My vision blurred. I blinked again. The image in the mirror swam before my eyes. I stared at the impossible. Looking back at me wasn’t my adult face. It was me as a child. But not the shy child I had been. This child stared out at the world with confidence and assuredness. Her blue eyes blinked steadily, shining and clear. Her long chestnut hair lay thick and straight, like a shawl around her shoulders, gleaming as mine never did. Her perfect button nose and sculpted lips with their natural rose tint. All were familiar. All my imperfections perfected. My antithesis and my ideal. I knew her. I had created her from my own imagination. She was everything I had aspired to be. Kelly.
Behind her, shadows swirled.
Over to my right, the gramophone crackled and hissed as the scratchy first chords of “Serenade in Blue” started to play. I saw the record spinning on the turntable, even though I knew it couldn’t. The machine hadn’t been wound up in years. Even if it had, that record was in no fit condition to play.
A young woman’s voice whispered in my ear. “The devil’s serenade…”
The music stopped. The turntable was still. The door slammed, but I ignored it. My attention was all on the vision in the mirror. The child’s lips twitched, then broke into a smile. She put her right forefinger to her lips. I couldn’t have spoken anyway. At that moment, I doubted my voice would have made a sound if my life depended on it.
I wanted to run. God knows, I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could, but my feet wouldn’t work. I willed my hands to flex, but they stayed, rigid, at my sides. Something held me there, fast. I couldn’t even move my head. Beads of sweat formed on my forehead and coursed down my cheeks. I was straining as hard as I could to get some muscles working. None obeyed.
A scream formed in my mind, but my mouth stayed stubbornly shut and the scream only echoed through the chambers of my brain.
Out of the shadows behind the girl, a face took shape. A young woman. Shoulder length red-brown hair, dark eye shadow, shell-pink lips, and a serious expression. Thelma. So they were all here, in one way or another. Even my own alter ego.
The unmistakable scent of Opium wafted into my nostrils.
Kelly had gone, and I stared back at myself. Thelma moved off to one side. I staggered. At last, my muscles obeyed me and I could move.
A creaking sounded behind me. The rocking horse no longer leaned against the wall. It moved steadily back and forth, as if someone was riding it. I looked down; the rockers were still broken. Part of one was missing, yet the thing still rocked. I heard a giggle—the same one I had heard before. The giggle that couldn’t belong to Veronica but somehow did.
I raced out of the room and slammed the door. Charlie emerged from the rehearsal room. He frowned. “Is everything all right, Maddie?”
I was panting. I nodded. I couldn’t tell him what had happened.
“You look really pale. Shall I get you a cup of tea?”
“No, honestly. I’m fine. Really. I’ve been sorting some stuff out, a bit too energetically I think. I’ll be okay in a minute. I need to catch my breath.”
Charlie continued to stare at me, with concern in his eyes. “I need to pop down to the cellar and check the fuse box.”
“Fine,” I said and forced a smile, hoping it didn’t look as false as I feared. I followed him downstairs. My heart only stopped thumping painfully when we arrived in the kitchen.
The doorbell rang. Shona stood on the doorstep, dripping wet. Her breath made clouds.
I opened the door wide to let her in and a chill breeze followed her. At least I could explain that. I forced myself to make polite conversation. “The weather’s turned really cold today, hasn’t it?” I said, taking her wet parka. I hung it over the banister and she followed me into the kitchen.
“At least you’re nice and cozy here.”
“Thanks to Charlie Evans. He’s in the cellar at the moment, but he’s fixing a couple of new radiators in the rehearsal room. Should be much warmer than with the convectors.”
“Oh, lovely.” She frowned. “You don’t look very well. Did you get any sleep last night?”
“Not much.” I shook my head and tears pricked my eyes.
Shona put her hand on my arm. “Let’s have a cup of tea and you can tell me about it.”
My hands shook as I filled the kettle. She took it off me and did the job herself. I called down to Charlie in the cellar to ask if he wanted some tea but he declined. His voice sounded far away. Once again, the dank smell penetrated the atmosphere, and I shivered.
I closed the cellar door.
Shona had made her way to the living room with our tea. I followed her, casting a quick glance up the stairs as I passed.
“It’s happened again,” I said. “Only this time I saw myself as a child—I mean as the child I wanted to be all those years ago. The one I called Kelly. And I saw my imaginary eldest sister, Thelma. An old gramophone started to play a record all by itself. Not only that, last night, a heavy wardrobe crashed to the floor.”
Shona took a sip of tea and looked thoughtful. Did she believe me? In her position, I’m not sure I would have.
“I can see you’re really stressed right now,” she said.
I put my head in my hands. “I just wish it would stop.”
Shona set her mug down on a small table by her side. “It wouldn’t be unheard of for the stress itself to be causing hallucinations. You were happy with your imaginary family when you were a child, weren’t you?”
I looked up. “Yes, but it’s the strange things I keep seeing and hearing that are causing the stress.”
But Shona had latched on to something and she wasn’t about to let go. “Moving house—especially the way you did, leaving pretty much everything and everyone behind—is one of the most stressful experiences anyone can have. Your whole life changed with your aunt’s inheritance. You’ve had to deal with your ex-husband turning up and clearly wanting to get his hands on your money. It’s bound to drag things up from the past. I’m no psychologist, but I’m sure it wouldn’t be unheard of for your brain to search for a happier time and set of circumstances and console you with them.”
“So you’re saying I’m making all this up?” I couldn’t remove the indignant edge to my voice.
“No, no, not in the way you mean. To you it’s all too real.”
“But if it’s my mind that’s creating the images for me, how did Cynthia see Sonia that time? And how did that wardrobe fall over?”
Shona sighed. “That’s where my argument breaks down.” She held her hands up. “I haven’t a clue. It’s the one thing I can’t explain. I do know Cynthia had treatment for schizophrenia some time ago and is probably still on medication for it. Maybe she imagined it.”
“Maybe,” I said. “I know nothing about schizophrenia.” I tapped my forehead. “I still can’t remember anything from that last summer when I was sixteen.”
The door opened. I jumped. Charlie stood there. “You’re nervy,” he said, smiling. “I came to tell you I’m all done for today. I’ll be back tomorrow first thing. There’s something a bit strange though.”
My heart sank. I could do without any more shocks. “What is it, Charlie?”
“In the cellar. I think you’d better come and see.”
I cast a pleading look at Shona. “I’ll come too,” she said, to my relief. “My curiosity would never forgive me if I didn’t.”
Down in the cellar, Charlie turned at the bottom of the stairs. I gasped at the sight in front of me. The tree roots had grown from their original position, extending a few feet from the wall. They practically filled one corner of the cellar and had bushed out. Long, woody tentacles reached out along the floor.
“They must have sprouted a good three or four feet since I was last down here,” Charlie said.
I looked at Shona. She stared at the roots. “I’ve never seen anything li
ke that in my life,” she said. “Aren’t they affecting the foundation at all?”
I grasped the nearest clump of root material and pulled it away from the wall, forcing myself to ignore the unpleasant sensation of maggots writhing in my hands.
“Can you shine the flashlight over here, Charlie?”
He picked it up off the stairs and returned within seconds. A bright beam of light lit up the bricks, revealing the veins of tentacles permeating them.
Shona gasped. “How on earth is that possible?”
I dropped the roots, glad to be rid of them. They settled back, as they had before.
“I have no idea,” I said. “Charlie?”
“Not a clue,” he said, after a moment’s hesitation when I thought he hadn’t heard me.
That hesitation bothered me. I could have sworn something had triggered in Charlie’s mind. Something he wasn’t prepared to share with us.
“Well I’d better get going,” he said, and I knew I wasn’t imagining the speed with which he packed away his tools and left. I wasn’t the only one who noticed it either.
“He was in a hurry all of a sudden, wasn’t he?” Shona said.
“Did you see his reaction when I asked him if he knew anything that could cause the roots to behave and grow like that?”
Shona shook her head.
“I think Charlie knows something he’s not telling me. Maybe to do with this house. I mean, he was in the junk room when Harry, the house clearance man, was spooked. Yet he said nothing happened. But something must have happened, Shona. The man tore out of here like the devil himself was on his tail.”
Shona shivered. Or was it a shudder?
After she left, I made my way back into the kitchen. I looked at the cellar door and imagined the roots down there, silently creeping farther along the floor. What would happen when they reached the stairs? It was my turn to shudder.
Chapter Ten
Charlie returned the next morning but seemed perplexed when I questioned him about the previous day. In the end, I dropped the subject. He finished the job, promising to return the following week to fit some much-needed sockets in the living room.
Meanwhile, I slept each night with my door locked and a newly acquired cricket bat in easy reach. It gave me comfort having something to defend myself with, although it would provide scant defense against anything of a supernatural origin. A new determination had taken hold of me. This was my house. Why should I allow something that seemed to have sprung from my imagination push me out of it? The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced my problems with Hargest House could be laid firmly at the door of whatever happened to me that summer I turned sixteen. If I needed to remember and finally deal with whatever that was, I was only going to be able to do it here. So, here I must stay.
Three days went by. Quiet, peaceful, uneventful. I went shopping in the town. I even managed to talk to people and strike up conversations with strangers without having to imagine myself as confident Kelly. In fact, since I’d seen her reflection in the mirror, I preferred not to think about her.
I avoided the frosty woman in the convenience store and discovered a small supermarket around the corner. I didn’t say who I was. If they knew, they didn’t say. The cashiers and I passed the time of day and exchanged pleasantries about the state of the weather. Not much more, but it was a start. Walking back down the street, I looked over at the newly erected scaffolding along the front of the condemned apartment block on the High Street.
An elderly woman caught me staring at it. “The sooner that’s down the better. Nothing good will ever come of building there. They might as well level it off and leave it for nature to take over. That’s if anything would grow in that accursed soil.”
“Do you live here?”
“All my life.” Her pale blue eyes searched mine. “And while they’re at it, they should take down that evil man’s house.” To my dismay, she pointed down the hill.
“You mean Hargest House?”
She nodded. “Evil. He built evil into that house. My grandmother remembered the first time he came here. Nathaniel Hargest. As wicked a man as ever walked the earth. He took lives, and worse than that.”
“What could be worse than that?”
She leaned closer to me. “He took their souls.”
I stared at her. She nodded. “And he had an accomplice. That Charlotte Grant.”
I could feel the color draining from my face. The woman seemed about to say more, but her expression changed. She backed away from me. “Who are you?”
“Maddie Chambers. I live in Hargest House.”
She gave a little cry and set off down the hill, moving much more quickly than I would have thought her capable of. Anything to get away from me as fast as her eighty-something-year-old legs would carry her.
I stared after her. If only I’d learned more. I didn’t even know her name.
* * * * *
Shona did though. “I think you may mean Mrs. Lloyd. Kathleen Lloyd. She lives in the sheltered housing complex. She must be eighty-eight if she’s a day. Nice lady most of the time. Bit fierce sometimes.”
“She frightened the life out of me.”
Shona smiled. “She’s quite a local character. Famous for saying what she thinks, without necessarily considering the impact of her words beforehand. She had a best friend for years, a Mrs. Webster. They used to go to bingo together, whist drives, all that sort of stuff. Fell out over something neither of them could remember and never spoke again. Mrs. Webster died last year and I heard Kathleen refused point blank to go to the funeral.”
“Maybe she thought it would be hypocritical.”
“Possibly.”
“Shona, do you know her to speak to? Judging by the way she raced off when she found out who I was, I won’t be able to get anything out of her, but you’d be doing me a massive favor if you could. Would you ask her what she remembers about this house? Why she told me Nathaniel Hargest took souls as well as lives? And why she referred to my aunt as his accomplice? I mean that would make her as evil as he was, and I’m having a hard time believing that.”
Shona looked stunned for a moment, then quickly recovered herself. “I’ll certainly do my best, although we’re not exactly friends. I know where she lives. How are you managing here?”
I crossed my fingers. “It seems to have gone quiet at the moment, so I’m hanging on. I feel I’ve got to deal with whatever’s locked away in my head and not let it beat me.” I sounded a lot more confident than I felt.
“Well, we really appreciate your help. Goodness knows where we’d be without that room, especially now it’s gone so cold and you’ve got that heating in. It’s made all the difference.”
When Shona left, I fancied a walk. The weather was crisp, cold, but sunny and I decided to go down by the river. My coat kept out the drafts and my boots and gloves made sure my feet and hands were warm. Outside, a few remaining dry, brown leaves fluttered down from the trees, adding to the mulch I now squelched through.
I was deep in thought when I reached the tentacle tree. I stopped and peered up through its denuded branches as I removed my glove and ran my hand along the gnarled and scarred bark. At ground level, the roots disappeared beneath the pile of dead leaves. I scraped at them with my foot, clearing a small patch of bare earth. The roots looked like those of any other tree.
“Only yours aren’t, are they?” I suddenly realized I had spoken my thoughts. Good job no one was around.
A faint breeze caressed my cheek like a cool hand. My fingers tingled. Faint at first, quickly gaining strength. The branch I was stroking suddenly bent and I jumped back. The breeze stroked my face again and brought with it a whisper.
“Kelly…”
I cried out. My whole body shook as if a bolt of lightning had struck me. A few yards away, closer to the house, stood the tall fi
gure of a man, dressed in a long black coat, and wearing a top hat which he raised to me. The faintest of smiles curled his lips. As I stayed there, unable to move, he turned and walked steadily toward the house. Then, as if he had stepped through some invisible door, he disappeared.
The tree rustled; withered leaves around me swirled. Still I stood, rigid, and they settled. There was no wind. No breeze. But the branches bent, until the tree was leaning over even farther than usual. A sudden gust blew me back. I tripped, fell, struggled to my feet. The gale blasted the tree. Its gnarled branches creaked and bent. But all around me remained still. Only around the tree did the wind howl.
It stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Birds sang and I realized that this too had ceased all the time the bizarre tempest had raged.
I backed away. Where could I go? The man seemed so familiar. Too familiar. If I went back to the house, would I see him there? The very thought of him terrified me.
Somewhere deep in my brain a memory stirred. As if one of those infernal shutters had begun to lift and, as it did so, a cloud of darkness and dread filled my body and soul.
* * * * *
I staggered back to the house without seeing the strange man. My fingers trembled so much I dropped the house keys twice. Finally I opened the door. The hall seemed warm and inviting—a whole world away from what I had experienced. I listened, hardly daring to breathe, terrified the man had invaded my house. But he’d disappeared before he reached the front door.
I set the keys down on the hall table and took off my coat, draping it over the banister. I might need that again at short notice.
In the kitchen, the clock ticked. A tap dripped—I turned it slightly and it stopped. I tried the cellar door. Locked. The man couldn’t have got into the house. Not if he was human anyway. He was so familiar. I was sure I’d seen him somewhere before. In this house.
I crossed over the hall into the living room. I had seen an old photograph album in Aunt Charlotte’s bureau, under the bay window. I opened the top drawer. There it lay, right on top.
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