The Secret of Crickley Hall (58 page)

She closed her eyes.

'They're trying to tell me, the children are trying to speak to me. They're here. Eve, the children are still in this house. They've never left it.'

Her eyes opened.

'Can't you sense them?' she asked Eve.

And Eve could sense something. No, she could hear something. A susurration of whispers. Growing in volume, filling the corners of the hall. She gasped when the colourful top on the floor began to turn slowly.

The sounds were of young voices, all whispering words she could not understand because one overlaid the other, all mixed together so that they were incoherent. But she knew they were frightened voices. The clamour rose, but still only in whispers, and the top spun faster. Eve looked at Lili, confused and mystified.

'They're trying so hard,' said Lili as she gazed in wonder around the vast room. 'But there's something preventing them.' She gave a shiver. 'There's another entity here, but it won't come forward. Not yet.'

The psychic stared down at the spinning top whose colours were beginning to blend, to become murky, and then to become a white blur. A humming sound came from it that was neither musical nor harsh, but which ascended to a steady
thrum.
And the whisperings now sounded like the soft flurry of distant birds on the wing.

But then a voice, a real voice, a man's voice, interrupted everything, even though it was just a murmuring coming from the landing above.

The spinning top began to wobble as it slowed down and its humming grew deeper in tone. Colours appeared on its tin surface once again and the dancing figures started to become clearer. Suddenly, the toy lurched, faltered, then fell onto its side to roll away in an arc, coming to a stop behind Eve. The whisperings ceased.

Lili inclined her head, searching for the source of the new voices. Loren came into view from a doorway along the landing, followed by a tall man, and it was his voice they could hear. The girl kept looking round at the man, as if taking in every word he said.

The couple paused and through the balcony's railings, Lili saw Loren pull open a cupboard door. The man's voice was strong and clear enough to be understood from below.

'We'll come back to it after I've had a word with your mother about the attic. I shouldn't like anything to be disturbed up there now I've set up.'

'That's Gordon Pyke,' Eve told Lili. 'He's the investigator.' Then, as if she had only just noticed: 'Lili, what happened to those sounds? The whisperings.'

The psychic continued to look up at the two people on the landing, who were now making their way to the stairs.

'Lili?''

The psychic dropped her eyes to find Eve staring at her. 'They've gone. Something disturbed them. I think they were frightened away.'

'It was the children, wasn't it? The orphans who drowned in this place all those years ago.'

'Yes. Yes, I believe—I'm
sure
—it was.'

Pyke and Loren were descending the stairs and Lili saw that the man, who had a small goatee beard, was very tall. Something—an intuition—seemed to click in her mind as she watched him, but the thought hadn't yet made itself apparent. Pyke had left something at the top of the stairs; it was a large suitcase.

Leaving the stairs, the so-called 'ghost-hunter' walked round the puddles with Loren. 'You appear to have been flooded,' he remarked needlessly as he looked around the hall. He craned his neck to peer up at the ceiling. 'Don't worry, I'll find its root cause and then we'll be able to stop it happening again.'

Something about the man was bothering Lili as he and Loren came towards them. As Pyke approached, she gazed intently into his eyes.

The sensing hit her like a physical blow, almost taking her breath away.

Oh my God!
she thought. Then, urgently and aloud: 'It's him, Eve! He was the boy in the photograph. The one you called Maurice Stafford.'

68: OBSTRUCTION

Gabe brought the Range Rover to a sliding halt, the bonnet nodding at the leafy fallen tree one foot away.

Hell! This can't be happening!

Travelling too fast, he had almost smashed into the obstacle that sprawled across the country lane, seeing it only just in time to slam on the brakes. He thanked the Lord for quick reactions and EBA—Emergency Brake Assist. Electronic traction control had helped also, preventing the vehicle from going into a skid.

The Range Rover's full-beam headlights lit up the blockage and Gabe quickly surveyed it. Lightning stammered and illuminated the scene even more and from where he was sitting he could see that the toppled tree filled the full width of the lane, its branches having crushed the tall hedges on the right, its split trunk creating a solid barrier on his left. Gabe slumped back in his seat in momentary despair and uttered a sound that fully formed would have been a curse. Thunder roared.

Without further hesitation, he pushed open the driver's door and stepped out into the storm. His eyes narrowed against the driving rain as he pulled up the collar of his reefer jacket and tucked one lapel beneath the other to protect his neck. Closing the door with a thud, he moved towards the high barrier of branches, the vehicle's head-lights helping him assess the damage ahead. He walked to both sides of the lane and found no way round the obstruction. At least, not in the Range Rover.

He was about to climb the grass verge where the shattered tree stump still smouldered, the fire caused by the lightning strike extinguished by the wind-blown rain, when he was distracted by a single light approaching down the lane behind him. As the light drew closer it shone directly into his eyes, dazzling them so he was forced to raise a hand in front of his face.

The voice fought to be heard over the storm.
'Mr Caleigh? Is that you?'

Gabe blinked and was able to make out a dark figure behind the torchbeam as it was lowered a little.

He raised his own voice.
'Who's there?'

The torch was dropped even further so that its beam pointed at the ground. By the reflected glare of the Range Rover's headlights he recognized the approaching figure. The man with the torch wore a storm coat with the hood up over a flat cap.

'Percy? That you?'

'Yers, Mr Caleigh,'
came the shouted response.
'It's Percy Judd. Had an accident, has yer?'

Gabe could barely comprehend the old gardener's words over the noise of the gale and pounding rain, but he caught the name all right. He waited for Percy Judd to get closer before speaking again.

'What the hell you doing out on a night like this, Percy?'

The gardener leaned close to Gabe's ear.

'Goin' to the same place as you, Mr Caleigh. Makin' my way to Crickley Hall.'

Gabe jerked his head away in surprise. 'Right now? Why?'

Percy seemed reluctant to explain. He could hardly tell his employer that it was the incessant whining and then howling of a dog had brought him out of his home this stormy night. That and his own very real sense of unease. 'Worried about the weather, sir,' he only half lied, again talking directly into Gabe's ear. 'It's flood weather, Mr Caleigh, jus' like las' time, them who remembers tell me.'

'I thought it couldn't happen again.'

'Nothin' can stop the waters pourin' off the moors, not when it's been rainin' fer weeks an' the storm's this fierce. It's the build-up, y'see. All the precautions can only limit the damage, can't stop the floodin' itself.'

Great,
Gabe thought to himself.
Something else to worry about.

'I tried phonin' the house,' Percy went on, 'but the lines must be down. Couldn't get nothin', jus' a dead line.'

As lightning flashed again, Gabe pointed at the fallen elm. He waited for the thunder to roll away before attempting to speak to the old man again. Percy stood there unbowed by the wind and rain, his back straight, rainwater dribbling from the peak of his flat cap which protruded from the hood.

'Road's blocked all the way across,' Gabe told him. 'Can't get round it in the car.'

Percy quickly appraised the situation. 'Then we'll have to walk round it, sir. Not too far to Crickley Hall from here; we'll make it all right.'

'You still wanna' go there? You don't have to, you know—I can take care of things myself.' He was only thinking of the old man's stamina. It was still a long way to Crickley Hall no matter what Percy said.

'No, I wants to go with yer. Set my mind at rest, like.' He seemed resolute.

Gabe clamped Percy's upper arm. 'Okay. I appreciate it. Let's find a way past the goddamn tree.'

He leaned into the Range Rover and switched off the engine and lights, but turned on the hazard lights to warn any approaching vehicles on that side of the lane. Together, bending into the gale, Gabe and Percy headed towards the charred tree stump on the grass verge. Without the car, it was going to be one hell of a journey, thought Gabe.

69: ESCAPE

Never had Eve seen a personality change so fast. One moment Pyke was striding towards her and Lili, bringing Loren with him, his limp hardly evident as he avoided the puddles, only friendly curiosity in his eyes (he had been regarding the psychic), the next his face was screwed up into a snarl, nothing but fury now blazing from those same but frighteningly different eyes.

His slight limp was no impediment as he marched towards Lili, raising his thick stick over his head as he came.

Lili took a step backwards and lifted her arms to defend herself from the blow that surely would follow. Loren froze, her complexion paling, her mouth open in consternation.

'Don't—' Eve began to say, but Lili screamed, drowning the next words, the sound shrilling through the great hall.

Pyke—Maurice Stafford? Lili had said he was Maurice Stafford!—barely paused, the walking stick quivering at the end of its backward arc, about to come crashing down. His face was a mask of sheer hatred and wrath, as if the exposure had revealed his true nature.

Lili kept her arms high to protect herself, her terrified scream reaching its peak.

All the lights flickered. They went out.

•

Shocked, and with Lili's scream ringing in her ears, Eve reached out for Loren in the darkness. Just before the lights went off she had seen Pyke's walking stick begin its descent, then heard it strike something—she knew it was Lili, for the scream turned into a howl of pain. Footsteps clacked on the stone floor, but Eve could see nothing until the lightning flashed outside and the grand hall was illuminated by a stark silver-white coruscation that came through the tall window over the stairs.

In the sequence of still-lifes caused by the lightning's strobing, Eve saw that Lili was retreating to the front door, was pulling it open, was rushing out, was a black silhouette against the flashing light that spilled through the portal.

•

Lili had already began to duck and hold up her arms to protect her head when all the lights flickered then died, only the absorbing thickness of her coat sleeves preventing serious damage to her right forearm when the stout cane struck. Her scream turned into a painful cry.

Horror had gripped her the moment the man once known as Maurice Stafford had come striding purposefully towards her, the walking stick held aloft as a weapon, his face rendered ugly by its expression. She managed to recover enough to turn and run.

Lightning lit up the hall as her panic drove her to the front door, her boots clacking on the flagstones, her right arm numbed by the blow and hanging down by her side, her left hand stretched before her. When her hand touched wood, her fingers scrabbled for the doorknob; she found it, twisted it, pulled the nail-studded door open and escaped into the storm-filled night.

Almost blinded by the fierce stuttering light, she ran across the rain-sodden lawn, mortal dread of what she had left inside the house (and it was not only the limping man that caused this dread, for she had sensed other terrors lurking within those solid walls) driving her on. The wind seemed to contest her progress and she had to lean into it, her left hand raised palm outwards to keep the rain out of her eyes. Thunder boomed as the soft wet earth sucked at her boots with each stumbling stride and she cringed under its power.

She failed to see the heavy, black seat of the swing as it hurtled towards her from the darkness. It struck her right temple, stunning her so badly that she fell.

Lili lay there in the close-cropped grass with rain hammering at her outstretched body, the fingers of one hand curling into the muddy soil. She tried to lift her head, but it took too much effort.

Lili passed out.

70: EPICENTRE

Eve reached into the darkness for Loren, but could barely see her own hand in front of her.

'Loren!'
she hissed, but there was no response.

The lights of the black iron chandelier high overhead suddenly came on, dimly at first, then seeming to catch, growing brighter. They dimmed again, as did all the other lights around Crickley Hall that were switched on. Brighter once more, then waning to a lacklustre but steady glow that threw shadows and created gloomy recesses around the hall and landing.

Eve realized what had happened. Somewhere in the Hollow Bay area power lines had been struck by lightning or blown down by the gale—either way, electricity to homes in the locale, and probably the whole of the harbour village too, was out. Crickley Hall's generator, the generator that Gabe had fixed and serviced only last Sunday, had kicked in and was now the power source for the house. The light was weak, barely adequate in fact, but it was better than total blackout.

She saw the tall man—Pyke, Stafford, whatever his real name was!—standing by the front door which he had just slammed shut.

He looked at Loren, who was standing frightened and disorientated a few feet away from her mother, then at Eve.

'Your friend won't get far,' Pyke said in an unexcited, almost friendly, way. 'Not on a night like this. And even if she does manage to find help—which I doubt very much; those people who've chosen to stay in the area will be locked inside their homes with barricades round their doors and windows—well, by then it will be too late.'