The Haunting of Ashburn House Read Free Page B

carried the water back to the lounge room.
    “You’d better be grateful for this,” she said as she placed the bowl next to Wolfgang’s food.
    The room was silent, but she thought she saw a flicker of motion behind the piano. She knelt and leaned forward to see behind it. Wolfgang huddled in the gap between the piano and bookcase, and his huge green eyes fixed on her.
    “You okay down there, buddy? Not too dusty for you?”
    He gave her a single reproachful blink then returned to staring at the opposite wall.
    The sun was dipping behind the trees, and the cooling air collaborated with her wet shirt and jeans to make Adrienne shiver, so she opened the second case and sifted through the few possessions she’d brought to Ashburn.
    Packing had been depressing. Most of what she’d owned had been given away when she moved into her friend’s apartment, and even less was practical to fit inside a taxi and cart across the state. One of the cases had been dedicated to Wolfgang’s needs; the second held Adrienne’s world—three changes of clothes, a towel, toiletries, the book she was reading, clean sheets, and her laptop. Her throat tightened as she stared at them. Her entire twenty-two years of life had boiled down to these items.
    “It’s a fresh start,” she said to Wolfgang and tried to smile. “And I don’t need much, anyway. Just you for company, somewhere for us to stay, and enough money that we won’t starve. And look, thanks to Great-Aunt Edith, we now have all three. We’ll be fine.”
    The great grey cat blinked at her, and suddenly, Adrienne wished he would come out of hiding so that she could hug him.
    “We’ll be fine,” she repeated, her voice sounding small and lonely in her own ears as she pulled the towel out and dabbed at her wet clothes.

CHAPTER FOUR: What Lives in the Night
     
    Adrienne changed into fresh clothes and laid the wet shirt and jeans over the back of the fireside chair to dry. Wolfgang watched her go back and forth but refused to move from his cubbyhole even when she put his food bowl directly in front of it.
    Despite the dry clothes, Adrienne found herself shivering and looked towards the blackened grate. She’d never lived in a house with a fireplace, but she’d been enamoured with the idea. A stack of dry wood sat in the bracket, a bucket of kindling sat nearby, and a folded newspaper and matchbox rested on the mantel.
    Why not? She took the newspaper and checked the date. It was nearly three months old, which meant Edith would have bought it shortly before her death. Adrienne took a few of the pages, scrunched them into loose balls, placed them in the sooty grate, and set some of the kindling on top.
    Once the newspaper caught, the flame easily spread to the twigs, and soon she was feeding it some of the larger logs. By the time the fire was large enough to be stable, she’d stopped shivering and was pleased to see that the flames lit the room better than the single light in the ceiling.
    She gazed about the space, admiring how the golden glow reflected off the polished wooden chairs and bookshelves. The fire created long, dancing shadows that grew up the walls and tangled on the ceiling, and the crackles helped drown out the noise of the groaning trees and chattering birds outside the window.
    A grandfather clock somewhere deep in the house chimed. She counted five long, metallic clangs and made a face. She hadn’t realised how late it had grown. She’d skipped lunch, and when she paid attention to her body, she realised she was starving.
    Her initial plan had been to spend her remaining money on groceries shortly after arriving at Ashburn, but that had been foiled thanks to the house’s unexpectedly remote location. Looks like we’ll be scavenging tonight.
    She wasn’t keen to explore the house with the sun so close to setting, but the longer she delayed, the worse it would become, so she left the lounge room, closed the door behind her, and crossed to the