‘How big is your family?’ Ella wanted to know.
‘There’s only Mum and me.’
Ella sighed and shook her head. ‘I’m glad it’s just the two of you,’ she said. ‘But on the other hand, you’ve already lived in the house for too long. You have to get out of there. The sooner the better!’
Ella’s voice rose as she was speaking, and Billie remembered what the librarian had said – that Ella had a vivid imagination, and made things up to scare people.
‘What’s the rush?’ Aladdin asked.
They were interrupted by the sound of rain on Ella’s roof. Billie wasn’t certain, but she thought she could hear the rumble of thunder far away in the distance. She hoped the storm would pass quickly, because she had no desire to be stuck in Ella’s cottage for any longer than necessary.
Aladdin obviously felt the same, because he said impatiently: ‘Can’t you tell us what’s so dangerous about the house?’
Ella leaned back in her chair. ‘The youth of today,’ she said wearily. ‘You’re so restless, you never have time to stop and think about things properly.’
One of the cats that she had chased off the sofa jumped up on her lap. Ella stroked its back. After a while she looked at Billie and said: ‘I have to confess right from the start that I don’t know everything. But I do know some things, enough to be sure that the house you live in is not normal.’
At that point there was a clap of thunder so loud that both Billie and Aladdin jumped.
Ella looked out of the window. ‘It’s over fifty years since I visited your house for the first time,’ she said. ‘And I realized right away that something was terribly wrong.’
Chapter Thirteen
Once upon a time, Ella had worked as a cleaner for various families in Åhus, and some of those families had lived in Billie’s house.
‘It was the end of the 1950s,’ Ella said. ‘I was supposed to clean the house twice a week. The children who lived there were pale and frightened. At first I assumed they were afraid of their father. He was a big, noisy fellow who shouted at his family, and no doubt beat them as well.’
She broke off when she saw the horrified expression on Billie and Aladdin’s faces.
‘Things were different back then,’ she said. ‘In those days people were allowed to smack their children. I didn’t like going there – what if he decided to start on me as well?’
Aladdin squirmed on the sofa. He was still impatient, but waited politely for Ella to continue.
‘I soon realized that it wasn’t the father that was the family’s problem. No, it was the house itself. They weren’t alone there, you see.’
She fixed her big eyes on Billie. ‘You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?’
In spite of the fact that she wasn’t at all sure, Billie nodded. ‘I think so.’
At the sound of the next thunderclap, the cats ran and hid under the table.
‘They’re such cowards,’ Ella muttered.
Billie would have liked to hide under a table as well, but instead she edged closer to Aladdin on the sofa.
‘Have you seen the ceiling light in the living room moving?’ Ella asked.
Billie could feel her cheeks flush red. So she hadn’t been imagining things after all!
‘Oh yes,’ Ella went on. ‘It doesn’t matter what kind of light you put up in there, it will always swing to and fro.’
‘Not all the time,’ Billie said.
‘No, but at some point every day.’
‘Why does it do that?’ Aladdin asked.
Suddenly Ella looked unsure of herself. ‘I don’t really know how much I ought to tell you,’ she said. ‘You’re only children, after all.’
‘I think we can cope,’ Aladdin said, straightening up. ‘Can’t we, Billie?’
‘Of course,’ Billie said, but her voice came out as no more than a whisper.
‘In that case,’ Ella said resolutely, ‘they say that the light in that room moves because a young woman died there. I don’t know who she was or why she did it, but according to what I’ve heard, a very unhappy girl lived in the house at one time. And she hanged herself from the hook on the ceiling in the living room.’
This was worse than anything Billie had imagined Ella might say.
‘Did she die?’ she said. ‘The girl who hanged herself?’
‘Of course she did,’ Aladdin said.
‘And now she’s haunting us because we live in the house?’
Ella pursed her lips. ‘I’m not sure about haunting – it sounds a bit childish when you put it like that. I’d prefer to say that the house is cursed.’
Billie and Aladdin looked at one another. Cursed?
‘What does that mean?’ Billie said.
‘That things go badly for anyone who lives there. I worked as a cleaner for four different families in that house. None of them stayed for longer than three years. Something terrible happened to all of them. I have no idea how many families have lived there since then, but it shouldn’t be difficult to find out.’
‘What kind of things happened to them?’ Aladdin wondered.
‘All sorts,’ Ella said. ‘In the first family – you remember, the one with the horrible father – the eldest son fell down the stairs and broke his leg in three places. And he hit his head as well. In the next family the mother was hurt. The kitchen stove caught fire and burned her face.’
‘Yes, but accidents happen all the time,’ Aladdin said sceptically. ‘People fall down the stairs and old stoves catch fire – that doesn’t just happen in Billie’s house.’
‘You don’t think it seems strange that so many accidents have happened in that particular house?’ Ella said.
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ Aladdin replied.
‘Bad things have happened in that house ever since it was built,’ Ella said firmly. ‘If I remember rightly, it was a school to begin with. I know that there was a lot of gossip about it when I first came here. There was talk of a school that had to be closed because there were problems with the children who went there. People talked about the glass children.’
Billie and Aladdin looked at one another again.
‘The glass children?’ Billie said.
‘Apparently that was what they called the children who attended the school in your house, but I have no idea why.’
Nor had Billie, but she really wanted to find out.
‘Do you know why the previous family moved out?’ Ella said, looking straight at Billie.
‘No,’ Billie said. ‘Do you?’
‘No, but I think you ought to look into it. Because they certainly didn’t stay there for very long.’
‘They were in such a hurry to leave that they didn’t even take their furniture,’ Billie said.
Ella looked surprised. ‘What furniture?’
‘More or less everything, I think. They just left. The whole house was full of stuff when they moved out last summer.’
‘Goodness me,’ Ella whispered, getting to her feet.
Without another word she went over to the sink and poured herself a glass of water. She didn’t ask whether Billie and Aladdin might be thirsty too.
‘Who told you they moved out last summer?’ she said.
‘The man who showed us around the house,’ Billie said. ‘His name was Martin.’
Ella had another drink. ‘I don’t know who that man is,’ she said slowly. ‘But I do know that no one has lived in that house on a permanent basis for the last two years. And as far as the furniture is concerned . . .’ She paused. ‘Have you seen a little metal table covered in small, brightly coloured tiles?’
The table on which Billie had found the hand-print.
‘It’s in our spare room,’ she said quietly.
‘Oh my goodness,’ Ella whispered.
She put down the glass and leaned against the draining board, supporting herself with one hand as if she was afraid she might fall over.
‘That table was there when I first went to the
house more than fifty years ago,’ she said. ‘The house was always sold as a furnished property in the past. Don’t ask me why, but that’s the way it was. All the families I worked for had more or less the same furniture. And now here you are fifty years later, telling me that it’s all still there.’
Billie got up, and Aladdin did the same. What Ella said couldn’t possibly be true. Why would the man who showed them the house have lied about both the furniture and when the previous owners moved out? To be fair, he had lied about other things as well, but nothing as serious. Or had he?
‘We have to go,’ Billie said. ‘But thank you for letting us come to see you.’
‘You’re welcome to come again if you have any more questions,’ Ella said.
The rain was still hammering in the roof, and the sky was lit up over and over again by vivid flashes of lightning. They would be soaked to the skin before they got back to their side of the harbour.
But Billie wasn’t thinking about the storm. She was thinking about the ceiling light in the living room, and the glass children. Could it really be true that someone had died in their house? And who were the glass children?
Chapter Fourteen
Even though she had a feeling it was a bad idea, Billie couldn’t help telling her mum what she had found out when she got home.
At first her mum didn’t say anything.
‘Couldn’t you have a word with our neighbours?’ Billie said to fill the silence.
‘About what?’
‘About when they last saw people living here. If the house has been empty for several years, they must have noticed.’
Billie had been so wound up when they left Ella that she had cycled all the way back to Sparrisvägen instead of going to the houseboat with Aladdin.
And now she was standing in the hallway, bubbling over with everything she had heard. She was soaking wet, dripping all over the floor.
‘Billie,’ her mum said seriously. ‘Is it Aladdin who’s come up with this idea that the house is haunted?’
Aladdin? What was she talking about? Things had been happening in the house before Billie even met him.
‘No,’ she said. ‘And I never said it was haunted, just that—’
‘You know what,’ her mum broke in. ‘I will actually speak to the neighbours as soon as I have time. Because we have to get to the bottom of all this.’
Billie was pleased.
Her mum said softly, ‘How about this: I’ll speak to the neighbours. And if they say that the family moved out last summer, and not two years ago as that old gossip claims, then you stop all this nonsense about there being something wrong with this house. OK?’
Billie thought for a moment. They hardly knew the neighbours; they could say anything at all. But she didn’t dare challenge her mum on that particular point, or she wouldn’t speak to them at all.
‘OK,’ she said reluctantly.
Her mum was relieved. ‘Good! Now hop in the shower and get yourself warm before dinner.’
At that moment the phone rang, and her mum rushed to answer.
‘Josef – how are you?’ Billie heard her say.
Slowly she went into the bathroom and started to pull off her wet clothes. She suddenly felt very lonely.
That night Billie couldn’t sleep. She tried every trick in the book, but it was no good. Eventually she gave up and switched on the reading lamp that her mum had put up above the bed.
Billie glanced at the clock and sighed. It was almost midnight. She picked up the book that was lying on her bedside table. She would read a chapter or two before she made another attempt to get to sleep.
But although her eyes read one word after another, Billie’s thoughts were elsewhere. Everything Ella had told her was flying around inside her head like lost butterflies.
Aladdin had been sceptical when they left the old lady’s cottage. ‘Did she tell us one single thing that was of any use to us?’ he had said.
Billie had felt obliged to stick up for Ella. ‘She said that bad things had happened to several families who lived in our house, just as you’d heard in school. And remember what she said about the light in the living room. I’ve actually seen it moving.’
‘We need to find out if the rest is true,’ Aladdin had said. ‘What she said about the house having been empty for two years rather than one.’
‘And don’t forget what she said about the furniture,’ Billie had added. ‘And the children who were known as the glass children.’
When she got home she had sat down at the computer and tried to find information about both their house and the glass children. She hadn’t come up with a thing.
Billie had decided that this didn’t make any difference. Ella could still be right. The very idea that the furniture in the house could be more than fifty years old, and hadn’t actually belonged to the previous family, made Billie feel scared. In that case there was definitely something wrong.
Billie had just switched off her reading lamp when she heard it. Just like when Simona had stayed over.
Something was tapping on the window.
Tap, tap.
Oh no.
Billie curled up under the covers.
Not now. Not when she was all on her own.
The distance to her mum’s room suddenly seemed endless, as if her mum was on a different planet. There was no chance that Billie would be brave enough to get out of bed while someone was tapping on the window.
She held her breath and waited and waited. At long last the tapping stopped, but still she didn’t dare move. Not until after a considerable amount of time had passed did she lift her head off the pillow. She listened as hard as she could, sitting in the darkness for ages with a pounding heart as she waited for the sound to come back.
But nothing happened. After a while she kicked off the covers and got out of bed. She didn’t have the nerve to look out of the window as Simona had done, but stood there in the middle of the floor listening, until she was absolutely certain that everything was quiet. Only then was she able to breathe out.
Slowly Billie’s heartbeat returned to normal. She briefly considered calling Aladdin or Simona, but realized that they were probably asleep. It would be best if she went back to bed too.
But she needed the loo.
She wouldn’t be able to sleep until she had been for a wee. Oh no!
Billie’s whole body was on full alert as she crept out of her room. She didn’t switch on the light because she didn’t want to wake her mum. She ran silently down the stairs and into the bathroom. She closed and locked the door, and did what she had to do as quickly as possible.
When she came out into the hallway, she noticed that the door of the spare room was open. The door that Mum always locked at bedtime, ever since Billie and Simona had gone in there during the night.
Billie swallowed hard. Perhaps Mum had just forgotten to lock the door tonight.
Or perhaps . . .
She couldn’t just go back to bed – she had to know. Her body was as taut as a violin string as she covered the short distance to the spare room and looked inside.
Everything was as it should be.
Or was it? There was something on the little table where Billie and Simona had found the comic. But this time it wasn’t a comic.
Billie was drawn towards the table as if it was a magnet. Someone had laid out one of the drawings that she had put away on the very first day. But that wasn’t all.
On top of the drawing someone had placed two small figures, two little glass statues representing a boy and a girl. Both children had serious faces, and were dressed in old-fashioned clothes. The colours painted on the glass had faded, but you could still see that the girl was wearing a red dress and the boy a blue shirt.
Glass children, Billie thought. Just like the ones Ella had talked about.
Then she saw what someone had written on the drawing:
Stop looking. Otherwise this will end badly.
Chapter Fifteen
&n
bsp; It was Aladdin who worked out how to discover the name of the family who used to live in Billie’s house.
‘There must be a contract,’ he said. ‘When your mum bought the house, she must have signed a document with the name of the other family on it.’
Of course, Billie thought.
She had stopped talking to her mum about all the strange goings-on in the house; there was just no point. As a result she was talking to Aladdin even more, and he too was afraid when she showed him the drawing she had found in the spare room, and told him about the glass children on the table.
‘I was so scared I didn’t get a wink of sleep all night,’ Billie said miserably.
‘Stop looking,’ Aladdin read. ‘This house certainly holds onto its secrets.’
Billie nodded. But she had no intention of allowing herself to be frightened. If the house had secrets, then she wanted to know what they were. Tracking down the previous family seemed like a good start, which meant they had to find out their name.
The next time her mum went off to the shops, Billie seized the opportunity. She ran into Mum’s room to look for the contract. Her mum wasn’t particularly good at keeping things in order. In fact, she was hopeless. Dad had been responsible for all that, making sure bills and documents ended up in the right folders.
Billie knew that her mum kept ‘important stuff’ in one of her desk drawers. She had shown it to Billie once; there was a spare front door key, their passports, and a few other things that might be useful. Billie guessed that the contract would be considered important.
Mum’s room was exactly the same shape as Billie’s, with a sloping ceiling and a window set in the gable. But the furniture was different, and so were the colours. Just like Billie, Mum had kept all the furniture except the bed, and it was obvious that this had been an adult’s room. All the furniture was made of wood, and it was all brown. Even the armchair in one corner was brown.
Could the furniture really be as old as Ella had said? Billie tried out the armchair and felt herself sink into the stuffing. Next to the chair stood a spinning wheel and a little stool. Billie closed her eyes, picturing someone sitting on the stool and spinning away. Quickly she opened her eyes. She didn’t like being in the house all on her own, and she didn’t want to spend any more time thinking about how old the furniture was.
The Glass Children Page 5