Midnight Is a Lonely Place

by Barbara Erskine

  There was no reply. No sound save the slight moan of the wind under the front door. She could no longer hear the voices from the living room.

  ‘Who is it?’ she repeated, louder this time. She was rooted to the spot. Without going closer the weak candlelight would not reach the door; without light she was too afraid to take even one step closer. ‘Oh, shit, come on. Don’t mess about. Who is it?’

  She could smell it now. The perfume. Rich, exotic, crude, with a strong overlay of wet earth. She swallowed, conscious that her hands were shaking; the candlelight had begun to tremble.

  ‘OK, Lady Claudia. Let’s see you.’

  Somehow she forced herself to take a small step forward. Her stomach was churning, her knees wobbly. The candlelight licked across the doorway, showing another row of hooks, another huddle of raincoats and jackets. Nothing more. No ghost. No Roman lady. She took a deep breath, feeling her hands ice cold and clammy as she reached for the doorhandle and pulled it open. The small cloakroom was neat, with pale green curtains, a thick rag rug, a green towel, and soap. She wedged the candle onto the high windowsill and turning, began to unzip her trousers. It was then she looked down into the small handbasin. There was a scattering of black soil in the bottom and amongst it, throwing fat, unwieldy shadows in the candlelight, wriggled several maggots.

  LVIII

  Snow had settled in the dunes. The streaming moonlight cast long, colourless shadows over the sand. As the clouds drifted inexorably in from the north-east, the sky, backlit to opal and then to dull pewter, lowered closer to the land. No night birds called; only the wind in the trees behind the cottage disturbed the silence of the grave as it lay now lapped in its mantle of snow.

  The young man looking down at it cast no shadow; he left no footprints. Like the woman he loved he sought revenge. No kind god had received his soul as sacrifice, for with his dying breath he had vowed to return and that vow had kept him from his love. There was no need to comb the furthest galaxies; Marcus Severus Secundus was anchored to this spot by blood. The blood of his victims. His hate had kept them apart through the centuries. The young man smiled. They had all three been released by the meddling of the girl and through her this secret charnel house would be made known to the world and his vengeance would be made sweet.

  In front of him the moon was shrouded suddenly in a cloak of cloud. The darkness had returned to the land and with it came the snow. Thick, white, whirling, dissolving the shadow which was all that remained of the druid, Nion, save his need for revenge and his love.

  There was a hair in her mouth. She pawed at it, screwing up her face, and opened her eyes to find a head next to hers on the pillow. Frowning, she stared at it. Sue. It was Sue, her tangled hair strewn across the pillow, fast asleep, cuddled up beside her on the floor. Alison moved her head slightly. A violent pain slammed away behind her temples, but she could see dimly in the candlelight. Candlelight? Had they been to a party? A disco somewhere? Why was she on the floor? ‘Sue!’ She shoved at the girl next to her with her elbow. ‘Sue!’ The whisper was louder this time. Somehow she managed to sit up, her head spinning. She could just see Sue’s mother asleep on the sofa. Why? Why were they all asleep by the fire in her own house? There was no one else there. The fire was burning merrily – she could feel its warmth. ‘Sue!’ Not a whisper this time, but a peremptory call.

  Sue opened her eyes. ‘What?’

  ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘I don’t know. Hours. Are you all right?’ Sue sat up and looked at her hard.

  ‘Of course I’m all right. Why?’

  ‘They said you’d gone funny.’

  ‘What do you mean, funny?’

  ‘I don’t know. All kinds of funny things are happening. Mum crashed the Range Rover, look at my bruises! And we saw your ghost. The Roman. He was horrible.’

  ‘You saw him?’ Alison’s eyes rounded. She sat up and hugged her knees with a shiver. ‘Is that why you’re here?’

  ‘I think so. Dad found us. He wasn’t even angry. I think he’s scared.’

  There was a moment’s silence as they considered this. Sue bit her lip. ‘Mum’s asleep.’

  They both looked at the sofa.

  ‘Where’s everyone else?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ There was a rising note of hysteria in Sue’s voice.

  ‘They can’t have gone.’

  ‘Of course they can’t have gone.’ Sue did not sound too sure. ‘Shall I look?’

  ‘No! Don’t leave me!’

  Hugging one another, the two girls stared round, frightened, as on the sofa Cissy muttered in her sleep. Inside the room the silence was overwhelming. Even the fire seemed quiet, the sweet smoky smell of burning apple logs slowly giving way to the overpowering aroma of wet earth.

  LIX

  Greg and Patrick were peering down into the washbasin in disgust. Behind them in the dark corridor, Kate stood clutching Anne’s hand. ‘You saw her, didn’t you. Claudia.’

  Anne shrugged. ‘I didn’t exactly see her …’

  ‘But you smelt her scent. You sensed her. You saw the earth, the maggots that drop off her everywhere she goes!’

  Anne swallowed hard. ‘Let’s go back to the fire. Surely you’ve seen enough.’ The candlelight was flickering crazily on the ceiling of the small cloakroom as the two heads bent over the washbasin.

  ‘Yuk!’ Patrick’s one word said it all.

  Greg turned with a grimace of pain, balancing on his stick. ‘You’re right. Let’s go back.’

  They made their way into the candlelit living room to find Alison and Sue sitting upright in their rugs. Both girls looked dishevelled and scared.

  ‘Greg? What is it? What’s happening?’ Alison’s voice had taken on a strangely high timbre.

  He gave her a long searching look, then he lowered himself back into his chair, wincing as he lifted his foot onto its cushion with a grimace of pain. ‘We seem to be orphans of the storm!’ he replied. Somehow he managed to keep his voice cheerful. ‘So, how are you both feeling?’

  ‘Lousy. I’ve got a really grotty head.’ Susie’s face was whiter than her companion’s.

  ‘And you, Allie?’

  Alison shrugged. ‘I feel a bit spaced out. Tired. Who’s that?’ She had noticed Anne.

  ‘Sorry. I forgot you hadn’t been introduced,’ Kate put in quickly. ‘This is my sister, Anne. She picked a really vile weekend to come and stay with me.’ She walked over to the two girls and knelt beside them. ‘Do you want anything to eat? Diana made some soup. It’s on the stove.’

  Alison shook her head vehemently. ‘I couldn’t eat anything. I feel sick.’

  ‘So do I.’ Sue’s whiteness had by now progressed to a shade of green. ‘In fact, can we go and sleep in your room, Allie?’

  ‘No!’ Patrick’s shout startled them all.

  ‘Why not?’ Alison stuck out her chin.

  ‘Well …’ Patrick floundered with a desperate look towards Kate. ‘Won’t you be warmer down here, near the fire?’

  ‘I don’t think they’ll come to any harm upstairs, Paddy,’ Greg put in quietly. ‘Not if they’re together. Why don’t you go up, girls. It’s a good idea. Take those rugs with you to keep you warm. Sue’s had a nasty shock with the car crash, and Allie’s probably still suffering from exposure. A warm bed is the best place for both of you.’

  The others watched in silence as the two girls climbed to their feet, and collecting armfuls of rugs and cushions, made their way to the door. Their unaccustomed silence was unnerving as they disappeared upstairs.

  ‘You shouldn’t have let them do that, Greg,’ Paddy said as soon as the staircase door shut behind them. ‘You know it’s not safe.’

  ‘What’s not safe?’ Cissy’s voice from the sofa was weak but perfectly lucid.

  Greg grimaced at his brother. ‘Paddy was thinking about the noise those two make when they get together. It is the middle of the night.’

  Cissy lay for a moment staring at the ceiling.
‘I was on my way to ask you to lunch,’ she said suddenly. ‘Someone jumped out in front of the Range Rover. I remember trying to miss him, and skidding …’ She looked up at Kate who sat down on the edge of the sofa beside her. ‘Did I hit him?’

  Kate smiled reassuringly. ‘No. No one was hurt except poor old you.’

  ‘Joe …?’

  ‘Joe is upstairs asleep. Where you should be.’

  ‘Have I broken my ribs?’

  ‘Diana thought they were only badly bruised. You need to rest. I’m afraid we couldn’t get hold of a doctor – the phones are still not working – and it’s started to snow so hard Joe thought it better to stay here till morning.’ It sounded convincing and it was, after all, the truth.

  ‘The joint,’ Cissy cried suddenly, distracted. ‘My lovely joint will be burnt. What a shame.’ She put her hand to her head suddenly. ‘Oh, God, I’m so tired – ’

  ‘You could sleep in Paddy’s room, Mrs Farnborough,’ Greg said. ‘If you feel you can manage the stairs.’

  She did. With Kate and Anne to help, Cissy washed her face, painfully removed her torn, bloody blouse, wrapped herself in Diana’s bathrobe and subsided into Paddy’s bed. In spite of her pain she was asleep almost as soon as her head touched the pillow. On the landing outside, Kate and Anne looked at each other, their faces shadowed by the candle in Kate’s hand, then Kate opened the door of Alison’s bedroom and peered in. The two girls were huddled in the narrow bed, their heads very close on the pillow. Both were fast asleep. ‘They seem all right,’ Kate said softly as she closed the door on them.

  Patrick had thrown on a couple more logs and the fire had sprung back into life. Kneeling before it, the poker in his hand, he was prodding it viciously as the two women returned to the room.

  ‘Everything all right up there?’ Greg asked.

  Kate nodded. ‘Everyone seems to be asleep.’

  ‘No strange smells or earth where there shouldn’t be any?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Thank God. Perhaps we can settle down for some sleep too.’

  ‘I think we need to talk.’ Anne said thoughtfully. ‘And besides, I don’t think we should all sleep. The unconscious mind is very vulnerable when it is asleep. We need to stay on our guard.’

  ‘So you admit all this is supernatural.’ Greg watched her through narrow eyes as she settled on a cushion near the fire.

  She shrugged. ‘I was trying to keep an open mind, but I certainly saw something out there …’ She paused. ‘I think you were right, this is some kind of phenomenon which is centred on Alison. I read some books about ghosts and poltergeists after I spoke to you, Kate. Your story intrigued me. There seem to be two theories: one, that all the strange events occurring are somehow centred on or created by the unconscious mind of, in this case, a teenage girl. That doesn’t make them less real, but they are subjective rather than objective phenomena. The second theory is that real spirits or ghosts – however you define them – are involved. In other words, external forces.’ She hesitated. ‘There are respected authorities who believe that poltergeists are actually disembodied spirits who feed off the emotional energy of people. Pubescent and teenage kids often have a lot of that to spare. If one believes one of those theories, one must also believe that the forces at work are powerful – powerful enough to light fires, move heavy objects and manifest physical symptoms like the soil and maggots which keep turning up here.’ She glanced from one to the other. ‘Poltergeists don’t usually hurt people. They are mindless and mischievous rather than malicious, perhaps taking their character from the person upon whom they are centred.’ Again she looked round. The others were watching her in silence. ‘Spirits, ghosts, whatever you call them can be a different matter. But even there, in the books I was reading anyway, where deaths have occurred, it is usually through a heart attack or a fall as someone ran away or reacted in terror – something indirect. Nowhere did I read of an actual physical attack, where someone was beaten to death.’

  ‘Unless the spirit had possessed a human and was using his or her strength to do it,’ Greg said slowly.

  ‘If we are assuming Marcus possessed Alison,’ Kate interposed. ‘But surely it’s the other way round. He was feeding her with his own strength. That is the point. She could never have done what she did on her own.’

  ‘Does it matter how she did it?’ Patrick put in suddenly. ‘What matters is how to stop it happening again, and to make Marcus go away.’

  ‘You’re right, Paddy.’ Anne drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them, gazing into the fire.

  There was a long silence.

  ‘So?’ Greg said at last. ‘How do we do it?’

  Anne shrugged. ‘I wish I knew. If we had a priest we could try bell, book and candle. Holy water. That kind of thing.’

  ‘We haven’t got a priest.’ There was irritation in Greg’s voice. ‘Even if we believed in all that mumbo jumbo. We have got a psychologist – someone who understands the human mind. So, why don’t we assume that Alison is behind all this – that somehow she has attracted this ghost – and approach the problem through her.’

  Kate glanced at her sister, and then at him. ‘He had a go at you, Greg, didn’t he? You said you felt him trying to take you over.’

  Anne shot him a quick look. ‘Why didn’t you say before?’

  ‘Because I’m still not sure it wasn’t my imagination, that’s why.’

  ‘Tell me how it felt.’

  Greg frowned. ‘It felt like someone going ten rounds with boxing gloves on inside my head. It felt unspeakably frightening. I was overwhelmed with rage and hatred which weren’t mine.’ He stared thoughtfully at the burning logs. ‘The first time it happened someone came up to me and he left; the second time I fought him off. I wondered if I was going out of my mind.’

  ‘And Allie couldn’t fight him. She didn’t know how to start,’ Kate put in quietly.

  ‘He used her until he had drained her energy,’ Greg went on thoughtfully. ‘So, how do we fight him?’ He looked at Anne.

  Anne closed her eyes. ‘The trouble is I’m not a clinical psychologist. I’m not a psychotherapist. I’m particularly not a parapsychologist. I’m not sure that I know where to start.’

  ‘Start by talking to Allie.’

  She shook her head. ‘That’s easy to say, but heavy-footed probing can be terribly dangerous.’

  Paddy got up. He wandered restlessly over into the kitchen and picking up the kettle, he carried it across to the sink and began to fill it. ‘You said we shouldn’t go to sleep. You think Marcus might possess one of us?’ He was trying not to let his fear creep into his voice.

  ‘I think it unlikely, but I think we should be on our guard.’

  ‘What about the others upstairs? They are all totally unprotected.’

  Kate bit her lip. ‘Shouldn’t we go and wake them?’

  Anne shrugged. ‘Your father and mother didn’t seem worried about the risk. Nor Joe. They are older, of course. Maybe they don’t have any energy to spare. Susie and Cissy –’ She frowned. ‘It may be that their experiences have already depleted their energies so much that they would be no use to him anyway.’

  ‘I’ll go and look at them all again.’ Kate climbed to her feet.

  The staircase was cold and dark as she stood looking up, the candle in her hand. She shaded the flame as it flickered and put her foot on the bottom step. Behind her, through the open door, she could see Paddy filling the teapot. By the fire, Anne and Greg stared morosely into the flames.

  She took another step and then another, staring up ahead of her. The landing smelt as it usually did, clean and slightly mothbally – from the linen cupboard she guessed. She stood, waiting for the candlelight to steady, watching the shadows running along the pink walls. From behind the closed door to Greg’s room, she could hear a steady, throaty snore. Joe. Taking a deep breath, she put her hand on the latch and gently pushed the door open a fraction. The room was pitch dark, but the sound of the
snore, suddenly loud in her ears, was reassuringly steady. She pulled the door closed and turned to the end of the passage. The master bedroom. All was silent. She hesitated. It seemed a terrible intrusion to look into Diana and Roger’s room, but she knew she must. None of them could rest until they were sure all was well. Steadying her shaking hands as best she could, she pulled down the latch and pushed the door open. A small nightlight burned on the bedside table. By the light of its flame she was just able to see the two heads on the pillow. All seemed quiet. That left Alison and Susie. For the second time in an hour she opened their door and looked in, walking right into the room and holding her candle near the bed to see the two sleeping faces. Both were peaceful, their cheeks slightly flushed, their faces poignantly young and vulnerable as they slept. Tiptoeing out of the room, she glanced behind her at the dark square which was Patrick’s door. Cissy.

  The room was still a mess. Paddy had taken one look at his tumbled books and had turned and walked out of the room. He had not, as far as she knew, been back. She could see the hunched form of the woman in his bed. She was moving restlessly, and as Kate watched, she began to murmur. Kate froze. Her hand was shaking violently as she held the candle and she saw the shadows leap and dance across the walls. The temperature had dropped several degrees.

  Who are you?

  The words hovered on her lips, but she said nothing out loud. Secretly glad no one could see her, she made the sign of the cross over Cissy’s head and closed her eyes for a moment in prayer. When she opened them again the room seemed to be warmer. Backing out, she closed the door silently and left Cissy to it.