“Yes, Miss,” we chorused.
That seemed to brighten his mood a little. “Oh, good, good.” He nodded to himself. “Most people aren’t, see. They just want a pretty view while they eat their fancy meals.” He shook his head sadly and then wandered over to one of the trees. “If you’re going into the caves, you’ll be wanting a guide. It’s not safe to go in if you don’t know the place.”
“That would be jolly good!” Miss Bowler boomed. “Lead the way, then! I’ll bring up the rear.”
A ghost of a smile lingered on the man’s face, and then he went over to a hollow tree trunk, his movements sprightlier than I would have expected. He reached inside the tree, and with wrinkled fingers pulled out a leather bag. From the bag he produced a leather helmet and a stick with a cotton-wrapped end, along with a book of matches. A hat fell out on to the ground, but he tucked it away again. “Follow me, then,” he said. “Stay close, and do exactly as I say.”
“Yes, sir,” everyone said, which made the man look a bit uncomfortable. He probably wasn’t used to groups of schoolgirls turning up in this wilderness.
“What’s your name, sir?” Ariadne asked. “My name’s Ariadne. Like in ‘Theseus and the Minotaur’.” A few people giggled at this, but it didn’t seem to bother her. She always introduced herself that way.
“Mm? Oh, I’m Bob Owens,” he said. “You lot can call me Bob. But no more of that saying things all at the same time.” He waved his hand emphatically. “Come on, then.” He struck a match and lit the end of the stick, and I realised then what it was.
“A flaming torch!” I gasped aloud.
“That’s a bit medieval, isn’t it?” Miss Bowler said, lighting the flashlight on her superior helmet.
“It gets the job done,” Bob muttered. He looked a bit miffed, but he carried on anyway. He headed towards the caves, and we followed.
Scarlet grabbed my hand. “I’m not a fan of confined spaces,” she whispered. I understood, images of the asylum flashing in my mind, and I held her hand tight.
The ceiling inside the cave was still head height, even for Bob and Miss Bowler. The green of the forest crept in across the damp stone floor, and stalactites hung from the roof like stone icicles.
“They look pointy,” said Ariadne. “I hope they don’t fall on our heads.”
Rose giggled, but the thought worried me a little. Especially with my not-very-safe safety helmet.
At the back of the cave there was a thin passageway, leading off into pitch-black darkness. Bob went straight over to it. “This way,” he said. “Watch your heads. And your feet. Just … just watch everything.”
As we followed him, one by one in the flickering torchlight, I saw what he meant. The passageway started off fairly wide, but soon turned into little more than a crack in the rock. I felt Scarlet’s hand squeezing my own. “It’s all right,” I said, trying to be braver than I felt. “He knows what he’s doing.” I had no idea if he actually did, but that seemed to be a good and reassuring thing to say.
I pushed my way through the crack, having to turn sideways, feeling cold, slimy rock against my skin.
“Yeuuch,” I heard Scarlet say behind me. “This is horrible. I want to go back to ballet.”
“I think it’s fascinating,” said Ariadne brightly, and her voice echoed off the walls.
We kept moving forward, sticking close to the person in front of us (in my case, that was Nadia) and behind us (Scarlet). It got colder and colder and darker and darker the further in we went.
“Why can’t we all have a torch,” Scarlet moaned. “I can’t see a thing.” Then she yelped, suddenly.
“What?” I turned my head, because that was about as much of me as I could turn. But I soon realised what had happened when an icy-cold drop of water splashed on my head, and I yelped too, making her laugh.
“You’re going to need to duck here,” I heard Bob say from somewhere in the darkness up ahead. “Pass it on.”
The message passed down the line. “Why do I need a duck?” Ariadne said.
I soon saw what Bob was talking about as Nadia (moaning about how dirty her clothes were going to get) crouched down on her hands and knees. I reached out and felt the cave wall in front of me – it went down very low, and there was no way I could walk under it. Reluctantly, I let go of Scarlet’s hand and crouched down myself. My hands slipped on the freezing floor, and all I could think was that tonnes of rock were just inches above my head, waiting to fall on me.
But then … then I was out the other side, and I could just about stand up again, and the space had widened into a cavern. I could see Bob and the other girls in the orange glow of the flaming torch.
“I can’t do it,” I heard Scarlet call from the other side.
I put my hands to my mouth. “You can! Just don’t think about it!”
“I am thinking about it! That’s the problem!” Her voice bounced off the walls.
“It’ll be all right, I promise!” I called back.
There was silence, then, and I waited … until I heard shuffling, and eventually Scarlet materialised on all fours, her eyes squeezed tightly shut.
“You did it!” I said.
“I did it?” She opened one eye, then slowly stood up and brushed herself off. “Of course,” she said. “Nothing to it.”
Not long after, Ariadne appeared, followed by Rose, and then the others. Finally Miss Bowler came huffing and puffing behind them. “Right,” she said loudly between gasps, leaning on her knees. “Are we all here?”
“Keep it down a little,” Bob said, frowning. “You don’t want to set off a rock fall.”
“Sorry,” Miss Bowler replied in a whisper that was almost as loud as her normal speaking voice. “Time to head down further, then?”
“Not down,” said Bob, holding his torch below his face to illuminate a creepy grin. “Up.”
Chapter Fourteen
SCARLET
decided quite quickly that I didn’t like caving. It was dark and wet and cold and, worst of all, claustrophobic.
And so far, at least, it had been dull. Nothing but rocks to look at. But then Bob got us all to climb up, one by one, through a hole in the roof, and things became a lot more interesting.
The cave opened out into a wide bowl shape, with the hole we had climbed through in the bottom – a bit like a giant sink. With the torches held up, we could see that the roof was covered in pointy stalactites and crystals. The light bounced off them, shimmering prettily.
“Oooh,” Ariadne said when she saw it. “If only my camera would work down here.” Rose stared upwards in awe.
We all sat round the edge, on the cold sloping stone, in a circle.
“They call this the Devil’s Basin,” said Bob in a low voice. “Legend has it that a giant witch used this as her cauldron, and the smoke from the magic potions rose up and left the crystals on the roof.”
“What balderdash,” Miss Bowler guffawed, attempting to clamber out of the hole, but having some difficulty. Bob glared at her, and she quickly changed the subject. “Big girls! Don’t just stand there staring! Help me up, will you?”
I tried not to laugh as Elsie and Cassandra, along with a couple of the other prefects, hauled Miss Bowler up and on to the edge. “Oof,” she said.
“If you’re all quite finished,” said Bob haughtily, “it’s time for a story. Put your torches out.”
“Oh no,” I muttered. I didn’t want it to be any darker than it already was. I wouldn’t be able to see the rock, and it already felt as if it was pressing down on me. My chest tightened.
“Will that be necessary—” Miss Bowler started, but Bob silenced her with another look.
“Torches out,” he insisted. He put out the one he was carrying, and the smell of smoke filled the air. One by one, the battery-powered torches were turned off, until Miss Bowler finally sighed and reluctantly switched off the one on her helmet.
I gasped. The pitch darkness was suddenly everywhere. Normally at night you
had at least the moon and the stars to see by if you didn’t have a candle, but this was different. Beneath the earth, the darkness was real.
Ivy squeezed my hand beside me. “Take deep breaths,” she whispered.
I breathed slowly, in and out, in and out. For a moment, the sound of breathing was all I could hear, and I focused on it. Then Bob began to speak.
“For as long as there have been people in this valley,” he started, his voice lowered to the point that I had to lean in to hear him better, “there has been a village. It started as sticks and mud, but it grew over the years to stone and slate. There was a church, and a grocer, and a school. It was never a town, mind, just a village, but the people loved it and cared for it. Generations were raised there, father and son ploughing the fields, cutting peat on the moors, fishing in the river …”
He seemed to get lost in thought for a moment.
“Is there a point to this?” I heard Nadia whisper on my right, and I whacked her on the leg.
“Shush, I want to hear,” I said. Concentrating on Bob’s words was helping me forget my urge to panic and run away as fast as possible.
“Seren village,” he said, “was more than the stone and slate it was built of. It was a home. A place where people belonged.”
“I didn’t see any villages,” said Elsie, and this time lots of people shushed her.
“But one day,” Bob continued, as if nobody had interrupted, “a man came to Seren. And he knocked on every door, and he told them that their houses had been bought, that they were no longer their own.” He sighed deeply, regretfully. “The city, he said, the big city miles and miles from here, needed the water. And so the people had to leave.”
“They didn’t have a choice?” Ariadne asked, sounding a little horrified.
“No,” he said. “They weren’t given one. They had been bought and sold. The valley was to be flooded to make a reservoir. Not even for the locals, no. The water was all going to be pumped away.” I could hear a scratching noise then, and I wondered if he was scratching the rock or grinding his teeth. “So they started constructing the dam. A huge, ugly thing that squatted over the valley. People died, they did, building that thing, and they said it was cursed. But they carried on anyway. And soon, the water was rising and rising and the village was under water. Lost forever.”
A question was burning on my tongue, and I couldn’t hold it any longer. “What happened to the people?”
There was another moment of silence before Bob answered.
“The city men built them new houses, over the hill. But those places are nothing but brick shells, row after row. Their old homes had been destroyed before the lake had even been filled, to make sure they couldn’t go back to them. Most of the young folk moved away south. There’s barely a man left now.”
I shuddered. Those poor people. How could anyone do this?
He took a deep breath. “But it didn’t end there. Because all the souls of Seren were buried in the churchyard, all those people who’d had the hills in their bones. And now their bones were trapped under gallons of water, and they couldn’t reach the heavens.”
His words swirled around us in the darkness, and I felt shivers go down my spine.
“The souls couldn’t rest, see. Now they were troubled. And they say … they say that the ghosts of those who are buried haunt the valley. They say,” he said, and his voice got even quieter so we had to lean in even closer, “that if you pay close attention late at night … you can hear the ringing of the church bells, and feel the chill of the souls as they pass you by, and see the lights under the lake …”
More moments passed in silence, and I could tell everyone was holding their breath. Then, almost at the edge of hearing, a voice whispered: “Save us …”
“Oh my word,” Ivy said, and she gripped my hand even tighter.
“Did you hear that?” So much for breathing calmly – now I was sucking huge, cold gulps of air into my lungs.
“I think I heard it,” said Ariadne.
And suddenly everyone was talking at once, everyone asking everyone else if they’d heard the voice, and debating what it had said.
“Quiet!” Miss Bowler snapped eventually. “Shut up, the lot of you! Are you quite finished scaring the knickers off them with your mumbo-jumbo ghost stories, Mr Owens?” She flicked her torch back on, and the sudden bright light hurt my eyes, though I was relieved to be able to see again.
“Hmmph,” said Bob, but he seemed to be smiling beneath his annoyance.
“Weren’t you scared, Miss?” asked Nadia cheekily.
“Not one bit. What a load of tosh.” Miss Bowler’s hand was shaking. Nobody mentioned it. “Let’s get back down.”
Once we’d climbed out of the Devil’s Basin, which was easier said than done, Bob wanted to go on a little further. “There’s one more chamber this way,” he said, relighting his torch. “And it’s a good one.”
Miss Bowler was still in a grump, but she reluctantly agreed. “Then we must get back,” she said.
Where had that voice come from? It had sounded so otherworldly and strange. I rubbed my arms, trying to make the goosebumps go away.
We pressed on to the next cave, through a long tunnel that was much less of a squeeze than the way in had been. As we got nearer, I heard a whispering, rushing sound.
“What is that?” Ivy whispered.
But when the tunnel opened out … everyone gasped.
This cave was big and wide, and there were two waterfalls tumbling down from the roof into a pool that stretched out towards the back of the cave, further than I could see.
“Worth it, eh?” said Bob with a grin.
Everyone agreed. Even Rose nodded enthusiastically.
“Lovely,” said Miss Bowler, in a way that implied she saw sights like this every day and was thoroughly sick and tired of them. “Right, all, time to head back! Quick sharp! No lollygagging!”
It was easier leaving the cave than getting in, but I still didn’t enjoy crawling through the horrible small space. My hands were black with dirt and my clothes were soaked through.
“Thanks, then, Mr … Bob,” said Miss Bowler when we were safely out in the open again. She pumped his hand vigorously.
“It’s Owens,” he said politely, brushing his hands on his overalls.
“Right, right. Come on, then, girls, back to the hotel.” Miss Bowler was striding off before we had a chance to protest. Quickly, everyone thanked Mr Owens before following her. I turned back and saw him standing there, his hands in his pockets, just staring off into the forest.
“I’ve just realised something,” said Ariadne as we walked down towards the hotel. We were up on the hillside, and you could glimpse the lake through the trees. She’d stopped for a moment, and was staring at it. “I think I saw those lights under the lake. On the way here.”
“I remember that.” I shuddered a little. Near the tower, she’d said.
“But there’s something else.” She frowned, and bit her lip.
“What?” said Ivy.
“Those things that appeared in the hotel, that Mr and Mrs Rudge seemed really scared of …” She trailed off.
“A gold cross?” I said. “And a candlestick?”
She nodded, and her eyes skimmed over the lake. I thought about the drowned village, and suddenly I realised what Ariadne was thinking.
“Don’t they …” she whispered. “Don’t they seem like the sort of things you would find in a church?”
Chapter Fifteen
IVY
wasn’t sure what to think about Ariadne’s theory. Were they really items from a church? And if Mr Owens’s story was true, and there really was a village under the lake … could it be that items from that church were appearing at the hotel? The thought made my skin prickle, but I wasn’t sure I believed it.
We’d only been back in our rooms for a short time when I heard someone yelling in the corridor. I went over and peered out.
“Someone’s taken my suit
case, Miss!” It was Elsie, and she was flapping desperately at Miss Bowler. “It’s just disappeared!”
“You’ve probably just pushed it too far under the bed, girl,” snapped Miss Bowler. She shoved open the prefects’ door and ushered Elsie back inside. “It’ll turn up!”
I retreated into our room again. “Elsie’s suitcase has disappeared, apparently,” I said.
“Nobody cares,” said Scarlet, who was changing into clean clothes behind the curtains of the four-poster.
“I know, but isn’t it weird? There’s things going missing, and things appearing that shouldn’t be there …” I’d never been one to believe in hauntings, but there was something going on here, and I had no idea what it was.
“It is spectacularly odd,” Ariadne agreed. “I think we need to investigate further—”
She was interrupted by the sound of Rose snoring. As soon as we’d got in, Rose had collapsed on their bed. She’d seemed exhausted from all the walking, and clambering about in caves. I supposed she hadn’t walked far in a long time.
We didn’t have the heart to wake her for lunch, so we decided we’d bring her up some food. This time the dining hall was actually open, and we all helped ourselves to cheese and ham sandwiches.
Not long afterwards, Phyllis Moss walked in and spotted us at our table. She hurried over. “Oh, girls! Just the three of you again?”
We nodded. “Our friend is sleeping,” I said. “I think she’s too tired from all the walking.”
“I got her a sandwich,” said Ariadne, waving said sandwich in the air.
Phyllis smiled. “Ah,” she said. “Well. I was just going to speak to your headmistress again. If the rest of you aren’t too tired, Julian has offered to take you all for a spot of birdwatching. Won’t that be jolly?”
“Jolly boring,” Scarlet muttered, but thankfully Phyllis didn’t seem to hear her.
“Sounds wonderful,” said Ariadne, a good deal louder.
I just smiled, and carried on munching my sandwich. I was a little tired too, and I hoped I would feel better once I’d eaten.
“See you later,” Phyllis said. Her smile was so cheerful that it was infectious. Soon she was off to chat to Mrs Knight once again.
The Lights Under the Lake Page 8