Secret of the Shadows

by Cathy MacPhail

  I burst out laughing. ‘I didn’t know you wore a wig!’

  ‘Oh goodness yes.’ I saw then her own hair was thin, wisps of blonde hair tinged with grey. She looked around the room. ‘Where can I put this so it gets some air?’

  No wonder she made me laugh. She placed her wig gently on the windowsill.

  ‘Aunt Belle, even without your wig you look like a film star,’ I said.

  ‘I always like to feel good, honey. Your gran used to laugh too.’

  It was even later before we said goodnight. I went into her room with her and sat on the bed, and we drank hot chocolate and talked. By the time I was closing her door her light was out, her eyes already shut.

  I walked down the hall to my room. I had decided to wedge the door with a heavy book, but the room itself was in shadowy darkness and I wished I had left the bedside lamp turned on. It seemed the whole house was dark and silent. I felt alone.

  The cold hit me as soon as I stepped inside, as if someone had blown their icy breath towards me. I jumped into bed and pulled the duvet tight around me. I switched on the bedside lamp and its light sent out a warm glow. I could see myself in the tall mirror in one corner, a girl with long fair hair and freckles, and blue eyes. I smiled and my reflection smiled back.

  It was a lovely little bedroom. Yet it was so cold. My nose was like an ice cube. I pulled the duvet almost over my head.

  I was tired, I decided, and needed sleep. I switched off the light and slid deeper under the covers.

  I don’t know what woke me, perhaps the wind outside or the sound of the sea rushing into the shore. But I opened my eyes and felt sure I was not alone. Someone was in the room with me.

  ‘Aunt Belle?’ My first thought was that she had woken up and come in, but there was no answer. I sat up and rubbed my eyes.

  The door was closed.

  I had wedged it open. How had it managed to close?

  And then, it seemed there was a movement in the corner, in that armchair. My eyes flickered towards it. It looked almost as if someone was sitting there. A dark figure. I blinked, trying to focus. It did look as if something was there. And not just sitting, but moving. A shadow stirring into life. My hand was shaking as I reached out to switch on the lamp. Someone was in that corner, I could swear they were. Ready to stand and take a step towards me.

  I flicked the switch and light filled the room. The chair was empty and behind it was only the tall lamp with its lopsided shade. It leaned over the back of the chair like a drunken man. I felt stupid. I had obviously mistaken the lamp for a figure. I stared at it for a long time, waiting for it to move, for the shade to topple and fall. But nothing happened. And for a second there, in the midnight of my room, I remembered Ben Kincaid and the statues that used to turn to watch me.

  I waited for another sign, but nothing came, nothing changed. Of course nothing changed! Strange things didn’t happen in bright little bungalows like this. They happened in great Victorian mansions. Or in old schools, with long, dark corridors. Not here. I was being silly, I decided.

  But I still slept the rest of the night with the light on.

  Chapter 4

  The second day

  All my friends came to the house the next day. It would be the last time I would see them before they went off on their respective holidays. I’d told them so much about Aunt Belle they were all dying to meet her.

  Aisha and Jazz arrived first. ‘Hope you don’t mind us turning up like this,’ Aisha said. Jazz didn’t bother apologising. She was sure we would be happy to see her. Out of school, she went mad with her style. Her black hair stuck up in spikes and her eyes were smudged black too. She was so different to Aisha, with her long brown hair held back in a neat clasp. Although maybe Jazz was just what Aisha needed to put the fun into her life.

  ‘The boys are coming later,’ Jazz said, chewing gum, pink through her bright white teeth. ‘We thought we could phone for pizza or something.’ She turned to Aunt Belle. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

  Aunt Belle laughed. ‘Mind? Of course not. And forget about pizza. I’m going to make a spaghetti Bolognese for us all.’

  ‘The boys are coming?’ I mumbled.

  Jazz gave me a playful push. ‘Including Mac. Don’t worry.’

  ‘Mac?’ Aunt Belle said, lifting a painted eyebrow.

  Jazz smiled. ‘She hasn’t told you about Mac? He’s her boyfriend.’

  ‘Not exactly my boyfriend, he’s just . . .’

  Jazz shook her head. ‘He’s her boyfriend, Aunt Belle.’ She was already adopting my aunt as her own. She turned to Aisha. ‘Isn’t that right?’

  ‘’Fraid so. We just don’t know what she sees in him.’

  Aunt Belle was delighted. ‘Oh, I am looking forward to meeting him,’ she said.

  ‘It’s a bit quiet here, isn’t it?’ Jazz said, peering out of the window at the sea. ‘Wouldn’t like to be here by myself on a dark and stormy night.’ She gave me another push. ‘Bet you could write a great story about this place, Tyler. You know, one of your creepy ones, about ghosts and ghouls.’

  ‘It used to be even more remote.’ Aunt Belle joined her at the window. ‘When it was first built, it was completely isolated.’

  Jazz grinned. ‘I think I prefer it this way. Aunt Belle,’ she went on, ‘I have seen too many films where the beautiful heroine is alone in a remote house and a mad axe man is after her. And I always see myself as the beautiful heroine.’

  She’d have to fight Aunt Belle for that role, I thought.

  I had planned to tell them all about the spiders and the weird feeling that had woken me up in the night, but finally decided against it. It seemed absurd now, and Jazz would only say it was another of my stories. I couldn’t hide the cold though. As soon as Jazz and Aisha walked into the room, they felt it.

  ‘Where is that draught coming from?’ Jazz asked, rubbing at her arms.

  I swung round to answer her and gasped. There was a shadow on the chair. It sprang to life, leaping from the seat. I stumbled back.

  But it was only Aisha. She caught my arm. ‘Hey, Tyler, what’s wrong?’

  ‘I–I didn’t see you sitting there. You gave me a fright.’

  Aunt Belle came in just then, carrying an electric heater. ‘This is going to stay on till this room warms up.’

  Aisha settled back in the chair again. ‘I love this room. I would sit in here at night and read my book.’

  ‘And think about Callum . . .’ Jazz nodded to Aunt Belle. ‘That’s her boyfriend.’

  ‘And have you got one, Jazz?’ Aunt Belle asked.

  ‘Who’d have her?’ Aisha said.

  ‘She scares boys too much,’ I said, and we laughed and all of a sudden the room didn’t seem frightening. No one else seemed to feel the strangeness in here. Only me. I decided then that in the dead of night when I woke up and it was cold and I imagined something in that chair, I would remember this moment, remember Aisha sitting there laughing, and I wouldn’t be afraid again.

  Chapter 5

  ‘Who does your nails?’ Jazz asked Aunt Belle, when we went back into the front room. She lifted Aunt Belle’s hand and studied them with admiration. ‘They’re lovely.’

  ‘I do them myself, dear. Always have. I think I should have been a beautician. Missed my vocation there.’

  ‘What did you do?’ Aisha asked.

  ‘I was a waitress at a Republican club in New York,’ she told them proudly. ‘I met presidents and film stars and so many interesting people. I’ve had such a terrific life, and two wonderful husbands.’

  I giggled. ‘My aunt Belle always manages to get double her share of everything!’

  Aunt Belle laughed too. ‘I was born lucky,’ she said.

  ‘Tell us about when you first went to America,’ Aisha said eagerly.

  They didn’t need to ask Aunt Belle twice. She loved sharing stories about her past.

  ‘Maybe you could do my nails at the same time.’ This was Jazz, holding out her black painted
nails to my aunt.

  And that was the way we spent the afternoon, Aunt Belle sitting happily with her nail polish collection, filing, polishing and painting me and my friends’ fingernails, and telling them wild tales of her early days in New York. I was sure she made half of them up, but who cared?

  I knew she would be a hit with them.

  ‘When are you going off on holiday?’ I asked. Jazz was off to Spain with her family, Aisha to Egypt.

  ‘In a couple of days,’ Jazz said, admiring her nails.

  ‘We’re all going to be away. The boys are going on holiday too. You’ll be all alone, Tyler,’ Aisha said cheerily.

  Alone. For a second the word made me shiver, but I shook the feeling away.

  ‘Not with Aunt Belle here,’ I said.

  The boys came just in time for dinner. If Aunt Belle had been expecting Mac to be a kilted Scotsman and not a skinny Asian boy, she said nothing, just smiled and winked at me in approval behind his back.

  Aunt Belle’s spaghetti Bolognese was so good. We ate in the dining room round that oval table – Aunt Belle insisted we have dinner there – and we talked and laughed, and every so often, Mac would look over at me and smile. Jazz spotted him one time and groaned. ‘There’s something wrong here,’ she said. ‘Aisha and Callum, and Tyler and Mac. But what about poor little me?’ She grinned at Adam and made an effort at fluttering her eyelashes. ‘You could be my boyfriend, Adam. You’ve always fancied me, haven’t you?’ She puckered her lips, offering them to Adam.

  He shrank back from her. ‘Me? I’d rather kiss a cobra.’

  Jazz hissed like a snake. ‘That could be arranged.’

  They were always winding each other up like that, but I was sure deep down they did like each other. It was only a matter of time till they both realised it.

  Aunt Belle insisted they go before it was too late. ‘It’s a lonely road,’ she told them.

  ‘I thought you told me it was only delinquent five-year-olds we had to worry about here?’ I giggled.

  Jazz put on a spooky voice. ‘But at night, who knows what horrors could be lurking in the shadows.’ She laughed. We all did. But in that moment, despite the light and warmth of the dining room, the words ‘lurking in the shadows’ made my skin break out in goose pimples.

  It was a warm summer evening, with the orange sun setting over the river. I brushed away any fear I had. What bad things could happen in this lovely house? With my cheery aunt Belle here beside me?

  My friends left soon after dinner. I felt a knot of fear in my stomach I couldn’t explain as I watched them walk up that long road to the bus stop. Mac looked back once and waved. And then they were all gone, swallowed up in the distance. Almost as if they had vanished from my life. Why was I feeling like that? They were only going on holiday. Why did I suddenly feel so isolated?

  Aunt Belle must have noticed my mood. She slipped an arm around my shoulders. ‘Come on, let’s go for an ice cream. That’ll cheer you up.’

  We brought a big tub of ice cream back from the cafe in the village, and we sat on the patio outside the kitchen, savouring it and watching the sun sink behind the hills.

  ‘The evening your gran and I came here to view this house, it wast just like this. We couldn’t believe our luck. We’d found the perfect house. Couldn’t believe it hadn’t been snapped up by someone else. That it had been empty for so long. That it was so cheap! So we signed for it the very next day.’

  She got to her feet. ‘Right, time for bed, for me at least.’ She yawned. ‘I feel so tired. Must be jet lag.’

  I sat up for a while after she went to bed. There was a film on television. A strange story about a missing boy. Had he run away? Had he been kidnapped? Who was guilty? As it neared the end and it was clear the boy had been long dead, that he was a ghost back for revenge, I wished I hadn’t stayed up to watch it. And I knew then I had only been putting off going to bed. I kept imagining the closed door of my bedroom, and couldn’t stop thinking about what was behind it.

  Nothing, Tyler! I kept telling myself. There was nothing inside that room.

  I got myself a glass of milk from the kitchen and stood for a moment outside my room before I opened the door. I had left the light on deliberately, so I could see every corner. It was still cold, even with the heater blasting away. And when I stepped inside, after only a few moments the door still swung shut. As if a dead breath had blown it closed.

  There was something wrong here, in this room. I only wished I knew what it was.

  Chapter 6

  I wedged the door open again, climbed into bed and tried to concentrate on the next chapter of my book. But I was tired and so I turned off the bedside lamp after only a few pages. The slashes of moonlight coming in through the window reassured me, and the memory of Aisha sitting laughing in the chair in the corner too. I could make it out in the silver light, and the lopsided lampshade made it look faintly comical. I could even hear Aunt Belle’s gentle snoring from her room. There was nothing to be afraid of here, I told myself. And with those comforting thoughts I fell asleep.

  The duvet was right over my head when I woke up. What had woken me? Was it a sound? I listened, but all I could hear was the comforting rush of the incoming tide, and the early cawing of the seagulls.

  Yet, there was something there. Something in the atmosphere of the room. And it was even colder than I remembered. I dared a peek over the duvet.

  Darkness.

  And that’s when I realised the door had closed again. I had wedged it open, and now it was closed. How could that happen? Was that what had woken me? The sound of that door clicking shut.

  There was a cold sweat on my brow. My eyes were drawn to that chair in the corner. I tried to make out what was there in the darkness and it seemed to me that the chair was enveloped in that same strange shadow. I stared at it for an age.

  And the shadow moved.

  Something stirred in that chair. Something was watching me. I saw no eyes. There was nothing but shadow, yet I was convinced it was watching me. My teeth began to chatter and my hand trembled as I reached for the lamp. In my mind’s eye, I saw another hand, its skeletal fingers reaching out to stop me.

  With one flick the lamp was on. Light flooded the room and I leapt from the bed.

  I stood in the corner, back against the wall. The chair was empty. Of course the chair was empty. It was only a harmless, inoffensive chair, and a door that wouldn’t stay open. In the light, I refused to think otherwise. Still, I never took my eyes off the chair as I moved towards the door, telling myself all the time I was foolish.

  The handle of the door was ice cold. I turned it slowly, pulled the door open, and backed out of the room and into the hall.

  I stood, rubbing my arms, staring into the gloom of that room, half expecting something or someone to materialise there.

  And then, another shadow made me jump – a shadow in the kitchen.

  At that moment the door was pulled open wide. ‘I thought I heard you.’ It was Aunt Belle, in her purple dressing gown. ‘Couldn’t you sleep either?’ She held up the kettle. ‘I’m just making myself a cup of tea. Do you want one?’

  I looked back into my room at that green chair and I shrugged. It was as if a veil had been lifted. Normality had returned. How stupid I was being. Bad dreams and my wild imagination. That was all.

  Chapter 7

  Aunt Belle and I sat in the kitchen with our tea – in a china teapot with china cups and saucers. Aunt Belle had no time for mugs, she said. And we talked until the red lights of dawn brushed the sky.

  ‘I think it’s the cold in that room that wakes me up,’ I said, almost talking to myself. I didn’t want to alarm Aunt Belle with stories of moving shadows on chairs. ‘And the door keeps closing all the time.’

  ‘Subsidence,’ she said at once. ‘This is an old house, built in the 1920s. What with its age and being right next to the sea, there’s bound to be subsidence . . . I think I remember your gran mentioning that to me once.’ S
he looked thoughtful, trying to remember. Finally she gave up with a shrug. ‘We’ll get a carpenter in about the door. See what he can do.’

  Subsidence made the door close, and it was just a gap in the woodwork creating the draught. Down to earth, sensible explanations. They reassured me. I was happy to believe them.

  ‘Jet lag. I feel so tired,’ Aunt Belle said, and she yawned. ‘I can only sleep a couple of hours and then I’m awake again.’

  I wondered then if there was something of the shadow in Aunt Belle’s room, but she dispelled that notion straight away. ‘I love that room. I feel as if your gran’s in there with me. We always had so much fun together.’

  I remembered then that my mum had told me once that Gran had a gift, a gift for seeing the dead, and that she’d passed that gift on to me.

  ‘Did you ever think Gran might be psychic, Aunt Belle?’ If anyone would know more, surely it would be her?

  She spluttered into her tea. ‘Your gran? You’ve got to be joking. She was always taking the mickey out of me because I was the one who believed in all that stuff. I used to go to seances and I was told once I was the reincarnation of an Egyptian princess, and do you know what your gran said? “Oh, of course, Belle, you would never have been the reincarnation of a kitchen maid, would you? You’d have to be a princess.” She thought I was too gullible and all that kind of stuff was just nonsense.’

  I laughed. Aunt Belle, a kitchen maid? Never.

  ‘Mum said she felt Gran wanted to tell her something before she died,’ I went on. ‘Something was bothering her. And Mum always regrets she didn’t get the chance to ask Gran what it was.’

  Aunt Belle looked thoughtful. ‘It’s funny you saying that, because the last letter I got from your gran she said something similar.’ She got to her feet. ‘I’ve got the letter in my case. I’ll show you.’

  As I waited I imagined my gran, alone in the night, here in this house, with its ice-cold room, and a door that closed of its own accord. Were those the things that had been bothering her?