AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Where are we going?” I ask as Edward leads me to the door.
“To the attic.” His voice wavers on the words. “To the scene of my greatest failing.”
The attic?
Is this something to do with Father Bryne? Edward found me in the attic last night and told me that Pax was missing, and as we came down the stairs, Father Bryne attacked us. But Edward wouldn’t even go in the attic, not while Ozzy was there. So why is he leading me there for the second time in two days?
Confused, I follow Edward out of my room. We step over the dark patch in the entrance hall. I really have to clean that up today and get a new rug to cover it. Edward leads me up the stairs, but I drag my feet, pausing halfway up to admire the family photographs hanging there. It’s been a long time since I really stopped and looked at them – pictures of me playing with a red bucket at the beach, Dad and all his brothers sitting on the hood of a vintage car, my great grandmother in her favourite pink outfit…
“Look, Ozzy’s still here! Hi, Ozzy!” I wave to the furry ghost hanging by his feet from the chandelier. He opens one lazy wing and winks at me before clamping it tight around his fuzzy body.
“Brianna, are you trying to delay the bitter truth of the tale I must impart?” Edward shrinks away from the bat. “For it is with a heavy heart that these verses I must compose. In hopes the pain of my candour may impose—”
“Sorry. I wasn’t trying to dwardle. I’m just remembering last night.” I shudder, but I allow him to continue leading me up the stairs. “How close I came to losing you all.”
“Within that foul vessel, a tempest brewed, and my foul soul he did darkly subdue. But none so filled me with woe and dread, as the horrors I have witnessed where the attic’s shadows spread.” Edward gestures to the still-open attic stairs with a flourish. “After you, m’lady.”
Anything to make you stop rhyming.I start up the steps, expecting Edward to pinch my bum on the way, but he doesn’t.This really is serious.
I flick on the attic light. Edward yelps as Ozzy flies over our heads and perches on one of the low beams, folding his wings and regarding us with those huge eyes of his. Edward glares at him. “This is a private matter.”
The ghost bat raises one wing in what can only be described as a threatening manner.
Edward grimaces. “Fine. I suppose this is your home.”
The bat lowers its wing. Edward visibly relaxes. I can’t help but wonder what the tiny, fuzzy, dearly departed bat had done to my three ghosts to make them so terrified of him.
Edward crosses the room, his face a picture of misery. “Boxes and trunks, their contents veiled in gloom, Like ancient phantoms waiting in this room…”
“Edward, just tell me why we’re up here, and then we can leave.” I swipe a cobweb off my shoulder. I amdesperatefor coffee.
“Very well. Here it is. You must lift the lid.”
Edward gestures to the old piano that’s been up in the attic since I could remember. Dad had it valued once and apparently it would fetch a decent amount of money, but he couldn’t find a contractor who could get it out of the attic. So here it remains.
Even more curious now, I grip the top of the piano and heave. It’s heavier than I expect, but I manage to lift it, raising a cloud of dust that makes my throat itch.
“It’s inside, in the corner at the back.”
I fumble around inside, grazing my fingers on the strings and mechanisms. I brush something that feels like leather. I tug it free and drop the lid with aTHUD.
Behind me, Edward makes a squeaking noise and Ozzy flutters down to peer at the object over my shoulder.
“It’s a book?” I dust off the leather-bound volume and tug on the leather thong. No, it’s not a book, but some kind of journal – handwritten pages tied together in a leather case. And the handwriting is strange – the lines are too perfectly neat, the tails of the letters g and y not hanging below the line as they should…
“It was a book, once,” Edward says sadly. “This is Ambrose’s manuscript. He hid it here to keep it secure after the fire at the publisher burned the remaining copies.”
Of course.Ambrose used a writing frame placed over the page to write his stories. This is why the tails of the letters don’t hang beneath the line, and some of the letters overlap.
But how…how is this here?
“You found this when you were hiding up here a few days ago?” I stare at the heavy piano. Edward must have been terribly upset to stick his head through the thick wood of the piano. That would have smarted for a ghost.
Edward sighs. “No.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Then I shall explain. It had been a particularly hot summer in 1878, and Pax had decided to forgo his tunic and armour and wander about naked. I was hiding up here to preserve my vision, when I heard a noise on the stairs. Ambrose came up here and hid it in the piano. It was just before he left for his Russia trip.”
