The Haunting of Appleton Hill by Trinidad Giachino

Author:Trinidad Giachino [Giachino, Trinidad]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-04-17T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

I looked up and saw them. Hanging above my head, carelessly stretching their copper and plastic arms toward me. The cables that Claire used to hang herself―or that someone else used to end her life―were coming out through a hole in the ceiling.

The lamp wasn’t missing, which made the entire thing even more bizarre. Although it was covered in rust and some crystal drops were absent, it was still possible to appreciate the magnificence of the piece in its skeletal form. It looked like someone had pushed aside the chandelier just enough to expose part of the hole from where the cables were stemming.

Jo had been right about the strangeness of this bedroom as a murder scene. I turned around and studied the door with more care. I could see now, even from a distance, that the area around the lock looked battered. Someone had wrestled with it.

“Which also confirms this is Claire’s bedroom, despite its deterioration.”

I had taken the time to go through every single unlocked door on that floor to check if I could find any other place with wires hanging out like that. None of the other rooms had this characteristic. In fact, Claire’s bedroom was the worst when it came to lack of maintenance. The decay in here was like no other room I had seen. There was a special kind of neglect lingering about the place.

I checked my phone. It was almost 5:00 p.m. A little too late to be out in the cold, riding a bike through Ashwell. Nonetheless, that was what I was going to do. I needed to know. I needed to unveil the reasons behind Claire’s death. Everyone seemed to have a piece of information they refused to share with others, and that needed to stop.

“This is the reason, isn’t it, Claire?” I asked out loud, quite unsure of why I was doing it. “This is the reason why I feel this suffocating sensation around me, why the air feels so dense and polluted when I try to mention you. Because your own life was polluted with secrets.”

The crystal drops from the chandelier swung delicately, as if a breeze was making them rock from side to side. Except there was no breeze because the window was locked, and the structure itself remained in place. Only the dust-covered prisms moved.

“I knew it. All of this can’t be my imagination. It wasn’t just a stress-induced dream. You were here the other night, right? In my dreams? You led me to this room.”

A nonexistent gust of air shook the drops again and dust rained upon me.

“I’m gonna take that as a yes.”

I was surprised at how easily I accepted that the ghost of Claire was still lingering among those walls. But in a way, I felt relieved. Relieved that I wasn’t slowly losing my mind. Relieved that the initial sensation of weirdness I felt creeping up under my skin and taking shape was not just me. I wasn’t creating impossible storylines for a movie I was directing in my head.

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