The Dead of Winter

by Chris Priestley

  ‘You are tired, brother …’ she began.

  ‘Enough!’ said Sir Stephen, pushing her away, and refusing to even look at her face. He walked instead towards me and clasped both hands round my shoulders, smiling sadly.

  ‘Michael,’ he said, ‘go and fetch Mr Jerwood. He is with –’

  But before he could finish these words, he gasped, looked at me with an expression of bafflement, then dropped to my feet to reveal Charlotte standing behind him holding the scissors, crimson smears on their silver blades.

  I fell to my haunches and tried to pick Sir Stephen up, but he made no sound. Blood was oozing from a wound in his back and, when I turned him over, more blood trickled from between his lips. I placed my ear beside his mouth and there was no sound, no breath.

  ‘He’s dead!’ I said, looking at Charlotte and seeing the scissors whirl towards me in a wide arc. I managed to move just in time to save my eye as the blades flashed past my face.

  I struck out wildly, but with enough force to knock the scissors from Charlotte’s hand and send them clattering across the floor. I scrambled backwards but Charlotte lurched with surprising speed and startling strength. She grasped me round the throat and began to choke me. I tried to prise away her arms but to no avail; she held me like a vice.

  As we struggled round the room, my flailing arm caught a lamp on the table and sent it to the floor, where the oil spilled across the carpet, igniting as it did so and catching the edge of the great damask curtains.

  The fire seemed to take hold in every surface of the room instantaneously. No sooner had it begun than it encircled us entirely. Charlotte did not appear to notice, so crazed was she now. With all my remaining strength I struck her in the face as hard as I could.

  Charlotte let go of me and staggered back. The flames were alive, rearing up here and there like burning stallions, kicking out with fiery hooves.

  But there was a path between the flames and I ran through, shielding my face against the heat, and managed to reach the door leading to the hallway beyond. Charlotte tried to follow me, but the waves of fire crashed back like the Red Sea over Pharaoh.

  She screamed after me, more in fury than in fear. I turned to see her twisted, raging hate-filled face and thought that were there any justice, these flames would be only a taste of those yet to come.

  I stepped out of the burning room and into the passageway, shocked to see that the fire was already escaping and moving with a supernatural energy, sizzling in the ceiling above my head and visible between the floorboards at my feet. The plasterwork was cracking and falling. Smoke was seeping through. I was about to run, when I was brought to a halt by what I saw ahead.

  Standing some ten feet away, with his back to me and his head bowed, was a boy about my own age – though his clothes were somewhat old-fashioned.

  I knew in an instant that this was the boy I had seen in the mirror. He was muttering to himself, clenching and unclenching his fists. Even from the back I could sense his rage. Then he turned to face me.

  I had seen much at Hawton Mere to chill my blood, but nothing – nothing! – had prepared me for the sight I now beheld. The boy turned to face me, but the face he showed had no eyes or nose or any feature at all save a mouth – a mouth that now opened like a vicious wound to let out a cry that seemed to shatter the very air about us. It was a cry that summoned up a world of anger and pain in one terrifying sound.

  He ran towards me and I swear that my heart stopped there and then and only beat again when he raced past, uninterested in me. I turned to see his form shift this way and that: a cockroach-spider-lizard thing, galloping towards its prey on bristled legs. Through the shimmering heat haze I saw Charlotte.

  The thing stood before her in the fire glow. It was a boy once again: the boy whose brooding, violent spirit was such a part of this house. And I saw that she, like me, could now clearly recognise him for who he was.

  He was not a ghost at all. Or, at least, he was not the ghost of a deceased person. He was the ghost of a child whose life had been so damaged that the pain of it had manifested itself as this strange and terrifying entity. It was Sir Stephen as a boy.

  When Charlotte saw the boy, her face changed to one of terror. She recognised, as did I, the intensity of hatred and bitterness in that awful face. Her cruelty and obsession had spawned this creature the day she let her brother take the blame and saw him locked in the priest hole. Sir Stephen had been haunted by himself all those years. Now the demon that had tormented him had come for her.

  Fiery snakes were hissing at my head and feet, slithering along the passageway and threatening to cut off my escape if I did not move quickly. But just as I began to run, a beam fell from the ceiling and blocked my way. The heat from the flames hurt my eyes.

  I fumbled inside my pocket and blew the whistle. There was no sound to take comfort in, but still I hoped that somewhere it would be heard and help might come.

  Smoke plumed up and stung my throat. The ceiling collapsed behind me. The air around me was becoming unbearably hot, and my breaths became shallower and shallower.

  I could see very little now, and I must confess I thought that this might be where my story would end. But then Hodges and Jerwood came running towards me, Clarence barking at their heels.

  Hodges cleared the burning timber away with total disregard for his own safety.

  ‘Michael!’ shouted Jerwood as they reached me. ‘What has happened here? Where is Sir Stephen?’

  ‘He’s back there … in Lady Clarendon’s bedroom … So is Miss Charlotte,’ I began, coughing at the smoke that coiled about us.

  Hodges leapt forward and began knocking aside the burning rafters with his bare hands, struggling against all reasonable odds to break through, despite his very clothes catching alight as he did so. The fire reared up and attacked him, burning his hair.

  Jerwood tried to pull him back but Hodges turned in such a rage of passion that I thought he would strike Jerwood down, before shrugging the lawyer away and returning to his efforts. This was the loyalty that Sir Stephen had so admired in my father. But was another brave man to die out of loyalty to Sir Stephen?

  ‘Mr Hodges!’ I cried tearfully, grabbing hold of him and turning his face towards mine. ‘Don’t! Oh please don’t! He’s dead. Sir Stephen’s already dead! And you’ll die too if you go in there!’

  ‘But what about Miss Charlotte?’ he shouted.

  ‘It was she who killed Sir Stephen,’ I gasped. ‘And she murdered Lady Clarendon too.’ Hodges and Jerwood exchanged astonished glances. ‘It’s true!’ Another part of the ceiling crashed down.

  ‘You’ll never reach her, Hodges!’ shouted Jerwood.

  I had imbibed so much smoke during this speech that I could now barely breathe, choking as Hodges stood for a moment weighing my words. After a second or two, he nodded.

  ‘For God’s sake, let’s get out of here!’ shouted Jerwood, and this time Hodges made no resistance.

  Part of the house seemed to collapse at our every footfall. The sound of the conflagration was deafening and behind it all there was that awful groaning, moaning, growling sound of despair shaking the house to its very foundations.

  We staggered, coughing and choking, out into the courtyard, and we each helped the others to run across the bridge and out into the safety of the marsh. Hodges’ clothes were still smouldering in places, giving him a wild air as he stood and looked back towards the house.

  Flames were leaping from the roof and from the window, and the yellow and red of its light flickered and danced upon the snow and the ice of the moat. I found myself irresistibly drawn to the balcony, and Hodges and Jerwood followed.

  The light of day was fading and the eerie glimmer of twilight washed the scene. Rose-red clouds billowed above us. We stood by the moat, looking up at the blazing room.

  But Charlotte was not dead yet. She appeared at the balcony, screaming in terror. I could see something behind her, black in front of the tumult of flames. It was less
boy now and more monkey, more demon or imp, and it hopped this way and that in triumph until Charlotte, in her desperation to escape it and the flames, climbed on to the parapet, ripping her burning dress from her body, and leapt into the frozen moat in nothing but her white shift.

  To his great credit, Hodges jumped into the icy moat to try to save her, but it seemed to take her under and Hodges could not find her in the thick, murky water. Jerwood and I helped to pull him out and, as we ushered him away, Charlotte’s body floated up from the depths and rested, just as Lady Clarendon’s had, below the thick ice, the light of the fire washing over her frozen and distorted features.

  I glanced back once, as we walked to the bridge, and saw the ghost of Lady Clarendon at the edge of the fire glow. She stood at the moat’s edge, staring down at Charlotte’s body. She turned to look at me briefly and then, walking backwards, disappeared into the darkness, not merely to be hidden by it, but to be subsumed by it, engulfed in it. She simply became part of the blackness. She was gone now, I supposed, never to return.

  Chapter Twenty

  The events I have described are all now long past, not that they have ever faded in their intensity. They are as potent in my mind now as they ever were. I wish to God I could have made them fade. I wish to God I could rid my dreams of their awful shapes.

  Funerals and weddings tend to conjure up visions of other funerals and weddings, and Charlotte and Sir Stephen’s ceremony inevitably made me recollect that poorly attended and dismal funeral of my dear mother, though it seemed a lifetime ago and was a very different sort of affair.

  We three – Jerwood, Hodges and I – had agreed that the best we could do in the circumstances was to say that it had been what it appeared to be: a terrible accident. We did not even tell Mrs Guston or Edith or the Bentleys. What good would it have done?

  Sir Stephen’s rank ensured that the service at Ely cathedral was a grand and spectacular occasion. The massive and rather grotesque marble monument to Sir Stephen and Charlotte looms over visitors there to this day, a talking point for guides, who tell the tragic story of how brother and sister died together and lie together for all eternity. It is a very moving tale they say, when told well.

  Sir Stephen’s neighbours turned out in abundance, expensively dressed in black like a flock of carrion crows. The womenfolk cried and swooned and sobbed behind handkerchiefs and fans, but I did not believe their grief. Those who had gossiped about Sir Stephen while he lived now hoped to profit by his death.

  I stood apart with Jerwood and with Hodges, whose hands and face still bore the shiny pink scars of his wild efforts to reach Sir Stephen in the fire. We had forged a bond now. Any suspicion which might have fallen upon me as the inheritor of Sir Stephen’s wealth was cleared by the presence of Jerwood, whose reputation as an honest man was second to none.

  That said, the neighbours were very happy to speculate, of course, and I could see small groups whispering darkly whenever I turned round. But I could not have cared less, though I must confess I gained some pleasure from the fact that all their cries and wailing were for naught. Sir Stephen had chosen to remember none of them in his will.

  Hawton Mere was reduced to a blackened, crumbling ruin by the fire and all the paintings and accumulated treasures of its ancient family were likewise destroyed.

  But Sir Stephen’s wealth did not solely reside in the stones of Hawton Mere – far from it. Sir Stephen owned land for miles about and much property besides. He was a shareholder in many businesses, both here and abroad. It was Jerwood’s job as his lawyer and friend to make sense of this vast fortune and distribute it in accordance with Sir Stephen’s wishes. The distribution was simple at least. With Charlotte dead, the fortune was all to be directed to one person: the author of this tale.

  When Jerwood explained that I was the sole heir to the whole of Sir Stephen’s estate, I was at first shocked and then resentful. I did not want this money. I had done nothing to deserve it and I did not want the association with all the pain and misery of that place and that family. In particular, I did not want any link with Charlotte.

  But Jerwood, in his kind way, and then subsequently the kindly Bentleys both convinced me that it was Sir Stephen’s will and I should not let pride check this great opportunity in my life.

  Initially reluctant, I came to see the sense of what they said and eventually assented. Jerwood explained that I did not actually need to be involved in any of Sir Stephen’s business dealings. He had people in place to manage all those matters. When I had come to an age when I might take an interest in those affairs, then an opening could certainly be found for me. In the meantime, I was to continue with my education. The capital would be held in a trust for me and Jerwood would administer to my day-to-day needs.

  Jerwood did have one suggestion though, one to which I was quick to agree. He suggested that it might be appropriate to bestow a sum of money upon each of the servants from Hawton Mere, giving a special sum to Hodges for his loyalty to Sir Stephen over the years.

  Jerwood had already seen to it that the servants had gained employment elsewhere and was tireless in his endeavours to ensure that all those connected with the house were looked after. It was almost as if he took on the burdens of Sir Stephen with an enthusiasm – as though by so doing it brought him closer to his dear departed friend.

  All this done, I returned to my former school – and how oddly normal that now seemed – and to a world that appeared childish after the events at Hawton Mere. I found that the boys who had been offhand when I had arrived now looked diminished in size and importance.

  Perhaps because I paid them no heed, and perhaps because I now gave off an aura that spoke of my trials and adventures, some of the boys sought me out and I began, in a hesitating fashion at first, to form friendships for the first time for many years.

  I was now a good and enthusiastic scholar. The teachers encouraged me to ever higher achievements, until one day I stood on the steps of my college in Cambridge, unable for a moment to quite believe my good fortune.

  I will not bore you with tales of my university life, of the studies I undertook, of the friends I made or of the girl I met and loved and who, when she took her leave of me one sunny day beside the Cam, drove me to take to the continent on a kind of Grand Tour.

  I strode about the Alps in melancholy isolation, taunting death on more than one occasion with my reckless disregard for the weather or terrain – a wanderer above the clouds.

  But wherever I roamed I could not rid myself of Hawton Mere. For many months, on many a night, I would have the same repeating dream that I was lost somewhere, surrounded by fog and mist, unable to discern any features at all.

  I would walk and walk with no clear direction, but always I would find myself in the same place: at the moat’s edge at Hawton Mere, the water frozen all about.

  Looking down I would see a shape beneath the ice, a form becoming more distinct as I watched, until I saw with mounting horror that it was the staring face of Charlotte, fixing me with a look of murderous hatred. The ice above her head would crack and I would wake bathed in cold sweat and shivering as though I really had been standing there.

  I wandered the great cities of Europe, and saw wondrous works of art and architecture. I wrote poetry of a particularly gloomy nature. But whatever solace I sought from nature or art, it was not forthcoming, and I began to yearn for the familiar voices of England.

  I knew that if I was to leave Hawton Mere behind me, I had to face my fear, not try to hide.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I was in Sicily when I made the decision to return and found passage aboard a ship bound for Bristol. I never got on so well with anyone during all my travels as I did with Captain Mayhew, and by the time we docked in England we knew all there was to know about each other.

  A seafaring man will usually trump a landlubber when it comes to the telling of tales, but he was forced to admit that my experiences made his life seem tame in comparison. He was fascinated an
d never once disputed a single thing I said, however extraordinary it must have sounded, however unbelievable.

  By the time we had reached Bristol we were firm friends and I vowed to stay in contact with him through his shipping office and we both hoped that we might meet again some day.

  I sent a telegram to the Bentleys and to Jerwood as soon as I arrived and then took the locomotive to London. The Bentleys met me at the station and could not have been more pleased had I been their own dearest son returning; and, in truth, they seemed like family to me now.

  ‘You are so thin!’ shrieked Mrs Bentley as she embraced me. ‘You’re not looking after yourself, Michael.’

  ‘I am quite well, Mrs Bentley,’ I said. ‘Honestly.’

  ‘Leave the boy be, Sybil,’ said Mr Bentley, straightening my coat and dusting the sleeves with his hand. ‘Don’t fuss, don’t fuss.’

  We took a cab to their house in Highgate and I told them something – but by no means all – of my adventures, and they listened in rapt attention, punctuating the tale with occasional gasps of amazement.

  Their house was just as I remembered it. I had spent many days here over the years. The Bentleys had shown me such kindness. If I could have stayed anywhere, I would have stayed there. They had kept a room for me as they promised they would, and after an enormous dinner and a chance to hear the Bentleys’ news, I slept very soundly indeed.

  The following day I took a cab to Lincoln’s Inn Fields to see Jerwood. The lawyer and I had a different relationship than I had with the Bentleys, but in some ways it was closer still for our shared experiences at Hawton Mere.

  He greeted me at the door like an old friend and neither of us could speak for some moments. I knew that I had changed considerably in my time away, but he did not look a day older and was his usual, impeccably dressed self. But he did have one surprise for me.

  I entered Jerwood’s study to find Hodges standing before me. My joy at seeing that fine fellow was tempered by the fact that the whole history of Hawton Mere seemed to be written in his face – quite literally so, with the burns he suffered in the fire still visible. But oh, how pleased I was to see him. He grabbed me by both arms and lifted me clean off the floor.