Haunted (18 page)

He pressed STOP and switched off the machine at its power source. Resting back against a wine rack, Ash drew deeply on the cigarette, the question returning: why? What the hell were they up to? What did they expect to achieve? He scanned the cellar until he was reasonably satisfied there was no one else down there with him, glad he had insisted that the dog be shut outside the house for the night. Christina’s voice? Either he’d been mistaken, or there were pipes or a shaft that might have carried the sound to the basement from elsewhere in the building. That had to be the explanation, surely. He still had no idea how they’d managed to override the power switch for the equipment in the library, but somehow they had. Tomorrow he would find out, even if it meant taking the machinery apart, piece by piece.

His throat felt dry and he had to admit to himself, despite his rationalizations, his nerves were unsettled. Idiot! He was allowing the Mariells to get to him. Angry, he pulled a wine bottle from the rack and wiped dust from the label with the palm of his hand. Château Cheval-Blanc, 1932. No doubt a good year. He pushed it back and reached for another. More vintage wine, he realized with some envy. Château Climens, 1929. Ash moved further along to find shelf spaces among the racks, inside these alcohol of a harder nature. He took down an Armagnac and peeled at the neck wax with a thumbnail. Let the Mariells complain, he grumbled to himself. Maybe I’ll just counter-complain. Cigarette dangling between his lips, he twisted off the bottle’s top.

A muffled giggle came from somewhere in the cellar.

He turned sharply, in time to catch a shadow move inside one of the alcoves. In his surprise, the brandy slipped from his grasp, the cigarette fell from his mouth. The glass shattered against the stone, its contents exploding outwards, splattering Ash’s trousers, spreading across the floor in a shiny pool.

Ash’s startled cry rang round the cellar when the alcohol burst into flame.

Shocked, he leapt backwards. He saw there were flaming patches on his trousers and hastily slapped them out, moving further away from the fire as he did so.

Grabbing a dust sheet, he ran forward again and threw it over the flames, smothering them completely. He stamped on the covering, crunching broken glass beneath, working systematically so that the whole area was covered, fearful that the material itself would catch alight.

He had no time to consider the sly noise that had caused the freak accident, but realized that the cigarette he had dropped must have ignited the brandy; he was now concerned only with snuffing the fire before it had a chance to take hold.

Moments later he sagged against the wine rack, the battle won, the sheet blackened and charred. The shock and the exertion had drenched his body in perspiration. He felt hot. He felt as if he were burning up.

Cautiously he lifted the smouldering dust sheet. The fire was out, with not even a scorchmark on the stone. Yet when he straightened, he saw orange reflections dancing on the walls and ceiling of the underground chamber.

He looked around, wildly. It couldn’t be! The fire was out! But flickering shadows stated otherwise.

His legs were burning. He stepped back, slapping at them once more. But there was no fire. There was no fire, yet he could
feel
the heat of it! And it was becoming difficult to breathe as oxygen was absorbed. And he could
hear
the fire’s crackle.

But there was no fire!

As if to reassure his sensibilities, as if to reason with himself, he checked the thermometer. To his dismay, the mercury was rising rapidly. It was soaring. So fast, so unbelievably fast!

Ash felt weak, the heat sapping his strength. Breathing had become torturous.

He fell away as the thermometer glass shattered, hands instinctively protecting his face from the shards.

Its explosive violence galvanized Ash into action. He staggered towards the stairs, clawing at his shirt collar as he went, choking on unseen smoke. He stumbled blindly against the wooden steps, feeling their brittle heat as he pushed himself upwards, desperate to get out of the cellar. Flames and moving shadows flickered on the walls around him. He could hear the
crumple
of burning wood. Soon the bottles would burst from the heat, their discharge encouraging the fire, feeding it. He could feel – could smell – his clothes smouldering, could feel the tightening of his skull as his hair stiffened, became dry.

Ash forced himself to climb, gasping for air, the heat searing his skin. He was near the top. The cellar door was closed. He stretched a hand towards the handle, yelling when his fingers closed on the hot metal.

He collapsed onto his knees, holding his burnt hand with the other. His breathing was painful, his senses were swimming from the lack of pure air. Ash pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and used it to grasp the metal again.

His hand slipped.

Below him, the inferno raged. He cringed against its roar.

This time he used both hands over bundled handkerchief, ignoring the pain, forcing the handle to turn.

The lock released. He pulled the door inwards. And his eyes grew bright with new horror.

Looming over him was the darkened figure of a girl, her hair wild around her face, her nightgown flowing outwards as though tossed by the storm below.

The figure leaned towards him, a blackened shape whose features for the moment remained unseen. Ash cringed inwards, his muscles tightening, shrinking from her touch.

But as she drew near, her face lightened as if revealed by the invisible flames, and it was Christina’s concerned eyes that searched his, Christina’s gentle hand that lit upon his shoulder. Her lips formed his name, though he did not hear. He saw the fiery flickers reflected in her pupils, flames that quickly diminished as the heat at his back cooled and the rumbling sounds of burning died.

A movement behind her caught his eye. Seeker accompanied Christina, but stayed back, head low, shoulders quivering, looking balefully towards the cellar steps. The mewled whimpers from its squeezed throat were almost childlike in their misery.

Ash found that he could only rise with the girl’s help, such was the extent of his shock. She tugged beneath his arms, lifting, and he had to cling to the doorframe for leverage.

He leaned against her and she sagged under his weight. When he turned to scream at the inferno below there were no flames and there was no heat.

The wooden steps merely led down to a cold, dank cellar where the dim light bulb swayed, sending shadows rushing from one wall to the other.

Edith awoke, the nightmare still parading through her mind. She sprang up in bed, her panic related to the panic in her dream.

Her throat was hoarse as she sucked in air as though the smoke from the nightmare was in her own bedroom. Her breasts heaved, the effort of breathing laboured, her windpipe shrunken against the imaginary fumes; but the pain it caused shifted, clutching at her chest.

Edith knew the signs, knew this searing was not part of the dream, but was real and familiar. She struggled to reach the bedside lamp, panic barely contained, blinking away tears that had as much to do with fright as the hurting. Plump fingers felt the switch. Light shone down on the pill bottle that stood near the lamp’s base. The top was hurriedly loosened, a glyceryl trinitrate tablet shaken into the palm of a hand. Edith pushed it beneath her tongue and rested back against the pillow, waiting for the tablet to dissolve and subdue the pain demon, aware that on this occasion the beast might refuse to be caged. But the agony gradually softened and her breathing eventually eased. Her shaking subsided to a trembling.

Sometimes Edith would spit out the glyceryl trinitrate tablet before it had dissolved completely, for the headache it could bring on was almost as fearsome as the torment in her chest. This night she did not.

Supported by the girl, Ash lurched through the bedroom door, a man drunk not from alcohol but from shock and fatigue. His body flagged with the very toil of breathing.

Christina laid him on the bed, lifting his legs so that he was supine. She left him, going to the bureau where she poured vodka into a tumbler.

‘The fire . . .’ he murmured when she returned.

Christina took his hand and placed the drink in it. ‘There was no fire, David. Don’t you understand that? It’s just part of the haunting.’

He rested on an elbow and said nothing more until he had taken a large gulp of vodka. He winced at its sting, then looked at her, shaking his head. ‘That’s not possible. The heat—’

‘It was in your mind,’ Christina insisted gently. ‘There wasn’t a fire in the cellar, only a memory.’

Thoughts tussled inside his head. ‘Your sister . . . it was true, you did have a twin. She started the fire in the cellar all those years ago.’

Christina looked down on him as if in pity. ‘There’s no danger, David. You’re perfectly safe.’

‘She was burned down there . . .’

‘You’re shivering. Let me cover you.’

Christina helped him out of his jacket, then removed his shoes. She pulled the blanket over him and sat down on the edge of the bed, her hand smoothing dark hair away from his forehead. Her fingers lingered on his cheek.

His breathing not yet settled, Ash looked pleadingly at her. ‘Christina, tell me what’s happening here at Edbrook.’

Her reply was not meant to be unkind. ‘Weren’t you going to tell us that?’ Her hand slid to his shoulder. ‘Just rest, David, push all those bad thoughts from your mind. You look so pale, so tired.’

But he persisted. ‘Yesterday . . . a few minutes after I arrived . . . I thought I saw you in the garden with Simon. But it couldn’t have been you . . .’

‘Try to calm yourself.’

‘There’s another girl here . . .’

‘We’ve tried to tell you that. Rest, David.’

His exhaustion was not easily resisted. He grabbed her wrist. ‘I came to your room earlier – you weren’t there.’

He found her voice soothing despite his agitation. ‘I’ve kept to my room since early evening, just as you requested. I must have been sleeping when you knocked – I sleep very soundly, David.’

‘But Miss Webb – she didn’t answer either when I went to her room.’

Christina smiled reassuringly, as might a mother whose child was afraid of the red-eyed monster lurking in the bedroom closet. ‘Nanny often takes sleeping pills at night – she hasn’t slept well for years. I doubt you’d have roused her even if you’d beaten down the door.’ She dabbed abstractedly at the edge of the blanket, smoothing its rumpled line. ‘Perhaps you did disturb my sleep – I don’t know. I seem to remember having a bad dream, a nightmare. I woke sensing something was wrong. I couldn’t obey your instructions, David, I had to leave my room and find out what was troubling me.’

‘I’m glad you did,’ he told her. He sighed wearily, realizing how exhausted he was. His eyes closed for a moment, glass resting against his chest. Christina took it from him to place it on the bedside cabinet.

His eyes opened again. ‘Tell me about your sister . . .’

She glanced away, giving a small shake of her head as if such memories were too distressing. A tear slowly glistened a path on her pale cheek. Ash gently coaxed her down beside him.

‘I know, Christina,’ he whispered, ‘I know how it hurts. I miss my own sister, even though it was so long ago when she . . . she . . .’

Christina raised her head so that she could search his eyes. ‘Why is it so difficult for you to say? She drowned, and for some reason you can’t accept the word. Why does it make you so afraid, David?’

His reply was cold, toneless, a dull acceptance. ‘Because it was my fault.’ Disbelief, confusion – whatever her expression might have been, he repeated his guilt. ‘It was my fault that she drowned.’

He stared beyond Christina, looking into a distance of which time was the measurement. And the memories came easily, those childhood times that had been held at bay for so many years, contained like some terrible blight that might cause havoc if allowed freedom. They now emerged as if from a broken chrysalis of consciousness. He wondered, himself, at the outflow, dismayed that they could so suddenly pour through unchecked, arriving to taunt him, to remind him of events past that would best be forgotten. But nothing is truly lost from the mind’s labyrinthal vaults: although traumas may be hidden, perhaps placated, not all can be laid to rest; some merely lie low in anticipation of future arousal. Yet strangely, they brought with them a peculiar relief. Ash talked, and as he did so, visions played before him, their retrieval a smooth and unstoppable dredging. Ash shuddered inwardly as he remembered.