Uncanny Tales – (005) – Chapter 01 – The House Guest at Chestnut Cottage

 

Chestnut Cottage is a rather quaint Tudor thatched dwelling with its white walls and black oak timbers, its rose covered lych-gate and a wishing well in the garden.

It is very much the stereo typical “chocolate box” image of an English country cottage.

It’s a fairly remote cottage situated at the end of Vicarage Lane some half a mile from the Church and about a mile from Appleby village itself.

My name is Harry Tyler and I lived in the cottage for more than twenty years and by the time summer came to an end I had been in residence another eight months after I died.

Not in a physical sense, my body did not lie undiscovered, decomposing in my armchair, I was found and dealt with in the proper manner.

At the time I was happy enough to die, though I took no hand in it I hasten to add, I died of natural causes.

The last year of my life was a mere existence after the death of my dear wife Rose.

We had no children of our own and what other family that were left we were not close to.

Rose and I had been happily married for 47 years and we retired to Appleby village and we had such a nice life together.

She was my conduit to the world, she was the interface that connected me to people, so after she was gone it was like being stranded in a foreign land without a translator.

To find myself alone in the world at the age of seventy-four filled me with dread so I withdrew into the safety of the cottage and became very reclusive and only ventured out when I had to.

So, when I died I naturally thought I would be reunited with my Rose again, but I remained in the cottage and she was nowhere to be found.

I spent every day confined to the cottage and garden the same prison I confined myself to before I died.

In many ways it was no difference to when I was alive except I didn’t have to eat or drink.

Nor did I have to wash or comb my hair or trim my beard and of course I didn’t feel anything.

I was exactly as I was when I died, a fat, old man with white hair and a beard, wearing the same clothes I had on when I breathed my last.

I hoped to God I didn’t have to spend eternity wearing that awful red jumper, I hated that jumper and the only reason I was wearing it at all was that my favourite one was still damp, and I didn’t want to catch a chill.

If I had realised I was going to pop my clogs anyway I would have worn the other one.

So, there I stood a fat white bearded old man wearing a red sweater that made me look like an off-duty Santa Claus.

I didn’t understand why I was still there, I didn’t want to be there I wanted to be with Rose.

I thought there must be something I had to do in order that I could move on, but at that time I had no idea what that something might have been.

 

On the first of September I thought to myself, today is not like any other day, today things are going to change.

I was standing in what used to be the bedroom Rose and I shared, and I was looking out through the window at the unfolding scene below.

A removal truck had just come to a stop in the lane and a small blue car parked a suitable distance behind it.

The driver of the of the car slowly got out and walked towards the gate, pausing briefly to speak to the removal men who were lowering the tail board, then she walked through the gate and down the long winding path.

She was an attractive young woman, late twenties or probably early thirties, petite with shoulder length black hair that shimmered with a hint of blue like a raven’s wing and she walked awkwardly with a stick in her right hand.

I recognised her at once, as one of fifteen or so prospective buyers who viewed the cottage during the summer.

I thought to myself that it would be nice to have company, even if there would be no conversation, it would be a bit like watching a soap opera on TV.

I would have preferred it to be a man; after all spying on a young woman would make me feel a bit like a peeping Tom, but I figured that beggars can’t be choosers.

Then as I watched her slow progress down the path something terrible occurred to me what if she was one of those awful naturist types who go about the house naked, where would I look?

Then I laughed at the stupid question I had asked myself, it was obvious where I would look, I might be dead, but I was still a man.

 

So, I watched her discreetly over the next week or so as she went about her unpacking and arranging her furniture, but due to my gentlemanly disposition I declared her bedroom and the bathroom as off limits.

As I was in my ninth month of limbo I was desperate for knowledge of the wider world and I was bitterly disappointed that she didn’t have a television, I really missed the TV and she didn’t listen to the radio either.

I had hoped she might at least take a daily paper but no, the only paper to come through the door was the local freebie.

She did have a computer and I did look-over her shoulder while she was using it, very rude I know and under normal circumstance I would never have done such a thing, but I thought to myself, needs must.

By the end of September, the computer had taught me a lot, I had established that her name was Juliana Molesworth and she was a workaholic who lived on the computer, in fact the computer was her life, it was her work, she shopped on it, she banked on it, it was her library, it was her music collection and it was her only friend.

Apart from her visits for physiotherapy she never went out and her only visitors were delivery people, oh and a hairdresser.

This young woman was making the same mistake that I had, she was cutting herself off from the world and making the cottage her prison.

Though I didn’t know why she was withdrawing from the world I now knew what I had to do to move on, I had to save Juliana from my own fate.

 

I know that strictly speaking as I was dead I couldn’t actually live with her, but after living with Juliana for five weeks it had become clear that she had gone to Chestnut Cottage to cut herself off from the world and I knew from bitter experience that that course of action was pure folly.

So, it became clear to me that my job was to show her the error of her ways, but I had absolutely no idea how I would achieve that.

For a start I was dead and invisible, although I could make myself visible without any difficulty, the problem was not if I could make her see me, but when and how, and would it make her freak out.

If she didn’t freak out at having a resident ghost, then she almost certainly would when she discovered she had been sharing the cottage with an old man who could make himself invisible.

I decided for the mean time to just maintain a watching brief just to keep an eye on her until I could figure out the best course of action.

I did allow her the odd glimpse, a reflection in a mirror, a shape in the corner of her eye just to test her nerve, but she seemed un-phased by it or would dismiss it with a shrug.

She seemed at least on the surface anyway, to be quite a strong character she was clearly in a lot of pain from her hip, for which she took strong pain killers. 

Juliana got around some of the day without her stick but towards the end of the day she couldn’t walk without it and she would rub her hip and you could see the pain etched into her face, and it was a pretty face when it wasn’t screwed up in pain, and she had hypnotic green eyes and a sensual mouth.

 

It was getting towards the end of the month and I was out in the garden, it had been a glorious late summer / early autumn day, the sun would have felt quite warm had I been able to feel it, and I was watching the sun set as I had so many times with Rose.

I missed her so much and I was feeling sorry for myself, so I stayed until the sun disappeared behind the trees then I went back inside.

Juliana was sat perched on the edge of an armchair and in front of her on the coffee table was a large glass of wine and a pile of pain killers, and I feared the worse as I sat in the empty armchair opposite her, to my mind booze and pills meant only one thing.

Her hand was shaking as it moved towards the tablets.

“Don’t do it” I said

“What?”

She looked around the room.

“Who said that?”

“I did” I said as I appeared, and she went stiff and white in response and said in alarm

“Where did you come from? How did you get in here? get out before I call the police”

Then she grabbed the empty pill bottle and threw it at me, but it went straight through my chest and hit the back of the chair before bouncing back on to the floor and came to a halt by her feet, by which time she had managed to pull herself to her feet and was wielding her cane, but when she saw the pill bottle come to a stop by her feet she flopped down into the chair and said.

“Damn I’ve taken too many and now I’m hallucinating”

“You’re not hallucinating” I said quietly “I’m really here”

“No, No, that’s not possible” She said and drained the wine glass then instantly refilled it.

“I’ve over dosed” She was trembling, and she held out a hand in front of her and watched it shake.

“Oh God now I’ve got the tremors” She closed her eyes tight for half a minute then opened them and stared at me.

“And you’re still here”

“You’re really not hallucinating” I said quietly “I’m really here, please don’t take your own life”

She took a double take and was suddenly calmer as she considered what I had said.

“Take my own life?” she said quizzically, then she glanced down at the pile of pills and the glass of wine.

“I’m not going to kill myself” she said, and I looked at her and nodded and said “good” but I didn’t believe her, and she could tell.

“I tipped them out to count them because my leg is hurting so bad I thought I must have missed taking one, but I haven’t damn it, and I can’t have another one for two hours” She said impatiently.

That made sense to me, and then I felt foolish and I had exposed myself for nothing.

“I can see you believe me now” She said, “So now tell me who you are or what you are?”

“My name is Harry Tyler”

“I know that name this was your house wasn’t it?”

“Yes”

“But you’re dead, you died here” She said and took a large gulp of wine “Are you a ghost or an angel?”

“I think I’m just a ghost, I haven’t been anywhere to become an angel”

“So why are you here? Why haven’t you gone to where dead people go?” she said before she drained her glass and filled it again quickly.

“I not really sure” I lied

There was silence for a few moments before she asked

“Is there a heaven?”

“I don’t know if there is a heaven or not, I’ve always believed that there was” I replied and paused for a moment

“My wife Rose died in this cottage and she has obviously gone somewhere”

“God how many people have died here? Is it cursed or something?” She asked and had another glug of wine, then a look of panic came over her face.

“Have you been here all the time, ever since I moved in I mean?” Then she flushed deep red.

“You haven’t been letching at me in the bath?”

I laughed and said.

“No, it’s alright don’t worry, I haven’t been letching at you even though you are a very attractive young woman”

She looked doubtful, so I continued.

“I am painfully aware that this is not my home anymore and as such there are areas that I have made off limits, I am a very discreet ghost”

She sighed and looked reassured and then we sat in silence for a while, then she fell asleep in the armchair.

 

For the next two days I didn’t show myself to her, partly because I thought it might be better for her to digest the knowledge of my existence for a while before I spoke to her again and partly because I was angry at myself for misreading the situation the previous evening and alerting her to my presence unnecessarily.

I had acted on the spur of the moment, but in truth it hadn’t upset my plans in anyway, chiefly because I didn’t have a plan to upset.

Of course, there was always the possibility she might think she had imagined the whole thing as a result of the wine and painkillers.

I looked in on her from time to time and apart from the obvious signs of a hangover and her limp she seemed ok.

Although she did tend to suddenly look over her shoulder for no apparent reason.