by Jack Lewis
“I only did it to get you to stay,” she said. “I didn’t use much. Not enough to hurt you. I feel so alone here.”
“Not enough to hurt me?” said Tamara, feeling the blood rush to her face. “I’ve been throwing up, Magda. My hair’s been falling out.”
“Please, Tammy. I just felt so alone.”
“You should have thought about that,” growled Tamara, “before you sent me to boarding school. You didn’t give a shit how alone I felt, did you?”
She shrugged away from her mother’s grip and turned her back on her. She walked toward the door. She was scared of what would happen if she stayed. A fury was building up in her more powerful than anything she’d ever felt before.
“I was scared of him, Tamara,” called out her mother’s voice, high-pitched and desperate.
Tamara stopped. She didn’t turn around, but instead stared out into the empty hallway where the banner hung and the eye stared at her. She still couldn’t meet its gaze.
“Your father terrified me,” continued her mother. “That’s why you had to go. You don’t understand what he was like, and what he did. You wouldn’t have believed me.”
“Tell me,” she said.
“He did things in the orangery. I knew about it for years; everyone did. It was just a secret of the family, something the men have done for decades. Part of me thought it was all an act, and that as long as it didn’t hurt anyone, it was okay. It didn’t matter if a few hares went missing or deer were killed. As long as it wasn’t people. But when he started looking at you…”
Tamara turned around.
“And what? When he started looking at me, then what?”
She felt something shift in her mind. The doors of her memory were opening again but they were rusty, and needed more force. It was as if they didn’t want to open fully.
“If you can’t remember, that’s for the best,” said Magda.
“Tell me, Mum.” The word slipped out again. This time, she didn’t care.
“You have to believe me. I didn’t know he would hurt you.”
“Just tell me.”
Magda put her hands to her face and sobbed into them. It was so pathetic that it stirred something inside Tamara, and despite everything, she found herself walking over to her mother and helping her to her feet.
The old woman looked at her.
“Tell me you’ll stay,” she said.
Not this again. It was too much, she couldn’t cope with it. She felt the walls of the manor close in on her, as if the old stone wanted to crush her and grind her bones into dust.
She walked out of the room. As she reached the lobby and then the stairs, her walk turned into a run. She took the steps two at a time, and tripped in the middle and scratched her shin. She gripped the banister and pulled herself to her feet. She felt the eye on the banner watching her, gazing into her back as she fled toward the first floor.
She reached her bedroom. She dragged her suitcase from the corner and put it on her bed. As she flung her clothes into it, she felt something in the room with her.
The air turned cold. Her breath floated from her mouth and hung in front of her as a mist. Something was here. She didn’t want to turn around, but she knew that she had to.
When she turned, nothing was there.
Then something grabbed her by the throat. She couldn’t see it, but she felt ice cold fingers tighten around her neck. Fingernails dug into her skin, sharp enough that they broke through. She tried to shout out but the hand tightened around her and made her words a gurgle.
Footsteps walked along the hallway outside. She tried to call out to them, but the hand wouldn’t let her. She still couldn’t see anything but she felt the presence in front of her, dripping with hate. Somehow, she knew it was smiling as it choked the air out of her.
“Tamara?”
The hand released her. She sank to the floor and coughed. Air strained through her mouth and she took raspy gulps of it. She felt hands lift her up.
Billy stood in front of her. He wore a blue denim shirt that was stained with mud. His jeans were tucked into his boots, and a twig was entwined in his laces.
“Why were you in my room?” he said. “I saw you.”
His face was creased into a look of anger. He stood in front of her with his arms folded. She felt a fury of her own take hold of her, born from everything that had happened. The house, the illness, the family secrets. She thought about their savings and how he had spent them, and she felt like she could punch him.
“I rang the bank,” she said, meeting his furious stare with one of her own.
“Maybe you should have listened to me.”
“We talked about it. We said we’d wait. What gave you the right to-?”
He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. She saw spit pool on the corners of his lips, and when she stared into his eyes, it was like they weren’t his anymore. He gritted his teeth, and she felt his hot breath blow in her face.
“What’s the matter, Ra Ra?” he said.
She punched him in the stomach. He let go of her and wheezed. She backed away from him, stopping when she felt the rim of the window frame dig into her back.
Billy slowly straightened up. When he looked at her, the anger had gone. He stared at her. It seemed like minutes, and she didn’t know what to say or what to do. For the first time, she was scared of her husband.
He turned his back on her and walked out of the room. She heard his boots thump along the hallway and onto the stairs, where the noise became quieter until finally, she heard the front door open and then slam shut.
Looking out of the window, she watched her husband march away from the grounds and toward the woods. She felt the door of her memory strain to open, but something inside her held it shut, making a last effort to stop the images pouring out.
It was the house. The house was doing everything. She stared at Billy as he walked toward the woods and she felt a sadness flow through her. She had to do something. If she didn’t, the house would take him for good, and after that, it would come back for her.
Chapter Fifteen
Magda tried to stop her at the front door. She grabbed hold of her, but her hands were too weak.
“Don’t go,” she said.
She had a cut on her thumb, and blood dripped down and welled in the skin between her thumb and index finger. Her face was pale and her cheeks were free from the usual powder that covered them.
Tamara pushed her hand away from her. She reached for the handle of the front door. It was a faded ring with metal on the end that was fastened into the wood. She gripped the cold brass and pulled.
“Don’t, Tamara,” said Magda.
“What’s wrong? I thought you wanted me to face the past. Wasn’t that what you said in your little speech?”
“I didn’t mean…this. Don’t go out there.”
She pulled the door open. The morning sky was covered grey. Black clouds drifted through it like ink squirted into murky water. A storm gathered overhead, and the gravel on the ground turned dark as rain hit it. Tamara pulled her hood over her head and stepped out.
As her shoes crunched on the stones she realised that it wasn’t rain falling on her, but hail, and she felt the little pieces bounce off her head. Some settled on her shoulders and soaked into the fabric of her hoodie as they thawed, while others hit her in the face and stung her skin.
She fixed her stare on the woods ahead of her. She couldn’t see Billy, but she knew where he had gone. Magda called out behind her, but Tamara didn’t turn. She heard Butch start to bark, and this time Rupert joined him until both animals cried out.
The hail fell faster and in bigger chunks, and as she reached the threshold of the woods it felt as if stones were being flung from the sky. The arms of the trees shook and swayed as the wind wiped at them.
She stopped. She remembered being here ten years earlier. Back then she didn’t want to go into the woods and she felt as if she shouldn’t, as if something waited f
or her deep inside it. A hand grabbed her and pulled her forward, showing her that going back wasn’t an option, that he’d drag her if he had to.
Whose hand was it?
Was it the bus driver’s as he walked her to the bus that would take her to boarding school? Was it Magda’s hand pulling her along, dragging her for a walk with the dogs? Was it her father’s?
A chill shook her. She couldn’t remember. It was too long ago, lost in a memory that her brain had locked away. Things were locked away for a reason, she knew. In her case was it to stop something getting in, or to prevent something from getting out?
The woods seemed to darken as she walked through them. She wished she’d worn another layer of clothing, and she pulled the strings of her hood tighter so that it covered her face like a cocoon. Without tree leaves to stop it, the hail still reached her in the forest, and she saw little fragments hit the floor and then melt.
To her right, a tree stood alone. Its trunk was curved like the spine of an old man, and its branches were small and knobbly. Some had twigs sharp enough to be daggers, and the branches at the top waved into the air, as if they were arms trying to scare her away.
She felt her memory waking. She remembered walking past this tree when she was a girl. She was alone, and she’d never been this far into the woods before, but she’d seen her father walk here, and she just wanted to know what he was doing.
An acorn fell from a tree and hit her head, shaking her from the memory. She was deeper into the woods than she’d ever been. A mist seemed to hang over it, rising from the ground and covering the moss and the bracken. Birds called out to each other from somewhere overhead, though when she looked at the branches around her she saw that they were bare. Her feet crunched over twigs that had been shed from the trees that grew them.
She heard a sound. It started to the right of her, somewhere in the distance beyond the mist. Then it seemed to circle around until it was behind her, and finally she heard it to her left.
It was the sound of someone chanting. She couldn’t make out the words, but the tune was cryptic and it seemed to have no break, as though the person making the noise didn’t need to stop for breath.
She pushed on. She walked past tree after tree, stepping over vines and ignoring the shrill shouts of the birds. Finally, she saw it. Ahead of her, lying in wait where the woods were darkest, was the orangery.
The brickwork might once have been red, but now it was covered in a green mossy growth. The windows had long since been bricked up, but she saw lines on the walls where the frames had once been. It was hard to imagine that someone would want to smother out what little light reached the grim building. She knew that the orangery sensed her, that in its brickwork was something sentient and mean, and it heard her nervous treads on the forest floor and stared at her with unwelcoming eyes.
She stopped a few metres away. There was no sign of Billy. The hail stopped falling from the sky, and the mud around her was damp. The birds had stopped their shrill greetings to each other. All around her was utter silence.
This was her last chance to turn back, she knew. To go back to the manor and find some way to leave.
She couldn’t. Billy was in the orangery. She didn’t know what was happening to him, but she knew the dark influence of the house had changed him, as it had her all those years ago. She felt that if she could just remember what happened to her, then she could finally move on from Towneley Manor for good.
At first she thought the orangery had no doors as well as no windows. It was shaped in a curve so that the stone appeared smooth at first glance, but when Tamara touched it she felt it was rough and wet, and the moss spread over the brick gave a foisty smell. A well stood thirty feet to the left. The bucket was inside it, stretching down into the depths below.
When she had nearly completed her lap of the orangery she found the door. She pushed it and stepped inside. She crossed the threshold and felt something change inside her, as if darkness seeped into her skin. She felt it move up into her brain, and things started to shift. The door of her mind began to open, and she felt memories strain out. She stepped through, taking a breath to prepare herself for what waited within.
The room was bare. Hemmed in by the circular walls it felt claustrophobic, but no horrors awaited her. There was no furniture, no doors, and the floor was made of concrete, and there was nothing on it save loose sticks and twigs. There was no sign of Billy either.
She wondered if she had been right to come here. Perhaps Billy was in a different part of the woods, and that Tamara was wrong about everything. Maybe nothing was going on at Towneley, and she’d imagined it all.
No. She knew she hadn’t. It was real, all of it. The books on the occult, Alistair Towneley and his dead son, Harold West-Towneley and his rasping voice. The figures in the conservatory.
She listened. She heard a chanting noise. It was lower than it had been in the woods, but it sounded like it came from nearby. She looked around, as if in the last ten seconds a door might have magically appeared. She walked around the orangery, completing a lap of its concrete floor.
The chanting was stronger in one area. She walked over to it. She kneeled down to the floor, and listened.
The chanting was coming from underneath her.
She brushed away some of the twigs and then she sat back. In front of her was the outline of a door cut into the concrete, and in the middle, was a metal ring the size of her hand.
She took hold of the ring. The metal felt warm, as if someone had held it not too long ago. She pulled it back, and she felt her arm muscles sting. Finally, the door began to lift up from the concrete, and she saw something start to glow in the hole below her.
A lamp was lit underneath the floor, and every so often it cast orange light on a flight of stairs that led into the depths. The chanting had stopped now, replaced by an ominous silence. It was the kind of silence created by something that knew she was there.
She started to walk down the stairs. Her footsteps echoed off the stone, and they sounded different the deeper she went. It felt like the steps went on for miles, but soon she reached the bottom. When she looked back up, the hidden doorway was twenty feet away.
This room was much larger than the one above it. It was a wide alcove cut into the ground below the orangery. The floor had been covered in grey stone, but the walls still showed the brown mud of the earth. Black markings were painted on the stone below her feet. She followed them as they spiralled across the room, but she couldn’t tell what the pattern was.
Banners hung over the walls and were spread evenly around the circumference of the room. Some looked so old that they might flake away, while on others the colours hadn’t faded yet. Various scenes were depicted on them. One showed four men dressed in black robes carrying a naked woman into the forest. Another showed the woman on an altar, arms flailing in the air. A man stood above her, his face set in a sneer and nose poking out through his hood. He held a knife in his hand. A third displayed a room filled with blood. It washed over the floors, and covered the walls. Something was in the centre of it, a black figure that looked misty, as if it were only just taking form.
Tamara felt her chest tighten up. She felt her memory strain in her head, trying to grip the door that blocked it shut. The room was opening something inside her. She recognised the place, yet it was alien at the same time. The earthy smell of the mud, the cold-looking stone floor with its black paint. The horrible banners. It wasn’t the first time she’d been here.
She looked again at the banner that showed the man in the hood. She had seen him before. Not just the drawing on the banner, but him. She was sure she had.
A chill crept over her, and suddenly she felt too alone and too exposed. She glanced up at the door and wondered if it might suddenly shut on her and leave her trapped in here. Candles burned in holders that were fixed to the wall. She’d never even thought to wonder who lit them. Was someone here?
She looked around. She couldn’t see anyone. On
the farthest side of the room, the floor was raised, and stairs led up to a small platform.
She walked over to it. Her footsteps sounded too loud on the stone, and she wished she could mute the taps they made. The flames flickered on the candles and made shadows on the wall that seemed to reach for her.
She stood before the steps. There were only ten of them, and when she reached the top, she saw a giant block of stone. This one looked like the coffins in the crypt, except it was solid all the way through. Markings had been carved into the stone. They seemed familiar to her.
Her memory strained again. Something had awakened in her, and she didn’t know if she wanted to see it.