House of Echoes

by Barbara Erskine

  The door shook as he closed it. Joss and David looked at one another. ‘Not an easy man to convince,’ David said quietly, after a minute. ‘Besides, Joss, I do think that he is in many ways right. Relax. Try and put it all out of your mind, but maybe be a little on your guard as well.’

  ‘On my guard against what?’ With a shiver she stood closer to the fire. ‘In the diaries he is described as he or it. Something or someone who terrified sane, rational, educated women.’

  And killed little boys. She did not speak the words out loud.

  ‘And you, who are also sane, rational and educated, have seen nothing. And you have heard nothing – nothing but some voices, trapped like echoes within the fabric of the house.’ He smiled. ‘Come on, Joss. You know the sign against the evil eye, don’t you.’ He raised his two forefingers and crossed them in front of her face. ‘Be ready if he or it ever manifests. Otherwise forget it. Tom loves it here. It’s a great place. All houses have dangers. Cellar stairs and ponds are obvious dangers and an unsupervised youngster could fall foul of them any time in history or today. You take precautions, you watch him, Lyn clucks round him like a mother hen. No one could do more.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  So, he claims yet another victim. The boy is dead. Next it will be me. Why can’t she see what is happening …

  Could so many people have imagined the same thing? Had they all read each other’s diaries, perhaps sitting in this very room, taking comfort from the fire as their hair stood on end and their toes curled with terror in the darkness of long gone winter nights? Somehow that didn’t seem likely.

  The kitchen was deliciously warm and bright and sane. Lyn glanced at them as they walked in. She had just put a cake in the oven and her face was shiny with the heat of the stove. On the floor in the corner, Tom was playing with his Duplo, building a castle with some very questionable symmetry. Self consciously she rubbed her face on her sleeve. ‘Luke just went out muttering,’ she said. ‘I gather he thinks you two are round the bend.’

  ‘Something like that.’ Joss forced a smile. ‘Anyway we have been well and truly reprimanded, and full of repentance we are going to help you set the tea things.’ She was gazing at Tom, needing suddenly to hold him in her arms.

  ‘Great.’ Lyn did not seem that enthusiastic. ‘He says you think the house is cursed.’ She frowned. ‘You don’t really think that, do you, Joss?’

  ‘No of course she doesn’t.’ David hauled himself up onto the table beside her. ‘Now, what can I do to help. I feel a cookery lesson coming on.’

  Lyn glanced at him archly. ‘I suppose I could make some biscuits.’ She blushed.

  The magic word had an immediate electrifying effect on Tom. Scattering brightly coloured plastic bricks all over the floor he scrambled to his feet, dodged effectively past Joss’s outstretched hand and ran towards them. ‘Me cook bickies,’ he announced firmly, and standing on tiptoe he grabbed a wooden spoon from the table.

  Joss watched them for several minutes. Her back ached and she was feeling peculiarly tired. Lyn was flirting openly with David and after an initial show of reluctance he had obviously decided to humour her. When Joss finally wandered out of the kitchen and back to the study no one noticed her go. David and Lyn, covered in biscuit mixture as much as Tom, were laughing too much to hear the sound of the softly latching door.

  In the great hall she stopped and looked round. Lyn had put a huge vase of daffodil buds on the table and in the comparative warmth of the house they had opened. The glorious scent filled the room. It was a happy smell, one that reminded her of spring and optimism and rebirth. She stood for a while looking down at the flowers then she went through into the study. On the chair where she had been sitting lay a rose bud. She stared at it. David would not have put it there. He would not have done anything so stupid! Putting out her hand she touched it. It was ice cold; frosted; already growing limp in the heat of the room, the white petals falling open, it was collapsing as she watched. Distastefully she picked it up and looked at it closely. There was something sad and decadent about it – something unpleasant that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She looked at it for a moment longer, then with a shiver she threw it on the fire.

  16

  As she lay back Joss craned sideways to look at the image of her baby on the screen. She could see it clearly this time – the foetal shape, the little arms, the legs, the pulsing swirling life.

  ‘Can you tell if it’s a boy or a girl?’ she asked. The question had been seething inside her all morning.

  ‘If I can, I’m not allowed to tell.’ The radiographer calmly went on with the scan.

  ‘I need to know.’ Joss’s voice was tense. ‘Please. I do need to know.’

  ‘Oh come on, Joss.’ Luke was with her, sitting on a chair nearby, peering in some confusion at the strange blobs and swirls which showed his child. ‘It’s more fun not to know. It’s not as though we mind, either way, as long as he or she is healthy.’

  ‘I need to know, Luke.’ Her voice was fierce. ‘Please. Can’t you tell me? I shan’t breathe a word.’

  The woman stepped back from the bed. ‘It’s the hospital’s policy not to tell mothers.’ She pulled a wad of tissues from a box and began to rub away the gel from Joss’s skin. ‘But in fact, my dear, I don’t know. Not the way your baby is lying. So you must wait and see. Not long now. Twenty-eight weeks and as far as I can tell the little one is absolutely fine. No trouble there at all.’ She smiled as she covered Joss up. ‘Now, you get up in your own time while I fill in the form, and you can have a picture to take home.’ Sitting down she scooted her chair across the floor to her desk.

  ‘Luke. Make her tell me.’ Joss’s eyes filled with tears.

  Luke stared at her. ‘Joss! What on earth is the matter? We agreed we don’t mind what it is.’

  ‘Well I do mind. I want to know.’

  The radiographer had put on a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles. She turned and peered over them at Joss. ‘Mrs Grant. I told you I couldn’t tell you, even if I wanted to.’ She frowned as she stood up and threw the glasses onto her desk. ‘Now, you mustn’t get yourself in a state. That’s not good for you. Not good at all.’

  In the car going home Luke said nothing until they had reached the outskirts of the town. ‘Come on, Joss. What is it? She said the baby was fine.’

  ‘I need to know, Luke. They’d tell me in London, I’m sure they would. Don’t you see? If it’s a boy, it’s in danger – ’

  ‘No!’ Luke slammed on the brakes. ‘Joss that is enough! I will not listen to any more of this. It’s crazy. Tom is not in danger. That baby, boy or girl, is not in danger. You are not in danger. I am not in danger.’ Behind them a car hooted and edged past them. The driver lifted the middle finger of his hand as he passed. ‘You are not to worry. Listen. I am going to ask the rector to come in and talk to you. Would you feel better if he blessed the house, or exorcised it or something? Would that put your mind at rest?’

  Exorcizo te, in nomine Dei † Patris omnipotentis, et in nomine Jesu † Christi Filii ejus, Domine nostri, et in virtute Spiritus † Sancti …

  With a sigh Joss leaned back in her seat and slowly she shook her head. What was the point? It had already been tried.

  Luke called him anyway in the end three weeks later. James Wood sat on the edge of his chair and listened politely to Joss and then again to Luke as the May sunshine poured in through the windows. Then he smiled. ‘I am always prepared to bless a house. I usually do it when people first move in. I pray for their happiness in the house and that it should be a sanctuary and a home.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘But I normally pass ghosts over to a colleague who specialises in such things.’

  Joss forced herself to smile. She liked the rector and had enjoyed going occasionally to his services in the church, but his reaction to their request did not inspire her with any confidence. ‘Your blessing would be wonderful, rector. Thank you.’ She glanced at Luke. He was looking away from her, seeming
ly studying the fire and she could not see his face.

  They both sat, heads bowed, there in the study while he prayed over them, then they stood in the great hall while he said another short prayer, presumably designed to cover the rest of the house. It was as he was leaving that he turned to Joss. ‘My dear. You told me I think that you had visited Edgar Gower? Have you spoken to him about your troubles?’

  She shook her head. ‘He’s still away.’ She had tried to ring him almost every day over the last month or two, hoping he might be back from South Africa.

  ‘I see.’ He sighed. ‘He would be the man to help you, I feel sure. He knows Belheddon. He knew your mother and father. And he is more sympathetic than I to the ideas you are putting forward.’ He looked shame faced for a moment. ‘I have never seen a ghost or experienced anything remotely supernatural outside my own religious experience. I find it hard to understand.’

  Joss put her hand on his arm. ‘It doesn’t matter. You have done your best.’

  The trouble was, his best might not be good enough.

  For several weeks she thought it had worked. The weather had grown steadily warmer; Luke’s vegetable garden was beginning to take shape.

  In the middle of the month Luke went up to London for the wine auction.

  ‘I wish you had come with me, Joss.’ He was full of excitement. ‘It was amazing! We’re rich!’ He seized her hands and whirled her round. ‘Even after they’ve taken their cut we will have about £27,000! No more worries for a bit. Oh Joss!’

  Joss, buoyed up with energy and optimism threw herself into her writing again. Working with Lyn in the house, cooking, helping Luke with his accounts she tried very hard to put her worries out of her head. The house was at peace. The atmosphere had lost its tension. The spring sun had swept away the shadows.

  Then about an hour after he had been put to bed on Friday night Tom had another nightmare. The adults had just sat down around the kitchen table when his screams rang out from the baby alarm. All three jumped to their feet. Joss, in spite of her increasing bulk was there first.

  The cot had once more moved across the nursery floor to the corner near the window. Tom was standing up, his face red, tears streaming down his cheeks, his eyes tight shut. ‘Tin man,’ he bellowed. ‘Me see the tin man. Me don’t like him!’

  ‘Don’t pick him up, love, he’s too heavy for you now.’ Luke’s admonition came too late as Joss swung him up out of the cot and hugged the little boy to her, feeling his legs straddling her rib cage, his small arms tightly clinging round her neck. ‘What is it? What tin man.’ She buried her face in his hot little neck. ‘Sweetheart, don’t cry. You’ve had a bad dream, that’s all. There is no one here. Look Daddy is going to put your bed back where it belongs.’

  Luke was looking at the floor. ‘I had wedged those castors so they couldn’t move. I can’t think how he’s managing to rock himself across the room like that. He must be remarkably strong.’ He straightened the bed, still miraculously dry, and reached out his arms for his son. ‘Come on, sausage. Let Daddy carry you.’

  ‘Who is this tin man he sees?’ Joss was looking at Lyn. ‘I thought I asked you not to ever read him The Wizard of Oz again! It’s upsetting him.’

  Lyn shook her head impatiently. ‘I haven’t, Joss. As far as I know we haven’t even got a copy. We are reading Babar books, aren’t we Tom –’ She broke off as Luke tried to lower Tom into the bed. The child’s scream was piercing. ‘He’ll have to come down. Let him fall asleep with us. I’ll bring him up later.’ Fussing she followed Luke as he carried the little boy downstairs, bringing with her his comfort blanket and his black teddy bear. In the doorway she paused. ‘Joss? Are you coming?’

  ‘In a second.’ Joss was staring round the room. ‘Let me just look. Maybe it’s a shadow or something that he sees.’

  She heard their footsteps cross her and Luke’s bedroom, then clump across the landing. In a moment they had walked downstairs and she was alone. She looked round the room. Behind the thick curtains it was still daylight outside, but the room was brightly lit now from the centre light, the floor a litter of Tom’s larger toys, the small ones neatly put away in his playbox. In the corner his chest of drawers stood between the door and the wall, on it the shaded night lamp. There was nothing there that could possibly frighten him. Aware that her own heart beat was thudding uncomfortably fast in her ears, Joss went to the door and switched off the main light then she walked back and stood by the cot, looking round. The shaded bulb hardly penetrated the murky corners of the room. Standing beside the cot she could see the huge multi-coloured plastic ball the Goodyears had given him, the bright rag rug and the toy box itself, cardboard, but covered by Lyn with thick sticky-backed scarlet and blue paper, almost in the corner of the room, the heaped toys spilling out of the top. The curtains were pulled tightly across the window. She frowned. The curtains were moving, sucked in and blown out as though by a strong draught. Nervously, she stepped towards them.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  Of course there was no one. How could there be? But the window was shut. It was very cold. Outside one of the late frosts that so often blight an English May was turning the garden silver, and she had shut it herself when she kissed Tom good night earlier. So why were the curtains moving? Her heart in her mouth, she was there in two steps, flinging back the multicoloured curtains to expose the windows behind. The reflection of the lamp shone back at her, somewhere behind her shoulder. There was no stirring from the fabric now except that which she had caused by her own impetuous movement. She shivered.

  Katherine. Katherine, sweet child, won’t you talk to your king?

  His eyes followed the girl as she flitted through the house. From behind the heavy curtain of rippling, dark-coloured hair, she flirted with eyes the colour of speedwells, her laughter echoing through the rooms.

  It was intensely cold over here by the window. Far colder than the rest of the room. Quickly Joss dragged the curtains closed again and turned.

  It was standing right behind her, a shadow between her and the lamp. Between one second and the next it was there, blocking out the light, towering over her and then it was gone.

  ‘Oh.’ Her involuntary gasp seemed a pathetically small sound in the dimly lit room. She stared round frantically, but there was nothing there, nothing at all. She had imagined it.

  Lyn glanced up at her as she entered the kitchen. Luke was cuddling Tom, sitting on the rocking chair by the range and already the little boy’s eyes were closed. ‘Come and sit down, Joss. I’m just rewarming supper. He’ll be asleep in a minute and we’ll snuggle him up in a blanket on the chair.’

  ‘I don’t think we should let him sleep alone in that room any more.’ Joss flung herself down at the table and put her head in her hands. ‘I’d rather he slept in with us. We can move his cot into our bedroom.’

  ‘No, Joss.’ Luke frowned over Tom’s head. ‘You know as well as I do that that is the thin end of the wedge. He’ll never go back on his own if we let him sleep with us now. Besides with the baby coming so soon you need your rest. Let him stay where he is.’

  ‘He’ll be all right, Joss. Honestly. All kids have nightmares from time to time.’ Lyn was watching as Luke stood up carefully and lowered the little boy onto the chair where he had been sitting. Tucking him up with his blanket, he slipped the teddy bear in next to him and stood for a moment looking down at his son’s slightly flushed cheeks, listening to his regular breathing.

  ‘I suppose so.’ Joss stared at her son, her heart aching with love.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, sweetheart.’ Luke came over to her and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. ‘All those children who have gone before. Don’t. It’s stupid and it’s morbid. That was then. Now is now.’

  In her sleep Joss stirred. A smile touched the corners of her mouth and she gave a small moan. Gently, not waking her, the bed covers were slowly eased back and her night shirt fell open, exposing her breasts to the starlight.
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br />   She woke heavy eyed while it was still dark. She stared up at the ceiling for a moment, disorientated and then reached across with a groan to find the alarm clock. It was half past four. What had woken her? She listened. Tom had not woken the night before when at last Luke had carried him upstairs, snuggling down at once with his teddy and turning over with his back to them, his arms around the furry creature’s body, but even though there was no sound from Tom’s room, she knew already that she would have to get up and see that he was all right.

  Heaving herself carefully out of bed she stopped for a moment, looking back towards Luke’s humped form. She could barely see him – just the outline in the light from the landing which streamed through the half closed door. He did not stir. Reaching for her bathrobe she padded on bare feet through to Tom’s room and pushed open the door. The room was cold. Far colder than the rest of the house. Frowning she went to the radiator and checked the switch and thermostat which had been left on in case the weather should suddenly revert to winter. It was hot beneath her hand. Shivering she went over to the window. It was open only a crack. Her own reflection as she peered out into the darkness of the garden was dim – a silhouette, back lit by the night light. As she peered she could see the dull gleam of water far away at the end of the lawn, reflected in the starlight.