Read The Ghosts of Tullybrae House for Free Online Page A

you.”
    “Lamb, you’re a doll.” She gave him a one-armed, sideways squeeze. He hadn’t been expecting the familiar gesture. Sputtering, he patted her hand awkwardly.
    “Yes, well… you go on then.”
    Taking the stairs two at a time, Emmie barrelled into her career as an official curator.
    By noon, she was ready to give up.
    When she’d thought about how she would start the night before, she had decided the sitting room would be a good place to ease herself into the job. Old Cranberry (or so she’d taken to calling the curmudgeony earl in her head) had used this room until his death. It was one of the few rooms at Tullybrae which hadn’t fallen prey to consolidation and storage; the general cramming of too many items into too-small spaces.
    At her side were her four favourite items, highly specialized equipment for historical cataloguing: a yellow notepad, an easy-glide ballpoint pen, a digital camera, and a box of pre-threaded manila tags. Cataloguing was one thing she knew how to do inside and out, since it was what she did most often under the tutelage of Professor McCall. Each item would need to be meticulously described, with as many distinctive marks and identifiers as she could locate. The item’s condition would also be recorded. It would then be photographed from multiple angles, assigned a number for future identification, and tagged.
    But even the study quickly proved to be an overwhelming room. Everything, everything , was antique. The furnishings, the paintings, the rugs, the window treatments. Even the wallpaper. And although the room had the outward appearance of livability, there were mounds upon mounds of items stacked haphazardly within the hutch, the credenza, under the window seating, and inside a large ornamental chest in the far corner.
    By lunchtime, Emmie hadn’t evaluated even half the room, much less catalogue her finds and determine their historical significance and value.
    At twelve-thirty, Lamb brought a tray into the sitting room. Hearing his short-stepped gait, Emmie looked up from where she sat, cross-legged, on the floor in front of the credenza. Arranged neatly on the tray, which the butler clutched with a death grip, was a watercress sandwich, four homemade shortbread cookies, a Granny Smith apple cut into slices, cubes of sharp cheddar cheese, and a tall, frosty glass of milk.
    “Lamb, you sweet man. I said I usually skip lunch. You didn’t need to do this.”
    Lamb bent, his knees creaking, and handed her the tray when she rose to meet him half-way. “I couldn’t bear the thought of you going from dawn to dusk without eating. I hope I haven’t included anything you don’t like.”
    “I’m grateful, thank you. It all looks delicious. I love watercress.”
    “Do you? ’Tis an old-fashioned taste, I think. No’ what the young people like to eat nowadays.”
    “In case you hadn’t noticed by my line of work, old-fashioned is kinda my thing.”
    Lamb let out a huff that was almost a chuckle. “Fair enough.”
    That first day tired her more than she thought it would. Emmie was asleep less than a minute after her head touched the pillow. If the strange giggling and the tugging at the covers happened again, she was too far gone to notice. Every night thereafter she slept soundly as well. Whatever had disrupted her that first night must have been an anomaly. A product of her over-active imagination, stimulated by the atmosphere of the house.
    Or so she tried to convince herself. But her historian’s imagination, its fascination with the past, wouldn’t be subdued for long. No sooner would she chastise herself than her mind would drift back to the idea that there were beings in the house whom she couldn’t see. There were times, too, when she was alone that a spider web sensation would tickle along her spine. And though she knew she was being a little absurd, Emmie would find herself slowing down around corners, steeling herself against the possibility of coming face to