✦   A SITTING & A READING  ·  BUTTON HOUSE, ENGLAND  ·  WOODSTONE MANSION, HUDSON VALLEY   ✦

I lit a candle in one house and laid out the board in the other, three thousand miles apart. Both times, before I'd asked a thing, somebody wanted to know if they were the only ones.

So. You've ended up with one of them. Maybe it's the draughty English heap at the end of the gravel drive, with the woodworm and the boiler and the solicitor who suggested you sell. Maybe it's the big beautiful wreck on the hill in New York, the one the lawyer all but begged you not to sign for. It doesn't much matter which, love. I've sat in both, and I'll tell you what nobody in either village will: both houses are full.

And I'll tell you the thing that kept me up on the flight home. They're not the only ones. They just don't know it yet.

Let me tell you who's in them.

— WHO IS STILL HERE · BUTTON HOUSE —

✦ Robin — a caveman, older than anything on that land by thousands of years, struck by lightning up a tree. When the lights flicker, it's not your wiring. He'll beat you at chess.

✦ Sir Humphrey — a courteous Tudor gentleman, on separate terms with his own head. If you find it in the airing cupboard, point it towards the rest of him.

✦ Mary — burned for a witch four hundred years ago. If you smell smoke with no fire lit, that's her. She was very faint for me. You may have come too late for her. You may not.

✦ Kitty — a Georgian girl, all sunshine. She'll have decided you're her best friend before your shoes are off. Don't let her down.

✦ Thomas — a poet, shot in a duel in 1824. He'll be in love with somebody living by the weekend, and he'll write about it. Out loud.

✦ Lady Button — Edwardian, and she has never forgiven the house for being sold to anybody. She leaves by the bedroom window every morning. You'll hear her before your alarm.

✦ The Captain — a wartime officer who never got near the front and runs the place like a barracks regardless. A first name he won't use, a lieutenant he won't mention. Don't push.

✦ Pat — the cheerful one with the arrow through his neck. Scout leader. He'll have an activity planned for you by lunchtime.

✦ Julian — the one with no trousers, a politician, and the only one who can lay a finger on your world. One finger. Mind your laptop. Keep back from the upstairs windows.

— WHO IS STILL HERE · WOODSTONE —

✦ Thorfinn — a Viking, the oldest thing in those walls, killed by lightning a thousand years ago. When the lights flicker over there, that's not the wiring either.

✦ Sasappis — Lenape, gone five centuries, the only one who'll ever tell you the truth. He walks through dreams. Mind where you sleep.

✦ Isaac & Nigel — two soldiers from opposite sides of a war, one of whom shot the other by accident. They are, against all odds, in love. It took Isaac about two hundred and forty years to say so.

✦ Hetty — the lady who built the house and declined to leave it. She has opinions about you, your clothes, and your breakfast service.

✦ Alberta — a singer somebody poisoned in 1928. You'll hear her long before you see anyone. She's still working out who did it.

✦ Pete — the cheerful one with the arrow through his neck. Scout leader. Yes, really. I'll come back to that.

✦ Trevor — the one with no trousers, and the only one who can lift a thing off your table. Hide your remote. Hide your good pen.

...and the ones I'd rather not name aloud, on either side of the water. (open at your own risk)

✦ A muttering crowd of plague dead under the English boiler, and a grumbling crowd of cholera dead in the American basement, and you'd not want to put them in a room together. A little girl in the pantry who sings after dark — and that one, love, you'll hear too. A girl in the attic who sleeps for months and wakes near her prom. A Puritan in the dirt who writes on the walls in something I won't describe. A headless greaser hunting his head, and a sour old fellow in the next field over who'd thank you to leave him alone. The master of the American house, who I won't speak of without something stronger in my glass. And somebody in the English house who has already sent one living soul out of a window — but which of them it was, I'll not say. Ask around. See who goes quiet.

— WHAT I WROTE DOWN ON THE PLANE —

Two captains, one in each house, both too proud and both hiding the same thing — only one of them has stopped. Two scout leaders, a year apart, each with an arrow through his neck from one of his own boys, each married to a woman who was seeing someone behind his back. Same name, too. Two men with no trousers who are the only ones in their houses who can press a button. Two grand ladies of two grand houses, both married to monsters. Two old souls, both taken by lightning. I'm not saying it means anything. I'm saying I wrote it down, and my hand was shaking.

— BEFORE I GO —

Whether you can see them is its own strange business. Most people never will. You'd need to have nearly died — properly, gone for a minute or three — or be a babe in arms, before the world's taught you not to look. There's one woman in each house who managed the first: one out of a window, one down the stairs. And here's a thing I'd swear to: the sight goes with the person, not the house. Carry it across an ocean and every ghost on the other side will be looking straight back at you.

The dead themselves can't go anywhere. They died on that ground, and the edge of the land holds them like a wall — some of them were there before either house had a stone laid. They can't touch you, can't eat your biscuits, can't go through the floor. A camera won't catch them and a phone won't carry them, so if two houses ever did want to talk, it'd have to be through somebody living, saying everything twice. Unless, of course, there were someone on each side who could press a key. One finger. One letter at a time.

And every so often, in either house, one of them finally puts down whatever kept them, and is taken — a bright light, no warning, no goodbye. It's the same light on both sides of the ocean. They have a rather unfortunate little phrase for it, in both accents. Don't you dare be the one to tell them what it means.

Here's the part nobody warns you about: they'll argue with you about the telly, wake you screaming, cheat at every board game going — and then, heaven help you, they'll become the only family you've got. And somewhere across the water there's another family just like yours, that you'll never once stand in a room with.

I've done what I can. I've told you they're real, I've told you their names, and I've told you there are more of them than you thought. The rest is yours now. Both houses are.

I'm away before dark. Lock up behind me — not that it matters. The locks were always for you, love. Never for them.

Put the kettle on in one, say hello in the other. They're listening. Both of them. They always were.

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