In the end, it was the noise that did it. I think our modern society seems to be characterised by noise. Why do conversations have to be conducted in shouts? Resonating exhausts on ‘customised’ cars. Music (if you can call it that) so loud it can be heard clearly through closed windows.

As it happens, I have a condition called ‘hyperacusis’. That basically means I am sensitive to loud noises. A modern concert (even a classical one) can be actually painful to experience. So perhaps the problem is with me. I still don’t understand how anyone can want to drive with music playing that’s so loud it can be heard outside the car and even through double glazed windows. Anyway. Married in college, but a few years after graduation my wife decided I was ‘boring’. Probably true. And she left. Living in a rented flat, so we shared the savings intended for buying a house and parted company fairly amicably.

What can you do with a Master’s in English? Honestly? Not a lot. Our city’s post-industrial now, with two universities, and I’d made a bare living editing dissertations and tutoring school kids. I’d also worked as a care assistant in a local care home. But there wasn’t a lot keeping me in the city, and, as I say, I was tired of the noise. My share of the savings bought a small second-hand touring caravan and a diesel van to tow it. Reluctantly, I sold my 1961 Triumph motorcycle. As a classic, it just about covered the cost of the van and the caravan. I said my goodbyes at the care home – the manager said he’d be happy to give me a reference – and made arrangements with the universities to do any editing via the internet. There wasn’t a lot I could do for the school kids.

So I sallied forth from the north midlands city, heading south-east for rural East Anglia. I found a caravan site with limited facilities, a little primitive, hence low rents, and settled in. I did check around for work, but not seriously. Instead, I intended to find a plot of land which was within my financial reach and, hopefully, construct a dwelling there while I continued to live in the caravan. Now East Anglia used to be quite important, back in the Middle Ages, and there was a great deal of money made in agriculture, especially sheep farming. Look around the area and see the big churches built with wool money – now, drains on the local congregations to maintain them – but nowadays it tends to be a bit of a backwater in some ways. Cambridgeshire, where I was camping, tends (especially where I was) to flat, monoculture farmland. But it was quiet and, as I say, cheap.

I was getting a little editing work, and as word got round, that was coming from other towns and cities than the one I left as well. In between, I was researching possible home-sites. To my surprise, I heard about a plot in Essex, on Mersea Island, which was ridiculously cheap. If something is too good to be true, it usually is, n’est-ce pas? What was wrong with it? I booked a B & B in West Mersea, and drove down. I spoke to an Estate Agent in Maldon, a few miles away from the island, and was ensconced in a very pleasant room by tea-time. Fish ‘n’ chips in a nearby pub – there is nothing quite like fish fresh caught and cooked bare hours later by the sea. A good night’s sleep, and I set off eastwards. The site was a little east and north of the centre of the island, about an acre in extent. Overgrown, with a very ruined house near the centre. I say ‘very ruined’. More of a pile of rubble, really. It must have been quite large, once, and built of brick. Many local houses, the older ones, are timber framed with ship-lap on the outside, or ‘wattle and daub’ – lath and cement render, with lath-and-plaster inside. Brick was probably upmarket, especially in view of the size of the place.

There were tracks, perhaps from uninvited visitors, and I was able to drive in to the property and look around. It was very quiet, at least until I heard the ‘little bit of bread and no cheeese’ of a yellowhammer in a nearby bush. Listening further, I could hear gulls and, in the distance, the piping of waders in Pyefleet Creek. Yes, this place fitted the designator ‘peaceful’.

The pile of rubble contained what looked to me like perfectly useable bricks. Apparently hand-made, without a ‘frog’, in that (I think) ugly yellow that is quite common in local brick. According to the agent, no-one had lived there for a couple of centuries. There was neither water nor electricity to the site, but both were available nearby. There was, probably, a cess-pit somewhere. Local farmers had leased the grazing, so the weeds weren’t quite as prolific as they might have been.

It all made me think. I spent the rest of the day and the next exploring the island. It was very tempting. A last night at the B & B and I set off, via the Agency in Maldon, where I made an offer on the property. I suppose the offer might have been described as ‘derisory’, but to my shock it was accepted in a call the morning after I arrived back at my caravan.

The offer was for so little, I was able to raise it just out of the savings I had left. Surely, too good to be true...

The papers were signed and the deeds handed over. All I needed to do in the short term was to tow the caravan down and park it on my land.

I did that. Got a visitor from a nearby farm. “Bought the place?”

“Yes, I have.”

“Haunted, you know.”

“I’d had comments to that effect. We’ll have to see if whatever has been disturbing the peace will tolerate me.” I don’t believe in ghosts. At least, not in the popular sense, like in ‘Beetlejuice’.

My visitor, an elderly man shrugged. “I’ve seen things,” he said, ‘and so have others. Do you know the story?”

“No, I don’t.”

He produced a slim book. “This is the story, or legend, anyway. Not that anyone really knows the truth.” He handed it to me.

“Thank you. I’ll certainly read it, and let you have it back.”

“No rush. I have a cottage half a mile to the east. Pop in and see me. You can get water if you need, and use my outside waterproof socket for power. My name’s Bart Fisher.”

“I’m Trevor Shepherd. I’m very pleased to meet you. Thank you again.”

“I’ll be on my way,” he said, offering a hand which I shook. “Feel free to call in.”

He left, and I began the process of getting some mains electricity and water supplied to the site. It took several months, but eventually I got a box in the corner of the property containing a connection for the caravan electrics, and a stand-pipe. I settled in and became used to the usual sounds of the place. Oh, and I read the slim volume my neighbour had loaned me.

It seems that at the turn of the nineteenth century, during the Napoleonic Wars, a local squire, William Jenkins, took a young wife. He was not a popular man, easily upset, inclined to drunkenness and violence. Martha, his wife, was apparently a pretty young thing, half his age.

Not long after, Martha disappeared. The squire’s only comment was. “She run away.” While that was plausible, of course gossip spread, encouraged by the man’s unpopularity, and reports of a wraith in the area, walking at night, grew. The squire’s anger when pressed about his wife did nothing to quell the theories that he’d beaten her to death, perhaps in a fit of jealousy, leading to several serious assaults on other men in the area.

One night, the house caught fire. His body, or what was left of it, was found in the cellar of the ruined building along with a number of bottles, broken probably by the heat. It was thought he’d knocked a lamp over while drunk and been unable to escape the conflagration. Of course, with the state of investigations at the time there could be no definitive explanation.

His remains were interred in the local churchyard, despite objections from the local population, and the property devolved onto a second cousin. However, the squire’s wealth, rumoured to be considerable, was nowhere to be found, and the house so badly damaged as to be not worth rebuilding, and the heir never did anything with it except to lease the farmland to a succession of tenants. Most of the land was sold, but no-one wanted the acre surrounding the ruin, though it was sporadically grazed by one or other of the local farmers. Stories grew and spread, but neither the wealth nor any sign of the girl was ever found. Incidentally, plants didn’t grow happily on the squire’s grave. It remained messy, half bare, just a few dandelions and such growing there.

Eventually, a suitable ‘mug’ was found in myself, and I took possession of the supposedly haunted acre from a distant relative of the old squire.

At first I merely occupied the site and enjoyed the peace and quiet. Once I had electric and a water-supply, I was quite comfortable, though the living conditions were a little primitive. I was warm and dry, and I could work online thanks to a basic mobile internet. I visited my neighbours from time to time, but made sure I didn’t outstay my welcome.

When spring came round, I began a very slow process of tidying up. I found an ancient scythe in an auction room – sold as a curio, rather than as a tool – and by dint of extensive effort, got an edge on it. Secateurs, loppers, and a coarse-toothed saw were also necessary. I never intended to clear the site, merely to reduce the tangle of brambles and weeds. As I mentioned, the grazing tended to reduce the growth anyway, and I arranged for that to continue. The bit of money that brought in was welcome.

It was late summer before I began to work on the rubble. That was mainly a process of stacking bricks out of the way after chipping off any mortar that still adhered. That, and decaying timbers, way past being any good except for a bonfire. Broken glass, too.

“What be you doin’, sir?”

Behind me, a girl – young woman, perhaps – very pale, dressed in very drab, coarse garments. Her skirt, dark brown, reached her ankles, a shirt, light brown, secured with ties rather than buttons. The only bright thing about her was her dark red hair, tied in a severe bun at the back of her head.

“Hello, Lass. I didn’t hear you arrive.”

“I be a quiet walker, sir.”

“You must be. Well, I’m trying to make some sort of order out of this mess. I’m cleaning these bricks and stacking them out of the way.” I mopped at the sweat on my face. “I’ve not seen you before, have I?”

“No, sir, but I seen you.” Her voice changed subtly as she spoke. “You feed the birds?”

It was definitely a question, but not ‘if’. I put up a feeding tree clearly visible from the caravan for when I was sitting with my breakfast.

“I do. I like to watch them.” I was thirsty from sweating in the sun. “I’m going to get something to drink. Would you like something?”

“I thank you, sir, but no.”

I went into the caravan and fetched a tall glass of cool orange squash, but she was nowhere to be seen when I emerged. I shrugged, perched on my pile of cleaned bricks, and drank. I had questions, as who wouldn’t? But I went on with my work, eventually finding substantial foundations concealed by the weeds, and what I was sure was a cellar full of rubble, with stone stairs, or the beginning of such, leading down. As far as I could tell, the cellar would have been under about half the house. Did I want to excavate it? I quit for lunch and, tired, decided to go and get myself something to eat in the town. Tired or not, I wasn’t going to use the van, anyway, it was only a bit over a mile.

I had fish. I’ve never tired of fish, at least when it’s been well prepared and very fresh. I washed my meal down with a bottle of Doom Bar. That’s an amber beer from the south-west, named for a particularly nasty ‘bar’ or shallow area obstructing the access to Padstow harbour in Cornwall. It’s a premium beer, so even though it was less than a pint, I was still in a relaxed mood when I finished my meal, and went to sit and watch the boats in the Strood Channel. Not being a sailor myself, I didn’t think about the tides, and there wasn’t a lot of water there anyway, and no boats moving, but it was pleasant, and there were birds poking around in the mud.

“Hello.” A mellow voice from behind me.

I turned to see a plump, pleasant-looking woman, late thirties, perhaps, dark hair, colourful dress to just below her knees. “Hello,” I responded.

“Aren’t you Mister Shepherd, who bought the Manor field?”

“That’s right.”

“I’m Mary O’Donnell.”

“How do you do, Mary. I’m Trevor Shepherd.” I forbore to comment on her accent, or, rather, her lack of an accent; neither East Anglian, nor Irish. If anything, Liverpool.

“I suppose you know the history of your place?”

“Only what’s in ‘The Manor Mystery’. Seems to me no-one is likely to know at this distance in time.”

“Ah! You’re a sceptic.”

“I suppose I am. But I won’t rule out something just because I haven’t experienced it myself.”

“So ... how do you feel about Wicca?”

“I know almost nothing about it.” I hesitated, but plowed on, “There’s something ... in ancient woodland, for example, or stone circles ... that one can sense, but not explain or test.”

“Very good!” She was smiling. “I may be able to help you some time. Perhaps you would be willing to let me visit? The previous owner wouldn’t allow anyone on the property except the farmer leasing the grazing. Of course, that didn’t stop some less law-abiding characters. Funny thing, though ... not many would go back a second time.”

“Strange. I’ve been camping there since last October. I’ve had the odd visitor, locals, and a young woman, but I can’t say I’ve been disturbed.”

She nodded. “The girl was last seen alive in early April, Easter Sunday. Then the fire was in July.”

“Uh huh?” That was just a non-committal grunt to acknowledge that she’d spoken. “Feel free to call any time.” I handed her a card with my number. “Just call to make sure I’m in. Actually, you’re welcome anyway.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t come when you’re not there. Thank you.”

I left her with a smile to walk home, during which my mind was working. When had that girl visited? Not that long ago, surely ... June? I tried to put it out of my mind. That’s not easy, you know. The old subconscious goes right on churning.

The rest of the summer, I went on clearing the house-site. I found foundations, or the top of them, and erected a fence around the area. The stone stairs led down and I cleared – very slowly and laboriously – a considerable amount of rubble, mixed with charred timbers, broken glass and plain dirt. Plus broken pottery, some metalwork, that sort of thing, but not much of that, really. By the end of September, I’d exposed the cellar, four rooms leading off a small lobby at the bottom of the stairs. The brick walls obviously once had doors in them, but only charcoal and twisted, blackened metal fixings remained, though the doors must have been fairly substantial judging by the solidity of the hinges and bolts. One of the rooms contained more – much more – broken glass and ceramic, and those remains were of bottles, not window glazing. It seemed that after the fire, the squire’s body had been removed and the cellar filled with rubble and left. After two centuries, there wasn’t much in the way of forensics to examine. The story accounted for what could be seen, and there was little or nothing to learn from what was left. I did inform the police, and I had a visit from a detective, but I suppose they had more urgent interests than the ancient tragedy.

Mary O’Donnell came, too, a pretty, personable lady, but married. We walked round my patch and peered down into the cellar. “What are you thinking of doing with it?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I wouldn’t have said I was at all superstitious, but I don’t think I want to build on the same spot. My inclination is to knock what’s left down and fill in the hole. I don’t think I even want the stone flags. I might see if anyone else wants them.”

That was a consideration. Flagstones – proper, cut stone flooring – are expensive. Even the old bricks had a value, and honestly I didn’t like the colour of them and wouldn’t use them myself.

“I have a relative who buys reclaimed building materials,” she said.

Having nothing better to do, I called the number she gave me, and a little old man with a pronounced Irish accent came to see me. We agreed that I would load brick into seven tonne skips and stone into another, and he’d pay me by the tonne. It was all gain, as far as I was concerned.

I did wonder if we’d find anything when we lifted the cellar floor, but no. Just soil, and no differences in the colour to suggest an area we might investigate – see, I’ve always been interested in archaeology. I was left with a large hole. A very large hole. A hole probably at least twice the size I’d want if I were to build in the same place.

For the interim, I left the hole and just reinforced my ‘temporary’ fence around it.

I’m told that everyone dreams, it’s just that most people don’t remember them. For myself, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve remembered a dream after waking; in every case, they were disturbing dreams – nightmares, really. So, one night, when I woke in the wee small hours, shaking and sweating, from a dream, that was unusual. In the nightmare, I’d been looking on, unable to move or speak, as a hulking man beat on a girl about half his size. He’d apparently killed the lass, because he picked up the body and carried it out of the house, some distance away, dug a grave – was that in a vegetable patch? – and tipped her in. I suppose the dream was unsurprising. It would certainly explain the girl’s disappearance; it could also be accounted for by subconscious speculation. I had no way of confirming the truth of it.

I couldn’t dismiss the dream completely, but managed to push it to the back of my mind. A couple of nights later, a similar thing happened. The vision was of a man in a room lined with brick, a rack of bottles on one wall, barrels against another wall, straw on the floor. The room was lit by a small oil-lamp – one of those with a tall glass chimney. He was drinking from the neck of a bottle, slumped in a corner.

A movement in the room caught his eye, and a faintly glowing figure materialised. The bottle in his hand fell and shattered; the figure reached out and knocked the lamp over, spilt oil combined with straw, and the fire began. The man went to the door, but couldn’t open it as the fire intensified. Soon, the room was an inferno.

I woke, the image of the blazing room, the man with his clothes on fire on the floor, burnt into my consciousness. I dressed, and walked into town to find breakfast and coffee, anything to distract me. It may have been coincidence, but long before I finished eating, someone spoke behind me.