She heard gasps from below and someone saying, quite calmly:
“Oh, dear.She is not taking it well at all, is she?”
All thoughts of shouting at the people and telling them to leave were gone—Aurelia’s only instinct now was to escape.She scooped up the cat and got herself back into the flat’s stairwell, slamming the door behind her.After locking it, she held Fezz tight against her chest, breathing hard.She had the urge to scream again but couldn’t seem to find her voice through her shock—it seemed she’d used up her minute of pluck.
Aurelia’s knees practically gave way beneath her as she sat on a stair and counted the seconds until she heard a police siren signaling their arrival to rescue her.
The shop was a scene of chaos.Police were milling about, their badges catching the lights and their shoes crunching broken glass into the carpet.When they had arrived at the shop, they told her, there was no sign of forced entry.Having been informed that she was barricaded upstairs, they broke the glass door themselves in order to get in and look for intruders.They reported seeing what looked like smoke near the table at the front of the shop, but after they’d turned on the lights, it was gone and there was no sign of a fire or smell of smoke on the air.Nothing had been disturbed—the books were in order and the register hadn’t been tampered with.
The police were kind, but it was clear they’d written it all off as a false alarm.One of them gave her the number for a twenty-four-hour glazier who could fix the glass panel on the door, and they left once the glazier had arrived and started his work.
When Aurelia was by herself in the building again, dawn light was coming in through the blinds of the shop windows, reflecting off the glass shards on the floor.Another sleepless night, another baffling encounter, and now add to that—a mess to clean.
5
ItwasSunday,theshop was closed, and the day seemed to stretch out before Aurelia in an unpleasant way.Even after vacuuming up broken glass and downing several bracingly strong cups of tea, she still had hours to fill.But she knew her mind would be stuck on repeat, playing over what had happened.
She considered the evidence: she could see and hear people in the shop in the middle of the night, and they seemed to disappear quite suddenly.There was also that strange light that came and went along with them.Narrowing the possibilities, she thought she was either dealing with ghosts or hallucinations.While neither was particularly appealing, she was leaning toward ghosts since that option was preferable to losing the power of rational thinking.
Aurelia thought of her sister and father, who’d known Aunt Marigold almost as well as she had.Maybe Marigold had mentioned something to them about the shop being haunted?If so, it would go a long way toward easing her mind.
She decided to try calling her father first.He must have heard the tension in her voice because he soon asked if everything was alright.
“Yes, everything’s fine.”
She was determined not to tell him or Antonia about the police since they’d be guaranteed to worry about her.
“It’s silly, really, but I was wondering… Do you remember if Aunt Marigold believed in things… like, supernatural things?”
“What, like ghosts and spirits?”
“Right, that sort of thing.Did she ever mention anything like that?”
“I’d have to think.”
He paused, giving Aurelia time to appreciate that, as a retired philosophy professor, he was game to indulge her by carefully considering an entirely random question.
“I suppose I’d say Marigold was a very practical person,” he reasoned.“She loved her books, same as you, but I think she left fiction to her novels.”
Aurelia sank back into her chair.She had to agree with him; Aunt Marigoldhadbeen a very practical, rational person.If she’d ever encountered something out of the ordinary in the shop, she likely felt as Aurelia did now—unsure if it were actually happening and unwilling to tell anyone and risk them thinking she was unstable.
“Doyoubelieve in those sorts of things, Dad?”
“Do I?”After another thoughtful pause, he replied, “I suppose I believe there are still a few unanswerable mysteries in the world—things that can’t be explained by modern theories.Don’t you?”
Aurelia had to admit that she did.Not only because of recent experience, but other incidents that, so far in her life, she couldn’t explain away with rational explanations.Like the calls to and from Antonia that one or the other usually anticipated before the phone rang.Since they never set a date for their calls, it seemed as if one sister could simply sense when the other was about to call.And how many times had Aurelia seen Marigold hand a customer a book right before they’d asked for it?
“I do, yeah.I like answers, though.”
Her father laughed and said, “Well, mysteries make life a little more enjoyable and unexpected.Just think if your novels answered every question.It wouldn’t leave much room for the imagination, would it?”
“Hmm.”Aurelia smiled.“I see your point, but I still don’t like it.”
“We rarely like what’s good for us.”
“Like Brussels sprouts.”
“Or flossing,” her father added.
