READ WEBNOVEL A Talk With George
When she woke, the sun had already moved across the peak of Vale House and the light in the Rose Room had grown soft and shady. Cally rolled onto her side and hugged a pillow hard to calm the knots in her stomach, not because she didn’t know where she was, but because she did, and she remembered what she was doing was crazy.
A little alarm clock on the night stand (with roses painted on its dial) assured her it was only one thirty in the afternoon. Her meeting with Ian May was not until three. She got out of bed and crossed the room, looking out the window to the sunny meadow. One of the horses – a chestnut so bright it could almost qualify as scarlet – was visible grazing far off in knee-high grass.
Beside a vase of silk roses, a small printed sign on the desk informed her of this week’s WiFi password. Cally sighed resignedly and decided the responsible thing to do would be to use the time, before her meeting with the proprietor, to check her email. She sat down and, moving aside a rose-colored notepaper cube with matching pen and a small plush bear clasping a tiny bunch of silk roses, she opened her laptop on the pink desk blotter.
To her surprise – or was it dismay? – the internet connection went through right away, and several weeks’ worth of unread email began to arrive in her long-unchecked inbox. She scanned through the titles as they stacked up. Most of them were offers for cheap but astounding methods of enhancing her “performance,” and these she deleted as soon as they appeared. Two messages from her agent she filed, without opening them, into a folder labeled “Later.” A new message from Emerald, dated that day, hoped she had arrived safely, and asked that Cally let her know how things were going as soon as she got a chance. There was also a string of messages from Kelleigh, each headline a reminder in increasingly assertive tones of her promise to call.
The cell signal in the Rose Room was feeble at best, and Cally found the reception better if she stepped through the casement window onto the belvedere. Kelleigh answered on the first ring, but her tone was much calmer today.
“Seriously, Mom,” Kelleigh reiterated in her Patient Voice, “you don’t have to spend all the savings you have left. You are completely welcome to come and live with Gordon and I until...”
“Gordon and me,” said Cally.
“Mom!”
“See? We would drive each other crazy.”
She heard her daughter take a deep breath, doing her best to change the subject. “So,” she said at length. “How is the place?” she asked. “Nice and haunted?”
“I haven’t met any ghosts yet, myself,” Cally told her. “But according to the staff there are lots of mysterious footsteps, and strange chills.”
Kelleigh laughed, and Cally breathed a sigh of relief to hear it. She, along with her daughter and son who had just been teenagers at the time, had lived through years of people eagerly sharing their Mysterious Footsteps and Chills stories with them, and Cally had to admit she really was thankful both her children had turned out to be normal, responsible adults in spite of it all.
“Anyway,” Cally said, “it really is a charming old place.” She glanced back through the window and began to describe the house and the Rose Room with its garish rose-covered bedspread...
...and noticed her purse hanging on the coat hook on the back of the door. She distinctly remembered having hung it on the closet doorknob.
“Mom? Are you still there?”
“Yes...” Cally stepped back through the window into the room, causing the phone’s signal to become crackly. She ducked her head back outside and said hurriedly, “I’m sorry, the signal really is terrible here. I’ll email you, ok? Love you! Bye!”
She threw the phone on the bed and spun on her heel, looking around the room. She rattled the door knob and assured herself the door was still locked. She looked carefully into the closet, which was empty but for a row of hangers padded with chintz, and into the little bathroom. Nothing else seemed amiss. Maybe she was misremembering. “Or,” she said, laughing just a little too sharply, “maybe it’s the White Lady trying to be helpful!”
She went into the little bathroom to wash the sleep from her face before her meeting with Ian May. It was obvious the bathroom had indeed once been a closet, but it had been charmingly, if snugly, fitted with an old-fashioned claw-footed tub, a small window, and a mauve vanity and commode. “I wonder where Bethany found those!” Cally thought, unwrapping one of the rose-scented soaps on the vanity. Running a comb through her tangles, she saw in the mirror that her slept-in t-shirt was wrinkled beyond hope, and wondered if Ignacio had brought her luggage as promised.
She opened the door and was gratified to find her two suitcases in front of the door. A tall young man stood next to them with his hands in his pockets, smiling broadly at her. “Oh!” she said. “I was expecting Ignacio. Thank you for bringing up my things.” The old gray tom cat she had seen on the porch was also there, sitting with its back to them as it gazed through the Gallery railing at something in the dining room below.
“Oh, Miss,” the young man said, “That was none of me. Mr. Ignacio brought them an hour ago. I just came to see if you need anything.” He spoke with a musical accent. Cally thought it sounded Jamaican – some kind of Caribbean, anyway – and she found herself wishing he would keep on talking. “I am George,” he said.
“Ah, yes, George.” Emerald had told her to expect to meet someone named Georgie at Vale House; she hadn’t mentioned he looked like an angel. He was a beautiful young man, with dark mahogany skin and broad cheekbones sloping back under luminous eyes. His hands were pushed deep into his pockets, his posture easy and lithe, like a cat that could spring from repose to action at a moment’s notice. He couldn’t have been twenty, if that. “Very nice to meet you,” Cally said, extending a hand.
He did not take his hand out of his pocket to shake hers, and he did not say anything else, but continued smiling at her. If he was expecting her to tip him for Ignacio’s work in bringing up her bags, Cally thought, he had another thing coming. “Well,” she said after an awkward pause, “I don’t need anything right now, that I can think of. I have a meeting with Mr. May in a few minutes. But my friend Emerald suggested you might be able to tell me some good stories about the ghosts that are supposed to haunt this house. Or maybe you can give me a tour of the house and show me where all the ghosts are supposed to be lurking. That would be nice, later, maybe.” For that, she thought, she would certainly tip him.
He nodded, straightening up. “Emerald is right. You can’t swing a dead cat around here without hitting a spirit of some kind!”
“A dead cat?” Cally bristled at the expression. Even the old gray tom cat swiveled its head around to look at George.
“Sorry,” he said quickly. “Sorry, it was something my old boss used to say.”
“He must have been a charming man.”
“Oh, no, he wasn’t really very nice at all,” George said, and Cally realized sarcasm was lost on him. Maybe it was a language difference thing.
She bent down to pick up her bags, expecting George to protest and insist on doing it for her, but he didn’t move from where he stood. She dragged her bags into the Rose Room and George said behind her, “I think Mr. May is ready for you.”
“Thank you, yes. I’ll be right down.”
“Good, good,” said George. “We just want you to be happy here.”
She turned to close the door, an apology for cutting short their conversation ready on her lips, but the young man had already gone. Cally wondered what Joan would have to say about that kind of “customer service.” She shrugged and closed the door, then opened one of the bags on the bed and rifled through it until she found a blouse that wasn’t too wrinkled. The rosy-faced clock on the desk now read a quarter to three; she would have to worry about putting a few things away later. For now, she quickly changed into the fresh blouse, shoved her notepad and pen into her purse, and locked the door behind her as she hurried down the stairs.