An English Ghost Story (29 page)

‘The bulbs exploded, Steven,’ she said.

‘And your point is?’

* * *

D
ad was convinced. His cracked explanation solved everything, which meant he didn’t have to be afraid any more.

‘It doesn’t matter who’s doing this, Dad,’ said Jordan. ‘Or how it’s being done. It doesn’t matter how you’re haunted, whether it’s by ghosts or men in sheets. Mum is right. The bulbs exploded. That could have hurt us. Before then, it was all us. Tim broke the window. You hit me. I, ah, hit you. We were only hurting ourselves. All the ghosts ever did was pick up on the way we were, prod us into being more extreme. The worst they could do was haunt us, frighten us. That’s all over. This isn’t about frightening us any more. This is about hurting us, harming us.’

‘Killing,’ said Kirsty.

The word was there. In the room, between them. Tim was at attention, fidgeting now he no longer had his catapult.

‘Yes,’ Jordan said. ‘That. Killing us.’

She looked around the room. What else was tricked up, ready to explode or attack? The light was different from the old lamps, soft and amber, with deeper shadows. Colours were faded pastel, like an illustration in a Drearcliff Grange book. The ceiling was a canopy of dinge. Anything could be up there, beyond the light, looking down on them.

Dad took her by her shoulders and forced her onto the sofa, next to Mum. She didn’t resist, allowed him to sit her down.

‘Stay here,’ he said, ‘and look after Tim and your mother. I’m going to find them and put a stop to this nonsense.’

A stab of terror struck her. She held his wrist.

Should she let him go? There were dangers out there, in the rest of the Hollow. But he had slapped her, prompted her to fight him. He might be as much of a threat as the ghosts. He was close to the edge, building up frustrations he’d have to take out on someone or something. The house was pouring the volts into him just as it had into the lightbulbs. She didn’t want to be there when he went off.

She let go of him. She let him go.

‘You’ll see, Jord,’ he said. ‘I’m right.’

She turned to Mum, who had nothing to say and seemed happy to watch telly. She was right next to Jordan on the sofa, but a million miles away in her head.

* * *

H
e left the Summer Room by the secret passage and found the rest of the house dark. It didn’t matter. Now he knew what he was up against, he had no reason to be afraid. To be cautious, yes. There was no telling how desperate Wing-Godfrey’s Louise loonies might be – Kirsty had been right about that, given him pause for thought – but he was on to them. He’d take back his property, prove he was master here. He was the owner, not some sitting tenant in the way of a development scheme. This was his ditch and he would defend it.

His feet caught up in something and he stumbled, falling against the rack of coats. He grasped thick cloth and found himself hanging onto a long garment he couldn’t recognise by its feel. It wasn’t one of his coats and he didn’t think it could be Kirsty’s or Jordan’s. It was another of those things brought out of storage and used to decorate this haunting. He smelled mothballs and old lady.

The trap he had blundered into was an arrangement of boots, set across the passage. He let go of the coat and kicked his way through wellies.

His eyes were not adjusting to the dark.

Some light was in the passage, from under the Summer Room door. The further away he got from the room where he had left his family, the darker it grew. There were windows in the passage, but nothing shone through them.

He had planned to go to his office – not Louise’s study any more, but
his
office – first, knowing he could find his way there with his eyes shut. But he didn’t know, he realised, how far he had gone down the passage. Was he past the doors of the spare rooms? He let his hand trail the wall, at the height of the door handles. Paper and plaster. He walked forwards, feeling his way. Ten steps. He must have missed the rooms.

The East Tower door should be in front of his nose, almost touching. Looking back, he saw the faint fan of light under the Summer Room door. A fire on a distant hill. It couldn’t be more than twenty feet away, but seemed like twenty yards.

In the dark, it was impossible to get oriented.

But if he couldn’t see, then neither could Wing-Godfrey. It was up to him to prove he knew the house as well as the invaders. He was not afraid of the dark, he was not afraid in the dark. This was
his
dark. He owned it, as much as he owned the walls of the house and the trees in the orchard. The dark, he knew with electric certainty, was on his side.

He had walked up to his door. He could open it with his eyes closed.

He stuck out his hand to grasp the door handle.

Nothing.

He looked back, at the light, and ahead, where the door should be. A more solid blackness hung there, where the passage ended. He pictured the door in his mind, remembering it was varnished brown wood, with a ceramic handle. The handle was chipped, a rough slice out of the smooth shape.

He reached again, further, bending over, extending his hand. His fingers inched through empty space. He was close to overbalancing. He took a step forward, expecting to collide clumsily with the door, skinning his knuckles, banging his nose.

Nothing.

He reached out with his left hand, to balance. His fingers brushed cold glass and he flattened his palm against the pane. He knew exactly where he was, by touch. This was the window at the end of the passage, which was shuttered when his door was open. The door, actually to the stairwell of the East Tower, opened outwards like an exterior door, and faced the door that opened inwards, to his office.

He closed and opened his eyes, detecting no difference. Functional blindness didn’t matter. He had his bearings, and was confident.

With a sense of quiet triumph, he reached out, took the door handle, and turned.

The door handle took his hand and turned the other way.

He had hold of something cold, a hand of ice in a leather glove. Fingers interlaced with his and held him fast, thumb pressing the inside of his wrist.

The hand was fixed in space, as if stuck out of a wall rather than at the end of an arm. As it turned, slowly and with great strength, he was bent over. The grip crammed all the bones of his hand together, but the cold numbed any pain.

His head bumped the wall. His forehead scraped against the ridges of the raised-pattern wallpaper.

He jammed the heel of his left hand where he judged that the face of the person holding him was and slammed against solid wood. The impact ran up his arm. All the pain that had faded since his fall yesterday came back. He was sure again that he had broken fingers. He scrabbled against what finally felt like the door.

The hand was a solid cage around his fist, closed like a snare. He’d lost all feeling in his fingers but his arm was chilled to the elbow and tingles of numbness ran up to his shoulder.

His knees kinked and he lost his footing. His legs kicked and he fell to the floor, arm wrenched upwards, shoulder-socket yanked.

He was fixed to his door.

Looking back along the passage, the light of the Summer Room was a thousand miles distant. Something got in its way, blotting it like a curtain being drawn. With a faint slushing, dragging noise – what
was
it? – it came down the passage, towards him. A smidgen of light behind it outlined the shape. It had a head and arms, and long skirts that trailed – that was the noise! – on flagstones.

His throat wouldn’t work.

The light was gone and he couldn’t see the shape. He still heard the skirt scraping across the floor. This passage had been carpeted with rush matting, but it was gone now. He felt only rough, cold stone under him.

The grip on his hand was less like another hand than it was a vice, closing slowly but inexorably.

The cloth-scraping was close.

He smelled mothballs and something else.

Points of ice came out of the dark and touched his face, then fell to his chest, pressing his shirt to his skin – did they cut through, sink into his flesh? – and stabbing hard against his heart.

* * *

D
ad had been gone for a long time.

Mum and Jordan sat on the sofa, as if watching the old telly. A blizzard buzzed on the screen. White static light made ghosts of them.

Tim’s hands wouldn’t stop moving.

Without the U-Dub, he was bereft, naked, vulnerable. It hung around Jordan’s neck, like an amulet. His sister was hunched up on the sofa, knees against her chin, long hair like a dust-sheet. The U-Dub was out of sight, between her knees and chest. He saw a loop of the rubber outside her hair.

He put his hands in his pockets but his fingers wriggled like worms, as if they weren’t part of him. Frightened, he pulled his hands out again and looked at them.

The grain of the U-Dub was in his left palm. The pull of the rubber was a line on his right forefinger.

The weapon had been given to him. By the IP. He should have known he could never trust it.

Dad thought there were smugglers or pirates behind it all, like on
Scooby-Doo
. Mum said there were real ghosts; one had talked to Jordan on the old telephone.

It was darker than night outside.

* * *

S
he hadn’t believed –
really
believed – Rick was dead until she heard him. Before that call, it could have been a cruel prank, getting back at her for the Letter. But the voice that hissed at her, distorted by distance yet close enough to be inside her ear, could not have come from a living person.

…Kiss kiss kiss…

She kept hearing it, even though the telephone was smashed. It had got into her brain like an egg-laying insect. Whispers hatched and swarmed and ate inside her skull. She jammed fingers into her ears and pressed her shut eyes against her knees, but was only trapped in the dark with the kissing voice.

The taste of Rick was in her mouth.

Kissing her, invading her, winding around her.

She was stuck in endless night with the shade of her dead boyfriend. He would be with her for ever. And yet they were broken up. Nothing changed that.

An eternity chained to a hateful person. That was her lot.

She remembered Primrose and the Mama, shut in this house, tied together by fear and hate. She understood horribly how the diarist and her mother fitted into the picture, as much as Louise and Weezie and the Drearcliff Grange spooks.

A cold wind riffled her hair, slipped into her T-shirt by the loose neck and slithered across her shoulders. Cool air blew between skin and cotton.

She looked up and let the breeze part her hair away from her face.

Mum sat beside her on the sofa, watching dead television. Tim sat on the floor, off to one side. Both were awake but dulled, still as statues, not alerted by her movement, not feeling the wind. That was just for her.

…Kiss kiss kiss…

It wasn’t just inside her head. It was in the room, on the air currents, in the rustle of the slightly shifting curtains and the slushing buzz of the television.

…Kiss kiss kiss…

She felt them. Cold caresses and whisper kisses.

Rick’s lips had brushed hers within the last few minutes. She recognised the tang of his toothpaste, the aftertaste of the lager he drank, the press of his attempted moustache. The touch had come when she was out, on holiday from her head, directing her fury at Dad. How could she have missed it?

She felt a yearning, a need for more kisses, yet a dread of them. It was like being a virgin again, wanting to go on but certain – despite the boiling cauldron of desire – it would be a mistake, that this was not the time, that the time might never come. Ahead was an unknown country, of wonders and terrors, a prospect of pleasure and the certainty of pain.

If she had known Rick would be first and last, she might have warded him off.

…Kiss kiss kiss…

That layer of air remained with her, even as she sat up straighter, as if her skin were repelling her T-shirt with an anti-magnetic force. The cool was in motion, like a stroking palm. The cold spot touched between her shoulder blades, then worked her neck muscles under her hair, as if massaging. The touch was too icy to be pleasant, but she didn’t fight it. The cold made her feel alive again.

The chill touch ranged over her back like a searchlight and slipped around her side, under her armpit. She lifted her arm, and shivered as the ice circle pressed against her swollen tummy and ran up between her breasts…

(That’s not fat, those are breasts.)

…then fell again and pushed sharply at a spot that
gave
, passing through her skin and ribs, settling around her heart like permafrost. For an instant, she believed her pump was stopped, that she had only seconds of consciousness before brain death.

The terrible thought was that she would go on, trapped in her body, a puppet of the dead.

No. She was alive. The ice wasn’t just her heart. It dissipated throughout her.

Her T-shirt clung to her back now. She shivered with proper cold, wishing for a shawl or a blanket. The ice was in her veins and her vitals.

She wanted to reach out to Mum.

But Mum was in the zone, static whitening her face, tiny screens in her eyes.

…Kiss kiss kiss…

The French windows were open a crack. The draught came from there. Beyond the glass, the orchard was dark as midnight.

It
was
night. Real night, now. Hours had passed.

Out in the orchard, the voice was in the trees and the ditches. There were no birds at the Hollow, no insects. Just Rick’s voice.

She stood, pins and needles pricking her legs, and walked to the French windows. Tim’s gaze followed her like a security camera. Mum didn’t seem to notice.

Was she being called or warned?

She took the brass handles and pushed the French windows open. They swung outwards, panes like mirrors flashing old images, and hung completely open.

Beyond the French windows, there was nothing.

The trees, the ditch at the end of the orchard, the lawn, even the patio just outside the windows… in such deep darkness, they might as well be gone. She looked at the floor. The flagstones extended to an inner jamb, a raised metal draught excluder. The light from Louise’s lamps similarly stopped at the rim, as if it bordered a sea of black ink.