"She's bought a house," mum announced, looking up from the letter she'd been reading.
My father lowered the newspaper he'd been perusing and asked, "Whose bought a house?"
"Janet of course," mum said, waving the letter in the air.
"Ah, I'll bet she's bought a lemon."
The letter was from my Aunt Janet, my mother's youngest sister, and things always seemed to go wrong for her. If she bought car, even a new one, it was sure to be in for repairs within a few weeks. When she got engaged and before they could get married the guy was put in jail for sex with a series of minors. She was the sort of person who if she was walking along in a wide open space and there was a banana skin lying in the middle of it, Janet would somehow find it and slip on it.
It was not that Janet was stupid, far from it. She had a doctorate in educational development, and the reason she had bought the house was because she'd just got an appointment to one of the new government universities.
Mum looked down at the letter again and said, "Adrian, she wants to know if you'd go and help her move in."
That was fine with me, any excuse to be with Janet. She was only in her early thirties and a really voluptuous woman; you know the sort, all the curves going in and out in the right places. I think she could have easily have got married but as I heard mum and dad saying once, she'd gone sour on men after her engagement experience. She just missed out on another lemon there.
Not that Janet had ever been sour with me. She'd always been affectionate and I was very fond of her. Well when I say fond of her I mean that I used to fantasise a bit about her. I suppose that's how a lot of teenagers get over attractive aunts or even their mothers, but now at twenty I thought I was past that sort of teenage nonsense, and anyway we hadn't seen a lot of her lately.
"That's ok mum, I said, when she is moving in?" Mum referred to the letter again and said, "On the twenty ninth."
"Fine, tell her I'll be there."
Mum read a bit more of the letter and then said, "She says the house is haunted."
"Haunted, haunted by what?"
"She doesn't say, but she says that's why she got the house so cheap because people heard things and got scared."
"I said she'd buy a lemon," dad said smugly.
I'd read about Borely Rectory and places like that and I had visions of evil deeds done in the past whose influence still pervaded the place. Murderers doomed to haunt the place of their deed for eternity, or the restless spirit of their victim still seeking revenge. It sounded to me as if the place had exciting possibilities.
"A load of rubbish," dad said from behind his newspaper, "nobody with any sense believes in ghosts."
"But dad," I said, "don't you think that deeds done in a place in the past can linger on in the atmosphere of a place."
Dad looked at me over the top of his newspaper and said, "Yes, they can, and what the place needs is a good scrubbing."
That settled it, I knew from past experience that is was useless to argue with dad. I'd volunteered my services and could look forward to seeing my aunt, ghost or no ghost.
* * * * * * * *
After a couple of hours drive I arrived at the address given to me by mum, to find the removal van already there and the men carrying in the furniture and other things. Janet, dressed in tight denim shorts and green shirt, was supervising. My God she looked sexy, sexier than I'd ever seen her before. I thought it was a pity she was my aunt because I could have...well, it was no use dreaming.
My part in the situation was stay around for several days and help Janet move the furniture around until she was satisfied it was in the right place, and generally help her to settle in.
The place came as a bit of a surprise. After hearing about it being haunted, or supposedly haunted, I'd pictured a gloomy sinister place. It's best described as a cottage and over a stone lintel above the door was carved 1872, which I suppose qualified it as potentially in the creepy league.
In fact it didn't have that atmosphere at all. If it didn't exactly have the roses-round the-door romantic image, it did have a peaceful ambience. Inside that impression was sustained as the cottage seemed to emit embracing warmth.
True the place was a bit of a mess. It had been vacant for some time and it seemed nobody, not even the agent, had bothered with it. In summary, it was neglected.
Janet and I didn't have much time for talking as we set about arranging things. It wasn't only the placing of furniture; there were simple jobs like replacing tap washers and getting the gas hot water system going -- the damned thing defied my efforts to get it going for some time. There was a lot of cleaning in general and late in the day I had to roar into the nearest town to buy a couple of pizzas for our evening meal.
I wondered why Janet had bought the place because it was around thirty kilometres from the sparkling new university she was to work in. However, we were both bushed by the end of the day and it was bed, and for me almost instant sleep. If there were any ghosts I didn't see or hear them.
* * * * * * * *
The next day we took a slower pace as we put the final touches to the placing of small items like vases, crockery, cutlery and a tentative exploration of the overgrown garden.
There was some time for talk and I asked Janet why she'd bought the place.
I'd expected her to say because it was cheap, but her first answer was, "I don't really know."
She paused for few moments and then said, "When I saw it I just knew I had to have it. It was as if the cottage was saying to me 'I'm what you need.' I know it sounds weird, but that's really how I felt.
It did sound weird, but I understood how she'd felt because the cottage was having an odd effect on me. It was as if I'd known about it all my life even though I'd never seen it until the previous day, and if what Janet had said sounded weird, what I felt was even weirder. The cottage seemed to be saying to me, "You are going to love me."
Crazy!
"Did they tell you anything about the ghost?" I asked.
"Not the agent at first," Janet replied. "It was when I went into the local post office to buy some stamps and mentioned I was considering buying the place the post mistress couldn't wait to tell me. It seems that no one had ever actually seen anything, but they'd heard voices, a man and a woman talking."
"What do the voices say?"
"I don't know, no one seems to know, and when I asked the agent he denied the voices and the existence of ghosts. He said it was all rubbish and superstition and people probably heard some night animal moving about and making a noise or it was the wind in the chimney. But you know Adrian, I got the feeling he did know about the voices but wasn't telling because he was keen to make a sale."
She went on, "Of course I don't believe in ghosts and so I went along with what he said. I supposed the previous owners must have been nervous types, superstitious with over active imaginations."
"How many previous tenants have there been," I asked, feeling doubtful that all of them could have been superstitious with over active imaginations
Janet said, "I looked up the local records and over the past one hundred and five years there's been a constant stream of occupiers but with long periods when there were no tenants, but after the original owners there was a couple who occupied it for twenty five years."
I felt that my doubts were confirmed, there must have been some among that "constant stream" who were not superstitious nut cases, but then, how did you account for such a big turnover in occupancy?
