abandoned his interest in slavery soon after and returned home. He was, however, a changed man, troubled by nightmares and visions of death, speaking in languages, and seeing ghosts, prone to violence. He was believed to be possessed. Nobody could ever get out of him how he managed to escape his captors.

‘Come on’ Julia snapped her fingers, waking Maurice up from his past-induced horror trance. ‘Pass me those’ she pointed to the black silk ribbons sat on the chair next to him. She was carefully tying them around all vases in the room. ‘What time’s the funeral?’

‘They are going to bring the casket in an hour.’ Maurice replied with a slight delay. He thought for a second that he could feel someone’s hand on his back. 

‘If you help me with these’ Julia lifted the ribbon in the air, trying to capture his attention ‘we might not have to be here to see that. I hear old Greta Granholm did not have an easy death and her face has been quite mangled by the illness. I guess it’ll be a closed casket kind of business.’

As Julia was saying that, Maurice thought he saw a shadow on the wall, behind her. It was walking in the opposite direction to Julia, and disappeared behind the brocade curtains. His heart skipped a beat and as he moved back, he knocked a chair over. The sound made Julia jump and eek.

‘For goodness’ sake, Maurice. Get it together!’

Maurice said nothing at first, and swallowed dryly, feeling flustered, embarrassed and somewhat frightened. He apologised, but his voice sounded frail, lost.

The legend had it that the night before his wife and daughter were discovered, the servants heard Lord Granholm argue with the lady of the manor, whom he suspected of cheating on him. He threatened to slit her throat, in a fit that some said cast away sleep from their minds.

It all made sense to the authorities the next day, and Lord Granholm, who never even pleaded his innocence, was executed by the end of that week. None of his friends cared to get involved in his sentence. Truth was they were scared of him.

Before he died, his last words were uttered in foreign tongues, never before heard. Granholm’s entire estate went bankrupt by the end of the year. The house was taken over by the Crown, who then gifted it around to various lords and earls, to secure loyalties and appease vanities. And then the deaths started happening, wives and daughters, with no social discrimination. By the 18^th century, the house was abandoned. In the early 1900s the house found its way back to the Granholms, who restored it to some glory. But the little that it achieved, it started loosing after the First World War, when the murders started happening again. People believed Iain Granholm never really got the afterlife rest most souls do, but stayed with the house, as an unsettled ghost. And since then, every ten to fifteen years, someone’s wife and daughter would be found dead in that very same room Maurice and Julia were decorating now.

‘Maurice, you look as pale as death’ Julia commented, lifting up the chair that her assistant had knocked down.

‘I’m sorry, Julia. I don’t think I can be in this house, not today. Ever since my mother and my sister…’ he mumbled, holding his hand to his chest, like he was trying to quiet his heart.

‘My God, Maurice’ Julia lamented. ‘I am so very sorry. I have been an idiot. Of course you can’t be here today. Please, we’re almost finished here. Just go and wait for me in the car.’

Maurice shook his head vigorously.

‘I can’t just leave you…’

‘Maurice, go wait in the car. I will be fine. And whilst you’re there, can you please ring Samuel Berkley and see about that birthday party next month?’

Maurice confirmed with a nod. He left the room, and as he walked out, he felt a weight lifting off his chest. Ten minutes later, Julia came out of the manor, unharmed, and unbothered. Nothing had happened in the end, just another day at work.

Maurice felt terribly exhausted.