Then he’s falling towards me and I’m being crushed by the bulk of him and I’m aware that there are people in summer shorts and skirts running towards us at top speed and as I turn to scream at them for help I see, just for a second, a whisk of black silk dress disappearing very slowly in the opposite direction through the arch at the side of the house and there’s that strange buzzing noise in my ears again but this time I manage not to faint and I stay with Sid until Dad runs over the lawn clutching his walkie-talkie and crouches down next to us.
Mum comes out in her dressing gown almost as pale as Sid and she takes me back up to the flat and hugs me to her.
‘You poor thing,’ she keeps saying. ‘Oh you poor thing.’
She forces me to drink a brandy and then she makes me go to bed and take one of her pills so that I’m asleep within about three minutes. I don’t wake up until it’s getting dark outside.
I stagger into the kitchen all disorientated and thirsty from the brandy and pill, so Mum makes me some tea and then Dad comes back in from the hospital with his head bowed and his face lined and serious.
He looks at Mum and then at me where I’m sitting in pyjamas on the sofa with Ben tucked up next to me.
‘Sid had a heart attack, Tabs,’ says Dad. ‘He’s lucky to be alive. He’s got to stay in hospital for a while and then spend some time recuperating at home.’
‘Is he going to come back to work after that?’ I say. Visions of Sid’s kind face and shiny head well up, making me want to cry.
Dad’s face falls.
‘I don’t think so,’ he says. ‘He wasn’t well enough to say very much, but one thing he did say to me is that he’s had enough of the manor.’
‘Why?’ is the only word I can get out of my mouth. That one word seems to sum up everything that has happened to me at Weston Manor.
Dad thinks that I’m asking why Sid is fed up with the manor, but I think I can already guess the answer to that.
No – what I mean is:
Why did we have to come and live here?
Why are all these horrid things happening?
Why do most of them happen to me?
And why won’t anyone believe me?
The only person who believed me was Sid. And he’s not coming back.
Chapter Twelve
Something tried to silence Gran – and then Sid.
Or someone.
And in the days after Sid’s heart attack it’s like they’re out to get me too.
Not just in the daytime, but at night too.
I can’t talk to my parents about it. Dad just laughs it off and Mum gets her anxious look on and tells me to ‘Stop That Right Away!’ or ‘Don’t Start That Again, Tabitha’.
Dawn changes the subject when I ask her if she’s ever seen anything in the manor.
And Sid’s wife calls by to see Dad and sort out his final salary payment but I can’t very well start pestering her with questions – so I don’t. I just watch her trying not to cry, and Mum trying to comfort her, and I feel sad and small.
And scared.
It’s started to happen in the flat too.
I thought the flat was my sanctuary. I thought I’d be safe here. I didn’t think they’d get to me in here as well.
It’s two days after Sid’s heart attack and I’m up in my room.
I’ve tried calling Gran again but I can’t ever seem to get through.
It’s dark outside and I’m huddled under my duvet with the bedside lamp on, trying to read a diary about a teenage princess cos all my other books are about teenage vampires and that’s the last thing I need to be reading at the moment. Although the diary is funny and as light as marshmallow, I can’t concentrate on it and I’m drained of all energy. So I click my light off and bury myself under the pillow, trying not to listen to Mum and Dad arguing in low angry voices in the kitchen.
I expect they’re arguing about me. Again.
This has been going on since even before we came to Weston Manor, but it’s got a lot worse over the last few days.
I hug my pillow and close my eyes, trying to block out the noise of my fighting parents.
I must have dozed off because it feels much later when I come round to the sound of somebody whispering my name.
I jump and shoot upwards into a sitting position, clutching my duvet to my face. Like that’s going to protect me. Stupid.
I click on my bedside lamp with fumbling hands and look at the clock.
It’s just gone 3 a.m.
There’s a rustling noise in the corner.
I freeze and glance towards the bedroom door.
Should I get up and run across the room and out to Mum and Dad?
The rustle happens again and a dark shape shifts and moves on the old armchair in the corner of my bedroom.
My eyes adjust to the light.
There’s a woman sitting on my chair and she’s got her head buried in her hands. I hear the faint sound of sobbing. Not close, like somebody’s in my room, but like it’s coming down a tunnel from miles away or from a television with the sound almost turned right down.
My ears begin to buzz and I shake my head left and right, trying to rid myself of the noise and the vision.
Maybe I’m dreaming. I pinch my arm hard but it hurts like hell. I open my mouth to shout but nothing will come out, however hard I try.
The woman stops sobbing and lifts her head from her hands. In the dim light I see the moon-shaped oval of her face.
The slits for eyes.
The face without a mouth.
She’s looking right at me.
It’s the same woman I saw in the dining room, the woman in the dark blue dress.
Although every fibre of my body is screaming out in terror, some small part of my brain tells me that if she’s crying and looks frightened then maybe she’s not out to cause me harm.
I find my voice.
‘Are – are you OK?’ I say. Like you do, when you’ve got an apparition in your bedroom!
The woman continues to stare at me and her narrow eyes bore into my skull and my ears fizz and crackle. She looks as if she is about to speak but a bell rings from somewhere in the manor and we both jump out of our skin.
‘You. Here!’ yells a sharp female voice from the dark bowels of the manor. The woman gets up and drifts out through the door.
The door is closed.
I lie for a while trying to calm my thumping heart. I can hear faint noises from far off in the big house. It sounds like two women having an argument – but as if they’re having it underwater.
I lie for what feels like a lifetime, too afraid to move before at last I creep into Mum and Dad’s bedroom and put my sleeping bag on the floor again.
Then I lie there wide awake until daylight.
Mum decides that I need to have next week off school.
‘No,’ I protest. ‘I really, really want to go back.’
I’ve missed so much of the summer term already. I really want to be back to a normal place with kids yelling and fighting and teachers giving me detention.
I want to see Gemma and talk to her about normal things like music and make-up and cats and telly.
And Jake.
I really need him now. It’s weird – he’s stopped being annoying and is starting to represent sanity. After all, he’s kind and loyal and I think I can trust him.
Mum’s got her stubborn expression on so I know I’m not going to win this one.
I slump on the sofa in the lounge and text Gem.
Olds keeping me in, I put. And they’re arguing all the time. T.
That’s a bit of an understatement. Mum and Dad are hardly speaking to one another.
The Mayor is coming for a special visit today and Dad insists that I help him pick flowers from the walled garden and arrange them in large blue-and-white vases on the dining-room table where there’s a huge spread of buffet food brought in by a local firm.
We finish arranging the flowers and as the house is cl
osed to visitors for the special occasion, there’s nobody much around for a few hours. Dad drives off into town to get his hair cut for the occasion and Dawn has disappeared too.
The entrance hall is deep and silent. Only the dull tick of the grandfather clock penetrates the vast space. I stand there on my own for a full five minutes, listening.
Nothing.
It’s very quiet in the manor today. I wish I could say that this was a good thing, but it isn’t. It’s like the air is weighted with expectation and starting to build up in tension. I rub my temples where my head is starting to ache.
Just to prove that I’m not scared standing here on my own, I do a spot of whistling and then I text Gemma to ask if she ever bought the pair of leggings she’d seen in town and then I even stroll up and down the hall a bit, gazing at the paintings of Eleanor and Charles and the two beautiful half-sisters, and peering into glass cases at tiny china snuff boxes and pieces of priceless crystal.
‘I live here and I am going to like it,’ I say, all of a sudden. ‘It’s kind of my home, now. I belong here.’
I hadn’t even meant to say that. It just came out.
There’s a loud slam. The door to Lady Eleanor’s morning room has just banged shut.
I look around the hall again. Nothing’s changed. I can see a couple of photographers from the Gazette outside on the front lawn setting up cameras and this gives me confidence, even though a big part of me wants to run and hide away in our flat for the rest of the day to sit with Ben or Mum and try to pretend that everything is OK. But I guess there’s still this mad curious and annoying part of Tabitha Grey that wants to dig deeper.
Sometimes I hate being like that. Why can’t I just let things go?
‘All right,’ I say. It seems to help if I speak out loud to myself. It’s like having a confident, bossy teacher in tow, telling me what to do next.
I look out at the men on the lawn once more for comfort and then I take a deep steadying breath and put my hand on the knob of the morning-room door.
Can’t believe you’re doing this, says a scared voice inside me.
‘Neither can I,’ I mutter, but by then I’ve pushed the door open.
There’s an abrupt rustle as I enter the room, like somebody’s just stood up in a hurry. Out of the corner of my eye I see something dark swish out of sight. Then a heavy silence falls on the room. I walk to the centre and look out of the sash window over the gardens of the manor.
‘Good,’ I say. I can see Dad making his way up the drive. He’s got a special jaunty walk that I can spot a mile off, both hands tucked into his jeans and his head nodding a bit from side to side.
It gives me more strength to see Dad. I turn away from the window and face the middle of the room again. I look around at all the pictures crammed in here. There are tiny black-and-white photographs of people in oval frames over the fireplace. On the walls there are larger photographs of houses in Madeira and London. Dad told me that the Thomas-Fulfords had several homes in addition to Weston. And dotted around the wallpapered walls are pencil drawings and oil paintings of various members of the family.
There’s even one of Lady Eleanor as a little girl.
‘She was pretty then,’ I say, before I can help myself. I swear I hear a snort. Kind of like a horse, but fainter. I move away from the wall and back into the room.
Something moves with me.
It’s not something I can see.
It’s a smell.
It’s like lavender but mixed with perfume so strong and acidic that I nearly keel over. I sniff my own wrist to check that it’s not me, although I know full well that the body spray I got from Superdrug smells nothing like that, and then I hunt all round the room looking for air fresheners and bowls of potpourri and sniffing the furniture to see if it smells of some weird polish or something. But the smell just gets stronger and stronger where I am until it’s like I’m standing in the middle of some moving tornado of scent.
‘Get a grip,’ I say to myself. ‘It’s just a smell. Smells can’t hurt you.’
I glance out of the window to see where Dad has got to and my heart leaps with relief when I see him pounding up the lawn towards the arch at the side of the house.
While I’m looking at Dad, the smell moves.
I follow it.
It moves over to Lady Eleanor’s writing desk and hovers in the air over her chair. The air in the room hangs heavy and hot. It’s like the room is getting smaller and darker and stuffier and the ceiling is moving down to try and squash all the air out of the room. My head is pounding now, like a migraine or something, and my heart keeps doing funny flutters in my chest.
Then it goes.
Just like that. The smell lifts and disappears and the room seems to get brighter and lighter again.
I walk towards the door with my heart pounding and I try as usual not to look sideways in the tiny mirror on the panelling just inside the door as I go past it, but I swear I see both my own profile go past and then another taller one close up behind me.
My neck prickles with ice.
‘Dad!’ I yell as he comes through into the entrance hall, opening the big front door and allowing sunlight to flood over the parquet floor. ‘You’re back!’
Dad grins.
‘Well, I live here,’ he says. ‘Of course I’m back! Are you ready for today, Tabs?’
I’m not sure what I’m ready for at the moment but I smile and link my arm through his. My heart starts to calm down a bit.
‘Bring it on!’ I say.
The house changes with all the people rushing about.
I’m in the grounds outside and I’m looking up at the front of the house, like I did on the very first day we came here.
More press have turned up so there are loads of bored-looking men with cameras hanging about smoking on the steps to the manor.
I stare up at the shuttered windows on the first floor. Since Sid left, things only get done at the last moment and usually by some sort of relief security guard drafted over from another of the council’s buildings.
The house looks down on me. Sometimes I swear it’s about to speak.
The walls gleam white in the sun and the glass windows that line the verandah sparkle through their stained glass colour panes.
Groups of birds chatter and swoop in the bushes at the sides of the house and there’s the sharp click of croquet balls at the back and the roar and rush of traffic piling up outside on Weston Drove.
It all seems so normal.
The house looks stripped of character today, like a square white cake plonked down on a green iced base.
It’s like – the more people pour in and out of the doors, the less the house has its personality any longer.
I think what it’s like in the evenings when all the visitors have gone and I shudder and get up from the old flight of steps on the circular front lawn.
Time to help Dad again.
It’s kind of good that there are all these people knocking about. I reckon nothing will happen whilst there are so many loud modern bodies all over the place, filling up the grand rooms and the huge entrance hall with noise and gaiety.
Dad gives a speech to welcome the mayor and then people descend on the buffet lunch in the dining room in front of the cases of Chinese lions. The room looks so beautiful that for one short moment I feel pleased to be living in the manor – but that doesn’t last long.
‘Tabs, I’d like you to show the mayor and his guests around the house, please,’ says Dad.
I stop with a sausage roll halfway to my mouth.
What?
‘No, I can’t,’ I stumble. ‘I don’t want to go upstairs.’
Dad smiles at the mayor with this big fake ‘What can I do about my daughter?’ look and then pulls me off by the arm into a corner of the hall.
‘You’ve got to stop this nonsense,’ he says. ‘The mayor is our distinguished guest. You’re to take him round the house, and that’s that.’
I can
see that any more argument would be pointless, so I drag my feet back into the dining room and put on my polite smile.
The mayor and his four guests follow me into the drawing room, where I point out the valuable Wedgwood collection and the unusual porcelain lamps, and then into the entrance hall where they gaze up at the portraits of Sir Charles and Lady Thomas-Fulford and admire the beauty of the half-sisters, Lucinda and Rose.
I reach the foot of the staircase and for once I don’t go all cold, so I take a deep breath and take slow, creaking steps up to the first-floor landing, talking all the way about the things Dad has taught me.
I show them Lady Eleanor’s bedroom and the guest bedroom next door. I even manage the library, without passing out or smelling anything weird.
Then I reach Sir Charles Thomas-Fulford’s bedroom and I’m looking forward to showing the visitors those weird bell pulls by the bed and the special lever for shutting the bedroom door without getting out of bed . . . but I can’t.
The door’s closed.
I push it and twiddle with the doorknob but I can’t shift it.
‘Never mind,’ says the mayor, polite as ever. ‘We can still enjoy the other rooms.’
I turn away from the door but as I move back towards the mayor there’s a loud groan.
It’s coming from inside Sir Charles’ bedroom.
I look wide-eyed at the visitors but they’re chatting amongst themselves.
There’s a clunk somewhere near the door.
The door swings open about an inch and then stops.
‘You need to get someone to look at that!’ says the mayor. His party all laugh.
I take them inside with my breath held. But everything in there looks the same as normal, so I explain about the shaving mirror and let them enjoy the views out towards the back lawns.
We go through to the two servants’ bedrooms that are on the same floor as the grand bedrooms and, like all visitors, the mayor comments on the fact that it was pretty unusual for servants to have bedrooms so close to their mistress and master and I nod and smile, and all the time I try not to look out at the croquet lawn outside or think about bells or smells. It must be working because actually our tour of the rooms upstairs and even the poky rooms in the top-floor attic goes without a hitch, and by the time we get back to the first-floor landing and I stop them by the grandfather clock to tell them a bit about it, I’m starting to think that perhaps Dad is right and I’ve been a bit over-imaginative lately. I’m thinking that I ought to try and do something nice for him later when a woman rushes up to our group and heads straight into the servants’ toilet on this floor. She doesn’t catch my eye but I get a whiff of her strange odour and I reckon she’s one of the catering staff cos she smells of kitchen cleaner and meat and isn’t dressed like the other visitors, so although that toilet is not usually open to the public I guess that this is a special occasion. I ignore her and then I continue talking to the mayor and his guests just outside, answering their questions about the house.
The Haunting of Tabitha Grey Page 9