by Sarah Rayne
The next line was crossed through, as if the clerk or secretary had written something down, and Samuel Burlap had wanted to withdraw it. Nell held the paper closer to the candle and thought she could make out the words, ‘Even if they’re ghosts I might recognize . . .’ But the scoring-out had been done firmly, and she could not be sure she had deciphered it correctly.
This is what happened to me on Tuesday evening.
By six o’clock I had finished my day’s work on Mr West’s house, and I was pleased with what I had done.
Building a house is a remarkable thing. It’s like seeing a living creation emerge and know you’ve been the one who created it. Maybe artists painting wonderful pictures feel like that, or people who write books or poetry. I wouldn’t know about that, though, for my mother didn’t hold with such stuff, and I was brought up in the belief that proper work for a man is building and carpentering and smithing. Farming, too, of course. I’m none the worse and likely the better for having such an upbringing, and I should have brought up my own children in the same way, had Mrs Burlap and I been blessed with any, which we have not, although I should not like it thought I was ever neglectful of my marital duties, or Mrs Burlap unwilling. You’ll excuse my mentioning that.
But when it comes to my houses – well, I always feel a pride, and I like to know people will live in those houses and weave their own histories. History isn’t always what’s written in books or taught in schools. The history of ordinary men and women is embedded in walls and floors and timbers of buildings.
I set off to walk home that Tuesday night, thinking of nothing more than the rabbit pie Mrs Burlap would have ready for supper. It was twilight – that part of the day when fanciful folk tell how the shadow beings gather, waiting for the night to fall so they can walk abroad. A lot of rubbish, but it’s an hour when a man might, if he was so minded, imagine he saw things that were not there.
What I saw first, though, was the house – Mr West’s house, my house, as I still think of it. I should explain here that it’s nearing finish. We’ve got what you might call the shell erected, but we still have to put in floors and inner walls and ceilings.
But seen from Gorsty Lane in the spring twilight the house had taken on a different look. For the first time, it looked to me as if it were distorted. As if something had wrenched at the carefully placed joists and joints, and pulled them all a fraction out of true. So strong was this impression I wondered if I had made a mistake in my measurements, or if Mr Filbert’s plans had been wrong. But I knew I had made the most careful calculations, and Archibald Filbert is diligent and methodical.
But the impression of something wrong persisted. The central portion juts out from the main frontage, and on the first floor are two tall windows on each side of this section. Standing in the half-light, those windows took on the appearance of huge, grotesque eyes, as if the house was staring down at me.
There were no lights anywhere, and no sounds, but I knew someone was nearby. I knew it in the same way that you enter a darkened room and need no light to tell you someone’s there.
However, I’m a practical man, so my first thought was a practical one. If there’s anyone here, I thought, it’ll be gypsies or tramps. They’ll be scouring the place for items to make use of or sell – workmen’s tools, or even a sack of mortar or a tub of paint. I was angry more than anything else, and I went toward the house at once, for I was not having my careful work disturbed and my tools stolen. Nor was I giving much attention to the creeping unease that was stealing over me, at least not then.
But the uneasiness increased with every step. I was not frightened of louts – I’ve sent many a one about his business. This was a different unease, a cold prickling nervousness, a feeling that something was warning me of danger close by. They tell you that our long-ago ancestors, living in caves, had an extra sense which we’ve almost lost today – a sense that warned them of danger. I don’t know about that, all I know is that as I walked across that piece of land it felt as if something was crouching in the shadows watching me. But nothing moved until I came level with the house. Then something darted across the shadows, its shape so blurred I was not sure I had seen anything at all. A trick of the light, or a breath of wind stirring the silvered trees, creating an illusion, that’s what I tried to tell myself, but I did not really believe that. As I stood there, the movement came again, and this time I knew it was not a trick of the light. It whisked across the darkness and into the straggle of outbuildings on the far side of the house.
I went after it. I don’t pretend to be especially courageous, but I hope I’m not a coward, and most of my mind was still angry at this intruder who was daring to scavenge among my careful work.
I want this next piece written down firm and exact, as I’m telling you.
As I went towards the old outbuildings, I heard music. Someone playing a piano. That was impossible. Ahead of me was the shell of Ralph West’s house and behind and all around me were the dark, deserted lanes. It was impossible that someone could be playing a piano so close to me. And yet there it was. Light, delicate music. But cold. No, I can’t explain how music can be cold, but so it was. Like the snapping of icicles in the depths of winter.
Fear swept over my entire body, because I knew I was hearing music where no music could exist.
FIVE
Music where no music could exist . . .
Nell read these last sentences again, a pulse of unease beating in her mind. That’s what I heard earlier tonight, she thought. Music inside this house. Music where no music could exist, because the piano is locked up and we haven’t got the key, and there’s no electricity on for radios or stereos.
There would be a logical explanation for both incidents, though. The music Nell heard would have been a car radio in one of the lanes, and Samuel Burlap, despite his protestations had most likely had a few drinks. She laid the papers down, leaning her head back, staring into the gas fire. She was starting to feel sleepy – it had been an early start to the day and a long drive and there had been a mixture of emotions waiting in the house. In a moment she would put Mr Burlap away and go up to bed. In a moment.
The flames of any fire – even a gas fire – conjured up pictures, evocative, comforting. Brad would have known this room. Had the fireplace been open then? Had Charlotte West lit a fire in the evenings, and had the seven- or eight-year-old Brad stared into its depths and seen the pictures children did see in firelight? Goblins’ caves and fiery mountains and salamanders . . . You did not see caves or mountains in a gas fire, but there was still a sense that there might be something on the other side of the flames.
The room was warm and although rain still beat against the windows, it was a soothing sound, mingling with the soft hissing of the gas. Nell’s eyelids felt as if weights were pressing down, and although she was not quite asleep, she was no longer fully awake. She was in those borderlands where reality and dreams blur and blend, and where the impossible knits itself into the possible. Where soft music weaves itself into the dream patterns and the dreamer’s awareness.
Music. It tapped against her mind. She liked music. She and Brad often used to go to concerts, and one of her favourite memories of him was of a night when he had sat down at a friend’s piano and played Scott Joplin, amidst a lot of wrong notes and laughter, and how he had gone on to sketch out a few notes of Dvorak’s Humoresque before closing the piano with a flourish and saying he was years out of practice. It was one of the memories that had led her to suggest piano lessons to Beth.
It was not Scott Joplin or Dvorak she was hearing now though, and when she opened her eyes, it had gone. I was half asleep and I dreamed it, thought Nell. I probably translated the sound of rain into music because of Burlap’s statement, and because Brad wrote that letter to his friend Esmond about playing duets.
She was about to dismiss the whole thing and get up from the chair when the sound came again and now there was no doubt about it. It was light and fragile, but it was unmistaka
bly someone playing a piano. The music was delicate but intricate, Chopin, perhaps, or Debussy. Nell might almost have suspected Beth of creeping downstairs and finding the piano’s key, but Beth’s playing was certainly not of this standard. Was this the music Samuel Burlap had heard over a century earlier?
Panic threatened, then Nell remembered she did not believe in ghosts or ghost-music. Summoning up all her resolve, she reached for one of the candles, and went out to the hall. The candle flame sent shadows leaping across the darkness and the music wove itself in and out of the shadows, as elusive as quicksilver. And colder than ice, thought Nell, repressing a shiver. Burlap said it was cold, and now I know what he meant. But this can’t be Burlap’s music. Maybe I’m still asleep and dreaming. As she went towards the music room, this last possibility seemed very likely, because the whole setting was so much the traditional walk through the haunted house it was almost too good to be true.
Could it be Beth after all, perhaps suffering from some form of sleepwalking? She had had a series of nightmares a couple of years ago – could they be returning in the form of sleepwalking?
The front door rattled as a strong gust of wind blew against it, and for a moment it was as if someone was standing out there, trying to force the door open. The candle flame flickered, and in its erratic light Nell saw something crouching at the far end of the hall. A small figure – hunched by the wall, its face turned towards her. Oh God, someone had broken in – someone was huddled in the dark corner, watching her . . .
She began to retreat, her heart racing with fear, praying the candle would not snuff out and leave her in pitch darkness. And then the flurry of wind died down and the flame burned up again, and she realized all she had seen was the squat shape of the old umbrella stand. Optical illusion, Nell. Get a grip. But surely to goodness you were entitled to imagine you saw nightmare things in this setting?
The door of the music room was ajar, and she took a deep breath and went towards it. The shadows were deeper here, but she could see the piano from the doorway, the silken wood gleaming, but the darkness twisting so thickly around it that it was impossible to make out details. Was it open? Was someone seated on the stool, reaching out to the keys? She took a step further into the room, and as she did so, the curtains stirred in another draught of cold air. The candle flame went out and darkness closed down. The music stopped as abruptly as if a door had been slammed.
Nell gasped, but forced herself to stand still until her eyes adjusted to the dimness and she could make out shapes in the dark room. There was no one here – she was sure of that. She groped her way towards the pale outline of the French windows, so she could open the curtains and get enough light to see her way back to the hall.
The left-hand curtain came back with a scraping rattle, and although the rain was still sheeting down outside, the room lightened at once. Nell reached for the other one and drew that back.
Standing pressed against the glass was the figure of a woman, her hands lifted as if to bang against the glass, her eyes wide and staring, her face thin and ravaged, clotted strings of darkness clinging to her like ancient dregs.
Nell cried out and stumbled back, knocking against the piano. It gave a faint thrum of sound, and then, incredibly and impossibly, the figure vanished. It did not walk or run away; it simply disappeared between one heartbeat and the next, leaving only the rain streaming down the glass panes and the dark, drenched gardens beyond.
Nell’s legs were trembling so violently she was about to fall over. With her free hand she grabbed the edge of the piano and half fell onto the stool. She was icily cold and she wrapped her arms around her body in the classic gesture of trying to force warmth back. After a moment she got up, forced herself back to the French windows, and peered into darkness. But there was only the pattering of the rain and the sound of the trees moving in the wind, and all she could see was her own reflection, slightly ghostlike in the blackness.
Probably she was the one who had been sleepwalking, rather than Beth. She had slipped into a dream and the music had been part of the dream. But she had no sense of waking from sleep, not like the hero in Keats’ poem who after meeting his dream-phantoms, wrote, ‘I awoke and found me here on the cold hill’s side—’
And now she was thinking like Michael, who would find a romantic quotation in any situation, and would probably recite lyric poetry on his way to the gallows. But the thought of Michael was instantly comforting, and Nell felt better. There’s no one out there, she thought. It was the rain making a peculiar pattern – it melted, for pity’s sake!
She groped her way along the dark hall, lit a fresh candle in the little sitting room, and made her way up to the bedroom she and Beth were sharing. It was stupid to wonder if that soft piano music had woken Beth, because it had not existed. And of course Beth was all right; she was still soundly and contentedly asleep, exactly as Nell had left her.
She went back downstairs. She would finish reading Samuel Burlap’s statement before going to bed herself. Because either Burlap or Dr Brodworthy would surely end in giving an explanation for the music, and once Nell had read that she would be able to sleep soundly.
After I listened to that frozen music for a little while I summoned the resolve to go down to the outbuildings. They’re only three or four low small structures joined together by their walls, each with its own little latched door. They more or less mark the boundary on the western side of the land and they’re partly hidden by overgrown hedges. There’s an old wash-house, a dilapidated earth closet, and a couple of stores for coal or logs. The largest is a game larder where the birds would be hung after a shoot, or where poultry would be plucked before going up to the house for table. It was this I investigated first.
I knew about game larders. There’s one up at Sir Beecham Bondley’s house and my mother used to help in the kitchens when they had house parties and shooting parties. When I was old enough she sometimes took me with her.
‘You can run errands, Samuel,’ she’d say, and I rather liked scurrying around the fine estate and delivering messages to kitchen staff where I might be given a handful of raisins if cook was baking a cake, or to the beaters who would sometimes give me a sliver of cheese or the corner of a pasty from the bag-dinners they took out with them. I never told Mother; she would have been annoyed; she would have seen it as charity. I sometimes told Father though, and he always grinned and said, ‘Sounds good. You have to take what you can get in life, boy.’
The game larder on the Acton land was much smaller than the one at Bondley House, of course, and the door was almost hidden by a thick mat of sour-smelling ivy. It hadn’t been disturbed for years, that ivy – no one could have got in there without leaving tracks. But there are times when the body acts independently of the mind, and before I realized it, I was clawing at those crumbling leaves. They came away in huge, dry swathes falling from the door and the surrounding wall, the stalks splintering like small sapless bones. And there was the door, a thick old oak door, scarred by time and weather. There was an old ring-latch; when I grasped it, it scratched against my hand, but when I pushed hard it swung open, and thick, stale air came at me.
It took several minutes to pluck up courage to go inside. I had to keep saying to myself that there would be nothing in there – there could not possibly be anything.
Thin moonlight lay in bars across the stone floor, and dirt and grime crusted the walls, and it was a terrible, evil-smelling place, as I had known it would be. Black iron hooks protruded from the ceiling, and there were deep shelves, topped with slabs of old, cracked marble. Ahead was an inner door with a small grille about two-thirds of the way up – that was where the meat and game was kept. The grille was to allow air in. There were four or five thin bars across the opening to keep out birds and vermin.
I could no longer hear the music, but a faint movement came from beyond that grille – barely visible, hardly more than a rippling of the shadows. There’s nothing in there though, I thought again. You know that
, Samuel Burlap. But the impossible music was brushing against the silence, the notes trickling through the darkness like frozen cobwebs or the tapping of dead fingernails against glass. Or like wasted hands scrabbling on a prison door, trying to get out.
As the thought formed, the movement came again, more distinctly this time. A woman’s face looked out at me from behind the grille.
She was standing up against the door, her hands curled round the bars of the grille – she was gripping them with such fierce strength I could see her knuckles standing out white and taut. I could see them, I’m telling you and I could see her, just as clearly as I can see you now and that desk you’re sitting at, and those pages your assistant’s using to write all this down.
I think I called out, although I couldn’t tell you what I said. I do know that I seized the door handle and wrenched at it with all my might – like the outer door it was stiff and half-rusted into place. Years, I thought wildly. It’s been like this for years. Dear God, does that mean she’s been there all these years? Alive in there . . .?
The door was held in place by two thick black bolts, one at the top, one at the bottom. You’ll think the outside of a door a strange place for bolts, and so it was. It wouldn’t take anyone half a second to know they were intended not to keep something out, but to keep something in.
My hands were shaking, but I drew both bolts back and the door came open with a shriek of old hinges, and showers of rust and dirt. Spiders and black beetles scuttled away, and I went in.
The room beyond that old, bolted door, was empty. Empty. And yet, as I stood there, I knew something was in there with me, and I felt a cold black despair – as if all the light and life and colour was draining from the world.
I know that sounds pretentious, but it’s what I felt. I felt a hopeless, hard misery chipping slivers from my soul. I knew I should never be able to get those lost fragments back.