The Woman in Black (13 page)

She turned and walked away from the retreating Jeep, through the village.

She knew where she was headed.

Eve stood before the burned-out exterior of the building and checked the sign:

Then she looked at the key she held in her hand. ‘HJ’ was inscribed on it in the same font that had been used on the sign.

The receding sun caused the shadows to lengthen, made the blackened front windows look like two ghostly, haunted eyes, the doorway a gaping maw.

Clutching the key tightly before her, like a crucifix to ward off vampires, she stepped inside.

The inside of the building had been so blackened
by fire that it seemed to make what light remained of the dying day hasten away. For a fleeting second she thought of the black mould and rot covering the walls of Eel Marsh House.
This is what it’ll look like eventually
, she thought.

She stood in the hallway. The offices were panelled half in wood and half in glass and ran the length of one side, with what remained of a staircase heading downwards at the opposite end. The wallpaper was charred black and mildewed green. To one side of Eve was a large hole in the floorboards, its edges black, where she could see right into the basement. She walked to the edge of the hole and looked down, but saw only further ruin, swirling dust.

Entering the nearest office, she checked it for anything that the key might fit but found nothing. She checked the next office along, came up with the same result. She then made her way down the staircase into the basement.

The first thing she noticed was a charred, built-up pile in the centre of the room, looking like the remains of a bonfire. Eve frowned. Had the fire been started deliberately?

The blackened pile still held vague shapes. Eve carefully peered into it, checking for anything that might have a keyhole among the debris – a locked box, perhaps – but she could see nothing.

Then something caught her eye. She picked it up. An old doll, soot-covered and singed. It looked like Judy, the companion to Edward’s Mr Punch puppet. There was no joy in the doll’s face. Its eyes were wide and fearful, its mouth a shocked O. With a shiver, Eve threw it back where she had found it.

As she did so, she noticed a small archway in the far corner, covered by a metal gate, fire-blackened and rusted, but still looking substantial and solid. Eve pulled at it. With a creaking of ancient, disused hinges, it opened. Eve walked through it and found herself in a narrow corridor. At the end of it was a stack of safety deposit boxes. Eve felt her heart skip, and the key in her hand suddenly felt hot.

She tried the key in the first box. It fitted but didn’t turn. She tried it in the next one. The same thing happened.

The third one opened.

Dread mingling with excitement, she reached inside, removed what was there.

An envelope.

She read the name and inscription:
Nathaniel Drablow, on his eighteenth birthday.
She turned it over. It had a wax seal on the back and had never been opened.

The gate clanged shut. Startled, she turned to
see a figure silhouetted against the dying light. She heard rather than saw a lock being turned, and ran to the gate.

‘You can’t go back,’ said a rasping, cracked voice. ‘I’m sorry.’

Eve recognised the old, blind man she had seen when she arrived in the village. He was much bigger, much stronger than she had first realised. She pulled at the gate, but it held fast.

‘What are you doing?’ she said, her voice tinged with hysteria and disbelief. ‘You can’t do this. You can’t lock me in here and leave me …’

He turned and began walking down the corridor.

‘Please,’ she shouted, her voice echoing round the walls. ‘Please … come back …’

He stopped, but didn’t turn to face her. ‘If you go back to the house,’ he said, his voice heavy as if the reluctant deliverer of an unpleasant message, ‘the killings will start again …’

‘What d’you mean?’ asked Eve.

‘You heard my friends …’ He nodded along with his words.

‘Your friends?’

‘Yes … they sang you their song …’

Eve remembered. The children’s voices, the choir she had heard the first time she entered the village. Heard but not seen.

‘Yes,’ said Eve. ‘I heard them.’

‘Well, you should have listened.’ He continued towards the stairs.

Eve knew she had to do something, say something, to get him to come back and let her out.

‘It’s her, isn’t it?’ she called. ‘Jennet Humfrye. That’s who you’re talking about.’

The old man froze. But still he wouldn’t turn to face her. ‘Lost her boy Nathaniel in the marsh,’ he said, his voice now quavering and faint. ‘Then killed herself. But she came back for the other children. Oh, yes …’

Eve tried to keep him talking. Not just to get him to let her out, but also because she wanted to know. ‘But how does she …’

He talked over the top of her, reciting a verse. Eve wasn’t sure if he had made it up himself.

‘Whenever she’s seen, and whomever by, one thing’s certain, a child shall die.’ He shook his head. ‘So true, so true … And that’s why I can’t allow you to go back to the house.’

Eve nodded, taking his words in. ‘But,’ she said, ‘a child has died already.’

The old man slowly turned back to face Eve.

His sightless eyes staring at her.

James sat in the classroom unable to concentrate on his work. Tom’s death had upset them all, but he seemed to feel it most keenly. Since they had left London Tom had become his friend, and, although he wasn’t entirely sure he liked him, a friend was a friend and you were meant to be upset when something like this happened.

He wanted to run away, as far and as fast as possible. But he knew he couldn’t. He could hardly leave the house without Mrs Hogg’s say-so, so he sat there, fidgeting with nervous energy and apprehension.

He looked over at Edward, the boy who used to be his best friend. He didn’t know what had happened. It wasn’t just Edward losing his mother, it was everything. He knew he should keep trying to
do nice things for Edward, but what was the point? Edward had changed, and he had to accept it.

He looked down at his work. He couldn’t do any more writing, and he couldn’t sit here any longer. He put his hand up.

‘Miss,’ he said, trying to attract Mrs Hogg’s attention, ‘I’m hungry.’

Jean put down her knitting and looked at him over the top of her reading glasses. ‘Finish your work.’ She returned to her needles.

James put his hand up again. ‘Miss,’ he said.

Jean looked up once more, irritated this time. ‘Yes, James.’

‘I’ve finished.’

She sighed. ‘Then write it out again.’

‘But Miss Parkins lets us—’

‘Miss Parkins is not here!’ Jean slammed the knitting down on the table with such force that the rest of the class jumped. Jean seemed to regret her loss of composure, took a few seconds and gathered herself. ‘I have no concern as to what Miss Parkins lets you do. You will do as I say. Now be quiet and write it out again.’

The knitting was resumed.

James couldn’t sit still. His right foot was bouncing up and down so hard he felt it might fall off. He had an idea and stuck his hand in the air once more.

‘Miss,’ he said.

Jean was getting angry now and was about to shout at him or hand him some punishment, but he continued talking.

‘I need to go to the toilet, Miss.’

Jean sighed and shook her head. ‘Go,’ she said. ‘Just go.’

Outside the room, James looked up and down the hallway. Instead of going to the toilet as she would expect him to do, he turned right and headed towards the kitchen, smiling to himself at how clever he had been.

Unaware of the dark-clothed figure watching him from the top of the stairs.

‘What … what’s your name?’

Eve stared at the sightless eyes before her. She knew she had to get his attention, talk him round. Make him unlock the gate. She had dealt with enough children’s tantrums to know how to calm someone down. She should be able to deal with this old man.

‘My name?’ he said, as if it were a question he hadn’t been asked for years and had to think about. ‘Jacob.’

‘Jacob,’ she said. She smiled, knowing he couldn’t see it but hoping that the lift would show in her voice. ‘Hello. I’m Eve. How long have you lived here, Jacob?’

He flicked his head around as if bothered by a troublesome fly. ‘Always …’

‘I thought everyone had left the village?’

He nodded. ‘They did. I’m the last. The last …’

Eve leaned forward. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Dead.’ He spat the word out like gristle. ‘All the others are dead.’ His laugh was high-pitched and unhinged. ‘But she couldn’t catch me.’ He pointed to the milky dead orbs of his eyes. ‘Born like this …’ He wiped his fingers across his eyes and didn’t blink.

‘So how did you survive, Jacob?’

He pointed to his eyes once more. ‘Because of these …’

‘Right. And how do you still survive?’

‘Hunt. At night.’ He leaned closer. She could smell the rankness of him. ‘When eyes don’t mean nothing …’

Eve breathed deeply through her mouth. ‘Jacob,’ she said, trying to appear calm and reasonable. ‘I need to go and take the children from the house. I need to keep them safe. I can’t just leave them there.’

Jacob’s face took on a thoughtful expression. He moved towards the gate. Emboldened by this, Eve continued.

‘I saw her, Jacob. That means she’s coming again, doesn’t it?’

Jacob stopped, shook his head. ‘No … no, no, no …’

‘Jacob,’ said Eve, urgency in her voice now, ‘listen to me. I promise if you let me go and get the
children, take them to safety, we’ll leave and never come back.’

He let out a sound like a wounded animal. ‘Too late,’ he said, ‘too late …’

‘Please,’ said Eve, panic rising within her, ‘please, Jacob, let me go …’

Jacob lunged for the gate. His hands went straight through the bars and grabbed hold of Eve. Stunned and unable to fight back, she felt him pulling her towards him, crashing her against the metal.

‘Too late … too late …’

James thought he was being really clever. He hadn’t lied to Mrs Hogg, not really. Well, not about being hungry, that bit was true. And he probably did need to go to the toilet, just not yet. He had to get something to eat first.

He opened the door to the walk-in larder in the kitchen and stood before the shelves, deciding what to take. There wasn’t a great deal of choice, but, he thought, beggars can’t be choosers. He found a few oatcakes and stuffed them into his pocket. They were for later, when he couldn’t sleep and woke up peckish, but they wouldn’t do now. He looked for something more.

The dark-clothed woman with the bleached-bone face entered the kitchen, the walls cracking
and blackening as she approached. She brought with her the sound of the eels slithering in the water beyond the island, and the faint smell of decay.

So engrossed was he in his task that James didn’t notice the presence behind him. But he did see what he wanted. A jar of toffees on the top shelf.

James started to climb.

Jacob pulled Eve’s face right up against the bars. She was only inches away from him. She could smell his unwashed skin, his decayed teeth, his rancid clothing. She was so close she could see tiny insects moving about on his scalp.

‘She gets inside your head,’ Jacob was saying, spraying Eve with tiny flecks of spittle. ‘Makes you do things … All the little girls and boys, with sparkly eyes and teeth like pearls …’

Eve was trying to look anywhere, everywhere, but at his face. Her eyes cast about, settled on his belt. There was a large key stuffed into it. Hope rose within her then, faint as it was.
Keep him talking
, she thought.
Keep him talking.

‘If that’s the case,’ she said, ‘then tell me how we can stop her.’

Jacob began to jerk his head around as if a different beat, one Eve couldn’t hear, had taken him over. ‘Drowns … burns … poisons … cuts …’

Slowly, she reached her hand down towards the key.

‘Jacob … Jacob … You have to help me … The children …’

‘Nobody’s seen her for years …’ His voice was getting louder, wilder, his head swings more erratic. ‘You broke that.
You.
Now she’s getting stronger.’ He pulled Eve even closer to him. ‘I can feel it.’

Eve tried not to breathe in his foul breath. ‘But, Jacob, please, there must be a way we can …’

She grabbed the key.

‘Thief,’ he shouted. ‘Thief … You … you steal from me …’

He pushed her back from the gate, sending her sprawling on to the rough floor. Then he stepped back from the gate and, with a scream, ran at it. It buckled slightly but didn’t budge. He moved further down the corridor, then came at it once more, screaming louder this time. The gate, old and rusted, started to come loose. He tried a third time. The ancient lock gave and the gate swung open, clattering against the wall.

Eve lay still, staring upwards. Jacob stood in the archway, blocking her escape.

The gate was open, but she was still trapped.

James stood on the middle shelf and reached his hand up to the next one.
Why would someone put a jar of toffees all the way up here? To stop me from getting them
, he answered himself. He smiled.
Didn’t work, did it?

As his hand groped higher, his smile withered and died. His features became impassive, blank, his eyes unblinking. His hand stopped moving and he turned, sensing a presence behind him. He nodded once as if in response to an unheard command and turned back to the larder.

He climbed to the next shelf and reached up to the very top one. There was very little there apart from dust, mouse droppings, and a jar with a skull and crossbones on it. Rat poison.

Behind him, the woman’s eyes glittered with dark malevolence.

Jacob advanced into the room, head on one side, listening.

‘You don’t go back,’ he said, ‘you can never go back, never …’