by Sarah Rayne
But something was in here. Against the old door with its sinister nail marks something was struggling to take shape, using the darkness and the ancient cobwebs and the rotten spores clinging to the walls.
Nell snatched up a piece of the broken chair, which would at least provide a weapon, although this was absurd because when was a physical weapon ever any good against a ghost? Even if one believed in ghosts in the first place.
And then, like a bad connection finally sparking, or the pixels on a computer photograph clicking into place, the woman was there. The ravaged-faced creature of rain and darkness and ancient cobwebs. The woman who had stared through the windows of Stilter House, and who had stalked Nell and Beth through the dripping gardens, carrying with her a lump of twisted iron with spikes.
She was carrying it now. As Nell backed into the corner, ready to strike out with the piece of wood, the woman began slowly to walk towards her. Anne-Marie Acton, thought Nell, her emotions tumbling. Is that who this is? She swore never to leave until she had recalled Simeon. Can she really be still here, though? I really don’t believe any of this.
The figure held up the piece of iron, and the vagrant memory that had nudged Nell’s mind two nights earlier, finally fell into place. With sudden horrified understanding she knew what the brutal iron shape was.
TWENTY ONE
It was still light as Michael drove along the narrow lanes, but the sky was overcast and streaked with thin purple veins. It occurred to him that Caudle Moor had a remarkable talent for setting a scene.
He reached the house and with relief saw Nell’s car. It looked fine – but it was possible it had refused to start and Nell and Beth had had to walk somewhere to get help. Or would they still be in the house? He went up to the front door first, and plied the knocker, willing Nell to appear. But she did not and Michael glared at the lock, which was a Yale, and therefore impossible to open from outside without the key.
He went around the side of the house. Here was the window that had been open last night – the window Nell and Beth had climbed through. It was shut now and all the other windows were shut. He tried the side kitchen door, which was locked. What about the French windows of the music room? He went around to the back of the house, and he had reached the moss steps when he heard the sound he had heard on his first visit. Soft, light piano music. Michael stood very still, the music jabbing little pinpricks of fear across his skin, then went forward. The French windows stood open and the faded curtains and thin gauzy stuff beneath them stirred slightly in the cool air. Michael took a deep breath, then went inside.
For a moment he thought he was seeing again the small shadowy figure from two nights ago – that it was the lost, long-ago Esmond who sat at the piano, rapt in the music. Then the figure looked up, and Beth said, ‘Michael? Wow, you made me jump. I didn’t know you were coming here. Is Mum with you?’
Speaking lightly so as not to alarm her, Michael said, ‘I thought I might as well come out to the house. I haven’t seen your mum yet. Is she around?’
Beth twisted round on the piano stool to look into the gardens with a faint air of puzzlement. ‘Well, she was here,’ she said. ‘Only I whizzed into the garden and I thought she followed me, but then I saw she hadn’t, so I came back in here to wait. I’m getting really good at this piece. Shall I play it for you? It’s Chopin. It’s called a Nocturne.’
‘Let’s find Mum first,’ said Michael. ‘Why did you whizz into the gardens?’
‘Oh, because . . .’ Beth stopped, guiltily. ‘Um, well, actually, Esmond was here, and I went in the garden with him. I told you about Esmond, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, you emailed,’ said Michael. ‘Where did he go?’
‘Home, I s’pose. I don’t know where he lives, but I think it’s quite near. I just went to the edge of the gardens with him. Down there,’ said Beth, indicating vaguely through the windows. ‘He doesn’t like it if people don’t say goodbye when they go away, so we played this duet as a kind of goodbye thing. Then we walked through the gardens, and he went and I came back here.’
‘I see,’ said Michael, concealing his unease. ‘Listen, Beth, I’ll find your mum, then we’ll all go back to The Pheasant, yes?’
‘OK. Shall I stay here while you get her?’
‘Yes. Keep playing so I can hear you,’ said Michael, thinking if he could hear Beth’s unmistakable playing he would know she was all right.
He looked in all the ground-floor rooms, then, calling to Beth that he would check upstairs, went up to the bedrooms. He paused in the child’s bedroom, looking around. On the old desk was a copy of The Water Babies. Esmond’s book, thought Michael. The book where Brad West left that letter. It had the carefully drawn jacket of its era, and inside were a number of the exquisite and faintly macabre illustrations the Victorians had thought suitable for children’s stories. Michael hesitated, then thrust the book in his pocket and went up to check the attics, which were wrapped in their own brooding silence. Silence House, Ralph West had called this place. Silence from the Dutch word stilte. Because Esmond must be kept in silence.
The diligent piano playing was still going on when he got back downstairs, but Beth heard him and came out to the hall.
Michael said, ‘Beth, can you show me where Esmond went? Just the general direction?’
‘Of course I can.’
Beth led him confidently through the French windows and down the moss steps. And now, thought Michael, following her, she’ll go to the outbuildings.
But Beth did not. She went through the shrubbery with the old trees dipping their branches to form a green shadowy tunnel – enough of them to just about warrant being called an orchard. In Esmond’s day – probably in Brad’s, as well – the apples would have scented the air, and in spring they would have frothed their blossom against the sky.
This looked like the edge of Stilter’s land. There was a thick hedge and several sections of rather dilapidated brick wall, low enough to see fields beyond, and one or two houses in the distance.
‘This is the way Esmond goes? Over the wall?’ And then over the hills and far away, thought Michael. Or is it over hill, over dale, through bush through briar, through blood, through fire . . .? Why would I think about fire?
Because it burned in the end, that’s why . . . Acton House burned to the ground and most of its secrets burned with it . . . But not all of the secrets, not all . . .
‘Yes.’ Beth looked across the fields, not quite puzzled, but with the tiniest of frowns, then back at Michael.
‘Does he live in one of those houses over there?’ Michael knew Esmond did not, but he was trying to find out how much Beth understood.
‘I don’t know.’ She looked at him from the corners of her eyes, and Michael thought: she knows there’s something strange about Esmond, but she isn’t letting her thoughts take a definite shape. Fair enough.
He said, ‘Well, he’s gone home now by the look of it. Let’s find Mum.’
‘I thought she was here.’ For the first time there was a note of slight panic in Beth’s voice.
Michael said, ‘She’s around somewhere. But let’s look over there.’ He took her hand and walked towards the old outbuildings.
Nell had backed away from the dreadful unreal creature as far as she could, but she could go no further. She was pressed up against the wall, holding up the splintered chair-leg, ready to hit out, but a whole new layer of fear and revulsion engulfed her when she visualized her hand and the wood sinking into that menacing spider-web of shadows, so bizarrely in the shape of a human form.
Her legs felt like cotton threads and she thought she might slide to the floor in a faint. But this made her so angry with herself that she yelled in fury at the approaching figure. It would do no good, and there would not be anyone to hear, but she yelled anyway.
Useless, of course. The figure was hovering over her and the stench of old, stale dirt, dank earth, and sapless human flesh gusted into her face. Nell felt a wave of sickness, then man
aged to lift the wood threateningly. But her fingers were so slippery with sweat it slithered from her grasp, and there was the glint of a smile from the creature in front of her. Before she could do anything else, the black iron shape was pushed into her face, and fingers – terrible hard bony fingers – were forcing themselves between her lips. There was the sensation of a cage closing around her jaw, then the sound and feel of a hinge snapping shut. A thick stave pressed her tongue down and there was the taste of iron and old blood. Dreadful. Unbearable. And the iron was constricting her mouth and her tongue so severely it was no longer possible to shout for help, even if there had been anyone to hear.
Somewhere beyond the spinning darkness, came the sound of a door banging open. Light – rain-smeared but wonderful, ordinary daylight – flooded into the room. Nell’s assailant seemed to throw up her hands and cower back and Nell struggled to a standing position, clawing at the thing around her face. Through sweeping waves of relief, she was dimly aware of the outline shrivelling, as if the light was sucking it dry, causing it to dissolve in wizened strands.
Michael’s voice said, ‘Don’t struggle, Nell – I’ll do it.’ There was the feel of his hands and the familiar scent of his skin against her face. The hinge snapped and the pressure of the iron stave withdrew. Nell gasped and half choked, but by taking several deep breaths managed not to be actually sick. Even so, it was several minutes before she could speak. ‘Where is—?’
‘There’s no one here.’
‘But—’
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what it was, but I saw it as well. It’s gone now.’ He glanced over his shoulder and Nell saw a nearly formless pile of dirt and cobwebs on the ground. She shuddered, and said, ‘Where’s Beth? Is she all right?’
‘She’s outside. She’s fine. She has no idea there’s anything wrong. I said I’d check if you were in here, but I told her to wait under the trees because the buildings looked a bit unsafe. Stay here a minute.’
He crossed quickly to the door and Nell, whose legs still felt shaky and who could not have walked six steps to save her life, heard him say, ‘Beth? Still there? Mum’s here, and we’re just negotiating some fallen brickwork.’ There was a pause, then he said, ‘Good girl. We won’t be a minute. She’s found some primroses,’ he said, coming back. ‘So she’s picking some.’
‘We need to play this down with her,’ said Nell, who was starting to feel slightly better.
‘We’ll say the door banged shut and you yelled for help and I heard you.’
‘I did yell,’ said Nell. ‘I didn’t think anyone would hear, though. And then she – that woman – forced that thing over my face. And I knew once it was in place I wouldn’t be able to yell at all.’
‘What in God’s name is it?’ said Michael, looking at where the twisted piece of iron lay on the ground.
‘It’s what they call a brank,’ said Nell. ‘A scold’s bridle. It was a medieval torture. The popular belief is that it was used for nagging wives. They’d fit it over someone’s face and often parade them through the town, or leave them chained up in the stocks for two or three hours. There’s a stave that forces down the tongue. You can’t speak once that’s in place.’ The memory of those few minutes with the iron around her face and thrusting into her mouth washed over her, and she shivered again.
‘You’re safe now. It’s all right.’
‘I know. But Michael, I think someone was held prisoner here, and whoever it was, had that thing forced onto her – or his – face, so there wouldn’t be any shouts for help.’
‘Silence House,’ said Michael, half to himself. Keeping his arm round her, he reached for the twisted metal. ‘It’s a vicious thing,’ he said. ‘That’s the stave, isn’t it? There’s a spike halfway along.’ He tested it cautiously with a fingertip and winced. ‘My God, that’s sharp.’
‘I know. I felt it,’ said Nell, in a half-whisper, and Michael held her hard against him.
‘You might have been killed,’ he said. ‘Or maimed. I couldn’t have borne it.’
‘But I wasn’t. I’m a survivor.’ This time Nell managed a rather shaky smile. ‘And I’m perfectly all right to walk now. Let’s get out of this place. It’s choking me. I don’t mean just the dirt.’
‘The despair,’ said Michael, half to himself, thinking that later he would tell her how he, too, had been briefly trapped in here, and how, even in the outer room, he had experienced the thick suffocating loneliness and the helpless resignation. And the prisoner, said his mind. Don’t forget that macabre glimpse of a face staring out through the bars – a face that had something wrong about it. I was seeing the brank, he thought. It had been clamped to her face.
To dispel this image, he said, ‘We’ll collect Beth and get back to sanity.’
‘Are you leaving that – that thing there?’ Nell looked at the brank which was still lying on the ground.
‘I’m not taking it with me,’ said Michael. ‘I’ll come back later and hammer it to smithereens, and bury the fragments. I’ve never seen such a thing before. Have you?’
‘I’ve seen them in museums – when I was studying,’ said Nell. ‘But they were usually a bit better shaped than that. A bit more symmetrical. That looks as if someone cobbled it together in extreme haste.’
‘Or,’ said Michael, ‘in extreme secrecy.’ Then, seeing her expression, said, ‘Let’s head back to The Pheasant. Food, warmth, normality.’
‘And a hot shower,’ said Nell, summoning up a smile.
The hot shower was achieved immediately on reaching The Pheasant, but it was eight o’clock before Michael and Nell sat in the warm, reassuring dining room, Beth safely and contentedly in bed upstairs. Beth had no idea anything had been wrong. She had enjoyed going back to Stilter House where there had been no macabre figures tapping on the windows; she had met Esmond again and they had played the duet which she was going to practice when she got home, and they had taken some really cool photos of her at the piano, one of which would go alongside the one she had of her father. She ate an early supper, and went happily to bed to explore in more detail the hitherto-unknown world of the Malory Towers schoolgirls who played lacrosse and had midnight feasts.
Nell had showered, washed her hair, and scrubbed her teeth until there was probably no enamel left on them, but she still felt as if she would never be rid of the taste and the feel of the iron brank.
However, when she joined Michael in the small dining room, she thought a degree of normality was returning. The Pheasant’s menu offered fresh salmon cooked en croute.
‘Beautiful,’ said Nell, eating hungrily. ‘After this I’ll feel ready to face the world again. Is there another glass of wine – thanks.’
The wine, which was a Chablis, was followed by two large brandies, which they drank with their coffee.
‘What with wine and brandy and spooks,’ said Michael, leaning back in his chair, ‘I suspect I’m slightly potted. But I think I’ve reached a stage where I can cope with sorting out that monstrous regiment of ghosts. How about you?’
‘I’m slightly potted as well,’ said Nell. ‘But not so much I can’t stand shoulder to shoulder with you and confront the spooks.’
‘Whose existence you deny.’
‘Yes, but I’m seeing things through a haze of Chablis, so I’ll go along with the premise for the moment.’
‘Well, let’s take the creature in the stone room for starters.’ Michael sat up a bit straighter. ‘The one who seemed to attack you? Can we assign an identity to her?’
‘I think it was Anne-Marie Acton,’ said Nell. ‘Simeon’s sister. You haven’t read all of Samuel Burlap’s statements yet, but there’s a section where he describes seeing her when he was a child, and she seemed to be – this sounds bizarre – but she seemed to be trying to call Simeon back through the music. She vowed she would never leave until she had reached him.’
‘It’s a preposterous belief, of course,’ said Michael, tentatively.
‘Yes, bu
t I think Anne-Marie was mad with grief and consumed with bitterness and anger. And in that frame of mind, one might latch onto anything that might provide a bit of comfort,’ said Nell, thoughtfully. ‘Remember the reports of a huge increase in spiritualism after the Great War? All those poor women whose sons and husbands were killed flocked to spiritualists and mediums in droves.’
‘That’s true. I’ve never heard of that music legend,’ said Michael, ‘but it might have been some kind of local belief. And there have been wilder notions throughout the centuries. How does that explain Esmond’s belief in the same thing, though? Because that doctor who talked to him – William Minching – seemed to think Esmond was trying to reach his dead mother through music, as well. Could Esmond have seen Anne-Marie or sensed her, and picked it up from her? I know you don’t believe any of this, but—’
‘I might be just about prepared to make an exception when it comes to Esmond,’ said Nell. ‘And from all the statements – Burlap’s and Ralph’s and his servants – even though Acton House had gone by Esmond’s time, it sounds as if Anne-Marie was still around.’
‘Yes.’ Michael thought for a moment, then said, ‘You know, we still don’t know what happened to Acton House.’
‘Ralph wrote that it burned down.’
‘So he did. I’d forgotten that. He said it was described in the Deeds as The Toft, and that “toft” meant ground where there was once a house, but it had decayed or burned.’
‘Which begs the question—’
‘Why and how did Acton House burn down?’
‘Yes. But there’s another question,’ said Nell.
‘What happened to Esmond?’
‘Yes.’
‘I looked for a death certificate on the web when I was at the police station,’ said Michael. ‘But I didn’t find one. I might have missed it, or he might have died much later. Or the records might simply have been incomplete.’
Nell said, ‘It’s almost as if he was never in the world at all. That upsets me.’ She reached for the small coffee pot left on their table and refilled her cup, then said, ‘Violent death is a traditional motive for a haunting, isn’t it?’
