The Unquiet House

by Alison Littlewood

  ‘I paid,’ she whispered. ‘I paid wi’ our Mossy. Weren’t never your fault, love. Don’t ever think that. It were mine, it were always mine, an’ I’m still paying now. I should ’ave taken you away after Mossy left us, far, far away, but I didn’t ’ave the will left in me. An’ I thought it were all forgot, love, but there’s never anything forgotten, is there? Not in this place. This place remembers. I can feel it, can’t you?’

  Her shoulders shook and she sank into herself, burying her face in her hands. Emma took a step forward and then she remembered that the woman was expecting Frank, not her. She would only be frightened if she made herself known.

  She paused to glance around the room before stepping quietly away and into the hall, sensing rather than seeing the woman whirling around to look after her. Still, she couldn’t help but hear her next words: ‘But it’s ower, in’t it, love? It’s ower now.’

  Emma leaned back against the wall, trying to catch her breath. Something was wrong. The walls of the drawing room had been a soft shade of green. The paint had been fresh. The room looked just the way she had imagined when she’d first seen it, and all that she could think of was that Charlie had painted it. It felt somehow as if the house had betrayed her, as if it had accepted the work of his hands and rejected her own.

  She shook the thought away. Then she turned and started up the stairs after Frank.

  *

  Doors creaked as Emma trod gently on each step, as if to cover the sound of her approach. Frank didn’t call out and she didn’t either. She had thought she knew exactly which room he would have entered first, but he had actually begun at the opposite end of the house, towards the back. As she turned the corner of the landing she saw his thin form emerge from one doorway and enter the next. He was nearing her room. Now she felt, though she could not have said why, that he was leaving it for last.

  Emma waited until he emerged again. It was as if she were in a dream, or sleepwalking, somehow aware of it without being quite awake.

  There he was, a tall thin man in his colourless jumper, his hair just beginning to grey. He kept his eyes on the floor as he passed her bedroom, trying the one next to it before stepping back onto the landing, only one option remaining to him. Now, finally, he did call out, his voice breaking over the word: ‘Miss?’

  At the sight of his hand on the door handle of her room, anger rose; then it dissipated. After hearing his mother and the talk of their loss she was not sure why it came as a surprise to realise that he was afraid.

  He turned the handle and went inside and then there was silence. Emma softly followed. She wanted to see what he would do. He hadn’t closed the door behind him and she slipped through the gap he had left.

  Frank was standing in the middle of the room, looking towards the door that let into the narrow cupboard. She only dimly registered that her room was a mess, her clothes strewn across the bed, her things piled all over the floor, when she realised that she too was standing in full view. At any moment he would turn and see her. He would surely be horrified to be discovered there. He turned his head; he looked straight towards her and then he turned back to the narrow door, just as if he hadn’t seen her at all.

  Emma’s throat was suddenly dry. She watched as he stepped forward, his movements stilted, and reached out one shaking hand towards the door. She put out her own hand to stop him. She opened her mouth to speak. She forgot about needing to be silent and wanting to be alone and everything else. She only wanted to stop him from opening the door. She didn’t want to see, didn’t want him to see. She didn’t want to know anything else about this place; she only wanted for him to go and for her to lie down and sleep for a very long time.

  She was cold, right through. It felt as if something were waiting for her on the other side of the door. She was suddenly certain it would be the old man who had stood at the foot of her bed in the middle of the night; the old man’s ghost. He would be searching for his suit. He would know that she had been the one to throw it away. He would be angry with her. She could sense his anger, could almost smell it. It was sour and ripe and stuck in her throat. At the same time she wanted only to run, as hard and as fast as she could, even as far as the mire, to that empty place.

  And she realised that Frank hadn’t opened the door after all. He had turned the handle but he hadn’t opened it and relief flooded her. Then she looked at him, really looked at him, and she followed his gaze. He was staring at the floor. He was looking at the things that had been stacked against the wall; at the things that had fallen in front of the door, preventing it from being opened.

  He bent and started to push them away. A clothes rail had slipped behind a pile of boxes. She watched as he moved them, methodically, one by one. She couldn’t see his face. He hadn’t turned and he hadn’t looked at her again. She couldn’t move and she couldn’t breathe; it felt as if time had stopped and it would only start again when he opened the door and she wanted, more than anything, that he would not do that. That he’d put back her things and turn around and walk away, take his mother by the arm, and that they would both go. But instead he finished clearing the things from in front of the door, the one place left that he hadn’t looked, and she moved behind him as he turned the handle once more and pulled and this time the door swung open.

  She caught only the merest glimpse of what lay inside before Frank whirled around. His face was white. He pressed his hand to his mouth as he staggered away and started gagging, as if he was going to be sick. A moment later she caught the stench that was flooding into the room.

  Frank didn’t say anything, didn’t even look at her as he fell to his knees, retching, then he pushed himself up, batting at the air in front of his face, as if he could expel the thing he had seen, as if he could rid himself of that smell. Emma didn’t turn as he stumbled past her. She heard him, though, as he left the room, the door slamming, the irregular sound of footsteps moving away down the corridor.

  For a long time, she didn’t hear anything at all. She only looked.

  She saw the dark and the thing that was slumped against the wall, the thing that had once been her. Her body looked small, shrunken somehow, and her hands were bent into claws, as if she was scratching her way out through the walls. Her face was greyed and blotched and mercifully in shadow. There was an overturned bowl at her side, the faint tang of bleach doing nothing to stifle the stench of rot, and an old man’s pipe, splintered and broken at the stem, clutched tightly between her fingers. The holes it had made in her skin were no longer bleeding; the dark pool it had left at her feet had long since dried.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  At first she thought the smell of her own decay would choke her, but after a while she found it did not, and later she did not notice it any longer. On returning to the house she had been alone and had not wanted it to be any different, but now she did not merely know that to be true: she felt it in her bones. There would be no one to take her by the hand and lead her away, and so she stayed. There was no one to comfort her, and so she would not be comforted. She simply stood there and she did not look away.

  She had been in there all the time. All the time she had thought she was working on the house, building a life for herself, and she had been in this room, in a trap of her own making. She closed her eyes and remembered the woman’s words:

  There are few things more amusing than the deluded. There is nothing more amusing than someone who does not know they belong to me already.

  She remembered being trapped in this room, the way that Charlie had come back and saved her, or she thought he had. She could still remember stepping out of it, into freedom, the light that, for a moment, had dazzled her eyes. All of it was false; none of it was real. No: it had been real – the only thing that hadn’t been real was her. And Charlie, of course: he had been in the thrall of the woman’s ghost. She remembered what he’d said, his confusion when she’d asked him why he’d returned to Mire House: I’m not sure what made me come back. The woman wouldn’t have permi
tted him to see the truth.

  She looked back at the corpse in the narrow room. She closed her eyes, opened them again and looked down at her own hands. They appeared to be solid, but she couldn’t feel them any longer.

  After a time, she allowed the tears to fall. They were cold against her cold cheeks.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  There is nothing more amusing than someone who does not know they belong to me already.

  Emma couldn’t get those words out of her mind as she walked through the house, seeing the mouldering carpets, the grey walls, the paper hanging off in shreds, the cracked paint, the wood that had split, revealing the blackness inside it. The smell of the mire was stronger than ever. The woman had wanted her to walk into it and now it was here, swallowing the house, subsuming her. She was lost in the house and she knew now that it wasn’t hers, had never been hers. She had allowed it to charm her, had listened to its call – no, the woman’s call. And she didn’t even know her name.

  Now the house was empty and there was no voice to speak, not even her own.

  She went through a door and entered a room and stopped. She hadn’t consciously chosen this place but she realised she had come back to where, for her, it had ended: she was standing in front of the narrow door that led to the narrow room in which she had died. She did not want to look into it again; she had seen it already. Instead she covered her face with her hands. She didn’t move for a long time; she didn’t know if she slept or if she dreamed.

  We all go into silence in the end, she thought, and she did not know why.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The shadows lay dark in Mire House, making corners soft and vision uncertain. Dampness spread across the ceiling, its fingers reaching from the earth outside, the mire beyond. The humidity in the air constantly formed new shadows, new shapes. The house had been built to be a home, for life, but life had no part in it, Emma knew that now. It had always been empty and always would be. The corridors were still, and any small sound – the rustle of leaves against glass, the lonely cry of a curlew – resonated long and empty.

  When her body had been removed, she had thought that she would leave somehow, melt away from this place or find a new door set into some corridor; it would open for her and she would walk through it. Maybe – she dared to hope – someone she loved would come to her and take her by the hand. Or perhaps she would see another bright light.

  Her discomfort grew at the thought of it. She had thought the woman was trying to trick her into stepping into that whiteness, lure her into drowning in the mire, but now another fear had taken root. When she had been faced by that brilliant light, had that been her chance after all? The ghostly woman might have tricked her, not by having her step into the marsh but by its opposite. What if the light had been real – a doorway opening into the world, leading somewhere else – somewhere better? Perhaps the woman had known that Emma would turn away. Perhaps that had been her true revenge.

  There must be somewhere she was supposed to be – but if there was, she didn’t know where to find it. The men who took away her remains had closed up the house behind them, and whatever light they had let in had withdrawn. Now it felt as if the walls would never let go of her. There was only silence left. Sometimes she thought she heard the strains of some long-forgotten music coming from another room, but as soon as she entered there would be nothing and no one there.

  She wasn’t sure how much time had passed when the day came that she wandered into the hall and found the front door standing open.

  She could sense the fresh air beyond it. Without looking, she knew that it was the brightest part of a clear day, and she walked towards the door, dazzled after so long in the dark. When she reached the threshold she simply stood there, breathing it in. Then she stepped outside, half expecting herself to disappear as she crossed the boundary, and then she was outside and she turned and saw the one who was waiting for her.

  She was beautiful: she could see that now, the straight-backed woman with the dark hair and the black dress. Her complexion was clear, her cheeks softly rounded, her lips full. Her veil had been thrown back and her expression was soft; it took a moment for Emma to realise that her eyes remained cold.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but the woman stopped her with a look. Then she smiled. Emma didn’t trust that smile.

  ‘I thought it would end,’ the woman said. ‘Perhaps it has, now. There is no one else left.’

  Emma did not answer.

  ‘You are the last.’ The woman looked her up and down. ‘I hated you all for so long. Now …’ She did not finish the sentence.

  Emma frowned.

  ‘It is time for me to go.’ She gave that smile again. ‘But you will stay, will you not? You will stay here, in my house.’

  Emma shook her head. ‘But you said – at the river – you said it was my time, my chance to leave—’

  The woman tilted back her head and sent a trill of laughter into the clear air. ‘Indulge the ways of an old woman, dear. I lost all hope before I left the world behind me. I had lost my husband, my child – my family that should have been. But I rather enjoyed the taste of your hope. When you actually thought that you would simply be able to leave – that you would live …’ She smiled, and it was a real smile this time. Her eyes shone. ‘It tasted so sweet,’ she said.

  ‘And now you’re going to leave me here? In the house – for what?’

  There was no answer. The woman took in a deep breath, as if she was savouring the air, and then she turned to Emma. ‘Enjoy her, my dear,’ she said.

  Enjoy her. Those had been the words in the letter, hadn’t they? Clarence Mitchell’s letter. Emma had a sudden image of the woman whispering in the old man’s ear, him hearing nothing but nodding anyway, clutching his bed sheets tighter as the life faded from him and he formed his plans. She blinked the image away.

  The woman drew herself up. ‘The house was built for love,’ she said, ‘but love never came to fill it. Now you must do your best.’

  She stepped out of the door and the sunlight gleamed on the black silk of her dress. She pulled the veil down over her face as she walked away. Her footsteps made no sound and she did not look back. Emma watched as she reached the lane and turned not towards the mire but towards the church, where the yew trees stood, ancient and dark. There was no sound, none at all.

  Emma watched until the woman passed out of sight and then she turned and went back into the house that was waiting for her.

  CHAPTER TEN

  As time passed, the woman’s last words drifted around Emma’s mind again and again: Love never came to fill it … you must do your best. She wasn’t sure what she had meant, not really, but she did know that she had been wrong: Mire House was not empty.

  At first it was only the echoes of things she had seen before: the strains of music coming from the drawing room, a child’s high giggle, the gruffer tones of an older man, but later, they came to her. The children were first, one with shaved hair that made his skull appear too big for his body, his eyes mistrustful, the other a quiet boy who edged around a doorway with his thumb in his mouth. She felt dread gathering inside her at the sight of them, revulsion at these things, and then she saw the fear in their eyes and she forced herself to swallow it down. Instead she gave a wavering smile and held out her hands. They came to her and she held them, and she thought: It doesn’t have to be the way she wanted it.

  The house didn’t have to remain as it had been created, full of fear and emptiness and loss. There didn’t have to be silence. There could be laughter and joy and love, because she could bring them here, those things which had mattered to her in life; she could hold on to them. She could make sure that they were the things which would last.

  Do your best, she thought. Yes, she would; and she gathered the children in close and she told them stories. And as she did they smiled up at her and she thought she understood: there was no happy ending, not really. Things just went on. In stories, princesses got married and heroe
s prevailed over their enemies, but what next? They would grow old and die. Their strength would fail. The longer they lived the nearer they would come to losing everything, because that was where loss belonged, wasn’t it? In life, because in the end time would carry everything away, the good and the bad alike. Happy endings were only ever a beginning. Real endings had loss, death, sorrow. But for her, it hadn’t been the end. Now she had Mossy and she had Tom. Not all stories had to end in loss; some of them only began that way.

  She heard a high giggle behind her. She recognised it as Tom’s, but she knew that Mossy would be with him. They were rarely apart – and anyway, Tom wouldn’t laugh if he was alone. He didn’t like to be alone. A shadow crossed her face and she brushed the thought away. Now that she was here, he didn’t have to be alone. He didn’t have to be afraid. She smiled. She knew that things were better now because Tom’s hair was growing back; it was golden.

  The pair of them would be playing a game. Soon she would find them and squeeze into whatever small space they had found in which to hide. She thought she knew where that would be, and that was all right; whatever dark things had once happened there had passed.

  Another faint giggle circled the room and she smiled. Tom had been lost once; they all had. Now it was time to go and find them.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Emma stood in the small blue bedroom and looked out of the window. She could see into the lane and the pathway next to it. She had thought of simply walking away from the house as the woman had done, several times, but she had never tried. Partly this was because the door was never open, but it was also because she knew that the woman had been right; it was not her time. And the others needed her.