The Ghost of Midnight Lake

by Lucy Strange

Genres: Horror

Synopsis

It's 1899. The Earl of Gosswater has died, and 12-year-old Agatha has been cast out of her ancestral home - the only home she has ever known - by her cruel cousin, Clarence. In a tiny tumbledown cottage, she struggles to adjust to her new life and the stranger who claims to be her real father. While adjusting to her new fate, she learns that the shores of Gosswater lake are haunted and soon comes face-to-face with the spirit of another young girl who's soul will not rest. Could the ghost of Gosswater hold the key to Aggie's true identity?

Release date: September 21, 2021

Publisher: Scholastic Audio

Sample

Father died last night, and now here we are, eating breakfast as if everything were perfectly normal.

“Pass me the butter will you, dearest Agatha?” Cousin Clarence asks.

I look at him for a moment, then stand up and walk the length of the dining table and deposit the butter dish with a clatter. My cousin doesn’t flinch, but his enormous dog growls at me from beneath the tablecloth.

“Good boy, Brutus,” Clarence chuckles, slipping a sausage under the table. I try to ignore the monstrous snapping and gobbling sound.

Clarence waits for me to walk all the way back to my chair and sit down again before he adds, “And the salt?”

Wilson, the butler, is hovering by the door. He shuffles toward the table, but Clarence waves him away. “Don’t worry, Wilkins.”

“Wilson, sir.”

“My young cousin likes to make herself useful. Don’t you, Agatha? No need for you to hang about, Wilkins.”

Wilson sniffs and leaves the room, and I take Clarence the salt. I make sure my face is blank, giving no hint of the hot hatred stirring within me. I refuse to give him the satisfaction. Clarence has been like this since he arrived at Gosswater Hall two weeks ago—playful, cruel—like a cat with a sparrow between its paws. No sooner had the doctor declared that Father was “nearing the end” than Cousin Clarence appeared at the door, with his slobbering dog and his crocodile smile. Clarence is the heir to the Gosswater estate. He has reminded me of this every single day he has been here. And now that Father has died, Cousin Clarence is the new Earl of Gosswater.

He doesn’t look anything like an earl.

I watch him tossing the blond forelock from his eyes, spearing a sausage and stuffing it into his loose-lipped mouth. There is nothing even vaguely noble about Clarence’s posture, his manner. He’s more animal than aristocrat.

Brutus emerges from beneath the table, his huge head and shoulders dragging at the tablecloth and jangling the china. He is disgusting—all lolling tongue and dripping jowls. Father always said that animals belong outdoors—so the only dogs I have ever seen are sheepdogs and hunting hounds, and always at a distance. Brutus lumbers toward me, and I freeze.

“Don’t worry, little cousin.” Clarence grins. “He’s just after your breakfast.”

“Well, he can’t have it.” I shove the last bit of buttered crumpet in my mouth.

Brutus stops and growls.

I growl back.

He snarls, his quivering lip lifting to reveal a set of pointed yellow fangs. He steps forward and I feel a quick dart of fear in my stomach. I force myself to look away from the hideous beast and fix my gaze on my hideous cousin instead. I chew my cold crumpet. I hope Clarence can tell how much I hate him.

He meets my gaze and smiles slowly. He’s building up to an announcement—I can see it in the smug arrangement of his face. “You can’t stay here, I’m afraid, Agatha,” he declares.

At first I think he means here at the table, but after a moment I realize he means here at Gosswater Hall. I put down my teacup. “I can’t stay here?”

Clarence devours a forkful of sausage. Brutus goes back to sit by his master’s side and is rewarded with a slice of black pudding. Clarence fusses the horrid creature’s floppy ears.

He has not answered my question. He is taking his time. He is enjoying this.

“What do you mean, I can’t stay here, Clarence?”

He looks up again, that smile still on his face. “Gosswater Hall is mine now, Agatha. You’ll be leaving tomorrow.”

Leaving?

“What are you talking about, Clarence? This is my home. I thought …”

“What did you think?” He waves his fork about. “That I would want my twelve-year-old cousin living here with me, like some sort of annoying pet?”

Brutus snaps his slobbery jaws—that position is already taken.

Leave Gosswater Hall? I don’t know what to say. Something inside me is unraveling like wool. First Father’s death and now this … Gosswater Hall is the only home I have ever known, and I can count on my fingers and toes the number of times I’ve gone beyond the walls of the estate; Mother and Father rarely allowed it.

Clarence hunches like a vulture, and grins at me from beneath his hooded eyes: There is no kindness there, no mercy. “I’m sorry to have to break this to you, Cousin Agatha …”

He doesn’t look sorry at all.

“But there’s another bit of bad news.” He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out an important-looking document. The wax seal has been broken. As Clarence unfolds the papers—deliberately slowly—I glimpse the Asquith family crest at the top of the first page.

Father’s will—it has to be …

Clarence licks his lips as they twitch into another smile. “It turns out, Agatha, that the earl and countess were not actually your real parents. We already knew, of course, that the Gosswater estate would be passing to me, as the rightful male heir, but this news—this news—means that you, my dearest cousin, are not legally entitled to anything at all! Nothing in trust, no annuity, not a penny!”

He waits for me to say something, but my voice has stopped working. My throat is dry and tight. I can feel my heart beating in the tips of my fingers.

He holds the paper up for me to see—as if I can read it from this distance. “Just to be clear, dear Agatha—this document declares that you are illegitimate. You are nobody.” He grins. “And you’re leaving tomorrow. As a matter of fact …” He pauses again, relishing the drama of the moment. “I have arranged for you to be collected from Gosswater Hall by your real father.”

The shock is so great that, at first, I just stare at him dumbly. It is as if he has shot me with a pistol: BANG. At first—nothing—but then, very slowly, the pain spreads. My real father? What is he talking about?

Clarence wipes his greasy face with his napkin, flourishes the will triumphantly as he stands up, and then tucks it back safely in his jacket pocket. He slaps his leg to summon Brutus, and the pair of them leave the room in a sort of gloating, prancing parade.

If I could, I would hurl the silver pepper pot after them, but the impulse gets stuck somewhere inside me and my arm doesn’t move. I am left alone at the table, with the empty plates and the cold tea, and the knowledge that I am no longer Lady Agatha Asquith of Gosswater—and I never really have been. According to Cousin Clarence, I now have no home, no family, no money, no title …

And tomorrow, I am to be given away to a perfect stranger.

I spend the rest of the day packing my things, dazed, drugged with the confusion of it all.

This can’t be real, Agatha, my brain says. There must have been a mistake. Surely, something will happen to stop it … But the hours slide by and nothing happens to stop it, and my hands keep folding my clothes as if they have resigned themselves to this ridiculous fate.

I make a pile of my favorite books—some Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, the Brontës, my Complete Works of Shakespeare with the thin gold ribbon marking my place in Hamlet. I find my needlework bag with its half-finished sampler depicting the Asquith family crest. I throw the sampler on the fire, but change my mind immediately and whip it off the coals before it catches. I brush it clean, roll it up again, and put it back in the bag to take with me. You’re not giving up, Agatha, my brain says. Even if you do have to leave Gosswater Hall tomorrow, it won’t be forever. It can’t be …

The housekeeper, Miss McCarthy, helps me to pack my books and clothes into the traveling trunk. I go to the large wardrobe and pull out two of my best silk dresses.

“Not those ones, Agatha, love,” Miss McCarthy says gently. “His Lordship said the most expensive dresses should stay here.” She sees the expression on my face change. “Ah, now, I’m sorry.”

“Not even one silk dress?”

She hesitates. “Well, what the eye doesn’t see … Maybe just one.”

I take the blue.

“Sure, that one suits you so well. Perhaps you could wear it tomorrow?”

“Perhaps.”

Miss McCarthy puts her arm around my shoulders and squeezes me. “It can’t be helped,” she says. “And what can’t be helped must be borne.”

How can she be so docile about this? So accepting? I shrug her off. Miss McCarthy has looked after me since I was a baby. She has been more than just a housekeeper—she has been my ally, my protector. Why isn’t she protecting me now? Why isn’t she fighting for me?

“Tell him!” I snap. “Go and tell Clarence that it’s all nonsense—that this is my home.”

Miss McCarthy just shakes her head. She dabs at her eyes with a handkerchief. “It can’t be helped,” she says again. “It will be all right, Agatha love. It will all be all right—I promise you.”

But how can she possibly promise me that?

After lunch, Miss McCarthy is ordered to go to her quarters to pack her own bags. I hear one maid whisper to another in the corridor that Clarence is having “a clean sweep.” Wilson, the butler, has been dismissed too, along with Father’s valet and both footmen. They are being taken to the train station at Penrith, and Miss McCarthy is to return to her family in Ireland. The wool unravels further—everything is coming undone. Something inside my chest aches unbearably when I think of those last moments with Miss McCarthy—how I couldn’t return her embrace; how I dismissed her from my room as if she were nothing more than a scullery maid.

My hands are shaking so much that I can’t fold the nightgown I am holding. What am I afraid of? Everything. Suddenly I am afraid of everything, because everything is changing all at once.

I sit down on the bed and smooth the embroidered counterpane with trembling fingers. My heart flickers in my chest like a wind-blown flame. This room has been my cocoon: I could shut the door, and shut out the loneliness. Choosing to be alone—that is something quite different. I have learned that if you choose to be alone, the coldness of others cannot touch you. I would light the fire, and curl up on the window seat with my book. I would gaze out at Lake Gosswater and the distant fields—always the same view—the colors burning and fading with the changing seasons: a perfectly framed picture.

I look around and say goodbye to a room that already feels as if it belongs to someone else. Even the pattern of the wallpaper seems unfamiliar—the geese in flight embossed upon the silk blue sky. Where are they flying to? I wonder, and the ache in my chest gets worse … Where am I flying to?

Unable to bear the strangeness of it all, I find myself drifting up the stairs to my old nursery on the top floor. I put my hands down on the steps in front of me and climb up on all fours—like I used to when I was small. The wood beneath my hands is gritty with dust and dirt.

I haven’t been in here for months. When I turned twelve, Father decided I was too old for a nanny and he never got around to hiring a governess. I found it eerie, being up here alone—the echo of my own voice; the tea set laid out for guests who would never come; the staring eyes of the china dolls.

The air behind the heavy door is cold and musty. It is like stepping into a tomb. There are footsteps thumping up the stairs behind me, and a shadow falls across the dusty floorboards.

“Come to say bye-bye to your dollies, have you, Agatha?” Clarence barges into the room. “Oh, yes—a fine nursery. And look—a tea party all ready for me. How jolly!”

He picks up one of my old dolls. I feel an angry, possessive pang. “That’s mine,” I say, striding over and snatching it to my chest.

There’s a low growl right behind me and I spin around to see Brutus—teeth bared and muzzle drooling. My heart jumps—I didn’t hear him come in. He pads to Clarence’s side and I keep my eyes on him as I move back toward the staircase. I just wanted a moment alone up here, but Clarence has ruined it. He has ruined everything.

“Oh—look at this chap!” Clarence exclaims, approaching my old rocking horse and patting his gray-painted neck. “You need a bit of sprucing up, old fellow, but you’re well made. Yes—you’ll do very nicely for the next generation of Asquiths.”

My fingers grip the door frame. “The next generation, Clarence?”

He smiles a coy smile. “Well. Not for a year or two, perhaps, but I’m sure it won’t be long …”

I sway slightly, sickened at the thought of Clarence’s vile offspring clambering and dribbling all over my rocking horse.

Clarence swings a tight-trousered leg and deposits his substantial weight on the poor horse’s back. The old wood creaks. He gathers up the red reins and sets off at a rolling canter. “I, Clarence Mallory Asquith, Thirtieth Earl of Gosswater, am now the wealthiest and most eligible bachelor in all of Cumberland! In the whole of England, I should think!” He whips at the rocking horse’s flank and halloos his imaginary hunt: “TALLY-HO, my fine beauties!”

Brutus joins in the madness, leaping and barking with excitement. He starts sniffing about frantically, as if there are foxes hiding in the shadowed corners of the nursery. Clarence laughs loudly. “Sniff ’em out, boy—sniff ’em out!”

I can’t stand it. “This is a house of mourning, Clarence,” I say, raising my voice above their mayhem. “Where is your respect?”

Clarence guffaws again. “I’m the Earl of Gosswater, Agatha, and this is my house—I can do WHATEVER I LIKE!”

You can’t let him win this easily, Agatha, my brain hisses.

I feel myself flushing with anger. But what can I say? What can I do? I turn back to the dark staircase in defeat. Clarence’s voice pursues me down to the floor below: “TALLY-HOOOO!” Another flight, two floors down … As the sound fades, my anger begins to fade too. Something else takes its place—a colder, calmer feeling, diamond-hard. Another flight down and I am in the eye of the storm—anger, grief, fear, and confusion are whirling around me, but here in the center I am able to think perfectly clearly. By the time I reach the landing overlooking the atrium, I have made an important decision.

I am going to take something.

I am entitled to more than just a few books, some clothes, and this dusty old doll in my hand. No matter what Clarence says, I refuse to be “nothing,” and I have no intention of walking away from Gosswater Hall without taking something valuable with me.

I will take the King Stone.

I allow myself a private smile. Without the King Stone, dear Cousin Clarence will find that he is significantly less “eligible” than he first thought.