Page 19 of Love at First Fright

“Where do I even start?” She sat back down, fingers drumming against the table. “The first electrician said his tools kept disappearing and reappearing in different rooms. He’d put down his wire cutters in the entrance hall, walk to his van for supplies, come back and find them upstairs in a bedroom. Then he started hearing footsteps following him. Heavy footsteps. He refused to work alone after that.”

Harrison made a dismissive noise. Evelyn ignored him.

“The plumber had it worse. He was working on the pipes in the old servants’ quarters when all the taps in the house turned on at once. Every single one. Water everywhere. He said it was like someone turned them on deliberately, all at the same time. And when he went to turn them off, he heard laughing.” She paused. “Children laughing.”

My skin prickled. I pushed the sensation away. These local workmen probably hated working for Harrison so much, they all planned this together at the pub one night.

“Then there was the painter,” Evelyn continued. “Poor man. He was working in the long gallery—that’s on the first floor—and he said he kept seeing someone in the mirrors. A woman in an old-fashioned dress, just standing there watching him. But when he turned around, nothing. This went on for three days before he packed up and left.”

“Definitely his imagination,” Harrison muttered. “Though that young lad seemed the sort to smoke cannabis. That could have been it.”

“The final straw,” Evelyn said, her voice hardening, “was the incident with the carpenters last week. One of them was measuring up the doorframes in the drawing room when a hammer flew across the room and hit him in the back of the head. Knocked him unconscious. His colleague had to call an ambulance.”

Harrison straightened. “I’m still not sure—”

“It was hardly one of his friends, was it, Harry?” Evelyn snapped. “You saw the photos of the injury! The man needed six stitches!”

“Yes, but it could have been an accident. He could have knocked it off the windowsill himself, turned at the wrong moment—”

“A hammer doesn’t change trajectory mid-flight,” Evelyn said through gritted teeth. “It doesn’t fly horizontally across a room. Physics doesn’t work that way.”

“There are explanations. Rational explanations!”

“Such as?”

Harrison opened his mouth. Closed it. His jaw worked, but nothing came out.

“The point is,” Evelyn turned back to us, composing herself with visible effort, “something is wrong with this manor. The locals won’t come near it anymore. Word has spread. We’ve contacted six different construction companies, and the moment they hear it’s Grimthorne Manor, they refuse the job. We’re haemorrhaging money. The renovation is months behind schedule. And Harrison”—she shot her husband a glare—“refuses to admit there might be something genuinely supernatural happening.”

“Because there isn’t,” Harrison said flatly. “It’s mass hysteria. One person gets spooked, tells a story about seeing a glimpse of Vivian bloody Starling, and suddenly everyone sees ghosts. It’s textbook group psychology.”

“Then why did you agree to this?” I asked.

Harrison met my eyes. “Because my wife asked me to. And sometimes, keeping your marriage intact is worth humouring the irrational.”

The temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees.

Evelyn’s fingers tightened on the edge of the table, knuckles white. “The moment you experience it yourself, Harry, you’ll—”

A crash echoed through the house. Loud. Sharp. The unmistakable sound of breaking glass.

We all froze.

Another sound, from somewhere above us. The ceiling creaked, old timbers shifting.

Then silence. Heavy and waiting.

“What was that?” Brad’s voice had lost some of its easy confidence.

Harrison pushed away from the cabinet. “Probably just another windowpane. The frames are rotting. I told Evelyn we needed to replace them before winter.”

Brad cleared his throat. “Right. Well, we better get to work then.”

Relief washed over Evelyn’s face like she’d just been granted a reprieve from execution. “Thank you. Truly. Now, unfortunately, Harry and I need to drive down to our Brighton resort this afternoon.” She glanced at her watch. “There’s an issue that requires our immediate attention. But we’ll be back in a couple of days to check in on your progress.”

“Hopefully we’ll have some news for you by then,” Brad said, adopting his “professional” tone to add, “Though I should warn you—sometimes these things can take a while to sort properly. Depends on what we’re dealing with. Could be a couple of days. Could be longer.”

Harrison straightened, eyes narrowing. “Longer? And I suppose that’ll be an extra couple of thousand pounds?”