This is the new version of Shaddowdon rewritten as a result of the Harper Collins review.
Ghosts
Magicians can see and hear ghosts and sometimes will mistake a ghost for an ordinary person. Magicians separate ghosts into two classes:
Ghast: Usually tied to the place where they died and only capable of affecting the world in a weak manner, blowing out candles and so on.
Gheist: An evil ghost capable of going anywhere it wants and sometimes capable of killing the living. Jack the Ripper was reputed to have been a gheist.
from A Layman's Guide to Magic - 3rd Edition
Three men huddled around the desk in the darkened study and stared at the small gold box that lay upon it. No bigger than a matchbox, it looked innocuous enough, but the men acted as though it might jump off the table at any second and bite them. The room stank of burnt sealing wax and the elusive odour of magic, powerful enough to create miniature vortices in the air, which made the smoke swirl restlessly.
Each man waited for one of the others to begin the transfer of the spirit locked within it, not wanting to be the one responsible for opening the box.
"Perhaps we should think again? No one was supposed to get hurt." Peters looked to his colleagues for support. Bishop Peters was a big man who seemed to fill the room with his presence.
"He is not evil. We are doing a good thing here." Dr Drowd spoke as if trying to convince himself rather than them. Drowd was small man with a sharp hooked nose and thin wasted hands. His hands shook as he spoke.
"The prize is worth the risk," Nathan hissed at Peters, "or would you rather watch Jane die?" One glance at Nathan and anyone would know he was the leader of the three.
Peters sighed and bent his head towards the desk. Magical forces from the men combined to create an invisible prison around the box. They used energy strong enough to bind even the most powerful spirit. With trembling fingers, Peters pried the lid of the box open.
Blue and purple mists roiled out across the desk and pressed against the invisible cage that held them. The different colours told the men there were two spirits while the magical cage had been designed to hold only one. The men reinforced their magic, trying to prevent the spirits' escape.
For a few seconds it looked as though they might succeed. Then the spirits burst free and vanished from the room.
Dr Drowd was the first to recover. "There were two gheists. Why were there two?"
Bishop Peters muttered to himself in shock. "What have we done? God forgive us."
Nathan snapped at the others in anger. "Shut up both of you. Jacob, clear up this mess. No one must find out, no one."
"We have loosed the spirit of Oliver Langdon on the world. How can we keep that a secret? Who knows how many he might kill? And what in heavens name was the other one?" Bishop Peters crossed himself.
"We have our positions to consider," Nathan replied.
Bishop Peters and Nathan left the room, leaving Dr Drowd to sit at his desk to ponder the evil they had done. He was so deep in thought he didn't see the spirit descend upon him through the ceiling. His eyes bulged wide as his body was stolen from him.
"Well well," Oliver Langdon remarked as he picked up the box that had been his prison for centuries and dropped it into his pocket. "What am I going to do now?"
The telephone on the desk began to ring. Langdon looked at it curiously and when it showed no signs of stopping he picked up the handset.
Four Years Later:
Tim looked up at his father who frowned. There were only ten inches in height between them, but those inches might have well have been miles. It would have been clear to anyone they were father and son. Slim, dark haired and green eyed, even their postures were identical as they faced each other. Harper's eyes seemed to glow as he waited for his son to answer him.
"I'm sorry. I won't ever do it again, I promise." Tim tried very hard to sound contrite. However, his father looked far from convinced.
"Having a key to the house shield is a privilege. Do you have any idea what could have happened if a gheist gained entry to the House?"
"It could've done something bad, I suppose?"
Tim had never seen a gheist in his twelve years of life. He found it difficult to believe they could be half as dangerous as his father claimed. He wasn't even sure there were any gheists left in the world.
"Bad! If a gheist of any power became corporeal in this house, the damage could be immeasurable. That's why you must always close the shield behind you."
"Everybody knows that," Tim's sister, Eloise, chimed in from where she watched on the sofa. Eloise looked very different from her father and brother, taking after her mother with blonde hair and pale blue eyes. She knelt on the seat cushions resting her arms on the sofa's back watching her father shout at Tim. She was enjoying the experience immensely, in part because she was the only one in the room who knew the mobile phone in her hand was recording the whole thing.
"Shut up, Elle." Tim felt it was bad enough being told off by his father, without his little sister chipping in as well.
"Be quiet, Eloise! This is between your brother and me."
Eloise swung around and sat down facing away from them. She folded her arms tightly about her chest. Her father almost never shouted at her and she didn't like it when he did.
"This is your last chance, Timothy. If you forget to close the shield again, I shall take the key from you and you will spend an hour in the Study Room as punishment."
Tim blanched at the thought. Even ten minutes in the Study Room was horrible. He couldn't imagine how anybody, even his father, could survive for a whole hour in the Study Room. Eloise wore a satisfied smile on her face, which Tim saw through the large mirror above the fireplace.
"We shall say no more about it, Timothy. Just make sure you don't do it again." Harper walked out of the lounge, leaving his son and daughter alone.
Eloise swung back into her previous position and smirked at her brother.
"Have you done your homework yet, Tim? Mr Reardon told me you're behind with it again. He suggested I help you. You're so stupid that even I'm ahead of you. Would you like me to show you how to do all those difficult sums? Would you, Timmy?"
Eloise waved her mobile in Tim's face and he saw it was in recording mode. He found it difficult to prevent his eyes filling with tears of rage. He made a snatch for it but Eloise moved the phone away and giggled.
Eloise was a cow, and worse than that, everything she said was true. Tim stared at the prodigy that was his eleven-year-old sister. They'd both showed Level 1 talent from an early age. However, his sister was proving brilliant at school.
In any other family, Tim would be special. Any father of a Level 1 magician would forgive the fact algebra escaped his son and that he could barely spell to save his life. In this family, Eloise's superior abilities made him feel pathetic.
"I can manage my homework on my own, thank you kindly, Eloise," Tim retorted with as much dignity as he could manage.
"Are you crying? You are, aren't you?" Eloise grinned in delight and started chanting at the top of her voice. "Timmy's having a cry. Timmy's having a cry!"
Tim fled from the room, wiping away his tears as he ran. He walked straight through Carter who had entered the room to investigate their shouting.
"Sorry," Tim mumbled in apology as he ran out through the door.
Carter brushed his immaculate butler's uniform clear of imagined dust. "Well really. Master Timothy should take more care where he's walking. What if I had been corporeal at the time?" Carter was a large and portly looking man. If anything, you might have expected Tim to bounce off rather than go straight through him.
Eloise looked up from her phone. "It's hardly like you can break a leg. You’re a ghast, after all."
Carter gave Eloise a severe look in response to her flippant tone. He puffed out his chest and replied pompously.
"It is obvious you need reminding that I am your father's butler. I am hardly a common or garden ghast. And you, young lady, are a child placed in my charge by your father and I shall put you over my knee and spank you if you don't show me proper respect."
"You can't spank children these days. It's called child abuse." Eloise was well aware Carter would do no such thing, even though he was a rather old fashioned man, having died back in 1945.
"If you continue to taunt your brother, I shall have a word with Lord Harper about having you spend some time in the Study Room." Carter replied in a manner suggesting he might really do it this time.
"Oh no, please don't do that." Eloise might have said more but her phone was whipped out of her hands just as she was about to press replay. She and Carter watched as it rose to the ceiling before darting out of the room.
"Carter, tell the House to give me my phone back." Eloise wailed in distress.
"You must have been doing something naughty. You know the House doesn't like you being nasty to Tim."
Carter walked over to Eloise and becoming real gave her a hug. Eloise snuggled into his warm chest.
"I'll be nicer to Tim in future, I promise. It's just that he's such an idiot these days."
"I expect the House will give your phone back when it's satisfied you mean that."
Tim felt ashamed for walking through Carter. The House ghasts had enough to put up with, without disrespect from him. As he passed a window, the curtains swung outwards and he jumped forwards to stop them hitting him.
"The House is mad at you then." Ernie, the House boot boy stepped into the hallway. Tim braked to a halt to avoid walking through his best friend.
"Hi Ernie. It missed me, so it's probably not that upset."
"Hello, Tim. The House has been acting up since yesterday. It's blocked the servants from travelling through the old apartments. It's very strange and Carter's furious about it."
Tim remembered his own attempt to get into the closed parts of the House and winced at the memory. "The House never lets me go in there. Sometimes I think it would be nice to live in a house that wasn't alive."
Ernie shrugged and Tim realised he wasn't being very tactful as Ernie didn't have any choice in the matter.
"You off to see that girl again?"
Tim looked around frantically to check no one had overheard Ernie's words.
"Shush Ernie. I told you about Mary in confidence."
"And I've told nobody. You were so eager to see her yesterday you forgot to turn the shield back on. Why did you turn it off in the first place?"
"I wanted to read Mary a poem from a book in the library. You can't get a library book out of the House with the shield on."
"It's getting serious between you two then, is it?"
The boys sat down on the stairs. Ernie was ten years old when he died. Tim's notorious ancestor, Edmund Shaddowdon, rode his horse over him. That happened back at the turn of the nineteenth century.
A little thing like death didn't let a servant out of his contract with the Shaddowdon family in those days. The contract obliged him to serve five times his remaining years as a house ghast. It would still be many years before his contract expired.
"She's just a girl, Ernie. I like talking to her, and none of the locals will. You know how they can be."
Tim and Ernie became friends when Tim was a toddler. Tim found it strange to start out much younger than Ernie and end up growing older than him. But a very real and enduring friendship existed between them.
"Well, I can’t fault you for your intentions, but I think you should be careful. The motives of those out there are not always as pure as in here. Your family has long been a target."
Ernie grinned at Tim and gave him a friendly punch on the arm. "You'd best be off in any case, before she misses you."
Tim walked to the door and opened it. He stood at the threshold and was about to pull the door shut when the House decided to do it for him. The door slammed into his bottom bouncing him out of the house.