Lure by Deborah Kerbel Read Free Book Online Page B

around, I followed Caroline up the stairwell to the second floor of the house. There wasn’t much to see up there … just a big room with a long table and some chairs. And there were two little rooms that opened up off to the side.
    “These were the bedrooms, I guess?”
    “Yup,” she replied, leading me into a tiny room facing the street.
    “Wow, it’s small,” I said, turning around slowly. There was barely enough room to put a bed. And I thought my room in our new house was cramped!
    “Remember what I just told you … people weren’t as big back then. And most of the families in those days were pretty large, so the children would have had to share these rooms with their siblings.”
    I glanced around. “And where was the bathroom?”
    She giggled at that. “There was no indoor plumbing back in those days, Max. They had to use an outhouse … or a chamber pot if it was a cold night.”
    Chamber pots? I could not even imagine having to take a leak in a bucket in my own bedroom. Thank God I was born after toilets were invented!
    She pointed to the other little room. “The reason I brought you up here was to show you this bedroom. There was another apparition seen in here. A man returning a book to the outdoor drop box late one night claimed to have seen the greyish silhouette of a woman standing right there at that window.”
    I walked over to the tiny window and looked out to the street below. “And do you think it was the same ghost who was wearing the high-buttoned boots on the stairwell?”
    She shrugged. “I have no idea. All we know is that each time there’s been an apparition, it’s been a woman.”
    I turned away from the window. Caroline was standing in the narrow doorway, chewing on her pinky fingernail. For a second there, she looked just like a nervous little kid.
    “Do you have any idea who the woman is … well, I mean, was ?”
    She shook her head. “Some people think it’s the ghost of Ellen Ramsden, the first owner of this house. But this building changed hands many times over those years, so it really could be any one of the old inhabitants. Or even someone else who might have had connections to this place.”
    I stepped toward her, the ancient floorboards groaning beneath my running shoe. “Hey, you know maybe you should think about studying history when you go to university,” I said. “You’re pretty good at remembering all these old facts about dead people.”
    Her eyes dimmed … like a light inside her head had just been switched off. “Guess you could say I’m a bit of an expert in that department,” she mumbled. Then she turned and walked back to the stairwell. “I think we should get back downstairs now … I’m not really supposed to let people up here.”
    There wasn’t much else to see in the bedrooms so I was glad to go back downstairs. At that point, I thought the tour was over, but it turned out that Caroline still had one room left to show me. To the left of the stairs was another large room full of bookshelves.
    “This is the Fiction room. It was also part of the original house … most likely the kitchen. The rest of the library beyond this point was added on in later years.”
    I looked around. There was nothing to see in this room except for books.
    “Okay … so, is that it for the ghost tour?” I asked. Was this the part when she collects her commission and makes me sign up for that library card? I waited for the sales pitch. But it didn’t come. Instead, she just grinned and bobbed up and down on her toes. The light in her eyes was back again.
    “No, not at all. I’ve saved the best for last,” she said, waving her hand in the direction of a narrow, sunlit window crammed in a space between the bookshelves. “The most famous apparition of all was of an old woman sitting in a rocking chair right there in that spot. She was covered in light, rocking back and forth and repeating the name John, John, John, over and over again. That was a long time ago