The Old House Problem (1/4)

It was my own fault, really. I knew Holly could never resist any kind of haunting. I also knew she wouldn’t rest until she'd caught her ghost.

Holly and I were in the museum cafeteria catching up. She’d been my flatmate and partner-in-crime at uni, then gone to work in London for six months, which had turned into a decade. At first I barely recognized her: new hair, new style, new accent. But after about five minutes I realized that was all surface stuff: she was just exactly the same Holly—charming, enthusiastic and totally bananas.

I told her I was looking at a big old place in one of the seaside towns near Dunedin. Villa built in the 1920s, solid bones. Reasonable price. In fact, when I told her how cheap it was she nearly fell off her chair.

“That is a steal! Buy it im-med-iately!” she said, leaning forward, pointing at my head to emphasise every syllable.

“Mmmmm, yeah…nah.” I shook my head.

“What? Why?”

“There’s something wrong about it.”

“What do you mean, ‘wrong’?”

“As soon as the real estate agent opened the door and we stepped inside, it felt weird and bad. Like death.”

“Uh, I’m trying to eat here?” Holly screwed up her nose and put her sandwich back on her plate.

“I don’t mean literally death, like a body or anything. There was a bad smell actually but it was mainly mildew and book dust and stuff. When I say it smelled bad I mean more that the atmosphere was hinky.”

Reassured, she picked up the sandwich, took a bite and spoke with her mouth full.

“What do you mean atmosphere? Spiderwebs everywhere, creaking stairs, that sort of thing?”

“No…just a vibe. I guess it makes sense considering that the real estate agent said she the homeowner was an elderly lady who’d died fifteen years earlier and the house had never been opened up since then.”

Holly’s eyes lit up. “Why had it never been opened up? Was she murdered?”

“He didn’t get into that. There was a photo of her and she looked seriously old so it was probably just natural causes. I think it seemed weird mainly just because it was such an unholy mess. Clothes everywhere, books on the floor, bric-à-brac and jewelry and photos on tables, there was some kind of black stain on the kitchen wall. And someone had cut holes in the walls.”

“Hoarder maybe?” she suggested.

I shrugged.

“I think the thing that really bothered me was that it had just been left like that. Which means that there was no one who cared enough to tidy it all up. Even if she didn’t have kids, you’d think that someone who knew her would have bothered to put things in boxes or something. The real estate agent mentioned a caregiver, but I guess they didn’t care that much!”

“Maybe the caregiver murdered her!” said Holly, clapping her hands gleefully.

“Anyway, it’s back to the drawing board. I won’t be buying that place. Too creepy.”

“Mmmm. Can you send me a link to the listing?” Holly asked a little too casually.

I should have known it wouldn’t end there. Two days later I got a call from her—she wanted to cook me a vegetable jalfreezi.

“Hey!” she said, lifting up the lid of the rice cooker, releasing a cloud of steam. “You’ll never guess what happened.”

“What?”

She spooned out the rice with a bamboo paddle.

“I went to see your house!”

“My house? Oh that house.” I narrowed my eyes in suspicion. “Why?”

She waved her rice paddle around in exasperation.

“What do you mean why? It’s gorgeous—a couple of the moldy walls will need to be knocked down or fumigated. Amazing sea views. Solid investment. You’d be crazy not to, it’s perfect. But yes, first we’ll have to do an exorcism.”

“First of all, what do you mean ‘we’?” I said, annoyed, “Second of all, it’s not haunted.”

Too late. I was clearly going to be dragged into the thing. Holly is horribly persuasive.

“The real estate agent is kind of cute,” she said, licking a drip of sauce off her fingers.

“Oh God,” I groaned, clutching my head. “Don’t tell me you flirted with that guy?”

“I was just friendly. I said we should have a drink, I wanted some hot property tips. I’ve been away from the country so long that I need to get familiar with the market.”

“I’m sure he was eager to tell you everything.” I said, remembering the hapless fellow. He’d been a perfectly nice boy and I felt sorry for him falling prey to Holly’s predatory charm.

“I told him I was on the verge of making an offer but that I wanted to spend the night there, just to make sure the night trains wouldn’t wake me. It’s right next to the railway.”

“He believed that, did he?” I reached for a bottle of chardonnay. I was going to need some kind of buffer tonight.

She grabbed a keyring off the kitchen counter and jangled it in front of my face by way of an answer

“I’m very convincing,” she smiled. “Anyway, after dinner we’re going for a drive.”

“I’m not sleeping in that place.”

“Who said anything about sleeping? We’re just going to make some scientific observations. I have my EMF detector. We’ll take some wine, the pup tent…look at the stars, solve the world's problems... You can’t really see the stars in London, you know.”

So we went. As I predicted, Holly got bored after half an hour, drank most of the bottle of chardonnay and fell asleep in the pup tent. I couldn’t sleep with her snoring and, well, I’ll admit it: I was curious. The chaotic state of the house was really bothering me. I’ve never seen a therapist but strongly suspect that I may have a touch of obsessive compulsive disorder because it physically pains me to see a bad mess.

I went to the car and got all the supplies I usually keep there: garbage bags, rubber gloves and a filter mask. I’d make a night of putting that place in order.

And that was how I found out there really had been a murder.