‘Let me see him … Please …’
It was the mother, calling from the bed. But the nurse paid her no heed. She kept the blanket-wrapped bundle close to her body as she turned and pushed past Eve and through the door.
‘Please,’ called the mother, ‘please, come back …’
The nurse didn’t even acknowledge her. She just kept walking, the door swinging behind her, creaking and cracking but refusing to close.
‘Please …’ The mother’s voice was becoming more desperate, catching in her throat as she called. ‘Don’t go, please, let me see …’
But there was no reply, just the door swinging backwards and forwards.
Creak … crack … Creak … crack …
Eve tried to ignore the noise and concentrate on the voice. There was something familiar about it. She moved in to get a closer look at the mother. And saw who was lying in the bed.
Herself.
Creak … Crack …
Eve gasped and sat bolt upright, breathing raggedly. She was back in her bedroom in Eel Marsh House. Alone. She shook her head, trying to dislodge the images that she had carried over from sleep. It was a dream, that’s all. Just a dream.
As her breathing returned to normal, she lay down once more, intending to go back to sleep, but something stopped her. A sound, rhythmic, pulsing.
It’s the door, she thought, in the hospital. Still swinging, still refusing to close. She looked at the bedroom door. It was closed. But the noise was still there.
Creak … crack … Creak … crack …
It must be the generator. Somehow it must have turned itself back on again. Even as she thought it, she knew it wasn’t possible. She had turned it off herself. She listened again.
Creak … crack … Creak … crack …
Eve didn’t feel the slightest bit sleepy. The dream had seen to that. She got out of bed and opened the blackout curtains. Nothing but an empty beach and a calm sea.
She heard the noise again. It was coming from inside the house.
Someone else must have heard it. She couldn’t be the only one.
Creak … crack … Creak … crack …
Eve knew she couldn’t count on someone else hearing it and acting on it. There were children in the house, and they were her responsibility. She would have to investigate it for herself. She lit a candle and opened the door. After a couple of deep breaths, still feeling the dream’s adrenalin running round her system, she made her way into the hallway.
It was deserted. Eve crossed to Jean’s room, put her ear to the door and listened. Heard only light snoring. The other noise was still there, coming from downstairs.
The children. That was it: they were getting up to a bit of midnight exploring. She would go down, have a quiet word and be back in bed before Jean woke up. Her headmistress would be none the wiser.
Cupping a hand round the candle flame, she made her way downstairs. The flame cast huge shadows on the walls. The black mould seemed to suck the shadows in, making them even darker.
She stopped at the children’s quarters, crept into the room as quietly as she could. They were all there, sleeping.
And still she could hear the noise. Why am I the only one who can hear it? she thought. Why hasn’t it woken anyone else?
Eve closed the door and made her way towards the kitchen. The sound was louder in there. She swung her candle round, trying to illuminate the dark corners. Saw nothing. No movement at all. She listened.
Creak … crack … Creak … crack …
The door at the other end of the kitchen was slightly ajar. Her heart hammering, Eve walked towards it.
It led to an old, narrow, stone staircase. Eve pushed it open and began to walk down, her candle flickering in the darkness. She was wary of falling, the stone slippery and damp under her feet, but she reached the bottom safely. Ahead of her was another door: old, rotting, almost black with mould. The sound was definitely coming from behind that.
Am I still dreaming? she wondered. Going through door after door chasing a sound? To find … She shuddered, feeling the chill, the damp. No. This was no dream. This was real.
Eve cleared her throat. ‘Who’s there?’
No reply.
‘Is that … is that you, Dr Rhodes? Are you … do you need a bed for the night? Please … please tell me.’
Silence. There would be no going back now. Eve opened the door.
The smell hit her like a physical presence. The air was thick with a fetid, rank dampness. It permeated the foundations of the house with the stench of rot and decay. She clamped her hand over her mouth and nose, tried not to breathe it in. But she felt it, even in the short time she had been there, tainting her nightdress, sinking into the pores of her skin.
The room was huge. It probably covered the same area as the house, Eve guessed. The walls were stone, crumbling away and covered in moss. Water slowly trickled down them on to the wet floor, making the whole room glisten green and eerie in the candlelight.
There were rows and rows of shelves piled high with boxes, the lids pushed back, all crammed with old objects and artefacts, the damp and dusty remnants of the previous owners.
But Eve was alone.
Slowly taking her hand away from her face to cup the candle’s flame, she shone the light around once more, crossing to the shelves. The boxes were wet with mildew. She managed to get the lid off one and looked inside. There was a jumble of paperwork and shabby, moth-eaten clothes. She replaced the lid and looked at the next box along. It was full of old toys, soaked, blackened and neglected. The faces of ancient dolls, now with sightless eyes and frozen, vacant smiles, stared at her. Underneath them was a wooden frame. What was left of the material draped over and round it was rotted and black, but Eve could just make out echoes of colour on it, enough to recognise what it had been. A puppet show. Feeling a pang of sadness and regret, she replaced the box. Childhood’s end.
Next to the box of toys was something more interesting. An old phonograph. She reached out, touched the rusty machine. Was this what had been making the sound? She flicked the switch at its side, waited. Nothing happened. There were some cylinders next to it with writing on the side. She picked up the first one – Alice Drablow – and next to the name, some dates.
Then Eve saw something else. She frowned, brought the light in closer. It was beyond the shelf, on the stone wall itself. She held the candle up to it. There were words scratched into the stone, distressed, strangely angular letters: MY GRIEF WILL LIVE IN THESE WALLS FOR EVER.
Eve reached out, ran her fingers along the words. She wanted to get a feel for the letters, an impression of both them and who might have made them. But the stone was so damp and old that it crumbled at her touch. The words disappeared like they had been written in water, leaving Eve with a feeling of desolation and sadness, just like she had experienced in the nursery.
She stepped back, and knocked into something solid. She jumped, turned.
Creak … crack … Creak … crack …
An old rocking chair.
Was that what had been making the noise? Had someone been sitting in it? Rocking it? If that was the case, who was it and where were they now? As far as she could make out there was only one door, the one she had entered by. Did that mean whoever it had been was still down here with her?
Slowly, her heart hammering, she moved the candle round, trying to peer into the shadows.
A movement in the corner.
‘Hello?’
The noise came again. From behind the next shelf along.
‘Hello?’ she repeated, hoping her voice sounded more confident than she felt.
She held her breath as she walked towards the sound. She stretched out her arm holding the candle and, wanting to see what was there but scared to get too near, looked along the shelf.
A rat came scuttling towards her.
Eve screamed and dropped the candle. It went out with a hiss as it hit the wet floor, throwing the room into darkness. She stood s
tock-still, breathing heavily. She could still hear the rat scurrying about somewhere.
And then she heard it.
Creak … crack … Creak … crack …
The rocking chair was moving again.
Eve made for the door. Running up the stairs as fast as she could in the pitch-black, slipping and sliding as she went, into the kitchen, straight up the main staircase and back into bed. She pulled the covers right over her head and lay there tense and rigid, more afraid than she had ever been in her life.
All she could hear was the waves crashing against the shore outside.
And the frantic beating of her terrified heart.
The Next Day
Things looked better the next morning.
The sun, bright and distant, had burned away the mist, leaving the sky a cloudless robin’s-egg blue. Frost glittered and glistened everywhere. It was, thought Eve, the kind of morning you never experienced in a city.
She stood in the garden with Jean, watching the children. The garden might have seen better days and the barbed wire surrounding it was a constant reminder that the war was never really far away, but for the moment the children didn’t seem to care. The girls were skipping along to ‘Ring a Ring o’ Roses’ while Alfie and Fraser were chasing each other. Their laughter and happy energy chased away Eve’s fears from the previous night like the sun dispersing the mist.
‘Where’s Edward?’ asked Eve.
Jean kept her eyes on the children. ‘I told him he can’t come out until he’s willing to speak.’
Eve didn’t reply. She just turned, and made her way back to the house.
‘Leave him be,’ said Jean, her voice full of irritation.
Eve stopped. ‘I’m going to set up my classroom for the lesson.’
There was nothing in that statement for Jean to argue with, so she contented herself with a curt nod, and Eve went back into the house.
As she made her way towards the dining room, Tom came hurtling round a corner, straight into her side, almost knocking Eve off her feet. She was just recovering when James did the same thing. Both boys stopped dead, breathless and guilty.
She rearranged herself and looked down at them.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Tag, Miss,’ said Tom. ‘James was It.’
‘You shouldn’t be running around.’ She was about to say more when she noticed the doors to the children’s quarters were open. Edward was sitting on his bed, drawing. It looked like he was in another world, on a lonely little planet with only one inhabitant.
‘James,’ said Eve, ‘you used to be best friends with Edward, didn’t you?’
James was about to answer, but Tom gave him a severe look and surreptitiously stamped on his foot. Eve noticed.
‘Look, I know things have changed, James, but I’d like you to include him.’ Her words encompassed Tom, too. ‘It’s times like this when he needs friends. Do you understand?’
The boys nodded.
‘Just think if it was the other way round.’
She walked off, hoping they were thinking exactly that.
Tom
Tom knew Miss Parkins didn’t like him. She didn’t have to say it; she made it perfectly clear without words. He didn’t know why. She just didn’t. But that was fine, really, because he didn’t like her. Or at least that was what he told himself.
Mrs Hogg was all right, though. She was strong. She had discipline. Although he’d had the cane from her a few times, she was never cruel. It had hurt, but not too much. She was hard but fair, and that was something Tom could respond to, respect, because that was the way things should be. His dad had told him that before he had left. Off to fight, his mother had said, been fighting all his life. That, thought Tom, was how a man should be. And his dad was a lot more forceful than Mrs Hogg when he was dishing out punishment, too. No mistake.
So he didn’t care whether Miss Parkins, with her nice smile and her gentle manners, liked him or not. Didn’t care at all. Not a bit. No. But he still found himself back in the children’s quarters, doing what she had asked him to.
Edward didn’t look up when Tom and James entered the room. He sat on his bed, head down, concentrating on his drawing. Tom moved closer, looking down over his shoulder. Edward was sketching a picture of a woman and a small boy, standing in front of a house. Tom felt a new kind of emotion inside. Sadness, anger, jealousy, compassion? He wasn’t sure what it was. But it was there, and he didn’t like it. It made him angry.
He stood there, waiting for Edward to acknowledge them. When he didn’t, Tom said, ‘Come on, Edward, let’s go and explore.’ He pulled him by the shoulder, but Edward didn’t move, just slowly shook his head.
Tom was finding this difficult. He gave Edward’s shoulder a punch. Just a light one. ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you want to be friends?’
Edward flinched, put his head down, as if he were about to be hit. Any answer would be the wrong one.
Tom was getting irritated and it was starting to show. ‘You’ve got to. Miss said.’
Panic was rising in Edward’s eyes. He looked between the other two. James stepped forward, his voice quiet, compassionate. He smiled at his friend. ‘Don’t worry, it’ll be all right. We’re all stuck here, we’ve got to be friends.’
Tom saw how reassured Edward was by the words. Why couldn’t he be the one the other children liked and got on with? He felt his anger rising further. He knew the pattern. He would soon need an outlet, something to vent it on. Something, hopefully, that would make the others respect him.
He grabbed Edward’s drawing away from him.
Edward looked up, terrified, like a treasured possession, something of vital importance, had been stolen. He grabbed for it, but Tom moved it out of the way.
That was better, thought Tom. If he couldn’t do something to get a good reaction, a bad one would do.
‘I’ll give it back,’ he said, enjoying the power over the other boy, ‘if you do what we say.’
Edward looked at James, who seemed uncomfortable and couldn’t hold his gaze. Edward, having no choice, nodded.
Tom smiled and, Edward’s drawing in hand, he walked into the hall. The other two followed him. He made straight for the stairs, started to run up them.
‘Why don’t you talk?’ Tom said.
Edward didn’t reply.
An idea came to Tom. ‘I think … I think we should make you talk. Then Miss Parkins will like us.’
He turned to James, who didn’t look happy about going along with Tom but nevertheless said nothing. Then he remembered: Miss Parkins already liked James. And the thought of that made him angry once more. He reached the landing and, not waiting for the other two, walked along the corridor, trying all the door handles, looking for an open one.
He found it.
The Poker
The room was dusty and empty. It had been cleared of furniture and all that remained was a black, soot-stained fireplace with a heavy iron grate placed in front of it.
Tom was disappointed and angry, as if the room had been emptied just to annoy him personally. ‘There’s nothing in here,’ he called to the other two.
James and Edward entered the room, looked round. Tom was already voicing his displeasure about how boring the room was, when James heard something. He held up his hand, telling Tom to be quiet.
Tom didn’t like being told what to do, and was about to complain further when James told him to be quiet once again. And then he heard it too. A scratching sound; faint, but audible. Coming from the fireplace.
Edward, who hadn’t fully committed to entering the room and was standing in the doorway, turned to leave. Tom wasn’t going to allow that to happen.
‘Oi,’ he said, ‘help us.’ He grabbed hold of Edward and dragged him over to the fireplace, where Edward just stood and stared. He didn’t seem interested in what the other two were doing, just waiting to have his drawing returned to him.
The scratching didn’t stop.
Gest
uring to James to do likewise, Tom knelt down and began to lift up the grate. It was too heavy, even for both of them, so Tom looked once more at Edward.
‘Come on, don’t just stand there.’
Edward, knowing a threat when he heard one, knelt down and joined them.
Together, they managed to lift off the grate, put it at the side of the fireplace. All three of them peered inside.
There was a dead crow lying curled and still in a nest, surrounded by several dead little chicks.
Edward and James scuttled back, recoiling from the sight, but Tom continued to stare, fascinated. The crow had clearly been there for a while because it had started to decay; its body decomposing from inside, almost mummified. The chicks just looked peaceful, like they were asleep.
Tom was transfixed. He loved being close to death, was fascinated by it. The war had been a godsend for Tom. While other children were terrified of the bombing, he loved it. He didn’t know what would be left when he emerged the next morning or who would be missing. He always hoped that if someone he knew had been bombed, they would die messily and he would get to see the bloody body.
He reached for the poker at the side of the fireplace and gingerly began to examine the dead bird, prodding and poking it.
The crow’s head came off.
The other two winced, turning their faces away. But Tom, enthralled, kept going. Having prodded some more and exhausted the possibilities of the mother, he turned his attention to the chicks.
‘Don’t, Tom …’ James said.
‘Shut up,’ hissed Tom. He nudged one of the chicks gently with the poker.
And it moved.
The three boys – even Edward – called out in surprise, and they all scurried away from it.
But, slowly, they returned. Tom’s fascination seemed to have infected the other two.
Tom frowned. ‘What shall we do with it?’ For once, he genuinely seemed not to have the answer.
The Woman in Black Page 5