The Secret of Crickley Hall (62 page)

But now she was alert, adrenaline rushing through her system like a whirlwind. She had to stay calm though, for Loren's sake and her own. Eve had to watch her tone so that it revealed no hostility, nothing to arouse this lunatic's ire.

'We can't help you,' she said. 'Whatever it is you want from us, we can't help.' She was emboldened by his reaction—or lack of reaction. 'Please, can't you just collect your equipment and leave? We trusted you.'

'Yes, you did. You did trust me.' He smiled. 'That was your mistake, though.'

'Mistake? I don't understand…'

'You invited me into your home. That was a huge mistake. But meeting your daughter, Loren, outside confirmed what was meant to be. I knew her destiny immediately.'

Eve stiffened, any calmness she might have had swiftly vanishing. She tensed her body, ready to pull Loren to her feet.

He seemed to read her thoughts. 'Let me finish, Eve. Let me explain why this has to happen.'

Pyke rested both hands on the back of his walking stick.

'My life after Crickley Hall would have been fine except for two intrusions. If I told you that both literally drove me mad for a time, I'm sure you'd believe me. You would, wouldn't you?'

Eve was careful. Yes, she could see the madness in his eyes. He was as crazy as his guardian, Augustus Cribben. He was as demented as Magda Cribben. Perhaps Pyke had caught it from the brother and sister like some virulent kind of disease. Or perhaps it had been their mutual insanity that had once united all three of them.

'Sometimes a culmination of events can induce a breakdown,' she ventured tentatively, nervously. Instinct, and the incident with Lili, told her he was a very dangerous man.

He seemed to be looking into the distance but in fact his gaze was inwards. When he spoke it was almost to himself.

'I think I could tolerate the dreams, although they wearied me. But the hauntings… the hauntings are more than I can bear.'

'You told us yesterday you didn't believe in ghosts,' Eve said, genuinely surprised.

'Yes, yes,' Pyke replied impatiently, his attention having returned. 'You said that before and I told you I lied.'

Eve was ready to kick out with her feet if he came close. But Pyke hadn't done with talking.

'I suppose I could live with the dreams even though they came night after night, relentless in their consistency, always the children accusing me of betraying them.'

He banged his walking stick against the floor.

'But I could bear that! I could live with the dreams if only Augustus would stop torturing me, if only he would leave me alone.'

Eve gasped. He was
truly
insane. And yet… and yet hadn't
she
felt a presence in this house, something foul, something vile? The ghost of Augustus Cribben? Perhaps she was becoming a little unhinged herself. But a question nagged at her: why should meeting Loren mean so much to him? It confirmed what was meant to be, he had said.
What
was meant to be?
What
was Loren's destiny? Already scared, a terrible dread began to rise from deep inside her.

'The hauntings began soon after I returned to London. At least I heard the sound of his cane thrashing against flesh—I knew that sound. Oh yes, I had come to know it well—then his spirit would manifest itself. Even in spirit he would raise that cane against me and I felt its pain as if it were real, even though I'd never physically been struck by it.'

Eve remembered the other night when Loren had screamed in bed, claiming someone had beaten her.

Pyke visibly shuddered. 'Sometimes his image was weak, as if he were slowly losing power. The smell was always there, though, the whiff of strong carbolic soap which he always used to cleanse himself, but mixed with an aroma of what might be described as rotting corpses. At other times the apparitions are strong, as clear to me as you are now, and that's when he seems to sap my energy, leaving me weak and afraid. Sometimes he's completely black and that's when I fear him most.'

Pyke cast his eyes downwards as though studying the end of his walking stick; but his thoughts were elsewhere again, perhaps reliving the hauntings.

'It took me many years to realize the reason for his visits.' Pyke's voice was low. 'Augustus wanted something from me, but still I didn't know what it was.'

•

Lili wanted to escape the slaughter, was desperate to wake from the brutal scenes of remorseless, pitiless violence. But her mind was held captive to the horror and she was compelled to watch…

…
There are only three children left alive in the house and they huddle in the sable darkness of the cupboard on the landing. Brenda Prosser, aged ten years, and her younger brother Gerald, aged eight years, and Patience Frost, who is only six years old, clutch each other tightly, the youngest girl in the middle. Patience has wet her knickers
.

They have heard the screams echo round the great hall, all of them abruptly cut short. A long silence follows as their guardian searches other rooms downstairs for them. Then the dreaded sound comes to the three survivors, faint at first, but growing louder by the moment.

Swish-thwack!

It's coming closer. Up the stairs.

Swish-thwack!

The children cling together, shivering as one. Gerald's teeth are chattering and his sister claps a hand over his mouth. They mustn't make any noise at all. Gerald and Patience are crying and Brenda's eyes are wide and startled, for she cannot comprehend what is happening to them.

Swish-thwack!

Growing louder.

Swish-thwack!

Almost one sound.

Swish-thwack!

Pausing a few moments as though the wielder of the stick is looking into doors along the landing.

Lili now sees and hears everything through the eyes and ears of one of the children hidden in the darkness…

…
Footsteps approach, softly because the predator wears no shoes, coming closer, the children afraid to breathe, every few seconds the cane making the sharp thwacking sound they know so well The light footsteps stop.

He is outside the cupboard door.

All three shriek as the door suddenly swings open. They dig their heels into the floorboards as they try to push themselves as far back into the cupboard as possible. Gerald is now wailing and Brenda is shouting,
'Get away! Get away!'
They hunch their shoulders and press their foreheads against their bent knees, and they refuse to see the naked man who is leaning through the open door, the long, thin stick with the splayed end in his hand.

One by one Cribben draws them out and one by one he murders them. He strangles the boy and snaps the neck of the little girl. Brenda is last, and he grabs her ankle and yanks hard so that she slides out onto the landing. This girl's struggling body is held off the floor by her neck, as was Susan Trainer's only minutes before, and her feet kick out at him uselessly. But he doesn't feel the blows; nothing could detract from the pain inside his head. He squeezes, tighter and tighter, and Brenda's frightened, despairing eyes almost pop out of their sockets with the pressure, and her tongue, its tip trapped by her lower teeth, curls over to bulge from her mouth.

Like her young friend Susan, Brenda involuntarily urinates, and its stream spatters Cribben's legs and feet. He takes no notice. His only purpose is to extinguish the lives of these disloyal and ill-behaved miscreants who had been given into his care. Nothing else matters.

… And in her psychic vision, the unconscious Lili Peel was held aloft and was slowly being strangled. Her own legs jerked in the mud and grass on which she lay, and her eyeballs pushed against their lids, her tongue began to emerge from her mouth, as if she herself suffered the young girl's imminent death. She started to panic, needing air, the hands that squeezed her neck so strong and relentless. But as life passed from the last child, so Lili escaped her corpse. Still senseless yet still 'sensing', Lili's vision continued…

Cribben allows the child's lifeless body to fall on the floor. He retrieves the punishment cane that is lying on the landing. He stands still. Something is not quite right, but the torturous pounding inside his head will not allow clear thought. Has he dealt with all the children? He isn't sure, he cannot think.

It suddenly comes to him, though. Eleven evacuees had been sent to Crickley Hall, but despite his blinding pain he knows he has despatched only nine. Then he remembers Stefan Rosenbaum—the Jew!—has already been accounted for. That meant one was missing.

Where was the eleventh child?

Cribben resumes his search…

And Lili lost the psychic nightmare, although not for long.

73: INSANITY

Eve drew up her legs, resting the flat of her foot on the small square landing at the turn of the staircase, ready to use the leverage to push herself up. She still didn't know Pyke's intentions, but there was no doubt that they were bad as far as she and Loren were concerned. And every instinct as a mother told her they would be particularly bad for Loren. As he talked, Pyke kept looking at her daughter, showing more interest in her than Eve. If she could keep him talking, they might get a chance to escape. Or Lili might possibly get back with help.

He looked up at the window as stuttering lightning bleached all its glass white again. He waited for the thunder to die away before he spoke.

'So what did Augustus Cribben want from me?' The question was put mildly enough and Eve was aware that it was rhetorical. 'What caused him to reach out from his grave to me? If I were psychic I might have known long ago. If Augustus's spectre were stronger, he might have been able to communicate his needs to me.'

Pyke's smile was bitter.

'It was only comparatively recently that I found the answer,' he said. 'God only knows why I hadn't done it long ago—at least I would have the reason for the hauntings that have affected my state of mind all these years.'

Let him talk, Eve advised herself. Pretend interest and let him ramble. She exerted pressure on Loren's shoulder to warn her she was going to make a move soon, and was reassured when her daughter pressed a hand against Eve's back as if to say she would be ready. Pyke's lengthy narrative had allowed Loren to get over her initial panic, although she was still rigid with fear.

Eve continued to force herself to be polite and rational. 'Why does there have to be an explanation for Augustus Cribben to haunt you? Doesn't that sort of thing just happen?'

'No, dear woman, it does not just "happen",' he chided her. 'There are always reasons for hauntings. Some people may bear a grudge when they pass over and their spirit returns for revenge. Or the deaths might have been so traumatic that the spirit does not even realize he or she is dead. Sometimes there is some unfinished business or other left behind that has to be resolved. The last of these applies to Augustus Cribben.'

Pyke frowned as though the thought disturbed him more than he could say.

'You see, Eve, Augustus had eleven evacuees in his charge here at Crickley Hall.' He emphasized the number again.
'Eleven
children. That last night he'd punished only nine, all slain by his own hands. He knew the Jewish boy, Stefan, had died earlier, his body despatched by myself and Magda, but it still meant only ten children—
his
children—were dead. So where was the final one, the eleventh child?'

He had posed the question as though expecting an answer from Eve. When she didn't respond he seemed disappointed. Pyke continued.

'Of course, I was the eleventh evacuee in his care. Maurice Stafford, my name then, was the missing child. Augustus wasn't aware I'd run away with Magda, with me in fear for my life and Magda in fear for her future. Who knows? He was so uncontrolled he might even have killed his own sister.'

Pyke breathed out a long sigh of resignation. 'Augustus wanted to claim
all
the children. That was his right, they had been given to him.'

Eve discreetly rose on an elbow, very slowly so that Pyke would not notice. An awful suspicion was beginning to dawn on her.

'I only understood this,' he went on, 'when I went through the journals of that period in a public library. October 1943. The Hollow Bay flood made all the front pages, even though there was a war going on. After all, sixty-eight people were drowned or crushed to death in the disaster and the village was almost destroyed. Even more poignantly, so the newspapers pointed out, eleven of those who died that night were orphans who had been evacuated from London for their own safety. Eleven children who were in the care of Augustus Cribben.'

Pyke nodded to himself. 'There was the answer for me, laid out in stark black and white print on the front page of the national dailies. Such tragic irony. Children sent to the safety of the country because London in wartime was too dangerous.

'Two of the evacuees' bodies were never recovered and it was assumed they had been swept out to sea by the river that runs beneath the house. After all, the rest of the orphans' bodies had been discovered in the cellar where there was a well to the underground river, so the assumption was natural enough. No one knew that Stefan's body had been dumped in the well on another day, and I, of course, had absconded to London.'

Eve and Loren were almost sitting erect on the stairway by now and Eve's dread was deepening. She forced herself to speak normally. 'I still don't understand what this has to do with us.' She said this despite her suspicion.

He took a sudden step towards them and stamped his walking stick on the bare boards of the small landing. Both of them flinched.

'Don't you see?' he said excitedly. 'Isn't it clear to you after all I've said? The eleventh child doesn't have to be me: it can be another child!'

The shock, her suspicion now voiced, caused Eve to collapse back on the stairs. Loren squeezed her mother's arm in a tight vice.