The Oxford Set
Ever since Dwight and Grace Jackson moved into their Grade II listed red bricked Georgian townhouse slap bang in the middle of the picturesque Kentish cathedral city of Cantwarebugh, they knew they needed to spruce up the rather overgrown garden round the back.
A collection of brambles that had grown upwards to form an unusually shaped hedge particularly intrigued them. It could only have been a disused outbuilding that nature had reclaimed quite some time ago.
For years, they put off working on the garden, as Dwight prioritised establishing his therapy clinic and Grace, her florist shop. But eventually, the time had come to get out the pruners.
A few hours had passed before the brickwork of the old shed started to reveal itself.
”Gee, this might be as old as the house,” Dwight said, observing the crumbling brickwork.
“Yeah. Whoever lived here must’ve really loved this garden,” Grace said.
After a while, the front door was finally in a position to be opened.
Dwight tentatively opened it and they peered inside.
It looked more like a small home than a shed. With a fireplace and a small wooden chair.
But on the chair, there sat a stuffed monkey toy that was looking worse for wear. Mainly its nose, which had completely worn away.
“Geez, how long’s this thing been there?” Dwight said, as he picked up the toy.
”Don’t pick it up,” Grace said. “It could be riddled with disease.”
Dwight quickly threw the Monkey back into the shed and closed the door.
”I think the whole thing needs to be demolished,” Dwight said.
”I dunno. I think it could look quite good if we refurbished it,” Grace said. “But we gotta do something about the monkey.”
”Agreed,” Dwight said.
Dwight heard the sound of a laughing child. It went on for long enough for him to notice, but too short for him to know for certain
whether it wasn’t entirely in his head.
He looked around the garden, searching for the source of the disembodied laugh, but found nothing.
”You ok, honey?” Grace said.
”Yeah. I just thought I heard a child,” Dwight said.
As he turned back towards the shed, he was sure he saw a child in the far reaches of his peripheral vision.
Dwight looked toward the child but found nothing.
“What’s going on?” Grace asked.
“I’m not sure. Let’s just go in and forget about that damn monkey,” Dwight said.
Grace and Dwight walked back into the house, the monkey toy still safely out of view behind the closed door of the shed, but still present.
The next few days, Dwight and Grace experienced a series of strange goings on.
Grace was at least able to escape the house for eight hours a day, as she owned a Florist shop further in the city, but Dwight worked from home, so he had to bear the brunt.
They frequently heard voices they didn’t recognise coming from within the house. They smelt cigarette smoke, despite the fact that neither of them smoked. The shower occasionally turned on by itself, when Dwight and Grace were together in the same room and weren’t receiving guests. Dwight was even sure the child he glimpsed in the garden had followed him into the house, but only seemed to exist in his peripheral vision.
Things came to a head whilst Dwight was trying to convince a client who believed her son had been abducted by Aliens and replaced by an exact lookalike that it wasn’t the child’s fault that this had happened and was equally deserving of a mother’s love.
A breakthrough had been made, but then the mother suddenly started screaming and backing away from the doorway. Her son was clearly distressed, and Dwight had absolutely no idea what was going on or how to alleviate the situation.
The mother claimed to see a young girl, very similar to Hans’ Christian Anderson’s The Little Match Girl, clutching a stuffed monkey toy in her left hand.
Dwight felt a shiver down his spine, but decided not to tell his client about the dilapidated shed in the garden or the decaying monkey that lay within, so as not to make the situation worse.
After he had calmed the woman down and sent her and her son on their way, Dwight made himself a much deserved cup of tea and decompressed in the living room.
”Something’s going on, babe,” Dwight told his wife after she’d come home that evening. “Something that started when we found that goddamn monkey.”
“I told you not to pick up that toy,” Grace said.
“I beginning to think something bad happened in this house, year ago,” Dwight said. “And it’s connected to that monkey.”
”Do you think we’ve released a restless spirit from the shed?” Grace said.
”Nah. Ghosts don’t exist,” Dwight said. “Or, at least, I don’t think they do.”
Grace and Dwight looked at each other for a moment before they heard the sounds of what they thought was someone breaking in.
They leapt out of the chairs and rushed towards the front door.
”Hey! We’re in here! Don’t even think about taking anything, pal!” Dwight said.
Grace got out her phone.
”Any sudden moves and I’m gonna call the cops!” Grace said.
But as they searched the entire house, they realised that they were the only people present, and everything was as they’d left it.
“We must be going crazy!” Dwight said. “I can’t lose my mind. I’ll lose my credibility as a shrink.”
”Relax, honey,” Grace said. “We’ll resolve this, somehow. Don’t worry.”
Knowing for certain that they were alone in the house, Dwight instructed his wife to relax in the living room whilst he made them both a delicious meal.
The next day, Dwight and Grace decided to sift through the attic in case they discover something linked to the history of the house.
After a few hours of sifting through junk, they made a note to throw away later. They finally found a dusty cardboard box that seemed to answer all their questions.
Dusty old documents dating back to the 18th century filled it, along with black and white Victorian photos that were clearly forgotten about over time.
”We should give Ben these once we’re done,” Dwight said, referring to a historian friend of his he and Grace met at Oxford, who lived in Cornwall. “He’d have a field day.”
After a while, they found a photo that shook Dwight to the core.
It was of a young girl with straw like bond hair, a cheap looking raggedy dress, and small black boots. In her left hand, a stuffed monkey toy.
”That’s the monkey in the shed, isn’t it?” Grace said.
”Sure is,” Dwight said. “And that’s the girl my client claimed was in the living room.”
”Really? Geez.” Grace said.
”As nuts as it sounds, I think we may actually have unleashed an unquiet spirit from the garden shed,” Dwight said.
”So what do we do?” Grace said. “Move house?”
”No,” Dwight said. “We get rid of that monkey.”
Dwight and Grace burned the stuffed monkey on a bonfire in the garden that very night.
”Maybe we should’ve just given it to the museum?” Grace said.
“Nah. The toy had negative forces entwined within it,” Dwight said. “The only way to destroy them is to destroy the source.”
“I wouldn’t necessarily call a young a ‘negative force’,” Grace said.
“No. But clearly the ghost wasn’t at rest,” Dwight said. “Hopefully she is now.”
Dwight and Grace spend the rest of the night in silence until the monkey was nothing but a pile of ashes.
Then they put the fire out and went to bed.
Unquiet spirits never bothered Dwight and Grace in their house again. Sure, they had several experiences of the paranormal elsewhere, but nothing in their own house.
To be on the safe side, they decided to raise the old shed to the ground and replace it with a new building not connected to a traumatic past.
They found out where the girl who had briefly haunted them was buried and visited her grave in the churchyard across the road of their house once a week for a quiet moment of remembrance.
But the monkey, they decided, was best forgotten.
The Robinsonverse 