Story Series | Chapter One

 

Chapter One | Now

It’s nearly 1:00 p.m. in early June, and 23-year-old Audrey Beaufille is waking miserably in her old cottage that, as of today, is not actually hers anymore. Her alarm is wrenching her from a common nightmare fuelled by the two bottles of wine she consumed last night. Typically she smacks her phone to snooze for another 15 minutes — she’ll take the scary dreams over her waking life these days — but not this morning. This morning, she leaves for Paris.

She was expecting the hangover, but she still moans in agony as she blindly reaches above her head to uncork the air mattress she’s lying on. It deflates beneath her, and she remains pathetically limp until her butt touches the floor. After a few moments of blinking irritably in the offending sun, she forces herself upright, swallows the two Advils she preemptively placed next to the mattress last night, and haphazardly folds up her makeshift bed. 

Soon, she is standing in the middle of her empty childhood bedroom, fighting back tears and vomit. She picks up the air mattress and drapes her duvet over her head and shoulders in a half-conscious attempt to hide from the emotions she’s carefully boxed away these past few months, like she’s packed her belongings. She mopes out of the room. 

Her purse is on standby next to the front door. Inside it are two sets of keys: one for the cottage, which she needs to drop in the mailbox on her way out, and one for the new house. She picks up her bag and glances around the heartbreakingly bare space, forcing herself into a final, silent goodbye. 

The cottage. Home. But not. It now has an eeriness about it that reminds Audrey of the abandoned homes and hospitals she used to explore as a kid, something she never thought she would feel here. It makes her feel acutely alone. She’s always thrived on her own, but since her father Jonah died six months ago, leaving her on her own in their little cottage by la Penfeld river, an unfamiliar and unwelcome loneliness has festered inside her and become mountainous. Today, staring bleary-eyed around the foyer of her old home, she feels she’s finally gasping at its peak. She prays this is the worst of it, leaving this place; it must be all downhill from here. 

“Whatever,” she mutters unconvincingly to herself, and, before the new homeowners arrive and catch her standing there wrapped in her blanket like a weepy burrito, she grabs her purse and locks herself out.

Outside, Jonah’s VW van waits for her, stuffed with boxes. As she unceremoniously lobs her bedding into the back and climbs into the driver’s seat, Audrey can hear the melodic lapping of the river just beyond the cottage — the subtle soundtrack of her last two decades. Sniffing, she slides her sunglasses over her eyes and coaxes the old van to life, instantly drowning out the sound of the water with that of the rickety muffler and Jonah’s favourite album, which instantly begins pumping out of the stereo. Then she backs out of the winding gravel drive at high speed and leaves her life in a surge of dust.

***

Audrey is en route to one of the many assets Jonah left her in his will: an old two-storey house in Montmartre, the formerly Bohemian, now tourist-infested hilltop village in the 18th arrondissement of Paris. Despite her determined lack of excitement towards anything lately, every time Audrey thinks of the place, a shiver of adrenaline spills down her spine. 

Jonah loved Paris. His “ghost-hunting” escapades had lured him there when he first moved to France from Mozambique in his early twenties as a novice horror writer seeking inspiration. He’d initially gone for the ghouls and kept going back for, well, Paris. He took Audrey there many times when she was younger, but their visits trickled to a halt as his bank account swelled and he set his sights on farther, more exotic travels to fuel his writing inspiration. 

So Audrey was shocked to learn upon his death that he had recently purchased this mysterious fixer-upper in a quiet corner of Montmartre — and without telling her. She vaguely recalled his interest in the place during one of their trips to Paris years ago; the house was, after all, long-abandoned and probably ripe with spectral speculations. It seems he’d been planning to finally mine its history for fiction-worthy jewels when he died. 

Audrey remembers her call with the realtor a few months back, after she’d snagged the number from Jonah’s lawyer. 

“It was on the market for some time,” the agent told her. “It’s been unoccupied for over twenty years now. Your father actually first reached out to inquire about it a few years ago, and it was still available when he finally committed to buying late last year.”

After that chat, Audrey phoned the lawyer back. Indeed, he confirmed, Jonah had started bugging the agency about the home long ago, and had expressed his interest in buying it as an “income property,” but if Audrey knew her dad — and she did — he wanted its story, not its rental potential. If the place were to bring Jonah any cash, it would have been by inspiring a scary best-seller.

“I’m sure the place saw a death or two over the years,” the lawyer told her. “Add the fact that it’s been abandoned for twenty-five, twenty-six years, and it seems quite in your dad’s wheelhouse, non? Anyway, my dear, it’s yours. Do what you want with it. Sell it. Keep it. Hell, live in it. If you don’t mind my saying, I’m sure you could use a change of scenery after all this.”

Audrey didn’t need convincing. A beautiful, centuries-old Parisian home, all to herself? Abso-fuckin’-lutely. The choice was easy, especially considering the agency had thrown in a basic renovation of the entire place as part of their deal with Jonah. Apparently they had been eager to get it off their hands after years of very few bites. There wasn’t much interest in a mouldy dump in a shadowy corner of Montmartre when Paris is forever abloom with so many other, less eerie options. 

But hey, Audrey doesn’t give a damn about cobwebs, and contrary to common conceptions, she doesn’t believe in ghosts. And after scrolling through the photos of the house the agency had forwarded her, Audrey decided that the heartbreaker of a place, with its unkempt, mossy facade and veins of browned ivy, was basically her in brick-and-mortar form. Maybe, she thought, they could bring each other back to life. 

Thank God she doesn’t have any real friends, otherwise leaving her hometown would have been even harder for Audrey. She’s always been a loner, but now she’s a downright hermit: she’s in her mid-twenties, motherless, fatherless, basically friendless although she knows she has an open invitation to join almost any social clique in Brest, the coastal town on the north-western point of France where she’s lived with Jonah since her mother died when Audrey was a toddler. All the twentysomethings in Brest knew Audrey, knew her name, knew her money and knew she’s a force to be reckoned with, which, in small cities like those, is a formula for celebrity.  

Outside her open driver’s-side window, a convertible overflowing with laughing teenagers speeds past her on the highway. She smiles absently. She just never had much in common with the other kids back home. She’s sure that if she ever got bored, she probably would have resorted to inserting herself into some slightly intriguing friendship circle, maybe pursuing a boyfriend or two. But she was always content with her solo frolics without seeking out exterior sources of fun. Plus, Jonah did a pretty solid job of being the only friend she ever really needed. 

But now he’s gone, and she has no one. She doesn’t even have a goddamn grandma to send her birthday best-wishes.

 

And now she’s choking up again. She reaches for her bottle of Gatorade and chugs it, suddenly dying to get to Paris and park herself inside some moody cafe and sob silently over a glass of merlot.

The city appears outside Audrey’s window just as the sun begins to set, spewing rosy romance over the ancient architecture. The van rolls through the Quartier de la Gare on the southern side of the Seine; soon she’s crossing the river at a crawl in dense traffic impeded by lawless pedestrians as they slightly, stylishly avoid bumpers and bikes. To her left, at the end of the shimmering ribbon that is the Seine, the Tour Eiffel is a tiny pinprick against a liquid gold sky. 

Time to blast the music. 

Jonah’s favourite album starts again for the fourth time since Brest. She cranks it to full volume and slides a hand through her hair, tousling the unruly curls floating around her in the slow summer breeze coming off the river. 

Paris. She’s been here many times before, but she’s never come home to it. 

Left on Quai de Bercy, past dozens of vendors selling vintage prints and dusty books; right on Boulevard Mortland; right again on Rue de Lobau with just a quick glance at the Cathédrale Notre-Dame before wrenching her eyes back to the road ahead — there will be more than enough time for sight-seeing this weekend and beyond. She pinballs her way north through the heart of the city and starts climbing the narrower, cobbled streets that lead to the ancient artists’ village of Montmartre. With every turn, she begs herself to pull over, to explore, but the real estate agent is meeting her at the house in half an hour.

Audrey’s heart pounds as the van ambles closer and closer, past hordes of tourists with their cameras up and locals with their heads down. Finally she rolls onto her new street, a tight, cobbled avenue lined with a community garden on one side and a row of antique-looking homes on the other. She knows hers is the very last one on this block. Just before an old cabaret. 

The van rolls to a stop along the curb and Audrey puts it in park, turns the music all the way down, lowers her sunglasses and gapes out the window in silence. 

It’s almost exactly like the pictures. The two-storey house is covered with sprawling, very dead ivy. Amongst the branches, windows are shuttered behind aged green wooden shades. The property is tightly enclosed by a low white concrete wall with an iron entry gate embedded in it. 

“Oh my God,” Audrey sings to herself excitedly, barely taking her eyes off the house as she fumbles hastily out of the car and onto the street. After rummaging in her purse for a moment she unearths the blueprint of the house, which she folds into her back pocket, and the set of keys she received by courier a few weeks ago: one normal-sized key, assumedly for the front door, and one comically large, two-toothed key that looks older than France itself.  

“You go here,” she murmurs, inserting the big key into the small green gate. A few wiggles and a click, and the iron door separates with a metallic groan. Audrey pushes it open and walks into the small courtyard: just a few square-metres of dishevelled cobblestones that she already foresees herself drunkenly tripping over and an old conker tree that looks like it could use a friend.

As she approaches the front door, Audrey checks her phone. It’s 8:00. She still has some time before the agent arrives. She glances back at the van. Can she wait? She looks up at the house, towering before her despite its mere two storeys. Of course she can’t. 

Before unlocking the front door she examines its freshly installed wood. Nice. It seems the agency really did keep their end of the bargain. She wonders if the rest of the house’s basic infrastructure was resurrected before her arrival, as promised. 

The smaller key turns in the lock and the door creaks open into pitch-blackness. Audrey gropes the walls for a switch and soon the space comes to life under a yellowish glow. 

Audrey is immediately reminded of the cottage. The main floor is small but spacious, almost entirely open-concept with dusty exposed brick walls. Scanning the low-ceilinged room, Audrey spies the fireplace she’s been fantasizing about for weeks, then her eyes dart hungrily to the far corner of the room where, on an elevating landing overlooking the rest of the room, is the kitchen. She’s relieved to see from here that it’s been outfitted with a new sink and counters, as negotiated in Jonah’s contract, and the fridge, oven and other appliances she paid for months ago have all been installed, too. Beside the kitchen, at the very back of the room, is an ornate wooden spiral staircase. 

SLAM. 

Audrey screams and whips around, her heart skipping into a sprint, to see that the heavy front door just shut on its own. 

“Jesus Christ,” she mutters, placing a hand on her chest to try and calm her pulse. She opens the front door and peers around the tiny courtyard. A breeze has picked up. The door was obviously dragged shut by the wind. 

She closes the door behind her this time and takes a moment to let the adrenaline pump out of her. Dust is settling all around her after the sudden disturbance. She notices the floor is still caked in it from wall to wall, minus a few trails of footprints that must have been left by the renovators. 

Audrey steps around the space, ogling in every direction as her mind bursts with design ideas both preconceived and on-the-fly. After inspecting the main floor bathroom and nodding satisfactorily at the fresh porcelain of the toilet and sink, she climbs the staircase, disappearing into the darkness of the upper floor. She flicks a light and two doors appear before her. If her blueprint is correct, the one to her right is the master bedroom, with the ensuite bathroom. She wriggles with excitement as she walks the length of the room and opens the two windows overlooking the courtyard and street. Sucking in the fresh summer air, she decides to leave them open to air it out. The agency seemed to have done a good job replacing the plumbing, glass and other necessities, but the place still smells dank. She can’t complain, though; she’s sure if she sat untouched for over two decades, she’d reek too. 

Next, she strolls into the adjacent room. This one’s smaller, with no ensuite bathroom and only one window. She jams open the window in here, too, and the space seems to heave a sigh of relief. She smiles out at the conker tree, whose top branches are trembling in the wind, just a foot from the window sill. She reaches out to stroke a thick leaf, thinking of the lush forest of black alder trees that surrounded her cottage, and making a mental note to blitz this whole place with plants. 

When Audrey turns to face the room again, she notices something she didn’t before: an old ladder, painted the same white as the walls, reaching up to a large wooden trap door in the ceiling. She approaches it and consults her blueprint. Right. The attic. 

Folding the blueprint back into her back pocket, Audrey climbs the ladder. After one hefty push, the trap door opens upward with a loud creak, and she steps onto the top rung to hoist herself into the musty darkness above. 

She can just make out a low room squished under a drooping, triangular roof, but soon her eyes adjust to the weak light seeping in from two tiny windows, one in the east wall, one in the west. 

The floorboards creak even under her light weight as she tiptoes around the cramped space. Taking it in, her eyes widen; this is much more than an attic. This was once someone’s favourite room, now long-abandoned but still completely intact. The slanted ceiling is plastered with old, frayed posters, Polaroid photographs and crinkled, faded pieces of unframed art. Mouldy hardcover books are stacked in precarious piles all over the place. The wide-paneled wooden floor is smothered in patchy, threadbare carpets. An old desk sits beneath the west window and a small couch draped in stained linne is pressed against the opposite wall, under the east window. 

Audrey finally finds a dangling light switch and, wincing against the possibility of being electrocuted, she yanks it. A bare bulb flickers to life and the attic suddenly becomes a sepia picture like some of the ones tacked to its walls. She scans a few of them in the new light. There’s one of a garden, one of the Seine; one of an old Harley motorcycle. She steps on something with a mild crunch and looks down to see a large, rolled-up piece of parchment. Gingerly, she picks it up, unfurls it and blows off some dust to reveal a map of the world. It’s dotted with small, circular stickers - some blue, some purple.

Audrey can tell the renovators didn’t even touch the attic. Did they even know about it? They must have; the trap door isn’t exactly hidden. But there are no signs of anyone having been up here for a very long time, and the glass in the windows — Audrey steps closer to the east one to examine it, runs a finger down it, scraping a line into a thick layer of grime — yes, the glass is original. They didn’t replace the windows up here. She lifts a brow. The agency told her all the windows had been smashed, so she’s amazed these two little ones managed to survive almost thirty years of neglect. 

She wipes the rest of the window with her palm and the small space grows brighter. She peers out the glass. Below is the roof of the neighbouring cabaret, and just beyond that, behind its own stone wall, is a cemetery. 

Audrey turns to face the attic again. It’s busy and, of course, filthy, but somehow homey. It’s nothing like any of the abandoned buildings she used to explore. Usually those spots were stripped of any treasures. But this room is someone’s life-sized scrapbook, a collage come to life — and left sealed for who knows how long. Why was it, unlike the others, left completely full of the previous owner’s contents, like some relic? Surely the agency could have had this old stuff removed. The trap door wasn’t that small. 

As these mysteries occupy Audrey’s head, the attic grows colder. Feeling goosebumps rise, she glances out the window again at the darkening downhill view. She’ll have to grab a sweater from her luggage. 

She realizes her hands are shaking. Surprised, she looks down at them and stretches her fingers taught, forcing them into stillness. As she examines her knuckles, her calicoes, her chipping blue nail polish, she’s sure she feels something buzzing in her veins, something beyond a sudden chill. She finds herself squinting down at the map, now rolled back up at her feet. Suddenly, bizarrely, she feels she should have left it untouched. 

Audrey jumps as another ear-splitting BANG reverberates through the house from somewhere below. 

Still not quite recovered from her reverie, her eyes dart around the room. Everything looks normal up here, but— 

BANG-BANG-BANG.

Springing into a panic, Audrey trips over to the trap door and peers down but sees nothing unusual. She slides down the ladder, her feet landing firmly on the floor, but she quickly loses her balance when she realizes the room is completely dark; the window she opened just minutes ago is firmly closed, shutters and all. 

SLAM. 

She screams as a cloud of dust descends over her head, particles landing in her eyes and blurring her already dark vision. Spluttering, panting, she peers up. Through the darkness, she can see that the trap door just shut above her. 

Before she has time to think, more loud crashes erupt from the next room. Audrey scrambles into the master bedroom to see that these windows, too, have slammed shut. 

“What the fuck,” she mutters. Heart pounding, not thinking, she rushes down the spiral staircase to the main floor. The front door is open and the whole room is a wind tunnel. She hurries over, her hair flying in the gush of air blowing in from the courtyard, and slams and locks it. 

Leaning against it now, she tries to catch her breath. All around her, the house creaks and whistles. She almost laughs. It was just the wind. She presses her face against the cool mahogany just as someone knocks on the other side. 

“Mlle. Beaufille?” a man’s voice calls through the wood. 

Audrey sighs. The realtor. She grips the handle, bracing herself, and opens the door, instantly letting the blast of wind back into the house. A young man is standing on the cobbles of the blustery courtyard, clutching a thick folder against his chest. His face is arranged in a tight, professional grin despite the gale wreaking havoc on his hair and making his blazer flap comically. 

“Salut,” Audrey said, raising her voice over the howl. 

“Salut. Mlle. Beaufille, oui?” 

“Oui.” 

“Dean St. Martin,” shouts the realtor, prying a hand from his folder to reach up and shake her hand. 

“Come on in,” Audrey says, losing her grip on the door and letting it whack open dramatically on its own. Dean nods curtly, his grin still in place, and steps inside. She shuts the door with some difficulty, muffling the tempest, and after locking it with a click she turns to face him. 

“It’s nice to meet you in person after all the emails,” he says, straightening his tie, which had blown right over his shoulder. 

“Totally,” Audrey says absently, peering around at the walls, which seem like they could surrender to the wind and crumble at any second. She can’t help herself. Gesturing wildly around the whistling room, she exclaims, “Jesus titty-fucking Christ, where did this wind come from?” 

Dean’s smile falters, and she wonders if she misjudged him. She may not have a job, but if there’s one thing she’s a true professional at it’s cursing, and she usually feels quite comfortable extending her vast vocabulary to younger folks like this. But this one does seem a bit of a prude, so she swallows the second half of her statement, which was going to be “I think I summoned a motherfucking chinook,” and clasps her hands formally behind her back. 

Dean clears his throat, chuckling courteously. “Montmartre is prone to the odd bout of wind, with its higher elevation. So a lot of older places like this do get drafty from time to time.”

“Ah,” Audrey says with a decorous nod. 

“I see you took some time to explore?” 

“Yes,” she says. “I got here about half an hour ago and thought I’d let myself in.” 

“And? What do you think?”

Audrey blinks around the room again, this time with admiration. Even with the repairs that preceded her arrival, it’s a bit of a shit hole, but it’s hers. She turns back to Dean with a confident smile. “It’s everything I thought it would be and, uh, more.”

“I hope you’re pleased with the restorative work we’ve done? New floors, windows and appliances were installed where necessary, as promised.”

“Yes, it’s great. Thank you.” 

After sifting and scribbling through some paperwork, Dean clicks his pen and tucks his folder under his arm. 

“Well, Mlle. Beaufille, if you have no further questions or concerns…”

“I’d love to know more of the story behind this place, actually,” Audrey says. “All I really know is what I read in the listing my dad’s lawyer forwarded me, which is that it’s over a century old and hasn’t been lived in for about twenty-five years.” 

“Well, I can tell you it was constructed in the 1880s, around the same time as the old Lapin Agile next door,” he offers, gesturing in the direction of the cabaret. 

“Okay,” Audrey says, nodding. 

“It’s passed a few hands over the years, that’s for sure,” he says. 

“I bet. Do you know anything about the last owner?”

“Well, the man was an architect. We believe he chose this particular house because he was commissioned to design an expansion of the Saint-Vincent Cemetery, which is of course right down the street.”

“That’s interesting.” 

“Aside from that, Mlle. Beaufille, all I can really tell you is that you’re going to love this neighbourhood. Might I suggest popping in at the cabaret next door, I’m sure you know it’s world-famous — Picasso used to frequent it, you know.”

“Sure,” Audrey says, following Dean back to the door. “Very cool.”

Dean opens the door and the large room fills once again with wind.

“One more thing, Dean.”

The real estate agent pauses in the doorway, his hair, clothes and papers being rifled by the gust. He winces against the wind at her. 

“Did you ever talk to my father about this house?”

Dean shakes his head. “Not directly, no.”

Audrey bites her lip. Nods. “All right. Merci, Mr. St. Martin.”

Dean smiles gratefully and traipses into the courtyard. 

“Enjoy your new home, Mlle. Beaufille,” he shouts back at her. “It really is a spectacular place.”