He had no idea where he was running to except that it was away from the estate. Once he reached a road he would make his way to the village somehow, back to the world of order, to sweet, mundane normality. A rustling of bushes sent him veering off to the left. An unclear shape in the shadows beneath a tree caused him to run to his right. Mocking laughter from behind increased his laboured pace.
Soon he came to a clearing, one with which he was familiar. He stumbled, dropping to his hands and knees so that the rain, unimpeded by the canopy of trees, beat against his back. Ash realized where he was, for before him, so solid that it appeared to have risen up from the earth itself, was the stone monument of the Mariells’ family tomb.
He gasped in deep lungfuls of drenched air, his shoulders heaving, his hair matted against his skull. Rain pounded against the grey slabs of the mausoleum, its force causing a shimmering halo. The stone was slowly being cleansed of its mud and grime, lichen between cracks taking on a deeper hue, grass at its base bent under the pressure. As he watched, dirt was washed from the deeply etched inscription by the side of the entrance.
He could not help but read the names as they were slowly unveiled:
THOMAS EDWARD MARIELL
1896–1938
ISOBEL ELOISE MARIELL
1902–1938
Ash blinked rain from his eyes as sediment ingrained in the lettering began to flow more freely, joining with the surrounding dirt in a falling wash of sludge. His lips moved like an infant’s as he silently read the rest of the chiselled inscription, and fresh horror compounded that which already rooted him there.
BELOVED CHILDREN
ROBERT
1919–1949
SIMON
1923–1949
CHRISTINA
1929–1949
The last date, the year of death, became enlarged in his mind, as though it had grown in the stone.
1949
From the tomb’s dingy interior came the hollow giggle of a young child.
He saw that the iron gate was open wide. He heard a different sound from within, the grating of stone against stone. There was a stirring amidst the mausoleum’s twilight interior, a flat slab that was a coffin lid shifting sideways. On another tier, a stone lid was rising as if pushed from beneath.
The child giggled again.
30
He thrashed through the undergrowth, falling, rising, never stopping, cruel branches whipping at his face and hands, snagging his clothes, concealed obstacles tripping him when they could, birds screeching their own frenzied haranguing. Ash kept running, never once looking back, afraid of what might be following him through the woodland. He pushed by leafy barriers, scrambled over fallen tree trunks, always onwards, fighting through the tangled areas until at last, at long last, he saw a break in the landscape ahead.
With an explosive shout of relief, Ash staggered out onto the road.
He allowed himself a few brief moments to recover his breath, listening for pursuers while he did so. All now seemed quiet back there. Whoever – whatever, for he had not stayed to find out – had been inside the mausoleum had not followed him. Nevertheless, he set off again at an awkward jog, his injured left leg dragging, his throat raw from the harshness of his breathing. The morning had lightened, the rain having lost its ferocity, now only a drizzle.
He was not aware of the vehicle approaching from behind until it was a hundred yards or so away. He heard the engine, the tyres softly crushing twigs fallen from overhanging branches, and looked back to see headlights shining palely through the rain. He tried desperately to run faster, but the extra strength just wasn’t there: his strides became more clumsy, more lumbering.
The headlights brightened the wet road. Ash kept going, despair dragging at him, his steps becoming wilder as he strayed erratically over the road.
The Wolseley drew alongside and he stumbled away to avoid its wheels. The driver’s window was open, a hand reached out. Nanny Tess called to him. ‘Mr Ash. Please get in. You’re exhausted, you’ll never make it on your own.’
He came to a tottering halt, bent almost double, retching air. Hysteria was close when he finally managed to say, ‘What . . . what d’you want from me?’
Her face was concerned, her eyes pitying. ‘I only want to help you,’ she told him. ‘Please get in, let me take you to the station. It’s your only chance.’
Ash knew she was right: he was too weary both physically and mentally to get there by his own efforts. He slumped across the bonnet of the car.
‘Just tell me why,’ he pleaded. ‘Why did they do it to me?’
She indicated the passenger door. ‘Get in, Mr Ash, before you collapse in the road.’
Using the bonnet for support, he limped around the other side of the car, realizing he had no other choice but to trust her. He fell leadenly into the passenger seat.
The car moved forward again, picking up speed gradually. Ash, his chest still heaving, limbs trembling, regarded her with suspicion. Nanny Tess had altered considerably, but not in the unnatural way of her nephews and niece. She was haggard, her hair unkempt. The lines of her face were not only etched deeper, but there were more of them, patterning her whitish skin, hardly any part of her face free of their graining.
‘They were wrong to do this to you,’ she said in a querulous voice. ‘I warned them not to, I begged them.’
Unsteadily, in a sigh, he said, ‘I don’t understand any of it.’
She snatched a look at him, frowning at his condition. ‘Oh, you weren’t meant to. They wanted to confuse you. That would make you more frightened.’
‘Why should they want to frighten me?’ he snapped. ‘What have I ever done to them?’
Wipers smoothed the last patchy raindrops from the windscreen.
‘They wanted to prove you wrong. All your theories, your disbelief in life after death – they wanted to make you see . . . to make you pay . . .’
He stared at her uncomprehendingly.
‘There was no twin, Mr Ash,’ she said quietly.
He made a noise of disgust. ‘I realized that. Christina’s the schizophrenic, isn’t she?’
‘Is? You still don’t understand? After all that’s happened?’ She looked at him again and Ash avoided her gaze. ‘It was as though there were two souls inhabiting her body, one normal, a sweet, loving spirit – the other a mad thing, a spiteful, malicious being. We kept that part of her hidden, away from the eyes of outsiders.’
Her brown-spotted hands tightened on the steering wheel. ‘After Isobel and Thomas died, it was left to the two boys and myself to protect Christina, to control her as best we could. But oh, it was heart-breaking when we had to lock her away for her own safety as well as ours.’
She slowed the car as they approached a junction. Ash was almost tempted to run over to the telephone box on the grass verge. But what would be the point? It was easier to get to the station and then as far away from this damnable place as possible. Nanny Tess turned into the wider road, the car gathering speed once more. The windscreen wipers scraped noisily over the glass that had become dry. She did not seem to notice.
The aunt spoke in sadness, as though memories were hardly dimmed by time. Weary, beaten, Ash listened.
‘Simon was the cause of the final tragedy. You see, their childish ways followed them into adulthood, even though the boys had been warned to treat Christina with care. Perhaps Simon grew tired of her split personality – she was so full of fun one moment, a biting, screaming wretch the next – or perhaps one day he just became frightened of her.’
She paused, suddenly aware of the wipers’ dry screeching. To Ash’s relief, she switched them off.
‘Robert was on his way back from London after a meeting with his financial advisers and I’d gone to collect him from the station. I . . . I thought Simon was able enough to cope. Perhaps it was another game, just another one of his foolish pranks.’ She fell silent.
‘Tell me . . .’ he urged quietly.
Sh
e seemed to gather her resolve. ‘Simon locked Christina in the wine cellar with her pet. He knew she hated it down there, hated the darkness, the smell of damp, those solid, windowless walls around her. Somehow she managed to light a fire. I often had to search her for matches; she was fascinated by those tiny flames. Christina used to tell me that when a flame died, the smoke that curled into the air was its tiny soul on the way to Heaven.’
Nanny Tess smiled bitterly as she remembered. Her expression soon stiffened to grimness.
‘She may have been playing when she lit the fire in the cellar, or it may have been deliberate – there’s no way of knowing. Perhaps she only wanted to frighten Simon into releasing her. But it got out of hand: the fire spread.
‘Robert and I returned from the village to find the cellar filled with flames. Simon was crouched opposite the open door, weeping, just pointing at the fire and weeping. We could hear Christina’s screams from below, we could hear Seeker’s terrible howling.
‘Robert rushed down there, despite the heat, the flames . . .’
The car’s wheels crackled over a tree branch lying in the road, the gunfire sound startling Ash.
Nanny Tess was oblivious. ‘Minutes later, two figures emerged from that furnace. The first was Christina. Her clothes were on fire, one side of her body was burning.’
The old woman closed her eyes at the thought, and Ash anxiously looked at the road ahead, then back at her. She was watching the road again, driving steadily.
‘She was too quick for us. She ran by and we were distracted by the other . . . the other figure. Robert was completely ablaze. I . . . I don’t know how he climbed the stairs . . . he collapsed at our feet . . . in such agony, oh, he was in such agony . . .
‘We tried to save him, tried to beat out the flames. But it was no use – his whole body was a ball of fire. His screams . . . I still hear his screams ringing through the house at night. Even when I’ve taken pills to make me sleep, I still hear those terrible, agonized screams.’
‘You found Christina—’ Ash began to say.
‘Yes, Mr Ash. She’d thrown herself into the pond and she drowned there. As I told you before, she must have been too hurt, too weakened, to drag herself out again.’
Ash rested his head back, one elbow against the sill of the passenger window, his hand covering his eyes. ‘Oh Jesus . . .’ he breathed.
‘In those days we had grounds staff and they rushed into the house and managed to contain the blaze until the fire services arrived. Otherwise, I suppose Edbrook would have burned to the ground. That might have been a blessing.’
Again that haunted, faraway smile. It quickly dissolved.
‘Simon was distraught, inconsolable. He blamed himself for the deaths of his brother and sister. You see, despite their teasing, they had been very close, especially so after their mother and father were killed. Simon hanged himself from the stairway a few weeks later.’
Ash, in spite of all he had been through looked incredulously at the old woman. He wondered if she were insane. ‘It’s not possible,’ he said. ‘None of this is possible. I saw them all, I spoke to them. For Christ’s sake, I ate with them, Christina drove me in the car!’
Nanny Tess was shaking her head.
‘Christina . . .’ Ash insisted ‘. . . I touched her! We . . . she was warm living flesh!’ But he remembered the iciness of the bed where she had lain.
‘You saw and talked with no living thing. We were alone in the house, Mr Ash, just you and I. But not really alone. Robert, Simon and Christina were with us, but not as living people. Seeker too – its poor innocent soul is so confused.’
‘You’re crazy,’ Ash said tonelessly.
There was something more than sorrow behind her smile this time. ‘Did you feel weakened inside the house, Mr Ash? With all your knowledge of parapsychology, didn’t you realize that your own psychic energy was being used, being drained from you, just as they’ve drained mine through all these years? That’s how they exist, don’t you see?
‘They return to Edbrook time and time again, existing off me – dear Nanny Tess, the caretaker of Edbrook, the children’s guardian in life and in death – continuing to play their games as though somehow that held their spirits together, bound them close to each other. I think they consider the game they’ve played with you to be their finest. I only hope – I pray – it’s to be their last.’
There was no conviction when he said, ‘They were real . . .’
‘Only in your mind. And the human mind is a mysterious place, perhaps as strange as this other world where their souls truly exist. They used your mind, they sought its deepest levels and used the thoughts hiding there.’
He shook his head disbelievingly.
‘Do you have that tiny tape recorder with you?’ she asked.
Numbly, his thoughts elsewhere, Ash delved beneath his overcoat to search his jacket pockets. He brought out the micro-recorder.
‘Switch it on, Mr Ash,’ she told him, and he was puzzled by the note of smugness in the instruction. ‘Play back the recording you made at Edbrook.’
Without dissent, he pressed the REWIND button, waiting for the left spool to reclaim tape. There was a quiet hissing when he pressed PLAY, then Ash’s metallically thin voice came from the machine.
‘How did your parents die, Christina?’
The quiet hissing of running tape and atmospherics followed.
‘You were just kids when it happened?’ came his voice again.
No reply.
Frowning, he rewound further, then pressed PLAY again.
‘—anyone you know? Have known?’ he heard himself say. He remembered this was part of a question he had put to Simon.
Silence save for the tape’s own sound.
Now dismayed, he pressed REWIND.
‘. . . even been known to affect electricity.’ His words.
No response.
His own voice once more: ‘No, I’m still talking about unexplained phenomena. Please go on with what you were telling me.’
He listened to the hissing for only a short while before angrily switching off the machine. He noticed that the first houses of the village were in view as he shoved the recorder back into his pocket.
With a curious mixture of detachment and perplexity he asked: ‘Why? Why me?’
Her sigh was as weary as his question and Ash realized that Nanny Tess scarcely resembled the person he had first met at Edbrook, the reserved spinster, the proper maiden aunt.
‘An alliance,’ she said in answer.
He shook his head, not understanding.
‘An alliance of spirits,’ she went on, driving carefully through the deserted high street. ‘A joint game between them and another, someone they conspired with on the other side. Someone close to you, Mr Ash.’
The muscles at the back of his neck tensed, a coldness swept through him. A new, deeper, dread was aroused within him. His desire had been to return to the world of normality, and he was now there, that condition just outside the car windows, with the houses and the shops they passed, the street signs, lampposts, the everyday order of natural things; but the abnormal had accompanied him, was with him inside the vehicle. Nanny Tess’ voice was a drone, yet every word registered, part of him comprehending, part of him repudiating everything she said. And slowly, the dread began to overwhelm reason.
‘Their game was enhanced by your own total rejection of the spirit’s existence after death, a belief you’ve always hidden behind for your own protection. Isn’t that true? Hasn’t the guilt you felt over your own sister’s death made you erect a wall of non-belief?’ She continued, not waiting for a reply. ‘Aren’t you still, even after all these years, afraid that she’ll come back and demand retribution, make you pay for what you did to her? I told you the mind was a mysterious place . . .’
The car drew up outside the small railway station and through the entrance Ash saw a train waiting at the platform. But he sat there in the car, senses in turmoil. He was tr
embling, small, jerky shakes of his head refuting what she had told him.
Nanny Tess had become agitated, too, her distress shown in eyes that glistened wetly. ‘But it’s gone too far. I tried to control it, tried desperately, but as always, I gave in to them. My guilt is as bad as yours – I promised Isobel I would take care of them and I let them all die. Every one of them. How can I be forgiven?’
She pressed her forehead against the steering wheel, hiding her face between her arms. Her misery stretched the words so that Ash could barely understand what she was saying. ‘Now the worst has happened. Now there will be questions asked about Edbrook, about the Mariells.’
Through his shocked confusion, he managed to find some anger. ‘That’s the last thing I’d do, tell anyone what happened to me back there. Who the hell would believe me?’
‘You still don’t understand, do you? The game has gone too far! Someone else became involved, someone else whose heart isn’t as strong as yours.’
She raised her brow from her arms, her features wizened with torment, her hair straggled around wrinkled cheeks. Nanny Tess turned leisurely, although her dread-filled eyes dispelled any illusion of dispassion; her head craned round so that she could peer over her shoulder towards the back seat.
Even though he desperately did not want to, he was compelled to follow her gaze.
Edith Phipps stared at him from the back seat. Yet her eyes were as dull as slate, her jaw locked open with its upper set of teeth resting on her lower lip, the dislodged dentures ridiculing her death. But there was no slackness to her features, no corpse’s languor; if a corpse could have voice, then Edith would be screaming.
Ash recoiled against the dashboard. It was not horror that he felt, for there is a limit to even that extreme emotion; in those few frozen moments as he looked upon Edith’s stiffened body, his sensibilities were scoured by the utmost despair so that he was left empty and almost impassive.
But when he heard the titter that came from Nanny Tess and saw the madness that cavorted behind her old, frightened eyes, reality jolted him into action.