Page 87 of If I Stopped Haunting You

“Archie,”they said in unison.

So,thiswas Archie. The owner of the name he’d heard whispered in the study.

“Archibald Skinner,” Neil said, tapping it. He shivered, imagining the name carved into stone on a grave, abandoned to the elements. They were probably being watched, even now. The thought sent another shiver down his spine, and he slapped the back of his neck like that would convince the ghosts to go away.

“You okay?” Penelope asked, touching his arm.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” He waved a hand in dismissal. “Sorry, what were you going to say?”

She watched him quietly before turning back to the table and running her fingers over the letters.

Neil wished he were those letters.

“Well, we’re missing something.” He was snapped back to reality by Penelope’s voice. “Why is she haunting the castle? Why is this called Skinner Castle when it once belonged to Georgina’s family? Archie is probably her lover, right? Maybe a soldier sent off to war?”

Neil frowned as he searched through the letters, eyes flicking over paragraphs and sentences. They were love letters, long, intricate entries to Archie from Georgina. Her words were desperate and aching, the sort of letters he’d seen in movies and read about in books. It sounded as if the world would end if these two were not together. He glanced sidelong at Penelope, and Neil thought, alarmingly, that he knew what that felt like.

“Wait! I read something yesterday…” She trailed off as shesearched through them, stopping on a letter.“I do not know what to do without you. I feel it growing inside of me, and there is nothing I can do to stop it. Please, do not abandon me.”

Neil sifted through the letters as she read. He carefully peeled back one of the pages to reveal the familiar cursive, scrunching up his nose in thought.

“What’s the date on that letter?” he asked slowly.

“This one is marked May of 1815, why?”

He ran a hand down his face, trying to remember why the date sounded so familiar. “Waterloo…” Neil turned to Penelope, laughing. “I should have known. Laszlo fell into a bit of a Napoleon rabbit hole after the release of some big biopic, and I had to listen to him rant about all the ways the film let him down for hours. Anyways, when these letters were written, British forces were under the command of Wellington. This would have been right after he returned—rather, escaped—from exile on the island Elba, marking the beginning of the Hundred Days. Maybe Archie had to go to war and died there? Maybe the legends are true, and Georgina has spent the rest of her time trapped in this castle, seeking revenge for her fallen lover and Archie is the… I don’t know, protector ghost?”

“But if he went away, how is he here now? And what does that have to do with…” Her eyes went to the first letter. Penelope ran her finger over it, her nail dragging along as she reread it to be certain. “She was… she was pregnant, wasn’t she?” Penelope picked up the journal, reading aloud from it.“I feel it growing inside of me.”She folded the letter and set it aside, frowning.

Neil scratched his jaw, fingers raking over the beginnings of stubble as he thought. “Maybe… maybe she got pregnant, and her dad found out, and then he sent Archie away to Waterloo? Waterloo lasted, what, a day? That was in June of 1815, this passage where it sounds like he was sent away is marked May of 1815,and then the last letter to him is from November of 1815. Her journal entries go further, and the one about feeling abandoned is from…”

“December of 1815. That tracks,” Penelope said. “Nine months. Maybe it took him longer to return home, perhaps he’d been injured and delayed.”

“And he returned by winter after the baby was born.”

“But why haunt the castle?” she asked. “Why is she still here, and why is he still here, and how the hell did the castle get passed down to Archie? If he was off at war, then he would have died somewhere else and should be haunting that place instead, right? Unless we have the physics of ghosts completely incorrect and we’re going about this the wrong way.”

He snapped his fingers. “Maybe it wasn’t Archie, maybe it was their kid.”

“Her kid is wandering around the castle as a young ghost? Unlikely.”

“No, the gravestone. Maybe their kid inherited the castle.”

Penelope frowned. “I don’t know, we must be missing something else. It just doesn’t feel right.”

“Sorry, I’m not exactly a ghost investigator, now, am I?”

Penelope ran her fingers over the worn red leather of the journal. Her brows were pinched together, her gaze distant as she stared down at the blank cover.

“Where’s the last letter?” Neil asked.

Still frowning, she searched through the pile with him, lifting a slim one from the stack. It was marked November of 1815. Neil took it, carefully unfolding the parchment. Penelope leaned over the table as they read the letter.

Father has sent for you, but we have received no word of whether or not you even live. Though I continue to send letters in hopes of a response, I have heard nothing, Archie. There are rumors of othersreturning from war, broken, but still, no such sign of you. Where are you?

I fear you have left us here to rot.

“Us?” Penelope asked, eyes wide. “Her and the baby, right? He’d abandonedthem.”