“Then we’ll make it.”
“How did you get down from Ludsmoor Chapel, by the way? Weren’t you singing there tonight?”
“Yes, I ’ad a lift from a friend. We were going out for a drink after my performance only th’ weather turned and he ’ad a long way to get ’ome, so well, then I had the idea I’d see you.”
Unformed questions dissolved like a disturbed dream every time she tried to focus on things that didn’t seem to add up. “So where is Max tonight then, Grace? You said you knew.”
The car appeared to be on the verge of stalling and Grace changed down to first gear, revving it too much. They held their breath…then slowly it picked up a little speed and miraculously the T-junction loomed into view. Neither spoke as they rounded the corner onto Hilltop Road, the force of the wind at that point so great it almost lifted the car.
“Bloody ’ell, it’s rough up ’ere.”
The storm was raging off the moors, pelting the windows with snow, the horizon a white-out.
“Please God, don’t let us break down up here,” Hazel whispered to herself.
“We’re fine now, duck, we’re on a level. It’s just a matter of keeping going,” said Grace. “Then it’s downhill.”
“Well, I certainly think I’ll be staying the night if that’s alright,” said Hazel. “I don’t want to get stuck out here on my own, and it’s only going to get worse.”
“Aye, and it’ll be different in th’ morning. Always better in daylight.”
“I expect you’re right.”
Oh, God, the wisdom of this now she was sobering up. Grace should have got a room at the hotel in Danby. They both should. That would by far have been the most sensible option yet she’d gone merrily along with this hare-brained, dangerous - yes downright dangerous idea. God, why couldn’t she ever stand up for herself – ever, ever? Why?
She cast a sidelong glance at the woman who’d persuaded her into this and her sense of unease grew. What had seemed plausible in the warmth of the hotel bar, with the fire crackling and the hot liquor in her veins, now seemed like utter lunacy. What did Grace have to show her that was so important it had to be tonight? In fact, why tonight at all? And if she had incriminating photos or letters then why hadn’t she brought them with her to the meeting? And how come she knew Max wasn’t home tonight and wasn’t likely to be, either?
All at once nothing added up. She shot another look at Grace’s profile and the thought occurred that she hadn’t been honest, that there was another agenda here. Perhaps it was a case of hell hath no fury if Max wouldn’t leave his wife for her – this woman who got every man she wanted but hadn’t managed to marry any of them? This woman who would soon be turning forty, yet found herself stuck out here in the back of beyond with only her elderly mother for company? Perhaps she was getting desperate and needed to make sure Max would definitely divorce? Perhaps she thought if she worked on his wife she’d get him that way instead, if he, for example, was reluctant to divorce on account of losing the money? Even if the money wasn’t his, she would at least have a man to keep her?
Hazel’s head began to bang, petrol fumes stoking the nausea that swelled repeatedly into her throat. She’d never been as bad as this before with drink.
“Almost there,” said Grace, turning off Hilltop Road and down towards the east end of Ludsmoor. They passed the chapel on the left. And soon after that there was a right turn onto a narrow lane. Hazel frowned. It looked as though this was taking them out of the village again onto a vast stretch of open moorland. She didn’t realise Grace lived so far out. Wish Cottage, where she and Max had visited the family before, could be seen from the road, but this… Oh God, she really was going to be sick in a minute. The track was unmade and the Jaguar bounced in and out of potholes. All the animated conversation the two women had enjoyed back in the hotel, had now dwindled to that of strangers, the atmosphere loaded and unreadable. Again that needling in her stomach, the creeping feeling up her arms and across her back.
Finally an old farmhouse emerged from out of the swirling, grey clouds.
“Is this it?” Hazel asked. “Where you live?”
“Yes, duck. Alders Farm.” Grace let the Jag glide to a halt, pulled on the handbrake and switched off the engine level with the front door.
Hazel looked out of the passenger window, past the spectre of her own face, to the house, which stood in total darkness.
“Is your mother not at home?”
“She’ll be in bed by this time, duck. Or she’ll have gone up to my nan’s, to see as if she’s alright in th’ storm.”
The full brunt of the cutting wind hit them as they got out of the car and both women gasped.
Grace indicated the front steps and shouted over the noise of the wind. “Go on in, duck, th’ door’s open.”
Hazel hurried up the steps but the door was locked. She shook it, rattling at the handle. Then at the sound of Grace’s voice turned around, squinting into the snow. “What did you–?”
But rather than the other woman’s face, she saw instead the glint of a silver blade, sharp and fire cold.
***
Chapter Thirty-Three
1885
Danby Grange
Edward Danby
Edward Danby’s eyes snapped open. The carriage clock on the mantelpiece in his bedroom tinkled sweetly: one-two-three…
Three in the bloody morning and something had woken him.
From the adjoining room came the rhythmic snores of his wife, Clara; and in his basket the black retriever snoozed undisturbed. It must have been a dream. For a few moments he strained his ears into the quiet gloom… No, nothing. No creaking of the floorboards, no shuffling around downstairs; not an intruder then, or the dog would have heard it.
It was a drowsy night in late October. A full moon lit the room in a pearlescent haze, and the leaded window latticed across the eiderdown. Dreams and shadows… Grumbling, he rolled over and closed his eyes, preparing to slumber once more. A bad dream was all, undoubtedly due to a heavy dinner and a few too many whiskies. These were his thoughts before his conscious mind suddenly caught up with what he’d just seen.
He sat shock upright and stared in palpitating horror at the apparition in the corner of the room. Cloaked in shadows, a figure was standing behind the door – statue-still – its skin the blue-white sheen of bone, staring directly at him with eyes as ink black as that of the devil himself.
His heart lumped into his chest, the hot swell of it banging hard into his arteries, and for a good few seconds his mind blanked. Still he continued to stare, staring and staring until his eyes ached in the sockets. Desperately he tried to make sense of it. A waking nightmare, perhaps? And he was really still asleep? But the more he looked, the more the realisation solidified that this was no dream. And he was very much wide awake. The creature had a face. He could hear it breathing.
“Who are you?” he whispered. “What do you want?”
Materialising out of the shadows, a woman stepped forwards, now clearly visible in the moonlight. Dressed in a long, black tiered skirt in the Victorian style of the day, with a fitted jacket and an elaborate hat, she had a small, pinched face, the mouth sour beneath a hawkish nose. But it was the eyes which arrested attention – deep-set and ebony black they pierced his soul with a loathing so full of malevolence as to invoke a rush of primeval terror.
He leapt back against the headboard. Helpless. As she flew across the room in staccato pulses…one…two…three…and vaulted onto his chest. Astride him the extreme weight of her came as a shock – more like that of a burly farmworker twice her size – crushing his ribs one by one with cracking, popping noises, forcing his breath to extinguish with each splintering, painful burst.
He could neither speak nor move, as into his increasingly reddening, bulbous face a foul, sulphurous breath assailed his nostrils. “Don’t you remember me, Lord Danby?”
The breath squeaked out of his rapidly macerating lungs.
“
Let me show you.”
Into his head came the picture of a swaggering, drinking night. His own front room, several of his friends, shirts open, faces shiny with sweat and alcohol; a serving girl stripped and dumped on the floor between them. They were laughing, joking she wasn’t even worth pissing on.
“I see you remember the incident?” said the crone, leaning in closely, her words slithering into his ears, silky as worms.
“They made me swallow it, rubbed their urine into my hair. One of them raped me, some of them kicked me like a rabid dog before throwing me back into the servants’ quarters with a warning not to say a word or find myself six feet under in the woods, with no one to come looking.”
Every image seared onto his mind as if it had happened to himself.
“Knew I was without family, didn’t you? And at five next day I’d to get up as if nothing had happened and clean out your wife’s bedroom grate. Early mind, so as not to be seen by decent folk?”
He tried to move his head away to stop the crawling feeling wriggling down his ears; to close his eyes against the hatred streaming into him, but found he could do nothing. It would be preferable to die. Every nerve screamed in pain.
Who was she?
“Still not remember? No, of course you don’t. I was the faceless slave who didn’t matter – not even human. But the slave you should not have crossed, Sir.”
A vague memory of an ugly, young servant came to mind… a girl he’d not even realised had been dismissed… Until maybe now.
“Perhaps you don’t recall the first night she came here? You had her brought to your room to look her over. This room. Her name was Annie Bailey.”
He was unable to so much as blink. The blood vessels in his eyes were exploding. He would be blinded. Fire engulfed his brain. His heart was going to give out.
“And now, before this night is through, whatever you have done to me will come right back to you.”
A witch.
A bloody witch…
She read his mind with ease, and her voice oozed like an oil-laced poisonous tincture. “And so I am. Carrying your child, too. A girl, a daughter - one who will, as surely as yours will soon die, inherit everything you own and more—”
In one last desperate bid for life he sought to call out. But the weight on his chest grew heavier than a ton of earth layered upon layer upon layer, crushing every bone, air sac and blood vessel all the way down to his spinal cord.
Why could no one hear him? Why did the dog not wake? Why could he not be released from this torment?
“No one will come, Lord Danby.”
A groan gurgling in blood was his reply.
“And now I think you have the full picture, we can begin.”
Momentarily he blacked out, only to be roused by a deep, guttural voice roaring from the doll-sized body he should have been able to overthrow with one hand.
This wasn’t real…couldn’t be…
“I call to the mighty bringer of light, Lucifer… Spirits of the abyss, hear my call most powerful one and all!”
Heaven help me! Heaven save me…
There seemed to be more than one of her…one-two-three-four…dancing, chanting, whirling round and round, speeding up, working into a frenzy. A bonfire sparked and crackled. Overhead a full moon flickered through the trees, everything spiralling around like the most sickly opium trip he’d ever had.
Still he could not move. Forced to experience every last second in full salacious detail.
“No one is coming, Lord Danby. And this is going to go on…and on…and on…”
At the point where he could endure no more and he silently pleaded with God to release him from this mortal coil, a searing agony daggered into the core of his chest and he arched his back, screaming for mercy.
Still there was no respite from the unbearable pain. Even as hands plundered the cavity of his chest where his heart should be; ripping and burning, prickling and stinging…on and on and on…just like she said…
“Hell hath no fury like a witch who’s been scorned
So send the hell’s devils with pointiest of horns.
Tear at his flesh with all of your might.
Take off him his business, his money, his life.
When all has been taken, when all is stripped away,
I shall rip off him his soul for the devil wants his pay.
This is my Will. So Mote it Be.”
***
When he woke, it was to the half-light of dawn.
He looked down at his night shirt to find it intact – no signs of blood, no cracked ribs, no bruising. The dog was whimpering at the door waiting to be let out for his early morning walk and the maids could be heard scurrying around in the corridor outside. He sat up, surprised to find he had absolutely no pain and his vision was perfect. Nothing was untoward. The dream had unnerved him badly, however, and it was with trembling hand that he reached for a glass of water. Which was when he saw it. The doll. Or poppet. Propped on a cushion on the rocking chair by the fireplace.
He did a double-take. Then cautiously walked towards it. In the dawn light its face shone white and shiny, as if made of china. But as he drew closer, the revulsion of what it truly was stopped him short. The thing was made of wax, its features partially melted into the macabre distortion of a man. Its chest had been hollowed out and stuffed until it bulged, then sealed over and pierced with what appeared to be a crow’s foot.
He snapped his fingers for the dog. “Fetch!”
The dog whined.
Edward pointed at the poppet and commanded the dog once more. “Fetch!”
Again the dog whined and backed away.
“Oh for Christ’s sake.” Well he couldn’t let anyone else see it, least of all the servants. Which was why he picked it up. And buried it in his own garden.
***
Epilogue
Present Day: 2017
Spite Hall
Louise – now an elderly lady
“So was there an entire house behind this once?” said Gillian
“Oh, yes. I can’t remember much about it, though. I must have been about your age at the time, about six. Yes, your age. Good grief, how the years slip by. I only stayed the night once but it was very dark and spooky. I do remember that.”
“Did it have ghosts? Was it haunted?”
“There are no such things, Gillian, dear.”
“Yes, there are. I can see them.”
Louise put down her knitting and stared at the child. Her granddaughter had a most unnerving way of watching you, almost as if she could read your thoughts. “I do hope not. I used to think I could see ghosts too, when I was a child, but I can assure you it’s just our imaginations and we grow out of it. If you’ve been reading story books, fairy tales and the like, well, when we’re asleep our mind can play tricks on us. That’ll be all it is.” She resumed knitting.
Gillian was frowning. “So what happened to the house then, Granny Lou? The one that was behind here?”
Louise sighed. This child never gave up. “It burned down.”
“How come?”
She put down her knitting once more. Her daughter and son-in-law should have been back from town ages ago. It was the first time they’d ever left Gillian behind.
“Well dear, it was an accident. No one really knows, you see? My aunties – your great grandma’s sisters, Rosa and Marion – lived there at the time, but they were asleep in bed when it happened. Hopefully, well I pray to God, they never knew a thing about it. Anyway, it was one of the villagers who saw smoke billowing over the top of the forest and raised the alarm. But by the time the fire brigade and local farmers got there the whole house was ablaze and they couldn’t put it out.”
Gillian had her mouth open. “But how did it happen?”
“I don’t know, Gilly. The house had a lot of wood panelling, though, and we all had real fires back then, and there’d been power failures due to the weather so everyone used candles. Perhaps they forgot to blow one
out? Anyway, it was a very long time ago.”
“I like playing in the ruins.”
“Well, now, there’s no harm in that.”
“So have you always lived here, Granny Lou?”
“No, duck. I grew up in a little house on Moody Street. And then my father – your great grandad Harry – moved into a room over the funeral parlour in Ludsmoor when he and my mother split up; so sometimes my brothers and I would live there too.”
“Why did they split up?”
“Oh, you do ask a lot of questions, Gilly. I don’t know where you get that from, I must say. Still, it shows an intelligent, enquiring mind, I suppose.”
“Did you like living in Moody Street?”
“Yes, for a while. But I prefer living here.”
“When did you come here?”
“After I married. Your grandad and I wanted to start a family and by that time his brothers had both left home and so we moved in with your great grandmother, Nell. Look, why don’t you go outside for a bit and play? There’s a lovely tree swing out there and your old gran’s getting tired. She needs a nap.”
Gillian seemed to consider this carefully, before standing up, walking around the room picking things up and putting them down again, then thankfully skipping out onto the sunlit lawn.
Louise smiled, watching the child swing back and forth on the old tyre beneath the copper beech, with the glinting lake behind her. Fair haired like Ellen, she’d be the image of her if it wasn’t for the filaments of copper winding through those ringlets. You could see it catching in the sunshine. She’d be a beauty, would Gillian, with those flashing emerald eyes and that golden hair. One day though… one day she’d ask about that fire again; and she’d ask who the spirit girl was – the one who sat on the stone by the magic pool hitting a ball with a piece of string, rocking and humming to herself. And why her great grandparents had really split up and gone to live in separate houses just yards from each other. It had been a huge scandal at the time. But the villagers, even Auntie Flo and Auntie Connie – long dead now – never knew the real reason. No one did.
The Soprano Page 24