I’m very excited today to share a flash story by author Belinda Kroll. Please enjoy!
This was a specially written flash story that would have occurred between chapters 4 and 5 from Belinda Kroll’s book, Haunting Miss Trentwood.
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It is 1887, the year of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. A time when the British Empire is at its strongest. A time when Spiritualism has reached validity through formal organizations employing reputable mediums, who have evidence of contacting those souls which have departed this earthly realm.
It is a time when Mary Trentwood, heroine of Haunting Miss Trentwood, must decide what to do about her beloved father, Gideon Trentwood, haunting her.
- – -
Mary Trentwood woke a week after her father’s funeral, peeking out from under her coverlet. Yes, there was her father Gideon Trentwood sitting in the chair beside her bed, spinning his pocket watch by its chain. His ghost had risen from his grave moments after the casket had been laid there. His ghost had not left her side since that moment.
Mary shuddered and squeezed her eyes shut against the sight of his pale, ethereal skin, snappish eyes, and sandy hair sprinkled with gray.
“My dear,” Trentwood said, “you really must cease your pretending I am not here.”
Mary bit her lip. She had spent so much time preparing for his death. They had known for a month or more that it would be his last, and she had done her best to imagine a world without her remaining parent. She had pictured herself taking walks in the hedgerow, and having her aunt Mrs. Durham inventory the house for furniture and tapestries that were beyond repair. She had thought she would have her butler Pomeroy hire one of the local boys to patch the leaking roof, and tend to the overgrown gardens.
But today, today she had a plan. Her mother had been quite the Spiritualist, and surely the local medium would remember such.
“You can’t ignore me forever,” her father snapped.
Mary threw off the coverlet, her dark hair tumbling around her shoulders as she sat upright. Her hazel eyes flashed with her old energy. “No,” she said, “I suppose not.” She dressed in her usual black crepe and silk dress, taking care to brush the tangles from her hair and weave a black ribbon through her curls done up in a prim chignon.
“Excellent! I was beginning to wonder whether you would ever leave that bed of yours. It was getting rather boring, watching you sleep. What is your plan?”
Mary stalked from her bedroom. “I plan to perform a seance.”
Trentwood laughed. “Whatever for? You can already hear and see me.”
Why, to prove whether she was the only one who could hear him, of course. And if she were the only one who could hear him, well then, Mary decided she had an entirely different problem on her hands.
- – -
Mrs. Franklin, the medium, was a squat woman with so many necklaces that Mary couldn’t see her neck. She was dressed in shades of gray and lavender as was appropriate for someone in extended mourning. One might have thought she was just an eccentric, except for her eyes. Those bright blue eyes caught every movement in the room and pinned Mary in place as she explained the ceremony. When she finished explaining, she began to prepare by whispering to her spirit guide, as she called it.
“Madam,” Mary said, doing her best not to giggle nervously at Mrs. Franklin’s eerie whispering, “I will do whatever it is you ask as long as you are able to send my father to his rightful pea
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