by Beverley Lee
‘You’re not defined by that single episode that took place way back when you were a baby. It’s possible that whatever manifested itself in your house was there by pure chance, and was simply waiting to be set free.’
Gabe shrugged and scuffed his shoe under a pebble on the path. ‘I guess. But I want to be here because I can offer something, not because people think I need babysitting.’
‘I’ll have a word with the big guy. Carver that is, not God.’
The quip seemed to break the negative mood Gabe had wandered into. Or it was possible he felt like he had said enough? Whatever it was, Noah wouldn’t dismiss it lightly.
Chapter Sixteen
‘He wants to do what?’ Carver’s voice roared across the library. He was halfway up a shelf ladder when Noah told him about his conversation with Gabe.
‘I don’t think it’s unreasonable. He’s a bright, sensible kid. It would give him something to focus on. He wants to be useful.’ Noah’s eyes scanned the figure on the ladder. From the soft suede of his loafers to the cut of his light summer suit, Carver’s attire was all about detail.
‘Have you heard yourself?’ Carver’s face was slightly flushed. ‘The whole point to bringing him here in the first place was to keep him away from anything that might crawl out of the woodwork.’
‘I know it was. But there’s been nothing on the radar since the night I found him, true? Whatever it was simply vanished. What harm can it do to let him do the legwork for one of the others?’
‘Aha!’ Carver’s fingers closed over the spine of a book. ‘For a man of the cloth, you have a very open mind, Noah Isaacs.’ The steps creaked as he descended.
‘I believe in God. I believe in goodness and the power of prayer. I also am old enough to know there has to be a yin to the yang—and that’s your side of the coin. I have a healthy respect for it.’ Noah studied a knot in the floorboard. It had taken him years to admit that what they did here was valuable.
‘You’re wasted on the church, my friend.’ Carver blew a thin film of dust from the book.
‘Does this mean you’ll include Gabe in part of your research?’ Noah stood firm, ignoring his friend’s attempt to change the subject.
‘I will think about it.’ Carver’s eyes scanned down the index of his prize. Noah didn’t move. ‘My God, yes! Is that what you wanted to hear? I’ll ask Ollie if he can find something mundane for Gabe. He’ll get bored soon enough.’
‘Ask Ollie what?’ The oldest, by six minutes, of the Taverner twins stood in the doorway with a scuffed holdall at his feet.
‘You’ve been promoted.’ Noah jumped in before Carver could change his mind. ‘You now have an assistant for all those little tasks you hate.’
‘I don’t hate any task, actually.’ Ollie grinned, showing a gap between his two front teeth.
‘Are we getting a new student?’ He took off his glasses and breathed on a lens, then rubbed it on his t-shirt.
‘No, not quite.’ Gabe appeared behind him and dug him in the ribs with one finger. ‘You get me!’ Delight filled his voice.
Carver puffed out his cheeks and sighed. ‘I assume you’ve been lurking for a while, Gabriel?’
‘Since Noah came in. I’ve been brought up in this house. If you don’t lurk, you miss all the good stuff.’
Ollie looked perplexed. ‘I don’t have time to lurk.’
‘Neither will Gabriel from now on. Work him hard, Ollie, but only the basics.’
Noah didn’t miss the glance that went between Ollie and Carver. It said more than words.
***
The following day, Ollie Taverner logged into his account at The Manor. Gabriel hovered at his shoulder. Now that the moment was here, he was desperately impatient to get to work—even though he knew he would be kept well away from anything ‘unsafe’. That frustration only grew as Ollie seemed to take forever to go through his various checks.
The older boy stopped and squinted up at his new apprentice. ‘Personal space, Gabe. You’re not helping anyone by perching.’ Ollie turned to his screen and opened up the file he had selected.
Gabe stepped back by about two inches. Since being given the go ahead to help, even if it was only the simple stuff, he had hardly been able to contain his excitement. He owed Noah big time. Ollie would try to baby him, but he meant to learn all he could whilst pretending it was all confusing. If Carver ever found out what he truly wanted to do...Gabe took that thought and slid it behind a closed door in his mind.
‘Okay, this is what I’m working on now.’ Ollie brought up a couple of photos of a kitchen, one that could have come straight from a magazine, and the other where the contents of the cupboards and counter tops were strewn all over the floor. ‘The woman who lives here thinks she has a poltergeist. But we can’t take her word as gospel—lots of people suddenly believe they have one or that their homes are haunted. They see a TV programme about it and go looking for their fifteen minutes of fame. When Carver does his lectures, all kinds of people turn up, and you can bet your bottom dollar that a few days later, our mail account is near to exploding.’
Gabe leaned in closer. ‘But how can you tell from a photo if she’s lying or not?’
‘A keen eye. And mathematics sometimes.’ Ollie laughed at Gabe’s expression. ‘All those hours with your tutor weren’t just for boring you stupid, you know. A lot of people don’t realise we actually have a criteria we can work with. If we suspect there might not be any foul play by the homeowner, we’ll try and wheedle some cash out of Carver and go and take a look for ourselves. That’s where Olivia is now. She’s in Somerset, investigating claims by a farmer that he sees a Roman legion marching through his barn every month.’
‘So, what can I do?’ Gabe clenched his fists. His fingernails cut into the soft flesh of his palms.
‘You can quit vibrating and sit here and study these photos. Use your brain and intuition and tell me whether you think it’s a hoax or not.’ Ollie got out of the chair and Gabe slid in before he had cleared the seat.
‘I need to do some classified stuff for Carver on the other computer, but I’ll have a look at your findings in about half an hour, okay?’
Gabe watched as Ollie fired up the more powerful desktop in the corner of the room. It was no decision of décor; the screen faced the wall to keep any unauthorised eyes from snooping.
That was where Gabe wanted to be. That was where he would find the files that would help him solve the nagging, unanswered questions. There had to be files filled with notes and possible findings somewhere—Carver wouldn’t have kept it all in his head. He was a scientist, and leaving information for those who would follow him had to be ingrained in his every pore.
Both Carver and Noah had told him long ago that what had happened to Gabe had simply been a random, otherworldly experience. But what tugged at the corners of his mind was the fact that whatever it had been, it was still out there. And he meant to find it.
Chapter Seventeen
Beth Davenport stared out of her bedroom window, to the lawn and the fields beyond. It was late summer and swallows darted in and out of the eaves, raising their last brood of the season. A sudden rambling warble of trills sounded as one of the parent birds came home with a beak filled with evening insects. She liked birds and the freedom they had to come and go as they pleased.
The sky held a candy floss pink moon, a whisper from full, though night still waited in the wings. The promise of another night followed by another day. But time didn’t mean anything to her. She didn’t have any memory of anything but living in this room, this house; although sometimes, an image pushed itself out from the thick mist that carpeted her mind. She shied away from these unwelcome disturbances. They made her feel nervous, and when she got like that, she did silly things. At least Ella said they were silly things. Beth had no concept of silly or serious.
Sometimes one of the men came to see her. Reverend Isaacs was one. He and the other man used to ask her questions, or at least she thought the
y did. She didn’t like questions—they made her head ache. Then, Ella would come and make her lie down. A boy came too sometimes, but not with the men. He would sit with her and look out of the window. He understood that the birds made her happy. And he didn’t move the chairs—she didn’t like anyone moving the furniture.
The boy said his name was Gabriel. It was a pretty name. If she ever had a baby, she hoped she would give it a pretty name. But where did you get babies? She had tried to remember once. Ella had found her in the wardrobe at suppertime, curled up in a corner. But she’d only gone in to see if babies came from there.
Her once dark hair was winter white. Strands had appeared the day Noah brought her to The Manor and before a year was out, only a few dark wisps remained.
In the beginning, they had brought her downstairs for meals, had included her in conversations even though she didn’t answer. That was before one of the former students, thinking he was helping out, had tried to light a fire in the parlour hearth with green wood. Smoke had engulfed the room quickly. Beth had been cautiously walking down the stairs when the tendrils of smoke drifted into the hallway. It had taken Carver and Ella nearly an hour to stop her screaming. That was when she had first seen the boy cry.
Now they asked her if she wanted to go downstairs or outside. The boy brought her books from the library with brightly coloured photographs—parrots with jewelled plumage in the Amazon rain forests, crowds of pale pink flamingos with graceful necks in an ocean the colour of a Utah sky. Beth knew they must be make-believe. Her world ended at the boundaries of The Manor.
In winter, sometimes they moved her to a different room, one without a window. She didn’t like that too much as she couldn’t see the birds. They told her it was because it might snow. Snow was a bad word. It had crept in with its icy fingers like a thief in the night and had stolen all her memories of Before.
She sighed, a soft exhalation of breath, which misted the window for a moment. Then, it was gone. Sometimes, she wished that she could disappear as easily.
Chapter Eighteen
Downstairs, Carver waited until the house had gone to sleep.
He had spent a restless day unable to settle on any task. This irked him more than he was willing to admit.
Over the last year, Gabe seemed to have taken a much keener interest in what went on in the house behind closed doors. Not that Carver had kept it secret; you couldn’t expect a child who was brought up in this environment not to be curious. But in the past, Gabe had been happy with getting answers to his questions, and then wandering off to play his video games. It had been a lot easier when Gabe was younger. He had always been an inquisitive child, full of questions and statements such as I think I should be allowed to eat all the cake because I’m never sick. Carver had never treated him as a child, probably because on some cellular level, Gabe hadn’t seemed like a child. He was brought up in a house full of adults, so he became a small adult.
He was, in short, an old soul.
Noah was the one who had noticed the change. He drove up every couple of days, whenever church life gave him a few hours spare. The bond between them was strong. Noah always seemed to have the knack of smoothing over any of Gabe’s ruffled feathers if Carver had come down on him too strictly.
Ollie checked in with him before supper to say Gabe had buckled down to the task he’d been given, without complaint. He had asked the right questions and come up with the right answers. Gabe would be a real help, Ollie continued, as Carver sat with one foot resting on his knee and what he hoped was an unreadable expression in his eyes.
After bidding Ollie goodnight, Carver sat in the same position, swivelling his chair as though the mere action would bring about some resolution to the doubts in his mind. He would have rather Ollie said Gabe was bored, or too irritating. The fact he had settled into the task as though he was born to it only increased Carver’s uneasiness.
There were certain things Gabe didn’t know. Things Carver didn’t ever want him to know. But recently, he had seen a thirst for knowledge in Gabe’s eyes, a hunger waiting to immerse itself in all of the dark workings of the house. If he was honest with himself, Carver was afraid Gabe might come too close to the truth.
He booted up his laptop and signed on to the network. Part of him hated the fact he was checking up on a boy who had never lied to him. Not that Gabe was submissive—far from it. He could argue a point if he believed he was right and Carver respected him for that. He opened up the browsing history for the day. His eyes scanned the list quickly. There was nothing that didn’t relate to the poltergeist incident Ollie had given him. A rush of both relief and guilt flooded through him as he closed the laptop lid. I want to protect him, he thought, but if I deny him his wish to be a more active member of the house, I might force him away. I can’t track his movements night and day, so where does that leave me?
Noah’s voice chastised him in his head. Trust. It was so easy to say, but when there was a figurative time bomb in the house, it made him wish that he could turn back the clock.
Chapter Nineteen
In another house, Noah Isaacs was also awake. But only just.
He groped for his mobile, which was vibrating like an angry wasp on his nightstand. He registered the caller with a bleary eye and sat up in bed.
‘Tom? Is everything okay?’ Noah’s first thought was that Betty had gone missing again. Over the past few years, dementia had set in, and Tom’s firecracker of a wife had turned into a shadow of herself. She was prone to wandering off ‘to feed the chickens’ and getting hopelessly lost.
‘Betty’s fine, if that’s what you mean,’ Tom answered. ‘And don’t you go telling me to get anyone in to help. I can manage.’
Noah didn’t have time to reply before Tom continued. ‘I thought you’d want to know that Beth’s farmhouse is burning. I smelled smoke earlier when I was checking the pigs, but I thought it was someone burning garden waste. I got woken up by two fire engines racing down the lane with their sirens blaring. Got myself dressed to take a look. You can see the flames from the cattle yard. I reckon the thatch caught light.’
Noah scrambled out of bed and pulled his curtain back. In the distance, at the far side of the cemetery, yellow flames licked the night sky, interspersed by the blue neon flash of the fire engine lights.
‘Is anyone inside?’ Concern brought his mind into sharp focus.
‘I don’t think so. The people who bought it after Beth left are often away. It’s more of a holiday retreat.’ The disgust the old farmer felt at this state of affairs was evident in his voice.
‘I’m going to drive down and see if I can help.’ Noah tucked the phone under his chin as he pushed one leg into a pair of jeans slung over a chair.
‘I thought that’s what you’d say. That’s why I’m outside in the Land Rover. Be quick.’
The smell of smoke hit Noah as soon as he opened the front door. A strong breeze stirred the canopy of the old elms in the graveyard. He grimaced. That wouldn’t help with tackling the fire.
Tom sat, stony faced, behind the wheel of his battered, green farm vehicle as they sped the short distance to the lane. The fire engines had been joined by a police car, but no ambulance. Noah muttered a short prayer of thanks as he jumped out.
‘Reverend. Tom.’ A stout man dressed in uniform nodded a greeting.
‘Andrew.’ Noah held out a hand but the other man had already turned back to the raging fire. Inside the house came the sound of cracking timbers. Its bones are breaking, he thought, and shivered, despite the heat.
‘Sorry business this.’ Andrew Linton said. ‘The fire chief says it had a hold before they arrived. These old cottages are just tinderboxes waiting to go up, and we haven’t had rain for weeks. This place though, seems to be cursed.’
Noah glanced across at Tom. His lips were set tight.
‘Are we sure there was no one inside?’ asked Noah.
A torrent of sparks shot into the air as something inside the house exploded.
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‘Constable Cooper checked with the neighbourhood watch liaison. The owners are in Leningrad on business. They left a key at the station in case the alarm went off. As it often does.’ Andrew Linton stood back as two fire officers pulled another huge hose from the engine.
‘It will be a sorry shame to see this in daylight.’
Tom broached a question Noah hadn’t even thought of. ‘Was it arson?’
Linton shrugged. ‘Too early to tell. The fire bods will have to sift around once it’s all cooled down.’
The acrid smell of smoke clung to the inside of Noah’s nose, coating his throat with what felt like tar. He drew out a white handkerchief from his pocket and covered his mouth. Smoke was no longer simply a by-product of a burning object, not anymore.
Over the top of the hedges, headlights cut through the darkness. Whoever it was would have to back track as the fire engines blocked the narrow country lane. The car rounded the bend on the wrong side of the road and braked sharply. A young woman climbed out, long brown hair loose around her shoulders. Noah turned at the sound of her voice.
‘Olivia.’ Noah smiled a welcome as Ollie’s twin sister appeared at his shoulder.
‘Hi, Noah,’ she replied. ‘I just got back and saw the flames. You can see them from the other side of the village. I thought I’d come and join the party.’
One side of Tom’s upper lip tightened upward.
Olivia Taverner was younger than her brother by six minutes. She had the same slightly aquiline nose and brown eyes, but their similarities ended there. Ollie was studious, quiet and mainly unflappable; Olivia was ambitious, impatient and prone to flying off the handle if riled. Historically, she should have been the boy. Tom didn’t care for her much and didn’t hide it, but she respected him for having an opinion. Not that it stopped her from saying exactly what she felt.
Olivia had arrived at The Manor with her brother four years ago, and from their first meeting had refused to acknowledge Noah’s religious title. This had been the cause of her first fiery argument with Carver, who insisted new students follow etiquette until they settled in. In that moment, everyone in the house realised that if she stayed, life was going to get a whole lot louder. Carver gave his students a three-month probation period. After that, if they—or he—decided it wasn’t a good fit, everyone could go their separate ways. Despite the raised voices and slamming doors, Carver quickly understood Olivia had a unique gift. She couldn’t control it well, and had spent her whole life running from it. The Manor was a last-ditch attempt at help by parents so frazzled by their children’s talents that they were willing to try anything.
