Chapter Two
After meeting Lord and Lady of the Manor Sam had been hired and shown to the shabby shed beside the greenhouse. His wife had been appalled that her husband could think about business after he had just lost his father, but as Lord Backwater curtly told her; the show must go on.
His first task was to examine the crime scene, under the guise of testing the lights in the dining room, Sam looked around for anything that would suggest the family had indeed been visited by a ghost. It was un-naturally cold but Lucy who was following him around like a lost puppy dog told him that the boiler was on its last legs, so that could have explained it, but it didn’t explain the old dusty Grandfather clock that had stopped precisely at 8.p.m.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with it.” Lucy said after he had casually inquired about it. “It normally runs…well like clockwork. We’ve tried winding it but the pointers are stuck.”
“And that was the same time this mysterious figure appeared?” Sam asked moving to the last light.
“Yes, what are you driving at?” She fixed him with a hard look and he quickly shrugged his shoulders.
“Just a weird coincidence is all.”
“It is.” Lucy agreed, “all the clocks in the house have done the same.” Sam held his tongue. He wasn’t about to tell her that time froze whenever something supernatural interfered with it. Even the clocks weren’t enough to prove Star’s theory, someone could have fiddled with them, it would prove difficult to tamper with them all, but not impossible. The Backwater’s were fighting for survival and Sam wouldn’t put anything past them.
During the course of the morning he searched every bit of the house but found nothing concrete, in fact he had come across nothing of interest at all, but he had picked up an admirer. Lucy insisted on showing him around and annoying him with her constant gibbering.
After managing to sneak away for a minute Sam called his sister. It took several rings before she answered the office phone. “Where’ve you been?” He demanded testily.
“I had to pop out for some more milk.” She answered. “I was just coming in when you rang, have you found something?” Sam frowned; he knew when his sister was lying. She had been acting weird all day, knowing this was the wrong time to call her out he sighed.
“Not a thing.”
“What about the clocks?”
“Could have been tampered with.” He glanced at the lawn that stretched out in front of him, surrounding a big lake with an old twisted Willow tree draping over it, its thin finger-like-branches brushed the top of the water, sending ripples across it when the faint breeze jilted them.
Something caught his eye and he did a double take. A slender figure with long raven hair that reached down to its backside stood in front of the lake, dressed in a white gown that ended just above its feet. Intrigued Sam started to walk towards it. “Hold on a minute…” He told Star who was rambling on about something or other.
Whoever it was had its back to him, so he didn’t see a face, it just stayed there as solid and unmoving as a rock. As Sam got in touching distance its head jerked around at an ungodly angle, doing a 360 turn like an owl. He had seconds to see its face before it stretched out its arms and flung itself backwards into the dark murky waters of the lake…