Phantom: A Love Story by BlackRonin
Who is the Phantom? , “There is nothing more desolate in all the abodes of men than an unfurnished house dimly lit, silent, and forsaken, and yet tenanted by the memories of evil and violent histories.”
-Algernon Blackwood, “The Empty House”
***
“I guess no one mentioned that Devereux Manor is supposed to be haunted?”
Amelia paused with trowel in hand in the flowerbed, considering Ms. Price’s question. The older woman sat on a nearby stump and fidgeted, anxious for a reply, so Amelia took her time formulating one.
Eventually she settled on: “What’s Devereux Manor?”
Ms. Price blinked. “Why, that’s this house, dear. Your house.”
Amelia looked sideways at the house. It was still hard to think of it as hers. In her mind it was just “the house”, an entity unto itself.
“Didn’t you know about the Devereux family?” Ms. Price continued.
“Never heard of them,” said Amelia. She was pulling up the weeds that overran the lot, and Ms. Price had stopped by to “welcome her to the neighborhood” after the moving trucks left.
“Well, I guess folks keep quiet about that kind of thing,” said Ms. Price. “But it’s a fascinating story, about the Devereuxs, and the fire. And of course, the Phantom. I bet you’d love to hear it, you being a writer and all.”
The word “Phantom”, divorced of all context, sounded silly but still made the hairs stand on the back of Amelia’s neck. She pushed her trowel back into the dirt, frowning with the effort of it.
It was a hot day, a Louisiana summer, and she was wearing one of those wide-brimmed straw hats that made her feel like an old lady, older even than Ms. Price. She rubbed her dirt-caked hands on her overalls and grunted.
“I’m not that kind of writer,” said Amelia. “I write technical manuals.”
“Oh? Well how did you afford a house like this? Never mind, don’t tell me, I’m being nosy again. This was a plantation house back in the Devereux days, of course. Isn’t it funny, you owning it now?”
“What’s funny about that?”
“Just because you’re a neg—well, I mean, because of your, you know, background.”
“Funny.”
Ms. Price made small talk (very small talk) for a few more minutes, then excused herself to “check on her stew.” Amelia kept working in the yard. She should have gone in a long time ago, as there was plenty more work to do with cleaning and unpacking, but something made her want to stay out of the house for as long as possible.
She was just about to stand when a gleam caught her eye; her trowel had overturned something in the dirt. Frowning, she brushed the loose soil from it and was surprised to find a lump of gold.
It looked like old jewelry, a locket or a pendant, that had been crushed somehow. She couldn’t make out its original shape. It was heavy in her hand, and cold. Without thinking about it, she slipped the lump into the pocket of her gardening apron, and almost immediately forgot she’d found it.
As she headed inside she heard crickets chirping, real crickets. Devereux Manor was a fossil of the true Antebellum fashion, a great, looming, brooding pile of a house, its peaked roofs and stout columns and blackened windows refusing to fade into the past.
The dingy whiteness of its walls made it look like an old skull. Amelia reached one of the back doors and was about to knock, then felt foolish. The knocker, in the shape of two-faced Janus, stared at her out the corner of its eyes as she entered.
Devereux Manor was always dark, no matter what time it was or how many lights Amelia turned on. She went to where most of the boxes of her things were still stacked and changed out of her dirty work clothes, rummaging until she found a clean bathrobe.
Once she was dressed (more or less), she poured herself a glass of wine in the kitchen and thought about what she wanted to do tomorrow. Get the furniture arranged, she supposed.
She watched the day’s last light stream through the paneled windows, making spider web patterns on the walls of the foyer. She thought about her father. He’d owned Devereux Manor for decades, but for some reason never lived in it or rented it out.
Why he spent year after year living in that hovel in Richmond instead she couldn’t imagine. Maybe he didn’t like the idea of living with ghosts? She laughed, and it echoed through the whole house.
Amelia went to the upstairs bathroom for a hot shower. The old staircase creaked under her weight. Devereux Manor was a house of long corridors and narrow rooms and high ceilings, a house full of strange figures in banisters and wall panels. A house that watched and moved of its own accord, or so it seemed to Amelia.
Before showering she locked the bathroom door, though she was the only one here, and she stayed in longer than she meant to, using up all the hot water. Drying her hair with a towel, she went to the first floor bedroom she’d set up as an office and worked for a few hours, translating software demos into Portuguese.
A set of French doors here overlooked what was now the garden but had been the slave quarters when the house was new. She watched the old trees sway in the wind and suddenly remembered the misshapen lump in the garden. Without quite knowing why she went and got it, rubbing her fingers over it again and again.
She thought about her father more. The image of him in the hospital bed, face obscured by an oxygen mask and a forest of tubes, gaunt as a corpse already, lurked in her memory. He had been trying to talk to her at the very end but his voice gurgled, like he was speaking underwater.
For a long time she assumed she’d misunderstood his last words, but now she realized she’d heard him correctly and simply not recognized the name: “Devereux.” He’d said, “Devereux.”
But whatever he tried to tell her about the house in those last minutes, it was a secret he took out of this world.
Amelia lay on the couch, clutching the gold piece. She meant to just to relax for a moment, but soon she was slipping off to sleep. The last thing she saw, or thought she saw, was a figure at the French doors, a thin man in an old-fashioned cape, looking in with one hand pressed against the glass.
Was he really there? No. It’s my imagination, Amelia thought. Then she slept. And she dreamed…
***
Penelope sat at the night table, brushing out her hair. In the east wing, Phillip was at the piano, playing some sonata or another (she could never keep them straight). She counted her brushstrokes in time to his music.
Outside, the wind was blowing, and the French doors rattled. She took a moment to fasten them, pushing the red velvet curtains aside. There was a terrible racket coming from the slave quarters.
What were they up to over there, Penelope thought? What would it take for Phillip to keep them in line? Her father would never have put up with it for this long. But Phillip had never been the man her father was.
The music stopped. She heard footsteps down the hall. Phillip knocked once and entered. She saw his reflection in the window glass as he stood in the doorway, seemingly hesitating before closing it behind him.