The Secret of Crickley Hall

by James Herbert

  ‘Okay, mutt,’ Gabe grumbled, ‘let’s see how you like being outside all day.’

  ‘Dad!’ Loren objected. ‘We can’t do that. What if it starts raining again?’

  Gabe glanced up at the troubled sky and saw the clouds had become dark and threatening.

  ‘We’ll have to see,’ he told Loren. ‘You keep him calm while I go look for something to tie him with.’

  He left daughter and dog by the oak, Loren’s grip on Chester firm but loving – she was whispering sweet nothings in Chester’s ear – and strode towards the battered-looking shed that stood some distance away from the house, bushes on the rising gorge behind it brushing its flat roof. There was no padlock on the door’s locking arm and it opened with hinges squealing and bottom plank scuffing the ground.

  The interior smelt of dust and damp. It was shadowy, its only window so badly smeared by weather grime it was virtually opaque. He could make out what looked like well-used gardening tools – a rake, hoe, shears and other implements – hanging from the wooden wall opposite the window, and a couple of plastic sacks that may have contained fertilizer or weedkiller, or both, resting on the stone floor, while at the back, behind a lawnmower, an old Flymo hover-mower leaned on its side against the wall, its rotor blade missing. On a shelf above the hooks was a petrol can (gasoline, to Gabe) and a half-sized chainsaw, probably used for trimming tree branches and cutting up logs for Crickley Hall’s fires. There were also cobwebs, plenty of cobwebs, dusty nets draped from corners and ledges. The shed needed a good clean-up, which Gabe thought he’d probably do himself rather than ask old Percy who, no doubt, was too used to the dirt to notice. Many gardeners were like that.

  Gabe spied what he had been looking for: a length of rope dangled from a shelf hook at the far end of the row. Moving round the lawnmower occupying the centre floor space, he unhooked the rope and carried it back to the daylight coming through the open door. The rope was thin and almost black with dust, but it was long and strong enough to serve his purpose. After scraping the shed door shut and pushing the slot of the locking arm into the metal hasp, he returned to the oak tree where Loren and Chester were waiting.

  Loren frowned as Gabe threw one end of the rope round the tree trunk and deftly caught it when it came round the other side. ‘It’s wicked, Dad,’ she complained, holding Chester closer to her.

  ‘Can’t be helped, Slim,’ Gabe responded, feeling only a little guilty. ‘If he won’t come into the house, this is all we can do. If we left him untied, he’d scoot again. We don’t want to lose him, do we?’

  ‘But we can’t leave him out all night.’

  Gabe tied a knot so that the rope was looped securely round the tree. He knelt beside Chester and slid the free end through the dog’s collar. As he tied another knot, he said, ‘He’ll wanna play house after he’s spent the rest of the day on his own. You hear me, mutt.’ He playfully poked Chester’s ribs. ‘You want company again, you gotta learn to love Crickley Hall.’

  ‘He’ll get soaked if it rains.’ Loren clung to Chester more fiercely.

  ‘If it rains, I’ll haul him inside and if he howls or whines he goes down to the cellar. I don’t like it much myself, Loren, but it’s the only solution.’

  Gabe took his daughter by the elbow and brought her unwillingly to her feet. She stroked Chester’s head a few more times before following her father towards the house. When they both looked back, Chester was standing stock-still, his tail in the air, watching them as if expecting their return. Gabe put his arm around Loren’s shoulders and gently urged her on.

  ‘Chester’s gonna be okay. Wait and see – he’ll decide life indoors in comfort and with good company is a lot better than time alone, trussed to a tree.’

  ‘But why doesn’t he like Crickley Hall, Dad?’ Loren’s voice was woeful.

  ‘Well, I guess he’d rather be in his own home, like the rest of us,’ he told her. ‘Being somewhere strange gives him the jitters. He’s a jumpy kind of mutt anyway, always has been.’

  If Loren was satisfied with the reply she wasn’t saying. She walked alongside Gabe in silence, a troubled look on her young face. He wondered if he’d been wrong in bringing his family down here to Hollow Bay. Hell, even the dog hated it here. But Gabe thought he’d been acting for the best: the anniversary of Cam’s disappearance would soon be on them and Gabe hadn’t wanted them all – especially Eve – to face it in the house where their son had been born and raised, and where there were so many heart-stabbing memories of him.

  Father and daughter bypassed Crickley Hall’s main door, Gabe tapping on the kitchen window as they walked past, Eve turning round from the table where she and Cally were setting places for lunch. She gave Gabe and Loren a short wave and a smile.

  The door to the kitchen was unlocked, as Gabe knew it would be (irrationally, some impulse deep within Eve caused her constantly to leave the front door of their London house unlocked as if she were afraid that Cam might suddenly appear only to find himself locked out), and they stepped inside, stamping their boots on the thick doormat to shake off loose rainwater and mud. To Gabe’s surprise, Eve was still smiling.

  ‘You found him easily enough,’ she said, having watched Gabe tether their wayward pet to the tree from the window.

  ‘Yep,’ agreed Gabe as he shrugged off his reefer jacket. ‘Way up the hill, heading for the city lights.’

  To his further surprise Eve gave him a peck on the cheek, and then did the same to Loren. There was a sudden brightness to his wife that had been absent for a long time. Puzzled but pleased, he studied her face with some confusion.

  ‘Daddy, why didn’t you bring Chester inside?’ Cally looked up at him, a clutch of tablespoons held in one podgy little hand. Eve obviously had lifted her up to the kitchen window so that she could see they’d found Chester.

  ‘Because he told me he wanted to catch some fresh air for a while. He’s tired of being cooped up in the house all day long.’

  ‘Chester can’t say words, Daddy.’

  ‘Sure he can. You just never seem to be around when he says ’em.’

  ‘Doh,’ she said meaningfully.

  ‘You don’t believe me? When I was a cowboy back in the States I had a horse that gabbed to me all the time.’

  Eve and Loren rolled their eyes at each other.

  ‘Woody hasn’t got a talking horse,’ Cally responded doubtfully, referring to another favourite cartoon character. Bart and Homer Simpson were not the only guys in town.

  ‘That’s because he hasn’t even got a horse.’

  Eve intervened. ‘Gabe, you’re going to be in trouble when she wises up to you. You know she believes everything you tell her.’

  Gabe only grinned back at her. ‘Loren seems to have adjusted well enough.’

  ‘You weren’t there, Dad, when my friends laughed at me. I’m still disappointed about Father Christmas.’

  Cally’s head swung round to her older sister. ‘Father Christmas?’

  ‘You’re too little to understand, Cally,’ Loren informed her patiently. ‘Daddy makes up stories.’

  Cally’s head swivelled back to Gabe.

  ‘Well, look who’s all growed up all of a sudden,’ he teased Loren.

  Eve intervened again before Cally became disillusioned. ‘But it seems you haven’t,’ she said to Gabe, and amazingly her smile was genuine.

  Gabe stared at her. Had some of her lustre come back? He felt a lifting of his own spirit.

  ‘You had a good morning?’ he asked, probing her. When he and Loren had picked up the car, Eve had looked her usual beaten self. Had something happened while he and Loren were out? If so, was Eve saving the explanation for when she and Gabe were alone? He would just have to wait and see.

  But Eve gave nothing away, even though the sadness that she had worn like a shroud all these months appeared to have lifted – not entirely, it was true, for there was still an unshakeable air of melancholy about her, but this was now subdued, her manner more alert, her vo
ice a little lighter, her movement not quite so leaden. It gave him a glimpse of her real self, the woman he had loved for so many years, and he was afraid to say anything that might change the mood. The difference in her was not great, but to Gabe it seemed significant. Maybe a turning point.

  He hadn’t even pressed her when they were on their own, the girls off somewhere playing, Loren probably texting her friends on her brand-new cell phone, but at one point he had softly ventured, ‘You okay, hon?’ and she had merely turned to him and said, ‘Yes.’ No more than that.

  So he let it be. Maybe her mind had taken all the misery – and guilt – it could handle. If so, he guessed the change probably wouldn’t last long; but at least it might be a step towards her recovery. He hoped that it was.

  17: THE DORMITORY

  Loren and Cally were in the bathroom, Loren brushing her teeth, anxious about the first day at the new school tomorrow, while her sister sat on the toilet nearby, pyjama leggings bunched round her ankles, squeezing out the last few drops of her pee. Cally hummed a tuneless song while she waited, her eyes roving around the stark black-and-white-tiled room.

  A deep porcelain bath supported by ugly clawed metal feet took up much of the length of one wall and the octagonal-shaped sink on its sturdy pedestal was set against the wall opposite beneath a tall mirrored cabinet. The light from a pearled bowl centred in the high ceiling was too harsh and made the wall and diamond-patterned floor tiles look garish and cold, the reflection of Loren in the mirror unflattering. The window above the low toilet cistern was frosted and without curtaining; the door at the room’s other end was painted black, its brass doorknob tarnished with wear, no key in the lock beneath it. Even more so than most of the other rooms in Crickley Hall, the bathroom was utilitarian and charmless.

  Loren had decided, with no urging from her parents, to have an early night. Perhaps it was only because her sleep had been interrupted the previous night, but she felt very tired. She was anxious to be fresh and bright for the next day. She would read for a while as Mum or Dad read Cally a bedtime story (Gabe had fixed up a lamp on the small cabinet between Loren and Cally’s beds) and when Cally drifted off as she always did before the story’s end, she would try to sleep herself. Perhaps she wouldn’t even bother to read; sometimes she liked to listen with Cally – even though her younger sister’s stories were childish, there was something very comforting about them.

  Loren was also frustrated that her cell phone wasn’t working; the whole point of having it was so she could keep in touch with her friends back in London while she was away. She had tried for ages to send text messages, but when she switched on the Samsung the screen just said ‘Limited service’ and each time she persisted in tapping out a message with her thumb and pressing SEND, it said ‘Message failed’. In fact, she couldn’t even call her friends, because ‘Limited service’ always came up. When she’d complained to Dad he’d tried his own cell phone with the same result. He said it was probably because they were in the ravine – ‘gorge’, she’d corrected him yet again – and most likely there were no masts nearby. Use the land line, he advised her, but she wanted to contact her friends in private and Crickley Hall’s ‘ancient’ phone was in the hall where just everybody could overhear everything she said. It was very annoying.

  Loren exhaled a yawn as she brushed.

  Cally was sure the last drop had been forced out and so she slid off the cold toilet seat. She bent to pull up her pyjama bottoms.

  Then both girls stopped what they were doing and looked up at the ceiling.

  Downstairs in the kitchen, Gabe and Eve were sharing a bottle of Chablis while their two daughters were upstairs in the bathroom preparing for bed. Gabe leaned across the table and topped up Eve’s glass with the white wine and she held up a hand in protest.

  ‘You’ll get me tipsy,’ she complained but with a smile.

  ‘No bad thing,’ he replied, grinning back at her and continuing to pour.

  Eve had lit four candles and placed them at strategic points around the room before turning off the overhead light, which exposed the room’s plainness too much for her liking. One of the candles was between her and Gabe on the table, its glow bringing a soft lustre to Eve’s eyes.

  ‘We used to do this a lot,’ Gabe remarked in a soft voice, then immediately regretted having said it. They used to do this a lot before their son went missing.

  But Eve did not react, even if she realized the implication. She sipped the wine.

  To move on, Gabe said, ‘Not like Loren to go to bed early.’

  ‘She seemed very tired.’

  ‘Yeah, and a little antsy about her cell phone.’

  ‘And your mobile too. Won’t you need it?’

  ‘I’ll use the regular phone.’

  ‘That old thing.’

  ‘At least it’s digital. I’m surprised it’s not Bakerlite with letters as well as numbers.’

  ‘It looks first-generation digital.’

  ‘It’s a man’s phone.’

  ‘Yes, completely out-of-date.’

  ‘It’ll do. Eve, you seem . . .’ He hesitated, then came right out with it. ‘You, uh, you seem more relaxed than of late. You know, I’ve been kinda worried about you.’

  She lowered her gaze. Should she tell him what occurred this afternoon, the dream that wasn’t quite a dream? Would he believe Cameron had reached out to her somehow, if only for a few seconds? She was quite sure in herself that it had happened for real, but would Gabe accept it? She had been half asleep, dozing, that was true, and the horrible man with rancid breath and the odd after-smell must have been some kind of waking nightmare, but the presence that could only have been Cam was genuine, she was sure. The undefined vision had come to her. No, she couldn’t tell her husband, not yet. Not until she was truly sure that Cam was trying to contact her. Oh, she’d had sight of him before, but these had been in proper dreams, sleep fantasies that quickly faded when she woke. But this afternoon was different. There had always been a uniquely strong bond between her son and herself, and Gabe would never deny it. But would he believe that Cam was now trying to reach her through their psychic link? She doubted it. The idea was too off the wall for someone whose attitude to life had always been pragmatic. No, she would have to prove it to him. But first she had to prove it to herself. And there might just be a way of doing that.

  Eve smiled inwardly: for the first time in nearly a year she felt hope, and it was a wonderful thing.

  ‘Honey?’

  She realized she had been distracted. ‘Yes, Gabe?’

  ‘You really do seem a little different today,’ Gabe persisted, hunching forward over the tabletop and brushing her hand with his fingertips.

  ‘Perhaps . . .’ she began to say, but Chester, lying on his blanket by the kitchen door, suddenly shot to his feet and gave out a sharp yelp.

  Surprised, they both turned to the dog as one. Chester’s fur was bristling, his short tail erect, his teeth bared. Eyes wide and bright, he was staring at the open doorway to the hall.

  ‘What’s wrong, Chester?’ Gabe pushed back from the table, the chair legs scuffing the linoleum. ‘What is it, boy?’

  Then both he and Eve heard it.

  A faint scuffling noise coming through the doorway.

  As if frozen – they had become wary of Crickley Hall’s inexplicable noises by now – they listened.

  The distant sound continued and Chester’s yelps and barks relapsed to a whining. He cowered, his whole length close to the floor, front paws pushing himself against the door to the garden.

  Gabe rose and went to the threshold of the hall. Eve followed.

  Behind him, her hands resting on his shoulder, she tried to locate the source of the sound.

  They both peered up at the hall’s high ceiling.

  Loren and Cally were standing outside the bathroom door, also looking upwards, Loren with her hands on the balustrade, Cally peeking through the rails. They were open-mouthed, their upturned faces pale. />
  Below, in the hall, Eve hissed into Gabe’s ear, ‘What is it?’

  His gaze did not leave the ceiling. After a moment, he whispered back, ‘Sounds like footsteps. Lots of ’em.’

  They crowded round the door on the landing that led to the attic room – or rooms – the one place that neither Gabe nor Eve had yet visited.

  ‘Is it locked?’ Eve asked, for some reason speaking in a half-whisper.

  ‘Don’t know,’ Gabe replied, his own voice quiet. ‘Key’s in the lock anyway.’ He transferred the unlit flashlight (they couldn’t know if the lights beyond the door would work) to his left hand and gripped the doorknob with his right. There was a slight resistance, as if the lock might be rusting inside, but it turned. He pulled, then pushed at the door and it opened inwardly easily enough, although there was an initial squeak of its hinges. Now he clicked on his flashlight.

  The sound of numerous soft footsteps from above had faded away (faded as if turned down by a volume control) minutes before and now the family was curious but understandably cautious.

  ‘There’s a light switch just inside the door.’ Gabe pointed towards it with his beam.

  Eve reached past him and flicked the switch. Nothing happened.

  She aimed her own small torch up the narrow staircase leading to the attic.

  ‘Look, there’s a light connection hanging down, but there’s no lightbulb.’

  ‘I’m going up,’ Gabe announced.

  ‘We’re coming with you,’ Eve informed him.

  ‘Not a good idea. There could be, well, you know . . .’ He didn’t want to say it in front of his daughters.

  ‘Rats,’ Loren filled in for him.

  ‘Might be squirrels.’ Squirrels sounded more appealing.

  ‘Gabe, we heard footsteps,’ said Eve. ‘They weren’t made by animals of any kind.’