The Secret of Crickley Hall

by James Herbert

  ‘Chester, will you please stop it!’ Eve had become really exasperated. She jerked the leash harder, but it only made the dog more desperate.

  ‘Mummy, look!’

  Eve, too busy with her struggle to control Chester, ignored her daughter.

  But Cally tugged at her mother’s free arm and insisted. ‘Mummy, look at the children!’

  Startled, Eve immediately straightened and swung round towards Cally, who was pointing across the bridge up at Crickley Hall’s dormer windows. A smile was on her daughter’s upturned face.

  Eve’s eyes followed the direction of Cally’s finger and she saw the pale blurs that could only be faces at three of the rooftop’s four small grimy windows.

  ‘The children, Mummy!’ Cally repeated and Eve felt her jaw drop.

  Chester used this moment of distraction to make his break. The leash in Eve’s hand loosened, unwound, and with a final yank the dog was free. He scooted up the hill, the leash dragging along the ground, before Eve realized he was gone.

  ‘Chester, no!’ she called sharply. ‘Stop!’

  But the dog took no notice and continued his bid for freedom, racing up the hill as if there was a wind behind him.

  Confused, angry, perplexed, Eve turned back to Crickley Hall.

  The pale blurs at the rooftop windows were gone.

  23: DECISIONS

  Eve’s hand hovered over the phone – the digital phone that must have been one of the first of its kind: heavy and solid-looking, with big numbered press-keys – but something stopped her from picking it up.

  She had been about to ring Gabe at the Ilfracombe office, the number of which he’d written down for her and left beside the phone on the chiffonier, but now realized it would be foolish to do so: what could he do about a missing dog when he was miles away and probably trying to make some kind of impression on his new colleagues?

  Chester had vanished somewhere along the winding lane that followed the river and even though Eve and Cally had spent more than an hour searching for him, calling his name over and over, it looked as if this time he was gone for good.

  Oddly, Cally, who was in the kitchen finishing her lunch, had not taken it as badly as Eve would have expected. Certainly she’d bawled her eyes out for the first five minutes after Chester had broken free and disappeared into the distance, but then, after the initial excitement of the search, she got tired and hungry (not to mention wet), and complained to Eve about her state of hunger. Eve took her back to Crickley Hall, keeping an eye out for their errant dog along the way.

  As she stood by the phone, undecided, the receiver still in her hand, a deep disquieting physical chill crept up her spine and seeped under her hair to cool the flesh at the back of her neck. She shivered and slowly – slowly because she suspected someone was standing behind her and she really did not want to see who it was – turned round.

  She exhaled a breath when she saw the partially open cellar door. It was obvious that the draught of cold air had come from there. Because the door was only half open with very little light entering, the shadows within were peculiarly deep, as black as jet, and there was something strangely inviting about them, tantalizing almost. In some way it was like standing on top of a high cliff or building, when the space you’re looking down on seems to be inviting you to jump. Eve gave a small shake of her head – it might have been a shudder – and, phone still clutched in one hand, took a bold step towards the door and slammed it shut. Its key fell from the lock to the stone floor with a heavy clink.

  The coiled telephone cord was stretched to its limit as Eve bent to pick up the long key. When she replaced it in the lock and turned it she felt relieved. She would have to get Gabe to fix the lock or fit a new one, perhaps even add a bolt high enough to be out of Cally’s reach. Eve looked at the receiver in her hand and, decision made, returned it to its cradle. No, she wouldn’t worry Gabe about the missing dog, nor anything else for the moment. But now she vacillated over another number she should ring.

  For Eve, it was a difficult decision to make. That same morning she had set out determined to contact the psychic whose address and phone number were on the card she’d obtained from the village shop. She remembered the tingle in her hand when she had taken it from Ted Longmarsh, the anticipation she felt when she slipped the faded card into her pocket. Now she was unsure.

  What good could a psychic do; what could she tell such a person? That she thought she was living in a haunted house? That her own missing son’s psyche had been drawn to the place because there were unknown forces at work in Crickley Hall, things that were supernatural, things that were hard to understand for normal people? What would a psychic make of noises in the night that could not properly be explained, of mysterious footsteps, of Cameron coming to Eve in a dream, filling her with hope? What would Lili Peel think when she was told of the dust ghosts playing ring-a-ring-o’-roses here in the hall, of little pale faces looking down from roof windows? Would she think Eve insane, or a neurotic woman driven mad by grief? Or would the psychic humour Eve, go along with her ‘visions’ as some charlatans might just to fleece her of money? What was the use? Eve asked herself. But then, what did she have to lose by contacting Lili Peel? At worst it might help Eve just to talk about it to a perfect stranger. Gabe couldn’t help her, although he had tried, had tried desperately; his sympathy was limited, worn by time and his own early life. He already thought she was heading for a breakdown; she suspected he expected it. Why else had he brought her to this ‘sanctuary’ so many miles from their proper home at such a significant time? The new location was to help her forget.

  Even though he had himself heard the strange night noises and discovered unexplainable puddles in the hall and on the stairs, and even though he knew how afraid Chester was of the place, he still would not believe Crickley Hall was haunted. His life had no room for such preternatural ideologies. She was not sure he even believed in God; he had always walked away from or changed the subject whenever she brought up the idea of a Supreme Being or religious inclinations. It didn’t mean he lacked imagination; it only meant he was averse to such things. No, there would be no point in telling Gabe that she had sensed the presence of their missing son right here in Crickley Hall and that she had also witnessed ghostly apparitions in the house. Perhaps there was something special about this place that engendered supernatural activity, a peculiarity that enhanced or was a catalyst to certain psychic energies. If she told him this he might finally lose patience with her and dismiss it all as ‘horseshit’. She loved him and trusted him with her very life, but she didn’t need that kind of negativity right now: she wanted so much to believe. Eve doubted he would be convinced that she had seen little faces watching her from Crickley Hall’s roof windows on her return from the harbour village, even though Cally had observed them too.

  When they had come back after their fruitless hunt for Chester, Eve and Cally had gone up to the attic room together – she couldn’t have left her daughter alone downstairs in the big house, and besides, Cally showed not an ounce of trepidation at the prospect of meeting the ‘phantom’ children – to find the long-disused dormitory completely empty without an ethereal body in sight. ‘What did you expect?’ would be Gabe’s reaction. ‘The dormer windows are filthy with grime, rain was on them, you could have seen anything you wanted – whatever you expected – in them.’

  No, only a genuine psychic or clairvoyant would understand and Eve had almost decided on Sunday after her ‘contact’ with Cam that she would seek out the one advertised in the village shop’s display cabinet. This morning’s events had strengthened her intention.

  Nevertheless, Eve still hesitated.

  Gabe stood by the window, a plastic mug of coffee in one hand, a sandwich with a great bite taken out of it in the other. Laid out on a desk behind him were the design plans for the prototype of the first marine current turbine, a smaller detailed sketch showing the turbine’s rotor and drive chain on top of this. He had declined the invitation fr
om his three colleagues, who were employed by the parent company, Seapower, to join them for lunch, because he knew discussions would continue while they were eating and he needed to take time out to assess all the information he’d absorbed during the morning.

  The Seapower project was important globally, because the system would be able to use the limitless energy of the sea currents. A submerged machine could generate a maximum of three hundred kilowatts in a current of only five and a half knots, which eventually could be linked with a land power grid by a marine cable that would emerge from the base of the pile and lie out of sight on the seabed. Environmentally the submerged turbines would have very little impact and they would cause no pollution whatsoever; they would be installed beneath the sea at places with high tidal current velocities. Locations like Hollow Bay, Gabe thought.

  He took another bite from the sandwich that the team’s one and only secretary had nipped out to buy him before she went to lunch herself. Hollow Bay.

  Gabe continued to gaze out at the dismal view of the backs of office blocks, the rain adding its own dreariness to the grey scene. The sun had broken through the clouds earlier that day and its warmth had hinted at an Indian summer, but that hadn’t lasted very long – the clouds had closed up and the endless drizzle had resumed. His thoughts meandered from the harbour village to the house to which he had brought his family.

  Crickley Hall was a seriously weird place, no question. And although Eve seemed in better shape yesterday, he knew her nerves were already frazzled. And more trauma could tip her over the edge.

  ‘Fuck it,’ he said aloud.

  Suddenly his mind was made up. They were moving out of Crickley Hall. They would find somewhere smaller, a cottage maybe, anywhere that was warm and without puddles that had no cause, or strange noises in the night, or doors that kept opening by themselves. Although he had no belief in ghosts, there was definitely something eerie about the old house. Neither he, nor his family, needed it; Loren especially was becoming more and more frightened, though for her mother’s sake she managed to hide it well. Hell, even the mutt was scared.

  He felt a weight lift from his shoulders and he smiled to himself. Yeah, he’d drop by the realtor’s office some time tomorrow.

  24: THE EVACUEES’ TALE

  Percy Judd sat at the kitchen table as he had three days ago when the Caleighs had first moved into Crickley Hall. His hands dangled the flat cap between his knees, his storm coat hung on a hook beside the kitchen door. For such an elderly man his faded blue eyes were watchful and alert. Like last time, Eve was brewing him a cup of tea.

  Cally had been sent to her room to play or read one of her picture books; Eve had questions she wished to put to Percy, but not in front of her daughter.

  He shifted awkwardly in his seat. ‘Don’t mean to disturb yer none, missus. Been workin’ down at the church all mornin’, but I’m finished there fer today.’

  ‘It’s okay, Percy, you’re not disturbing me. Besides, you can’t work outside in this weather – that’s why I called you in. But call me Eve, won’t you? You already know my husband’s name is Gabe.’

  ‘If it’s all the same to yer, I’ll stick to mister and missus. It’s only proper. Yer my employers, y’see?’

  ‘Well, it seems you come with the house,’ Eve agreed. ‘But you don’t mind us calling you Percy, do you?’

  He chuckled and shook his head. ‘That’d be fine, Missus Caleigh.’

  She smiled at him. There was something she really liked about this old man, even though she hardly knew him. He seemed simple in a good way, a special way, without complications.

  ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I’m sort of glad to see you today.’

  He looked at her quizzically.

  ‘There are things I’d like to ask about Crickley Hall.’ She paused. Had his face momentarily darkened when she said that?

  ‘There’s a lot to do in the garden this time of year,’ he said, as if he couldn’t spare the time for idle chat.

  ‘Really? I thought with winter on the way there wouldn’t be much for you to do out there, especially in the rain.’

  ‘Oh no. In some ways this is the most important part of the year. Have to get things ready for the cold weather.’

  She brought his tea over as he enthused on what was obviously his favourite topic. Percy placed his cap on the table and took the proffered cup.

  ‘Not that yer got much of a garden, apart from the lawn, but what there is still needs tendin’. There’s prunin’ to be done an’ the tyin’ back of the plants, mulch to be spread over the beds to save ’em from the frost. Then there’s the trimmin’ of the trees, cuttin’ out the dead wood. Then yer apples want collectin’ an’ the fallen ones picked up – yer got a coupla healthy apple trees roun’ back. Make lovely jam with ’em, yer could, if yer’ve a mind to. There’s more plantin’ of bulbs needed – daffodils, tulips, snowdrops – which’ve gotta go in now if they’re gonna come through by next year’s spring.’

  He blew into his cup to cool the steaming liquid.

  ‘Then there’s yer logs yer’ll want choppin’,’ he resumed. ‘I’ve already put a fair amount down in the boiler room, but if yer gonna keep all yer fires burnin’, bedrooms an’ all – there’s a particular damp cold about Crickley Hall that radiators can’t best – yer’ll soon be runnin’ out of wood to burn.’

  ‘We don’t expect you to do that, Percy.’ Eve took a chair opposite him. ‘Gabe will be only too willing to chop wood. In fact, he’ll enjoy the exercise.’

  ‘It’s choppin’ the right wood that’s important. Some’ll only make a lot of smoke, others yer won’t even be able to light. Yer gotta know the right kind to axe.’

  Eve nodded. ‘You can show him which are better to use.’ She leaned her elbows on the table. ‘How long have you worked at Crickley Hall, Percy?’ she asked, looking directly into his eyes as if the question was of some importance.

  ‘Most of my life, missus. Since I were twelve years old. Never got on with school, an’ in them days t’weren’t unusual for a lad to start work at that age. Not down in these parts, anyway.’

  He sipped the hot tea and smacked his thin lips in appreciation. ‘I likes it strong,’ he remarked appreciatively. ‘Proper cuppa tea, this.’

  Eve was still staggered that Percy, who must be in his late seventies if not early eighties, had spent so many years in the one job. She quickly gathered her thoughts.

  ‘You said you look after St Mark’s cemetery too?’ she asked.

  ‘The graveyard, yers. I make sure it’s kept neat an’ tidy, ’specially roun’ the back, even though it don’t get many visitors.’

  ‘That’s where the children are buried, isn’t it? My husband saw the small graves.’

  Percy fell silent. He looked down into his tea, the cup in one hand, saucer in the other and held under the cup as if to catch any drips.

  Eve persisted. ‘The children came from here, didn’t they? They were all staying at Crickley Hall when they drowned, weren’t they?’

  Percy’s face became grim, set like stone. His eyes pierced Eve’s suspiciously and she instinctively pulled back an inch in surprise.

  But those old faded eyes soon softened again; now they were full of sadness.

  ‘The poor little mites were sent down to Devon durin’ the last world war. 1943 they come here. Late summer. People in London thought the Blitz were over, didn’t wanna send their kids away, split up the families, like. But the authorities knew better. They knew the bombin’ weren’t over yet and they wanted the young ’uns out of harm’s way. The evacuees that came to Crickley Hall had no choice anyway – they was all orphans, y’see.’

  He fell into silence once more and a distant look came into his eyes. Eve thought tears might appear in them, but the old man was made of sterner stuff. His eyes refocused on her.

  ‘What makes yer ask about the kiddies, Missus Caleigh?’

  There was more than just curiosity in the question: Percy seemed anxious.<
br />
  ‘I . . . I just thought it was so sad,’ she answered. All those poor children . . . drowned. I wanted to know more about them.’

  What else could she tell Percy? That she – and Cally, Cally saw them too – had seen the children’s ghosts? That they were haunting Crickley Hall? Surely he would only scoff, think her mad. Eve could imagine the word spreading round the harbour village – there was a madwoman living up at the Hall, thought the place was haunted. It seemed a close-set community, one where all kinds of rumour might start. It had been bad enough that morning in the shop, asking for a psychic’s card, the odd looks that the shopkeeper and her husband had given her when she took it from them. The locals would think her eccentric, at the least. And who could blame them.

  He drank more tea, then seemed to come to a decision. ‘If yer wants to hear about it, then all right, I’ll tell yer.’

  And so Percy Judd told Eve the heartbreaking story of the evacuees from London who had come to Crickley Hall in the late summer of 1943.

  ‘A course the Blitz were over by then,’ Percy told Eve, ‘but as I says, the gov’mint knew better. They knew the Germans weren’t finished with their bombings yet an’ the gov’mint wanted to get as many children outa London as possible. Lotta parents wouldn’t hear of it though – they thought the worst was gone – but kiddies in orphanages had no say in the matter. Those that came to Crickley Hall shoulda got away from the city long afore, but I s’pose the authorities had trouble findin’ ’ccommodation for ’em until this place come up.