WORKING LATE

Somewhere at the other end of the house, a door creaked. Helen’s shoulders tensed, then she carried on typing.

In six weeks of working at Longmoor House she had often worked through her lunch-break, but this was the first time she had stayed late.

It was normal for old houses to creak and groan, she told herself, especially with the wind gathering outside.

Longmoor House has a rich history and has undergone many changes over the years, she typed.

She was working on a new advertising brochure and the production deadline was looming.

A strange sound came faintly to her ears. She couldn’t place it, but felt she should know it.

So long as she kept working, she could ignore the fear creeping slowly over her.

‘Off you go, I’ll stay behind and finish up,’ she had told her boss Scott.

Compared to her previous roles in public relations, this job was beneath her. But once she’d hit 50, she found ageist attitudes abounded in the work place, and she had to take what she could get.

It was humiliating having to prove to 30-something Scott that he had done the right thing in agreeing to give Helen a trial period, giving an older woman a chance.

‘I don’t mind working late,’ Helen had said.

She longed for the trial to be over, for Scott to offer her a permanent job, to shake her hand and say, ‘welcome to the team’.

But she had a niggling feeling her efforts were doomed.

Just today she had heard Scott say to his receptionist in a disdainful voice: ‘It’s like managing my mother.’

‘She’s not very digitally savvy,’ he’d gone on. ‘I’m sure she doesn’t know a thing about Facebook analytics.’

Helen knew Scott had been talking about her. She was determined to show him that while she may not be a whiz with technology, her PR skills were first-rate.

Hopefully he would appreciate her working late alone in a grand stately home reputed to be haunted.

‘There are no such things as ghosts,’ Helen said aloud.

Why then, had she stopped typing? Why were her hands poised over the keyboard as she craned forward, every sense alert, trying to place that strangely familiar sound?

Outside, rain beat down. A clock ticked loudly. And through it all, that faint humming sound.

Helen imagined the surrounding rooms, filled with heirloom furniture.

She loved the child’s bedroom upstairs, with the old rocking horse and dollhouse.

But her favourite room was the ladies’ parlour, with the tables covered in lace doilies and the spinning wheel by the window.

A wave of coldness swept over her. Suddenly she knew what was making that strange sound.

It was the steady whirr of the spinning wheel.

Helen pictured feet pumping the treadle. But whose feet?

The image of a ghostly old crone fiddling with the spindle rose in her mind.

Helen knew from her research that Longmoor House had not always been a family home.

At one stage it had been used as a home for elderly women.

Perhaps a few unhappy souls still roamed the rooms.

She was getting herself into a state just thinking about it.

The thing to do would be to go and investigate; march down the wide hallway, fling open the door to the parlour, switch on the light and flood the room with 21st century reality.

Rising from her chair she looked through the open door down the hallway.

All was still.

With a show of briskness, Helen stepped out. It was cold in the hallway. Above her the gracious staircase curved upwards into the blackness of the rooms upstairs.

The house had also been used as a mental asylum for females in the 1890s. There was a horrible story about some young girls being locked in one of the rooms upstairs.

A home for unhappy women, that’s what this is, Helen thought.

She belonged here didn’t she, with her broken marriage, her disappointing adult son, her precarious existence couch-surfing among friends while she tried to find full-time work.

Helen edged forward, ears straining. She had no idea where the light switch was. She found her palms growing sticky as she got closer to the whirring sound.

Gusts of wind and rain tossed the trees outside.

Helen was at the door of the parlour now. Her hands, slippery with sweat, gripped the china knob. The door was locked.

She rattled the knob and it came off in her hand.

Now, as well as the whirr of the spinning wheel, the air seemed to be filled with whispers and moans.

The image of a ghostly old crone rose in her mind

They surged around her as she backed away from the door, knob in hand.

Helen fought back the feeling of panic that threatened to overwhelm her.

She turned and ran back down the hallway, pushed open the heavy front door, rushed headlong onto the veranda.

The next moment she had skidded on wet leaves and was tumbling down a flight of stone stairs, still clutching the china knob.

It was all over. All the stress and striving.

Longmoor House was Helen’s home now. Her spirit had found a niche among the forgotten women of the past.

She nodded at the old woman at the spinning wheel – yes, the woman had turned out to be nearly exactly as she had imagined.

Gently she brushed the shoulder of a young girl huddled sobbing in a corner, dressed in a tattered white nightgown.

A woman with soaking wet hair and clothing flitted down the hallway, wringing her hands.

Upstairs, somebody wailed. It seemed that Helen’s presence in the house had activated all the unquiet spirits lurking at Longmoor, attracted by the burden of anxiety and depression she carried, so like their own.

At first Helen hovered amongst her soul sisters but eventually she was drawn to the office where she had worked long hours.

A sweet young thing was at the computer, typing.

Scott had lost no time in installing a replacement after Helen’s fatal accident, in fact, the girl had been lined up to replace Helen all along.

‘ Welcome to the team,’ Scott said to her, at the end of day one.

The girl had impressed him with her thousands of Instagram followers but she frequently arrived late and left early, Helen noted.

Soon Longmoor House would re-open.

Thanks to Helen stirring up all the spirits in the house, ghost tours were starting up.

A parapsychologist was coming to film a documentary. There was a website to update, new publicity material to be produced. Social media was abuzz.

Helen floated above her old desk, serene in the knowledge that her PR skills had triumphed after all. Beneath her Scott was sighing and badtemperedly banging his mouse.

With a young assistant unwilling to do overtime, it was inevitable Scott would finally have to knuckle under and do some work himself.

There was a strong chance he would have to stay late to get it all done.

Helen smiled as she pictured luring Scott to a high window, saw his terrified face white against the night sky as he tumbled over the sill, pushed by ghostly feminine hands.

‘ Welcome to the team, Scotty,’ she would say.