Ash fled from the car.
31
He pushed by the startled porter who was just entering the shady ticket hall from the platform. Ash heard the man curse and shout after him, but refused to stop. The train was beginning to move out, slowly trundling forward as though its burden were too great.
Grabbing a carriage doorhandle, Ash limped alongside the train, matching its speed so that he could pull the door open and scramble in. He nearly lost his footing as he did so, but managed to clutch the edge of the doorframe and haul himself up. He collapsed in a heap across the compartment seat, but quickly pushed himself upright as the carriage door swung shut with the train’s gathering momentum; his head lolled drunkenly against the high back of the seat. Ash listened to his own mumblings, the denial, the rejection, of all that had happened, his hands tugging at his open shirt collar as though breathing were difficult. Tepid sweat trickled into the hollow of his neck.
The train began to pick up a smoothness of rhythm, though its motion was still unhurried, and Ash thanked God that he was at last leaving this hell’s-place behind, leaving Edbrook and the terrors it held for him, the Mariells whose existence depended entirely on the remorse and fears of the living, the housekeeper aunt whose guilt-ridden grief eventually had deranged her mind. Leaving them all, leaving Christina . . .
Confusion, impressions, sensations, jibed at him. Too much had happened during that brief time at Edbrook to be accepted, or even acknowledged. He had suffered absolute fear, yet he had also succumbed to an intense loving. And had made love. But to what? An apparition? That wasn’t possible, surely that wasn’t possible.
He shook his head, a desperate motion. For he knew the truth of it.
Robert and Simon and Christina were ghosts, and together they had intrigued with another who had once been close to him, a sister who had despised him even beyond her own life, who had conspired against him from the grave. And that conspiracy had brought her haunting to a perverse reality.
He became rigid. With his back to the engine, his view was of the long empty platform steadily sliding away from him. But now a figure came into view, the man’s head turning with the passing of the train.
Robert Mariell smiled at Ash.
Soon another could be seen through the grimed compartment windows. Simon stood coatless, hands tucked into trouser pockets, his throat no longer scarred, his face no longer tilted. His grin was carefree as he watched Ash go by.
An empty stretch of concrete, then another person standing there, gazing up at the train with all the innocence of childhood. There was no ageing after death; she was still a little girl. Below the white dress, the one she had drowned in, she wore white ankle socks. Beside her, patient and unmoving, stood Seeker.
Ash lurched to the door window, wrenching it down with a guillotine’s thud. He leaned out, stretching a hand towards her.
‘Juliet! ’ he screamed.
He could see her face clearly now, could discern the pretty features that his own mind had always blurred before, unwilling to recognize – determined not to – and thus acknowledge her unnatural existence. Her lips were perfectly clear as they twisted to a smile; and the malignity of the smile was just as plain.
The vision receded with the progress of the train, the dog a black mark frozen next to her.
Ash’s outcry was of aching sorrow. He called to her again, reaching towards the dwindling figure, tears streaking the dirt that smeared his face.
The hands that clawed at his shoulders from inside the compartment were vicious and strong. He clung to the window’s frame, afraid he would be thrown out onto the rushing ground below. He fought back, managing to inch his body round so that he could face his assailant. Cruelly sharp fingernails raked his face.
Christina’s eyes were closed almost to ugly slits. Her face was unmarked, her body untouched by fire, and yet this was still a different Christina from the one he had come to know. Before him raged the darker side of her earthly nature, the flawed creature whom the Mariell family had endeavoured to conceal from outsiders. Her hair was a wild mass around her face, her mouth sneered to a grimace. The glitterings in those blue-grey eyes were the highlights of her madness, her beauty hidden behind a harridan’s mask.
She drove at him relentlessly, her gown of pure, flowing white tossed as though by the wind, scratching and spitting so furiously that he was forced into a corner. He held up his arms to protect his face, allowing her to beat him, too afraid to retaliate. But as the pain became intolerable, he began to react, began to flail out at her, shouting her name, frustration and rage overwhelming his fright.
And although he found himself striking at emptiness, he could not stop beating the air.
Moments passed before, exhausted, he allowed his arms to drop away. And further moments went by as his eyes warily searched the compartment for her. Eventually, he straightened, his body swaying with the roll of the carriage. He felt the wetness trickling on his cheek and he raised a trembling hand to touch.
For a long time afterwards Ash stared at the blood on his fingertips.
Edbrook
Night has begun its claim as the wind sighs along the pitted drive towards the large neglected house. A motor car from another era stands beneath the steps that lead into the house.
The building seems desolate, its interior cluttered with shadows.
But someone moves through its darkness, journeying from room to room, a woman of late years who hums a melancholy tune, a rhyme with which she once lullabied the children of this place; but that was long ago and the children are no more.
With her, the old woman carries a box of matches. She strikes each one and leaves it burning where she pleases.
The stone shell that is called Edbrook blackens with the fading light. But in a window there rises a flickering orange glow. Soon that warm glow is joined by another.
And then by another.
Haunted
James Herbert is not just Britain’s number one bestselling writer of chiller fiction, a position he has held ever since publication of his first novel, but is also one of our greatest popular novelists, whose books are sold in thirty-three foreign languages, including Russian and Chinese. Widely imitated and hugely influential, his twenty-three novels have sold more than forty-eight million copies worldwide.
Also by James Herbert
The Rats
The Fog
The Survivor
Fluke
The Spear
The Dark
Lair
The Jonah
Shrine
Domain
Moon
The Magic Cottage
Sepulchre
Creed
Portent
The Ghosts of Sleath
’48
Others
Once
Nobody True
The Secret of Crickley Hall
Graphic Novels
The City
(Illustrated by Ian Miller)
Non-fiction
By Horror Haunted
(Edited by Stephen Jones)
James Herbert’s Dark Places
(Photographs by Paul Barkshire)
Devil in the Dark
(Biography Craig Cabell)
First published in Great Britain 1988 by Hodder & Stoughton
Published in paperback 2000 by Pan Books
This paperback edition published 2007 by Pan Books
This electronic edition published 2011 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-0-330-46896-1 EPUB
Copyright © James Herbert 1988
The right of James Herbert to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents A
ct 1988.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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James Herbert, Haunted
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