The Secret of Crickley Hall (17 page)

Hadn't she, herself, sensed the strangely sombre ambience of Crickley Hall? She had felt it even before she set foot inside, when she had studied it from across the bridge. Was it haunted, then? No, she couldn't quite buy that. But it seemed susceptible to paranormal activity. Was that the same as being haunted? Eve had no idea, although she was vaguely aware that paranormal didn't always mean supernatural. She needed guidance.

Leaning against the counter and putting her mug down, Eve brought her hands to her face and pressed the fingertips against her closed eyelids.

What did it mean? Had Cam subconsciously contacted her from another place? Was it possible?
Was it really possible
?

She lowered her hands again and turned from the window, intending to finish her half-drunk coffee, when something caught her eye.

The old-fashioned tin spinning top that Cally had found in the upstairs storeroom last night was standing nearby on the work surface where she had left it. Attractive colours gleamed from the section Gabe had wiped with the palm of his hand; she moved closer.

Those colours were primary and vivid. Curious to see more of the toy's pattern, Eve reached into a drawer and took out a soft duster. Cally was anxious to play with the top for reasons only a child would understand and that morning Gabe had promised to check out the mechanism when he returned from work. 'Drop of oil is probably all it needs,' he had reassured his daughter.

Eve picked up the toy by its plunger and began wiping the metal surface with the duster, soon revealing glorious colours and patterns. She could not help but smile at its gaiety. Running round its bulging circumference were dancing children, their tiny hands joined and their knees bent in frozen motion. Their depiction was simple and quaintly archaic in style, but wonderfully rendered. They played under a bright blue sky, with gentle but radiant green hills on the horizon, a deeper and no less pleasant green beneath their feet.

She blew away dust from her face and continued to clean the toy. There were coloured rings top and bottom, with small stars in the bands of red and yellow. It was a joy to look at and Eve could only wonder why it appeared never to have been used—nor even touched. There were no blemishes or scratches, no dents in the tin, nor any chipped paint. The spiral plunger was not rusted, although it refused to sink into the ball when she pushed at it. Perhaps the turning wheel inside was locked with lack of use.

She was about to call Cally to come down and see it, but had another thought. She put the spinning top back on the work surface and went to the cupboard beneath the sink where Gabe had stored his toolbox. Drawing the scuffed and grimy metal box out and planting it on the floor, she opened up its flaps, then pulled it open wider to reveal all its sections. There was a small can of light machinery oil lying on its side, pointed plastic cap firmly in place.

Taking out the can, Eve returned to the pristine spinning top. She uncapped the oil nozzle and pushed it against the tiny gap where the top's spiral drive rod entered the tin body. She squeezed drops of oil into the gap, the rod's spiral shape helping the fluid to sink down into the interior workings of the top itself. For good measure, Eve lubricated the visible part of the spiral rod. Satisfied, she put down the oil can, wrapped her fingers round the handle at the top of the rod, and plunged down.

The ball began to turn and then the plunger rod stalled, became stuck. She drew it up once more, counted to three, and tried again. This time the rod went all the way down and the top began to spin. She pulled it up again, then pushed down, working up a rhythm, the ball spinning faster and faster, the dancers moving swiftly, catching more speed as Eve plunged, lifted, plunged again. The colours began to flow into each other, began to meld, the dancers becoming a blur, Eve holding her breath as she worked, a humming noise now rising from the toy, soaring higher in tone with each spin, the colours beginning to fade, to become white, absent of any design, and Eve, as she pushed and pulled, remembered that the absence of colour was not black but white, white like the spinning top, its whiteness capturing her attention, the humming somehow hypnotic, the gyration mesmerizing, so that she could feel herself sinking into a void…

The top spun faster, faster, the humming pitched higher, higher…

And then she experienced a blissful peace, a consuming warmth that could only be described as spiritual, its catalyst the spinning toy.

She moaned as in the whirling bleached brightness she saw the dancing children reappear but without colour, only in subtle shades of ghostly grey. Eve's head felt light and giddy, but her gaze never abandoned the soft spinning images before her. The humming transcended into voices and they belonged to children at play a long distance away. She searched for Cam's voice among them, but there were too many to distinguish just one.

The spinning top began to lose speed and the voices reverted to the high-pitched humming, which now dropped to a softer
thrumming
, which then sank into a drone, which sank to a dissonant groan. The colours returned, the patterns reappeared, the painted children continued their dance. The top rocked on its base, then came to a gradual stop.

There was a stillness in the kitchen until Eve blinked and swayed against the counter.

Outside, the sun still shone intermittently through breaks in the scudding clouds.

Inside the house, there was only quietness.

Until a child's voice called out to her.

21: DANCING DUST

It was neither excited nor urgent; just a small voice calling from a distance.

'Mummy.'

At first, Eve had to dissociate it from the other voices she had heard while entranced by the bright whirling toy. It was a little cry, but at the top of its range and it entered the kitchen from across the cavernous hall.

'Mummy,'
it came again and Eve, still lost in her imaginings, languidly stirred. Instinctively she moved towards the sound, a mother's natural response to the call of her child. Dazed, expectant, she hoped beyond all realistic hope that it was her son's voice she heard. Her heart beat faster; her breath was caught in her throat.

She stopped in the kitchen's open doorway and stared across the broad expanse of flagstones at her daughter, who stood at the turn of the stairway opposite. Sunlight flooded through the tall window behind her, transforming a drab mausoleum into a room of antiquated charm. Dark wood panelling blazed intricate grains of brown and honey, the stone slabs of the floor had mellowed to a soft yellow, and old pieces of furniture were given fresh grandeur.

'Look, Mummy.' Cally, with her pink teddy bear tucked under her arm, pointed at the middle ground between them.

Eve looked, but all she could see was thousands—
millions
—of golden dust motes drifting in the air as if disturbed by the warm rays from outside mingling with the cold draughts of the hall itself to generate lively breezes that carried glittering particles which wheeled and turned and dazzled like a galaxy of minute, shifting stars.

Eve gasped at the splendour, but she did not yet see as her daughter saw. She remembered the dust storm in the attic dormitory yesterday, how it had risen and whirled in the glare of their torches, but it had been nothing like this, nowhere near as thick and fast moving. These radiant particles seemed to be forming definite patterns.

Cally giggled. 'See them, Mummy, you see them dancing?'

And that was when Eve began to discern shapes among the tiny purling dust motes. It was like staring into one of those illusory picture puzzles where hidden in repetitious patterns were individual objects, persons or animals; unfocused eyes had to be used until, usually quite suddenly, the main image appeared in 3-dimensional effect. The same kind of thing seemed to be happening to Eve right now. The figures inside and also made of swirling dust became clear in a rush. They were still part of the great mass filling the sunlight in the hall, but they suddenly took on individuality, images emerging from the whole while still remaining part of it. The closest of the children had their backs to her as they danced past, holding hands, moving from right to left in a circle so that she could now make out the children facing her on the other side. The spinning top! They were like the children on the spinning top! Dancing in a ring, holding hands, their legs bending and straightening as they skipped along, as if they were
real
children, not just colourful illustrations. And now she heard their happy chants, distant as before, but nevertheless voices raised in happy union.

The same warmth as before came back to her—that
spiritual
warmth—and she wanted to weep because there was a sadness mixed with the joy, a longing, a yearning, for something that could not yet be.

She became lost in the vision. Fantasy or revelation, what was it meant to be? Cally saw them too; she jumped up and down on the small square landing at the turn of the stairs and she pointed at the dancing children, crying out at the fun of it. Because of that, Eve knew that it was real, it was no hallucination: she shared the sight with her daughter.

She could not see their faces clearly, but she could at least make out their attire, the boys in short trousers and braces, the girls in frocks and some with plaits in their hair. Shoes were not visible, but Eve could see socks on the boys, most rumpled down round ankles. She tried desperately to distinguish their features, but it was like watching a moving stippled painting, the dust motes representing the stippling. But she could count them as they passed by. There were nine of them. Nine children. Nine little headstones down at the church graveyard. Nine out of the eleven child victims that had been taken by the flood more than half a century ago.

Why were their ghosts still here?

What could be here for them at Crickley Hall?

It was as though the questions had broken the vision.

For everything changed.

•

The sunlight disappeared, the sun obscured by an immense roiling raincloud, and the great hall was once more thrown into gloom and shadow. Rain pattered on the tall window and Cally's figure on the landing was suddenly shaded.

Eve felt her heart lurch, as if fear itself had entered the hall. Before her, the swirling specks of dust that had glittered so brilliantly but a moment ago dispersed, then disappeared. Eve either heard, or imagined she heard, a faraway wail that swiftly faded to a barren silence broken only by the rain on the windowpanes.

'
No, wait
—' Eve began to plead but almost instantly there was nothing left of the dancing wraiths or the dust that had constructed them.

Eve's body sagged as if a peculiar despair had hit her, and she almost sank to her knees. But she soon stiffened when she heard a new sound. Cally had heard it too and she was looking wide-eyed up at the landing above her. Eve slowly turned her head, following her daughter's gaze, her eyes lifting.

Swish-thwack
! The sound came. Again:
swish-thwack
! A pause, again:
swish-thwack
. It seemed to be moving along the landing, although there was no one there to be seen.

Swish-thwack! Swish-thwack
! Moving towards the stairway.

To Eve it sounded like something smacking leather… no, like something smacking against flesh. The
swish
of its fall, the
thwack
when it hit.

Swish-thwack!

The loudest of all, at the top of the stairs.

Then, nothing more.

Only the rain continuing to beat against the window.

22: THE CARD

They trudged down the lane, Eve and Cally with their hoods pulled over their heads against the soft rain, Chester trotting alongside them, restrained by his leash which was gripped by Cally. The tufty-haired dog was mindless of the wet, only happy to be free of that cold old house that wasn't his proper home. Occasionally, he would peer up at his mistresses as if to ask where they were going, but they both just made encouraging noises at him.

The river beside the lane rushed by, journeying in the same direction, towards the sea, its flow much swifter than their pace; white spume washed against the leafy banks and broke over embedded boulders; debris of leaves, small branches and stones were carried in the flux and water spray cast a thin mist over the river's rough bubbling surface. Trees that edged the lane and the opposite river-bank glistened with silvery raindrops, while the steep verdant cliffs behind them were darkly lush, which somehow made the gorge seem narrower, more enclosed, than it really was.

As they passed the small Norman church of St Mark's on their left, Eve made a surreptitious sign of the cross over her left breast, offering up a short silent prayer as she did so. Cally barely gave the church a glance; she was too busy trying to keep Chester from running ahead of them.

'Is it far now, Mummy?' she asked after bringing the dog to heel with a sharp tug on the leash.

'You know it isn't, silly,' Eve told her, smiling down at Cally and taking pleasure in the rosiness that had appeared in her daughter's cheeks. 'You can see the village from here. Look, there's the big bridge and the shops are just beyond it.'

'I like walking downhill,' Cally announced, 'but I don't like walking up. It makes my legs sleepy.'

Eve chuckled. God, it was good to be out in the fresh air, rain or not. Good for both of them. And good exercise for Chester, too. He'd almost gone into hysteria when she attached the leash to his collar and he realized they were going for a walk. He couldn't get away from Crickley Hall fast enough. Before the vision, she had felt the same way.

She wondered at what she and Cally had really witnessed in the sunny, dust-filled hall.

For a brief time, the sunshine pouring through the big window over the stairs had altered the whole atmosphere of Crickley Hall, changing this one room at least from a sombre, dispiriting chamber into an imposing open space, whose panelled walls and flagstone floor embraced the light, became warm, radiated their own glow. (Had this been the original architect's intention? Had he specifically designed the great hall with its high, south-facing window to catch the sunlight and reveal the room's true grandeur? If so, it was the only redeeming feature in a house that had all the charm of a large neglected tomb.) It was the sun's rays that had made the dust visible, draughts and heated air causing the particles to rise and float. And it was the dust that had made the dancing spectres visible; and it was when the sun had been obscured by rain clouds and Crickley Hall was once again cast in shadow and gloom that they had disappeared.