Wuckster's Multi-Genre Smackdown Collection

An Afterlife Affair

Author's Note:  This entry must qualify as both LGBTQIAP+ and paranormal.  It must also contain the words "cackle," "ominous," and "microwave."  It also must be a maximum of 2500 words.

Cruickshanks Manor became our property when my husband's great aunt Mimi passed away at the ripe old age of a hundred and three. Simon wasn't very close to her and I had only met her once when we attended her hundredth birthday party. Simon and I were still dating at the time and I was a little shy around his family, so I didn't interact with her much. I got the sense that she vaguely disapproved of me, or maybe she disapproved of the fact that Simon had a boyfriend at all.

I suppose we couldn't have made too bad of an impression on her, since she did leave us her home. Unless this gift was actually meant as some form of punishment. The estate attorney did let out an ominous cackle when he got to that part of the will. He claimed he had just been distracted by thinking about something funny that had happened earlier, but I wasn't sure I believed him.

The house was enormous, old, rickety, and of course, thoroughly haunted. Nonetheless I fell in love with it instantly. The outside was decorated in elaborate stone etchings highlighted by the most fantastically hideous gargoyles. The inside was filled to the brim with antique furniture and the walls were covered in some combination of faded floral wallpaper, old tapestries and paintings, and oversized mirrors. I even found an honest to god suit of armor nestled in a crevasse in the second floor hallway. The house had a real character to it. They just don't make them like that anymore.

The ghosts made their presence known pretty much from the moment we walked in the front door. We hear knocking sounds on the wall, moans and wails coming from upstairs, and the lights in the giant chandelier that hung in the main entry hall faded in and out.

Most people might have turned tail and run upon encountering such a welcome, but both Simon and I were utterly fascinated by the paranormal. In fact, our mutual interest in the supernatural is one of the things that brought us together in the first place. It was a bit of a dream come true for us, to be honest.

Ghostly happenings were so commonplace in that house that they almost faded into the background for us, although the little girl that was prone to weeping loudly in the nursery sometimes woke me up at night, as did the chained dragging phantom that stomped around the attic on the nights of new moons. Most of the spirits kept mostly to themselves or just made a little noise or moved a few objects around once in a while. There was one ghost, though, who became a bit of a problem, to say the least.

My first sighting of Brigadier Basil Adams was actually in the form of a painted portrait that hung in the study. Simon was trying to hook up a microwave in the decidedly un-modern kitchen and was getting frustrated by his lack of success, so I decided to walk around and explore the manor some more.

The painting caught my attention, not due to the brigadier, who was a rather nondescript looking bearded fellow in a military uniform, but rather because his companion in the portrait was the spitting image of Simon. An inspection of the little nameplate at the bottom of the frame identified him as Major General Arthur Cruickshanks, and the resemblance to my husband was uncanny. He had the same dimples in his cheeks, the same slender nose, and even the same mischievous glint in his eyes. Simon didn't know much about his family tree, but I was convinced I had found a likeness of a great great grandfather, or at least a closely related uncle.

I soon discovered I wasn't the only one who had noticed the resemblance between Simon and his forebear. It turned out the ghost of the brigadier was one of our many spirit co-inhabitants and he was drawn to my husband almost instantly. Our first night in the house I had fallen into a deep sleep within moments of my head hitting the pillow. I was exhausted by the long day's travel it had taken to get there and then we had drunk a considerable amount of wine with our supper that evening. I was out like a light and didn't even stir until midmorning.