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The Waiting Light: Part One - A Ghost Story from the English Countryside

Hello friends! I'm coming to you with a little treat (I hope!). We are grateful to you for choosing our handmade candles this March to celebrate International Women's Day and the upcoming Mother's Day. New customers coming in daily, and so many returning ones make Andrei's and my hearts sing! I had an outline of a ghost story set in the English countryside brewing for a while, and decided that perhaps writing it would be a way to say thank you for all your orders. What goes better with a candle than something cosy to read?

It was meant to be short, one blog post story, but I think by now we all know that I cannot write anything short, lol, so today I am sharing part one. Make yourself a cup of tea or coffee, get cosy and let's visit Lucy, a 40-year-old woman who just left her London life behind and moved to a quiet village in the English countryside. She is ready to finally start living for herself, when a mysterious candle in the abandoned turnpike house draws her into an unsettling mystery.

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Lucy was staring at the flickering candle in the window of the turnpike house on the other side of the small orchard across from her cottage. A candle that shouldn’t be there. A sense of unease tightened her chest. It was an old, crumbling building, and no one had lived there for decades. Yet in the past few months, every night, someone - or something - lights a candle in the back window looking out to the fields. A solitary light against the darkness of the surrounding land. The same window. One candle. Every night. In an abandoned, centuries-old turnpike. Lucy loves a good ghost tale, and she would love to explore the mystery of the candle on the pages of the book… not in her very own home, which was supposed to become her safe haven.

She wrapped her cardigan a little tighter around her body, more for comfort than to keep warm. The cottage living room was toasty, the logs were cheerfully burning in the fireplace, casting a warm glow over the room. The freshly brewed teapot was waiting alongside the book. She felt safe inside, but the sense of something unnamed lurking in the darkness just outside these old walls made her uneasy.

Lucy looked around the room with affection. Low ceiling, secondhand furniture, the floral wallpaper - an inheritance from the previous owners… She loved it all. She moved into the cottage only a few months earlier in the summer and celebrated her 40th birthday by unpacking boxes of clothes and books. She wasn’t yet sure she was happy, but for the first time in two decades - since she got pregnant with her son at 19 - she felt free. 

For years, she had been bending over backwards for her husband’s career. She left her promising job in HR to work from home as a remote admin assistant to cut childcare costs, handle all school drop-offs and pick-ups, cook, clean, and manage bills. All alone. She could never afford anything nice because, despite earning her own money, they were always spending on Chris’s various training and certificates. “Years of supporting and believing in him, only to find out he’s been sleeping with all these women. No surprise he never invited me to any work parties,” Lucy thought bitterly. When she calmly handed him the divorce papers, she was surprised by a sense of relief she felt in her body. And excitement for the unknown. Something she hadn’t felt in a long time.

Her lawyer, a sharp-eyed woman with little patience for excuses and man-children, demanded from him half of the savings and all the money from their London house.  At first he threatened, then begged, but his adultery was well documented, and she stood her ground. It was ironic that she was now almost grateful to him for not contributing to the home life over the years, as it really worked in her favour. She repaid the house by herself and owned a property that has more than doubled in value over the last 20 years.

When her son, Oli, announced with great enthusiasm that he was going to rent a flat with his friends closer to work, she felt it was finally time to take care of her own dreams and comforts. Lucy put the house on the market and began searching for a place she could settle for good. She knew what she wanted. A cosy cottage in the countryside with a small garden, surrounded by green fields and trees. There were only two modern commodities she cared about: reliable internet for work and a reasonably good connection from London so Oli and her parents could come visiting often.

“And I found it, but now I’m going to ruin it by scaring myself silly with ghost stories!” She pulled her eyes from the candle in the window. “Enough,” she told herself firmly. “Whatever was going on next door, it’s not my business.” This cottage, this life was everything Lucy wanted. “What a silly goose I am, I don’t even believe in ghosts”, she said out loud, trying to convince herself, but the feeling of unease in her gut didn’t disappear.

To be honest, Lucy wasn’t exactly sure when she first noticed the candle burning. “Must have been in late autumn, as the nights draw in”, she thought. Could she be sure it wasn’t burning there earlier? Perpas, but the summer days were long, evenings bright and balmy, and she was filled with happiness like a balloon. She was busy repainting the cottage, setting up her office in the corner of the second bedroom and clearing out the overgrown garden. There was a chance the candle had been lit then as well, but Lucy wasn’t paying attention.

She sat in the armchair, poured tea into her pretty china mug, but the train of her thoughts hadn’t stopped. She never saw anyone coming in or out of the building, and when she asked about it in the village, her neighbours would shrug and ask instead how she had settled into her new home and whether she had visited the local tea room yet. Only a few reluctantly admitted there are stories about a woman or a witch haunting the turnpike house at the edge of the village. Lucy wished someone had mentioned any of this before she purchased her cottage right next to it. Being the closest neighbour to a witch and a potential crime scene wasn't exactly the country living she hoped for. 

Jocelyn, who lives opposite the village church, had invited her for tea one afternoon. Even in her 80s, she is sharp and lively as someone half her age. They spent a few hours talking about life, books, and men. Jocelyn's face lit up as she spoke about her late husband, tears welling in her eyes as she showed their wedding photograph. He was a handsome man, and in the photograph, he looked at young Jocelyn with love. Lucy knew from other neighbours that he had died many years ago in an accident, and Jocelyn never remarried. Despite the tragic ending, Lucy envied her in a way. She wished she had someone to love so deeply and completely. The divorce shook her stagnant world and opened her eyes to how much she's missing in life, including romantic love and sex.

Trying to change the topic to save herself from crying over her loveless, sexless existence, she asked about the turnpike house. Jocelyn got alerted in an instant. “There are things you’d be better not meddle with. My grandparents used to mention a terrible crime committed there, after which the house was abandoned, and whispers of strange apparitions began to spread in the village. Take my word, dear child, and just leave it be.” Jocelyn visibly composed herself "So... when is your son coming to visit you next? He could meet my granddaughter, all she talks about is London and how she wants to move there…” 

Other villagers weren’t as serious, but some also confessed to hearing the stories over the years. “My parents used to tell me about a witch to keep me from mischief,” her neighbour Ted said, laughing, and she joined him, masking the sinking feeling in her stomach. Would he laugh if he knew about the candle?

All her neighbours were well-meaning, and she had no reason to doubt them. A quick online search revealed that the tunpike house is over 200, if not 300, years old, and it certainly looked that old. Hidden behind a tangled hedge of hawthorn and brambles, its abandonment was clear; she couldn’t imagine anyone living there with a leaking roof and rotting stairs, as she noticed when she went there one warm summer afternoon to take a closer look, peering through the windows and cracks in the doors. It was both beautiful and sad. Like a ghost or a memory from the past. She could imagine someone with a lot of money restoring it and turning it into a unique, quaint cottage, but she wasn’t sure whether the structure was beyond saving. 

Although the thatched roof was heavy with debris and sinking in places, the windows were still intact, and right now, on this cold, foggy, starless Winter evening, a bright candle flame flickered in one of them. There were only a handful of houses nearby, and only her cottage was at an angle so that she could see the back of the turnpike house. Her cottage garden was directly joined with a small orchard between the two buildings. Lucy could enter the orchard through the wooden gate in her own fence at the back or through the rusty, old gate from the road. There, following a small track left by dog walkers, you could go into the turnpike cottage backyard or keep on going into the fields, which many villagers did, as it was a particularly lovely walk, and if followed, led all the way to the closest town. She had grown used to hearing the gate squeak throughout the day, but now, she began to notice it every night too. And steps. Quiet, but clear enough that she couldn’t be mistaken. Someone was walking by her cottage after nightfall. What were they up to? Was it some dark ritual? Decades of reading crime and Gothic tales brought up lots of potential answers, all of which she would rather not be happening so close to her home. 

She was trying to fall asleep in her bedroom upstairs, instead of mulling over all of it, when she heard the gate again. She brought up all her courage, got up quickly from her bed, and looked outside. Whatever passed her house just a moment earlier was gone, but then she noticed a black figure moving in the shadow of the skeletal trees towards the turnpike house. As if aware of her gaze, the figure stopped, turned around, and stared directly at her. Lucy ducked away in panic, but it was too late. She was certain the shadowy figure had seen her, and it was filling her with fear more than anything. 

This is PART ONE of The Waiting Light.
Read PART TWO HERE

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In the next part, Lucy will try to find an answer to what is haunting the turnpike house by teaming up with a local, rather handsome vet who grew up in the village and knows all its secrets. 

Until next week,
Adriana x

P.S. If you enjoyed it, please share it with any of your bookish friends, online and off! Thank you so much!