The Stranger House (6 page)

And no sign anywhere of a Flood.

But there was evidence that this was an active graveyard. As she rounded the black fortress she saw ahead of her, near the left-hand wall, a pile of earth as if some giant mole had been at work. A few more steps brought into view the angle of an open grave, sharp and black against the green turf.

Then her heart contracted and she stopped in her tracks as a figure rose out of the dank earth.

It took only a moment to recognize the obvious, that this was the grave-digger who’d been stooping low to remove a large stone which he now deposited on the side.

This done, he straightened up to wipe his brow and looked straight at her.

If his appearance had given her a start, hers seemed to return the shock with interest. He froze with the back of his hand at his forehead, giving the impression of a mariner shading his eyes from the sun as he peered over the bow in search of land. But the expression on his face suggested it was a fearsome reef he saw.

She gave him what she intended as a reassuring smile and moved on towards the church door. Here she glanced his way again and saw he was still staring at her. He was a man in his fifties, square-built and muscular, with a leathery face that looked as if a drunken taxidermist had been stuffing an English bulldog and then given up. But that unblinking gaze belonged to some creature far less cosy than a mere bulldog.

Sam didn’t bother with another smile. Why waste it? This felt like the kind of place where not only did they stare at strangers, they probably pointed at the sky whenever a plane flew overhead.

She raised the old-fashioned latch and pushed the door open. Like the gate, its opening was accompanied by a sound effect, this time a groan straight out of a horror movie. Hadn’t oil reached Illthwaite yet?

She stepped inside.

When God said let there be light, He must have forgotten St Ylf’s. It was so gloomy in here she had to pause a moment to let her eyes adapt. When murk began to coalesce into form, she found herself standing by a font
consisting of a granite block out of which a basin had been scooped deep enough for an infant to drown in. Around its rough-hewn sides a not incompetent artist had carved a frieze of spasmodic dancers doing a conga behind a hooded figure carrying a scythe.

You live in the valley of the shadow, must seem like a good idea to let your kids see early what lies in wait for them, thought Sam. To her left was the space beneath the tower which seemed to be used as a kind of storeroom. The back wall was lined with dusty stacks of hassocks and hymn books, perhaps a reminder of days when the vicar expected a full house at every service. A rickety-looking ladder led up to a trapdoor which stood open, revealing the scudding clouds and admitting just enough light to make the shadowy church even more sinister.

She turned away to face down the aisle where the Gothic experience continued.

At the far end within the chancel on a pair of wooden trestles stood a coffin.

She set off towards it, trainers slapping against the granite floor. As she got nearer, she slowed. This was getting to be too much.

The coffin lid was drawn back to reveal the face of the corpse within.

It was a young face, pretty well de-sexed by death. She looked at the brass plate on the lid. It read
William Knipp—in the seventeenth year of his age.

Poor sod. He died young.

She thought she heard a noise behind her and turned abruptly.

Nothing.

But there was the sound again. Her keen ear tracked it to the porch, or rather the store space beyond, beneath
the tower. She walked back down the aisle and looked up at the open trap. The sky didn’t seem quite so dark now.

She called, “Hello! Anyone there?”

Though there was no reply, it felt like there was someone up there, listening.

“Hi,” she called, “Sorry to trouble you, but I could do with some help.”

Still nothing. She was beginning to feel irritated. While she didn’t have much time for priests and such, wasn’t it part of their job description that they should be there for you when you needed them?

“OK,” she called, “If you’re too busy to come down, I’ll come up.”

Setting the
Guide
on the floor, she grasped the rough wood of the old ladder and began to climb.

She was a good climber, light, supple and nimble. Watching her rapid ascent of the big blue gum over-shading the north side of the house at Vinada, her pa had said, “If I’d bought a monkey, I’d sell it.”

It only took a few seconds to get to the top of the ladder, though it felt longer. The higher she got, the more rickety it felt. She glanced down and the floor seemed further away than she would have guessed. Thank God I don’t suffer from vertigo, she thought.

Unless vertigo began with a sudden petrifying sense of being
watched
!

The sooner she was off this ladder, the better. She reached her left hand up to get a grip on the floor of the tower.

And next moment the trap came crashing down.

She whipped her hand away, felt the frame graze her finger ends, lost her right hand’s grip on the topmost rung of the ladder, and suddenly the floor which had
seemed so far away was getting closer far too quickly.

As she fell she had a sense of a darker shadow against the cloudy grey square. Or rather, later she had a sense that she’d had a sense, but for the brief time being all she was registering was her fervent desire not to crash head first on to the unyielding granite slabs.

She knew about falling. She’d always been good on the trampoline. In fact they’d persuaded her to try competitive gymnastics at school, but she’d left the team when it got too serious. Even then she’d known the medals she wanted from life weren’t to be got by bouncing. Now, however, all that twisting and turning looked like it might be useful.

First off, she tried a backward somersault to straighten herself up, but all it did halfway through was bring her in violent collision with the back wall.

This however turned out to be her salvation. Instead of sliding down it at great speed to make contact with the floor, she hit the stack of hassocks and hymn books piled there in anticipation of some future full house sell-out. The hands of angels might have done a better job at bearing her up, but maybe this kind of divine intercession was the best an Aussie atheist could look for.

This was her last absurd thought before she hit the ground with sufficient force to drive all the breath out of her lungs but not to kill her. An avalanche of hassocks and hymn books swept down after her, filling the air with swirling dust. She twisted round to protect her face from the holy debris and cried out as it clattered and bounced against her back. Fear of heights she didn’t have, but most of her childhood nightmares had been associated with fear of being trapped in a constricted dark place.

The downslide seemed to go on forever. She felt as if she were being buried alive under a mountain of dusty books and cushions. And even when they stopped crashing upon her, through the roar of terrified blood rushing along her veins she seemed still to hear noises: creaking wood, steps, doors opening and shutting.

Till finally these too, whether imagined or real, died away, leaving her to something more frightening than any sound.

The silence of the dark.

Later Sam worked out she probably lay there only a matter of seconds, certainly less than a minute. Also that she could have dislodged the hymn books and hassocks simply by sitting up. But at the time it felt as if she lay there an age, fearful that the slightest movement would bring the whole weight of the tower crashing down upon her.

And finally a voice.

“Jesus Christ! Gerry, give me a hand. Miss Flood! Miss Flood! Are you all right?”

Someone was pulling the books and hassocks from her body. Someone who knew her name. Maybe it was God. Though surely the All-knowing wouldn’t need to enquire after her health?

She squinted sideways and saw a pair of knees. Would God wear blue denim? She didn’t care. She could see, not too clearly, but at least she was out of the dark.

“What happened?” she gasped.

“You fell. Stay still. Gerry, don’t just stand there. Get some water.”

Gerry? God’s second son, maybe. Jesus and Gerry. Now she was being silly. On the other hand this Gerry did seem able to conjure up rain which was now falling in very welcome cool drops on her exposed cheek.

Her mouth felt dry as dust. She swallowed and realized that in fact her mouth was full of dust. She needed to get some of this delicious liquid down her throat. She struggled to turn her face upwards.

“No! Don’t move till we get help.”

Right, of course. She should lie still until experts had assessed the extent of damage and how best to proceed without causing more.

But even as this eminently sensible response was struggling along the self-repairing synapses of her brain, she was twisting round from prone to supine and flexing everything that she felt ought to be flexible.

“I’m OK,” she gasped, “Water.”

The source of the rain she now traced to a shallow silver platter from which Gerry the Son was flicking water with his finger. God the Blue-jeaned was still kneeling by her. She used his shoulder to haul herself into the sitting position, grabbed the salver, and drained what little water it still contained. Then with the instinct of a thirsty animal in the outback, she pushed herself upright, tottered to the font and buried her face in its cool dark pool. When her mouth was washed clean of dust, she cupped her hands and threw the water against her face and gasped with pleasure as it trickled down her body.

“This is good stuff,” she said finally, “Does this mean I’ve been baptized? My pa will kill me.”

The frivolity popped out as it often did at moments of high stress. Her rescuers didn’t seem to find it funny.

God was a six-footer, broad-shouldered, barrel-chested, though the barrel showed signs of rolling downhill into a beer gut. Way back he must have been a craggy good looker, but now he was definitely the ancient of days, in his sixties she guessed, his weathered
face lined and crinkled. But his eyes still sparkled a bright blue and his thatch of silvery hair was still touched here and there with starts of gold.

The other one, Gerry the rainmaker, was a bit younger, mid-fifties maybe, his hair still black with only a slight frosting at the edges. His rather chubby face looked as if it could relax into a kind of koala attractiveness, but for now it was set in a blank from which his slatey eyes viewed her more like a strange animal who might be a threat than a young stranger who’d just had an accident. In contrast to God’s sports shirt and jeans, he wore a dark suit and a collar and tie.

“I still think we should get you checked out,” said God, “That was a nasty tumble you took.”

“You saw it?” said Sam.

“No. I came in and saw you lying on the floor under all that crap. It didn’t take Miss Marple to work out you must have fallen off the loft ladder, right?”

“It might have tested her to work out what my name was,” said Sam.

Before he could reply, the porch door opened and another man came in, this one wearing a priest’s cassock and collar. He too was in his fifties, medium height, slightly built, with a salt-and-pepper shag of hair, and a matching tangle of beard, which, if the moistly anxious brown eyes peering out above it were anything to go by, had been cultivated to conceal meekness rather than express aggression.

“Thor,” he said, “And Gerry. Hello. What on earth’s happened here?”

As he spoke his gaze swung rapidly from the pile of hassocks and hymn books on the floor to Sam, and stuck. His mouth opened and white teeth gleamed through his
beard like the moon through a bramble bush in what may have been intended as a welcoming smile but came over more as a grimace.

The man called Thor (right name for a god, wrong religion, thought Sam) said, “I came down to make sure young Billy got screwed in properly. This young lady seems to have slipped off the tower ladder. You should get it fixed. It’s a death trap.”

“Oh dear. I’m so sorry. Are you all right, Miss … ?”

“Flood. Sam Flood,” said Sam, “Yeah, I’m fine. Few bruises, nothing broken. And I didn’t slip. Someone slammed the trap shut on my fingers.”

Something in what she said robbed the vicar of the power of response for a moment and when he got it back, it hardly seemed worth the effort.

“What … ? You’re sure … ? Who would do such a thing … ? It hardly seems likely …”

While the vicar was wittering, God ran up the ladder with the casual ease of an ancient mariner and pushed open the trap.

“No one up here now,” he declared, “Wind must have blown it shut.”

He slid down, landing easily.

“You’d need a bloody gale!’ protested Sam.

“Gales are what we get round here,” said the man, “Did you actually see anyone?”

“No, not really,” she admitted, “But I did hear something. And he had time to come down and get away …”

She moved away from the support of the font and was pleased to find she was pretty well back in control of her limbs. Standing under the once more open trap, she peered up at the clouds and recalled that sense of a presence just before it slammed shut. No features, just that
frightening feeling of being at the focal point of a predatory stare …

“There was a guy outside digging a grave when I arrived,” she said, “Was he still there when you arrived?”

She directed this at the man the vicar had called Thor.

“Laal Gowder? Yes, I had a word with him. Why?”

Because I thought it might be him who came in behind me and climbed up to the tower
seemed even less sensible an answer than it had a moment ago.

“Just thought he might have seen someone,” she said lamely.

“Coming out of the church, you mean? Well, I didn’t see anyone. And you were coming up the path behind me, Gerry. You see anyone?”

“No,” said the silent man, “Only Gowder.”

He spoke the name as if it tasted foul on the tongue. Despite his apparent lack of enthusiasm for her own presence, Sam felt maybe they had something in common after all. She recalled that Mrs Appledore had mentioned someone called Gerry Woollass. It came back to her. Not God’s son, but the squire’s son. Same thing round here, perhaps?