While traveling in a storm, Glen Harper takes a wrong turn and crashes his car. Unhurt but cold and wet, he decides to get help. Using a distant light as a guide, Glen discovers an uninhabited cottage, where he lights a much needed fire. Glen quickly warms up but soon becomes aware of a presence in the room. Hank Waterford is the caretaker of the estate where Glen found refuge from the storm. They meet when Glen, thinking he’s alone in the cottage, jumps into Hank’s bed. Both men are strongly attracted to each other, but they have to overcome a hurdle Glen never anticipated: the spirit of Henry, the estate owner’s son, who committed suicide after his unrequited love for Hank became too much to bear. Together Glen and Hank must deal with Henry, who haunts the manor house as well as Hank’s cottage. Can they find a solution that will allow Henry’s spirit to finally come to rest? Will he accept Glen and Hank’s relationship, or will he become a malevolent presence in their lives?

The Haunted Caretaker

I looked at him and said carefully, “What I told you about the manor house—what happened here, well—here, it felt—not the same, but—I don’t know—similar, somehow.” I shrugged. “I just thought it might be—related.”


He stared at me for a few seconds, and then went and collapsed into his armchair. He picked up the volume of Spenser, and held it with a curious tenderness before putting it down again.


“They killedhim,” he said, speaking in a low, slightly choked voice and not looking at me. “Up at the manor house. He was their son, but they killedhim.”


I stared. “They murdered their own son?”


The man raised his head and regarded me balefully. “No. He committed suicide.”


“But they drove him to it!” He hit his palm with a fist again. “They killedhim!” And then he lowered his head again, and his shoulders shook, as though he were sobbing.


After a while, I ventured to ask timidly, “How?”


Chapter 16