The Bronze Brooch

The ghosts in this story are real, but they are not monsters. In the shadow of the old century a businessman built a house fit for a prince - a monument to his glory, it was stacked with things rare and beautiful. Things that should not have been for sale.

Wooden carvings from the new world, pilfered from its people, delicate cups and plates from Asia, smuggled by resentful younger sons, glittering silverwork and warm bronze adornments from celtic lands. He crammed them together in cavernous rooms, cheek to jowl with stolen and ill-gotten goods from every part of the world, and the ghosts that came with them jostled. Listened. Learned.

Benjamin Simmons, the businessman, had everything that a man of his age could want - his hard work, and he had worked hard, to remove himself from the workhouse and his father's debt had paid off beyond all hope. He was not yet thirty and wealthy, he had built himself a strong reputation and a fine home, and collected wonders from around the world. Stolen wonders, perhaps, but wonders. He spoke to them in the night, asking the ghosts that haunted his collections for help - how could he have all this and no-one to share it with?

In the days while he worked, the ghosts whispered, each in their own language, to one another the truths he didn't want to hear. He was handsome to look at, but ugly to know. Clever but cold, charming but cruel. He took and took and took from the world around him and gave little back. The women he courted felt trapped - the sensitive ones spoke to the ghosts as they passed in the halls. They too were stolen treasures, hidden from the sun and the world, and the ghosts urged them to use their legs to flee. And so it went, in the night the businessman, in the day the ghosts. The house groaned under the weight of its secrets.

He brought home a girl, little more than a girl, dressed in rags and offered to feed and clothe her. The ghost rustled in their shadows because they knew she was beautiful and helpless, and so did the businessman. He had gauged the prospects and found her price favourable, but was sweet to her nonetheless. He charmed her with soft words and softer dresses, plied her with sweets and jewellery, hired a ladies maid to make her life beautiful and a governess to sharpen her mind. She was what he had been, Mr. Simmons thought, a diamond in the mud. He would polish her and when the time was right, he told the ghosts, he would marry her.

Valerie was not the soft child the businessman thought her to be - worked hard and raised in the cold, she knew better than to rest easy in his gilded cage. The house was a house of whispers - she followed him, light on her feet, to his nightly meetings. Watched him touch the treasures and whisper to them. More than this, she saw the figures in the shadowed parts of the rooms, and watched the grey mist pour from the lock after he secured the rooms once more.

The ghosts had convened, en masse, to discuss the girl and decided that Brigit should speak with her. But their words were lost on her ears. All Valerie knew was that, firstly, there was life after death, and secondly that this spirit meant no harm. Though grey and eeriely transparent, Brigit had a broad, warm face and thick, curled hair, tinged with red. The ghost of a bronze brooch sat heavy on her left shoulder, and blue markings covered her arms, curled around her eyes and lips.

She motioned to the window, led Valerie to the door, and urged and urged and urged her to slip away.

"I have nowhere to go," she whispered, and looked over her shoulder at the stairs, "will you protect me." Brigit nodded yes, and the ghosts convened once more. For two years, they made doors stick and rugs crumple underfoot, preventing the businessman from sneaking up on his ward or watching her unseen. They switched salt with sugar and sent drafts through his bedchambers. They made him tired and sick and uneasy, and turned his mind from romance until he called a priest to spray water on the walls and mumble spells over their items.

Valerie became more beautiful and sharp as a blade. She stole his keys and cared for the ghosts in the day - left little offerings for them and read to them, and made them homes in her bedroom, unseen under the bed. They grew stronger, there was no denying it. And Valerie became a woman proper, there was no ignoring it for Benjamin Simmons. He spoke love to her over the breakfast table, though he was sick and looked older than his years, and pretended to be chastised when she called him father.

And the ghosts met a final time. They drove him mad with visions of their lives and deaths, and moved his world by inches. A pen in inch to the left, a cup of tea two inches to the right, an inkwell a few inches closer than expected. He became dishevelled and bleary, ranting about the way his house revolted against him until his friends wondered that he might not need rest. Then they whispered in her ear a repulsive plan.

In her wedding dress she was resplendent - Valerie looked nervous, the businessman thought, but beautiful and as she said her vows he knew already where he would keep her. In his bedroom, and on his arm - in pride of place. She was the star on the tree, the crown jewel, and with help she would be the perfect wife. Already she had learned.

She sang beautifully, ate beautifully, danced beautifully, and charmed his friends and colleagues so much that they asked if he had conjured her from nowhere. He replied that he had not,

"I made her," he said, "I took her from the gutter and made her just as she is." They shared shrewd looks and kissed her cheeks firmly as they left, more than one resisted the urge to pull her by the hand from his reach. But she only smiled a serene and divine smile, as if the world was exactly as she had made it. In their marital bed, she kept the smile, despite rising bile, and stared at the ceiling as the ghost started to move. They moved his world by inches, and she told him it was not so,

"You put it there, darling, I saw you," she whispered when they pushed his cup to the edge in revenge for a slap. Cold tea, cold because of his shoddy timekeeping, was a severe offence. The ghost had warned her it would be so - the litany of bloody noses they had shown her now had another.

"You asked for it hot," she mused when they moved his footbath too close to the fire, which earned a kick, and then loosened the lids on his travel inkwells to ruin papers. They scratched him at night and haunted him with memories of the women who had come before until his cracking mind decided she was to blame. Mustering their strength for a mighty shout, the ghosts sent their warning call.

As he chased her through his great halls they slammed doors and smashed windows, rumpled rugs and shifted furnishings. They raised such a ruckus that the well-to-do neighbours who otherwise ignored the New Money on the street called for police. All the while, Valerie relied on what the streets had taught her to escape her father-turned-husband (rescuer-come-attacker) and save her life.

When the police arrived, the ghosts went silent and slunk to the shadows, but for brave Brigit who sent one last table reeling to give her a few seconds more. At the top of the stairs he ranted and raved, his wife, he said, was a witch. She spoke to his ghost and convinced them to turn against him. They were his shadows, his treasures, and she was using them to torment him,

"She bewitched me," he said, and pulled a knife, "I'll show you, they'll save her." And lunged. Undone by his own love for finery. he slipped on the smooth marble of the stairs and fell, unaided, to a simpler ending than the ghosts had planned. Not the madhouse, but the morgue. And Valerie, his sole kin, not fighting for her share, but left to bury him in peace. His business ran smoothly under new management - he had been a very smart man - and she dispatched the stolen treasures, one by one, to their rightful homes.

The ghosts went too, of course, and were glad to go because home is home, no matter how happy you are where you are. All except for Brigit, who had a shrine in Valeries old bedroom, laden with bronze jewellery and oats and sweet, fresh honey drizzled over fruits, and who travelled with her, in the brooch on her left shoulder. The only real marriage to have happened in that house.