Haunted

  He touched the bed, not knowing why (but perhaps in the way someone might caress their absent lover’s clothing in surrogate intimacy), trailing his fingertips across the padded quilt. The material felt stiffened, its softness somehow brittle.

  Leaving the bedroom, Ash went back to the stairway and descended hurriedly, anxious now and disturbed by the unnaturalness of the silence around him. He went from room to room, checking for any broken seals or powdered footprints before entering, and inside switching off detectors triggered by his own appearance.

  With considerable trepidation, he approached the cellar, and it was from the top step that he checked for fire damage. Apart from the lumpy dust cover, beneath which lay the shattered brandy bottle, there was no evidence of anything having happened down there: no blackened walls, no charred timbers, no lingering stench of smoke. It had all been an illusion. The files at the Psychical Research Institute were full of such. Ash was not sure whether he felt relief or dismay.

  From the cellar he walked down the hallway to the kitchen and here he stopped before going through. There were noises coming from inside. Faint sounds. A scratching.

  The door was ajar and Ash pushed it further open with the flat of his hand, the pressure soft, cautious.

  The mice on the kitchen table were unaware of his presence until the door came to the end of its slow swinging arc to bump against a unit behind. The tiny creatures scuttled without even bothering to glance at the intruder, some leaping onto a chair pushed in at the table, others running down (impossibly it seemed) the table’s legs.

  Ash felt his skin crawl at the sight of them, with their furry bodies and trailing worm-like tails. There had been perhaps a half-dozen on the table top, but there might well have been hundreds such was the nauseating effect on him. The ravaged bread – half a loaf, a grey-bladed knife lying nearby – they had feasted upon was pockmarked with black mould. The sight of it, together with the after-image of those busy creatures smothering its surface, set Ash’s stomach to heaving.

  He headed for the sink, hoping, although at that moment not caring too much, he wouldn’t step on one of those tiny fleeing bodies. It was bile only, and not undigested food, that spattered the backs of two cockroaches in the sink, and he shrank away, swallowing back the sour juices that continued to rise. Dear God, the place was filthy! What had happened overnight at Edbrook? Of course, even if the question had been voiced and was not just a yell inside his head, there appeared to be no one around to answer him. He reached for the tap and twisted the old-fashioned cross head. Brown water spurted and clunked in the pipes like caught metal before running smoothly and becoming clear. The black beetles swilled around with his bile, their thread-legs frantic paddles. He turned off the tap and walked away from the sink, trusting the subsequent whirlpool to suck them away.

  The back door was unlocked and he stepped outside, relieved to be in the open, wintry though it was. He wiped the wetness from his lips and chin with the back of his hand and took in deep gulps of air, some of his tiredness instantly vanishing. He shivered with the cold and then, almost desperately, he called Christina’s name.

  Had he really expected an answer? Ash couldn’t be sure. Nevertheless, he called again.

  He listened to the silence.

  From the terrace overlooking the gardens, he cupped both hands around the circle of his mouth.

  ‘Chriiistiiinaaa . . .!’

  Once more he called, but with less effort this time, and with little heart.

  Christina had left Edbrook. And so too, it seemed, had Nanny Tess. Ash was alone, and he wondered why he so foolishly imagined that the decaying house behind him was gloating.

  25

  The red Fiesta eased itself cautiously into the motorway’s traffic flow, headed in a north-westerly direction, picking up speed quickly as if joyous to be free finally of the congested city streets.

  But there was no joy on the face of the bright vehicle’s sole occupant. And it was not wariness of speeding juggernauts that caused Edith Phipps to grip the steering wheel so tightly.

  Ash pulled on his overcoat as he walked along the corridor towards the stairs, not even taking time to close the bedroom door after him. He descended swiftly, wanting to be clear of this place, this empty abode whose brooding gloom oppressed the spirit. The sharp air outside had done something at least to shake off his lethargy and his intention now was to move fast before the reviving effect waned.

  At the bottom of the stairs he hesitated. He looked back along the hallway at the black monstrosity of a telephone. One more try, he decided. Nothing to lose save a few seconds. He went to the instrument and lifted the heavy receiver to his ear. It was hardly a smile, but the corners of his mouth twitched upwards. The phone was dead, as he knew it would be.

  He dropped the receiver the last couple of inches onto its cradle, then wiped dust from his hand with the sleeve of his coat.

  His footsteps clattered on the wood floor as he hastily made his way to Edbrook’s entrance. Ash opened one half of the double-door, stepped through, and descended the three stone steps outside scarcely breaking stride.

  He tugged the collar of his coat upright, folding a lapel across his chest to ward off the chill breeze. His feet crunched noisily against the gravel of the pitted drive.

  So dangerously close did the articulated lorry sweep by the Fiesta that Edith was afraid she and her vehicle might be sucked beneath its huge wheels. As it was, the slipstream of the giant’s wake buffeted the car so that her hands had to grip the steering wheel even more tightly to keep control.

  A glance in her wing mirror told her the lorry had its junior cohorts close behind, vehicles whose drivers’ patience had probably been discarded the moment their machines’ wheels had touched three-lane concrete. She checked her own speed. Fifteen below the limit. Perhaps the fault was hers, then. Still, she wasn’t alone at 55 mph. ‘And just look at us,’ she mumbled scornfully, ‘bunched together like a convoy of hearses.’ A cheerless simile – and how it suited her mood. Why this awful debilitating dread, Edith? Why this irrational fear for David? Impossible to answer. ‘Second’ sight did not mean ‘clear’ sight. Mostly there were only feelings, intuitions; but oh, this was so strong, so overwhelmingly strong! And it came from David himself. He was the link. It was as if the poor man were sending out a distress signal. But it was blurred, so confused . . .

  Her foot touched the brake as she realized she was mere yards away from the car in front.

  Calm yourself, she ordered. Whatever was wrong, whatever was going on at this house called Edbrook, she would be of no use to David if her body were splattered across the motorway. Good Lord, such morbid thoughts! And bad for you, Edith, she admonished. Very, very bad for you.

  Edith risked looking down at the road-map book lying open on the passenger seat. She did not want to miss the motorway exit and the road which would lead to another road, which would lead her to yet another road, which would eventually lead her to the Ravenmoor area.

  Watchful of the way ahead again, she shifted the two letters obscuring the relevant map page, letters signed by Miss T. Webb, then quickly checked the correct exit number.

  ‘A long way yet,’ she murmured to herself, and flinched as another lorry thundered by.

  Once inside the telephone box, Ash gave himself time to recover his breath before ringing the Institute. At least the walk from Edbrook along the country lanes had cleared his head. He felt sharper, and somehow more vigorous despite the hike; perhaps all he had needed to throw off the mental tiredness was fresh air and brisk exercise. He blamed the house itself, with all its staleness and dismal light for his earlier condition. And the traumas of the past couple of nights, he reminded himself. The Mariells were playing games with him, trying to discredit him, and he didn’t know why. Did he care? Did he really give a damn about what they were up to? Curiously, he did. What he wasn’t sure of, though, was whether he cared enough. They disturbed him, the Mariells; and perversely, he had to admit, they fas
cinated him. Especially Christina. Last night . . .

  He stopped himself. He needed some sanity brought into the situation, some direction. He needed to talk to McCarrick; solid, sensible and logical Kate.

  Ash dug deep into his pockets. He swore when he brought out pennies only.

  He pushed open the heavy door and stepped out onto the grass. He looked behind him, back down the lane towards Edbrook.

  But when he started walking, it was in the opposite direction.

  This was the one, this was the exit from the motorway that she wanted.

  Edith indicated left and soon was relieved to leave the fast-lane lemmings for the quieter country roads. At a more comfortable speed she passed through towns and villages, pleased to come upon the open stretches of countryside, to see the soft hills in the distance.

  The first lights began to blink on as the day dulled to dusk.

  Ash’s stride had lost any briskness by the time he reached the outskirts of the village; his shoulders were slumped, his eyes cast down at the roadway, the two-mile journey having all but drained him of his newfound (and swift to diminish) vigour.

  The houses became more regular, less of a stutter, some now joined at the hip, soon running into terraces along the high street. Lights inside were being switched on, and here and there he glimpsed the warm glow of firesides. There was something irresistibly comforting about these homes, a soothing reassurance for the lone traveller; yet that very cosiness also served to emphasize the isolation of the outsider. Ash felt completely alone.

  The puffs of white air he breathed before him dissolved around his face, as insubstantial as fleeting thoughts; the evening’s bitterness was countered by the exertion of his body. He passed by shops, their larger brightness harsh to his eyes; but in the distance was a more welcoming light.

  His pace increased a fraction and his throat seemed drier in anticipation.

  Edith stood next to the Fiesta as the elderly pump attendant filled the tank, grumbling to her about the nights drawing in, winter comin’ on, lack of decent summers, and the price of meat (it was a small garage on a B road, and pumping fuel wasn’t the most interesting job in the world although it at least gave occasion for conversation with itinerant customers).

  Oh yes, Ravenmoor weren’t far, not far at all, and yes he knew of a place called Edbrook, a big old house, lotsa ground ’round it, and no, that weren’t far neither, less’n three miles further on, before you got to the village, and no, he weren’t sure who lived there, not the name anyways, the place was sort of there an’ weren’t there, if you know what I mean, just a house set back off the road with no nearby neighbours and the folk – whoever they were – kept to themselves, not that he would know them anyways (he chuckled here) because he was a new boy in these parts, only moved to the area with his second wife – widowed again two years later – ten or ’leven years since and anyways he had no cause to socialize with people who lived in big places like that although a lady who did live there stopped by for petrol every so often in one of them lovely ol’ cars, in perfect nick it looked, as if it weren’t taken out much, and he knew she came from there because once she’d had no cash and had to pay him by cheque and he’d had to ask her to jot down her address, blowed if he could ’member her name now, but she never said much when she called in, weren’t one for a chat, not like him, he enjoyed a good jaw, and if you foller the road, missus, take the secon’ right, then watch for the first small lane left, foller it round ’til you hit a bigger, but not too big, road, hang a left (his six-year-old grandson in Plymouth had taught him that one), then Edbrook was just a bit further on.

  He paused for breath and another chuckle.

  Knew the place, oh yes, and didn’t care much for it. Passed it a few times and got bad vibes (his grandson had taught him that one, too). When you were into your seventies – yep, seventy-two and still working, afternoons and odd evenings, mebbe, but still at it, wouldn’t want it no different – when you were into your seventies you got feelings ’bout such things, know what I’m saying, missus? You get to know. There you go, full to the brim an’ ready to race, need a bill for the tax man? No? Then I’ll get your change, how about oil? You okay for oil? No, these little tin cans never drank the oil like the big old brutes used to, still that’s progress, so they say, though I reckon some things have regressed, if you know what I mean, things aren’t the same no more, but times don’t stand still an’ you gotta keep up . . .

  To Edith’s relief, the attendant went off to his office of whitewashed stone and she called after him to keep the change. She was already sliding into the driver’s seat and reaching for the safety belt before he had time to turn around and wave her a thanks.

  The landlord of the Ravenmoor Inn had barely opened the door to sample the evening’s climate (cold wasn’t a problem, nor even icy, but rainy tended to keep the punters – save for the die-hards – indoors) when the dark-coated man virtually stumbled into him. No local lad, this one, and a bit untidy. A clean shave wouldn’t have hurt his appearance. He stepped back to allow the customer across the threshold.

  Ash mumbled an apology as he brushed by the landlord. He made his way through the vestibule into the saloon bar, while his host took his time in following.

  ‘Cold evening,’ the landlord offered in conversation as he strolled around the bar counter.

  Ash merely nodded in agreement and pointed at the row of spirits inverted over optics behind the other man. He singled out the vodka bottle.

  ‘A large one,’ he said. ‘A bloody large one.’

  Edith slowed the car, her face close to the windscreen as she peered at the gate-posts ahead. She switched her headlights to full-beam in order to see more clearly.

  Yes, this was the place, for as she drew closer she could just discern the name EDBROOK etched into the brick pillars on either side of the drive. The gates were drawn back and she pulled off the road, bringing the Fiesta to a halt inside. In the evening light she was able to make out the shadow of a large house at the end of a long, straight driveway. There were no lights on inside the house.

  She sensed nothing.

  It could have been an empty shell down there.

  ‘David . . .’ she said quietly, as if the whisper could rouse him at such a distance.

  No, she sensed nothing. Yet she had no desire to enter that darkly unhappy place. If only David . . .

  Edith eased her foot from the brake and drove onwards.

  Lawns soon spread out on either side, woods beyond them, and then there were gardens. In the half-light she could not tell if they were well tended. She gasped – for a moment she had thought there were people standing in the grounds, but she quickly realized that their sinister stillness had the frigidity of stone. She ignored the impression that these statues were observing her approach.

  The house grew larger in the windscreen, soon filling the view completely, the car’s headlights brightening its façade, but only to dreariness.

  She parked the vehicle beneath a tree whose branches overhung the gravelled yard in front of Edbrook, and some distance away from the steps leading up to the house’s entrance. A safe distance away, she taunted herself, embarrassed by her own lack of nerve. She regarded the edifice with uneasy curiosity, wondering why it could make her feel so, for still she sensed nothing, no hint at all of its history, nothing of what was contained within those stained walls.

  Then why the fear? It was there, deep inside her like some small rotting core, a cancered cell quietly corrupting others around it with almost somniferous slowness, working its way through her system, growing horribly towards fulfilment, encouraged by forces outside . . . outside but inside this grim house . . .

  There, Edith, she told herself. You do sense something. An awful clutching blankness, whose root cause was very real. There was horror here and David Ash had become part of it.

  Edith had set out on this journey with enough resolve to counter her trepidation, her purpose being to warn David of the danger sur
rounding him, a threat rendered obscure to him by the self-denial of his own gift. It was as if the sensing, unable to break through whatever psychological blockage he, himself, had imposed, this tenuous yet unyielding barrier between the conscious and the subconscious, had chosen another route. No, not quite right. The part of him that mediated between what he believed in and that which, through logic, he rejected, this intrinsic arbitrator common to us all (or nearly all, she had to modify) – which might be termed perception – had been forced to send off these thoughts in another direction. Edith was the one who had collected them, as the arbitrator had hoped she would. David had beaconed his own distress signal and probably wasn’t even aware (oh, the fun a psychoanalyst could have with a mind like David’s). And now the trepidation had seriously subjugated her resolve.

  Edith considered turning the car around and driving away from this unpleasant place. There appeared to be no one at home, anyway; no lights were on. Perhaps David had already returned to London, his investigation completed. Perhaps her fears were in error. No, no, she resisted. Supposition could be argued against, sensing couldn’t be. If David really had left, all well and good. If there was no one at home, perhaps even better – she could leave in the knowledge that at least she had been willing.

  Still she felt nothing from the house itself. It was as though only a void was within its shelter, that clutching blankness perplexing to her. But if there was truly nothing there, then there was no need to be afraid. Nothing was nothing to be afraid of, was it, Edith?