The Secret of Crickley Hall

by James Herbert

  She levered herself up on her elbows, looking towards the open doorway, wondering if she should wake Gabe, whose gentle snoring could not drown out the sound coming from the landing.

  After last night, the landing light had been left on so that the girls would be able to see should they stir from their sleep and become disorientated. But it was a dim glow, the lightbulb weak, hardly strong enough to govern the area it was supposed to; instead it seemed to create even deeper shadows, shadows that were impenetrable.

  The bedroom became almost darker again as the moon was concealed behind another cloud, but there was just enough light from the landing to see the small figure that suddenly appeared in the doorway.

  Eve drew in a sharp, startled breath.

  ‘Mummy,’ Loren said from the bedroom’s threshold, ‘I can hear someone knocking.’

  Eve let her breath go and relaxed her tensed shoulders.

  ‘I think it’s coming from the cupboard again,’ Loren said.

  ‘I can hear it, darling.’

  They both listened as if for reaffirmation. Loren took a step into the room. ‘Mummy?’

  The fear in her daughter’s voice caused Eve to tense again. She nudged Gabe’s shoulder with her elbow.

  ‘Gabe, wake up,’ she said in a harsh whisper. ‘Gabe.’

  Loren was standing by the bottom of the bed now, a hand on one of the corner posts. ‘Daddy!’ Although urgent, she spoke in a whisper as if she didn’t want to be heard by anything outside the room.

  Flat on his back, Gabe roused. He lifted his head from the pillow.

  ‘S’going on?’ he murmured, not quite awake.

  ‘Listen,’ Eve urged him, her voice low.

  Gabe listened.

  ‘What the hell is it?’ he said after a few moments.

  ‘Loren says it’s coming from a cupboard.’

  ‘Which one?’ There were more than a few in the big house.

  ‘Somewhere along the landing, Daddy.’

  Gabe pulled the duvet aside and his feet touched the cold wood flooring. Fortunately, he was wearing his grey T-shirt and dark boxers, so there was no embarrassment before his daughter. He sat on the edge of the bed to listen again. Although muted, it sounded like knuckles on wood.

  Eve left her side of the bed, the hem of her wrinkled nightie falling to her knees. She went to her daughter, putting a comforting arm round her shoulders.

  Loren clung to her. ‘What is it, Mummy?’ she asked in a scared half-moan.

  ‘We’ll find out,’ Eve assured her. ‘Is Cally asleep?’

  ‘Yes, I checked on her.’

  Gabe was by the bedroom door and he peeked out cautiously as if expecting a surprise. The knocking came from his right, somewhere past his daughters’ open bedroom door. He squinted into the general gloom.

  One hand holding the doorframe as if to pull himself back from harm’s way, Gabe took a step out onto the landing. Below, the hall looked like a great dark pit, the poor light from above barely touching the flagstones. Even the big window over the stairway failed to offer any light.

  Behind him, Eve scrabbled for the bedroom light switch, then flicked it on. A little more light graced the landing.

  The knocking became louder, although still muffled, and it wasn’t because he was closer to it. Someone or something was beating even louder against the cupboard door.

  Gabe cocked his head as if it would help him hear more clearly. The noise seemed to emanate from a cupboard along the landing as Loren had said; it was the same one he’d investigated for her only yesterday. With a puzzled glance back at Eve and Loren, he moved quietly towards the sound, placing each footstep carefully as if trying not to make a sound himself, which was crazy: he should be stomping and hollering to frighten any intruder off. Instead he continued to tread cautiously.

  Eve, with Loren clutching her arm, followed, both of them holding their breath.

  There was a key in the lock of the cupboard door, as there seemed to be in all the cupboards in Crickley Hall, but Gabe could not remember if he had left it unlocked. As he stood directly outside the cupboard, the knocking became more intense, as though whatever was inside was becoming desperate. Eve and Loren crowded him from behind, and Eve placed a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘What is it?’ she almost hissed.

  ‘I got no idea,’ he whispered back. Feeling foolish for keeping so quiet he raised his voice. ‘Hey!’ he said sharply, expecting the noise to stop.

  It didn’t. It increased in both volume and rapidity.

  ‘Goddam—’ Gabe cursed and he felt Eve’s fingers dig into his shoulder in sudden fright. Loren gave out a sharp squeal.

  Now Gabe felt his temper rise. Enough was enough. He reached forward to the small brass doorknob just above the key, ready to yank the cupboard door open. But the knocking became a pounding before his fingers could grasp it and the door itself seemed to strain against its frame.

  As one, Gabe, Eve and Loren jumped back and Loren gave out a terrified scream. Eve held on to her, squeezing her hard out of her own fear. Still shocked by the loudness of both the pounding and the now frantic clattering of the door, Gabe steeled himself and grabbed at the brass doorknob, determined to put an end to the disturbance.

  And, as his fingertips touched metal, the lights went out.

  And the knocking stopped.

  And a scream came from the nearby bedroom.

  13: DARKNESS

  Total darkness. Impenetrable blackness.

  They stood there in shock for several heavy heartbeats, unable to move until parental instinct kicked in. Cally continued to scream.

  Although disorientated, Gabe and Eve moved towards their daughters’ bedroom together and, because Loren was still clutching at her mother’s nightdress, she went with them.

  Gabe felt the wall with his hands, working his way along the landing, Eve following his sound. Dim shapes were slowly beginning to reveal themselves – the balcony railings, the tall window below a slightly paler blackness, the doorway to Loren and Cally’s bedroom the same.

  Gabe had just felt the emptiness of that doorway when the imperfect moon fought clear of the roiling clouds below it and suddenly they could see more clearly. Moonlight flooded through the hall’s tall window, brightening a long segment of the flagstone floor, and Eve was able to discern her husband’s silhouette in the opening.

  ‘It’s all right, Cally,’ she heard him say. ‘We’re here, you’re okay, baby.’

  Eve pushed into the room behind him, dragging a terrified Loren in her wake. Cally was kneeling on her bed, the duvet bunched up before her.

  ‘Cally, what is it?’ Eve made straight for her, arms outstretched.

  Cally had stopped screaming, but her shoulders heaved with her sobbing.

  ‘In the corner, Mummy,’ she wailed, throwing herself into her mother’s arms.

  Eve, Gabe and Loren all looked towards the corner that Cally’s trembling finger was pointing at. In the semi-darkness they could see it was empty.

  ‘There’s nothing there, darling,’ Eve soothed as Cally clung to her. ‘You’ve just had a bad dream.’

  ‘No, Mummy, there was someone standing there, all black.’

  ‘No, you just had a fright when the lights went out. We probably disturbed you when we were out on the landing.’

  ‘The banging woke me up,’ Cally complained as she cried against Eve’s shoulder, the words coming out between sob spasms. ‘I sat up and saw someone in the corner. He was – he was looking at me.’

  How could she tell if whatever she had imagined watching her was all black? Eve wondered, but quickly dismissed the thought: logic wasn’t going to calm Cally down.

  Gabe, who had found his way over to the empty corner, turned back towards the bed. ‘It was just a bad dream, Cally,’ he told her softly. ‘Look, there’s no one there.’

  ‘But, Daddy—’

  ‘Hush, darling.’ Eve hugged her tight. ‘It’s over now. We’re here with you.’

 
‘I left my flashlight beside our bed,’ Gabe said. ‘I wanna take a look inside that closet.’

  At any other time Loren would have amended ‘closet’ to ‘cupboard’, but tonight she was too upset. ‘Don’t, Daddy,’ she pleaded. ‘Not while it’s so dark.’ The moon was abruptly hidden again and she sat on the bed with her mother, pressing against Eve’s back.

  ‘It’s okay, hon. I just need to find out what was making that racket. We don’t want it starting up again.’

  He was gone before Loren could protest any more, ducking through the doorway, silently cursing the sudden power cut. Nevertheless, by the time he reached his and Eve’s bedroom, his eyes had adjusted to the darkness some more. He felt his way along the side of the bed until he found the cold metal of the flashlight standing erect on the floor; there were no bedside cabinets in this stark room, just the bed itself, a tall chest of drawers, a high wardrobe set against one wall, and an oval mirror hung on another. He pressed the switch and the flashlight came on. He shone it towards the landing so that his wife and daughters would see its glow and feel reassured. He quickly padded back to his daughters, shining the light on Loren and Cally’s beds first, and then into the suspect corner. It really was clear; no dark man lurked there.

  ‘See?’ he said. ‘Nothing there at all.’

  Leaving the bedroom again he returned to the cupboard out on the landing.

  ‘Okay, you bastard,’ Gabe muttered to himself, ‘let’s find out what the fuss is about.’

  But all remained quiet now, although he didn’t trust the silence.

  He reached for the brass door handle and tugged it. The door did not move. He remembered he had locked it previously and he dropped his hand to the key below. Without giving himself time for further thought, he turned it.

  Gabe felt the easing of pressure as the unlocked door shifted in its frame. He yanked the door open in one swift movement and shone the light beam into the cupboard’s depths. Eve and the two girls joined him as he bent to peer inside. They stared nervously over his shoulder.

  He shone the flashlight around the interior, checking the corners, the back and even the cupboard’s ceiling. All that was there were the cardboard boxes, the rolled-up rug and the mop and broom that he had already discovered. Moving aside two of the boxes, he noticed there were two thinnish waterpipes running along the left wall an inch or so above the floor and disappearing into the back wall.

  ‘Guess there’s the answer.’ Gabe’s light-hearted tone was forced as he aimed the beam directly at the two copper pipes. He reached down to feel them. ‘One of ’em’s hot. Might be an airlock in it.’

  ‘Gabe, that can’t be it. We saw the door move when the banging got really loud.’

  He couldn’t explain it and he didn’t even try. He was looking for a rational reason for the noise; he didn’t want to spook the girls any more than they were spooked already – and that included Eve.

  ‘I’ll check it out tomorrow,’ he promised. As he straightened up, he kept the light pointing into the cupboard as if expecting an animal of some kind – a trapped bird maybe (although how a bird could have found its way inside, he had no idea), a mouse, a rat, or even a squirrel. Nothing stirred, though; nothing appeared from any hole in the skirting board; no bird fluttered out at them.

  The overhead light and the one in the bedroom further down flickered, dimmed, came back on for a moment, dimmed once more, almost went off again, then returned to a steady glow.

  ‘Thank God for that,’ Eve murmured in a release of breath.

  ‘Percy Judd said there were power cuts here and I think we’ve just experienced one. I’ll take a good look at the gen tomorrow, see if I can fix it. It should kick in when the power goes.’

  ‘This house . . .’ Eve allowed her comment on Crickley Hall to peter out, the inflection in those first two words containing the message.

  ‘Yeah, I know. We’ll give it just one week, okay?’

  Once more, Eve gave no response to the time limit set by Gabe even though he’d reduced it by a week. She wasn’t sure she could stand as much as another day here. She knew it hadn’t been the waterpipes creating that din and so did Gabe; he was only trying to soothe the girls with his unlikely – no, ridiculous – explanation.

  ‘Let’s all get back to bed,’ he suggested, swinging the cupboard door shut and locking it again.

  ‘Daddy, can we come in with you and Mummy tonight?’ It wasn’t Cally who asked but Loren, and her voice was plaintive.

  ‘Sure you can.’ He hugged his daughter close and Cally raised her arms to be picked up by Eve. But before they could find their way back to the bedroom, a mournful howl came from Chester in the kitchen below. Although the kitchen door was closed, the howl seemed to echo around the great hall.

  Not only did the children sleep with Gabe and Eve that night, but the dog also slept on the floor close to Gabe’s side of the bed.

  14: SUNDAY

  Gabe had cleaned the generator’s spark plugs and reset the gauges. He’d also cleaned the oil filter and made sure that the coolant level was correct. Then he’d washed out the fuel filter and checked the gen’s fuse, to find that it had blown, which was probably the sole cause for the machine’s malfunction. Luckily he had a selection of different amp fuses in his toolbox, so was able to fit a replacement. Oil level was fine and he tested all the electrical connections to make sure it was not just the fuse that was at fault. The only thing he was concerned about was that if the generator had been standing idle for a long time, then the gas – petrol, he reminded himself – might have gone stale, which would mean draining and refilling it with fresh.

  However, the latter proved to be no problem, for when he tested the gen by switching off the main fuse to the house’s power, the generator sprang into life like a runner taking over the baton. Satisfied, he switched back to mains electricity and returned the generator to standby.

  Smiling at the machine as if they had solved the problem together, Gabe wiped his oily hands on a dry cloth he kept in his toolbox.

  ‘Don’t let us down, baby,’ he said to the generator. ‘We don’t need any more scares like last night.’

  Carrying the long metal toolbox, Gabe left the boiler/generator room and went next door to the well cellar. Like the landing light, the lightbulb down here was far too weak to brighten the place efficiently and the thicker shadows that were created somehow made him feel uneasy.

  The rushing of the river at the bottom of the well was loud enough to catch his attention. Downing the toolbox, he went over to the low wall that encircled the pit at the cellar’s centre and shone his flashlight into it. The beam of light reflected off the slick mossy wall before revealing the spumy, surging river thirty or so feet below. Anyone unfortunate to fall in wouldn’t stand a chance, he mused: there would be no grip on the rough but slimy stonework and the coursing waters would immediately sweep that person away. He reminded himself to make sure the door at the top of the stairs was always locked in case Cally’s curiosity got the better of her (he thought he’d locked it yesterday, but this morning he had found the door ajar again). The stone wall round the well was low enough to be dangerous should either one of his daughters lean over it for a look-see.

  The noise of the river was amplified by the round wall to a constant, only slightly muffled roar, and the air here was so chilled he could see his own breath vapour.

  Gabe checked himself. He had been leaning too far over the wall, almost mesmerized by the black pit he was staring into. He hurriedly stepped back from the brink and drew in a slow breath. Damn right it was dangerous. Loren, too, would be banned from venturing down here alone.

  He climbed the cellar stairs and at the top he carefully locked the door behind him, giving it a pull to ensure it was secure. It was loose in its frame but remained shut. Leaving the toolbox on the hall floor, Gabe went into the kitchen.

  Chester had dragged his sleeping blanket into the corner by the kitchen’s other door and he looked up expectantly at
Gabe.

  ‘Still jumpy, boy?’

  Gabe squatted to pat the dog’s flank. Although no longer trembling, Chester nevertheless gazed appealingly into his master’s eyes.

  ‘Guess you’re still not happy with the place, right? But you gotta acclimatize, pal. We all do.’

  Gabe wondered if they would. He felt that Eve would leave right now if she had her way. And the girls? Last night’s incident scared them, but neither of them had complained this morning at breakfast. It was as if Loren was looking to her mother for guidance, and Cally seemed to have forgotten her upset already. The three of them had gone off to the Sunday-morning service at St Mark’s – even though it was C of E – without mentioning the episode; but Gabe knew that Eve was waiting to get him alone.

  With one last comforting pat on Chester’s rump, Gabe rose and went to the sink where he poured tap water into the kettle. While he waited for the water to boil, his thoughts returned to Eve.

  She really was creeped out by Crickley Hall. And he wasn’t too comfortable with the place himself. When he had gone downstairs during the night to bring Chester back to their room, he had trodden in more small puddles on the broad steps, and there were others across the flagstone floor of the hall. If the dog hadn’t been shut away in the kitchen, Gabe might have suspected him of leaving his mark all over the place. But these had no smell: they were plain water. However, it had been windy outside and he supposed that rain might have been blown through cracks in the tall window over the stairs. Had it been windy when he had first noticed the puddles the night before? He couldn’t remember. But anyway, that wouldn’t explain the ones across the hall.

  Maybe they should get out right away, find some other house to rent, something not as weird as Crickley Hall. A place slap-damn in the middle of a village or town, somewhere not so isolated. Or so lonely. He couldn’t risk Eve becoming more depressed than she was already. She had been through too much this past year – they all had.

  But the tragedy had changed Eve more than it had Gabe.