Lila Fitzgerald and the Dinner Party of the Dead [Gothic, 6K]
Written for the Santa’s Secret Pen 2021 writers’ story exchange.
The clock on the mantelpiece is dragging again. The minute hand dangles between the eight and nine. Lila stares at it over the top of the dusty book in her lap, going unread under the warmth of the midday sun. It deigns to hit the nine and Lila sighs. The book tumbles from her lap and crashes into a heap on the floor.
“Really, Lila.” Archibald perches in the crook of the ceiling beam, one leg swinging back and forth. At least he keeps more rhythm than the clock. “That book’s older than you are. Have a little respect.”
“Everything in this house is older than I am.” Lila sits up and stretches her arms above her head. “Even the dust must date from at least the turn of the century.”
Archibald smacks his lips together. “Oh, I don’t know. It has a distinct taste of 1907, if you ask me.”
“You can’t taste,” Lila reminds him. She sticks her tongue out to the air. 1927 tastes like woodworm, if you ask her.
Lila scoops the book from the floor and plops it onto a nearby table. The table leg nearly gives out in the process. She frowns. “Everything in this house is falling apart,” she mutters under her breath.
She stands and strolls toward the towering windows. Although the glass is thick with dirt and tarnished around the edges, the striking shoreline below is still distinctive enough to be visible. The sharp edges of the dark rock face jut out against the crashing waves. If everything were to be perfectly quiet – perfectly still, just for a moment – you might hear the sound of the water as it tumbles and shudders against the shore before receding back upon itself.
But, then, if there is one thing Harrington Manor is not, it is perfectly quiet. For a house full of ghosts, it is a surprisingly noisy one.
Lila cocks her hip against the window frame and yawns. The purple beads of her dress make a slight noise with every movement. She runs her fingers over them absentmindedly. Full of ghosts, that is, except for her.
She rubs at a smudge on the window with her thumb, pausing as something glaring and red catches her eye on the front path. She frowns. That wasn’t there yesterday.
“Archie?” She calls out.
Archibald grunts and makes a show of not so much as looking at her.
Lila cocks her head around and quirks an eyebrow. “Oh, Archie, dear.”
Archibald stares at the painting that hangs across the great expanse of the library. Phantom flecks of mud still cling to the bottoms of his boots, his pants frayed at the hems. His billowing white shirt gapes over his chest, marred only by the bright red stain at his ribs.
It is Lila’s one and only gripe with the ghosts, really – she would rather prefer if they weren’t preserved exactly as they were in their moment of death. She tears her gaze away from the bloody mark of the stab wound, as she finds herself so often doing. He’s still ignoring her, bronzed curls falling into his violet eyes.
“I was under the impression you preferred Archie to Baldie.” Lila bats her eyelashes innocently.
“You know.” Archibald hops down from the beam, gliding gracefully to a spot on the floor. His feet hang in the air, not quite walking but not quite still, either. The house creaks around him, even if he does not make a sound as he crosses the room. “You’d better watch it.”
“You couldn’t sneak up on me if you tried.” Lila taps a finger against the glass toward the obtrusive sign on the front path. “Which you have. Several times. Unsuccessfully, I might add.”
Archibald hangs by her side, his mouth twisted down at the corner in obvious displeasure. Even though his clothes speak to another time, to another century, he is handsome still. The firm bridge of his nose and the rise of his cheeks give way to what is, at times, a warm smile. When he’s not scowling.
“For sale,” he reads from the sign. He lets out an almost imperceptible sigh. “Here we go again.” He floats off toward the corner of the room, brushing a hand over a dusty lamp. It flickers into life and Lila shivers. She really hates when they play with the electricity like that.
“What does that mean?” Lila presses. “Here we go again.”
Archibald waves a hand absentmindedly. “People often come past to poke at this old ramshackle of a house. Usually, it happens a little sooner than this, I’ll admit. It has been sometime.”
Lila opens her mouth to interrogate him further but is cut off as the grandfather clock in the hall chimes loudly. The sound reverberates through the long, winding hallways, throughout the seven floors of the manor and the attic besides.
“Jeepers!” She exclaims. “Is that the time already?”
“Seems so.” Archibald is distracted but she hasn’t the time for it.
“I haven’t even finished the invitations.” Lila fusses, tip-tapping her way to the corner of the room.
“I wouldn’t worry about it. Us ghosts have very little by the way of social engagements.”
“You say that,” Lila says as she sits down at the writing desk and uncaps a fountain pen. “But you should see how Marge is when I get in the way of her weekly Quadrille game with the triplets.” She toes off her strap shoes and tucks her feet up underneath herself.
The ink bubbles up against the page as she picks up from where she left off. For a moment, the only sound in the room is that of the pen nib scratching against the paper. When she’s finished, she fans the page to let the ink dry before folding it neatly and tucking it into a cream envelope.
Lila sets it to one side and pulls out a fresh sheet of paper. In slow, neat cursive, she pens a name at the top of the page.
“Hector will never come.” Archibald has appeared by her shoulder.
Lila grips the pen tighter, so used to such little shocks that her hand does not so much as falter against the page.
“He never does.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Lila underlines the time on the invitation. “It would be rude not to invite him.”
And, besides, she thinks to herself quietly. One day, he might.
A stack of invitations tucked in one hand, Lila sashayes down the winding corridor toward the east wing. Her shoes dip into the worn carpets; the fingers of her other hand dance over the wood-panelled walls. They are lined with portraits. Many of their subjects still reside in the house to this day, albeit with a little less life to their bones than they had at time of painting. Some, Lila doesn’t recognize. It’s no use asking the ghosts. They shrug and dust her off with a wispy flick of their fingers.
“They might have been here, once,” Mrs. Davenforth likes to say, her secretive smile tugging at the corners of wiry lips. “Who can keep track?”
Where those who are gone might be is a question Lila wouldn’t dare to ask. Frankly, she often catches herself wondering when she became quite so cavalier about spending all her time with ghosts as it is.
Lila turns the corner, tucking an envelope under the first door on the left. Voices float through the hallway: snatches of conversations, arguments, and everything in between. Lila hasn’t time to get involved. She hums under her breath as she goes, an envelope here, another there. The Helen Kane ditty has been playing on her mind all morning, looping between her ears and falling from her lips as she goes.
At the far end of the hallway sits Hector’s room, a little removed from everyone else’s. Hector’s portrait sits across from the door, a detail he shows great disdain for. Lila hasn’t the heart to move it, though. She doesn’t move anything in the house. It doesn’t seem hers enough to do so.
Lila turns the envelope in her hands, her song dying on the tip of her tongue. She clicks her heels together, takes a breath, and raps three times on the door. There is no response, which is hardly surprising.
Lila clears her throat. “Hector?” She calls lightly, tipping her head toward the door. “I don’t mean to disturb you. Only, I wanted your advice on something,” she fibs.
A croaky voice comes from within. “Sounds like the sort of thing young Archibald might be able to help you with.”
“Oh, not with this. Archie’s no good for this kind of thing — he’d only paint me the fool.” Lila toys with the long necklace draped around her neck. “I’ll only take a minute of your time. Cross my heart.”
Hector cracks the door open. His dark hair is slicked back from his head; a thin mustache twitching on his upper lip. His hands are worn and skeletal on the doorframe and his eyes are sunk deep into their sockets. Lila couldn’t even begin to think how old Hector is and it seems indelicate to ask. His clothing is dated, even by the standards of the other ghosts: his patterned knee breeches match his knee length coat and the ruffles of his collared shirt almost drown his frail frame.
“Miss Lila,” Hector says softly. Every word seems pained. “I am weary.”
Lila widens her chestnut eyes. “Oh, Hector. I am sorry to disturb you.” She places a hand on his arm. He, like the others, is cool to the touch. But she does not flinch, so used to the odd sensation of their skin against hers. “This is important.” She presents the envelope with a flourish.
Hector’s gaze travels slowly to the envelope and then back to her. He sighs. “Not another confounded dinner party.” Nevertheless, he takes the envelope and tucks it against his chest. A frown tugs his brows. “You tricked me.”
“I did no such thing,” Lila protests, although it isn’t entirely true. “I do need your advice. What does one serve for such a special dinner as this?”
Hector stares at her for a long moment and then slumps, resigned to the conversation. “Well, then? Do tell. What is so special about tonight?”
Lila straightens up and beams. “Why, it’s my birthday!”
Hector’s mouth quirks at the corner. For a moment, Lila might think he was smiling.
If only Archibald could see him now.
“Is that the honest truth?” Hector taps her shoulder with the corner of the envelope. “Or are you once again trying to seduce me into joining you all?”
“Would I do such a thing?” Lila cocks her head and flutters her lashes.
“For your own sake, I shan’t answer that.” Hector coughs, a wheezing sound that rattles his ribcage. “I’ll think about it.”
The door shuts in Lila’s face before she can respond. She blinks, nose to the wood. A slow grin creeps over her features. She turns on her heel and marches down the hallway.
“Take that, Baldie,” she murmurs, snapping her fingers at her side as she swings into her room to get ready.
The dining room has never looked so grand. Lila has forgone the electric lamps for the evening; choosing instead to painstakingly light the room with candles alone. The soft glow brings a warmth to the draughty room as the shadows of the flames dance in twos and threes against the wall.
“Is everything to your liking, Miss Lila?” Daisy asks. Her maid’s uniform is a century out of date but she’s a sweet thing, always fussing between Lila and the cook, no more so than on nights such as this.
“It’s the bee’s knees, Daisy!” Lila exclaims, clapping her hands together. Daisy stares at her blankly. “It means it’s great,” Lila clarifies. She adjusts a fork just so on the table and plucks a grape from the fruit arrangement in the centre that is as much decoration as it is food.
“Silly, really,” Lila mutters as she chews on the grape. No one will eat much besides her. She decants a slug of champagne into a coup and knocks it back. Drinking, however, is something the ghosts do rather well.
“Why do you think they call them spirits?” Archibald had told her once, a bourbon perched in one hand. That was back in the early days, when she was still more enamoured by his charms than she was irritated by his quick tongue.
Lila sinks against the sideboard, her hand gripping the wood. “Funny,” she murmurs. She stares at the bottom of the glass and blinks slowly. She can’t quite seem to remember how long ago that was. Come to think of it, she can’t really remember a before. A time before Archibald, and the Manor, and days spent hosting dinner parties for the dead.
“Isn’t this quite the spread?” Archibald is talking to the liquor bottles at the far end of the table. He passes over a rum and snags the grappa, instead. “And you look lovely, yourself, Miss Fitzgerald.”
Lila laughs lightly and refills her glass. It goes down as fast the first but does little to appease the unsettled feeling in the pit of her stomach. She’d really put on the ritz tonight: the golden dress had been hanging in her closet for as long as she could remember – or as long as she couldn’t. It hits her mid-calf and glides against her skin like molten metal.
Archibald is staring at her expectantly. Lila catches herself and glides down the room toward him. “I wish I could say the same about you.” She tips her empty glass toward him; his appearance unaltered since the morning. “A bloodied shirt is not what I would call festive attire, Archie, dear.”
For once, Archibald doesn’t argue over Lila’s nicknames. It makes her nervous.
“It’s more effort than it’s worth to change.” Archibald pours a generous glass of grappa for himself. He glances up at her over the rim, hesitating for just a moment. “Long may your sense of fashion last.”
Lila’s hand tightens on the stem of her glass. “What does that mean?” She whispers.
Archibald chuckles but the sound is hollow. “Oh, you know. At some point, you might get bored of dressing to impress the same crowd all the time.”
The dining room door opens and in come the ladies: the primary occupants of the west wing, they always take the time to dress up for such events. Lila gives her curled bob a gentle nudge with her palm and smoothes her most dazzling smile onto her face. “Not all of us are such a frightful drag as you,” she twinkles at Archibald, sliding past him to greet the women.
The room seems to shrink in size as the ghosts of the Manor seep in to join the party. Lila lets herself be swallowed up by the hubbub. Cathryn, of the west wing ladies, takes charge of the champagne and Lila barely has time to finish her glass before it is being refilled all over again.
In the midst of it all, Lila’s gaze keeps darting back to Archibald across the room. He seems odd tonight: his usual flair and guffaw somehow muted, even amongst the cheer and festivity of the room at large. He won’t meet Lila’s gaze even though he surely feels it upon him. More than once, he has complained to her that her staring eyes burn as hot as a fire poker.
Daisy tinkles a bell at the far end of the room. It barely breaks through the bustle but it catches Lila’s attention at least. Lila shoots her a wink and hops up onto a nearby chair. She takes the end of her string of pearls and raps them melodically against the side of her glass.
“Please, dear guests! Be seated.”
Howard, ever the gentleman, offers her a hand down – the one he still has, the other lost to a battle he won’t speak of.
“Thank you,” Lila says. She adjusts his pocket square with a wink and floats to the end of the room to take her place at the end of the table. She sets down her glass and fans a napkin out over her lap with a flourished flick of her wrist. “I’m famished.”
“God, I envy you young things,” Mrs. Davenforth sighs. “I haven’t felt hungry since 1876.”
Lila passes her a box from the other side of the table. “Not even for a candied pear?”
Mrs. Davenforth purses her lips. “Well, perhaps I might be tempted,” she concedes, plucking a sweet from the box.
The seat to Lila’s left remains unoccupied. Hector’s place card has been overturned in the commotion of glasses, plates, and ethereal bodies. Lila carefully rights it and glances again toward the door.
“I told you he wouldn’t come,” Archibald comments from the next seat down. “I can’t believe you gave him my place at the table.”
“You’ll live.” Lila flickers Daisy a smile as she sets a plate in front of Lila.
“Well—”
Lila launches a bread roll at Archibald’s smug grin before he can get any further. “No smart comments out of you or you’re never getting your place back.”
Something flickers in Archibald’s gaze. “Never is a long time,” he replies. He tosses the roll back to her and she catches it against her palm.
Lila bites into it with gusto, her eyes fixed on Archibald’s as she chews loudly. “You’re being uncharacteristically morose tonight.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t call it uncharacteristic,” Mrs. Davenforth comments as she sneaks her fifth piece of candied pear from the box that creeps closer and closer to her lap. “He was like this for months after Cynthia. It was awful.”
Lila’s fork pauses midair. “Cynthia,” she murmurs. East wing. Three doors down from Tilly’s room. A young woman with a shock of fair hair and wide, green eyes. “She’s not here, is she?”
“Not anymore,” Mrs. Davenforth says. “She—”
“That’s enough.” Archibald’s tone is sharp. It is like nothing Lila has ever heard before – least of all from Archibald. His hand is clenched tight around the butterknife, so much so that his bones threaten to pop through the thin skin over his knuckles.
The sudden shock of silence from their end of the table is infectious. The room falls into a deathly silence. Two dozen faces stare at Lila. She feels heat rise to her cheeks. She falters, tongue clumsy in her mouth.
She laughs but it rattles, her nerves apparent. “Please, everyone—”
The doorbell rings, loud and shrill through the dining room. The sound is so foreign that Lila drops her glass. It hits the edge of her plate and shatters into a thousand tiny shards of glass.
“Lila, dear.” Martha gives her a gentle smile. “Perhaps you best be the one to answer that.”
Lila’s hands start to shake. “Right.” She laughs. “Of course.” She rises on unsteady legs. The staring, all-seeing eyes of the dead follow her all the way to the door.
In all her time at the Manor, never once has Lila heard the doorbell ring. Never once has anyone come to the door – at least, not to her knowledge. The hallway from the dining room to the front door seems impossibly long, the melancholy tick, tick of the grandfather clock in the foyer luring her closer with its ominous pull. First the real estate sign, now this.
It’s starting to rain outside. Water drips through the hole in the ceiling by the front door, making a tinny sound as it hits the bottom of the rusty bucket left there for that very purpose. Lila sidesteps the window that’s open a crack but shivers, nonetheless, as the cool air hits her bare arms.
The doorbell sounds again. Here, it is worse: the sound rattles Lila’s bones, shrieking between her ears. Impatient mumbles come from the other side of the door, footsteps scuffing against the forgotten front step.
Lila clears her throat, lifts her head high, and opens the door.
The man on the other side of the door can’t be much older than thirty; a nervous twitch to his drooping mustache as he stares forward. He twirls a large umbrella between his hands, its wooden handle curved over one meaty fist.
He hardly seems to be looking at Lila. Rather, it is as though he is looking straight through her. “Hello?” He calls. His voice echoes around the tiled foyer.
“Yes?” Lila chirps irritably. “Can I help you with something? You’re interrupting our dinner, you know.”
The man pauses. He blinks twice and then shakes his head. He cranes his head past the threshold, so close that Lila can smell the putrid stench of his hair grease and see the wisps of his chest hair poking out of his collar. She recoils in disgust at his familiarity.
“Sir! Please, have some manners.” She takes a half step back.
“Hello?” The man bellows again. His breath smells like the rancid fish they serve at the restaurant ten miles down the road.
Lila blinks. Huh. She had quite forgotten that such a restaurant even existed. The fresh air of the outside world is a fog of another lifetime. Of something that she no longer knows. She nudges the tip of her toe against the doorframe and wonders, honestly, if she can remember the last time she left the Manor. She quickly finds she cannot.
The man sighs and shrugs. “I’ll come back tomorrow, I suppose.” He pulls a slip of paper from his pocket and smacks it against the door.
“Sold?!” Lila shrieks, staring aghast at the bright red letters painted against the splintered front door. “Excuse me, sir, you come back here this instant—” Lila takes off after him down the front path although her shoes slip and slide against the wet cobblestones.
He still does not seem to hear her – or chooses not to. He turns his collar up to the rain and opens his umbrella, shrouding the upper half of his body from her view.
“Listen here!” Lila yells. But her legs are beginning to give out beneath her, an impossible force pulling her back toward the Manor. She scrabbles at her waist but there is nothing there – no physical rope or tie pulling her backwards. Yet, she cannot seem to stop it. No manner of fighting nor twisting stops her from being pulled back up the path and into the house.
The last glimpse she gets of the man is as he slides into a large car that awaits him at the end of the front path. It’s like no model she’s seen before, all garish angles and hideous red paint. She gasps out and the door slams shut on him and his contraption of a car.
Lila sinks backward onto the staircase, drawing her knees up to her chest. She is shaking all over, her dress damp and clinging to her skin. She nudges her loose hair pin back into her bob but her fingers won’t work right and it clatters to the floor. She slumps over, head in her hands, breath coming out in great, heaving sighs.
“Here.” A cool glass is pressed into her hand. “You might need this.”
Lila doesn’t look up but brings the glass to her lips, anyway. Archibald sits down beside her, the brush of his presence tickling her side. “Archie?”
Archibald, again, does not protest. Something must really be wrong.
“What’s happening to me?” Lila rasps.
Archibald sighs. He taps a foot against the bottom step, the dull sound barely audible over the worsening weather overhead and the crash of the waves picking up force down by the shore. “The thing is, Lila,” he says. “The thing is, it’s not 1927 anymore. It hasn’t been for some time.”
Lila’s head throbs – which she’s now quite sure shouldn’t even be possible. But, then, nothing has made sense since last night. She squints against the harsh sunlight flooding in through the windows. The previous night’s storm had cleared away the cloud bank, leaving behind the most glorious summer’s day. Lila’s not in the mood for it.
She glances at the newspaper by her left foot. Archibald had brought it to her this morning, when she was still asking over and over whether he was quite sure that it was really 1965. But there it was, emblazoned in print.
Wednesday, July 7, 1965.
With one swift movement, she kicks it off the window seat and lets it drift to the floor in a tangle of pages. The face of Lyndon B. Johnson stares up at her from the floor. Evidently, he’s the President now. Evidently, President Coolidge is dead.
Evidently, so is she.
“I wouldn’t read that, if I were you.” Hector hangs in the doorway. He seems to radiate a soft glow in the sunshine, golden flecks twinkling around him. “It’ll only make the headache worse.”
Lila hums and tears her gaze away from the pages. “Someone could have told me.”
Hector crosses the room slowly. He takes in his surroundings as though he hasn’t seen the library in a decade. Perhaps, he hasn’t. “It was not our place to do so. We all have our time of realization. Best to let things run their course.”
Lila’s gaze is fiery. “It’s been almost forty years, Hector.”
“It took eighty-three before I found out,” Hector replies coolly. “We didn’t get a lot of visitors.”
Lila stares at the realtor’s sign on the front path. It swings in the breeze, the blood red SOLD stamp threateningly bold. Underneath, the realtor’s name is printed, alongside a tawdry headshot. Evan Routledge. Bringing you home since 1957.
“We still don’t,” Lila murmurs. “What happens now?”
“You mean about that?” Hector cocks his head, heavy eyebrows sinking above his eyes. “I don’t know. That’s a first. Even for me. They’ve tried to sell the house many a time. Never has anyone actually bought it.” A chunk of the window frame splinters outside and tumbles down. “It’s not hard to see why.”
Lila purses her lips. They would be back before long: the greasy man with the mustache and whoever else besides. Here to hand over the Manor to a new owner with no knowledge of its current, numerous occupants. A smile twists at the corners of her mouth. Maybe, it might be pertinent to introduce the new owners to their lodgers.
She hops off the window ledge and snaps her fingers. “The Manor is not going to be sold,” she declares.
“It’s not?” Hector shrinks away from the window and the intense glare of the sun.
“Not on my watch.”
“Lila.” Hector’s tone is soft but laced with warning. “Take a little time. It is no easy thing to learn that one has been dead for a few decades.”
Lila shakes her head, crossing the room. “There is no time. This is our house.” She turns to him and grins, a sharp toothy smile. “And they’ll have to pry it from our cold, dead hands.”
Hector does not reply, looking at her steadily.
Lila feels raw under his gaze, the edges of the hurt inside her exposed. She buries them down, deep below the edge of sensation. That’s not for now. That’s for later.
She turns, pausing only at the door. “Hector?” She asks, hesitantly. “The others…” She trails off, biting her lower lip. “The portraits of those who are gone.”
“Some prefer to move beyond this world. I hear it’s quite peaceful.”
“You didn’t—” Lila stops herself. There seems no delicate way to ask. “You always say you are so tired. Keep to yourself in your room, day in, day out.”
Hector smiles a secretive smile. It adds a flicker of life to his face that Lila has not seen before. “When it’s been three hundred years, Lila, you too might find you want a decade or two off from socializing.”
Lila laughs lightly. “Oh, I don’t know.” She grins. “Then who would host the dinner parties?” She blows him a kiss farewell and takes off with great purpose toward the kitchens. For this dinner party, she’s going to need a feast like nothing the Manor has ever seen.
Archibald slams open his door so loudly that it makes Lila jump. A few of the invitations in her arms tumble to the floor and she scowls in his direction.
“What,” Archibald asks, brandishing the invitation with something between alarm and horror. “Is this?”
Lila scoops up her fallen invitations and straightens, blinking at him. “Goodness, of course. I suppose you rarely get an official invitation, do you?” She chuckles. “See you at six!”
“Lila.” Archibald darts in front of her. He stands so close that Lila can see the gentle rise and fall of his chest; a bizarre habit the ghosts have kept from their living years, despite no longer requiring oxygen. His eyes are dark and stormy, strands of hair falling across his bow. “What are you up to?”
Lila smiles sweetly. “All will be revealed tonight.”
“Please,” Archibald rasps. “Lila. This…” He gestures to the invitation. “Special event. It’s not— You’re not—”
Lila reaches for him. It’s almost like running her fingers through water, to place her palm on his chest. His ribcage is silent, no hummingbird of a heartbeat beneath her palm. No flutter of her own at her wrist. It’s funny how she notices it now; now that she knows. It makes her wonder how it could have taken her so long to realize.
“Archie, dear,” Lila murmurs. “Cynthia. She left, didn’t she? To the next place.”
Archibald’s pinched expression says everything he cannot in words.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she says firmly. “That is exactly what this dinner is about. All right?” She smiles softly.
“All right,” Archibald whispers.
Lila presses a gentle kiss to his cheek. The touch hangs between them as she pulls back, the memory of the cool marble of his cheek clinging to her lips. “Wear your bloodiest shirt,” she instructs with a grin.
Archibald shudders as she slips past him. “Heaven help those who face your wrath.”
Lila saunters down the corridor, fire burning through her veins. “Heaven can’t save them now.”
The sunset lingers on the horizon, deep orange hues illuminating the table. It makes the dining room seem almost as though it is on fire, alight with the flames of the battle to come. The table is laid as if for a feast: towering piles of meats and breads and cakes. Cascading platters of fruits and a huge selection of cheeses with sharp knives sticking menacingly from their blocks.
Finding herself lacking in any macabre battle scars herself, Lila settles for dressing in a long black gown with silver rings adorning every finger and long jewels hanging from her ears. But those that have wounds to show have spared no detail in their attire for the evening. Lieutenant Rogers, who rarely changes from his spotless Naval uniform, has donned his torn and bloodied breeches. Mr. Matthews has removed the ear that he usually keeps so politely attached to his head. Helena borrowed a short dress from Lila that exposes her charcoaled calves and burned arms from being burned at the stake.
“Everyone looks fantastic!” Lila declares.
Archibald tinkers with a bottle on the sideboard. “So, then? What’s the plan, exactly?”
“It’s quite simple. To use that which the Manor is full of: spirits.”
Archibald pauses, a bottle of absinthe in one hand. “Your plan is to get them very, very drunk?” Lila raises an eyebrow. Archibald’s face twists into a grin. “Ah. The other kind of spirits.” He pulls the cork from the bottle with his teeth and spits it somewhere in the direction of the floor. “I hate to state the obvious, but—”
“They won’t be able to see us.” Lila nods. “I know that. But they will be able to see a dinner party in motion with no guests.”
Archibald takes a slug of absinthe and passes her the bottle. “Then why the get-up?” He leans in to whisper conspiratorially. “You know Agatha only detaches her head on very special occasions.”
Lila grins, smacking her lips together. “Oh, that? That’s just for fun.” She winks.
In the murky abyss of dusk, a car pulls up to the end of the front path.
“They’re here!” Lila hisses, rushing down the hallway. Candles light the way, drawing a singular path through the Manor toward the dining room.
There, the ghosts are already assembled, as though it were any other night at Harrington Manor. Lila hadn’t needed to give them much direction, plates and glasses being passed around. She tries to imagine what it will look like to not see those doing the passing. She grins and skips to her seat.
Hector’s place is still set beside her own; empty, again. She spears a grape with the end of a sharp knife and pops it into her mouth. Nerves prickle at the pit of her stomach. Her eyes do not leave the door.
The doorbell rings. Lila does not move.
“At least they are polite,” Mrs. Davenforth comments under her breath. Lila shoots her a look.
It doesn’t take long. Whether curiosity or courage, Evan Routledge is drawn inside, following the trail they laid out for him.
“Hello?” His voice sounds even less certain than the day before. “Is there someone here?”
Lila directs the ghosts as if conducting an orchestra. How much Mr. Routledge can hear is of little consequence. He had certainly heard – or, at the very least, sensed – something with Lila standing before him. What, then, of two dozen ghosts conversing in loud tones across a laden dinner table?
Mr. Routledge’s face appears around the edge of the door. He has his hat in his hands, his knuckles white as he holds tight to the brim. “What nonsense is—” He falters, his eyes widening as he takes in the apparent apparition of the dinner table performing all by itself.
“What’s going on?” An impatient voice comes behind him.
Lila cackles gleefully. “There are more of them today,” she whispers, drumming her fingers against the table in rapt anticipation.
A young man appears beside Routledge, broad-shouldered and sandy-haired. He grows strikingly pale in the face of the scene. “What is this?” He barks. “Some kind of practical joke?” He glances to the doorway. “Darling, perhaps you better wait in the—”
But it’s too late. His sweetheart comes through the door and lets out an almighty shriek, so piercing that it rattles the chandelier overhead.
“Oh, Mr. Routledge,” Lila calls in a sing-song voice, rising from her chair and wandering down the side of the table.
Routledge glances about him. He rubs at his ear and shakes his head.
“Yes, you heard me right. I said, Routledge. Mr. Evan Routledge.”
Routledge swats at his ear as though there is a fly buzzing about him. The young man’s sweetheart is openly sobbing, clinging to him. His mouth gapes open and closed like a fish but no sound comes out.
Hector stands in the doorway, observing the trio with an amused smile. “What do you say we give them a real scare, hm?”
Lila looks up from where she was blowing cool air into Routledge’s ear, watching in delight as he jerks this way and that. “What did you have in mind?”
Hector motions to Daisy in the corner of the room. “I think this room could do with a little more sparkle, wouldn’t you agree?” He winks and walks unsteadily toward the other end of the wall.
With a swift flourish, the thick velvet curtain that used to swath the back wall collapses into a heap on the floor. Flecks of dust hang in the air in front of the mirrors that reflect the dinner party back to them.
Routledge and the couple turn slowly. There is a moment of sheer silence, as the ghosts delight in their own reflection – and the living trio recoil at the scene behind them.
“The living cannot see us before them,” Hector says. “But our reflections reveal us to the world.”
“This house is cursed!” The young man yells. He scrambles backwards, only to knock into the table, sending a knife clattering to the floor.
“Oopsie daisy! I’ll get that for you.” Howard picks it up and offers it to the man with a polite smile.
The young man clenches and unclenches his fists as though about to clobber him before he thinks better of it, hurtling toward the door.
“Wait!” His sweetheart wails, stumbling after him.
“What a fine dress!” Gail says, leaping up from her chair and running her clean out of the room.
“This… This is…” Routledge blubbers, his face growing increasingly red and sweaty with every tentative step toward the door.
“This is our Manor,” Lila says, walking toward him with long strides. “And you would do well to leave and never return.”
Routledge sees her now. Their eyes meet in the mirror, Lila towering behind him. Her feet begin to leave the floor until she hangs above him.
Mrs. Davenforth cries out from the far end of the table. “Look! Lila’s learned to haunt!”
Archibald hops up onto the table, kicking plates and bowls this way and that with his pointed boots as he marches toward Lila. His shirt billows over the weeping wound in his side, his hair wild around his head. He catches Lila’s eye in the mirror and winks. With a delicate kick of the heel, he leaps into the air and hangs beside Lila. “Mr. Routledge. Might I see you out?”
That, it seems, is the final straw. Routledge blunders toward the door, nearly overturning several candles in his wake. Lila tuts, following after him. “His manners are worse than yours, Archibald. Not so much as a thank you to the host.”
Archibald brings Lila down to the ground as they walk to the front door, his palm flat against the middle of her back. Routledge is already halfway down the front path. The couple are nowhere to be seen. “No matter. It’s sure to be a night he will never forget.”
“We certainly left an impression, that’s for sure.” Lila folds her arms across her chest. Routledge backs his car into a tree, then crashes forward into the wrought iron fence, before finally making it through the gate. The glow of his headlights disappears into the twisting roads that lead back to the town.
“What do you say,” Archibald murmurs, his lips brushing the shell of Lila’s ear. “To a little dancing?”
“It wasn’t on the program,” Lila admits, turning her face up to his. “But I’m sure that could be arranged.” She kicks the door shut with the heel of her shoe, leaning into Archibald’s side as they make their way back to the dining room. “I’ll have none of this modern hoo-haw, though. The Ants, or whatever they’re called.” She grabs his hand and pulls him inside. “Daisy! Wind up the gramophone!”
“I think, darling,” Archibald says, catching her around the waist. Duke Ellington starts to play, bringing the ghosts from their seats to join them. “They’re called The Beatles.”
“I think, Archie, dear,” Lila replies, toeing off her shoes and kicking them to the edge of the room. “That I don’t care one bit.”
Archibald spins her around, dipping her low. “Lila Fitzgerald,” he says with a flirtatious grin. “Welcome to the party of your death.”
THE END