I set the album on the table and opened it. Shots of me as a child, playing in the garden here. The memories flooded back. A young Aunt Charlotte. Younger than I remembered her, in black and white, impossible to tell the color of her hair, but probably that familiar ash blonde, or light brown like mine used to be before I discovered gray hairs and started giving nature a helping hand.
Aunt Charlotte’s clear eyes stared out at me. Her ringless hands were clasped lightly in her lap. Next to her stood an occasional table with a bowl of roses on it. But there was something else. I peered closer. There was a photograph in a frame that could have been silver. An older man. My heart beat quicker.
I turned the pages of the photo album, past color pictures of my parents, smiling and happy. They gazed at each other, oblivious to their small child, playing with her doll on the carpet in front of them. That must have been a day when they were either dropping me off or picking me back up. My mother was dressed in a sleeveless, white summer dress that showed off her tan. My father wore a T-shirt and jeans. I lingered over that photograph for a long time. I could almost remember that time, but I could have been no more than nine or ten, if that.
I turned another page and froze. These pictures were in no kind of order. The 1970s gave way to the 1950s, or maybe earlier. The photograph was black and white. The man who stared out at me wore a long black coat and a top hat. One hand clasped a silver handled walking stick. My eyes fixed on that face. I had only seen it a few minutes earlier. Yet the owner had been dead for forty-five years. Aunt Charlotte had written beneath it in her neat hand: The devil, Nathaniel Hargest.
The chill breeze I had felt before in this room, brushed my face. A small child’s voice rang out.
“Kelly.”
I ran. Out of the room. Up to my bedroom. This time I grabbed the largest suitcase and threw open the wardrobe and drawers. I piled everything in. I grabbed toiletries from the bathroom and threw them in too. I could barely shut the case, but I didn’t care. To hell with facing my demons. I was leaving and this time I wasn’t coming back.
I passed the window and an unusual movement caught my eye. A woman, dressed in a dark brown, calf-length coat was running, waving her arms. As she came closer, I could see she was elderly, white-haired and familiar. She was staggering, out of breath, terrified. Then I saw why. A huge black dog bounded into view, chasing her. He was almost on her. Her mouth opened in a scream I couldn’t hear.
Without thinking, I raced out of the room and out of the house, along the river path. No one else was around apart from a man in the distance, walking away. I saw a hunched bundle lying on the path ahead of me a few yards from the tree. There was no sign of the dog. Panting, I reached her and bent down. She had collapsed and was facing away from me. I touched her shoulder and she rolled over. I screamed and backed off. The dead eyes of Kathleen Lloyd stared straight at me, milky, the irises rolled up almost out of sight, her mouth open in a near-perfect O, her fingers clawed at her throat where blood coagulated.
Heavy footsteps thudded down the path toward me. The man had heard me. He was already fishing in his pocket and by the time he reached me, he was pressing numbers on his phone.
* * * * *
“There was nothing you could have done, Mrs. Chambers.” The young policewoman handed me a cup of coffee in my kitchen. “Mrs. Lloyd was a very old lady. You heard the paramedics. They’re pretty certain she had a heart attack. Shame though. There she was taking some exercise, doing all the things she should do to keep fit and healthy and this happens.”
I stared at the dark-haired officer. She couldn’t have been more than her early twenties. “You saw her face,” I said. “She was terrified when she died. And I know why.”
Oh, let her think I was a lunatic. She probably did anyway. She was a community police officer. She’d have heard the rumors about the crazy niece of Miss Grant’s living all on her own in that vast, scary house.
The young woman smiled in what I’m sure she thought was a reassuring fashion. It made me want to slap her. My emotions and nerves were raw enough without some smart-arse child cop telling me she knew better!
“I asked the paramedic about that expression on her face. It was pretty unnerving, wasn’t it? That and the blood on her throat. He said, she probably couldn’t get her breath. You know, when the heart attack struck.”
I struggled to keep my voice calm. “And what about the black dog.”
“What dog?”
“I told you. I saw a big, black dog chasing her. That’s why she was running. That’s why she was terrified and that’s why she had the heart attack. Has anyone found the dog yet? It needs to be put down. There’s something seriously wrong with it.”
The woman shrugged her shoulders and I gripped the edge of the table. One more smart comment and I wouldn’t be able to restrain myself.
“No one else has seen a dog. Mr. Hawks, who called us, said he hadn’t seen any dogs down there today. He remarked on how unusual that was.”
“Perhaps something kept them away,” I said.
The door opened and an older—male—police officer poked his head around. “If you’re ready, Lynn, we’re done here.”
“I’ll be right there.” The policewoman stood up and took my empty coffee mug to the sink. “Will you be all right on your own, Mrs. Chambers? Is there anyone I can call to come and sit with you?”
I managed a smile. More of relief that she was going than for any other reason. “I’ll be fine. Thank you.”
She gave me a bemused look that only lacked the single cocked eyebrow to achieve full irony. “Well, if you’re sure. Goodbye then. You really couldn’t have done anything more. Take care of yourself and try not to dwell on today. It was her time, that’s all.”
I let them see themselves out. The front door slammed.
Above me, on the second floor, the gramophone started up again. Glenn Miller and His Orchestra and my aunt’s voice singing along to her favorite song. Once again a whisper sounded in my ear.
“She’s playing the devil’s serenade.”
I raced up to my bedroom and grabbed the suitcase, trying my damnedest to ignore the whispering echoes all around me and that music. That bloody song that sent terror shooting through every cell of my body and made me want to scream until I had no voice left. I forced myself to be governed by one thought alone—to get out of this house once and for all. Alive.
Chapter Eleven
I stayed in the same hotel as before, booking myself in for an initial two weeks. The first thing I did was see an estate agent and put the house on the market, carefully avoiding the need to go back there myself.
The hardest part was breaking the news to Shona.
“I’m so sorry it means you’ll probably lose your rehearsal room, but I expect it’ll take an age to sell the place anyway. Hopefully you’ll be able to find somewhere else in the meantime.”
We were sitting in Shona’s cramped study at the former vicarage. Ancient books struggled to maintain their precarious foothold in bookcases designed for half the number of volumes they were expected to accommodate. Her desk was strewn with papers, and the windowsill groaned under the weight of potted plants.
Shona patted my hand. “The important thing is that you’re all right. Where will you go, when the house is sold?”
I shrugged my shoulders. Truth to tell, I hadn’t a clue. “I might go back to Chester.” But as I said it I knew I never would. Nothing would make me want to go back to living in the same city as Neil.
“You could stay in this town,” Shona said. “You’d be very welcome.”
“Would I?”
“Of course you would. Why would you think otherwise?”
“Because of people in the town who remember my aunt. And all those crazy rumors.” I thought of poor, dead Mrs. Lloyd. Shona must have read my mind.
“I spoke to Kathle
en a couple of days ago. She remembered Nathaniel Hargest from when she was a girl. She also remembered your aunt and how shocked her mother was when she moved in with the old man. Most of what she knew came from her mother and grandmother. It’s all superstition and innuendo, Maddie. Don’t pay any attention to it.”
“You didn’t see her face, Shona.” I shuddered. “She looked as if she’d died staring at a vision of hell itself.” Shona said nothing. Before I could stop myself, I said, “I saw him.” I told her about the impossible wind and the figure I’d seen. When I told her how the man I now knew to be Hargest had vanished, her expression changed. She looked concerned in a way I felt certain I wasn’t going to like.
“Have you thought about seeing a doctor?”
That put me on the defensive. “Why would I? I’m not ill.”
“But sometimes our minds can play tricks on us and—”
“I’m not sick, Shona. I thought you at least might believe me. I saw this inexplicable wind buffet that tree; its branches bent in ways they shouldn’t be capable of. For heaven’s sake, it blew me over. And I saw Nathaniel Hargest, as clearly as I saw Veronica, and Thelma as well. I don’t have an explanation for it, but I know what I saw and it’s frightening the life out of me.”
Shona stared at me for a few moments, then licked her lips. “I’m sorry you had such a terrible fright, seeing Kathleen like that. It’s never easy, finding a body. It’s happened to me. But she died of a heart attack. The expression you saw was probably pain, shock even. It was all quite sudden and, even though she was eighty-eight, it was unexpected. Still she did have a long life.”
Shona’s words were delivered in a matter-of-fact tone. Well, why shouldn’t they be? After all, as she’d told me, they weren’t exactly best friends. But her attitude seemed almost callous. Dismissive. Not like the Shona I had grown to like.
I left soon after.
Charlie phoned and proved impossible to resist. “Look, why don’t I do the jobs anyway? At the moment, the lack of sockets will be one more thing a potential buyer would have to put right. And, while I’m at it, why don’t I put in the extra radiators on the top floors? Your buyers won’t die of frostbite when they’re being shown around.”
What he said made sense. “Okay, go ahead. I’ll meet you at the house and give you a spare set of keys so you can let yourself in and out.”
“So you won’t be there?”
“No, I’ve decided to stay elsewhere until it’s sold.”
“Oh, that’s a shame.”
I could tell he was waiting for an explanation, but I wasn’t prepared to share with Charlie what I’d told Shona, especially not after her latest reaction.
Charlie and I arrived at the house at the same time and I was grateful for that. At least I didn’t have to go in there alone and I’d forgotten to pack so many personal things I wanted to keep with me.
“Moving back in?” Charlie nodded to the suitcase in my hand.
“Oh no, I’m collecting some more of my things.” I tried to appear nonchalant, but my heart was beating far too fast. I told myself nothing would happen while Charlie was there. I unlocked the door and handed him the spare keys.
I dropped the suitcase at the sight that met my eyes. “What the…?”
“You’ve had a break in.” Charlie strode through the devastated hall into the kitchen. I stared at the upended table and dead leaves strewn all over the floor. It looked like a tornado had whirled through here, leaving devastation and ruin behind it.
“Oh my God!” Charlie’s exclamation set me racing after him.
I stopped at the entrance. The cellar door was open. Tree roots, clinging together to form one giant mass, seemed to have forced their way through and now trailed across the floor. I looked down and screamed, “Charlie. Your foot!”
He pulled back, shaking off the root that had curled around it. His face was as white as mine must have been.
“What the hell can I do?” My voice cracked. “What is this?”
Charlie shook his head. “Pray,” he said. “And get out of here. Never look back. Okay? Just get out of here.”
But there was something I must take with me. My personal documents. I had a concertina file in the living room containing my birth certificate and every other valuable document I possessed.
I left Charlie staring down at the roots in the kitchen. As I tore across the hall, another barrier lifted partially in my brain. An image. A memory of Aunt Charlotte chanting. On the second floor. In the room that was now littered with broken furniture. She had stood at the window, holding my hand. I didn’t understand her words, but when she had finished, she had squeezed my hand.
“It’s going to be all right, Maddie. You’re under their protection now. They’ll keep you safe from harm.”
I grabbed the concertina file and struggled to remember more, but nothing came.
I heard a yell. A man’s cry of pain. Charlie.
I ran back to the kitchen. And disbelief.
The roots had disappeared. The cellar door was closed. I turned back to the hall. In those few seconds, the leaves had gone, the vases were back on their tables. Everything once again as it should be. I stared, incredulous at the neat and tidy hall. This was madness. I couldn’t have imagined it all. And where was Charlie?
I called his name. I shouted up the stairs. I went back to the kitchen, picturing him lying at the foot of the cellar steps, injured and in pain, or unconscious and bleeding to death. Or worse. Maybe I was already too late. I couldn’t leave him there. I would have to open the cellar door.
The smell of damp earth and rotting vegetation hit me the moment I cracked the door an inch.
No roots met me. I took a couple of nervous steps. “Charlie?”
My voice echoed around the bare walls. I listened. Not a sound. Switching the lights on revealed nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to indicate the sight that had greeted us when we first arrived.
I wanted to run away, but I couldn’t do that to Charlie. In that split second I realized he had come to mean more to me than merely an electrician I’d employed.
“Charlie?” I reached the bottom of the stairs and took a deep breath, I grabbed the flashlight and turned toward the corner where the roots grew. I shone the light at the clump of roots. They seemed even more luxuriant and appeared to have edged a little farther along the floor, but only an inch or two, if that. So what the hell had we seen in the kitchen?
I peered all round, shone the flashlight as best I could into dark places even the improved lighting couldn’t penetrate. I couldn’t bring myself to touch the roots, but they definitely did seem thicker and more serpentine.
Unless Charlie had gone upstairs, he must have left already. Maybe he saw something that scared him so much he fled.
But I would have heard him. Or the door opening at least.
Upstairs in the kitchen, I checked the back door. Locked and bolted. I went out the front. His van was still parked next to my car. He wasn’t in the driver’s seat. I looked around. No sign. I called his name. No response. He must still be in the house.
Reluctantly, I turned back and started up the stairs.
The giggling started almost immediately. I heard a hissing, “Hush!” It sounded like an older female. The childish laughter stopped. I swallowed. I would have given anything to be able to turn around and race back down the stairs, but Charlie must be up here. Maybe injured and in pain. If something happened to him, it would be all my fault. If he were found dead and he had been alive when I ran away, I would have that on my conscience for the rest of my life. No, I had to face this fear.
I gripped the stair rail with clammy hands and pushed on. As I reached the first landing, I thought I heard footsteps running along the corridor above. I told myself it was my imagination. My feet were lumps of concrete. They didn’t want to move and I didn’t want to move th
em, but I had to. Up another flight.
Whispering. Two children whispering to each other. I couldn’t make out the words. In a way I was glad. Maybe I really didn’t want to hear what they were saying. Plotting.
I made it to the next floor and clung on to the banister, too scared to let go. Terrified to look around and see what had been running along the corridor or who had been giggling. I forced my head to turn and look to the right. The rehearsal room door stood ajar.
I crept toward it and listened. Nothing. I pushed it open with one finger and stepped over the threshold.
There was nothing unusual. I saw the customary layout of chairs and tables left by the cast after their latest rehearsal. Now Shona had a key, they could come and go as they pleased. Evidently none of them had been bothered by whatever lurked in the shadows here. No, I was their only target.
Once I’d left the room, I took a deep breath. My stomach clenched. I would have to go into the junk room.
The door was closed. I hesitated. Maybe I should call out, but I didn’t want to reveal my presence. Besides if Charlie was unconscious, who would answer? That’s what really scared me.
I turned the door handle. A chill hit me in the face, with such a force it almost knocked me over. Inside, the already jumbled and broken furniture looked as if someone had attacked it with a sledgehammer. Shattered chairs, tables, shards of glass from ruined mirrors, littered the floor. Cupboards had been stacked up so that I couldn’t see the back of the room clearly. Charlie could be in amongst this and I wouldn’t know. Not unless I went in properly and worked my way through to the back.
Anxious to avoid tripping, I stepped carefully. Some of the debris could provide a deadly weapon to anyone with murder on their mind. Anyone—or anything.
I threw broken chair arms and legs out of the way and heard a crunch of glass under my feet. I looked down and picked up a small silver frame, carefully wiped it and stared at the image. Nathaniel Hargest glared back at me from the photograph I had seen in the picture of my aunt downstairs in the album.
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