The House of a Hundred Whispers

by Graham Masterton

  Ada pointed towards the keys and said, ‘There, look. We’ll be able to let them out later, when it’s safe.’

  She went along to the landing, leaned over the banister rail, and listened. It sounded as if Jaws and the other men were in the kitchen. She heard bottles clinking together, so they must be helping themselves to Herbert Russell’s Jail Ale, and toasting each other. A kitchen chair scraped on the floor, and she heard Phil laughing. She shivered when she thought how close she had come to being raped by every one of them.

  Martin was standing close behind her. ‘I don’t think they’ll bother us, even if they hear us.’

  ‘Let’s hope you’re right.’

  Ada crept down the staircase and crossed the hallway, and Martin followed her. She opened the front door and peered outside. The full moon was illuminating the courtyard, with its headless cherub and the two granite barns behind, as brightly as a film set. The night was achingly cold, and she could see stars winking over the leafless trees, the same stars she consulted when she made astrological predictions. Rigel, and Aldebaran, and Sirius the brightest of all.

  She tried to step through the door, but her legs simply wouldn’t work. Her brain refused to make them move, or even to recognise that she had legs at all.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Martin asked her quietly.

  ‘No! I’m stuck!’

  ‘What do you mean, stuck?’

  ‘I’ve lost all feeling in my legs! That Jaws fellow told me about this. He said that he tried to leave the house at least three times when the moon was full, but he couldn’t. I can’t, neither. It’s so strange. It’s almost like my legs have been amputated.’

  ‘How about that incantation you were talking about?’

  ‘I’m going to try it. I don’t know if it’ll work, because it’s Irish, and this is England, but it’s worth a try.’

  She reached up under her sweater and fumbled through her necklaces and pendants until she felt the circular bronze talisman embossed with the face of Arianrhod, the Druid goddess not only of beauty but of reincarnation. She wanted to be reborn. She desperately needed her life back, the way it had been before she was chanted.

  She pressed the talisman tightly between finger and thumb, closed her eyes and recited the words that Alice Kyteler had written.

  ‘Glaoim ar na taibhsí gach doras a oscailt – I call on the ghosts of every door to open. Iarraim ar bhiotáille na hoíche mé a scaoileadh soar – I ask the spirits of the night to release me. In ainm Danu, lig dom siúl faoi shaoirse ar fud an domhain arís. In the name of Danu, let me walk freely in the world again.’

  She waited. At last, from the direction of St Mary’s church, she heard the harsh, abrasive call of a nightjar, like a football rattle. She took that as a signal that the incantation may have worked, and she tried again to take a step forward. Nothing happened. Her legs still refused to move.

  She turned around to Martin and he was looking at her so sympathetically that her eyes brimmed with tears.

  ‘It’s no good. I’ve been trapped here for ever.’ Her throat constricted as she pointed to the courtyard outside and said, ‘That’s my whole life out there. That’s my cottage and my family and my friends and my future. They’ve all been taken away from me, and for why, and for what?’

  ‘Don’t give up hope, Ada. There must be some way that we can get out of here. Rob and his wife, Vicky – they’re both convinced that their little son, Timmy, is still trapped in this house somewhere, aren’t they, and they’re trying everything they can think of to find him. Well – they called you in, didn’t they? And didn’t they say something about a wizard?’

  ‘Yes. Francis Coade his name is. He’s brilliant. If anybody can find out how to set us free, he can. I haven’t seen any sign of Timmy, though, have you?’

  They heard raucous laughter from the kitchen, and one of the men shouting out, ‘Here’s to the next full moon!’ followed by more laughter and beer bottles being clanked together.

  Martin said, ‘Timmy? No. I’ve not seen him. Vicky was sure that she’d heard him, faintly, but who knows? In this old house, it could have been anything. It could have been the draught blowing down one of the chimneys. Or an owl, outside.’

  Ada quietly closed the front door, and for a moment she pressed her head against it, in despair.

  ‘Why don’t we go into the library?’ Martin suggested. ‘We can stay there until the moon goes down.’

  Ada nodded, and followed him into the library. She sat down in the red leather armchair by the empty fireplace, while Martin stood by the window. They couldn’t see the moon from in here, but they could see the shadows lengthening, and the garden gradually filling up with darkness, like an inkwell.

  After a while, Martin said, ‘Being trapped like this, Ada, it’s certainly made me look at things from a very different point of view.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Life, for a start. There’s every possibility that you and I are never going to grow any older, and that we’re never going to die, so what’s the point of it?’

  ‘I don’t know. We can always go on hoping that one day we’re going to be free.’

  ‘I suppose so. But you’ve heard those men talking. None of them seem to have any hope left at all. That bloody priest, what’s his name, Thomas. He’s been here for literally hundreds of years, hasn’t he? I’m surprised he still believes in God.’

  ‘His faith – it’s probably all he’s got left.’

  ‘But being stuck in time like this, for ever, it’s taken all the meaning and all the purpose out of our lives. If you know you’re going to die, every second is more valuable than anything else you can think of. That’s what I understand now. Every second is more valuable than money, or property, or half a dozen Rembrandts hanging in your hall. Tonight, I can tell you, I’d happily give up everything I own, even my big fat pension fund, just to be up in that bedroom lying next to my Katharine and to be able to put my arm around her and hear her breathing and feel that everything was normal again.

  ‘That priest, that Thomas… he might have given me all the time in the world, but he’s stolen my life.’

  ‘It was Thomas who trapped you? Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wish I could remember, but I can’t. I’ve told you how much of a pig’s dinner my mind’s been in, since he chanted me. I took Katharine to Tavistock for something to eat and I drank too much. Actually, we both did. I know we had an argument and I stayed downstairs, in the drawing room, while Katharine went to bed.’

  The moon had set now, and there would be half an hour of absolute darkness before dawn began to lighten the sky. The library window was as black and shiny as Ada’s obsidian scrying mirror had been, and she could see herself reflected in it, but not Martin.

  Martin thumped his fist against his forehead, as if that would help him to remember what had happened.

  ‘I can vaguely recall shouting at Thomas for some reason and I know I was very angry but I can’t think why. The next thing I remember is him standing over me in his black habit and his dog collar and laying a hand on my shoulder and chanting. It felt like the whole world was sliding sideways and the floor was opening up and I was being tipped into hell.’

  They sat in silence, each with their own feeling of helplessness. As the moon sank further below the moors, Ada had the strange feeling of being pinned more and more forcefully against the back of the leather armchair. It reminded her of being pinned by centrifugal force against the wall of the Gravitron fairground ride on Barry Island.

  ‘Martin—’ she gasped, reaching out both hands and trying to rise up out of her seat, but for a few seconds she felt as if she were glued there. Then – just as suddenly as it had started – the tension relaxed and then died away completely.

  When she looked at her uplifted hands, she could see that she was now in the same state as Martin, still visible but translucent, and that she was no longer reflected in the window. Through her bare feet, she could dimly make out the patt
ern of the red Kendra rug that lay under the library table.

  ‘It’s over,’ she whispered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s over. I’m trapped again. I’m not real any more.’

  Martin went to the door and listened. There was no more laughing and clanking of beer bottles from the kitchen. Jaws and the other men must have been taken back up to the witching room too, and it would be a month before there was another full moon – the wolf moon, in January.

  Ada stood up. ‘We can go and slide those keys back under their doors now, so that your family can all let themselves out.’

  She took hold of Martin’s hand. It was the strangest feeling – more like the feeling of cold air blowing from a hand dryer than a human hand.

  ‘You know that I’ll never be able to thank you enough for saving me tonight,’ she told him.

  He leaned forward and gave her a kiss on her fringe. ‘You’re not the only one who was saved, Ada. I found something inside myself that I never knew was there.’

  They were about to leave the library when they saw the shadowy figures of Jaws and his companions crossing the hallway and mounting the stairs, whispering to each other. Martin held Ada back in the doorway until they were gone, and then the two of them went up too.

  When they were only halfway up, Ada heard a long, low groan, and she was sure that she felt the staircase moving under her feet, one oak joint creaking uncomfortably against another, as if the house were having a bad dream, and stirring in its sleep.

  35

  Only five minutes after Rob had climbed back into bed and switched off the bedside lamp, Vicky said, ‘Honestly, darling, I need to go to the toilet.’

  He switched the lamp back on. ‘Oh God. Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. I’ve been trying to hold it for the past half hour, but I can’t.’

  ‘You’d think an old house like this would have chamber pots, wouldn’t you? Maybe you could use a pillow to soak it up.’

  He swung his legs out of bed and went across to the door, gripping the handle in both hands and wrenching it as hard as he could, trying to break the deadbolt out of the strike plate. He yanked it three or four times, without budging it, but as he stepped back to pull it again, he stepped on the key. He looked down at it, baffled, and then he bent over and picked it up.

  ‘I don’t believe this,’ he said, showing it to Vicky. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t here before. It must have just dropped out of the lock.’

  Vicky climbed out of bed, too. ‘I don’t care if it fell from heaven, Rob. Just open the door so that I can go to the loo!’

  After Vicky had hurried out to the bathroom, Rob walked down the corridor to Grace and Portia’s bedroom, listened for a moment, and then knocked.

  ‘Who is it?’ called Grace.

  ‘It’s only me. I’m just making sure that you’re okay. Is your door locked?’

  ‘Hang on.’

  Rob waited while Grace came to the door and tried the handle. ‘Yes, it is locked. I locked it myself last night before we went to bed, in case anybody else tried to get in. But where’s the key?’

  ‘Look down on the floor.’

  ‘Yes… it’s here. How did you know that? Have you got X-ray vision or something?’

  ‘No, the same thing happened to us. Didn’t you hear me? I was shouting and banging for ages.’

  ‘We were dead to the world, Rob. We were both exhausted and we’d had a bit of a smoke, to be truthful.’

  She opened the door. Behind her, Portia was sitting up in bed with the quilt pulled up to her neck. The bedroom smelled of Chanel No 5 and stale skunk.

  ‘This house,’ she said. ‘I think we’ll have to leave today. We don’t want to abandon you, Rob, but I’m not sure that we can take any more.’

  ‘Can’t you at least wait until Francis has done his decontamination thing? He should be here about eleven. If it works… well, maybe this house won’t be haunted any more. Maybe we’ll get Timmy and Martin back, and Ada.’

  ‘You really think so?’

  ‘Yes. No. Who knows? But Francis seems to be sure that he’s worked out what’s possessing Allhallows, doesn’t he – this force or whatever it is, and how he’s going to get rid of it.’

  ‘All right, Rob,’ said Grace. ‘We’ll stay until then. But if he can’t get rid of it, we’ll have to go.’ She lowered her voice and added, ‘Portia might come across as tough, but she’s practically having a nervous breakdown. Especially since she had that nightmare about a man kissing her.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Rob, and looked over Grace’s shoulder to give Portia a wave and a smile, as if to reassure her that they weren’t talking about her. Portia gave him a half-hearted wave back.

  *

  When Francis arrived, lightning flickered over the distant village of Buckland Monachorum as if it had been specially arranged by God, or by the director of some Gothic horror film. It was five miles away to the south-west, although Rob counted at least ten before he heard the first bumbling of thunder.

  Underneath the hood of his raincoat, Francis was wearing a beige woollen beanie. As he came in through the front door, he pointed at it and said, wryly, ‘Can you believe it, practically all of my hair had dropped out by the time I got home. I looked like a moulting guinea pig. What was left of it I shaved off. Now you wouldn’t be able to tell me apart from what’s-his-name from Star Trek, Captain Picard.’

  He humped a large grey hard-shelled suitcase over the front step, and then wheeled it into the centre of the hallway, lining it up with the library door.

  ‘I have everything I need in there. Three dead cats, for a start.’

  ‘You what?’ said Rob. ‘Three dead cats? You’re joking, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. They’re an essential part of the ritual. But don’t worry – I didn’t kill them myself. They were strays given to me by my friend the vet in Launceston, and they’d already been put down. It was either here or the crematorium, so they wouldn’t have known the difference.’

  ‘I see. What else have you brought?’

  ‘Druidic chanting beads, made of obsidian and moss agate and gold. An antique Celtic shield, with a pentagram embossed on it, and a sword to go with it, of about the same age. When I bought the sword, I was told that it had been used to decapitate baby dragons as soon as their heads appeared out of their mothers’ wombs. As you can imagine, I took that with a large pinch of salt, but all the same it carries a solar cross on its handle. That means that when it was forged it was invested with great natural power.’

  He laid his suitcase down flat on the floor, and Rob could hear something clanking inside it.

  ‘I also have a copy of The Great Book of Lyre. Jonathan Lyre was a great twelfth-century wizard. His main claim to fame was exorcising Buckfast Abbey. It was haunted by scores of malevolent misty spirits that the Cistercian monks had been unable to exorcise themselves. His book contains the recitation that Raphael Hix adapted for Old Thorndon Hall. And of course I have herbs.’

  ‘And slugs?’ asked Grace, from halfway down the stairs.

  Francis smiled and shucked off his raincoat, and Vicky hung it up for him. ‘I’m afraid so,’ he said. ‘Quite a few slugs. With cloves stuck into them.’

  It was then that Rob realised that the blanket he had taken from the witching room was no longer lying on the floor behind the umbrella stand.

  ‘Grace? Vicky? Did either of you move that blanket?’ he asked.

  ‘Not me,’ said Vicky, and Grace shivered and shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t have touched that with a bargepole.’

  ‘Well, someone’s taken it. I couldn’t persuade any of the police dogs to come anywhere near it, so I was going to ask Sergeant Billings if he could send it to their forensic laboratory in Exeter.’

  Francis crouched down and clicked his suitcase open.

  ‘It wouldn’t surprise me at all if your presences came down here and took that blanket back to their witching room. They may be invi
sible but they have enough energy to knock you over and kick you, so they must have more than enough strength to carry a blanket upstairs. I’ve come across several instances of unseen presences throwing pots and pans around the kitchen and tipping chairs over. Folks generally call them “poltergeists”, although that’s not what they really are.’

  He lifted the circular iron shield out of the suitcase, and it was so heavy that he had to use both hands. It was battered and tarnished and Rob guessed it must be hundreds of years old.

  ‘Would you mind shifting that chair over here?’ Francis asked him. ‘Then I can set up my altar.’

  Rob dragged the mahogany chair into the middle of the hallway. It was too heavy to lift and it made a scraping sound on the floorboards that set all their teeth on edge.

  Francis took out a compass and then he scraped the chair a few centimetres from side to side to make sure it was angled in the right direction. ‘Forgive me the noise, but I have to make sure it’s facing exactly due north.’

  As soon as he was satisfied that it was positioned correctly, he reached into his suitcase again and brought out a large grey sheepskin. It was unwashed and greasy-looking, with thistles still tangled in it. He gave it a hard shake, and then draped it over the back and the seat of the chair.

  ‘See this? This is supposed to have been cut from one of the five grey wethers over at Sittaford Tor. One of the early gods turned them into granite to punish a shepherd who stole one of his neighbours’ sheep, but for one night only every spring they turn back into living sheep. If you’re lucky enough to catch them while they’re alive, you can shear off their wool. That’s the story, anyway.’

  He placed the shield on top of the sheepskin, face down. Then he unscrewed the top of a glass bottle of water and splashed it into the shield as if it were a bowl. Into the water he emptied three white china jars of dried herbs – yarrow and camomile and wild tobacco. After he had done that, he picked up a turfing iron and stirred it thirteen times, murmuring to himself as he did so, ‘Tubu fis fri ibu, fis ibu anfis, fris brua uatha, ibu lithu,’ over and over.