Page 20 of Crazy Spooky Love

It’s Saturday morning and I hope for their sake that whoever is banging on my door has a damn good reason.

I was in the middle of one of my favorite recurring dreams, one where Thor comes and rescues me from the ice palace I’m trapped in for no discernible reason.

What? So superheroes factor highly in my dreams. We all have our oddities, and that’s one of mine.

If a man can fly, turn green, or smash things with an improbably big sledgehammer, I’m all over him like a rash.

It strikes me momentarily that Leo is the only man I know in real life who is game enough to wear a cape, but I dismiss the thought as quickly as it arrived and haul my ass out of bed to answer the door.

“Melody Bittersweet?” Dwayne, my postman, queries even though I went to school with his sister and he knows perfectly well who Iam.

“I am she.” I hold my hand out and accept the package, frowning. I haven’t ordered anything I can thinkof.

“Feels like a book to me,” Dwayne says, looking as if he expects me to open it on the doorstep to satisfy his curiosity.

“Is it your policy to feel everyone’s mail, or just mine?”

His face cracks into a grin that is anything but innocent.

“Oh, I’m selective these days. Got caught out handling a woman off the estate’s sex toys a while back.

” The smile falls from his face and he leans a little closer.

“I wouldn’t mind, but they were secondhand from eBay.

” He shudders. “Not even bubble-wrapped. I mean, who does that?”

“I honestly don’t want to know,” I mutter, closing the door. I gave up Thor for this.

It is a book, but not one I’ve ordered. The postmark tells me that it was sent from Hay-on-Wye, which is odd because I don’t know anyone there, and there is no accompanying note, which is even odder.

Why would someone send me an anonymous gift?

I turn the book over in my hands and study the embossed gold title.

One thing’s for sure, this hasn’t been delivered to me by accident.

Twenty Years’ Experience as a Ghost Hunter by Elliott O’Donnell. It’s old—battered, emerald-green leather with gilt-edged pages, and quite hefty. I peep inside at the date of publication: 1916.

It reminds me of something from a movie, a book that might be purchased from a magical bookshop from a gnarly old man with knowing eyes.

Or, hang on, maybe it was from a bookshop more like the one Hugh Grant owns in Notting Hill.

That’s more like it. Hugh Grant trumps a gnarly old man any day of the week.

I indulge in a lazy couple of minutes of enjoyable fantasizing as I make coffee to wake my brain up.

Hugh Grant is on his knees, valiantly searching underneath the counter in his quaint little store, because he knows he has a copy of a book I simply must read stashed under there.

I avoid looking at the book on the table as I stick a couple of slices of bread in the toaster.

I’ve had one mystery on top of the other over the course of my first week as a ghost buster, and this surprise book feels almost like one too many to figure out.

Maybe if I just work on resolving the secrets of Scarborough House, my mysterious gift will explain itself along the way too.

I turn the Magic 8 Ball on the kitchen work surface and wait to find out whether I should head across to Scarborough House alone this morning.

Without a doubt.

Well, at least it’s a decisive answer. I reach an emergency jar down from the top shelf of the kitchen cupboard, because between the antique book and an impromptu visit to Brimsdale Road, this has suddenly become an extra-crunchy peanut butter kind of day.

The path to the back door of Scarborough House is much easier to negotiate now that Artie has trampled it down. I slip inside quietly, this time making sure to lock the door behind me to prevent unwanted visitors from following me inside.

“Isaac?” I call out as I walk through the kitchen.

My voice echoes around the old place, and a shiver whispers down my spine.

As you might expect, I don’t spook easily, but there is something about the silence today that makes me uncomfortable, a hostility in the air that I didn’t notice on my last visit. Maybe it’s because I’ve come alone.

“This is all getting somewhat tedious now, Miss Bittersweet.”

I jump, because the low voice is directly in my ear as I step into the hallway.

“Lloyd.” I take a step backward into the kitchen to put a breathable distance between us.

He was definitely waiting right by the door with the sole intention of trying to scare me.

I’m annoyed with myself for being startled, but I’m not frightened of him.

He’s going to have to try harder than that.

I’m not some unsuspecting civvy here. I’m a Bittersweet.

Lloyd Scarborough has underestimated me and, for now, I’m happy to allow him to look down his long nose at me and continue under that delusion.

“Mr. Scarborough to you,” he corrects frostily.

“You don’t appreciate my being here,” I say, leaning against the doorframe.

“I’m a ghost and you’re a ghost hunter, Miss Bittersweet. I think that rather sets us at odds from the outset.”

Well, I can hardly argue with that one, can I?

“I can probably help you,” I say.

He laughs, a hollow sound that rattles around the walls. “That’s exactly the problem. I neither want nor need any help from you or any of your assorted cronies.” Resentment rolls from him in cold waves. “The ridiculous arrogance of youth. Douglas was always exactly the same.”

My ears perk up, and he sighs.

“Oh please. Permit me to express a negative opinion of my brother without automatically casting me in the role of cold-blooded murderer.”

“Well, someone killed him,” I say, mildly.

“Isaac’s guilt was well-documented at the time.”

“Yet he wasn’t found guilty.”

“That doesn’t make him innocent.” Lloyd shrugs. “It’s really neither here nor there, is it? The house will be sold soon and, from what I gather, filled with a bunch of dribbling old dears waiting for God.”

I decide that I really don’t like Lloyd Scarborough. He’s bitter and rude, and in my experience a person’s ghost is pretty much a true reflection of the person they were when they were alive.

“It can’t be sold if you keep trying to frighten off any prospective buyers.”

“It isn’t me doing the frightening, Miss Bittersweet.”

He shrugs and then disappears into thin air, leaving me alone in the hallway.

Right, then. I can either go back outside into the sunshine or head on up the sweeping staircase to see what lies beyond. Most sane people would choose the sunshine. I’m not a sane person, I’m a Bittersweet with a job to do. I set my foot on the first creaking step and start to climb.

It really is a stunning old place. I mean, granted, it needs an imaginative overhaul, but it’s the most magical house.

The high ceilings and grand proportions of the rooms lend it a stately air, and it was clearly decorated with flair and decent finances, because the fabrics used for the curtains and upholstery are all heavy velvets and slippery old silks; not particularly to my tastes but they were obviously high-end and high fashion when they were chosen.

The house wears an overcoat of dust and neglect, but beneath the surface lies a designer party dress and exquisite jewels.

It really is a crying shame that Donovan Scarborough isn’t thinking more along the lines of turning the house back into a gorgeous family home; but then, I expect the presence of three inhospitable ghosts is quite a turnoff.

In all honesty, I wouldn’t especially want to live here myself with the Scarborough brothers in situ, so I guess I can see why it’s being sold off.

Not that Donovan seems at all regretful to see the house go; I get the impression that is very much a decision made by the head, not the heart.

Sad really; every floorboard and rafter of this house is soaked in his family history, both good and bad, and it’ll all be ripped out and lost, replaced with bland corporate magnolia, cheap curtains, and metal grab rails.

“On your own, ghost hunter?”

I turn at the lighthearted sound of Douglas Scarborough’s voice and find him lounging against the doorway to one of the bedrooms.

“I am.”

Crap. I can feel my cheeks getting hot because he looks a bit like one of the Rat Pack, all glam and louche. I shoot him a cheery smile and hope I’m not noticeably blushing. “Feel like a chat?”

“You mean you need me to talk to you.” He grins easily. “There’s something I’d like in exchange first though.”

“Am I going to regret asking you what it is?”

“Shouldn’t think so.” He folds his arms across his chest. “I want to watch cricket.”

Okay. So that wasn’t what I was expecting. I don’t actually know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that.

“You know you can’t leave the house though, right?”

“Do you really think you need to tell me that? I’ve been here since 1910. Believe me, if there was a way I could leave this house I’d have found it by now.”

“So…you want me to arrange a cricket match…in the garden…for you to watch through the window?” I speak slowly, saying the words at the same time I form the thoughts.

My voice takes on Aussie-style upward inflection, mainly because I can’t imagine any of the people I know making a decent fist of playing cricket.

My mother? Marina? Artie? Oh my God, no… not me ?

Thankfully, Douglas’s laugh is enough to convince me that I haven’t quite grasped the idea.

“God no, how infernally dull would that be?”

I’m unoffended by his derision. He doesn’t know the half of it. If he’s any fan of cricket at all, watching my nearest and dearest attempt to bat, bowl, or field would be enough to make any self-respecting cricket fan set fire to the stumps in protest.