Julia's House of Flowers

They said all women were found the same; still, cold, gone past the threshold of life. And always in that room.

Julia had always been passionate about flowers. It was not just a phase that all girls her age went through, it was more of a secret language she knew how to speak instinctively. She did not grow out of it as time went on, but grew more into it. She could pair textures and colours to tell a story, no matter what that story was. She could bring to surface grace and beauty even in the saddest, most heartbreaking moments in one’s life. Which is what made her name stand out from all other florists in the county. And it was why she was there today.
‘No, Maurice, we cannot have the hortensias there. We must place the lilies there, and the chrysanthemums should really go right next to the casket.’ she directed her assistant, who moved around the catafalque in a way that suggested he avoided it like one would want to avoid the Plague. The casket wasn’t even there yet.
Maurice looked and sounded a little bit dazed. He wasn’t used to organising flower arrangements at funerals. To begin with, he did not like them, not since his mother and sister died in a horrible accident when he was eight. The funeral home thought to sit his sister on a bed of chrysanthemums, but not to do something to cover her extremely bruised face. Since then, he could not look at chrysanthemums the same, nor attend funerals.
Julia’s House of Flowers was a happy, cheerful business; they did weddings, birthdays, charity galas. Glamour not death. Not funerals in creepy mansions with even creepier histories of blood and murder.  
‘Are you sure you are all right?’
Julia showed obvious concern, but not entirely for Maurice’s wellbeing. This was a big contract for her and she needed Maurice’s help to finish all the work in time.
Maurice loved Julia. He’d never told her, but he was utterly and irrevocably in love with her. So, for her, he would step over his own heart if he had to. He was going to carry on working in that house, if it meant he was near her. He was going to brave through being in that place where he felt watched by evil every minute.
‘It’s this house.’ He answered, trying to reciprocate the smile, but only managing a grimace. ‘It all looks so…dark, it’s sending shivers down my spine. Do you not find it ghastly that we’re here? And for…this?’, he said in something close to whispers. He looked suspicious at the burgundy painted walls around him, like he expected to be heard.
The Granholm manor, now fairly dilapidated, had been a true Jacobean jewel back in its prime years. At their origins, The Granholm family were tea merchants who did a great deal of business with the East India Company. They were incredibly wealthy, as expected, and renowned around the royal court for their elitist balls and celebrity parties. Around the more discreet layers of Jacobean society, they were also well known for their love of opium and puritanism.
Their good name became all-round tarnished, however, around the year 1617, when Lord Granholm was found guilty of an atrocious murder: that of his wife and daughter.
Julia walked around the sumptuous flower arrangements that sat tall at the sides of the catafalque. She put her hand on Maurice’s shoulder. He shuddered lightly.
‘We go where there’s money.’
Maurice blinked blankly. Julia could be very blunt.
‘Besides’ she added, moving past him, through the rows of wooden chairs placed for all those who were invited to the funeral later on. ‘The Granholms are not only rich, but high society and we can always benefit from having such clients. They hired us directly. We cannot refuse work simply because it makes us uncomfortable.’ She added stiff-lipped.
She opened the heavy wooden door of the dining room and pushed the wrappings of the last bunch of chrysanthemums through with the tip of her green velvet stilettoes.
‘Ours is a very visual trade, Maurice. We do our job, we do it well, people praise us, pay us and recommend us. Easy!’
Maurice sighed. Julia’s could be a very business-oriented mind and she had no problem simplifying matters and stripping emotion to its commercial core. He was the opposite of  that and he guessed that was why Julia insisted on him being her assistant all those years ago, despite his lack of experience. His care, his empathy, his display of soul and morals made him see aspects of humanity where she could not. They made a formidable team.
But he knew she did not feel for him the same way as he did for her, in spite of their collaboration.
‘Does the story of all the women who died in here not trouble you at all?’ Maurice found himself asking.
Glimpses of light waltzed in through the wide squares of glass behind Maurice, and reflected charmingly on Julia’s dark-toned skin. In her black, ankle-long, plump-skirted dress, Julia looked for a moment like the lady of the manor. Maurice was both excited and shaken by her image.
‘Do I think what happened in this house, in this very room, is an absolute tragedy? Of course I do! But the whole ‘’possessed by the devil thing’; it’s just a story, Maurice.’
She shrugged, her hazel eyes looking amused.
‘Hmpf…’
He sneered with continuous disbelief. It wasn’t just a story, how could it be? Everyone knew the Granholm manor was haunted, everyone knew that the reason why all those women died in there was because of Iain Granholm’s vengeful spirit was still trapped inside that house, breathing through its walls, existing in every speck of dust; watching, waiting for his next set of victims.
Maurice’s eyes travelled around the sombre, almost baren room around him. The fabled dining room. The room of death.
A lot of the furniture had been auctioned off over the years. The space, however, retained its historical features, with the traditional dark wood-panelling and the ornate ceiling, the heavy oak fireplace that offered beautifully hand sculpted, uniformly arranged scenes depicting ferocious lions and flower garlands. The chess-board like floors were made of enormous marble pieces and the candle-lit chandelier were still in perfect condition.
The money raised from selling the items inside the house had paid to keep the building standing. That was, until the money ran out. After the funeral of the last descendant of the Granholm bloodline, the house was going to be stripped of all its remaining goods and demolished.
As there was nobody else wanting to claim it and no one wishing to invest in its recovery, the council decided they did not wish to endure the sick popularity of that place any longer. Some legends needed to be forced to rest.
Maurice found it strange that, despite the ceiling-high windows, the room felt so gloomy and small. There were scratches around the door frames and windowsills that made him think of something or someone desperately trying to get out, only to be dragged back in again. Even the slight idea sent shivers down his spine.
‘Oh, what a horrible place…’, he muttered to himself.
Only two years before the murders, Lord Granholm had travelled to Congo with the East India Company, with the purpose of trialling a new coffee bean trade route. In spite of the advice received, Lord Granholm took a local boat down the river Congo, and adventured into the jungle.
He had always been a man of wild interests and little wisdom. He got his crew of five killed and he himself was captured by so-called savages, tribes who had not been exposed to the ways of the west. He was held for a full month. On the last Sunday of the month, he was found by troops patrolling the river, delusional and feverish.
He abandoned the coffee deal and returned home, but he was a changed man, troubled by nightmares and visions of death, speaking in languages, and seeing ghostly shadows in everyone he met. He was believed to be possessed. Nobody could ever get out of him how he managed to escape his captors.
‘Come on’ Julia snapped her fingers, waking Maurice up from his mental recess down history lane. ‘Pass me those’ she pointed to the black silk ribbons sat on the chair next to him. She was tying them around all vases in the room. ‘How long until the funeral?’
‘They are going to bring the casket in in an hour.’ Maurice replied with a slight delay. He thought for a second that he could feels someone’s hand on his back, but when he turned around, there was nobody there. Who could it be anyway?
‘If you help me with these’ Julia lifted the ribbon in the air ‘we might not have to be here to see that. I hear old Greta Granholm did not have an easy death and her face has been quite mangled by the illness. Mandibular cancer, they say.’
As Julia was saying that, Maurice thought he saw a shadow on the wall, behind her. It was walking in the opposite direction to her, and disappeared behind the heavy velvet curtains. His heart skipped a beat and as he moved back, he knocked a chair over. The sound made Julia jump and eek.
‘For goodness’ sake, Maurice. Get it together!’
Maurice said nothing at first, and swallowed dryly. He apologised, but his voice sounded frail, lost. His eyes rolled around the room with clear fright, whilst a growing sense of dread churned in his stomach.
The legend had it that the night before his wife and daughter were discovered, the servants heard Lord Granholm argue with the lady of the manor, whom he suspected of cheating on him. He threatened to slit her throat, in a fit that some said cast away sleep from their minds.
It all made sense to the authorities the next day, and Lord Granholm, who never even pleaded his innocence, was executed by the end of that week. Before he died, his last words were uttered in foreign tongues, never before heard. Granholm’s entire estate went bankrupt by the end of the year. The house was taken over by the Crown, who then gifted it around to various barons and earls, to secure loyalties and appease vanities. And then the deaths started happening, wives and daughters, with no social discrimination. By the 18th century, the house was abandoned. In the early 1900s it found its way back to the Granholms, who restored it to some glory. But the little that it achieved, it started loosing again after the First World War, when the murders recommenced. And since then, every ten to fifteen years, someone’s wife and daughter would be found dead in that very same room Maurice and Julia were working on now.
‘Maurice, you look as pale as death’ Julia commented, lifting up the chair that her assistant had knocked down. She gave him a second and third look, and he seemed paralysed.
‘I’m sorry, Julia. I don’t think I can be in this house, not today. Ever since my mother and my sister…’ he mumbled, holding his hand to his chest, like he was trying to quiet his racing heart.
‘My God, Maurice’ Julia lamented. ‘I am so very sorry. I have been an idiot. Of course you can’t be here today. Please, we’re almost finished here. Just go and wait for me in the car.’
Maurice nodded vigorously. His eyes constantly looked for a third person in the room. The shadow never appeared again, though.
‘I can’t just leave you…’
‘Maurice, go wait in the car. I will be fine.’
Finally, Maurice nodded and agreed to leave.
But, as he walked towards the exit, he heard the searing, painful scream coming out of Julia’s throat.
He rushed back in, stumbling forward, almost tripping.
When he pushed the door open, Julia was stretched out on the floor. The walls were draped with her blood.