Page 101 of If I Stopped Haunting You

He felt the chill first, then the bite of a clammy hand wrapping around his ankle. As he met Georgina’s eyes, sunken into a face filled with death and despair and anger, his legs gave outbeneath him. His breathwhooshedfrom his chest as he fell, and he gasped for air, momentarily stunned.

Neil slammed against the floor, head cracking against the wood. He saw stars as the woman yanked hard, and Neil scrabbled for purchase as Georgina tugged, pulling him under the bed. It was a cliché, but in any other moment, he might have laughed because the monsterdidlive under the bed. There was nothing remotely human about Georgina Walsh now, and the sight of her, thefeelof her against his leg was terrifying.

“Penelope!” he screamed, one hand gripping the edge of the writing desk, the other waving in the air over him. Penelope’s hands wrapped around his free one, tugging with all her might. But she wasn’t nearly strong enough, and Georgina wasn’t human anymore.

She growled from somewhere behind him, and Neil screeched, his heartbeat thundering as she jerked him back with inhuman strength.

“I’m not letting you go!” Penelope promised. Her hands were sweaty, her grip slipping, but still, she struggled, standing her ground. As she always had.

And then the pulling stopped.

Neil blinked in surprise, narrowing his eyes at the darkness under the bed and the not-woman lurking there. Beady eyes stared back at him, gleaming from the shadows like glowing orbs. The thing Penelope had seen in the cellar… itwasGeorgina. This would have terrified him then, too. It certainly terrified him now.

“Penelope!” Neil screamed, scrambling back.

Penelope yanked with all her might, and Neil kicked free, both fumbling backward. They tripped, and his arms clamped around her as they turned and watched in horror as two skeletal hands appeared from beneath the bed, the thing freeing itself of the shadows. Georgina stood, bones clambering to right themselves, one leg straightening into position and then the other. Shestalked toward them, ratty white dress trailing in her wake. Neil spread his arms before them, blocking Penelope from Georgina, whatever good that did them.

“Georgina!” Penelope yelled, squeezing her eyes tight and clenching her hands into fists. The ghost didn’t stop. “Georgina Walsh!” Penelope screeched.

The ghost froze, her eyes going distant.

“Skinner.”

Penelope eyed Neil sidelong. “Um, right, Georgina Skinner.”

Neil and Penelope watched in surprise as parts of Georgina turned more human, her gross, corpse-like state melting away, layer by layer.

“Georgina Skinner?” Penelope said slowly. “Georgina, we know what happened to you.”

Penelope took a step toward the ghost, but Neil reached out as if on instinct, his hands tightening around her wrist.

She shook her head. “No, I’m okay. We’re safe.” He let go as Penelope moved past him, stopping a few feet away from the woman. She held out a hand to Georgina as if calming a feral animal. “You’ve been looking for your Archie, haven’t you? That’s why you’ve stayed all this time?”

Georgina’s lips parted.“Archie,”she echoed.

Before them, Georgina began to change. Her flesh and bone filled out, no longer skeletal. Her skin turned pink and plump, her cheeks full, life blown back into her. Her eyes met Penelope’s, expression pained.

“Archie,” she repeated, voice strained.

“He returned to you, but you had so little time together,” Neil started, glancing at Penelope.

The ghost moved to her desk, running a slender finger over its surface. And then she smiled, a soft, pretty thing. “He loved me, my Archie. When he was sent away, he wrote me every week. The servants slipped the letters to me, careful of my father, but Archie’sresponses stopped coming in late May, and I believed I was left alone. Father would not leave for business, insistent that he could not abandon me, fearful I would go in search of Archie and risk the baby.”

She focused on Penelope. “Archie and I married before my father sent him away, though my father would not allow it. Archie was but the mere son of our groundskeeper, and I a future duchess. After Archie asked my father for my hand, my father forbade us from seeing one another. And then he caught us in the garden, secretly wed. In his anger, he sent Archie away to war.”

“But you were pregnant,” Penelope said softly.

“Yes,” she answered after a moment. The sound of her voice still grated against him, and Neil shivered, wrapping his arms around his middle as she continued, “I knew by April when my father sent Archie away that I was with child. But I was only a child myself, and when I grew sick that autumn and Father feared what would become of our home and his line, he sent for Archie, only to receive no word back of his whereabouts. When we were certain Archie would not return, he made our son the heir to this castle.”

“But Archie did return?”

“Yes, in April of the following year. He’d been injured, an infection in his leg, and he recovered in a hospital in Brussels. It was a miracle he returned home safely at all.”

Neil’s arms slackened, his chest squeezing tight. All those months she thought he was dead. And even then, they only had three years together before Georgina passed away.

“And you were happy, weren’t you?” Penelope ventured. “You and Archie and your son had a life together.”

“For a while, yes. We were a family until my sickness returned. When the doctor said there was nothing they could do, I promised Archie I would watch after them always. And I did, until Archie passed, then my father, and when our son built his own family, and they too passed, I knew I would be trapped here to watchevery single person in my line wither and die.” She reached out to touch the canopy bed, but her finger disappeared into the wood. “I have seen even this castle fall apart because of me.”