Not There: A Ghost Story For Christmas, #1

By Marni Scofidio

This holiday season, release your inner Scrooge.

 

Eirlys Stephens has always longed to write, but before her husband Mason ran off with her best friend Hazel, between his demands and those of Eirlys' spoilt daughter Natasha, she never had the time. This Christmas she decides to ditch the Laura Ashley tablecloth, turkey crown, and Christmas pud to go on a residential writing course at Savernake House, a mansion once owned by The Most Evil Man In Wales. What could possibly go wrong?

 

A 'bah-humbug', anti-domesticity, anti-homemade jam & Jerusalem Christmas ghost story featuring outspoken women and far too much (fine) wine. Why bake when you can drink?

Warning: this novella is not for romance, Christmas, and/or Aga saga fans. Proceed at your own risk.

• Language: English
• Publisher: For Attention Press
• Release date: Jun 6, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227400543

Marni Scofidio

Now resident in Wales, Marni was born in San Francisco, California, and raised in Buffalo, New York. She is a modern supernaturalist whose fiction and nonfiction has been published in the UK, Canada, Australia, and the United States. Her first novel, Knucklebones, was published by PS Publishing, the UK's premier genre publisher, home to Ramsey Campbell, Stephen King, and Joe Hill. She is married and Wicked Stepmother to one stepson. Her staffy x Gruff has a poet alter ego named Vanilla G.

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Copyright © 2023 Marni Scofidio Doidge

All rights reserved . Except for use in review, no portion of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part or in any form without permission from the author.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: If you have a dictionary installed in your e-reader, unfamiliar words in this novella can be either defined or translated by pressing down and selecting the word. There is also a Welsh Glossary at the end.

The utmost care has been taken in proofreading this novel. But if any eagle-eyed readers do spot a typo please feel free to let the Publisher know at:   [e-mail]

A WELSH GLOSSARY

Note: the translations are based on the idiom in current use in North Wales. Pronunciations, for those up for further punishment, can be found on the Internet.

Bach

Small; can be used as a term of endearment

Cariad

Sweetheart; can be used romantically or to show platonic affection

Clanger

Mouse character in vintage children’s t.v. show that ‘spoke’ in high whistles

Diolch, Diolch yn Fawr Iawn

Thank you; Thank you very much

Draig Goch

Red dragon; the national emblem of Wales, as featured on the Welsh flag, arse facing the old enemy, England

Hiraeth

A Welsh word that doesn’t translate into English. It can mean a deep longing for home, or homesickness tinged with grief or sadness over the lost or departed. It is a mix of longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness, and/or an earnest desire for the Wales of the past, possibly one that never existed.

Iechyd Da

Cheers; literal translation, ‘good health’

Iesu Mawr

Big Jesus

Nain

Grandmother

Noughts and Crosses

Tic-tac-toe

Paid fwcio efo fi!

Don’t fuck with me! Used in conjunction with dealing with banks, utilities, debt collectors, annoying relatives, social media stalkers, shitty American software, etc.

Spunk

Seminal fluid

Monday, 21st December

I.

My first view of Savernake House stopped me in my tracks.

Part Arts and Crafts, part Tolkien, part Gothic, its architectural style was nightmare house of a laudanum addict suffering severe delusions. In short, bonkers. Turrets, arches, cupolas, grotesques and spires crammed together, a disfigured stone face under a bad hair sky.

Grief was the other impression Savernake House gave. The main grounds perched on a rise overlooking a windy sea of foliage; the house wore her bereavement of darkened fields as close as earthen petticoats. A distant guard of mountains framed by willow and silver birch completed the mourning ensemble.

The Rough Guide: Wales had a brief paragraph stating it had once been owned by an artist, one Ifo Aveni RA, aka ‘The Most Evil Man In Wales’. It was rumoured to be haunted, but by whose ghost, the paragraph didn't say. Out of shot of the view as featured on the brochure, a line of pegged-out sheets spoilt the romance.

And I was here because of my husband Mason, who for the last year, possibly longer, had made me a cuckquean. A predictable lover not only in bed, as I recall, but also in cheating on me with my best friend Hazel, the original champion of beige. After re-decorating her entire bungalow in Kelly Hoppen, she’d relieved me of Mason and his demands and moods as well as his smelly feet. So in the end, a good friend after all. There are far worse things in life than being a sixty-five-year-old near-divorcée, living alone, able to do just as I please.

Which meant swerving Christmas. I’d packed away the pudding basin and parchment paper, the fairy lights and my grandmother’s Charlotte Rhead gravy boat, the dullest piece of pottery ever made, outside Leachware. From the loft I’d retrieved hidden treasures: the Peter Pauper Press ‘Venice’ journal with the words ‘Commonplace Book of Eirlys Stephens’ written in green ink on the frontispiece (as far as I ever got) and my Kaweco fountain pen.

All these had been carefully stored in a tea chest four years ago, after Mason kicked off over my friendship with our gardener who, as well as an expert greensman, is a talented poet. Literary endeavours and other men were not welcome in our home. A fine, a very fine, irony, considering my husband’s extracurricular activities.

The Savernake brochure had claimed that ‘Anyone Can Learn to Write Fiction in Exquisite Surroundings with Best-Selling SciFi/Fantasy Romance Author Aoife De’Ath (Whip-Happy Lesbian Monsters on the Moon, Dumb as a Bucket of Astro-Rocks). No Experience Necessary.’

Waiting for the other students to arrive, I coped with anxiety induced by unfamiliarity by inspecting my surroundings. White tiled floors, high plastered ceilings, wellies for guests, and a grand staircase soaring towards the dark mystery of upstairs.

The lounge was a woodpecker’s dream. Timber beams, (real) antler chandelier, lamps carved from fire logs, and Grinling Gibbons-style bookshelves as far as the eye could see. They cheered me immensely, as did the case containing a stuffed herring gull the size of a Staffordshire bull terrier. The shabby corpse would have turned Mason, a vegan birdwatcher, purple with outrage.

Framed prints and canvases jostled on mustard and sage walls. Marked NFS (an acronym I know, Not For Sale, having co-owned an art gallery with Mason for three decades), an ornate gold frame supported a tiny Tunnicliffe, a gouache of a kingfisher, bright as a jewel.

What I found odd was there wasn’t a single work by the artist who’d owned this house. I had never seen Ifo Aveni’s work, never heard of him before now. How evil could he have been to have lived in this strange yet beautiful dwelling?

On cue, the other guests arrived, quickly filling the lounge. Ten of us sat in mismatched chintz sofa and wing-back armchairs, pretending to read the health and safety brochure given us on registration, but in reality attempting to get the measure of each other without speaking. (First rule of week-long residential courses: spot at the get-go whom to avoid. High colour and/or fanatical viewpoints on Gardeners’ World or The Great British Bake Off can be clues.)

Studying the books, my hand touched a surface indented with tiny grooves. On closer inspection it was initials carved into a heart in the bookshelf. I + I. The heart had cross-hatching and detailed wings. It must have taken some doing, to cut those lines into such a hard wood as oak.

The lounge had one door, as did the dining