The Unquiet House (11 page)

He kept trying to remember when he’d had the thought about whether it would be better if a hand seized your shoulder to find it was see-through; to know that he could pull away and find it was nothing solid after all.
If she grabs a hold of you, you’re dead
.

But ghosts couldn’t grab, could they? Their hand would slip straight through. And what if a thing like that happened in daylight? Ghosts were supposed to come out at night, but having looked in at the window of Mire House, he wasn’t so sure that was true. Maybe it could happen in the daytime, when it might be hard to see a ghost. If a misty hand had touched him when he’d been running down the drive, how would he even know?

Maybe that was why he couldn’t stop thinking about the place – because somehow something had already touched him. It was all Sam Holroyd’s fault. If he hadn’t dared him …

Frank shook his head. He was being stupid, wasn’t he? He’d only looked in at a window. He hadn’t done anything wrong, not really. For all the old man knew he might have called around there to see him on purpose. He had an image of himself walking up to its great front door and knocking, inviting the fierce old man round for tea, and he let out a giggle.

He stifled it when he heard a quiet knock on his door. Then it was pushed slowly open, before he even had the chance to call out. Mossy was standing in the gap. Frank scowled. He was about to say something –
get out
, probably – and then he saw the expression on his brother’s face. He looked tired and a little sheepish. He was already wearing his pyjamas. Frank didn’t like Mossy being in his room, but he couldn’t bring himself to send him away. His brother climbed onto the bed and sat next to him. He hadn’t said a word.

‘What do you want?’ Frank’s voice was soft. This time, when Mossy looked up, Frank realised he’d been crying. ‘What’s up?’

Mossy shrugged. Then he whispered, ‘Were you scared?’ Frank looked at him. He hadn’t liked the way the house had lodged in his own thoughts; he didn’t like the idea that Mossy had been thinking about it too.

‘
I
was scared,’ his brother said.

Frank sighed. He wasn’t going to admit to being scared. Mossy didn’t usually admit it either and it was better that way: he’d have to learn. If he admitted to being scared of things in front of the others, it’d be even worse. ‘It was nothing,’ he said. ‘Just an old man.’

Mossy turned his head and looked at him. ‘Not him,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t scared of the old man.’

Frank felt his arms go cold all at once, each little hair prickling as it spread over his skin. He didn’t like the look in his brother’s eyes. He didn’t want to think about what it might mean. He glanced towards the window. Their house was set back a way from the road, in a wide yard all of its own. There were outbuildings around it; from here, all he would see were the barn and the lane and the fields. If he pushed aside the net curtains and opened the window and leaned out, he would be able to see the church steeple. He would need to lean further to see the house, but he knew it was there, on the other side of the churchyard – the
graveyard
– and the old man was inside it, smoking his pipe perhaps, staring into space with those blank eyes.

He took a deep breath. He wasn’t sure what he was going to say. Then Mossy pushed himself to the edge of the bed. ‘Night night,’ he said, and Frank automatically replied as his little brother walked out of the room.

I wasn’t scared of the old man
.

Frank wrapped the covers tightly around his shoulders and leaned back against the pillow. When he closed his eyes, though, it wasn’t the old man he thought of; it was Sam Holroyd, the so-called friend who’d run off and left them. Sam Holroyd, who’d dared him to step across that border in the first place.

His lip twisted. The place was still there. It wasn’t going away. Perhaps next time it was Sam who needed to go up to the door: maybe he even needed to go inside.

It was early on Saturday morning and a light ground mist still hung over the grass. Everyone was there except Mossy, who had chosen to stay and help Dad put new chicken-wire around the hen coop. It wasn’t something he’d normally do and he hadn’t really told him why, but Frank thought it was something to do with what he’d said the night before:
I wasn’t scared of the old man
.

Now they were at the big house again but it was clear that no one was going inside because the old man was standing in the garden. He was motionless, staring out at the road. The only thing that moved was the curl of smoke from his pipe.

Frank still hadn’t asked what it was his little brother
had
been scared of and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

They crouched in the lane, Frank and Sam and Jeff, occasionally bobbing up to see what they could see. Sometimes, the old man did move; he raised the hand in which he held a thick wooden stick and punched it down again into the ground.

Frank looked at Sam. ‘It’s your turn,’ he said in a low voice. ‘As soon as he goes in you can go and knock on the door. You ’ave to count to ten before you run.’ He didn’t say Sam should go inside,
though he knew that was exactly what he should do; the only thing that could make up for Mossy’s fear. He thought Sam would argue anyway, but what he didn’t expect was: ‘I’ve already done it. It’s your turn again.’

‘You have
not
. We was all the’er last time, and you was first away.’ Frank leaned over and spat. It was something he’d just started to do; he’d copied it off his dad.

‘An’ then I went back agin later. Din’t I, Jee?’

Jeff’s eyes had started to shine. He looked at his brother as if he’d just come up with a brilliant idea.

‘You’re lyin’.’

‘Not.’

‘Are.’

‘Wanna make summat of it?’ Sam leaned towards him, his chest puffed out. Frank suddenly knew it was hopeless. Sam would do anything, say anything, rather than go and knock on the old man’s door.

Anyway, no one was going to knock. The man still stood there, his head twitching now and then towards the lane. He kept banging the stick so hard into the ground Frank knew it would retain its print for days to come.
His backside would too
, he thought,
if he got caught
.

He sighed. It was two against one. ‘You won’t mind going past him then,’ he said, ‘if you’re so brave.’ He pointed down the lane, towards the path that led to the river. One side of it flanked the old man’s wall. His mother would tan his hide if she knew he’d even thought of it – she got tight-lipped if anyone even mentioned the place – and he shifted uncomfortably. It wasn’t as if the river was much fun for playing out. They couldn’t even reach the water, not really. There was a little bridge over the
worst of the miry ground, a concrete slab with a thin metal pipe for a handrail, but it didn’t lead anywhere very much. It looked as if it would be fun to play on but it wasn’t. They could sit on the edge and dangle their feet, but what lay below looked like nothing but grass, long and lush. It wasn’t grass, though. It was mire.

‘All right.’ Sam’s voice was low. Frank looked at him and saw the older boy was only pausing, making him wait. Then he straightened and smiled. ‘We’ll all go. If, you know,
you’re
so brave.’

Frank thought of the way Mossy had come into his room, his quiet knock, his downcast eyes: the way he’d gone to his big brother when he was afraid. And he
had
been afraid, he and Mossy both, but he hadn’t allowed it to show. He couldn’t. He was the eldest. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You first.’

Sam led the way down the lane. Frank was behind him and he couldn’t see his expression but the back of his neck looked pink and he didn’t think it was caused by the coolness of the morning. Maybe he was wondering if the others were still behind him, following at his heels. He tried to walk more quietly just to spite him. Then he looked into the garden and saw the old man’s head turning slowly to watch their progress. He could hear the sound of his stick punching the earth. He was still wearing his scruffy black suit. It bagged at the knees. Even from here, he could see it had an unpleasant shine.

Sam started to whistle. It wasn’t a good whistle. Frank knew it was supposed to sound as if he didn’t care, like he wasn’t scared, and for a moment it almost worked.

The old man made a dirty noise – a deep, rasping hawking sound – and he spat. Spittle flew from his lips, a wet gobbet that
landed on the ground in front of his feet. Frank saw this quite clearly because he had reached the gateway; there was no longer any wall between them. He felt exposed, as if he’d stepped out of the bath and someone had seen him; the cold was close against his skin, his belly contracting. He became aware of his own breathing, too light and shallow.

Ahead of him, Sam started swinging his arms, high and fast, trying too hard to look casual. They had reached the path. It was narrow and overgrown with rosebay willow herb and nettles that brushed against their legs. They started to sting even through his brown corduroys, but he didn’t really feel it. Then Sam stopped and Frank had to stop too, to avoid bumping into him. Behind him, Jeff’s footsteps ceased.

‘Nice day!’ Sam yelled the words, shattering the quiet. Frank stared at him, horrified. The older boy had half-turned to look back at the old man. He raised an arm and gave a cheery wave, then pursed up his lips and blew a long, loud raspberry. In the next moment he started to run.

Frank was frozen. He heard the plants whipping at Sam’s legs but he was really listening to the silence underneath that, until Jeff forced his way past him and he realised he would be left alone. He had expected the old man to chase after them but he was still standing there, an isolated figure in the middle of a wide lawn, and then he caught movement from the corner of his eye and he realised he wasn’t alone after all; there was someone standing behind him, wearing dark clothes. It was a thin woman with wide skirts and something covering her face. He shifted his focus to where she stood only to find he was mistaken after all; there was nothing but the shadow of clouds, moving across the grass.

He shook his head. He had been so
sure
. He could still almost see her, reaching out to grasp the old man’s shoulder. Now he didn’t look angry any longer. His lips were pressed into a bloodless line, his forehead furrowed with creases, but his eyes were sad. Frank felt an overwhelming urge to shout at him to run with them, to run away; then the shrieks of laughter from up ahead roused him and he forced himself to move.

He didn’t stop running until he reached the bridge and found them, Sam almost doubled across the handrail, laughing fit to bust. He slapped his thigh; he’d copied that from
his
old man. ‘Your face,’ he said. ‘Your
face
!’

Jeff was standing in the middle of the bridge, laughing too; now he laughed even louder. When he slapped his thigh in just the same way Sam had, Frank had to fight back the urge to scream.

‘See?’ Sam gasped. ‘He’s just a silly old sod. Dunno what you was scared of.’

‘Silly old sod,’ Jeff repeated. ‘Silly old sod.’

Frank stood there, not knowing what to say or what to do, until the two of them subsided and the sun climbed higher and Sam turned and led the way across the mire and towards the river.

*

There was no bridge over the actual river. It was not inviting or even approachable; it didn’t make a noise, chattering over pebbles like the rivers in stories did. It was something they could sense, but they rarely
saw
it because of the reeds that spread around it. Frank had tried to paddle in it once and he knew that what looked like long grass was always mire. He’d sunk into it and the water had overrun his boots and
run down to his toes, and later he’d found it had a bad smell, that water. It was odd that he couldn’t detect it from here on the bank. He’d had to use the reed-grass to pull himself out again, clutching sharp handfuls to help him gain purchase. The river had no clear definition. It seeped into the land on either side; there was no distinct point at which land was land and river, river.

Now the only sound was the slapping as they batted midges away from their faces and arms. No one spoke but he knew they must be thinking of going back. Mossy would be waiting for his big brother by now and he felt a stab of mean triumph that he’d got rid of him at last.

Sam was standing with his back to Frank, staring out over the river, and he pulled back his arm as if to throw something into the water. Frank knew without looking for a splash that there was nothing in his hand; there were no stones to throw. There was nothing to do here, nothing with which to make a den, nothing to shoot at even if they’d thought to bring the catapults they’d made from sticks and elastic bands, no trees to climb. They were bored already and too hot and being eaten alive, and the only reason they hadn’t gone home was the old man that Sam had insulted.

He looked back the way they’d come. Beyond the bridge he could see the top of the house, and further off was the tip of the church spire. All of it was still there, waiting. Maybe the old man was there and maybe he wasn’t:
And the woman. Maybe she’s waiting too
.

He shook his head. The woman had never been real in the first place. But a part of him still wondered if that was why the old man had been so horrible?
Bloody little buggers
, he’d called
them when Frank peeked in at his window. Maybe he couldn’t help it. Maybe he’d been touched by the ghost after all, been claimed by it in some way, and now he was stuck there all alone with no one but ghosts for company. He shivered. Still, it was no use staying here, waiting for nothing. They could be stuck here for ever. ‘I’m off,’ he said.

Sam looked up and shrugged as if he wasn’t bothered.

‘See you later.’ He started to pick his way across the wet earth, his boots making an unpleasant squelching noise. Then he heard other noises behind him, the sound of the others following. Sam, who was older than him by a year, was taking his lead. He smothered a grin and kept going, his back a little straighter than before.