Each week, I send out a story via my email newsletter. Each story is around 1000 words, sometimes less, sometimes more. The stories are in a variety of genres: supernatural, thriller, sci-fi, horror, and sometimes romance, and all of my stories typically feature a gay protagonist.
I would love it if you would subscribe to my weekly newsletter! You can do so HERE.
This is story number 35 of the series. Enjoy!
Specters and Soufflés
The crumbling chateau loomed at the end of the winding gravel drive, all Gothic spires and ivy-choked walls. Remy Marchand squinted up at it, jet lagged and seriously second-guessing every life choice that had led him here. When his great-aunt Cecilie had bequeathed him her ancestral home in the Normandy countryside, he’d figured hey, free French vacation. He had pictured wine, cheese, and maybe a rustic bike ride through sun-dappled fields—not this crumbling Addams Family reject with bats circling the tower. This place gave off some seriously spooky vibes.
“Bienvenue, Monsieur Marchand!” A plump, grandmotherly woman in a black dress bustled out the front door, beaming. “I am Madame Renard, the housekeeper. Welcome to Chateau Marchand!”
“Merci,” Remy said, dredging up his high school French. “This is quite the imposing pile of rocks.”
Madame Renard nodded, smile never wavering. “Ah oui, it has been in your family for generations! So much history in these stones. But let’s get you settled, non? You must be exhausted from your travels.”
The inside was just as eerie as the outside – all creaking floorboards, moth-eaten tapestries, and dark oil paintings of stern-faced ancestors. As Remy unpacked in the cavernous bedroom, he could’ve sworn the eyes of the portraits followed him. A shiver danced down his spine and an unsettling feeling came over him. Weird.
Get a grip, he told himself firmly and shaking it off. It’s just an old house. Nothing sinister here.
Remy spent the next few days exploring the sprawling chateau and grounds. He poked through the library full of dusty first editions, swam in the mossy stone pool, and gorged himself on the incredible meals Madame Renard served up.
But he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched. Rooms fell silent when he entered, shadows shifted in the corner of his eye, cold pockets of air followed him like a breath down the neck. He was jumpy, on edge.
On the third day, he found flour all over the kitchen counter. Like, a lot of flour. No explanation. Madame Renard swore she hadn’t baked that morning, and the cloud of fine white dust spelled what looked disturbingly like his name if he squinted. That night in the library, he heard someone whispering—softly, insistently, and in French. He turned sharply, but no one was there. Just a flickering candle and his racing heart.
On the fourth night, he woke to the smell of baking bread. He glanced at the antique clock – 3AM. Who the hell was cooking in the middle of the night?
Remy padded downstairs to the kitchen, mouth already watering. He pushed open the swinging door and stopped dead. A tall, translucent figure stood at the counter, kneading dough.
A figure Remy recognized from the painted portrait in the living room. His great-grandfather Jean-Luc Marchand, who’d vanished without a trace a century ago.
“Sacre bleu,” Remy croaked.
Jean-Luc spun around. He looked exactly like his painting, waistcoat, handlebar mustache and all – except for the whole being-made-of-mist thing.
“Ah! You must be Remy,” Jean-Luc said, pale eyes crinkling in a smile. “Désolé, I didn’t mean to wake you. I had a hankering for brioche.”
Remy goggled at him. His great-grandfather was a ghost. A French, bread-baking ghost.
“I… You… Huh?” Remy stammered eloquently.
Jean-Luc wiped floury hands on his apron. “My apologies, this must be quite a shock. We don’t get many visitors. To be honest, I wasn’t sure the family even remembered this old place.”
Remy’s brain was doing cartwheels. He stared, then closed his eyes, reopened them. Still ghost. Still dough. Still haunted kitchen.
“Maybe I’m dreaming?” he muttered. “Maybe it’s a hologram? Maybe the Camembert was cursed?”
Jean-Luc chuckled. “No cursed cheese, I assure you. Unless Madame Renard’s been shopping at questionable markets.”
“You disappeared in 1924. Aren’t you… dead?”
Jean-Luc grimaced. “Alas, yes. Nasty encounter with a boar while hunting. I’ve been lurking in the chateau ever since, reliving my glory days as a renowned pâtissier.”
“A ghost who bakes,” Remy said faintly. “Sure. Like that’s totally normal.”
Jean-Luc shrugged, cheerfully nihilistic. “One must pass the time somehow, in the great beyond! Now, I don’t suppose you’d care to help your old arrière-grand-père glaze these brioches?”
Over the next days, Remy fell into a bizarre routine of haunted house-sitting and supernatural culinary lessons. Jean-Luc, it turned out, had been a master pastry chef in life, inventing legendary desserts for Paris’s finest restaurants.
“The secret is in the wrist,” Jean-Luc instructed as they whipped up custardy canelés and towering croquembouches. “Whisk with passion, but never anger. Anger makes for flat soufflés and soggy beignets.”
Remy found himself actually enjoying his eccentric forebear’s company. Jean-Luc had a wicked sense of humor and endless tales of Jazz Age debauchery.
But one question niggled at Remy. “Why did you never move on?” he asked delicately one afternoon as they collaborated on a batch of madeleines. “I thought ghosts were supposed to, you know, go into the light.”
Jean-Luc huffed a rueful laugh. “Ah, well. The truth is, I have some unfinished business. You see, I was desperately in love with the chateau’s gardener, Olivier. What a beauty he was! Regretfully, I died before I could tell him how I felt. I always assumed I was doomed to pine for my amour perdu for eternity.”
He glanced toward the garden through the window, voice softening. “Every evening I stand here and look out, hoping to see him. Hoping he might somehow come back. I’m fairly certain he felt the same way about me as I did about him.”
Remy’s heart squeezed. How tragic, to be parted from your soulmate by death itself. He opened his mouth to say something comforting.
And nearly dropped his tea towel as a second spectral figure shimmered into existence beside Jean-Luc.
“Mon chou!” the newcomer cried, enveloping Jean-Luc in a joyful embrace. “At last, I found you!”
“Olivier?” Jean-Luc gasped, eyes wide and brimming with ghostly tears. “But how? I thought you’d moved on long ago!”
Olivier, a handsome spirit with salt-and-pepper hair and laugh lines around his eyes, cupped Jean-Luc’s face tenderly.
“Jamais, my love. I could never leave you. I just got a bit lost along the way, that’s all. Being a ghost is confusing business. But I’m here now.”
The two men gazed at each other with such profound adoration that Remy had to glance away, overcome. Their love had survived death, time, the universe itself.
Olivier turned to Remy, smiling. “Thank you for being a friend to my Jean-Luc. Because of you, we can finally be together.”
Remy swallowed past the sudden lump in his throat. “I was just a guy learning to bake,” he said hoarsely. “You two did the hard part.”
He watched, misty-eyed, as the lovers clasped hands and slowly faded away, off to whatever phantom honeymoon awaited. The kitchen felt cavernously empty without them. It was an honor, Remy realized, to have been part of something so beautiful, so true.
He looked down at the madeleines, golden-brown and perfect. He had a feeling the recipe would become a family heirloom, passed down through generations. A tribute not only to the two kindred spirits who’d found each other at last, but to the power of love, legacy, and one thoroughly unexpected French vacation.
THE END