Free The Whispers of Wilderwood Hall by Karen McCombie

could just walk through those gates and down that road and escape this place.
    Now I can see the freckles across her nose and the deep brown of her big, blinking eyes. More unruly curls than ever are escaping from her white cap.
    I’m so busy staring and studying her, that it takes me completely by surprise when Flora turns her head sharply.
    â€œHello,” she says, her brown eyes locked on mine.

The girl’s words are like a slap to my face. This is different. Wildly, madly different. This really isn’t some mirage in my mind. I’m looking directly into the eyes of a living, breathing girl from another time, another version of Wilderwood Hall – and she’s looking directly back into mine.
    â€œYou can … you can see me?” I mumble, tripping over my words.
    â€œAye, but why is it that I can see you and others cannot?” says Flora.
    Her chest is heaving, as if there’s a bird locked and frightened inside of it, fluttering and trying to fly free.
    â€œ I don’t know, but please don’t be scared,” I tell her, holding my hands up imploringly.
    She clasps a hand to her chest and looks ready to run.
    â€œActually, right now, I’m a bit scared too,” I add, hoping it makes her feel better.
    My honesty makes her pause at least. She looks me up and down, her eyes widening, scandalized by my lack of skirt I’m sure. Wherever and whenever I am, to a girl like Flora, leggings must seem like I’m walking around next to naked.
    â€œWhat are you?” she demands. “Some kind of selkie?”
    â€œA selkie?” I say, wondering if it’s some kind of Scottish slang for an English person. “What is that?”
    â€œA beastie that once was a seal. That rises from the sea and takes on human form,” Flora jabbers on, sounding panicked. “You
are
a selkie, I know it! My grandmother herself said she saw them when she was a girl growing up in Oban. She said she went down to the shore and played with them. No one ever believed her stories but me.”
    The girl’s eyes are huge in her gaunt face, fear only a scream away, I worry. Oh, but she
mustn’t
scream – or I’m likely to scream too, and I don’t know
who
that might alert. The fierce housekeeper or someone else from this
older
Wilderwood? The possibility of that makes me deeply uneasy.
    â€œI’m not a … a seal or a selkie,” I tell Flora quickly. “I’m just a normal girl.”
    â€œI think you are
not,
miss,” she announces. “You – you may seem it now, as you are, but earlier you were the strangest thing to me. A haze that became a figure and then faded to nothing. You appeared and were gone so quickly that I could not trust my own eyes!”
    And now I know for sure: I didn’t just imagine being on the beautifully furnished first-floor landing this morning, any more than I imagined the noise and steam and clatter of the busy kitchen a few minutes ago. And I’m definitely not imagining the terrified girl standing staring only inches away from me.
    â€œSo you did see me this morning?” I ask her. “When you were hiding in that room, or store cupboard, or whatever it is…”
    â€œIn my closet, you mean?” asks Flora.
    â€œYour closet?” I repeat, wishing I knew more about whatever era I’ve slipped into. Perhaps “closet” meant something different to a cupboard back then. “Do you …
live
in there?”
    Flora suddenly does something I don’t expect, and I don’t suppose she does either.
    She bursts out laughing.
    But just as quickly, she reigns in the smiles and glances around alarmed at the French doors at the front of the house. Flora’s worried, I suppose, that she might be discovered. I don’t suppose the wealthy family who own the house would want their staff enjoying the fountain or any other part of the estate that wasn’t strictly the