Haunted by Love

"Well, let me just get you signed in and you can go up to your room for a bath and the restaurant opens in just under an hour at twelve thirty, if that would do you?"

"Perfect," I reply. "And can you tell me what the password for the Wi-Fi is, please?"

My room is at the front of the Hotel overlooking the driveway and small car park. The room doesn't have the sinister feel I got looking at the Hotel but it's a pretty depressing place none the less, with tired, worn décor in muted colours. The bed is a double, but only just, and there is a bedside cabinet with a lamp that has the most hideous shade -- a domed contrivance of Paisley fabric with a fringe of tatty tassels around the bottom that makes it look like some psychedelic jellyfish. Finally, there is also a desk in the room on which sits an old, battered telly, the miniature kettle with a single cup and a pot containing sachets of tea, coffee, sugar and tubs of milk.

First things first: I use the toilet and begin filling the bath before starting my laptop and connecting to the Wi-Fi. There are four emails from Rick that show he's becoming increasingly worried about me until by the final email, sent a couple of hours ago, he is desperate:

Bethany, where the hell are you? You're still not answering your phone. I called the hotel and they said you hadn't checked in last night. If I don't hear from you by midday I'm calling the police to report you missing. Rick

The clock on the laptop shows 11:44 so I quickly send him a brief reply saying I'm okay. I then write a slightly longer email explaining about breaking down, losing my phone, becoming lost on the Moor and finding Ruth's cottage that, alas, had no phone or even electricity. I decide to leave out mysterious, scary shadows, waking up in bed with Ruth, milking goats and 'Refugee Chic'; apart from not wanting Ruth or me to sound weird, somehow last night and this morning was something special, a time apart from my normal life that I'm not ready to share, not even with Rick and certainly not in an email. I do ask him to send me his phone number as I can barely remember my own and, apart from my parents' home phone number, I have to rely on my phone's contacts all the time.

I click SEND and return to the bathroom where I strip, finding my knickers are rather stained and pungent, and climb gratefully into the bath for a long, cleansing soak. I take the bandage from my right hand to prevent it getting wet and look at the damage for the first time: there are several cuts where thorns, or whatever they were on the plant I grabbed, sliced into my palm and fingers. However, the cuts are clean and already much less painful than they had been when I awoke. I must compliment Ruth on her first aid skills.

Much as I wanted to just float and relax, I find that I'm agitated and feel that I should be getting on with the research I'm supposed to be doing. I also need to sort out a replacement phone and so after just twenty minutes and barely wrinkled at all from the water, I'm back in the bedroom towelling myself dry and dressing in deliciously clean clothes. When I check my email again I can see Rick has replied, much relieved and begging me to call him. I hesitate over whether to re-apply the bandage to my hand; however, as the cuts are still rather tender, I do, though tying the bandage is challenging and the result is much messier that Ruth's neat original.

Since, rather bizarrely, there's no phone in the room, it's a trip down to reception to use the pay phone in the foyer. As I make my way downstairs I count out the change I have on me, worried that I won't be able to speak for long. However, the cold draught that flows around me from the half-open front door (why the hell is it open, and in late-October too?) makes a long chat a decidedly unappealing option, however much I want to talk to Rick.

"Rick Ripley."

"Hi Rick, it's me!"

"Bethany, thank god you're okay. I was so worried after you got cut off last night. What 'appened?"

"Well, at that point nothing; it's just that mobile phone reception around here is crap so my phone lost the signal. It also meant that the sat-nav stopped working and I got lost and then I broke down and..."

"'Ang on Beth, that doesn't make sense," he interrupts. "The GPS system the sat-nav uses isn't linked to the phone signal."

"Isn't it?" I ask rather indifferently. "Well, the sat-nav stopped working anyway," I point out, "and so I got lost and then Gumd... my car broke down and I ended up wandering on Bodmin Moor in the freezing rain. I lost my phone when I almost sank in a bog: I got out but the phone didn't."

"Bethany, that terrible! Not the phone, I mean you in a bog. So, where was you, after the bog?"

"Completely lost. Well, I was lost before that, but, anyway, I was just walking and stumbling in the dark until I came across this house. The woman who lives there, Ruth, she took me in. She thinks I was suffering from hypothermia so she put me to bed and warmed me up. She also cleaned and bandaged my hand where I'd cut it. She was so kind. This morning she found me some dry clothes and fed me and then she helped me work out where my car was left before driving me there and then she guided me here. She's just amazing."

"She certainly sounds it," Rick comments and the dryness of his voice makes me realize that I've been gushing perhaps a little too much about Ruth.

"Sorry, but it was such a horrible night and Ruth did so much; I wouldn't be here talking to you now if it wasn't for her."

"You're right Bethany. I shouldn't be envious but I missed you and I was worried. You need to be more careful and not do foolish things like wandering on the Moors in future. Now what..." The front door suddenly slams shut cutting off the chilling air flowing off the Moor. It makes me jump and I try to tell myself it was just coincidence but there was something in what Rick just said that made me feel uncomfortable. I wonder if it's not simply that Rick sounded like some villainous character from Scooby Doo: 'Don't you kids go visiting the creepy valley, if you know what's good for you...' as he tries to scare people away from his secret diamond mine.

"...then you need to see if there's any factual evidence about the people in your story: that always helps make the thing seem more real." Rick has been speaking while I was distracted and I hope I didn't miss some beautiful, romantic words, though he now seems to be talking work.

"Yeah, I thought I might check the library in Bodmin: deaths at a nearby manor house must have been commented on in any local newspapers and there might be books written locally too."

"Sorry, I'm telling you 'ow to do your job, aren't I?" he admits. "I have a good feeling about this story and I want it all to go well, not just for the show but for you too."

"Aw, thanks, Rick. I love you," I tell him in an upsurge of affection.

"Yeah, me too."

"Oh crap, my times almost run out and I've no more change," I tell him as the warning beeps sound in my ear.

"Bugger! Get yourself a new phone, Bethany, you can bung it through on expenses as you lost yours when you were working."

"Really? Thank you, Rick. Bye for now, I'll message you."

"Okay. Bye Bethan..." The line cuts off as my time runs out. I replace the phone handset in the cradle. Why do the guys I fall for always seem to have such an issue with the words 'I love you'?

Lunch is indifferent: a rather lack lustre chicken salad that does not auger well for lunch with Ruth tomorrow. Perhaps as Saturday lunchtime is quiet they don't make much effort so I'll see what this evening is like and then decide.

I head up to my room and make a start going through the notes I have, checking some things on the Internet and making a to-do list:

Check local newspapers - Royal Cornwall Gazette & poss. Falmouth Packet Visit Bodmin Libraryfor above and also books Explore Hotel. See if there is a plan or pictures of Purdew Hall. Buy Ordnance Survey map of the area! Sort out phone. Should I buy a proper camera?

This last comes from seeing Marcus and Janice produce shots of locations that look too good to have come from a phone's camera. After a moment, I delete it: I've got to get a new phone so I'll ask about how good the camera is before I choose. I sit and think. There might be all sorts of next steps but until I see what I can find to begin, it's hard to think about what comes next. I hesitate before adding another item:

Buy boots and clothing for walking on the Moor.

Somehow, I feel that at some point I may need to go out there and, if I must, I'm going prepared this time! I do an internet search for mobile phone stores and there are several in Bodmin, including a branch of the one from which I bought my old phone. Perhaps I should drive into Bodmin and sort it out but, to be honest, I don't have the energy to face the driving or finding my way around a new town. Perhaps I'll explore the Hotel instead. Thoughts of my phone remind me that I ought to email Mum and Dad, so I drop them a brief message saying that I'm here safely but I've lost my phone, that the hotel is okay if a bit manky and asking how they are.

I leave my room and try to explore, visiting the bar and the residents' lounge but other areas of the old building lie behind doors that are locked or marked 'Staff Only' or both. I extend my exploration to a brief foray outside as I attempt a circuit of the grounds. However, it starts to grow gloomy as the afternoon wanes and the clouds build. When the first raindrops fall, I head straight indoors because I've had enough rain for this weekend. Anyway, it'll be dinner time soon and the bar should be open and a gin and tonic is a very appealing thought.

I wake suddenly from a deep sleep, my disorientation a mix of unfamiliar surroundings and a couple too many gins and tonics. I listen: I hear the wind moaning around the building making the window rattle from time to time. It is disconcertingly dark without the customary city gleam of yellow street lighting edging between the curtains.

There is a thin, high cry, "Ma-aaaa!" and my blood runs cold. Silence returns and I begin to wonder if I had imagined it or if maybe it was just the wind. "Maaa-maa!" This new cry is no less chilling. There is something strange and unearthly about the cry, which is at once all around me yet seeming distant and, turning my head as I lie here, I cannot locate the direction from which it comes. I grab the other pillow from beside me, pulling it under the covers to hug it for comfort. I suppose it helps, a little, until I see the pale shape by the bedroom door. My body tenses in alarm and then in horror as I realize, almost instantly, that this is not a real person for there is an uncertainty in the shape and a blurriness in the details. However, the form is nonetheless that of a woman in a pale robe, her hair falling down her back in vague, grey ripples.

"Bear-aaaa... Maamaa..." The sound is one filled with fear and I cannot help shivering. "Maaaamaaaaa! Bea-aaaaa! Heeelll meeeee!" The terror in the sound is almost painful to hear. The ghostly -- there, I've used the G-word -- the ghostly woman also seems to react to the sound: her hands rise as she seems to beat on the door and though there is no sound her desperation is palpable. Her form appears a little more definite than at first.

Yet, though the sights and sounds leave me trembling, I feel no threat to me in the cries or from the woman and there is a tiny part of me that feels an urge to go to the source of these cries because nothing should suffer like that. "MAAA-MAAaaa! Maaa... Bea-aaa... M-Maaa..." The cries are fading, becoming weaker and more broken even as the ghostly woman's hammering against the door becomes frantic, the thrashing of her head making her hair dance and sway. "Maaaa..." this cry is little more the sighing of the wind now. "Mama!" The ethereal woman slumps, sliding down the door to lie crumpled at its base, face buried in her hands...

"No!" I sit up sharply. Quiet as this last sound had been there was something distressingly final in its abrupt ending. I can feel my cheeks are wet with tears; the sound was, I'm sure, that of the boy, William Blyth. The woman's head lifts and turns towards me and my heart clenches in fear: indistinct as they are, her features are a mask of loss and devastation. It has to be Lady Blyth whose head tips back in a thin, distant-sounding scream of loss and I empathise with her pain.

That thought, that I might have just heard a young boy's death, even if only the echoes of it, is truly grotesque and one that would distress anyone. Yet, from this building, all I sense is an underlying feeling of hardness and callousness, malice almost, as if it is inured to such suffering; there is no one coming to comfort the fading shade of the grieving mother.

I lie there, my trembling and fear and weeping all slowly easing but I'm unable to sleep as I half dread, half hope at any moment to hear that plaintive, desperate cry of 'Mama!' once more. If the horrible wailing comes again then I didn't just listen to the child die... The wind grows stronger and louder and now there is the rattle of rain against the window panes. I worry that the sound of water will be another distress after recent events but I am warm and dry and I imagine myself back in the bed at Trehalow Farm, safe and protected and cared for, as I cuddle the pillow...

Chapter 5: Getting Started

I wake late, the broken night's sleep and perhaps the alcohol combining to make me sleep later than usual. As consciousness fully returns, I remember the cries in the night and the ghost at the door and wonder did I really hear and see them or was it just a dream? I roll over and my hand brushes the pillow in the bed beside me. The memory of cuddling this tells me that, while I still might have imagined it all, it wasn't a nightmare or dream. Somehow, I cannot believe that I simply imagined the sound of the suffering child and the desperate figure of his mother.

Of course, it might actually have been a real child crying and that worked on my overwrought imagination; there don't seem to be many other guests here at present but it's a possibility I need to check. The answer is to talk to the owners, Kenneth and Alison Curnow. Actually, what I've seen of Mr Curnow suggests he's a bit of a grumpy bastard and Mum said it was Mrs Curnow who told her the tale. Therefore, it looks like I'll have to do something I've not done much: I'll need to go all roving reporter and interview people.

Half an hour later I'm sat down for breakfast. I flex my right hand that feels unexpectedly naked without the bandage. It's still a little sore and the skin tight but the cuts are closed and I think being open to the air will be better than being under an increasingly grubby bandage.

I'm pleased to see that it is Alison Curnow waiting on the tables, rather than her husband or one of the few staff they employ, and I say a friendly hello when she comes over. "Hello, my dear. You were the lady who got herself proper lost on the way here, aren't you? What can I get you?"

"Oh, I certainly did!" I reply as I glance over the short menu. "That'll teach me to depend on sat-nav in this part of the world. I think," I say in response to my growling stomach, "it has to be the full English breakfast and a pot of tea, please." She nods and bustles off. If I recall, it was Samuel Pepys who said, 'A man might dine well in England if he breakfasts three times a day'; I'm hoping his axiom extends to a woman at the Purdew Manor Hotel, which has been a distinct culinary disappointment so far.

There are only three other guests: an elderly couple and a middle aged chap, so no young children. When Mrs Curnow returns with the pot of tea I ask her if the Hotel is busy at the moment. "Oh no, not really my dear: this is it actually," she replies, gesturing to the other guests. "We'll be a little busier next when the schools are on half-term holiday."

"But not as busy as in the summer I guess?" She shakes her head in confirmation. "My parents stayed here during the summer; they're the reason I'm here actually."

"They liked it then, even though the summer wasn't very good?"

"They did enjoy it," I assure her. "Mum particularly liked the story of the haunting you told her."

"Oh, the tale of Sir Lovell and Lady Blyth and their dead son, yes; it's such a sad story. And people have seen things here and on the Moor you know? Some people think Ken and I just made it up to attract the spiritualists and ghost hunters but we didn't. I..." she hesitates, "I'm sure I've seen the ghost of Lady Blyth, one night on the landing. Proper scary it was." She looks at me, keen that I should believe her so I nod.

"I can certainly believe you did. Mrs Curnow I should tell you," I glance around and lower my voice not wanting to be overheard, "I work for the BBC on the 'Mystery, Myth and Murder' TV show?" Her eyes go wide.

"Oh, I love that programme!" she exclaims, "And that Rick Ripley is quite a dish. Are you here to do a story about our ghosts?"

"Well, we're certainly considering it Mrs Curnow."

"Oh no, you must call me Alison, Miss Cooper."

"I prefer Ms actually but, please, my name is Bethany." Just then there is the ding of a bell and she excuses herself, returning moments later with my breakfast: a large plate with bacon, sausage, a fried egg, grilled tomato, baked beans and fried bread that is daunting in its scale.

"I'll leave you to eat, Ms, I mean Bethany," and she moves off. I tuck in and, despite my fears, the food is surprisingly good but also very filling. I eat only half of it, conscious that I promised to treat Ruth to lunch and I know how awkward it is dining with someone who has no appetite.

The other diners finish their meals and leave and I am left on my own. Alison comes over and sits beside me and I ask her whether she has much information on the family or about what the house was like before it became a hotel. "Well, there are a couple of old paintings of Sir Lovell and Lady Blyth and a watercolour of Purdew Hall as it was then. I'm sure I've seen a whatchamacallit, a plan of the old house at some point. It might have been part of the deeds when we bought the place so I'll ask Ken."

"That would be brilliant, Alison, thank you. Um, could I see the paintings at some point?" For some reason, much as I want to see them, it is a scary prospect.

"Of course; give me half an hour to get sorted in here and I'll meet you in the front hall. Would that suit you?"

I tell her that would be perfect and drink the last of the tea before walking out into the hall. The grandfather clock opposite says it just past nine thirty and I wonder what to do for half an hour. I see a painting on the wall near the clock that I haven't noticed before and walk over to examine it. As I suspected, it is the water coloured etching of Purdew Hall, the one that Alison mentioned. I can see the artist did their best but there is no doubt about it: this has always been a grim, foreboding looking place.

I jump as two slightly chilly hands slip over my eyes from behind. I give a little squeal as Ruth's voice asks, "Guess who?" and I laugh. My laughter here sounds out of place, inappropriate, almost like a giggle at a funeral, and I cut it off.

"You clown!" I say, turning to her and the sight of Ruth's smiling face is unexpectedly comforting. Actually, given what I'm sure I saw and heard last night, maybe it's not so unexpected. My eyes register her clothing: a good quality outdoor coat that's unzipped to show a jumper beneath, waterproof trousers and, strangely, her feet just in thick, woollen socks. She glances down, following my gaze.