Ethan sidestepped Dad and I did too, but rather than wait by his car, I stopped and turned back. Dad hadn’t moved, and his hand remained on Mum’s arm. Aunt Julia had stepped aside too, giving them the space to be alone. Mum was still crying and I think Dad was equally as upset. He pulled her towards him and gave her a kiss on the forehead, his lips lingering. Mum allowing them to. It was such an intimate gesture – the gesture of lovers – or lovers that had once been. Aunt Julia had tears in her eyes on seeing it and those that had gathered in mine fell.
This was a family affair. Some might say it had nothing to do with the house at all. But I disagree. Dad had moved on and was forging a new life but there was no way Mum could, not whilst we were at Blakemort. It wouldn’t allow for life, let alone new life. I thought of Dad’s words again and his offer to get us out of the house as if he sensed it was half the reason for Mum’s decline.
Quick. Be quick.
Yes, we had to be, and not spend another year, another Christmas here.
But as you know, there was another Christmas to come.
Part Four
The Last Christmas
Blakemort Chapter Twenty
Pride got in the way of escape.
“No way, absolutely no way. Just who does he think he is?”
I half suspected Mum wouldn’t accept any financial help from Dad. When he spoke to her about what was on his mind, she slammed him for it, screeching – literally screeching – on the phone that she didn’t need his help. She was wrong; we did, but I was nine (nearly ten) and kids don’t get in the way of adult affairs. The only thing I said after the phone call – we were in the kitchen and she was slamming pots and pans and banging cupboard doors – was that it would be nice to move, words I’d uttered several times before. She just glared at me.
“Yes, it would be, wouldn’t it, Corinna, but on my terms, not his!”
I could have howled with frustration at that point but I remained mute, trying to contain my feelings as much as possible.
“Mum, that history project—”
“What history project?”
“You remember I told you, the one where we have to find out about an old house.”
“That was ages ago.”
“I know but—”
“Get Ethan to help you. God knows I’ve got enough to deal with. Another client’s just cancelled on me, never got the concept drawings I sent apparently, even though I emailed and posted them, recorded delivery too. It was a major client. I was kind of relying on them. I’m going to have to spend precious time drumming up a bit of new business to compensate, so really any schoolwork you’ve got, it’s Ethan or bust.”
I sighed. As if Ethan would help me.
The first few months of that year – 2003 – I remember as being very dark, as the three of us detached even further from one another. That’s the only way I can think of to describe it: detached. Mum was constantly holed up in her office, Ethan stayed in his bedroom, and I was either in my bedroom or in the drawing room, reading and writing or colouring in. There were no safe rooms in the house, not at all, but there were rooms I deemed less threatening, and those two were it. Stuff had happened in them certainly but in some way it seemed to be more tempered. There was no more writing, even though I sat at my desk, ready, willing, and able. But whoever had guided my hand and who had been caught that day, was still in hiding. Either that or they’d been destroyed. Nonetheless, I kept that pen and paper handy, just in case.
The black mould that Mum tried so hard to scrub away was spreading, affecting not just the drawing room, the parlour and the morning room but also our bedrooms. It was like the walls were diseased. The flies were increasing too, especially during summer, so many dead and living bodies littering windowsills; the dead ones the result of Mum and Ethan’s handiwork. I couldn’t bring myself to kill them despite the fact I couldn’t bear them. The latent vegetarian in me coming to the fore again, I think.
The heating took to clicking on in summer too, despite Mum fiddling with the dials, turning it off even – it just kept bursting into life, old pipes relentlessly cranking up, clattering away, even screeching sometimes, as Mum had screeched.
“I must get in touch with Carol,” Mum would mutter. “This house is a joke.”
And I think she did but she never received any replies – something that infuriated her more. ‘Why pass on an email address, if you never check the damn thing?”
Mum had taken up smoking. Apparently she used to smoke before having kids but had given it up when she got pregnant with Ethan. She was puffing her way through packet after packet, for a time I don’t think I saw her without a cigarette in her hand. And that cough she had – it was getting worse. Her face becoming gaunt, skeletal even, as she snacked on cigarettes instead of food. She looked old – my young, vibrant and ever-smiling mother. She didn’t smell the same, she smelt of cigarettes of course but something else too – despair? It has a smell, I swear, it’s sour, it lodges in your throat, the inside of your nose, your memory, and it stays there.
But even though she was depressed, there was still a spark of the old Mum.
“If we’re going to have to stay in this house,” she determined, “for a while longer at least, let’s make it look… more cheerful.”
And we tried; we really did. Mum hauled me, and when she could persuade him, Ethan, around second hand furniture shops and antique fairs such as Ardingly, full of precious junk. We’d head out in the Volvo with Mum actually looking enthusiastic. “We’re going to find a bargain today, kids. We’re going to make Blakemort a palace!”
It would never be a palace, but even so, we managed to find some nice pieces of furniture and lugged them home, as well as several pictures to hang on walls, some in watercolours, others in oils. I kept steering her towards brighter paintings although she kept veering towards the dull of grey and black.
Mum was quite handy with DIY, I suppose she had to be without a man about the house and when home she busied herself positioning what we’d bought, dragging chairs over to stand on whilst she hammered nails into the walls.
“Damn,” she said once, having missed the wall and hit her thumb. We ran it under cold water and she took a break whilst the pain subsided. What horrified me was that she was beginning to fill the music room with furniture and paintings, ‘making it look cosy’. A vast room it could never be that, but, of course, that’s not the only reason. It was already overcrowded – with the unseen. Every stick of furniture ever placed in that room sat awkwardly. In fact, every stick of furniture placed in that room never stayed in place. A wooden chair, a chaise longue, a sideboard, they were all moved back and forth, a few inches here and a few inches there, just enough to make them look out of place, untidy. Mum used to accuse us kids of moving the furniture, and when we denied it, she wouldn’t be told otherwise. “Just leave off,” she’d say, whilst lighting another cigarette. She’d also get annoyed that the pictures, like the one in the parlour, never hung straight but after a while she ceased caring. I suppose there’s only so much you can bother about in the end.
The months passed and winter gave way to spring, to brighter, sunnier days. We did our utmost to live as a normal family and to a degree we managed it – as far as a disconnected family can. Although I’d told myself not to let my guard down I couldn’t help but grow desensitised to what was going on, able to ignore figures dashing to and fro out of the corner of my eye, the sounds that I’ve described, the fear even. Every so often I was able to close a lid on it. Perhaps that was my mistake. I feel now that the house liked a challenge, and that it suffered boredom too, but there was patience in that boredom, time in which to devise new ways to torment. And, oh, who it tormented! I honestly think of that house as something sentient. It sits and it broods, it calculates and considers. I’ve told you before that there are ancient parts to the house, but what was there before? Another building? There could have been, sitting on lost ground, wretched ground, a ground caught between two world
s.
And into that world, Mum at last invited others.
Blakemort Chapter Twenty-One
“I don’t want a friend home for tea,” I protested. In truth, I was horrified by the thought of it; for their sake, not mine.
“Don’t be silly, darling, it’d be lovely to have a friend round. They could even sleep the night if it’s on a Friday, you could have a pyjama party. Now won’t that be fun?”
Of course, Mum had suggested before that we bring friends home for tea, and certainly there’d been visits to friends’ houses after school but we lived quite a distance from Lewes, and everyone we knew lived either there or in Brighton. It just wasn’t convenient for people to return visit. Something I’d been relieved about as I got to know the house better – never insisting otherwise. Mum had said, when we first moved in, that she hoped we had plenty of visitors but to be honest, besides Aunt Julia we never did. Mum used to have a wide circle of friends when we lived in Ringmer and I often wondered what had happened to them, and who had stopped bothering with whom? Of course, as a single mum it was difficult for her to go out without us, but she wore a disappointed look very quickly after we’d moved there, as if she couldn’t quite believe how easily she’d been dropped. Gradually, I think she stopped any effort to make social arrangements; she grew despondent instead, even spending Saturdays whilst we were with Dad alone. But right then, at that minute, she seemed desperate to rectify the isolation in our lives, on my behalf at least. Not only was she talking about a sleepover but also throwing a birthday party for me, which was ridiculous as my birthday had already been and gone.
“Nothing wrong with having a belated event,” she declared.
“I don’t want it.”
“Why ever not? All girls your age want a party. It’s a chance to dress up, to be the centre of attention. We can hold it in the music room.”
The mere thought!
“I don’t want one and it’s my birthday not yours.”
“There’s no need to be so ungrateful.”
“What about Ethan?” I suggested, desperate to deflect interest. His was coming up soon.
“I’ve already asked and he was horrified. Just wants to stay in his room that one, playing those computer games of his. Honestly, teenage boys, it’s not healthy.”
Nor was this house I wanted to yell but I didn’t, I just kept shaking my head, refusing to entertain the idea.
Mum paused, clearly disappointed. “Well, have a friend over then. You must have a friend over.”
In the end I asked Lucy. She was the closest thing I had to a best friend. She said yes and a date was arranged. Even now I cringe to recall what happened.
It was Friday, as Mum had suggested and it was just before we broke up for the summer. Mum had picked us up from school and we’d gone into Lewes for tea afterwards, Mum perhaps worried about dishing up burnt offerings again. Lucy was in my class at school, not as shy as me, but confident with light brown hair that fell past her shoulders and a sprinkling of freckles on her nose. She was as comfortable in Mum’s company as she was in mine, which impressed me. As a child I was always shy with adults I didn’t know well. In the Italian restaurant just off the High Street I felt proud as she nattered away to Mum, telling her about what we were doing in school, our teacher, the forthcoming summer holidays and what she was going to do during them, holiday primarily, in France, with her parents and two younger sisters.
Mum seemed happy too. Away from the house she had some colour in her cheeks.
“Talking of school work,” she said, looking from Lucy to me, “I never asked; what mark did you get for your history project?”
Lucy screwed up her nose. “What history project?”
“Erm…” I tried to interrupt but Mum was talking again.
“You had to research the history of an ancient house remember? We were going to do Blakemort, I was going to help you, but then…” she shrugged, added almost absentmindedly, “things got in the way as things often do.”
“We didn’t have a history project,” Lucy replied.
Mum looked confused as inside I wilted. “What?”
Lucy repeated herself and Mum looked at me. “Then why did you say you did? I don’t understand.”
“I… erm… I wanted to find out more about the house.”
“You could have just said that. Why make up something about a school project?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t have to tell lies, you know,” Mum added and I flinched.
“I didn’t mean to lie.”
“You did.”
“I thought you’d take me more seriously if I said it was a school project, that’s all.”
“After this I don’t know if I’ll take you seriously again. If there’s one thing I can’t stand in life, it’s liars.”
“I’m not a liar!” I couldn’t believe it. Why was she acting like this, making a point of it, going on and on? Where was the easy-going, laughing Mum I adored?
Still her eyes bored into mine. “You know what, Corinna, get over it will you? It’s a house, just a bloody house. We’ll live in it until Carol returns, if she ever does bother to return that is, and then we’ll move. That’s the only thing you need to know.”
I was stunned, she’d sworn in front of my friend! Not that she seemed to realise or even care. She turned slightly, looked out of the window, but I could still see the expression on her face, it was stony. In more ways than one she was changing.
With tea over and the atmosphere strained, we drove back to Blakemort – even Lucy, ever-confident Lucy, looked a bit nervous and that was before we’d drawn up. I know I said I’d only concentrate on Christmas but what happened over the next twenty-four hours had a significant impact. It helped me to understand how dangerous the house really was, how clever, how insidious. It was a summer’s day, as I’ve said, although approaching the house down that dark, dark lane you’d never believe it. We got home late afternoon, with the sun low in the sky. On seeing the house, Lucy perked up – was wowed by it in fact.
“You live in a mansion!” she exclaimed.
“I’ve told you, it’s just a house,” Mum corrected, her tone still offhand.
Our feet crunching against the gravel, Mum muttered about the ‘bloody weeds’ that were surrounding us in a circle at the front and growing ever higher. “I must do something about them,” she continued. But she hadn’t so far and I doubted she ever would. She just seemed to hope they’d go away.
Inside the house, Lucy grew even more wide-eyed. “Wow!” she kept saying, and then, “Where’s your brother?” I was surprised she’d asked, that she was interested.
“He’s out with Dad, but he’ll be coming home soon.”
“Oh, good, I like Ethan, he’s fun.”
Fun? Ethan? I’d never have put those two words together. Before I could protest, Lucy announced she was going to explore and was off, just like that, tearing through the house. I stood and stared. I’m not sure what I’d been expecting really, her to recoil, to be like me, to sense the wrongness of it all? But she didn’t. She ran happily across the hallway, her feet clacking against floorboards this time, straight into the music room.
That’s when I started running.
“Not that way—”
It was too late. She’d opened the door, gone into the garden and was waiting for me to follow.
* * *
Time seemed static as I stood in front of the music room door. Behind me, Mum had gone to the kitchen or to her office, it was always as if the house had devoured her, as if she was no more. In contrast, Lucy was in front, framed by weeds, tall plants and trees, her mouth open and one finger beckoning. “Come on,” she said. “Hurry.”
The last time it was open, so many had come rushing through, but all was still in that moment. I couldn’t sense anything untoward, just the slightest of breezes drifting towards me, but warm, rather than that awful bone-chilling cold. I took a step forward. It would be all right, of
course it would. It was just a door, a simple door.
Laughter? Was that laughter? It was, coming from Lucy. For some reason, my hesitation was amusing her. “Scaredy-cat,” she was calling.
“I’m not!” I protested, determined to show her.
Forcing myself not to think anymore, not to feel, I continued moving, getting closer and closer. Under the lintel, time slowed even more. It was as if I’d entered a tunnel, some kind of portal, one with no summer’s day waiting at the end of it, no hope at all of emergence. My feet moved faster as my breath came in short sharp gasps. I wondered whether to close my eyes, just in case someone appeared but somehow I knew that would do no good. Because that someone, that something, was inside me, actually inside me… maybe even the house itself. I’d swallowed it as earlier it had swallowed my mother – become a part of it, as much as the bricks, the plaster, and the lath. It had wormed its way into my bloodstream, been digested. What a thought! What a horrid, horrid thought! And not possible, surely it wasn’t possible. I belonged to the house, and all because I’d passed through the music room door? Magic at work again, a black magic, darker than pitch. I was not a part of Blakemort!
I slammed against something. What was it? A wall? I heard a cry as Lucy went flying; her brown hair like a pair of eagle wings either side of her.
She landed heavily on her bottom, no longer laughing but stunned instead, beginning to cry.
“Ouch, you idiot, you stupid, stupid idiot! Why’d you do that for?”
Because I was trying to escape!
I thought it but didn’t say it. Words had never seemed so futile.
Blakemort Chapter Twenty-Two
Once I’d apologised and fussed over Lucy, she seemed to recover. She picked herself up, dusted herself down and then ran again, finding the little path that led to the cemetery, although how she did I’ll never know, it was more overgrown than ever. Stamping on the brambles determinedly, she didn’t appear to notice whenever one swiped at her skin and scratched it; she simply continued to drive forwards, as relentless as Aunt Julia had been. Talking of whom, I hadn’t been there since the day she’d slapped Ethan, but I had to follow Lucy, I had no choice. Not only was fear lying in the pit of my stomach but resignation too.
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