She brushed at her damp eyes with the back of one hand. Dad said they had to be strong for Mummy’s sake and she, Loren, had done her best. She rarely cried over Cam any more even though she missed him terribly; she almost had right then because she was in a strange place and was already feeling homesick.
She leaned forward to straighten the duvet and as she did so she caught something moving out of the corner of her eye. Something small had walked past the doorway – no, had run past the bedroom door. She hadn’t heard footsteps, but she had definitely seen a blur go past.
It must be Cally. It seemed to be her size even if it was rushed.
‘Cally?’ Loren called out. ‘Is that you out there?’
No reply.
She walked to the open door and looked along the balustraded landing that ran round two sides of the big hall.
Nothing. No one there.
Except . . . Loren wasn’t sure she’d really heard it. But it came again. It sounded like a whimper.
Loren stepped out onto the landing and looked to her right, towards where she thought the sound had come from. Holding her breath, she listened.
It came again. A quiet little sob. And then again. A small child crying.
‘Cally?’ she called again. ‘What’s wrong? What’s the matter?’
Loren could hear the low buzz of conversation coming from the kitchen doorway below, but the sound she strained to hear again wasn’t from there. She took a few paces along the landing, then stopped when she heard another whimper. It came from a cupboard set in the wall.
‘Cally,’ she called again, this time somewhat irritated. Why wouldn’t her sister answer her?
She went to the closed cupboard. Was Cally playing a game, hiding from her? Now she’d shut herself in the cupboard and had become afraid of the dark. But then why didn’t she just come out? Had she locked herself in? But she couldn’t have: the key was in the lock.
Another tiny sound of a sob. Definitely from inside the cupboard.
Loren reached out a hand for the key. Her fingers closed around it.
And suddenly she was afraid.
The whimpers, the sobs, hadn’t sounded like Cally at all. And Cally wasn’t a cry-baby anyway. She was mostly a happy girl. The quiet whimper came again and it seemed much further off than from inside the cupboard. Somehow it was distant now.
With sudden resolve, Loren gripped the key hard, turned it and pulled.
The cupboard door swung open and inside there was only – Loren shivered – inside there was only blackness. A blackness so deep it seemed solid.
6: WHITE SHADOW
‘Mum! Dad! I heard someone—’ Loren all but skidded into the kitchen, her words broken off when she saw the stranger sitting at the kitchen table. All eyes turned to her.
‘What is it, Loren?’ Eve asked calmly as she leaned back against the sink. There always seemed to be a crisis in her eldest daughter’s life these days.
Loren didn’t reply immediately, her attention taken up with the visitor, a funny old man with stick-out ears and a red face.
‘I heard something . . . someone upstairs!’ She burst out the news, despite the presence of the stranger.
‘This is Mr Judd,’ Eve told her, ignoring Loren’s agitation for the moment. ‘He’s Crickley Hall’s gardener and handyman. He’ll be helping us with the place.’
Percy gave her a quick smile but, sitting close to him, Gabe noticed the curiosity in his stare. Was there something else, too? Something that was close to alarm?
‘Now, what are you going on about?’ Eve’s voice was patient.
‘I was in our new bedroom,’ Loren said in a rush, ‘and I saw something go past the door. I thought it was Cally.’
Her little sister was hanging onto the back of her father’s chair and she looked confused. ‘Not me,’ she said as if anxious that she was being accused of doing something naughty.
‘I know it wasn’t you, silly.’ Loren shook her head at Cally.
‘Not silly,’ Cally insisted.
Gabe stepped in. ‘Who did you see, Loren?’
‘I . . . I don’t know, Dad. It was like . . . it was like a white shadow.’
Gabe raised his eyebrows and glanced at Eve, who went to her daughter and put an arm round her shoulder.
‘It’s true, Mummy,’ Loren insisted. ‘It was gone before I could look properly. And then I heard someone crying. It wasn’t very loud, but I could still hear it. I thought it was Cally at first, but she’s down here with you and it didn’t really sound like her when I got closer.’
‘Closer to what?’ asked Gabe, still at the table with Percy Judd.
‘To the cupboard upstairs,’ Loren replied. ‘I thought someone had shut themselves inside the cupboard.’
By chance, Gabe had looked towards the gardener again and now he saw there was alarm in those old faded eyes. Yet Percy said nothing. Gabe swung back to Loren and began to rise. ‘Let me take a look. Maybe you heard a mouse or something.’
‘It wasn’t a mouse. It was a voice, Mummy. It was someone small crying.’ She looked up at Eve for support.
‘It must have been something else, darling,’ said Eve gently. ‘Perhaps the wind, a draught whistling through.’
‘No, it was a voice. Please believe me, Mummy.’
‘I do. It’s just that you may have been mistaken.’
‘C’mon, Loren, we’ll take a look together.’ Gabe came towards her, reaching out a hand as he approached.
‘I already looked, Dad. There was nothing in the cupboard. It was just . . . dark.’
‘Well, we’ll take a proper look. I’ll bring the flashlight. You okay for a minute, Percy?’
The gardener had already risen to his feet and was adjusting the cap on his head. ‘That’s all right, mister. You best be goin’ with your daughter.’
‘Gabe. Call me Gabe. My wife is Eve, and now you’ve met Cally and Loren.’
Loren pulled at her father’s hand, impatient to take him upstairs.
‘I’ll be on my way.’ Percy headed for the kitchen’s outer door as if keen to be gone. ‘I’ll see yer Tuesday afternoon ’less yer wants me sooner. Phone number’s on this.’ He placed a small crinkled piece of brown paper on a worktop as he passed. ‘Anythin’ at all, just give me a holler.’
With that he was through the door, pulling the hood over his cap as he went. Rain dampened the welcome mat before he closed the door behind him.
‘Okay, Slim,’ Gabe said to Loren, ‘let’s see what all the fuss is about.’
‘Not much to see,’ Gabe announced, shining the light into the deep cupboard. ‘Just some cardboard boxes, a mop and a broom, and what looks like a rolled-up rug at the back, nothing much else.’
He had snatched up the flashlight from the narrow chiffonier against the wall in the hall where he’d left it after leaving the cellar earlier, and all four of them, Gabe, Eve and the two girls, had climbed the broad wooden staircase to the first-floor landing.
‘It was just dark before,’ Loren insisted, looking over his shoulder. ‘There was nothing there.’ Gabe was crouched so that he could look through the cupboard doorway; the opening itself was about five feet high and three feet wide.
‘Sure, but now we got the flashlight. And hey, look back there. The board at the end of the closet is painted black. No wonder it looked so dark in here when you looked before.’ The smell of dust wafted from the opening.
‘But I heard someone, Dad. I definitely heard someone crying. I thought it was Cally.’
Eve, also crouched, turned to Loren. ‘Cally has been with us all the time,’ she said softly so that Loren would not feel she was being disbelieved, only mistaken. ‘You couldn’t have heard her.’
‘I know. I mean it sounded like her. A child was crying.’
Gabe moved into the cupboard, going down on one knee. He shifted boxes aside, raising dust. ‘Might’ve been a small animal. Probably a mouse.’
‘It wasn’t a mouse! Why don’t you believe me
?’
Eve touched her daughter’s shoulder: Loren became distressed all too easily these days. ‘We’re only saying you might have been mistaken,’ she said soothingly.
‘But I saw something too. Something went past the door.’
Gabe had moved further into the shadowy space and was pushing more cardboard boxes aside. ‘Well, there’s nobody in here now,’ he said over his shoulder as he began to pull back. ‘Coulda been a breeze blowing through the house, as Mummy said. Wind through a crack in the wall can make all kinds of spooky noises.’
‘It wasn’t the wind,’ Loren told him firmly.
Eve could feel no draught or breeze coming from the cupboard. She looked around the landing, then over the balustrade at the hall below.
Gabe backed out and straightened. ‘Nothing there, Loren. Guess you imagined it. No big deal.’
Loren turned on her heels and stomped away, disappearing into her new bedroom and closing the door after her.
Gabe and Eve looked at each other and Gabe raised his eyebrows. ‘Hormones,’ he said.
Eve remained silent.
7: FIRST NIGHT
‘Gabe.’
‘Uh?’
‘Gabe, wake up.’
Eve shook his shoulder. Gabe was a heavy sleeper.
‘What . . .?’ He stirred, opened his eyes, eyelids sluggish with sleep.
Eve pushed herself into a sitting position and leaned back against the curved wooden headboard. Rain outside pattered against the room’s windows.
She shook Gabe’s shoulder again, this time more fiercely. ‘Gabe, can’t you hear him?’
Reluctantly, he dragged himself from sleep and raised his head. ‘Hear who?’ he said.
‘Listen.’
Now he heard it. Chester’s howl drifted across the hall and up the stairs from the kitchen.
‘He’s frightened,’ said Eve.
Gabe rested on one elbow and briskly wiped weariness from his face with the flat of his hand. It had been a long, hard day and this he could do without.
‘He’ll be okay,’ he assured Eve. ‘Just needs to get used to the place.’
Eve was staring at the dark opening of the doorway, the door left ajar so that they could hear either of the girls should they wake up in their strange room and be frightened. Their bedroom door had been left open too.
‘Gabe!’ she said sharply. Something pale had moved into the opening, but it was too dark to see what: so cloudy was the night that the window offered little light. ‘There’s someone out there.’
Gabe felt the back of his neck go cold, short hairs there stiffening. He sat up in the bed and stared at the doorway and drew in an involuntary breath.
‘Mummy? Daddy?’
Both Eve and Gabe felt their bodies relax when they realized Loren had come to their room. The door swung even wider open and the howling below grew more mournful.
‘Chester’s upset,’ Loren said from the doorway.
‘It’s all right,’ Eve soothed. ‘He just doesn’t like being alone in a new place.’
‘He’ll settle down soon,’ Gabe added.
‘But he’s crying, Daddy.’ In the cold darkness of night he had become ‘Daddy’ once more.
He pushed the bed’s heavy duvet aside, giving in only a tad reluctantly. He was concerned for the mutt too. That afternoon he’d had to venture out in the rain to Chester, who had refused to leave his spot by the oak tree, heedless of their calls and coaxing. He had picked the mongrel up bodily and carried him back into the house; once inside, Chester had shivered in the corner of the kitchen next to the door while Loren wiped him down with an old towel, his eyes bulging so hard that the whites at the sides were visible. Eventually, and with Loren stroking his wiry fur, Chester had fallen into a troubled sleep.
‘You go back to bed, Loren, and I’ll go down and see to Chester,’ Gabe said as he padded over to the door.
‘Can’t he sleep on my bed?’ Loren implored.
‘Uh-huh, kid. He’s gotta get through the night on his own. We can’t have him sleeping upstairs.’
‘Just this once, Daddy. He won’t disturb me if he’s on the end of my bed. I promise he’ll be good.’
‘Let me see how he is first.’
‘Thank you, Daddy.’
‘I didn’t say I’d bring him up, I said I’ll see how he is. And if he does come up, he’ll be in this room, not with you. Now get yourself back to bed before you catch cold.’
She disappeared into her own room, but before he could go to the stairs, her head popped out again.
‘You won’t be cross with him, will you?’ she said plaintively.
‘Bed.’ He used his no-nonsense tone and she disappeared.
He remembered there was a light switch somewhere on the landing and his hand scrabbled against the wall beside the bedroom door. There, found it. He clicked on the landing light, which was dim, hardly strong enough to spill into the hall below. The switch to the iron chandelier was inconveniently somewhere by the front door.
Gabe usually slept in T-shirt and boxers, but because the house was cold, tonight he wore dark pyjama leggings below the T-shirt. The landing’s bare floorboards, which had been varnished some time ago, were cool under his bare feet and for once he wished he was the kind of guy who wore slippers. Hand using the wide rail for guidance, he went down the stairs into the hall’s shadowy darkness, old boards creaking beneath his tread. Pausing on the small square landing at the turn of the stairs, even the tall window behind him affording scant light, rain pitter-pattering against the glass, he looked across the grand hall towards the closed kitchen door. But it was another door that caught his attention, a deeper blackness among the shadows. The cellar door was open and he swore he’d closed and locked it earlier in the evening, ever fearful of Cally wandering down to look at the well and its dangerously low wall. Now it was open, unlocked. Had Eve gone down there to see the well for herself – they had been too busy for the full tour earlier – and forgotten to close and lock the door after her? Yet he was sure, being the last one to turn in that night, that the cellar door was at least closed if not locked. He mentally shrugged. Okay, if that was the case, maybe a draught from the well below had forced it open. Had to be, there was no other explanation. A river running beneath the house could cause all sorts of air disturbances, a breeze – a wind even – travelling up the shaft, then funnelled up the cellar stairs.
He descended the rest of the stairway and crossed the umbrageous hall, its flagstones even colder than the wood under his feet. He was an idiot not to have taken the flashlight up to the bedroom with him: he could just make out its black barrel standing erect on the chiffonier where he’d left it next to the old-style phone earlier. Padding over to the narrow sideboard, he picked up the heavy flashlight and switched it on. No need to turn on the hall’s light when he had his own source.
Just for the sake of it, he swept the beam around the room, chasing shadows away, lighting up the deeper corners. Everything seemed in order apart from the open cellar door, which he swiftly moved towards. He shut it and heard the lock click as he turned the key. Foolishly, Gabe had to admit to himself he somehow felt more at ease with the door locked.
From the kitchen came Chester’s desperate howl and Gabe realized the dog must have quietened when he heard the creaking of the stairs, although for some reason Gabe hadn’t noticed. Now the cry was more urgent than before.
The flashlight’s beam providing a path for him, Gabe went to the kitchen door and opened it. The howl broke off midway and Chester’s short tail began to thump the floor in nervous agitation. Lit by the strong beam, Gabe saw that Chester’s neck was stretched to its limit as he perked up.
‘Okay, fellah,’ Gabe said soothingly as he approached the tough-haired mongrel. ‘No one’s gonna harm you. Just tell me what all the fuss is about.’
Without switching on the overhead light, Gabe knelt down in front of the quivering dog and began to stroke his head, then pat his side. In return, Cheste
r endeavoured to lick Gabe’s face and, when Gabe pulled back, was content to lick his master’s outstretched hand.
‘There you go.’ Gabe kept his voice soft. ‘No spooks around to scare you. Only me. Now settle down so we can all get some sleep.’
But Chester would not lie down. He stood on all fours, his favourite blanket rumpled beneath him, and tried to nuzzle his master’s face again. Gabe pulled the dog to him and cradled the trembling body in his arms.
‘Hush now, you crazy mutt,’ he whispered. ‘Nothing to bother you in this place. Momma and the girls are in bed where I oughta be, so just you snuggle down and go to sleep.’
Chester only pushed against him all the more.
A flurry of rain suddenly lashed at the kitchen windows causing Gabe to swing round and almost overbalance.
‘Wild out tonight, Chester,’ he said to the pet. ‘You don’t wanna be out there in this weather, do you? Is that what all the fuss is about? You busting to go AWOL again, or maybe you just wanna get busy?’ ‘Busy’ was their code for Chester relieving himself. ‘You need go find a nice tree?’
Gabe stood and reached for the key in the kitchen’s outer door, twisted it, then pulled back the top and bottom bolts. He swung the door open just enough for Chester to slip through the gap, but the dog merely shrunk away from the opening as rain gusted through.
‘No? Don’t want out? Don’t blame you, Chester, don’t blame you at all. But come on, you gotta stop this wailing. You’re keeping us all awake.’ Gabe closed the door and locked it again, then squatted down beside the trembling dog.
‘What is it? You wanna come upstairs with me, is that it?’
The dog pressed against his knees.
‘Can’t do it, boy. You gotta get a handle on the place. Toughen up, okay?’
Gabe stood and went to the inner door. ‘Now not another peep outa you. Be a pal and go to sleep.’
As soon as Gabe shut the door behind him, the wailing began again, only this time it was even more agitated. He heard Chester scratching at the kitchen’s inner door. Gabe went back, threw open the door and scooped the dog up in his arms.
The Secret of Crickley Hall Page 4