The Unquiet House

by Alison Littlewood

  He imagined someone reaching out from behind him in the dark and resting their hand on his shoulder. He pulled himself in smaller, wrapping his arms around his body. He closed his eyes and waited but it didn’t help. He expected the door to be yanked open any second and for the yelling to begin, but it didn’t happen. He bent and looked at the line of light under the door. It wasn’t quite regular and he didn’t know if that was because someone was standing on the other side of it. He sniffed. If it was the old man, wouldn’t he be able to smell him?

  There was a soft creak, as if someone standing outside had shifted their weight. Frank swallowed, battling the dry lump in his throat, and he stepped backward, his arm outstretched. It seemed he might just keep moving until he emerged in some fantasy land, just like in a book. But his fingers brushed something hard and there was fabric, coarse and hairy, and he thought of some kind of animal but standing upright, something that could somehow see him, and then he was sure he could hear it breathing. He could feel it, the heat radiating from its body. He still couldn’t see but he knew that someone was there. He staggered away, stumbling into a hard edge. And then he sensed something else, tendrils of it reaching towards him on the air, something he could almost smell: fear. Someone else’s fear.

  He stumbled forwards again, towards the door. He brushed against something and it rattled and he decided he didn’t care. It was too late anyway: the old man must have heard him. He must know he was trapped in the dark and he was only waiting now to teach him a lesson, and all Frank wanted was for it to be over.

  He felt his cheeks and they were wet and he realised he was crying and he felt a sudden raging thirst. He had to get out. He flailed, bashing his hand against the door handle, then grabbed it and twisted and at first it turned but then it jammed and turned back, against his hand. He tried again but it wouldn’t budge. It was as if someone was holding it from the other side. He tried it with both hands but it wasn’t any use and then he heard a shuffling sound behind him, something limp and soft dragging itself across the floor.

  He banged against the wood and called out: ‘Please—’

  The door opened and light flooded in. The man stood there staring down at him with disgust in his eyes, and something else; it looked a little like surprise.

  The tears on Frank’s cheeks felt cold. Whatever he’d felt before, the thirst, the fear, had gone. He looked behind him and saw only a small cupboard lined with shelves and a rail full of ratty jumpers and greying shirts, and something lying on the floor: a heap of fabric, a brown tweedy suit that he must have knocked from its hanger. That must have been the sound he’d heard. The thing looked crumpled but clean, almost new.

  The old man was still staring at him. His cheeks looked sunken and horribly unshaven. His ears were large, the lobes rounded as if they were on upside down. He looked angry, but not as if he were going to lash out. As if in denial of this impression, he reached for Frank’s shoulder, and he pulled away with a little cry.

  ‘Tha’s still ’ere,’ he said.

  Frank had no idea what he meant. He did not reply.

  ‘What’re you doing in ’ere?’

  Frank couldn’t find any words. The man twitched, as if he was going to touch him, and Frank did the only thing he could think of: he pointed towards the dresser. ‘I brought your pipe,’ he said. ‘My friend took it. He din’t mean to. We was messin’ about, and now I’ve brung it back.’

  ‘So you’re not ’im.’

  Frank shook his head. ‘It wan’t me as swiped it.’ He crossed the room and picked up the pipe and held it out. This time the man took it. He held it in his hands as if it were some rare and precious thing, and then he slipped it into the pocket of his jacket. He was wearing his black suit again, the one Frank’s mother would say was ‘nowt but holes and air’.

  ‘I dun’t mean that.’ The man blinked, and his eyelids looked heavy. Now he didn’t look angry; he looked tired. ‘One of yer mates ran up ’ere, couple o’ weeks back. Left footprints all ower, he did. An’ I shut ’im in that cupboard, just like you, on’y – when I opened t’ door – ’e’d gone.’

  Frank pressed his lips together and looked back into the cupboard. It was just a cupboard. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide that wouldn’t be spotted in moments. ‘’E must a’ run out again,’ he said, ‘when you wan’t looking.’

  ‘There weren’t no time when I wan’t lookin’, lad. I were ’ere all t’ time, standing right outside this ’ere door.’ He kicked at it.

  ‘I din’t mean owt,’ Frank said. ‘I din’t mean to come in. I on’y wanted to gi’ you that.’ He shrugged. ‘Sorry, an’ that.’ He looked down at the floor.

  ‘So you’re not ’im.’

  Frank shrugged. He didn’t really know what he meant and he didn’t want to think about who the ‘him’ might have been. He certainly didn’t want to think about anyone vanishing in a closed cupboard; that made him think of the woman he thought he’d seen, the one with the dark clothes and the pale face. It struck him once more that was what was wrong with the old man: she’d touched him and his thoughts had gone awry. He’d started seeing things. He was so busy standing about waiting for children to come along and bother him, bashing his big stick into the ground, that he was imagining he’d seen them even when they weren’t there.

  ‘’E looked like you,’ the man said. ‘Not just like you. Bit younger. Funny teeth.’

  ‘Well ’e’s nowt to do wi’ me. An’ I’ve allus come ’ere with me mates. We’ve never been by us sen.’

  The man didn’t appear to have heard. He was staring down at his feet. Frank saw he was wearing brown ribbed socks that had worn into holes and his big toe with its jagged yellowing nail was jutting from it. Strangely, he wasn’t disgusted: he felt only pity. ‘What d’you live ’ere for?’ he said, ‘out ’ere, all on yer tod? It’s a big ’ouse. Lots o’ rooms.’ He stopped himself, biting his lip. It wasn’t any of his business. His dad would give him a clip round his ear if he’d heard. Maybe the old man would.

  But he didn’t look angry. He met Frank’s eyes. It was the first time he’d seemed to really see him. ‘I dunno,’ the man said, and his voice was quiet, barely a whisper. Frank found himself leaning closer so that he could hear; he felt sure, somehow, that there was more.

  ‘I’ll show yer,’ he said, and stepped back, not towards the doorway but into the room. He went to the window and Frank knew that he could run, now, if he wanted to, but somehow he found he didn’t want to. ‘You ’ave to lean,’ he said, ‘down the’er.’

  The man stepped away from the window and Frank took his place. He could see right across the garden and into the lane. He could just see the roof of the porch beneath and that some of the slates were cracked, and that was all.

  ‘The’er.’ The man squeezed in next to him and pointed.

  Frank saw. At the apex of the porch was a globe made out of stone. He thought there were letters on it, but they were darkened with moss and difficult to make out.

  ‘Read it,’ the man said.

  Frank leaned out further. ‘E … L … I,’ he said, and there was more, but it disappeared around the curve. There were more letters to the left of them, others beneath where they spiralled around, but they didn’t make any sense.

  ‘Eli,’ the man said. ‘Elizabeth.’ He drew a long sigh, and Frank caught a whiff of stale breath.

  ‘Is that what it says?’

  There was another sour spurt of air, perhaps the nearest thing the man could get to a laugh. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. He gave a wry smile. ‘I never did know, not really, but I thought it did. We thought it did.’ He smiled again, and this time there was sorrow in it too. ‘It didn’t mek much sense. We knew those letters weren’t put there for ’er, but when my Lizzie saw it carved there, she said it were meant t’ be: it was s’pposed to be our ’ouse. Course, we got it for a song – bought it from one o’ Lizzie’s sisters, married into it, she did, then decided she wanted nowt to do wi’ t’ place. I thought
at fust it was charity, but she were just flighty: Antonia weren’t never one for charity. On’y then my Lizzie died, see. All a long time ago now, I ’spose, though it dun’t seem like it t’ me. Prob’ly before you was even a nipper.’ He gazed out of the window again, though he didn’t seem to be seeing anything at all. ‘We was going to live ’ere till we got old. We was going t’ have children. Lizzie was allus the one who knew what t’ do. She were going to come in and paint the walls green and fill it wi’ laughter.

  ‘You can’t tell the ways, can you? Not really – you can’t plan owt. Well, you can, but it’s God’s own sweet will as wins in the end. Her name means “my God is abundance”, did you know that?’ He let out a spurt of air. ‘Cancer got ’er. Bowels.’

  Frank blinked. He knew the man had said a funny word, but somehow it wasn’t funny at all. He swallowed.

  The man drew a long sigh. ‘So tha’s why,’ he said. ‘Tha’s why I’ve got a big ’ouse, lad. It weren’t meant for me – not just for me, anyroad.’ He stared out of the window and Frank waited. He shifted his feet. He wasn’t sure what he was meant to say.

  ‘I should turn it off,’ the man said, and he went to the worn-looking record player and picked up the stylus and swung it off the disc. ‘It were our song, that. Dun’t s’pose you’d like it.’

  Frank realised the record had just been going around and around, making a soft hissing; he wasn’t sure when the music had stopped.

  ‘I listened to Elvis and Cliff and Buddy, all those,’ he said, ‘but it was the old ’uns I liked best, the ones I danced to wi’ Lizzie, back in the day. When we wus courtin’ and fust wed. The big bands: “Someday Sweetheart” and “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree”: songs where the words took a long time to begin and you could just listen to the music, let it carry you off.’

  ‘I should go,’ Frank said.

  ‘Aye, well, I ’spose you should.’ He tapped his pocket where he’d put the pipe.

  Frank didn’t move. Now he could go home, it didn’t seem so pressing any longer. There was something else he wanted to say, but he wasn’t sure how. Then it just spilled out: ‘I think there’s a ghost in your ’ouse,’ he said.

  The man raised his eyes, slowly and steadily, and he looked at Frank. ‘I know,’ he said.

  Frank nodded again, and then walked towards the door. He could feel the old man’s gaze on his back.

  ‘Tha’ll come back then,’ he said.

  Frank stopped and turned. ‘Mebbe.’ He opened the door and when the man didn’t say anything else he walked down the stairs. He could hear steps above him but they stopped and he looked back to see him standing on the landing, watching him go. The man raised a hand at him and he raised a hand back before he walked across the black and white tiles, towards the outside and home.

  It wasn’t until he was halfway up the lane that the thought struck him. He stopped dead. It wasn’t about ghosts or the man or his dead wife or anything about Mire House at all: it was about the way he’d climbed out of his window and shinned down the drainpipe. It hadn’t been easy. It was bad enough going downwards: there was no way on earth he was going to be able to climb back up again. His mother was going to know exactly what he had done.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Frank didn’t know why he’d expected to see the old man in church. He was never in church, even though he always looked as if he’d dressed for it. He twisted around on the unforgiving pew, searching for that dark suit, but of course it wasn’t there. The old man wasn’t neighbourly, as his mother would have put it.

  Today Frank wasn’t sitting next to Mossy as he usually did. This was because he was in disgrace. As if to underline the fact, his mother reached out and grasped his knee, preventing him from twisting in his seat. He fell quiet as the vicar stepped forward. He was a tall and bloodless man, everything about him pale and washed out, including the tufts of hair that clung above his ears. Everything about the church felt dry: the flags, the smell of old stone in the back of the throat, the vicar’s voice as he began to intone, something about Job and endurance.

  Frank pulled a face just as the vicar’s eyes fell on him. He quickly looked down at the kneeling cushion tucked under the pew in front. Matthew James, a boy he knew from school, had tucked his legs under him and his muddy boots had smeared across the embroidery. Frank frowned. He wasn’t sure which was worse, a thought that no one could see or damaging church property.

  His mother dug him in the ribs as the vicar stopped droning on and everyone shuffled to their feet to sing ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’. He glanced at her. It wasn’t fair, he had stood as quickly as everyone else. She wouldn’t look at him. He knew she was doing it on purpose. She’d barely looked at him since he’d arrived at the door from his last visit to Mire House. He’d tried to sneak in – quietly, he’d thought – past the dining room, but he’d glanced in to see them all looking straight at him. He still remembered the way Mossy’s mouth had fallen open, the mush of his mother’s treacle pudding all chewed up inside.

  She nudged him in the ribs again and they started to sing.

  *

  After the service everyone gathered outside, the men talking about the weather, the women about the trials of bringing up children. The vicar stood in the doorway, looking at them as if he wasn’t sure what to do any more. The children didn’t stand about; some took out their latest playthings to show their friends, while others ran up and down the lane or around the graves. Frank didn’t join in. If he looked like he was enjoying himself, his mum would be down on him in seconds. She’d send him off home on his own. Instead he walked away from the others, along a quieter path that led between the graves. Tufts of grass licked at the base of each grey stone and lichen obscured the letters. He glanced at a few: Dear Husband. Cherished Son. Beloved Wife. He could see Mire House through the veil of trees that stood between them. If the old man still had a wife, he might be nicer. He might come to church and chat with the rest of them and no one would think to peek in at his windows because he’d be just like everybody else. From here he could see the porch jutting from the front of the house, the globe appearing flattened to a disc. He remembered the look on the man’s face when he’d told Frank about the letters written there, the name of his wife waiting for them at their new home. Now she must have a stone just like these, her name carved into it once more, not in life but in death. It was only then that he realised he knew the name of the dead wife but not of the living man who lived so close by.

  He shook his head. He didn’t know why he was even thinking of such things. He’d never cared what the old man was called before; he had only made sure to avoid him. It wasn’t like him. Normally he’d be thinking about his Sunday dinner. He turned and scanned the graves. They were all around him now, as if they’d gathered in to block his way home. Down the hillside he could still see his mum in her Sunday frock, together with his friends’ mothers, their mouths all wagging but not a sound to be heard. She was a long way off. He turned back towards the house, wondering if he’d be able to spot the old man at a window, watching them but with nobody to talk to, and he noticed he wasn’t alone in the churchyard after all: there was a woman there too, dressed all in black, just like the old man. She had her back turned and was looking towards the house.

  She was tall, the woman, and slender, and a veil was covering her hair, but he thought that it was long and dark, though he didn’t know why as he couldn’t really see it. She stood beneath one of the yew trees that surrounded the church. They were ancient things; they had been there for years and years, according to his mother, and they were heavy with thick old branches holding out their poisonous berries like offerings. He looked back at the woman. She wasn’t there any longer. Frank blinked. There was a dark furrow in the tree’s trunk, a broken branch hanging loose. Together, the shape they made looked a little like a woman; it had only been an illusion. He had fired his imagination with Sam’s silly stories and now he was seeing things, just as he had before.

 
He forced himself to walk towards the tree. There was no reason to be afraid. It was just like monsters under the bed; he knew they weren’t real, but if he thought about them too hard he would end up lying awake, mistaking his breathing for theirs. There was a bench under the tree. There was writing on the back of it.

  My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? Matthew 27:46

  He pulled a face and backed away. That wasn’t a nice thing to write. Perhaps the vicar had chosen it, maybe while he was dreaming up another sermon about endurance. It didn’t feel that way, though. It seemed like the words had been there for a long time.

  It was cold under the tree. Its shadow was sapping the warmth from the air. He looked at its fruit. His mum had told him about yew trees. Older than the church, and deadly; she said he must never ever eat any, not that he could see why he would. That was the reason for the church wall, she’d said, to keep people’s cattle from straying and eating the waxy needles. It was odd, but until then he’d thought the walls must be to keep the badness out, not to keep it in. Now there was Mire House. Was that something they’d wanted to keep out too?

  His mother’s voice, raised and harsh, sounded like a curlew on the air. Frank whirled around and gave her a wave, seeing Mossy standing next to her, small and neat and good in his best clothes. He hurried across the tussocky grass, realising too late that he’d stepped off the path. It was people’s graves he was walking on, the low mounds that must be hiding their bones. He grimaced and moved aside, edging by the back of the headstones, but it was no use; he couldn’t seem to keep clear of them. He tried not to see any of the names written upon them as he started to run.

  *

  The cake was not his mother’s finest. It was chocolate cake, but it looked beaten; the top sagged and the edges looked dense, as if someone had sat on it. He’d thought he could smell baking that morning but hadn’t dared ask what she was doing. There was usually afters, but he hadn’t expected his favourite. She knew he loved chocolate cake. On his birthday she’d decorate one with hard little silver balls she bought from the grocer. There were no silver balls on this cake – if there had been, they’d all roll inwards and gather in its sunken middle.