Chapter 57: Chapter 57 – New neighbours

She must have been there recently, for it wasn't just that the markings on the windowsill still looked new, it's that the Northrop servants, who stopped by the library daily - even if only to draw the curtains - still didn't report anything unusual. Something that was not entirely unheard of, since the traces that Oscar found were on the outside of the window. In other words; To be discovered they would have had to open the windows and deliberately direct their gaze towards that part of the building. 

Still debating with himself whether or not he should do Madeleine a favor and clean up the traces of her crime, Oscar looked up to where Rose Cottage stood, still imposing despite no longer having the presence of its original owners.

If the Cornells had decided to take the step of moving to a more modest apartment in the center of town, it was because, in those harrowing months when they were not sure how to get rid of their debts, they managed to place the house in another family´s hands. With that money is that they rented their new apartment, using what was left to it, while Edmund Cornell's business was recovering or had just gone down the drain.

The Youngs, as these neighboring newcomers were called, were a family of four who had just moved to Snodland. They did not know anyone and were still in the process of adaptation, so they did not usually receive many people in their home.

In fact, it is for this very reason that Oscar was surprised when, after just a couple of minutes observing the facade of Rose Cottage, he saw Dianne walk past the property and, what is more, wander into the gardens without any kind of hesitation. So did she know the Youngs?

That possibility persisted in Oscar's mind during the few seconds it took the author to approach the mansion and then turn to one side and sneak off in another direction. No, she wasn't going to knock on the front door, as he thought. Rather, it seemed that she was going to steal! That woman had gotten into their garden, going towards a strategic point from which no one could monitor her from a distance anymore.

Would she just stand there herself or...? There were enough figurines and weeds in this courtyard for someone to walk through the entire enclosure hidden behind some piece of decoration.

Forgetting the incriminating imprint on the window, Oscar chose to visit Rose Cottage right then and there. He did not know what the author was up to, but he was convinced that it was not a good thing. And what better way to find out than asking? Although, again, why bother going after her? Whatever it was, it wasn't like she was willing to confess anything to him. Much less after all those times when he refused to carry out her narcissistic creative plans.

No, on second thought, he wouldn't face her directly.

What was the plan, then, to knock on the door and tell complete strangers that he believed he had seen a suspicious woman sneak into their gardens? It was absurd! Not to mention that, if he told them this, he would have to explain what he was doing watching their yard. And that, no matter how coincidental it might have been, didn't sound good at all.

Of course, he didn't plan to sneak onto the property in the same way as she did. What if they caught him? He did not have the same saving halo as Madeleine and her company. If they hunted him, the least that he could happen to him would be to go to prison for a marauder.

So he resolved to do neither one thing nor the other. Having decided to go ahead with his plan to visit Rose Cottage, even if only for the sake of meeting the new neighbors, he attempted to go around the back of this property. He didn't go into the gardens, as Dianne had. Rather, he took advantage of the adjoining farms, which did not belong to any house, to sneak in there and go to the backyard of the building that interested him. He didn't try to hide, either. On the contrary, he tried to go through the most visible areas that he could and, when he finally spotted someone in the distance, he did not spare any qualms in saluting them.

Wasn't this what social neighbors did, after all? Obviously, it was quite an act. Oscar had never been so friendly, much less interested in the lives of those who inhabited the homes adjoining his own. But this was an exceptional situation.

“Who are you?” The only tenant in those gardens had asked, a boy no more than eight years old, from a safe distance from the fence that separated them.

The kid had been there alone, playing with a ball, until he heard this stranger greet him and stopped, turning to him with equal amounts of caution and curiosity.

Oscar introduced himself, giving as little information as possible. All this boy needed to know was that he was not a threat. Having been commissioned by one of the Northrop to see that the property was kept in perfect condition, he could easily tell he was coming from Snodland at the time and that, having heard from the new owners of Rose Cottage and seeing him in the gardens thought about coming over to say hello.

He wouldn't mention his time as a Cornell stableman, and he wouldn't mention seeing an intruder. The first because he did not seem relevant at that particular moment and the second because it was not his intention to scare the boy with that information.

He preferred to wait a bit and observe, before deciding to reveal something else. He did not expect it to be the boy who would take the initiative in inquiring, referring to Thornfield:

"Is the house next door haunted too?"

Why should it be? But of course, the kid was still a stranger. It was not in his power to give a sermon. So he preferred to ask the second more convenient question:

"Is Rose Cottage haunted?"

The boy who had just introduced himself as Roger Young nodded, making Oscar wonder what the hell was doing talking about ghosts with a kid in the middle of the property of his former employers. Now, did he look like an exorcist or how was this going?

"Almost from the day we settled in, inexplicable things have been happening." Lowering his voice a bit, as if he feared this supernatural entity would catch him accusing them in front of a third party, he continued. “My parents did not want to believe it, at first, but now they are beginning to distrust. You know? I'm not the only one who caught something strange, Terry did too. And Terry is very good at detecting unsolicited presences!”

"Terry?"

"My Pekingese. He has an excellent nose! He can detect anything in a ten mile radius. So how is he not going to know when there is a non-human presence in the house? Obviously he's going to bark or even try to chase whoever tries to hurt me.”

"And where do you say that dog of yours is right now?" Oscar decided to ignore the part about the exaggerated qualities of the animal and go to what interested him. “He doesn't seem to be around.”

"Oh my mother punished him for eating the new curtains and now he's tied up in the stables. Do you want me to bring it?”

Roger's eyes lit up at the possibility of being able to introduce Oscar to the one who must have been his furry best friend. But that euphoria barely lasted an instant, in which the other dismissed it by saying:

“Later. First I'd like to know a little more about the haunted property.”

"What's to say? Anyone can see it.”

"I'm afraid I haven't had the pleasure, and I've been in this town practically all my life, spending time with the Cornell family."

"Are you a friend of them?"

"Former employee," Oscar didn't want to get wet when he answered. “I lived for many years in Rose Cottage and nothing ever happened worth telling… At least, not on the paranormal level.”

"T-that's weird, I won't believe it! My father taught me that you cannot take seriously everything that previous tenants say, good or bad, because they sure are only looking for their best interest and getting the money from us!”

"Good business with Mr. Cornell, in that case."

"You can tell me the truth, I am sure of what I have witnessed and nothing will surprise me. So do you know if someone died in this house?”

“Yes.”

The gray cells of the female lead died here, but Oscar bit his tongue to keep from this sarcasm. And he did well to limit himself to the monosyllable, because after an "I knew it!", quite animated, Roger seemed to forget the previous offense, to refuse to see the dog, becoming much more willing to collaborate.

"I knew the doors that opened by themselves and the shadows moving through the corridors weren't my imagination!"

"Couldn't it be the wind?"

"Everything was closed! And… and Terry couldn't be either! He was by my side some of the times it happened. Do you know the scariest of all? That the doors squeaked! It was as if we were in a mansion of those abandoned a hundred years ago.”

“Thats weird. Not that Mr. Cornell went to great lengths to take care of his home, but when I lived there, no doors made any noise. And well, if it did start to do it, just putting some oil on the hinges would be enough, right? Anyway, when did that start to happen? Was it before you settled in?”

Because it would have made a terrible first impression that, from the first time the Youngs visited the mansion, the place had already been in such bad shape.

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"Yeah… well no, it didn't happen right away. It was about two days after we moved in that things started to happen more often. But time doesn´t matter, I tell you!”

"Of course, because the ghost needed those days to assess the situation and decide if it scared you or let you be."

"Aside from the strange noises and shadows, objects change places on their own," Roger continued, stubborn as he was in his own hardships. “It's not just a matter of you forgetting where you put something and then, even though he thought I had left it on a small table, it´s on the counter in another room. No! Is that several things change places and are repositioned in strange positions, as if they had been prepared for some kind of ritual. The other day, for example, I found one of the buckets the service uses in the middle of the room, upside down. On it they had put a framed photo of an old woman that I had never seen in my life. And, around all this, they scattered a handful of ledgers that were in the library. It was so scary ...! Even my parents were scared, but then they said that I had done it to play a joke on them, and they punished me without my horror novels.”

"Wise decision." Before Roger could protest, Oscar asked, trying to make his interest sound greater than his skepticism. “Haven't you seen that photo before, even?”

Because the books were so recognizable, so much so that he didn't need to inquire about them. If Edmund Cornell must have been happy about something, it was to get rid, with the excuse of moving, of that collection of old volumes.

"No, the frame was ours. It appears that someone removed the portrait that was originally there and traded it in for a newspaper clipping. Which by the way, I wanted to go to the town library to find out who that lady was and what she died of, but then I found out that there is no such building in this village. It's annoying!”

"May I see the picture?"

Oscar believed that, once granted his request, Roger would have to go into Rose Cottage to look for it. He didn't expect that, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, he would take the picture out of his pocket and hand it over.

"I don't know her," he lied, returning the photograph after a brief glance.

Working daily at the newspaper, of course he was aware of who the lady was. He did not know her, in the sense that they had never crossed paths, but he did remember well the article to which that portrait belonged and was well aware that that old woman at that time was still alive and well.

After all, that photo had been taken from an ad for homemade cakes written no more than two weeks ago.

"Poor thing, she must have passed away here before you even started working for the Cornell Messrs," Roger guessed.

"Tell me something, did you happen to let the neighbors in when you arrived?" Realizing of the kid could be suspicious of him, making sure of what he was implying and thus making him choose not to tell him anything else, he added. “I say this because, perhaps, they could also notice something strange.”

"I don't think they did. My parents had a little garden party two days after arriving, and although it wasn't formal at all, they did invite a lot of people. But no one had a complaint...”

"By any chance wouldn't a Miss Warren show up at that party?"

Asking this, Oscar looked somewhere behind Roger. He hadn't been sure before, but now that he had been chatting with him for a few minutes, he was convinced that behind some hedges, Dianne was hidden.

In fact, the aforementioned had at one point even peeked out from the branches on purpose, while Roger was not staring in her direction, only to make an obscene gesture at Oscar, threatening him to go to hell.

Unfortunately for her, Oscar had no intention of moving. As eccentric as the kid seemed, he planned to stay talking to him for at least a few more minutes.

"You mean her most illustrious majesty, the empress of words?"

“Who the f…?” The title was puzzling, even more so than the news that there was a ghost in Rose Cottage. “She introduced like that?”

“She claimed to be the best author in this part of the country, who had published many books, visited foreign countries, advised in famous academics... And even met the queen! I wanted her to tell me a horror story, but she refused saying something that she should keep her profile low now that she lived in Snodland, that it was not convenient for everyone to know about her secret identity and start to idolize her.”

"Ultimately, we're talking about the same inkblower," Oscar concluded with a jaded sigh. “Wasn't she the one who warned you about a supposed ghost by any chance?”

"Uh… Now that you mention it, maybe it is. She didn't mention any ghosts, but she did tell me to be careful while inside Rose Cottage” After a pause in which he seemed to stop to consider something, he added. “Thinking back, that was the first day something happened! A ghost tried to sneak in from the kitchen at night, but Terry saw it and ran to jump on him. I know because it happened that I was downstairs, trying to sneak into my father's office to ste... Eh ... Anyway, what I'm saying is that if it weren't for Terry, things would have ended very badly!”

"Did he catch the ghost?"

“He managed to rip a bit of the fabric of their ghostly robe, but nothing more. That shadow ran into the afterlife through our gardens, while my little dog kept barking at it. I barely managed to restrain him from chasing after! It would be bad luck to follow a being from the underworld, I read it in a book.”

"And as for your parents...”

"They woke up to the din. Mother got mad because my little brother started crying and once awake it is a bummer to get him to go back to sleep. And father, when he heard my story, insisted that it was a thief who had entered. He even called the police! But they found nothing, not even the toilet door I saw the ghost go through was broken. So in the end I was scolded for lying.”

That last sentence was spoken with resentment, perhaps still feeling aggrieved that he had been ignored.

"How could I lie about such a thing?” He insisted-. “Not even that was the first time, I saw more shadows other days. Never so clearly and at night, but during the day things were moving around too! So it can't be my imagination.”

No, it wasn't, definitely. Oscar could already get a pretty clear mental picture of what was going on.

Dianne, whose knowledge of feasible methods of scaring off staff had to come down to watching low-budget horror movies, had decided to put her skills to use in trying to kick the Youngs out of their new home. How? Simple. It would not cost her anything to move a few things around, even loosening the hinges on some doors. It wasn't just that the newcomers of Rose Cottage had opened the doors of their home for her during that little gathering in the yard, it was that the author didn't even need anyone's permission to enter!

Just as Madeleine had done a few days ago, Dianne snuck into the Youngs' house. Of course, hers was a simpler entrance because, since she was a close friend of the protagonist, how could she not have her own key? That must have been one of the first things that Dianne tried to achieve when she landed in the novel and, right now, she proved to be of use. The Youngs didn't change the locks, so she didn't have to struggle to sneak in.

The problem must have come with the dog.

It was quite possible that she had not had a problem with him during the informal celebration, but who was to say that this little Pekingese could be a real threat at night? Dianne had to run and, according to what Roger said, she did not dare to return before dawn.

Then, considering all the little tricks that the writer did inside the house, added to the rumors that she made sure to implant in the most credulous member of that family, the shadows, noises and others could have been the child's imaginations. Imaginations, to be precise, triggered by nothing more than prolonged suggestion. There was nothing supernatural about it, in short.

Oscar suddenly felt bored. Why did he want to talk to Dianne? So that she would tell him the same story, he would excuse himself saying it was for the sake of the plot and then try to put a sheet over and push him to act like one of her fictional spirits? He would rather save all that.

"Roger, you should know I've changed my mind," he said, glancing again quickly at the place where Dianne was still hiding. “Yes, I would like to meet that dog of yours.”

Perhaps it was a sudden impulse to watch the chaos unfold, but he thought he wanted to see what would happen if Terry encountered that ghost he haunted a few nights ago again.

Roger was so delighted with the request that Oscar did not have to repeat it. Without making any objection, he hurried to the stables, where his pet was being held.

Dianne, for her part, also rushed out of where she was when she heard the kid disappear behind a door. Perhaps she with the intention of throwing a certain someone an extensive row for having discovered her, before even thinking of running away so as not to run into the fierce Pekingese again.

However, she was going to be left wanting, both to try a new macabre joke that would make the Youngsters nervous, as to give a lecture to Oscar. When she was finally able to leave her hiding place, she discovered that Oscar had already left.

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