by Tony Walker
“Yeah, let’s go,” said Rachel.
“What?” I said, incredulously.
“It’ll be a laugh,” she said.
“Come with me?” said Talya suddenly.
“Ok,” said Rachel.
“What are you talking about? Why would your grandmother want you to go to that old ruin?”
Talya suddenly said, “She used to work there. She was a cleaner there for years.”
“I didn’t know that, but still.”
“Maybe her spirit’s there in some way,” she said.
Rachel had started to pull on her jeans and pullover.
“Rachel, please,” I said. “All this thumping around will wake up my dad and mum.”
“I’ll be quiet.”
Talya too was pulling on her jeans and the clothes she’d come in before we changed to go out.
“This is insane,” I said.
“Look,” said Nev. “We know that it’s all nonsense, so let’s just go with her to the School. It’s not far. It’ll put her mind at rest, and then we can get some sleep. Is it still raining?”
I looked up at the skylight window in my attic room. “No, it’s stopped. The moon’s come out.”
“So let’s go,” said Nev.
“It’ll be good crack,” said Rachel.
“No!” I said firmly. “If you go, you’re not coming back in this house.”
At that they all stopped. They could see that I meant it. “We’ll go in the morning, Talya. I promise.” I put my arm round her shoulder. She seemed very scared.
And the atmosphere was still thick in the room, as if her using the ouija board had tainted it. The bright sickly moonlight that came in through the window made it worse. I could see their faces, pale and tired looking.
“Ok, so sleep,” I said.
It seemed they were all settling down. Nev lay back down and pulled the covers over her. Rachel got back in her sleeping bag, still clothed. Talya was the last to move. “I’ll just go to the bathroom,” she said.
I was suspicious. “You know where it is?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“Don’t go out of the house Talya. Please.”
“I won’t.”
She opened the door and stepped out. I heard the click of the cord pull as she put on the light. I heard water running. I even thought she was talking to someone. I relaxed a little. I was pretty tired. I started to doze then sleep. I woke with a start. I knew I’d been asleep for a little while. Talya hadn’t come back.
“Oh damn it,” I said. I shook Nev awake.
“What now?” she snapped.
“Talya, hasn’t come back.”
Nev sat up. “Ok, we’ll have to go after her.” She got out of bed and kicked the slumbering Rachel.
“Eh?”
“Get up. Talya’s gone.”
“I thought we weren’t going.”
“We weren’t, but she has.”
“Oh well. I wanted to go anyway.”
I got up and pulled on my clothes. My heart was beating fast. Anything could happen to her out there. She could fall in the stream, she could trip over a rock in the dark. That ruined school was dangerous. The floorboards were rotten. Also, there could be anyone there - vagrants seeking shelter. She was only a teenage girl.
The three of us went downstairs as quietly as possible. Even Hector the dog didn’t wake. I tip-toed into the kitchen and went into the drawer where I knew there was a torch. I flicked it on to test that the batteries weren’t dead and a powerful white beam shot out. It was one my dad had sent off for - 1 Million Candlelight.
We gathered by the door and I put on my rain jacket. Nev took my sister Kate’s who was off at University, and Rachel borrowed my mum’s.
The moonlight made everything bright. We made our way through the puddles to the field where the footpath was that led past the school.
“Is this the way she would have come?” asked Nev.
“Dunno. I don’t know if she knows it. If not, we’ll get there quicker than her.”
We made our way over the fields. We disturbed a sleeping herd of cows that mooed unhappily. One of them coughed.
“Cow coughs sound like people’s coughs,” said Rachel.
We ignored her. She was getting on my nerves, anyway. If she hadn’t encouraged Talya we’d probably be all still asleep in our warm beds.
We went down the hill and there in the distance we could see the silhouette of the Old School. The path went past the back hedge of the school garden, but we managed to scramble over.
“It’s really muddy,” said Nev.
Then we were in the back garden of the school. I could see the broken door hanging off its hinges with a black mark where someone had tried to burn it.
“I can’t hear anything,” said Nev. “Want to shout?”
“No.” I lowered my voice. “Who knows who’s in here? Could be any old freak whose taken shelter from the rain.”
“So how will we find her?”
“Let’s go round the front,” I said. “We’ll maybe see her coming on the road.”
So we made our way quietly round to the front of the old school. The gates were chained together, but one of the gateposts had sagged so you could squeeze round it.
We stood there looking up the narrow country road that led to my house. The light wasn’t bad but we could see no sign of Talya.
Then Nev said, “Maybe she went into the school?”
I really didn’t want to go in there but it looked like there was a choice. Reluctantly I turned. Even Rachel was quiet as we faced the evil old place. I couldn’t get the thought of Andrew Hayes out of my head.
“Shout?” said Nev.
“Ok.” And so we shouted, hesitantly at first, but then raising our voices. “Talya! Talya! Are you in there?”
“Did you see that?” said Nev. She was pointing at a window on the first floor.
I shook my head.
“No,” said Rachel.
“Something moved in the window.”
“Think it was an owl,” I said.
“No,” she said. “It looked like a woman.”
“A woman?”
“Like Talya’s Nana?” said Rachel.
I turned on her. “How could that be?”
She visibly cowered back. “I don’t know. Just saying.”
“Let’s look,” said Nev.
And so the three of us went round the back and up to the door. Hesitantly, I went in. I shone the torch around. Broken, rotten wood; an old newspaper. The marks of someone having a fire on the floor. This looked like it was the old kitchen. I shouted out again for Talya. No reply.
“Well, if she’s here, she must have heard that,” I said.
Nev and Rachel agreed.
“She’s hiding from us,” said Rachel.
“Or she’s not here at all,” I said.
“Let’s just go a bit further in,” said Nev.
And so we made our way from the kitchen into the corridor that led, with its peeling wallpaper, towards the downstairs rooms of the house. Then we came to the bottom of the staircase. A lot of the stairs were broken.
“She could have gone up there,” said Nev, pointing.
“It looks unsafe. Why would she?” I said.
And then there was a noise behind us.
“What was that?” shouted Rachel. Her fear made me almost jump out of my skin. What was it — a rat? A tramp? Or nothing at all.
“There is something there,” said Nev, peering into the dark.
“Where?”
“In the corridor we came through.”
“That’s the way out,” said Rachel. “If there’s something there, it’s blocking us in.”
“Something? Don’t be daft. What?” I scoffed.
“What about getting out the front door?” Nev asked.
“Chained up,” I said.
I took a step towards the corridor, shining the bright torch down it. Down at the far end there was a shape. It
stood in the shadows.
“Jeez!” I jumped back.
“It’s definitely a woman,” Nev said. Her voice shook.
“Hello!” I shouted. “Hey!”
“What’s a woman doing here at this time of night?” said Rachel.
“Let’s go and see,” said Nev.
My hand was shaking holding the torch. I saw that Rachel had picked up a big bit of wood out of the broken banister. We advanced slowly down the corridor. Then the shape moved. Nev, ran after it and me and Rachel after her, as much scared of being left behind as facing this woman.
Nev was ahead of me. When I turned into the kitchen she was standing there, breathing heavily. She said. “It vanished.”
I said, “Vanished?”
She nodded. “But I’ll tell you one thing.” She looked terrified.
“What?”
“It was Talya’s grandmother. I knew her and it was definitely her.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Rachel said. “It’s giving me the creeps now.”
“You’re the one who wanted to come. You said it’d be good crack,” I said.
“Well, I’ve changed my mind. Talya isn’t here anyway.”
She was right. There had been no sign of Talya. She probably hadn’t been here at all; it was just me jumping to conclusions. I was pretty eager to get out of the place too. I didn’t like the idea of some freaky woman tramp hanging around here.
“Let’s go,” I said.
We trudged up the road to my house. It was nearly 5 am by now. I used my key to unlock the door. The house was again quiet.
“But what about Talya?” asked Rachel.
“We’ll just have to wait until daylight then I’ll tell my dad and we can go out and look for her. I’m sure she’ll be ok. She may even come back before then.”
We mounted the stairs wearily. I was exhausted. I went to the bathroom to wash the mud off my hands before I went back to bed.
It was then I noticed that the airing cupboard was open. It’s big enough to walk into, but not much more. It stands beside the bathroom and my mum keeps all the sheets and things in there. It’s normally closed.
Curious, but with a sense of dread, I slowly pulled open the door. Half lying against a heap of sheets was Talya.
“Talya!” I said, but I knew something was dreadfully strange. As I reached out to touch her, I felt her temperature was wrong. She wasn’t warm like a living person, but she wasn’t cold either. She didn’t resist me but felt heavy. When I turned her, I saw there were bruises around her throat. Her eyes were open and bloodshot, her tongue was black. She’d been strangled.
Then I heard someone standing behind me. I turned round. “Hi,” I said. “I’m sorry if we woke you. I didn’t mean to make so much noise.”
His face was the face I’ve known all my life, but his eyes weren’t right. It was like somebody else looking through them. Somebody evil.
The police arrested dad for Talya’s murder. In his defence he said he was possessed by the spirit of the old headmaster, Andrew Hayes.
Of course he went to a psychiatric hospital and will be there until he dies. No one believed his story.
Except me. I tried to tell them but they told me to be quiet. They didn’t want to believe it. Nobody does. By using the Ouija Board, we’d opened a gate and allowed the child-murderer Andrew Hayes to come back from hell to kill again.
12
The Orphan of Cartmel
It was 1950. The war was over but the country was grey and dismal, hardly recovered from conflict and heaviness and loss sat on the land. The weather too was dismal as the train from Preston pulled into Cark. I wore my gaberdine and carried a small brown leather suitcase, just large enough to hold the change of clothes I’d need for my brief stay in Cartmel. I didn’t anticipate being here for very long — just long enough to find out what I needed to find out, then I’d be back at this station and back home to London.
As I left the country platform, a fine rain slanted down and even though I angled my head so my hat brim protected me a little, my face still got wet.
‘Bus is that way,’ a small boy pointed, recognising me as a stranger in need of help. My hand went to my pocket for some change, but when I offered him the angular bronze threepenny bit, he shook his head. It was a simple act of kindness. I smiled at him and walked on.
The bus was small, red and cream and crammed with passengers from the train. Their breath steamed the window, and I used my gloved hand to wipe away a half-moon of moisture better to see the bedraggled winter foliage of the lane we rumbled down.
It wasn’t far, but it took ten minutes to get to Cartmel, what with the local stops, where headscarfed women and boys in caps and duffel-coats disembarked. It seemed the driver just knew where they were going before they told him, but then they’d probably got off there a hundred times, or maybe a thousand. Looking out of the wet clear space on the window to my left, I saw the ghosts of hills in the mist. Hills and trees and more hills. It seemed time lay heavy on this land; as if nothing ever changed.
I got off the bus in the picturesque village square outside the King’s Arms. I’d booked to stay in the Cavendish Arms, which couldn’t be far away. Cartmel was tiny, but even in the rain there was something about the place; an ancient energy humming in the grey-stone buildings. But maybe that was just me fooling myself as I knew I had connections here.
I asked an old man the way as he went from the hardware store to the greengrocer’s. As I’d thought, it was just round the corner.
The Cavendish Arms was suitably ancient. The saloon bar had a huge medieval looking fireplace in which was set an iron grate, piled with smoking coals and wooden logs, not quite caught by the flames.
The barman saw me looking. ‘Just put it on.’ His northern accent was strange to my ears, but here I was in Lancashire. The land of my fathers. At least, I presumed it was the land of my fathers.
‘Booking in?’ he asked with a pleasant smile.
I nodded.
‘You got a bit wet, by the look of it.’
Truth was I’d only been out in the rain for minutes, but it was coming down heavily. I felt uneasy. It was strange to be here after so long, after all my historical ponderings on Cartmel once I’d learned it was where I came from.
Lost in thought, I hadn’t responded to his comment about the weather and he shrugged, probably finding me rude so I forced a smile.
Truth was, I just wanted to get to my room. It had been a long journey from London and I needed the time to settle myself and plan what I would do first.
The barman got my key and took my bag despite a feeble protestation. His Lancashire good-humour recovered as he made conversation again all the way up the narrow, rickety stairs.
‘You’ve missed the races,’ he said.
‘I’m not here for the races.’
‘You’re staying a week though?’
I nodded.
‘Fell-walking is it? That’s popular with city folk now. Can’t see why myself.’
‘No, research.’
‘Ah,’ he said. I suppose he didn’t have much to say to that.
I was alone in my room. It was small. The bed had a cast-iron frame. The mattress sagged in the middle as did the pillows but the sheets were fresh. Faded Lake District scenes in cheap gilt-effect frames hung on the lumpy walls. The floorboards creaked as I went to hang up my damp coat in the sombre dark wooden wardrobe. I had to put my hat on a chair as there was no hat-stand. Sitting on the bed, and sinking in, I regarded the room. Like the rest of the inn, the place was ancient. I’d read that this hotel was set up by the Priors in the Middle-Ages for visitors from afar who came on business to the Priory. That’s why I’d chosen it. Because I was here on business too. My own business.
I ate a passable beef pie with onion gravy, boiled potato and carrots with a pint of Hartley’s Pale Ale, brewed not far away in Ulverston. I was the only guest. It was February after all. After eating, I sat by the fire with my book, but
I could not settle. So I went to bed.
After London’s lights burning bright all and every night, confusing birds and brightening even a winter sky to dull orange, the dark of Cartmel was absolute and instant. It was quite unnerving. I switched off the small electric lamp about ten. The night rendered me blind, as if all I knew and all the foundations upon which I’d built my life so far were swept away.
Eventually I slept. I dreamed of trains and missing trains and railways and stations and signals and lines winding across England and being forever lost and confused. Then something woke me.
It was a woman. She came with a glow. A pale glow like that which comes from dead wood. And she smelled of rivers and rain and streams running fast with winter downpours, threatening to carry me off and drown me in deep water.
The woman did not speak at first. She stood, incongruous against the cheap wardrobe. I knew she was a ghost because I could see through her. I almost laughed. I wasn’t frightened. This was the sort of place one would surely see a ghost, though I’d never seen one before.
And then a scent of flowers, faint woodland flowers, well out of season now. Perhaps from her perfume: Parma violet, and underneath it the smell of dark winter water.
She raised a finger and at that, my mood altered. A sudden fear seized me, rising from my heart to my throat.
Her raised finger was a warning. But a smile too, a faint, strange smile. I heard a voice as if from a million miles away: I'm glad you've come, it said: I'm glad you've come.
Then she vanished. I tried to sleep again, telling myself I was stupid, but my heart was unsettled and my nerves in shreds.
I woke with a start and saw grey light trying to find a way in through the drawn curtains. I got out of bed in my pyjamas and pulled open the checked curtains showing a blustery day with spots of rain. The window looked down on the back of the inn where there was a van and some other general untidiness. I pulled on my trousers and vest and went with a small towel to do my ablutions and shave.
Breakfast was good and the waitress, a pleasant north-country girl asked how me how I’d slept. I lied to her for politeness sake, and ordered bacon and eggs.
I had an appointment with a Deacon at the Priory at ten so I took time over my breakfast, taking toast and tea to the ticking of the clock that sat above the dining room fireplace. I’d written to the Priory, explaining my mission. They’d been strangely unwelcoming. I hadn’t expected that. I thought they’d want to help.
