She made her way up the stairs to do a final gathering of items from her and Ruby’s rooms. She gave her habitual glance upwards when she stood on the first step and then shook her head. No need to do that, she thought. There’s not going to be anything to see up there. What did catch her eye was a glint of silver hanging from the post of the banister on the landing. Gabriel’s rosary beads. He must have left them for her to find them. It touched her to think that he had hung them there to make sure that she wouldn’t forget them, that she should keep them as some sort of protective talisman for the little girl on her hip. She stepped into Ruby’s room to pack some items there and left the beads down on the dressing table.
It crossed her mind as she packed the last of her clothes that Sue might not be there when she arrived, could be off covering a story. It didn’t matter – when Dan left, Sue had insisted that Martha take a key to her apartment so she could let herself in any time, day or night. She had even bought a travel cot for Ruby, bless her. In a way, thought Martha, that might be even nicer – to have that lovely modern apartment to herself for a night at least. No spooky corners or fireplaces. Nothing older than an unpaid phone bill or some stale bread in the whole place. She could have a bath, and order a pizza which would be delivered to the door. She could eat it in her dressing gown and then have a hot chocolate and get into a bed with clean sheets – she’d probably have to make it herself but what matter. The thought of being in Sue’s apartment cheered her immensely, made her feel that once she got there then everything would be fine, carefree and safe.
Martha zipped up the final suitcase. She glanced around the room and remembered her next task – to empty the nappy-bin in Ruby’s bedroom. She had noticed a faint unpleasant pong in there and reckoned that she’d be none too popular with Rob Mountford should she leave them there, in this weather especially. It would serve him right though – hadn’t Lil said that he’d told her not to speak to Martha? Didn’t want anything to damage his chances of making as much money as he could out of Eyrie Farm. Calling it Hawthorn Cottage, as if that could banish the past . . .
Martha crossed to Ruby’s room and began to deal with the nappy-bin. Suddenly she started and swung around. She thought – was sure – she’d heard the door to Ruby’s room squeak. She stood still, the end of the chain of nappies emerging from the bin in her hand, enfolded in plastic like a long string of sausages. There was nothing there. Get a grip, Martha, she thought and pulled the rest of the nappies from the bin. She rested them on the ground while she replaced the lid of the bin and secured the sides. She could give it a good scrub out when it came back to London.
Martha glanced around the room, at the picture of the hare leaning against the wall. That was something she might leave off her inventory. Donate a horrible picture to a horrible place, she thought. She didn’t think she could ever look at it again without feeling a shiver down her spine. The moon and stars lamp too she would leave behind. She had come to regard the gentle, silent rotation of the shapes as something sinister rather than comforting.
For the first time something struck her – was Henry’s body still in the fireplace? It had never even occurred to her that it might be. It must be. All this time she had been putting Ruby to bed in here . . . she shivered. Maybe that was why his spirit couldn’t leave the place? Then again, Marion’s body wasn’t here – she hadn’t even died here, but it was to Eyrie Farm that her horrible, restless soul had returned. To find her son. To shut him up so that no one would ever know he was there . . .
Martha shook herself. Stop, she thought. It’s over and you are one trip to the car away from getting out of here. She glanced at the chimney-breast for a moment longer.
“Rest in peace now, little boy,” she said aloud, a wobble in her voice. “Sleep tight.”
Martha turned and left the room, bouncing the nappy-chain along behind her with one hand as she hoisted up the suitcase she had left on the landing with the other. The small table had been righted, she noticed, and the shards of the broken lamp cleared up and disposed of. She saw they were in the wheelie bin outside, along with chunks of tape used to secure the cameras and attach wires to the floor, when she opened it to put in the nappies. She bunched up the chain of nappies and threw them in on top and then turned her attention to trying to get the suitcase into her car. No easy task. She had certainly crammed too many ‘essentials’ in this time.
Eventually she managed to fit the case in along with the bags of toys and feeding items. She banged the boot shut, straightened her back and took one long look at the house. “Let’s go!” she said and trudged back inside to the now bare study. “Right then, Ruby Doo!” she said to her daughter and held her arms out to pick her up. The baby was growing tired, she could see, her skin a little paler than normal, little red bags under her eyes. “Do we need a snooze, darling?” she asked and bent to catch her daughter under the arms which were outstretched towards her.
It was then that she remembered something. “Oops, one more thing that Mummy forgot!” she said and straightened her back. The rosary beads that she’d left in Ruby’s room. They’d completely slipped her mind. For a second she contemplated leaving them but rejected the idea. She couldn’t leave them for the removal men. They’d never see them for starters and then probably stamp them into the ground and leave them behind. She couldn’t let that happen. Gabriel had been so good to give Ruby that extra protection, and they were clearly something precious to him that he carried around with him. She would retrieve them and then she could courier them to Will at the university to give back to Gabriel. She doubted he’d appreciate them arriving in a package at the bus depot.
Ruby gave a wail as she saw her mother retreat when she had come so close to being picked up into the safety of her arms. She was exhausted and hot and Martha felt guilty at depriving her of the cuddle she so clearly wanted. She bent and ran her hand around Ruby’s chubby cheek. “Sorry, darling. Give me two seconds and I’ll be back.”
Martha turned and walked quickly down the hallway, Ruby’s wails getting louder by the second. “Mummy’s here, petal!” she shouted, hoping to provide her with reassurance. A thirty-second trip upstairs and then she could settle Ruby into her car seat and she’d fall asleep as soon as the engine started. “Coming, sweetheart!” she called again. Ruby’s wails turned to sobs.
She had reached the bottom step of the stairs when the study door slammed. The bang echoed through the hallway and made her jump, giving an involuntary cry of shock as she did so. Martha froze. The door only ever did that when the window was open in there and the front door opened at the same time. The front door was ajar alright, but Martha was sure all the windows were closed . . . but she hadn’t checked too thoroughly, just assumed. She jogged back down the hallway.
The bang had silenced Ruby but Martha knew it wouldn’t be long before she reacted to her fright. She reached out and pressed down the heavy handle to the study door and pushed with her shoulder against it. It didn’t move. She tried again, not a budge. The slam must have somehow tripped the locking mechanism. She bent down and peered between the wood of the door and the frame. Sure enough the bolt of the lock was visible in the thin gap. Martha felt panic. The key, she thought, the key is inside. Then she remembered. No, it wasn’t – she had taken it from the lock the morning after she had slept in the study and put it in the pocket of her pyjama bottoms. But where were those pyjamas now? She didn’t remember packing them. They must still be upstairs, on the bedroom floor perhaps.
She turned and, as she did so, was greeted by a sight that made her blood turn cold. There by the stairs she saw something she never thought she’d ever again see.
Marion.
The same chubby, pasty-grey skin, the dark short curly hair, the black clothes. The sight was exactly the same as before. Through her she could see the stairs, yet the apparition still managed to look as solid as a live human.
Martha screamed in fright and shock and flung herself back against the doorway, p
artly to get away and partly out of instinct, to somehow protect her daughter. Her mind flashed back to what Gabriel had told her – the study didn’t exist for Marion, it hadn’t been there . . . wait . . . Martha felt a pit of fear form in her stomach. He was wrong. The study had been there when Marion had lived at Eyrie Farm. Lil had said she had watched it being built – Duncan Stockwell had used it. For heaven’s sake, Martha had seen Marion go into the bathroom upstairs – it hardly existed directly above without the study being there underneath it. How could she have been so trusting – how could she have left her daughter in there, unprotected, without thinking?
Marion’s pupils were black. Martha could see no trace of anything human about them. They were only a few feet from her face now – the spirit seemed to be growing closer to her, not visibly moving but somehow gliding towards her – close enough to touch her – close enough . . . Martha gasped as the spirit glided through her. She felt icy cold, as though her skin and blood had been dipped into freezing water. As soon as it had entered her body it left, the coldness passing through her, the apparition gliding through the door behind her into the study. No, thought Martha, no no no!
Marion’s spirit was now in the room with Ruby. The locked room, where Martha couldn’t help her. Martha turned and jiggled the door handle frantically, banging on the door and shouting as loudly as she could. “Marion!” she screamed. “Marion, get out of there! Get the hell away from my baby – she’s mine! Leave her alone, Marion!” She pummelled the door with her fists, the palms of her hands, rattled the handle, kicked the door with her feet. There was no give. She was never going to get in this way. What was Marion doing in there? What scared Martha the most was Ruby’s silence. Just like Henry’s . . . She had to get in.
She forced herself to step back from the door. It felt like the most unnatural thing in the world to do but she was on her own and she had to think logically. She took a step away, a step back, then turned with a moan and ran for the stairs. She had to get the key.
Martha sprinted for the stairway, taking the steps two at a time, running as hard as she could. She reached her bedroom, bare since she had cleared it out. The pyjamas, where were the pyjamas? “Where are the fucking pyjamas!” The laundry hamper – she had rolled them up and dropped them in the hamper the first time she had been here with Will. Dear God, let the key be there! Let it not have fallen out somewhere!
There they were. She grabbed them and there was the key, hard in the pocket. “Oh, thank you, Jesus,” she moaned. Bizarrely, she thought of Gabriel telling her she had to have faith. She didn’t know then if he had meant faith in herself or in a higher power. Still didn’t.
The key in her hand, she dived for the door. “Mummy’s coming!” she yelled and ran for the hallway.
It took a split second, but Martha saw the table suddenly slide at high speed out from the corner of the landing under her feet. She couldn’t stop herself – she crashed straight into it and fell sideways, away from the stairs, knocking the table over with her as she went. She landed heavily on her right arm, the key making a clunk as it fell from her hand and landed on the floor.
“No!” she shouted and made to sit up, scrabbling for the key with her hand. She felt a sharp pain jolt through her shoulder as she did so. No sooner did she raise her chest to sit up, however, than she was slammed back onto the floor, her head bouncing back and hitting the wooden landing. She looked up. Marion stood – no – hovered above her. She seemed ten feet tall to Martha. She didn’t know if the spectre had grown taller or if it was elevated off the ground.
Marion looked down at Martha, her chin spreading around her lower face, her eyes black and fixed. Fear gripped Martha and she tried to sit up but couldn’t. She tried her legs and found that she could push herself along the ground in the direction of Ruby’s room.
Again, as if it had happened in an instant, Marion’s face was suddenly directly over Martha’s. She got the smell of rotting vegetables and realised that it hadn’t been the nappy bin creating the foul odour earlier, it had been Marion. Why hadn’t she realised this and just got herself and Ruby out of there? Because she was certain Marion was gone, that’s why – sure that she had felt her leave.
Rage suddenly filled Martha. “You’re supposed to be gone!” she shouted into the spectral face. The foul mouth that Martha had looked into earlier suddenly opened wide, the eyes closed tight and with an overwhelming stench the thing started to growl, lowly at first, then louder and louder until the sound filled the air. Martha tried to cover her ears but something was pinning her hands to the ground. She could only turn her face away from the cavernous mouth, the rotting teeth, the black tongue . . .
The growl lingered in the air long after it had finished. Martha heard a cry from downstairs. Ruby. She was alive. If she was crying, she was breathing. She was fine. At the same time, Martha was sure she could hear a whimper from behind her. She tried to turn her head around. Henry? Surely not. Surely he’d crossed over that morning? She’d felt him leave . . .
The apparition was upright again, staring down at her, the hands folded demurely at the waist. Martha tried again to move her arms. It worked this time. She extended the fingers of her right hand and felt the metal of the study key beneath them. She scrabbled it toward her and closed her fingers around it. Whatever happened, she must not lose the key again. At the same time, if Marion were with her, then she wasn’t with Ruby, was she? Did she have enough power? Enough energy to be in two places at once? Still Martha could hear Ruby cry. She tried to make her muscles move to get up but couldn’t. The cry was loud and strong though, and it was an upset cry, not a cry of pain. That was all she had to console herself with.
Martha strained again to get up. The scratching had started from Ruby’s room. She could hear little thumps, whimpers and a small voice. It was just like she’d imagined it. “Mammy?” said the little voice. “You they, Mammy?”
Martha tried to focus on anything but the voice. It was unbearable. Little Henry was going through it all again. Unimaginable suffering and fear.
“Mam!” shouted the boy, annoyed at being ignored like any other child. “I come out now! I hung-ny. I thus-ty!”
Martha heard the little speech impediment – the inability to say his ‘r’s’, substituting ‘n’s’. “It’s alright, Henry!” she called. “I’m coming now!” Anything to give him hope as he experienced the horror again and again.
Suddenly Martha was flipped over onto her stomach, as though she was lying on a rug and someone flicked it. She grunted as she hit the floor, banging her chin against the ground, winded. As quickly as she landed on her stomach, her body was spun around so that her feet were now lying in the doorway of Ruby’s room and her head was near to the table that had slid out into her path. The movement was so quick that the room whirled around her and then suddenly she felt hands around her ankles, just as she had the other night. Hands gripping her like a cold vice and dragging her into Ruby’s bedroom. She tried to sit up, tried to kick, but it felt as though she were bound, wrapped in cling film all the way down her body. The hideous apparition of Marion was nowhere to be seen but she could still strongly detect her awful smell.
Martha was dragged over the saddle-board into Ruby’s room. She squirmed to avoid a screw that she knew protruded slightly from the saddle-board. It didn’t work. She felt the metal edge rub against her jeans and then scrape her stomach as her clothes were pulled up with the dragging movement. She screamed in pain and frustration, her stomach exposed now, her T-shirt bunching up under her arms. She was over the threshold now, inside the door. She struggled again to turn or get up and was amazed to find that this time her movement was unrestricted, the vicelike grip on her ankles suddenly gone. She stood up quickly, stuffing the key into the front pocket of her jeans where it would be more difficult to fall out, straightening her clothes. She swung her head around. There was no sign of Marion.
The scrabbling in the chimney had stopped after Martha had spoken to
Henry but as suddenly as it stopped, it started again. “Mam, whey ah you?” he said, his voice growing panicky. At the same time, a low rumble came from above their heads. The promised thunderstorm arriving at last. Martha heard a thump on the roof, then a second, as another thundery shower began.
“It’s alright, Henry, love. I’m going to get a man to help you,” said Martha in the most soothing voice she could manage. She had to get to Ruby but this little boy needed her as well. If she could just get Ruby and get out she could go and find Gabriel, get him to help Henry cross over this time. The thoughts came in an instant but they spurred her into action. She took a step toward the door, was momentarily halted as the first flash of lightning lit up the entire room, and then the door slammed in her face, as the study door had done downstairs. She stepped back, then turned in an instant as the blackout blind snapped down and the room was plunged into darkness, the rain beating an insistent tattoo on the roof.
The Dead Summer Page 33