by Sarah Rayne
But one thing remains stubbornly clear. I’m convinced that the figure I saw inside Charect House – the man who tapped at the window and who walked through the dark rooms with that grisly lump of flesh casting its horrid light – is still there.
Brank House. Asylum for the Incurably Insane.
County of Shropshire
Patient’s record.
Name: Alice Wilson.
Address: Goldsmith Mansions, Peckham, London.
Date of Birth: 8th June 1925.
Date of admission: April 1963.
Next of kin: No relatives believed living.
Religion: Church of England.
Diagnosis: Delusional.
Admission: Patient was admitted to Brank Asylum under the Mental Health Act 1959 as emergency case. Later, she became a voluntary patient.
Released into care of: Family connections in New Jersey, USA. Notes forwarded to State of New Jersey Division of Mental Health Services.
The part that leapt from the page and burned into Nell’s consciousness was not Alice Wilson’s macabre experience. It was not even the fact that it really had been Alice who wrote the account for the local history publication.
It was that Alice had apparently gone to live with family connections in New Jersey.
New Jersey was where Liz Harper’s cousins lived.
NINETEEN
Michael’s study felt rather dismal when he finished the call to Nell.
It was just after ten o’clock. He considered seeing who might be in the Senior Common Room, but his room was warm and snug and he thought he would make a stab at deciphering some of the remaining pages of Harriet Anstey’s journal. He had already decided to enlist the help of someone in the history department. They had astonishing methods for enhancing old documents – Michael had only the vaguest idea of how it was done, but he knew surprising results could be achieved.
But it would not hurt to spend an hour or so seeing what he could make of the faint, faded scribble. Two or three of the pages looked as if they were still reasonably legible.
23rd April 1939
The builder’s report was delivered to the Black Boar’s reception desk shortly after breakfast. It’s so pleasant when people do what they promised, and the report is a properly itemized list of all the work needed, along with estimates of the cost of each individual task. When I read the total I blinked though, because it’s a shockingly large sum. But I think I could manage it – Father did not leave a great deal of money when he died, but he left a little, and Mother did too. And there’s the undoubted fact that Charect House, put into reasonable order, should sell for a very comfortable price.
The builder has added a handwritten note to the effect that I should not be too dismayed. Everything about the house is shockingly old-fashioned, but the fabric is sound. He also says even if I decide not to have the main works done, he strongly advises that the worm-eaten beams in the attic are shored up. They are causing the rafters to sag, and a section of an inner attic wall has already partly collapsed. It was a load-bearing wall, he says, and there’s a very real danger of that section of the roof collapsing.
He finishes by saying if the quote is acceptable, they could start work soon.
I don’t suppose many people are having building work done at the moment, since, despite Mr Chamberlain’s reassurances, we’re clearly on the brink of war.
24th April
I have accepted the builder’s estimate and have asked him to start the work as soon as possible. (The part about the roof collapsing terrifies me.)
The men will begin with the basic building work and the roof repairs, and will also renew the electrical wiring, since that will mean ripping out wires and gouging into the walls anyway. New beams will be put in, and the old ones torn out. Afterwards, they will build up the collapsed attic wall to provide extra support to the roof. Then they will replaster everywhere.
I think this is going to plunge the house into massive upheaval.
2nd May
I was right about the upheaval. Charect House has become the temporary home of five or six builders, along with an astonishing miscellany of their accoutrements – hods filled with bricks, and lengths of plasterboard which are never the correct size and have to be sawed into pieces, and huge tubs of plaster and cement and paint. There are miles of electrical wiring everywhere – I have no idea which is the old wiring and which the new, and am keeping well clear of both on principle.
The newspapers are saying Herr Hitler has issued a directive to the German High Command to prepare for an attack on Poland. The Prime Minister has announced that Britain will stand by Poland.
I find all this so worrying – it takes me back to the Great War. Harry once said he believed that although we should eventually win that war, it could linger as unfinished business for a very long time. What would he say if he could see what’s happening in the world now, I wonder? Would he want to be back with his regiment? Sometimes, as I work in the house, sorting out the boxes and trunks, with the sounds of hammering and sawing all around me, I have the strangest feeling that Harry is close to me.
4th May
The main annoyance from the renovation work is the frequency with which the men keep turning off the electricity. It’s apparently necessary to do this, although I don’t understand why. Sometimes they give a cheerful shout of warning, and sometimes they don’t – or, if they do, I don’t hear it because they’re at one end of the house and I’m at the other. It doesn’t matter so much if I’m at the front of the house because the sun streams into most of the rooms, but it’s disconcerting if I’m in the kitchen, which is rather dark. This morning when it happened I tripped over an uneven section of floor, trying to get to the matches to light the oil lamp, and laddered my last pair of stockings.
6th May
I’ve taken to wearing a skirt with deep pockets in which I can store a box of safety matches. If the lights go off without warning, I can at least strike one and find my way to the nearest oil lamp. There are six lamps placed at strategic intervals around the house – three that were already here, and three more which my friend the taxi driver helped ferry out here yesterday.
I’ve had a good morning’s work – I’ve been putting out the boxes of what seem to be genuine rubbish. The builders have promised to take them away in one of the skips after the weekend. They’re finishing early today on account of it being Friday afternoon. That seems fair enough: they start quite early in the morning; in fact, when I arrive here around ten, they’ve usually put in a couple of hours’ work already and are settling down to a fry-up over the primus stove. I’m usually offered a bacon and egg sandwich. It’s all very democratic, and the bacon and egg sandwiches are delicious.
I brought a newspaper with me to read with my lunch. Today the Black Boar have given me sausage patties, which make a nice change from sandwiches. There’s also a slice of Victoria sponge, and an apple to round it off. I ate it all while reading newspaper headlines about how two warships are escorting the King and Queen to Canada, and how each ship carries several million pounds in gold for safe-keeping in that country. I don’t think there’s much doubt about the war. I think Harry would say we shouldn’t trust Adolf Hitler or Mussolini.
It was on the following page that Harriet’s writing became uncertain, and Michael put the diaries down for a moment, considering whether he should hand the rest of the pages to his colleague in the history department. But when he took the journal to the desk and switched on the table lamp, the next two pages were legible, although the writing itself was straggly and erratic. He would read as much as he could.
Harriet Anstey’s journal: concluding entries
I’m writing this by the dimmest light imaginable. I’m trapped in Charect House, and I can’t see any way that I can get out—
That’s absurd. Pure hysteria. Of course I’ll get out, either by my own efforts or because somebody will miss me and come to look.
But in case they don’t, I’m going t
o set down an account of what happened. I don’t know who might one day read this, so I’m making it as legible as I can. But it’s very difficult. There’s hardly any room to write. There’s hardly any light to write by.
It was half past four, and I was in the library.
I’d finally finished sorting through the boxes, and I was folding some curtains to take back to Cheshire. Beautiful material, excellent quality, and whoever had chosen it had very good taste. They would cut down very nicely for the spare room at home.
Normally, on a May evening it would still be bright sunlight, but a storm seemed to be brewing: there was that swollen, bruised look to the sky and the feeling of something pressing down from overhead. I thought – if this continues I shall end with a headache. The ticking of the clock in its corner seemed to be in exact rhythm with the slight throbbing against my temples, and I wondered whether to get up and stop the mechanism, but the builders seemed to be winding it up regularly, probably so they would know when it was time for their various breaks.
The builders had already left, driving off half an hour earlier in their rattletrap vehicles. The plasterer, they said, might come in early on Saturday morning to do the plastering in the attic. Only a couple of hours’ work, it was, then it could dry out over the weekend. I thought I knew which the plasterer was: he wandered around with large tubs of cement and whitewash, dabbing at walls with brushes, apparently at random.
I listened to the lorries go down the drive, then returned to the boxes. I was intending to work until about five o’clock: I had dispensed with the taxi driver since the work on the house commenced – shockingly expensive to have two taxis every day! – and had discovered that if I walked part-way along the lane, a little country bus came along every two hours and went all the way into Marston Lacy. Today I would catch the six thirty bus and be at the Black Boar in time for seven thirty dinner.
When footsteps walked across the room directly above me, I was startled, but not overly alarmed. I thought all the men had left, but it was possible one was still here – the electrician certainly came and went according to his own timetable, and both he and the plumber drove their own vans.
I got up, dusted down my skirt (old papers gather a remarkable quantity of dust), put my diary and pen in the pocket where I keep the matches, and went up the stairs.
At first I thought he was standing at the top of the stairs, looking down, then I saw it was only the mottled wall where a huge, damp stain had spread. In the dimness of the hall it looked like the outline of a man – I had noticed it before. But as I started up the stairs, I saw that after all it wasn’t the damp stain – it really was one of the workmen.
‘Hello,’ I said. My voice echoed in the enclosed space, and I saw him give a start of surprise as if he hadn’t realized I was there. ‘I didn’t know anyone was still here,’ I said. ‘I’ll be leaving and locking up in about ten minutes – have you finished?’
He did not answer. He began to come very slowly down the stairs – fumblingly, that’s the only word I can think of to describe it – and as he came, he was humming very softly to himself.
The throbbing headache that had started earlier increased, making me feel slightly dizzy, but – and this is the really curious thing – the soft humming was trickling in and out of my brain. Prowling music – beckoning music. Music that said: follow me . . .
I reached out to the banister to steady myself and began to say something else about intending to leave. Only, I don’t think it got said. The headache swelled to enormous monstrous proportions, and the music swooped and whirled around me, and the man seemed to come towards me through a kind of amber glaze. Like those insects you see trapped in resin – only, I was the trapped insect, looking out.
I have no recollection of moving up the stairs – I can only remember the soft cadences of the music and the overwhelming need to get closer to it. I think there was the feel of the new floorboards under my shoes, where the builders had nailed new sections of oak strips into place that day, but I can’t be sure.
And then, little by little, the humming faded, and I sank fathoms deep into sleep – only, I don’t think it could have been sleep in the normal sense of the word. I think it was much too deep and dense for that. I think I might have fainted.
When I opened my eyes, the amber glaze had gone and I was lying in a small, cramped space, half covered by pieces of old sacking. There’s the smell of new plaster, and it’s stiflingly hot and ominously quiet. Or is it? Isn’t that soft singing still going on somewhere, a long way away? No, there’s nothing to be heard.
I’ve pushed the sacking aside and managed to stand up, although I’m stiff and uncomfortable, as if I had been lying up here for a long time, and I’ve got pins and needles in my legs. But I’ve rubbed them to get the blood flowing again, and I’ve tried to see where I am. The matches I’ve been keeping in my skirt pocket are still there, with the diary and pen, and a few minutes ago I struck a match. Oh God, that was the worst moment of my life. The tiny flame flared up in the airless space, showing that I was in a small, narrow space, completely enclosed by four walls. And the walls are unbroken . . . I sat there on the floor, staring about me, until the flame burned all the way down and scorched my fingers.
The knowledge of what I saw in that too-brief flare of light is drumming into my brain. I’m in the attics of Charect House, on the other side of the damaged wall the men rebuilt. I have no idea how I got here, except that I know I tried to follow that sly, beckoning humming . . . Did it bring me up here? It must have done. And then I sank into that deep, dark sleep.
Heaven knows how long I was unconscious, but while I lay there, the plasterer must have come in to finish the work to the newly-built wall. A couple of hours’ work, early on Saturday morning, so the plaster can dry out over the weekend, that’s what the builder told me. Or perhaps the man even came back on Friday evening, to get the job done and out of the way. Whenever it was, he wouldn’t have seen me, because I was lying in the far corner, in a little recess created by a section of jutting wall, most likely part of the chimney breast. And I was half covered by sacking, so he would just have seen a pile of household debris. Some old sacks, a couple of discarded dust-sheets. No need to bother carrying them down the stairs.
I’ve struck a second match, and it might not be quite as bad as I feared. There might be a faint chance of escape. There’s a tiny window, set high up, and surely I can break the glass and climb out.
I can’t. The window is too small – it’s a tiny, round window, barely a foot across, hardly more than a ventilator. It lets in a few threads of light at the moment, for which I’m deeply grateful – I can just about see to write these lines. But I think when night falls, it will be pitch dark in here.
I don’t know if this is still Friday or if it’s Saturday. What I do know is that the builders won’t be returning until Monday morning, and that means I’ll be here for two, if not three, days. Trapped up here in the silence and the dark. The prospect terrifies me . . .
Michael was unable to make out the writing on the rest of this page – it trailed off as if the writer could no longer hold the pen. There were sections of blank paper, then it resumed near the foot of the page. Oh, Harriet, he thought, please be rescued.
I’ve used up a third, precious, match examining this place very carefully, and now I’m sitting under the little round window, writing this. It’s a surprisingly calming thing to do – although I won’t answer for the clarity of what I’m actually writing. But it gives me hope to be writing it – it makes me believe I’m sending a letter to someone and the unknown someone will respond. I might still get the letter to the outside in some way, although at the moment I can’t see how. The window is hopeless – too small and too high. I can just manage to see out of it, and I can just touch the glass with my fingers, but even if I could break the glass I couldn’t climb out.
The walls are solid. I’ve tapped them all the way round, and three of them are obviously the brick
outer wall of the house itself. The fourth seems to be the new one – there’s a different feel to the surface, and there are one or two slightly damp patches, as if the cement or something isn’t quite dry. But although I’ve banged this wall, and tried to gouge out the damp-feeling plaster with the heel of my shoe, it’s set hard and I’ve made no impression on it.
A little while ago I managed to stand on tiptoe and look through the tiny window. Far below are the familiar tanglewood gardens. The window looks down on to the side patch – what would have been the kitchen garden. Vegetables and herbs. It’s a ruin now, but it’s still recognizable for what it once was.
In terms of actual distance, that patch of garden is only forty or fifty feet below me. In reality, it might as well be forty or fifty miles, because I can’t get through the window; I can’t even get high enough to break the glass. And if I could, what good would that do? Could I throw something out? What? What would attract attention? Shoes? A note? But a note would blow away at once, and shoes would simply become part of the miscellaneous debris that’s already scattered around the house.
But it will be all right. The builders will be back on Monday (how far away is Monday?), and I’ll hear them and I’ll be able to make them hear me. I’ve only got to sit it out and wait. I’m dreadfully hungry. Worse, I’m dreadfully thirsty.
At this point the writing deteriorated so badly and was so damaged by damp or age that, although Michael spent almost an hour poring over the faint marks on the pages, he finally had to admit defeat. Harriet had certainly written more – there were two and a half pages left – but it was plain that by that time she had been writing in what must have been virtual darkness, perhaps striking a match every so often. What demons had gibbered at her while she huddled up there?
