In the year 1784 the Duchess of Leipzig was murdered in her four-poster bed in the highest tower of Shelsig Castle. That fact was not public record, but Gerda von Shelsig, the last in a long line of dead Duchesses of Shelsig, was quite certain of it.

The house could not be as thoroughly haunted by the woman if she had died a natural death. This, like many things Gerda was sure of, was part of the reason she had such terrible reservations about the arrival of her new stepdaughter.

Sitting at her dressing table the night before Meredith was due to arrive, Gerda brushed her hair out and regarded her new husband in the process of undressing. He unhooked his cufflinks and deposited them noisily in the silver tray where he kept them.

“The driver will bring Meredith in from the airport,” John said, unbuttoning the top button of his shirt. “I thought we could all have dinner together.”

“What time will she arrive?”

“After I get home from golf.”

“Are you nervous?” Gerda asked.

John looked over at her, one silver flecked brow quirked. “To see my own kid? Hardly.”

When they’d met, she’d been on a medical trip to waters at Montecatini in the north of Italy, and her scarf had been caught on the wind and pulled from around her neck. John Jones, a professor studying gothic architecture, had been the one to rescue it.

It had been, without question, the single most romantic thing anyone had ever done for her. But she hadn’t made up her mind to marry him until he accepted her invitation to come back to the Castle von Shelsig to document the flying buttresses. Even after they made love the first time, bending themselves into contortions on the main stairs, she still thought of him as more of a diverting pastime than anything.

It was the Duchess who convinced her.

When the shuddering apparition of the murdered Duchess stood at the top of the stairs, impossible and terrible as ever, John had looked right at her, blinked, and then turned his head to resume pressing kisses on Gerda’s neck and down to her breast.

He simply could not see her, or if he did, he never spoke of her. Either way, it did nothing to dampen his enthusiasm for her. They married the next month, with only the priest, the butler, and their noble ghost for a witness.

Setting down her hairbrush, Gerda said, “But George, wasn’t she rather upset with you for remarrying so quickly?”

Behind John, a light bulb flickered in its ornate lampshade. The beaded trim shook slightly as a shadow passed by their bedroom door, as if stirred by an unseen wind. Gerda suppressed an annoyed sigh.

John, being a thoroughly American man and thus impervious to hauntings, had still never appeared to notice the ghostly figure of the Duchess of Leipzig. Even through their honeymoon, he had the dense obtuseness of a goose in rut.

John shrugged. “It’s been two months. I’m sure her mother has calmed down by now. Speaking of, what do you think of this shirt for tomorrow? Wanted to wear something familiar for her, you know?”

He held up a button down the same striking shade of blue as his eyes. Gerda smiled. “You’ll look handsome. Did she give you that shirt?”

“Her mother gave it to me for Christmas one year, thought it might bring back fond memories,” he said.

Gerda got to her feet. “On second thought, dear, why not wear that lovely beige alpine hat you bought in the Tyrol? It would be a good way to help her connect with what you’ve been doing since she last saw you.”

“You think? Sure,” he said, shrugging out of his Oxford and hanging the blue shirt back up in the wardrobe. “Can’t wait.” 

They went to bed, and Gerda closed her eyes against the faint, familiar specter of the Duchess wafting past their open door. John, she trusted, didn’t see the figure at all.

~*~

 Meredith Jones proved to be an athletic, shrewd girl of sixteen. She had the energy of a skittish horse, all long limbs and wary expressions. Even the castle, which looked especially striking against the cloudless sky overhead, seemed to inspire more skepticism than awe when she emerged from the old family car.

The car had barely come to a stop in front of the mossy fountain before John bounded forward and all but pulled his child out of the back seat and into a hug.

Meredith was visibly stiff in the embrace, but took the whole thing with a stiff upper lip and no complaint, so Gerda felt the whole affair had gone as well as could be expected.

Tea was its own sort of ordeal. They retired to the morning room, and Gerda served them Jasmine tea. John took his usual black coffee, all the while explaining about the house and grounds with his usual mix of boyish charm and academic zeal.

She sat in an overstuffed armchair, her travel clothes looking rumpled and her eyes as narrowed as the gap under a door.

“—one of the oldest estates in Bavaria still inhabited by its original family,” John said.

“Well, inhabited by one of them,” Gerda corrected quietly. “My family have all gone to be with the Lord.”

John reached across and took her hand, though she hadn’t expressed the sentiment with any particular feeling. It was a simple fact.

“Have you got any family?” Meredith said, turning her cool gaze onto her. It was the first thing she’d said to her since her arrival.

“A distant cousin or two, but no one in the area,” Gerda said. “But I never feel alone.”

“And now you’ve got my father, I’m sure you’ll be very happy,” Meredith said icily.

Gerda glanced at John, wondering if he would intervene. But her husband was only smiling at the two of them, his expression satisfied and content, like he thought this was all going swimmingly. On the heavy oak mantle, a baroque clock she’d always hated began to chime.

“The house only wanted for your addition to be complete, my dear,” Gerda managed.

Warmth didn’t come easily to Gerda. She had never liked children. Teenagers she regarded as vicious little tigers unschooled at dismemberment. However, this was one of the hazards that came with marriage: other people’s family. Gerda could respect Meredith’s ire. She could accept it and acknowledge that, like a song carried on the wind, Meredith’s feelings announced themselves without target or destination. In short, they had nothing to do with her, and were therefore not Gerda’s to police.

So they stared at each other, Gerda sitting in complete neutrality, until Meredith seemed to relax just slightly, and turn her gaze back to her father.

“Gee, dad, I just never figured you’d end up living in a castle,” she said, and not in a complimentary way.

“And an old one, at that. Full of creepy crawlies. You’re not still scared of bugs, are you, kid?”

Meredith looked annoyed. “No.”

“Good, because Castle von Shelsig is full of them.”

Gerda bristled. “John, you know very well the fortress is kept in excellent condition. You have nothing to worry about lurking the halls.” And then, reflecting on her vows to the Holy Virgin not to tell lies, she added, “No bugs, anyway.”

Meredith was clearly more observant than her father, because her eyes narrowed again. Before she could ask a follow up question, John turned to her and said, “I suppose you’re right, it’s a fortress, not a castle.”

“What’s the difference?” Meredith said, shifting in her chair and yawning.

“Very little. Fortresses have thicker walls and bloodier histories.”

“And absolutely no spiders,” said John gamely. “Now come on, kid, I have to show you the badminton courts. Think you can beat your old man in a game?”

Meredith looked extremely doubtful.

~*~

It went on like that with the precision of a German watch. It was as Gerda feared: Meredith did not take after her father. Nothing seemed to escape her skeptical, questioning glance.

Not the soot-blackened ceiling of the great hall, where ghostly cries were sometimes heard to echo, not the faint tremble of impossible footsteps on the grand staircase, and certainly not that unfortunate issue with the mirrors.

John looked at himself in the mirror only to inspect his mustache and check for any issues with his lapel pins, but Meredith had certainly noticed the faint shadowy movements that so often crowded the edges of the Venetian mirrors imported from 18th century Italy.

And so, when they gathered together for dinner on the third night of their acquaintance, Gerda was not surprised to see a sudden stiffening in Meredith’s posture, the faint glaze of affronted terror that surely signaled her first undeniable apparition.

Gerda remembered her own. All prior manifestations had been things she could simply write off as a trick of the light or a sherry-induced miscalculation. However, a full figure dressed in antique clothes standing in the corner of the formal dining room, frozen in a ceaseless and silent death-scream, was less easy to dismiss. And worse, it rather soured one’s appreciation of a fine glass of Riesling.

Gerda turned to glance behind her, where the figure of the Duchess stood in the corner, dressed in an antique nightgown, her hair set in rag curls and her expression so intensely dour as to be ceramic in the light of the candelabras. With all the dignity she could muster as the present Duchess of Shelsig Castle, Gerda made a shooing motion with her hand.

“Can you see that?” Meredith said hoarsely, staring fixedly at the half-visible figure of the silent, screeching Duchess in the corner of the room.

John turned, glancing over at the corner and moving past it to land on a recently taxidermized fish mounted proudly above the mantle. It gaped at them in the half-light. 

“Ah, very astute my dear, you’ve spotted the rather fine trout that I caught last summer. You would not believe the devil of a time I had in catching it.”

He then launched into a very long-winded story about the fish, which gave Gerda a moment to reach her hand across the table. For the first time in her life, she touched her stepdaughter’s hand. The girl jumped, her eyes locking onto Gerda’s, and for a moment they looked at each other like that.

The shock on her face was wounded. Not offended, but raw. It was like seeing her true self for a moment, startled into the light in the way only the ghost of a 17th century murdered duchess can manage.

Gerda spoke very quietly, wishing that John wasn’t in the room, wishing that the ghost of an 18th century Duchess would stop haunting her house. She had never liked children, but she resolved she would help this one.

“You simply learn to accept things,” Gerda said quietly.

Meredith nodded uneasily, though Gerda knew with absolute certainty that she wouldn’t be able to. Some people were like that. They couldn’t look at an object without seeing a plan for its improvement.

John, not listening, said, “How right you are, my dear. And then you rip it’s guts out and hang it on the mantle!”

~*~

Gerda was gardening when her stepdaughter approached her about the ghost.

“Have you tried an exorcism?”

Gerda stared at her. “Whatever for?”

“To get rid of it,” Meredith blustered.

“She’s truly a ghost of no consequence,” Gerda said dismissively. “There’s no need for that.”

“But what if she tries to hurt someone, or break something?”

The girl’s tone was so outraged that Gerda felt the odd impulse to laugh. In her experience, however, it was best not to laugh when people were at their wits end.

“She’s been screaming through the halls for nearly a century my dear, if her plan was property destruction, she’s done a rather poor job of it.”

“But she’s frightening,” Meredith insisted, crossing her arms and gesturing towards the front door.

“Only a bit of beyond-the-grave screaming. Simple dramatics.”

“And dad doesn’t notice?”

“No, of course not, dear. He plays golf and thinks about airplanes. He’s very busy.”

“But you can see her—”

“Yes, as a Duchess I am strikingly underemployed.”

“But she makes me so upset,” Meredith said.

The morning sunlight slanted across the grass, and already the wetness was inching up the hem of Meredith’s skirt. She looked so terribly, terribly young standing there. It reminded Gerda of how it felt to be that age, so strident, so hopeful, so full of agony.

John’s voice cut across the moment, whistling a tune and carrying two badminton rackets on his shoulders. He walked towards them, waving the rackets enthusiastically while calling, “Who’s for a game, eh? I picked up some new rackets.”

Meredith was visibly upset when she turned to look at her father, who took no note of her distress and beamed with galling good humor at his wife and child together, tending roses.

“Look at my girls, standing together,” he called. “What a lovely picture. I wish I had a camera! You know, I think I’m the luckiest man in the world.”

Meredith clenched her fist. “Oh, dad, you’re so— you’re so—”

His eyes narrowed, and for a moment they looked so similar that it gave Gerda an odd rush of dizziness. Two frowning Joneses. And then, to Gerda’s immense horror, Meredith began to cry. Hot, streaming tears poured out of her face, and despite the girl’s best efforts to brush them away, her face was soon mottled and red with the first stirring of furious grief.

Gerda sat back on the grass, watching.

John’s face crumpled. “Bunny rabbit, what’s wrong? Don’t cry, darling, I can’t bear it when you’re upset.”

Gerda thought of John running up to her, the silk scarf clutched in his hand, his expression so forward-looking and beautiful as to be nearly blinding.

John crossed the grass to Meredith, arms outstretched to comfort her, but she turned away from him.

“Bunny rabbit, don’t cry,” John said, but she was already storming off, sniffling with muted dignity and outrage as she stalked back to the entrance to the kitchen.

John was rooted to the spot, watching his child walk away from him, his expression tense and difficult to read. A play of emotion spasmed across his face, robbing him of his usually serene countenance. It gave Gerda an odd feeling to realize that he, too, was capable of complex, tormenting emotions that could not be easily named. Buried inside him was the same kind of screaming pain that exists in all creatures. He simply didn’t let it out. She wondered if he even knew it was there, or if it was like a heartbeat that beat so ceaselessly as to be indistinguishable from everything else.

“Liebchen,” Gerda murmured, deferring to her mother tongue as was her habit whenever she was confronted with a display of genuine human emotion. “Are you–”

“Teenagers,” John said gruffly, turning to her and shaking his head. “There’s no reasoning with them. Well, bad luck. Darling, would you like to play a game of badminton?”

~*~

It came to a head two nights later. Everything seemed to go well. Meredith even ignored another apparition at dinner, her eyes glazing over but her posture quite perfect. The girl even managed to eat a few green beans. They retired to bed.

And then the Duchess had one of her midnight screaming episodes.

When the ghost went wailing down the halls, Gerda typically took a sleeping pill and went back to bed, but this night she knew something would have to be done.

She could hear the sound of Meredith’s door opening. John followed Gerda as she got out of bed, mumbling, “Darling, it’s late.”

“Meredith is awake,” Gerda said quietly, rubbing her eyes as another long, pronounced wail flitted down the hall.

“Is she sleepwalking?”

Gerda didn’t bother entertaining that absurd notion, and pulled her robe tightly around her chest before walking into the hall. The oak paneled hallways, narrow and lined with looming paintings of obscure members of her family, seemed to close in on them.

Meredith had a flashlight, and she was pointing it down the hall at the wailing figure of the Duchess, who clutched her face with truly histrionic despair as she moaned and wailed.

Meredith faced the ghostly Duchess like a prize fighter, her flashlight pointed at the apparition. “Get out of here,” Meredith said. “Go away!”

“There’s no use,” Gerda started to say, but John pushed past her. 

“Bunny rabbit, it’s nearly morning,” he said, bleary-eyed. “Go back to bed.”

Meredith turned around, her face alight not with fear but with anger.

“I can’t,” Meredith said, pointing down the hall, past her father, where the Duchess of Leipzig stood screaming.

John looked right at the dead woman, but if he saw her standing there, John gave no indication of it.

“It’s an old house, you’re seeing shadows—”

“It’s not shadows, it’s a ghost following me around, and you say you can’t see her, but I can.”

John took a step towards his child. “Nothing’s going to hurt you while I’m around, kid.”

“Oh, because you’re such a model father,” Meredith spat. Her words were whip sharp, and Gerda swore that even the ghost in the corner shut her mouth in surprise.

“Meredith,” John began, his tone warning.

“You left me,” Meredith said. “You left me and mom and you didn’t come back. Six months, you said, and now you’re gone forever, and you remarry three months after getting here. I needed you, and you left.”

She was crying now, clutching the hem of her pajamas. Gerda put a hand to her mouth, willing herself into the corner, trying to make herself a shadow. Whatever conversation was happening here, it needed to happen. Even the Duchess had fled, perhaps sensing that her power to spark fear had no sway over an emotional eclipse of this scale.

John looked thunderstruck. “I wrote to you every day.”

“Yeah, from airmail paper in Venice, or Tuscany, or Paris. Where were you when I needed you? Gone, that’s where. And I hated that sweater you sent me.”

John set his jaw. “I never did anything immoral, there was nothing wrong with my love for Gerda. Your mother and I weren’t together—”

Meredith began to sob.

“Oh, dear,” Gerda said, wringing her hands.

“Don’t cry,” John said, his voice harsh, “Everything is going to be alright. It will be, we’ll be a family again, and everything will be like it was before. Things can get better now.”

“No, they can’t, because I’m not done being upset at you,” Meredith cried.

The clock on the wall let out a sonorous moan as the hour changed, and Gerda counted three chimes in her head. By the time the ringing had stopped, Meredith had already fled back to her room, slipping right past her father’s optimistic, reaching arms.

~*~

The day after Meredith left the Castle von Shelsig, the air was quiet with a lingering sadness. John hardly ate dinner, but stared out the window like a man trying hard to remember a word that was just on the tip of his tongue.

They retired to the sitting room, as was their custom, Gerda with her knitting and John with a whiskey, but they didn’t speak about Gerda’s charities or John’s plans for the next day.

They were quiet. Subdued.

Finally, John looked up from his glass, a new resolution in his voice.

“We didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. His voice had regained some of its usual cheer. “I did everything that I could for her, but a man can’t live for his children. He has to look to the future.”

Behind him, the specter of the Duchess loomed, harmless and terrifying, her jaw unhinged in a yawn of anguish.

Gerda tried to think of something to say to him, some answer that would satisfy his newfound sense of resolution. But all she could think about was the box Meredith had not packed when she threw her clothes into her suitcase and departed for the airport in wounded haste.

A badminton racket placed carefully on the bed, posed as if in memorial to something.

Maybe this was how all families were. Gerda had never married before this. She would not marry again. It took a singular kind of man to live in a castle.

Regardless, it didn’t matter. Meredith would return to America. God knew if she would ever come back, but if she did, the Castle von Shelsig would still be here, and John would still be beautiful, and Gerda would still be here with her knitting, listening to the wails of a long-dead duchess who could not be consoled or soothed or reasoned with, only outlived.

She gave her husband’s hand a fond pat, and resumed her knitting where she had left off.