The Secret of Crickley Hall (11 page)

Perhaps it was to deter him from a career of crime that the authorities decided to deal with Gabe firmly. For the autotheft itself and because of its serious outcome, plus Gabe's past record of minor offences, he was sent to the Illinois Institute for Delinquent Boys for one year, while his companion, who was even younger than Gabe and had a clean sheet as far as the law was concerned, was given a period of probation. The front-seat passenger, who had broken his back and lost a foot, was deemed punished enough.

Because of Gabe's ongoing problem with authority, he served a further three months at the facility. But something worked there. They found he had an aptitude for machinery as well as calculation and they encouraged him to pursue his gift. Because he did not want to serve any further time, those last three months of incarceration had more value than the first twelve months: Gabe knuckled down and began to study for a career as an engineer, a mechanical engineer. When he was released, he returned to Quincy and Aunt Ruth, went back to high school and attended night college to learn as much as he could about engineering. On weekends he worked as a junior mechanic in a garage and car showroom (which meant mainly washing cars and handing tools to real mechanics), watching everything they did to engines, learning fast while he did so. The meagre amount of cash he earned was handed over to Aunt Ruth to help pay towards his own keep.

At seventeen, having achieved good results in both school and night college, he left Quincy for New York City. Unbeknown to him, his aunt had been secretly saving money for precisely this kind of move, which she knew would come sooner or later; she had even put aside the money he had given her from his weekend work. He had spent almost a year of hardship in the Big Apple, living in a one-room attic apartment in the South Bronx, taking any job that came his way—washing dishes in a Harlem bar, short-order cook in a diner, delivering pizzas, shelf-stacking and serving in an all-night Mini-Mart—mostly night-time labour so that he could hunt for work as an engineer during the day (on occasions, he had introduced himself to as many as five engineering companies during the course of one day). Eventually his persistence paid off: he got himself taken on as a junior trainee structural and mechanical engineer in a large, global corporation, APCU Engineering, and he had never looked back. At the age of twenty-one, Gabe had been sent across to England, and there he'd stayed ever since.

And then, he and Eve had met. In that hip bar in pre-film Notting Hill. They had quickly married when she had become pregnant with Loren and neither of them had regretted the union: she loved him now as much as ever—no, perhaps even more than in the early days; she had come to know so much about him—and she was sure Gabe felt exactly the same way about her. It was just that she was so… so distracted now, thought too much about their lost son.
If only Cam would… would he come back
? she asked herself. There was still a faint, almost elusive, hope in her that one day soon their son would be returned to them. As long as he remained on the missing list there was always that chance…

A flurry of rain, driven by a vigorous wind, beat against the bedroom's two windows, making her start. She craned her neck to look towards the sound as the windows rattled in their frames. The night outside was wild, unrelenting, and no friend to slumber. Eve faced the ceiling again, lonely because her partner slept. She tried to clear her mind of everything but, as ever, the misery crept back, staking its claim.

Oh God, don't let it be so
, her mind pleaded as it had for almost a year.
Missing doesn't have to mean dead. Someone could have taken him for their own, some stranger could be loving him as we love him. Please, please send my innocent child back to me
! In the daytime lately it had become easier to suppress the torment but in the darkness of night, when others slept and she felt so alone, the thoughts were almost impossible to control. Yet even the possibility that Cam might be dead seemed like a betrayal of her son.

The wind suddenly died and the rain's fury went with it. Now the rain pattered against the glass. Low clouds overhead must have parted, for moonlight entered the bedroom.

Then a sound different from the steady soft drum of the rain. It was a tapping and it came from somewhere out on the landing.

Eve listened, tried to determine its source. It was becoming louder, no longer a tapping but a muffled knocking.

She levered herself up on her elbows, looking towards the open doorway, wondering if she should wake Gabe, whose gentle snoring could not drown out the sound coming from the landing.

After last night, the landing light had been left on so that the girls would be able to see should they stir from their sleep and become disorientated. But it was a dim glow, the lightbulb weak, hardly strong enough to govern the area it was supposed to; instead it seemed to create even deeper shadows, shadows that were impenetrable.

The bedroom became almost darker again as the moon was concealed behind another cloud, but there was just enough light from the landing to see the small figure that suddenly appeared in the doorway.

Eve drew in a sharp, startled breath.

'Mummy,' Loren said from the bedroom's threshold, 'I can hear someone knocking.'

Eve let her breath go and relaxed her tensed shoulders.

'I think it's coming from the cupboard again,' Loren said.

'I can hear it, darling.'

They both listened as if for reaffirmation. Loren took a step into the room. 'Mummy?'

The fear in her daughter's voice caused Eve to tense again. She nudged Gabe's shoulder with her elbow.

'Gabe, wake up,' she said in a harsh whisper. 'Gabe.'

Loren was standing by the bottom of the bed now, a hand on one of the corner posts. 'Daddy!' Although urgent, she spoke in a whisper as if she didn't want to be heard by anything outside the room.

Flat on his back, Gabe roused. He lifted his head from the pillow.

'S'going on?' he murmured, not quite awake.

'Listen,' Eve urged him, her voice low.

Gabe listened.

'What the hell is it?' he said after a few moments.

'Loren says it's coming from a cupboard.'

'Which one?' There were more than a few in the big house.

'Somewhere along the landing, Daddy.'

Gabe pulled the duvet aside and his feet touched the cold wood flooring. Fortunately, he was wearing his grey T-shirt and dark boxers, so there was no embarrassment before his daughter. He sat on the edge of the bed to listen again. Although muted, it sounded like knuckles on wood.

Eve left her side of the bed, the hem of her wrinkled nightie falling to her knees. She went to her daughter, putting a comforting arm round her shoulders.

Loren clung to her. 'What is it, Mummy?' she asked in a scared half-moan.

'We'll find out,' Eve assured her. 'Is Cally asleep?'

'Yes, I checked on her.'

Gabe was by the bedroom door and he peeked out cautiously as if expecting a surprise. The knocking came from his right, somewhere past his daughters' open bedroom door. He squinted into the general gloom.

One hand holding the doorframe as if to pull himself back from harm's way, Gabe took a step out onto the landing. Below, the hall looked like a great dark pit, the poor light from above barely touching the flagstones. Even the big window over the stairway failed to offer any light.

Behind him, Eve scrabbled for the bedroom light switch, then flicked it on. A little more light graced the landing.

The knocking became louder, although still muffled, and it wasn't because he was closer to it. Someone or something was beating even louder against the cupboard door.

Gabe cocked his head as if it would help him hear more clearly. The noise seemed to emanate from a cupboard along the landing as Loren had said; it was the same one he'd investigated for her only yesterday. With a puzzled glance back at Eve and Loren, he moved quietly towards the sound, placing each footstep carefully as if trying not to make a sound himself, which was crazy: he should be stomping and hollering to frighten any intruder off. Instead he continued to tread cautiously.

Eve, with Loren clutching her arm, followed, both of them holding their breath.

There was a key in the lock of the cupboard door, as there seemed to be in all the cupboards in Crickley Hall, but Gabe could not remember if he had left it unlocked. As he stood directly outside the cupboard, the knocking became more intense, as though whatever was inside was becoming desperate. Eve and Loren crowded him from behind, and Eve placed a hand on his shoulder.

'What is it?' she almost hissed.

'I got no idea,' he whispered back. Feeling foolish for keeping so quiet he raised his voice. 'Hey!' he said sharply, expecting the noise to stop.

It didn't. It increased in both volume and rapidity.

'Goddam—' Gabe cursed and he felt Eve's fingers dig into his shoulder in sudden fright. Loren gave out a sharp squeal.

Now Gabe felt his temper rise. Enough was enough. He reached forward to the small brass doorknob just above the key, ready to yank the cupboard door open. But the knocking became a
pounding
before his fingers could grasp it and the door itself seemed to strain against its frame.

As one, Gabe, Eve and Loren jumped back and Loren gave out a terrified scream. Eve held on to her, squeezing her hard out of her own fear. Still shocked by the loudness of both the pounding and the now frantic clattering of the door, Gabe steeled himself and grabbed at the brass doorknob, determined to put an end to the disturbance.

And, as his fingertips touched metal, the lights went out.

And the knocking stopped.

And a scream came from the nearby bedroom.

13: DARKNESS

Total darkness. Impenetrable blackness.

They stood there in shock for several heavy heartbeats, unable to move until parental instinct kicked in. Cally continued to scream.

Although disorientated, Gabe and Eve moved towards their daughters' bedroom together and, because Loren was still clutching at her mother's nightdress, she went with them.

Gabe felt the wall with his hands, working his way along the landing, Eve following his sound. Dim shapes were slowly beginning to reveal themselves—the balcony railings, the tall window below a slightly paler blackness, the doorway to Loren and Cally's bedroom the same.

Gabe had just felt the emptiness of that doorway when the imperfect moon fought clear of the roiling clouds below it and suddenly they could see more clearly. Moonlight flooded through the hall's tall window, brightening a long segment of the flagstone floor, and Eve was able to discern her husband's silhouette in the opening.

'It's all right, Cally,' she heard him say. 'We're here, you're okay, baby.'

Eve pushed into the room behind him, dragging a terrified Loren in her wake. Cally was kneeling on her bed, the duvet bunched up before her.

'Cally, what is it?' Eve made straight for her, arms outstretched.

Cally had stopped screaming, but her shoulders heaved with her sobbing.

'In the corner, Mummy,' she wailed, throwing herself into her mother's arms.

Eve, Gabe and Loren all looked towards the corner that Cally's trembling finger was pointing at. In the semi-darkness they could see it was empty.

'There's nothing there, darling,' Eve soothed as Cally clung to her. 'You've just had a bad dream.'

'No, Mummy, there was someone standing there, all black.'

'No, you just had a fright when the lights went out. We probably disturbed you when we were out on the landing.'

'The banging woke me up,' Cally complained as she cried against Eve's shoulder, the words coming out between sob spasms. 'I sat up and saw someone in the corner. He was—he was looking at me.'

How could she tell if whatever she had imagined watching her was all black? Eve wondered, but quickly dismissed the thought: logic wasn't going to calm Cally down.

Gabe, who had found his way over to the empty corner, turned back towards the bed. 'It was just a bad dream, Cally,' he told her softly. 'Look, there's no one there.'

'But, Daddy—'

'Hush, darling.' Eve hugged her tight. 'It's over now. We're here with you.'

'I left my flashlight beside our bed,' Gabe said. 'I wanna take a look inside that closet.'

At any other time Loren would have amended 'closet' to 'cupboard', but tonight she was too upset. 'Don't, Daddy,' she pleaded. 'Not while it's so dark.' The moon was abruptly hidden again and she sat on the bed with her mother, pressing against Eve's back.

'It's okay, hon. I just need to find out what was making that racket. We don't want it starting up again.'

He was gone before Loren could protest any more, ducking through the doorway, silently cursing the sudden power cut. Nevertheless, by the time he reached his and Eve's bedroom, his eyes had adjusted to the darkness some more. He felt his way along the side of the bed until he found the cold metal of the flashlight standing erect on the floor; there were no bedside cabinets in this stark room, just the bed itself, a tall chest of drawers, a high wardrobe set against one wall, and an oval mirror hung on another. He pressed the switch and the flashlight came on. He shone it towards the landing so that his wife and daughters would see its glow and feel reassured. He quickly padded back to his daughters, shining the light on Loren and Cally's beds first, and then into the suspect corner. It really was clear; no dark man lurked there.

'See?' he said. 'Nothing there at all.'

Leaving the bedroom again he returned to the cupboard out on the landing.

'Okay, you bastard,' Gabe muttered to himself, 'let's find out what the fuss is about.'

But all remained quiet now, although he didn't trust the silence.

He reached for the brass door handle and tugged it. The door did not move. He remembered he
had
locked it previously and he dropped his hand to the key below. Without giving himself time for further thought, he turned it.