by Jack Lewis
Her father had left the estate to her? Really? Why had he changed his mind after all these years?
Nothing made sense anymore. She thought she would faint. She looked down at the note and read the words again.
‘The truth is in the marks.’
***
They parked the car in a layby at the side of a country road. The sky was darker outside of the city, and Scarlett could see the stars. It reminded her of Gawthorpe, and how the sky was so clear of pollution that the constellations twinkled. She’d always meant to learn the names of them, but then she’d met Trev and she’d discovered new hobbies that didn’t involve knowing the names of stars that had burned out long ago.
There was a fence to their left. Beyond it was a field that looked featureless in the darkness, spreading out like a pitch-black sea. A car was opposite them with the lights out.
She heard footsteps crunching on gravel, and she watched as the owner walked back to his vehicle and got in. He sat in the driver’s seat and for a while, he just stared ahead. Scarlett felt sure he was looking at them.
She wondered if she should do something, but then he started the engine. When he turned onto the country road and drove away, they were left alone.
“We need a plan,” she said, looking at Trev. “This was only supposed to be for a night. I feel like the worst mum in the world.”
She shivered and then hugged herself to try and get warm. Ruby was in the back seat, buried under the blankets that she and Trev had surrendered to her. At Scarlett’s feet was the discarded packaging of a packet of sliced cheese and a loaf of bread, the most they’d been able to afford when they went to the supermarket.
Trev reached down to the lever next to him, and his seat groaned as he adjusted it. He pushed it back as far as it would go, but he still didn’t have enough room.
“We should go to Gawthorpe,” he said. “After all, you own it now.”
The thought had occurred to her. She didn’t want to stay in the cramped car any more than he did, and she hated herself for putting Ruby through it. She hadn’t seen her old home since she was sixteen, and even thinking of the hulking mass of stone brought back bitter memories. After her parents made her leave, she had sworn that she’d never go back, no matter how much they begged.
But they hadn’t begged. They didn’t even try to call her when Ruby was born. When she thought about going back to the house, she felt sick. It seemed like her past was always there, lurking behind her as an ugly shadow.
There was nothing happy for her at Gawthorpe, just memories of her sister dying and her parents abandoning her. She didn’t think she’d be able to go back and face the rooms that she used to play in, to smell the old aromas of the house, to hear its noises again as it creaked and groaned in the night.
“I’m not going back there,” she told Trev. “I don’t care if he’s left it to me.”
“It’s got to a point where we can’t ignore it now, Scar,” said Trev. “Sooner or later you’re going to have to face the past. You can’t heal from it if you’re always avoiding it.”
“You sound like a bad agony aunt,” she said.
She thought back to the night she left home. Walking away from the mansion with a rucksack on her back and Trev at her side. To her left had been the lake, a sinister expanse of rippling water.
She forced herself not to look at it but she heard the water lapping against the banks, splashing the way it had when Jane drowned. It was like it was taunting her.
As she left the estate she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, and she had the overwhelming sensation that something watched her as she walked, and that it was glad she was leaving.
A couple of years later, she got a job at a newspaper in the city. In some ways, it was a dream. Scarlett had won the village newspaper contest when she was ten with an article she’d written about her father’s falcons. She remembered with pride the way the editor had told her how good it was while he handed her a signed frame.
Children’s contests didn’t count much in the real world of journalism. The Chronicle had the fourth largest readership out of all the papers in circulation. She’d gotten the chance through reaching out to an old friend, who in turn asked her editor father if there were any jobs for Scarlett.
‘She can be a reception monkey,’ the editor had said, though he’d grinned when he spoke the words. Scarlett didn’t know if he was joking or not about the ‘monkey’ part.
She sat behind a desk, answering phones and greeting guests. After a while, she began to befriend the journalists as they passed through reception. She started squeezing them for information on how to write copy, and in her own time, when Ruby didn’t demand her attention, she wrote pretend articles for the Chronicle to improve her skills.
She began to dream that the reception desk was just temporary and that a seat in the office above awaited her.
When chatting with the journalists developed into her proofreading their work, then helping them revise drafts, Scarlett found she was getting up every morning bursting with energy.
It didn’t matter that Rubes had woken her up three times during the night; the office awaited, and any day now, she’d get offered an apprenticeship as a journalist.
And then the day finally came.
‘Scarlett, can I see you in my office?’ said the editor.
Trying to keep her excitement contained, Scarlett walked into the editor’s office tingling with anticipation.
She walked out of it red-faced and jobless, after having slapped her friend’s father in the face. The editor had offered her a journalist post, but the placing of his hand on her thigh was a clear sign that there would be conditions. Unwilling to meet them, Scarlett had batted him away, slapped him for good measure, and then stormed out.
She never told Trev what happened. ‘They had to cut back on salaries, and it was last in, first out,’ she told him. She knew how quick his temper was when it came to protecting her, and she wouldn’t let him get into trouble.
The problem was that Scarlett had no qualifications. So, without the connections of her friend’s father, she knew she’d never get as good a chance again.
For the next few years, getting out of bed wasn’t so easy. The four a.m. wake up calls from a crying kid drained her, and she spent the next part of her life slaving in any job she could get. Most involved her being on her knees scrubbing the floor, but at least they didn’t mean she was on her knees in front of the lecherous editor.
“My neck’s killing me,” said Trev.
She looked to her right and saw Trev. He was staring out of the car window, though the area around them was so dark that there was nothing to see. The countryside was beautiful during the day but as soon as the sun set it turned dark and lonely and became a place so remote that you could scream as loud as you wanted and nobody would hear you.
Trev returned her look, and she smiled at him. He was her family. Him and Ruby. They always had been, and they always would be. Her past at Gawthorpe hurt her to even think about, and she felt like she would never be able to bring herself to face it.
Trev reached down to a crevice at the side of the door and picked up a CD. He slotted it into the player and turned it on. She heard a voice speak, and she realised it was one of Trev’s physics audiobooks that he listened to so that he could sleep.
She recognised the narrator as someone from TV, but she couldn’t put a name to the voice.
‘In the same way that time slows closer to sea level than in space, a clock will run slower when it is near a black hole. All black holes have an event horizon, beyond which nothing can return. If one were to go through a black hole, the event horizon would be their last chance of escape. After that, they would be lost.’
She closed her eyes and tried to fall asleep, aware of the image of Gawthorpe House in her mind and trying desperately to get it to dissolve.
She tried to clear her mind, and gradually the picture faded until she was left with nothing. A bla
ck hole. She let her mind wander into the black hole and beyond the event horizon, where sleep waited for her.
She awoke with a start.
She felt a chill across her chest, and she had the disorientating feeling that comes when you don’t know how much time has passed.
The stars in the sky were gone now, smothered by a grey cloud that wheezed across them.
She looked out of the window to her left, and then jumped back in her seat.
Chapter Four
The car window was clouded by steam as though someone had been breathing on it.
She put her hands to her face and rubbed her eyes, scrubbing away the feeling of paranoia.
When she looked back at the window, she saw someone staring into the car.
It was a man, and his face was pressed so close to the glass that he had steamed the window. A feeling of horror shuddered through her as she realised he was looking at the back seat, at Ruby.
She started to panic. Her heartbeat sped up to a rate that she couldn’t sustain, and ice flooded through her.
She had to do something. Trev was asleep, and she wouldn’t wait for him to wake. She had to act.
She reached across to the steering wheel and thumped the horn. The shrill sound pierced the silence, and Trev jolted awake. Ruby stirred at the back of the car.
Scarlett looked to her left and saw that the man was gone. She pressed her face against the glass, and after a few seconds, she could distinguish him from the darkness. She watched as he ran away from the car and to a wall, which he climbed over and then disappeared into the fields.
She looked at Trev. Her chest felt like it was going to burst.
“Give me your phone, quick.”
He shook his head as if trying to rid himself of the last remnants of sleep. Gradually his eyes focussed.
“What’s going on?” he said.
“I need your phone, now. We need to call the police.” She couldn’t keep the panic from her voice. All she could think about was the man staring into the car, his gaze set hard on her daughter.
Trev patted his pockets. “I don’t have one, Scar. I sold it, remember? We needed petrol at Manover. What the hell’s going on?”
Is this what it had come down to? Gawthorpe House was hers, yet she’d put her daughter in harm’s way rather than have the courage to face her past. She looked outside and saw how dark and lonely the countryside was. What were they going to do tomorrow, and the day after that? They had no food, no money.
Was she the worst mother in the world? It was only meant to be one night, that’s all. But if one night was turning into two, then three, then four, that changed things. She had to put her feelings to one side. It wasn’t fair to Ruby.
Ruby sat up on the back seat. She leaned forward and gripped the headrest behind Scarlett.
“What’s happening, Mum?”
She knew what she had to do. The thought of it chilled her, but they couldn’t go on like this. She looked across at Trev.
“Let’s go to Gawthorpe,” she said.
***
The dash display beeped as they turned a corner and saw the woods at the edge of the estate. Scarlett looked at the flashing symbol on the dashboard.
Her first thought was that there was a problem with the engine. The car would break down and they’d have to walk through the lonely woods to get to the house.
Maybe if she just didn’t look at anything, she’d be okay. If she ignored the estate, the trees, the lake, she could get through it. There was no other choice; Ruby deserved a hell of a lot better than sleeping in a car.
“It’s the petrol,” said Trev. “The tank’s empty.”
“My stomach hurts,” said Ruby, behind them.
Scarlett looked in the rearview mirror and saw that Ruby looked pale.
“We’ll be there soon, honey. I promise,” she said, feeling a sense of guilt so strong that her stomach ached. She reached forward, grabbed a bottle of mineral water and passed it behind her.
Trev steered them onto the road that led to Gawthorpe. He gripped the wheel so hard that his knuckles turned white, and he was staring at the road with an unusual amount of concentration.
“I never liked this place,” he said.
She knew how he felt. As the car drove over the asphalt, Scarlett tried not to stare out of the window. She couldn’t help it. The road ran straight for a mile, and she knew this would take them to the house. Trees hemmed them in on either side, crowding the road as if they were sentinels ushering the car onward. They had withered branches and knobby trunks, and their leaves linked to form a net that stopped light from reaching the road.
Trev grabbed the window handle. He wound the glass up so that not even an inch showed, as if he didn’t want to leave room for the Gawthorpe air to get in.
Soon the trees dispersed and the sky lightened, though Scarlett didn’t feel better for it. She knew what would come next. As they cleared the last tree, she forced herself to keep her head rigid.
Don’t look to your right, she told herself. Anywhere but there.
She saw Trev’s head turn in that direction, and she knew what he was looking at. At the side of them was the lake, with its weed-infested waters, its pale tide lapping against its banks. She was glad the window was up now, because it meant she couldn’t hear the water as it splashed.
“Look Mum, a boat,” said Ruby.
She wouldn’t look. She couldn’t believe that the rowboat was still there. Why hadn’t Dad gotten rid of it after Jane’s accident? Scarlett turned around to look at her daughter. She must have had a severe expression on her face, because Ruby shrank back in her seat.
“You never go near the boat,” she said, making sure she sounded strict. “Do you understand? You never, ever go near the boat or the lake. If you do, we have to leave the house.”
Ruby nodded.
“Words please, Rubes. I need to hear you promise me.”
“I promise, Mum.”
“Here we are,” said Trev.
Scarlett turned around in her seat and saw it. It had been eight years, but now, looming ahead of her, was Gawthorpe House.
Gawthorpe was an unusual mansion. A sloping roof covered most of it, but rounder roofs sat on rooms that stuck out at the side. Turrets were laid out haphazardly, giving the building an imbalanced feel. It was as though one side was heavier than the other, and that it could topple over at any moment.
There was a sharpness to the house, with the points on the turreted roofs looking like the ends of swords, and the edges of the brick window frames cut so cleanly that they could prick your skin.
The building was cold to look at, and even a glance was enough to transfer that ice onto you. Scarlett had looked at it for less than a minute and already she felt a chill spread across her chest. She heard a weak voice in her head tell her to turn around and flee.
Trev parked the car at the edge of the drive and they all got out. The air felt colder so close to Gawthorpe. As she looked at the crumbling brickwork, she felt she could smell its age. The front face of the house was almost entirely covered in ivy like it was a disease spreading over its skin.
Ruby stood on the gravel and craned her neck to look up at the house. Scarlett followed her daughter’s gaze across the windows. She couldn’t see anything but darkness on the other side. Whatever waited in Gawthorpe didn’t present itself, but was content to stay in the shadow until they went inside.
Don’t go in the house.
Did she really hear that? It was a warning. Not spoken aloud, but whispered inside Scarlett’s head by a rasping voice. She hadn’t wanted to come back, and she almost wished her dad hadn’t left everything to her. If it weren’t for Ruby, she’d have never returned.
“Is this really ours?” said Ruby.
Trev nodded. “You like it?”
“It’s massive.”
“We’re not living here forever,” said Scarlett.
Scarlett walked up to the front door. She almost knocked, but then r
ealised she could just open it and go in. As soon as she pushed it open, the smell hit her. It was the stench of age; of dust that had been left to gather for too long, and of damp patches that had been allowed to spread. It was one that she knew too well, but it seemed to have become stronger over the years.
As soon as they walked in, Ruby bolted into a sprint. Scarlett’s heart raced as she watched her daughter run up the staircase in front of them and follow it as it twisted up to the first floor. Scarlett walked after her, and as she climbed the staircase she couldn’t help but remember how big it used to seem to her.
