#Superstitious Nine | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

awritesthings1 · 3 months

Text

Things That Go Bump in the Night

Pairing: Tommy Shelby x Wife Reader

Summary: You ask your husband Tommy if he believes in ghosts. The answer might surprise you.

Warnings: dark, angst, spooky.

ao3 link

“Do you believe in ghosts?”

It was near the end of winter, and another autumn of earl grey teas and tireless raking of crunchy leaves was fast approaching Arrow House. Tommy’s peaky cap lived on the coat hanger by the front door, dusted in the faint smell of smog. Gone was the silver razor; the Shelby’s were much too respectable for that anymore. In came the monogram initials, all of which had been carefully handstitched onto cuffs and collars to match golden cufflinks, and out came the fine woolen overcoats.

The weather lay thickly that year over the English countryside, enough to invoke a ghostly mist around the trimmed hedges and shorn grass. A stillness crept in as sly as a cat when the fog came down, covering all life with a sheer dew. The garden retired into a dull combination of cool greens and toe-curling crystal air.

It was at this time of year that the monsters came out to play in their ominously shaped shadows and faint howls. Where there was a tick of movement, an airy silence and childhood fear followed. Tommy would have teased you endlessly for your paranoia if he hadn’t suffered through the same fate after the war. You supposed he had more of a right than you because his fears came from a very real place, and yours were out of superstition.

“Spirits,” Tommy clarified. “Yes, it’s in my blood.”

“But have you ever seen one?”

Tommy turns his head to look at you, squeezing you closer to his chest from where you both lay under the covers.

“Why’d you ask?” His accent was thicker in the morning.

If anyone knew anything about spirits, it would be your husband. He was more superstitious than you due to his gypsy blood. The things he told you about the community were nothing short of witchcraft—charming dogs, telling fortunes, and cursing wrong'uns. It puzzled you at first that your seemingly pragmatic, calculating husband believed nothing short of Madame Boswell’s words as nothing but gospel.

You stared out the window, attempting to conjure up the right words, but shivered instead when his fingers ghosted across your back.

“Well… I don’t know. I don’t think I would believe in something until I saw it for sure with my own two eyes.”

He hummed and smiled lazily. “Why do people believe in God, hm?”

You pressed your lips together and shrugged as best you could in his embrace.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Eh?”

“Have you ever seen a spirit?"

Tommy’s eyes glazed over in thought. It was the answer you dreaded.

“Yes.”

“Were you scared?”

He blinked out of the daze.

“No.”

Your hand moved to rest on the cusp of his cheek.

“What happened?”

He cleared his throat and laced his hand with yours there on his face.

“I was nine. Madame Lovell’s nephew drowned in a lake the day before, and then on the day of the funeral, it rained. I was running back from over the hill when I saw him. He stood there staring at me through the spray of rain.”

Your thumb swiped over the tops of Tommy’s cheekbones.

“You’re certain? Maybe the rain got in your eye, and what you saw was a shadow or maybe even an eyelash in your eye. That happens to me sometimes.”

“I know what I saw.”

You hummed in acknowledgement, then tried to picture the scene for yourself. You stood atop some grassy hill, peering down into the valley. Dark plumes of smoke rose from a small coffin stationed at the bottom of the hill, slivering up through the wildflowers and tree branches to where you stood. Then there, through the smoke and rainfall that blinded your eyes, was the boy who drowned.

“Was he scared?”

A pause, then: “no.”

That night, you settled by your vanity, combing out knots and patting lotion onto your skin. The haunted look of that boy Tommy said he saw lingered in the back of your mind, and every vague shape or shadow shifted in the corner of your eye. Paranoia—that's all it was. You didn’t want to be caught staring at a dark corner like some half-mad crook. Tommy would be crossing the threshold into your room any moment now. Maybe if his last-minute business hadn’t held him up in his office, he would be here with you now, and you wouldn’t be glancing over at that suspicious coat hanging up by the wardrobe. The lamps that were lit didn’t stretch far enough to illuminate the monsters from their hiding spots.

It was a trick of the brain, that’s all.

And surely enough, Tommy’s footsteps were heard down the hall. Your shoulders slumped in relief. The autumn season was only one for the dramatics.

Your hand cream pot clattered onto the vanity, swirling in circles until it came to a stop just as you heard Tommy outside the door. But when you stood to greet him with a kiss, the door to your bedroom remained closed, and the doorhandle remained still.

“You can come in!" You laughed, but a sort of coldness seized your heart with terror when you wondered why Tommy was just standing there on the other side.

“Tommy?” You inquired after a painfully thin stretch of silence.

Again, nothing.

You reached for your comb, holding the long, sharp piece you used to part your hair out like a knife. You weren’t naïve. Tommy had enemies, opportunistic ones, too.

And so you stood there, straining to hear any noise beyond your heartbeat that thundered in your ears. You tried slowing your breathing to hear better, but your eyes then began to water from the strain and your refusal to blink. Then it happened, as abruptly as you imagined. The door burst open. Tommy rushed in, slammed the door shut behind him, and stormed over to the closet without so much a look in your direction.

“Tommy?” You squawked, still seized in terror.

He grunted, shrugging on his overcoat and snatching his leather gloves from the tallboy.

“What’s going on?”

Finally, he paused. His eyes were bloodshot and far away. You feared he looked through you rather than at you. He came closer then, pulling you into his arms and laying a warm kiss on your temple.

“Everything’s ok, darling.”

“Where are you going?” Your voice broke. “Did something happen?”

“No…” He hushed. “No.”

“Then where are you going? It’s still dark outside!”

He sighed into your disheveled hair, then pulled away.

“I need to check on one of the horses. Get into bed; I’ll be back soon.”

You clutched his lapels in protest. “No!”

He said your name sternly: “I really need to go. Frances is in her room if you need anything.”

“Tommy, I heard something!” Then, you lowered your voice so only he could hear, “I think someone’s in the house.”

He pulled you in by the scruff of your neck. “No one’s here, love. It’s just us and Frances.”

His boots thud severely against the wooden floor to the door. “I’ll be back soon.”

Begrudgingly, you let him leave and confined yourself to the bed, pulling the covers over your face like a small child afraid of the dark. You left all the lights on, determined to let any intruders know that yes, you were home, and yes, you would see them coming. Tommy would be back soon, and if Tommy didn’t suspect anything amiss, he was probably right.

But the grandfather clock in the other room kept ticking, tick tick tick, and little fairies scampered about in the garden below. The moon’s solemn gaze glared judgingly through the windows, past the squinting shutters, and onto your skin. Ink from family portraits bled into one horrifying mess of shadows. You threw back the hungry covers, which seemed to be swallowing you whole, and knocked your shoulder into the jaw of the door (you had mistaken it for being further than it really was). A teacup flew off a shelf, but you dodged it with one ugly turn of your ankle.

Then you ran down the winding stairs, through the narrowing hallway, and out the chattering front doors of Arrow House. A lustrous mist had fallen over the land, thick enough that your arms whipped around senselessly, blinded by the clouded night, in your attempt to trek to the stables.

The stable gates were banging back and forth by the time you reached them. They whack your behind when you pass them, and you would’ve cried if it weren’t for the airy atmosphere peeling the moisture from your eyes.

“Tommy!”

A clack of hooves answered you.

Your feet burned despite the bitter cold, swelling with each step. Still in your nightgown, the elements worked together, clawing, scratching, and biting at your bare skin. The swell of a draft caught the tip of your nose, and you whipped around just in time to see a coat disappearing around the back of the stable where the paddock was.

Fear acted like a glaze of sweltering iron, hissing the rhythm out of your heart.

“I can see you!” You tried to warn as if you were the hunter and not the hunted.

Leather hands wrapped around your shoulders from behind.

“Are you insane, eh?” Tommy’s gruff voice scolded in your ear.

You turned around to crumple into his embrace.

“Tommy, something’s not right about this house.”

“Is that why you’re out here? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

It could have been a ghost, a careful soulless thing—a soundless haunting memory with no cause for action, warping around the edges of reality. It was then a great whipping lash of winter lakes and violent snowflakes cut into the lines of your knuckles and sliced beneath your skin.

Your lips moved sometime after that, or maybe it was before; you couldn’t remember. Nothing seemed to make sense. The man in the moon wound away your surroundings one by one, like a fisherman with his catch on a hook.

“What?”

“You don’t remember, do you?”

“Remember what, Tommy?”

Silence held a knife to your neck.

“Out in the paddock..." His dark, long eyelashes brushed earnestly along his high-cut cheekbones, and you feared the thought that had seemingly paralyzed your husband from saying any more. If it weren’t already dark, a shadow might’ve passed over his features.

A fountain of words prepared to gush out, but you slipped on a puddle that appeared around your feet. You stepped back with a gasp. It wasn’t raining.

“I’m sorry, my love. I should’ve listened to you.”

The puddle kept growing. Words turned into water.

“What the fuck is happening, Tommy?"

His thumb brushed the apple of your cheek.

“I’ll avenge you. I will.”

You cried.

“Shhh, don’t be afraid, darling." Tommy kissed your ice-cold forehead.

You choked. Water: water pooled out of your mouth and suffocated your lungs. You couldn't breathe.

“Go back to bed for me, eh?”

All over your nightgown—water, water, water.

The horse trough out in the paddock, the goldfish swimming past your cheek, straw in your teeth, Tommy, Tommy, Tommy, no response, no one, the weight of a hand tangling in your hair, air, air, air, no air.

Drip, drip, drip.

Water in your eyes, ears, nose, mouth—

You never saw them coming.

“I promise, love. I’ll get the bastards that…”

He choked as if he were also choking on water, water, water.

“I never saw them coming, Tommy,” you hiccupped, but it was all water, water, water—

“I know.”

Gurgling.

“I just wanted to find you.”

“I know, I know.”

They pinned your arms back.

“The fucking water trough, Tommy!”

He swallowed painfully.

You couldn’t see him anymore. His face had washed away in your straw, goldfish, blood, water, water, water, tears. Blindly, you traced under his eyes and felt his salty, grief, widowed, water tears.

There’s so much tears and sorrow there in that stable that it begins pouring from outside and through the roof. Most days it was in the paddock, but tonight it was here.

Frances, the housekeeper, watched from her window. On these types of nights, when Arrow House became entrapped in a spell and rain drizzled over the countryside, Thomas Shelby would squelch across the overgrown grass to the paddock behind the stable before disappearing. Where he went, she didn’t know. The hazy sheet of mist left much to the imagination. What he saw out there? She didn’t know either. The poor bastard probably just missed his wife.

Frances briefly left her room to peer into Mr. Shelby’s. Letting out a sigh of relief, the room appeared untouched, still frozen in the state Mrs. Shelby left it when she went out to find her husband that tragic night. The sheets were still tossed aside, the teacup still shattered on the ground, her comb still waiting on the bedside table.

Satisfied with her findings, she turned to leave when—

What’s that?

A puddle.

There must be a leak somewhere.

Oh well, she’ll see to it in the morning.

With that, she quietly crept away to her room and fell back asleep, undisturbed by the chattering shutters or creaking floorboards. Not even the ghostly cries down the hall woke her.

After all, there was no such thing as ghosts, only things that went bump in the night.

Taglist: @maliceofwonderland , @fairytale07 , @goblinjnr , @ilovepeoplesdads , @multidimensionalslut , @blogforficslol

361 notes · View notes