‘Well, perhaps we should speak to her and find out what she saw, or thought she saw, last night,’ Steve said reasonably. He hadn’t bought Tim’s explanation, but at the same time had a healthy scepticism when it came to the supernatural. He was prepared to believe in ghosts, although he had never seen one, but he also believed that, more often than not, these occurrences had a rational explanation.
‘Hold on a minute,’ Sean said. ‘I just don’t see how what I saw this morning could have been some kind of trick. It was smoke; smoke that had a shape, a form... it had eyes... arms. It touched me for God’s sake.’
‘You think it touched you,’ Tim said rationally. ‘Just as I thought I saw a magician on the TV make an elephant disappear.’
‘I saw that. It was done with mirrors,’ Steve said.
‘Exactly!’ Tim continued. ‘But the illusion looked real enough.’
Sean got to his feet angrily. ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ he said. ‘I’ve been scared half out of my wits, and here we are discussing disappearing elephants. It’s too much. I’m leaving.’
‘At least hear what Susan has to say first,’ Steve said. He was reluctant to see Sean leave. Out of Tim and Sean he had more time for, and more in common with the heavy metal fan. Despite the fact he had published one of Tim’s stories in his magazine, and admired his writing, there was something about him he simply didn’t like. He possessed an arrogance and air of superiority that Steve found off-putting
‘And if you are going to leave, at least have some breakfast before you go, to set you up for the journey,’ Tim said, getting to his feet. In his own mind he had solved the problem, and his appetite was raging. He walked from the room and didn’t wait to see if the others were following.
Steve shook his head and grinned at Sean. ‘Well, as long as he’s happy...’
A small smile played on Sean’s lips. ‘Pretty sure of himself, isn’t he?’
‘Total self-belief. Pretty impressive. I just hope he’s right.’
‘I know he’s not,’ Sean said bitterly.
‘Then I hope just as much that you’re wrong. Otherwise we’re in deep trouble here.’
10
The dining room was laid for breakfast, but of the staff there was no sign. The first thing Steve noticed when he entered was that the large oak table was laid for five and not six, which begged the question, were the staff expecting Sean’s departure?
Tim was already sitting at the table tucking into a bowl of cereal. There was toast set in two racks at each end of the table. A sideboard stood against one wall, its surface covered with dishes with domed metal covers. Steve lifted one – scrambled eggs. The other dishes contained bacon, sausages and one of the domed lids hid kippers that announced themselves by their smell as soon as the lid was lifted a fraction.
Cat was the next to arrive. Despite the early hour she arrived at the breakfast table in full make-up. Her eyes were lined with kohl, her skin powdered to a pale translucency – looking almost anaemic; her fingernails were painted black. Only her hair was different from the day before. This morning she had plaited it and it hung as a thick black cable down her back. The plait pulled her hair back, revealing more of her face. She was really very pretty, Steve thought.
She poured herself a mug of strong black coffee and helped herself to a croissant out of the basket on the sideboard. She sat at the far end of the table, opened a magazine she had brought with her and started to read, pausing only occasionally to take a bite of croissant, or to sip her coffee. She spoke to no one.
‘Manners cost nothing,’ Tim said pointedly. Cat ignored him and flipped over another page of her magazine. Further comment was stalled by the arrival of Lisa who came into the dining room looking flustered. She glanced about the room quickly and sighed loudly.
‘Something wrong?’ Steve asked her.
‘It’s Susan. There’s no sign of her,’ she said. ‘I popped in to see her, just to check that she was all right after last night’s hysterics, but her room’s empty.’
‘Perhaps she’s gone for a walk, to clear her head,’ Tim said helpfully. ‘Maybe she’s just trying to summon up the courage to face you, after making a bit of a fool of herself last night.’
‘No,’ Lisa said vehemently. ‘When I said her room was empty, I meant just that. It’s empty. There’s not even a bed in there. Nothing.’
Tim frowned. ‘Odd,’ he said.
‘You think that’s odd, but you dismiss my experience as some sort of special effects trick,’ Sean said bitterly. He was still in two minds whether to leave or not.
‘Special effects trick?’ Lisa said.
‘Tim’s got a theory,’ Steve said, and explained it to Lisa briefly.
Cat spoke for the first time. ‘What experiences?’ she said to Sean.
Sean started to tell her.
‘Excuse me,’ Lisa cut in, ‘but I thought we were talking about Susan’s disappearance.’
‘A strange word to use, Miss Bailey. Rather melodramatic, if you don’t mind me saying so.’ Roger DeMarney stood in the doorway, flanked by Nick and the woman Steve and Cat had met the day before, Sarah Delacourt. Roger DeMarney introduced her to the others and it was she who spoke next.
‘Obviously you have realised that Miss Cross is no longer with us. She came to us this morning and expressed a desire to leave. I think homesickness rather got the better of her, but then at fifteen she was younger than the rest of you. I think a course like this, where you are thrown in the deep end of a small social and educational pool, can be rather daunting for those of a rather retiring nature. Spike drove her to the station at Weymouth. She should be nearly halfway home by now.’
Nick clapped his hands to get everyone’s attention. ‘Right, what this means is that we shall have to revise the parts of the seminar where we would have naturally divided into pairs. But apart from that it shouldn’t really affect the group dynamic too badly.’
‘Okay,’ DeMarney said. ‘That just about covers everything. I trust you all had a good night’s sleep and are ready for the rigours of the day?’
Sean opened his mouth to speak but Steve nudged him and he shut it again.
DeMarney took the silence as assent. ‘Splendid. Well, your first lecture starts in fifteen minutes in the drawing room.’ He turned on his heel and left the room, followed by the others.
Lisa sat down at the table and started spreading a slice of toast with butter. ‘Well, I suppose that explains that,’ she said.
‘If you believe them,’ Cat said.
‘Oh for heaven’s sake,’ Tim said. ‘Are all of you totally paranoid?’
Cat scowled at him. ‘I’m not paranoid, but I think I know when I’m being lied to. And that was a classic example of it.’
Tim finished his mouthful of bacon. ‘So what do you think has happened to her?’
‘How should I know?’ Cat said.
‘I agree with Cat. I don’t believe them either,’ Lisa said. ‘I was with Susan for a long time last night and she didn’t say anything to me about going home. In fact I rather got the impression she was thankful to be away from home and her mother for a few days.’
‘And was that before or after her experience?’ Tim asked.
‘After.’
‘Well, perhaps she slept on it and decided this morning that she wanted to leave,’ Tim said.
‘You have an answer for everything, don’t you?’ Sean said.
‘Not everything – just the obvious. I just think it’s wiser to believe in the rational rather than the irrational.’
‘Bully for you,’ Cat said under her breath. ‘I’m going outside to get some air before the first lecture.’ She looked back at Steve. ‘Coming?’
Steve laid down his knife and fork and wiped his lips with a napkin. ‘Good idea,’ he said.
‘But...’ Lisa said.
He turned to her. ‘What?’
She flushed and lowered her eyes. ‘I was going to say, you haven’t finished your breakfast.�
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Steve’s eyes widened. ‘Lis! You sound like my mother.’ He shook his head and followed Cat from the room.
‘They make quite a nice couple,’ Tim said, watching them go.
Lisa threw down her napkin angrily. ‘Oh, shut up, Tim!’ she snapped.
11
Out in the garden Steve walked with Cat down to the edge of the lake, and looked out across the water. ‘I’m going back over there later today. Are you coming?’
‘Maybe. Any particular reason?’
‘That story DeMarney gave us yesterday about the squatters. I didn’t believe a word of it.’
‘No,’ Cat agreed. ‘Neither did I. I was thinking about it in bed last night. It was pretty obvious they didn’t want us over there.’
‘I think we surprised them. Don’t forget they were using the boat. I think they had forgotten about the old one.’
‘So what do you suppose they have to hide?’ Cat said.
‘Who knows? Maybe nothing. Maybe it’s just another diversion for us. You heard Tim’s theory didn’t you?’
She sat on the grass and crossed her legs. Although it was still relatively early, the sun was scorching. It was going to be another blisteringly hot day. Steve stood between her and the sun, and when she looked up at him he was a golden silhouette. ‘I heard, but then Tim seems to be the type to have a theory about everything.’ She chuckled. “Do you go along with it? I mean, is it likely that the staff are playing these type of games?’
Steve sat down next to her and plucked a blade of grass, rolling it between his fingers. ‘Well to be quite honest, nothing would surprise me. And I prefer to think there are some kind of mind games being played, rather than to think about the alternative.’
‘Which is?’
‘That the place really is haunted, and that Susan and Sean have had rather terrifying first hand experience of it.’
Cat shivered involuntarily and got to her feet. ‘Come on. We don’t want to be late for the first lecture.’
Steve stood up. ‘Can I ask you a question?’
Cat started to walk back towards the house. ‘Feel free. But I won’t answer if I don’t like it.’
‘I just wanted to know why you make it so difficult for people to like you?’
‘That’s a very heavy question,’ she said with a smile. ‘Am I really that obvious?’
‘Well, you weren’t exactly sweetness and light when you came down to breakfast.’
Her pace had quickened and the smile dropped from her face to be replaced with a frown. ‘I’m not very good with mornings.’
‘It’s more than that,’ Steve said. ‘Your whole manner is prickly. It’s as though you deliberately put barriers up, to stop people getting too close.’ Almost as soon as the words had left his mouth he realised he had over-stepped the mark. Cat’s back stiffened and the frown grew into something darker, her mouth a grim line.
‘I’m sorry...’ Steve began, but she wheeled on him savagely.
‘No don’t apologise. You were spot on. Bull’s eye! Give the man a coconut.’
‘There’s no need to be...’
‘God, you’re just like all the others. It’s my fault, though. Just for a moment I allowed myself to believe you were different, but you’re not. You’re just as interfering as my parents, my teachers, everybody!’
They had reached the French doors that led into the drawing room. The others were already there, waiting for the lecture to begin. Steve reached the door before Cat and held it open for her. She barged past him and, ignoring everyone else, went to the front of the room and threw herself down in a high-backed armchair.
Tim sidled up to Steve and said quietly, ‘Lover’s tiff?’
‘Fuck off!’ Steve said through gritted teeth. On the other side of the room Lisa hid her smile behind her hand.
The main door opened and Allen and Nancy walked in. Allen looked like he was wearing the same clothes as yesterday, and Nancy looked as underfed and intense as ever.
‘Right.’ Allen stood with his back to the fireplace, looking at them all intently. ‘Who believes in ghosts?’
Susan Cross opened her eyes to darkness and listened to the breathing in the room. Ragged, wheezing breaths – the sound of air being sucked into time-ravaged lungs and then exhaled again. She had been awake for some time now but didn’t dare move from the uncomfortable hard divan on which she was lying. If she moved it would attract the attention of the other occupant of the room... and that was too terrible to contemplate.
She couldn’t remember clearly now how she came to be here. She could recollect the terrifying apparition at her window and the relative safety of Lisa’s bedroom. The warmth shown to her by the other girl made her realise again the loneliness of being an only child. Having Lisa to talk to, to pour out her troubles to, must have been what it was like to have an older sister.
It was the scratching at the door that woke her. Lisa was still sound asleep, curled up under a blanket on the easy chair. The noise at the door certainly hadn’t woken her the way it had Susan. When it came again Susan listened carefully. It sounded as if someone was scrabbling at the door handle – perhaps trying to fit a key in the lock.
She rose from the bed. Her legs were weak and trembling, but she made it to the door. ‘Who’s there?’ she said quietly, then glanced back at the chair to check she hadn’t woken Lisa.
‘Susan, open the door this instant!’
Susan took a step back from the door, a sob breaking in her throat. It was her mother’s voice, calling to her from the other side of the door. So she had come here to drag her daughter home. Susan might have known her mother wouldn’t let her enjoy a week away from her – she never had before. She was always there, always interfering in her life. And now, on this one chance Susan had to stand on her own two feet, to be independent, here was her mother again, ruining everything.
Disappointment quickly gave way to anger. She reached forward and twisted the key in the lock and heard the metallic snap as the mortise retracted. She then grabbed the door handle and twisted it savagely, ready to pull the door wide and confront her mother. Ready with a tirade of angry words designed to drive the woman away, back to the dingy suburban house they shared.
As she twisted the door handle, something shifted under her hand, as if suddenly the handle had come alive. The cold brass lever was soft in her grip, and warm, like flesh. She recoiled, trying to pull her hand back, but the softness had spread to encircle her fingers.
Frantically Susan wrestled with the thing, trying to yank her hand away, but it held her firm. And she could see it now – spindly flesh-like growths wrapping around her hand like skeletal fingers, but soft and pliable, not bony and hard.
‘Lisa!’ she shouted. ‘Lisa, please help me!’
But Lisa didn’t stir.
Susan shouted again, so loudly it hurt her lungs and made her cough, but she might just as well have been screaming into a vacuum. It was as if she was enclosed in a bubble and no sound could escape from it.
The door was opening – a crack at first, then wider. Susan stepped back as far as she could, but the fleshy growths sprouting from the door handle limited her retreat.
Something was entering the room, and that something was not her mother. Instead it was something black and dusty and infinitely old – the something that had shown itself outside her window earlier.
Susan started to cry. Silently the tears poured down her cheeks, and for the first time in her life she wished it were her mother outside the door, coming to take her home.
She remembered nothing more until she awoke in this darkened room on the hard divan with the awful rasping breathing for company.
She had to escape, but she couldn’t if she was too scared to move from the divan. Slowly she started to push herself up, taking her weight on her elbows. A course blanket covered her and it made soft rustling sounds when she moved, so she made her movements even smaller, even quieter. The breathing in the room didn’t change. It w
as a regular rise and fall, as steady as a metronome. She timed the movements to coincide with the inhalations that were much louder than the exhalations. They sounded like choking wheezes.
Eventually she was almost upright and her arms were shaking with the strain – she felt pathetically weak. Then, with a loud pop, one of her arms snapped and with a cry of agony she collapsed back onto the bed.
The breathing changed. The rhythm altered and Susan knew the thing in the room with her was awake and restless.
Pain was washing over her in red waves, so fierce she thought she might pass out. And with the pain, all the memories of the past night came rushing back to her. She raised her one good hand to her face, feeling the leathery, wrinkled skin, the lines and imperfections. Her hand traced the contours of her cheekbones, and gaping hollows that had once been her cheeks. As she brushed her hand across her head she felt the brittle, stringy hair that sparsely covered her scalp.
There was movement in the room and Susan started to cry as she remembered the terrible feeding ritual of the thing in the room with her, and the pain, the agony of having her youth, her life sucked from her. She cried, knowing she would never see her mother again, because the thing in the room had an appetite and the appetite was insatiable.
The lectures were interesting enough – Allen holding forth about the early novels of Stephen King, and what an important influence they were to today’s writers, while Nancy gave an impressive talk about the ghost stories written in Britain between the two world wars, and how they were still potent in the twenty first century.
Lisa noticed how the others seemed to fall under the spell of their lecturers. Allen, despite his slight frame and rather school-teacherish manner, was an entertaining and charismatic speaker. Nancy, on the other hand, was nowhere near as intense, but her knowledge of her subject was impressive. They broke for lunch at one o’clock and resumed at two.
Lisa spent the day listening to the words, and even when Nancy was reading stories by R.H Malden and H. Russell Wakefield, two of her favourite ghost story writers, her mind kept drifting to other things and she found it impossible to concentrate.
A Weaving of Ancient Evil Page 6