The Unquiet House (9 page)

She got out and opened her mouth, but he spoke first. ‘Changed your mind? Good. There’s something you should have a look at.’

He opened the door for her and ushered her inside as if she were a guest. For a moment she thought she heard something behind him, a brief high sound; then it faded and Charlie turned.

‘Look at this,’ he said. ‘This is what I think you should see.’

The hall was empty save for some shoes lying at the foot of the stairs and a few rags discarded in the corner. Charlie’s face was full of suppressed excitement. ‘Do you see it?’

She didn’t see. He pointed down at the floor and she looked again. The whole space was criss-crossed with muddy footprints.

‘
Look
.’ He took an exaggerated step across the floor, carefully placing his heel, then laying down his foot. She saw what he meant. The muddy print next to his foot was small, too small. She went closer.

‘Do you see it now?’ His voice was lower, almost calm.

She looked across the tiles and saw how many prints there were: some were a little larger and some smaller, but they all belonged to children. She had a sudden image of them running around the hall and she shook her head. It didn’t mean anything; the marks could have been there for years; she simply hadn’t noticed them—

‘They weren’t there before,’ Charlie said, as if reading her thoughts. ‘I know they weren’t, because the first time I saw them – when I came down earlier this morning – I cleaned them all away. Now they’ve come back.’

Emma remembered the sound she thought she’d heard when Charlie led her into the house: a child’s stifled giggle. Now she thought she could detect the lingering trace of tobacco in the air.

She’d seen a man standing at the foot of her bed in the middle of the night. She’d seen his suit hanging in her wardrobe after she’d thrown it out
.

And Charlie had been there each time.

She looked up at him now, trying to read his expression. He gave a smile. ‘It looks as if you really do have ghosts. It probably just means you’re special.’

She shrugged his words away. There had to be some explanation; there had been no laughter. She had only heard the house settle and taken it for something else. She forced herself to smile as Charlie’s words dissipated in the air between them.

*

Emma had started to paint the dining room at the back of the house while Charlie tried to fix some of the panelling upstairs. She could hear the
bang, bang
of his hammer, the pauses while he pieced things together. This room was tall and a little narrow. She didn’t quite like it. She could smell damp even through the sharp tang of paint, and she thought mould was blossoming through it already, shadows that would eventually darken and stain the walls.

Here at the back of the house she could almost sense the mire the place was named for. It had a faintly musky scent that made her want to find its source. She could imagine the moisture spreading through the walls, bringing decay with its touch, reaching across the ceiling and through the door, into the
hallway. It had brought the cold with it too; as she worked, the mist of her breath hung in front of her face.

Then she heard the tolling of a bell.

She shuddered: it was as if the sound had come from somewhere within – but it sounded again, full and resonant, and she laid down her paintbrush.
Fanciful
, she thought as she went to take a look.

As soon as she stepped onto the gravel a clammy breeze brought with it the sound of bells and she turned towards the church. It didn’t sound like a call to service – it didn’t sound
organised
, though she had never heard the bells before and didn’t know how they should sound.

The heavy ring set into the church door clanged under her fingers as she twisted it and the door opened, letting out a dry stone smell. This time the inner door was unlocked and it opened onto streams of misty light, thick with dust, and rows of pews stretching into the distance. A man was standing in the aisle, facing her. She looked for his black suit but no, this man was taller, his bearing straight and his hair just touched with grey, and he was thin, very thin. She realised the bells were quiet now, that everything was.

The man carried an air of vague anxiety, but when he came towards her his smile was genuine. ‘Hello,’ he said.

‘I— hello. I didn’t mean to interrupt. I heard the bells and thought I’d call in.’

‘You’re not interrupting, love. New, are you? We welcome new faces here.’

Emma found herself blushing. ‘Well, I don’t usually – I mean …’

‘Not an attender, eh? Well, that’s all right too. I don’t come much myself, truth be told.’

‘I just moved into the house next door.’

‘Painting, was you?’

Emma had forgotten the state of her clothes; her top was spattered with paint. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think to change.’ She glanced around the church, the windows brilliantly coloured, the roof a mass of exposed beams, the bosses obscured by the poor light.

He grinned, instantly looking almost boyish. ‘Well, I won’t tell if you don’t. Name’s Frank Watts. I come in to potter about – do a few repairs, give the old girls a workout.’

Emma frowned, then he gestured upwards to where the bells must be hung and she understood.

‘You getting on all right, are you? Big old house, that.’

‘It was my— a distant relative’s. I inherited it.’

‘Ah. Sorry. Or, good for you, not sure which.’ He winked.

‘I just moved in, so I’m new here. My name’s Emma. I—’

‘Yes, love?’

‘Well, I was kind of curious. About its background, I suppose. I’d never been here before, so it’s nice to talk to someone who knows the area. I don’t suppose you know anything about the house?’

His eyes clouded. ‘Well, not that much. There’s stories, I suppose you’d say. I live nearby, but I don’t have a lot to do wi’ it, you know.’ His eyes went distant and he paused. ‘It was empty before you, for a good long while. Someone called Mitchell bought it, but he just left it to go to ruin. And a ways before that it was the Owens, but – well, they kept theirselves to theirselves.
That’s about it, love.’ There was something in his eyes; he looked guarded.

‘Do you know what happened to them?’

He shot her a sharp look. ‘Well – they were getting on, you know. She passed a good few years ago – I’m not sure really. Then he went – well, a while back. An’ I never really knew the Mitchell feller. He din’t stop here long, never seemed a part o’ the place.’

Emma frowned. ‘In the house?’ she asked. ‘Did Mr Owens die in the house?’

He put out a hand as if to quiet her. ‘Steady on, love. Nowt like that. No, he din’t go in the house. Not that far off, though.’ He paused, grimaced. ‘He were out walking – yes, I believe that were it. Near the river, I think.’ He brightened. ‘So not in the house, no, love. Don’t you worry about that. It’s a nice place, I’ll warrant. Big place, though. You married?’

She shook her head. ‘A relative’s staying here for a bit. Then it’ll just be me.’ She regretted telling him of their relationship at once.
Barely related at all
, she thought. It surely wasn’t worth mentioning to anyone else.

‘Aye, well, love, I’d best crack on. Nice to meet you, like.’

Emma smiled back, nodding. ‘You too.’ She’d already forgotten his name. They said their goodbyes and she walked away, her footsteps loud on the stone floor. Then she stopped and turned. The man –
Frank
, that was it – twisted away as if he didn’t want her to know he’d been staring.

‘I had a walk around the graveyard the other day,’ she said. ‘Nice place. I did wonder, though – who came up with those inscriptions, Frank? The ones on the benches?’

‘Oh – all sorts, love, over the years. Someone’ll come along and sponsor one, and they get to choose, you know. It ends up a
bit of a hotch-potch, but it’s all the Good Word, you know. If you’d like to come along one Sunday—’

‘But who chose the one along the back fence? It’s a bit – well, full-on, isn’t it?’

He didn’t reply.

‘Do you know it? It says
My God, my God
—’

‘I know what it says, love.’

His voice was quiet and didn’t invite further questions, but Emma pressed on, ‘So do you know who picked it? They must have been – I don’t know—’

‘I know who it was,’ he said. ‘It was a long time ago, love, and she was deep in grief, so I dare say that was the reason. And it is part of the Word, after all. So I don’t reckon anyone’d want to take it down, though there’s probably quite a few would’ve liked it not to have been there in t’ fust place.’ He drew a sigh and sank onto a pew, as if suddenly tired. ‘She’d lost a child, love. I’m not sure what her name was – it’s a long time ago. But it’s funny you should ask, for all that.’

‘Why’s that, Frank?’

He met her eyes. ‘Because you’re living in her place, love.’ He paused. ‘The woman who had them words put on that bench – the same person built your house.’

The ground about the bench was seeping water, welling around Emma’s shoes wherever she stepped. It was on a slope, but the ground was drenched with run-off from the hills beyond. She could see Mire House from where she stood, its stone darkened with damp, sitting on the hillside, and she thought for a moment of a squat toad – but no, the house was beautiful. It had always been beautiful. It was strange to think that the woman who had it built had also sat here, her despair so strong she’d had it carved into the stone.

She looked at the inscription now –
Why hast Thou forsaken me?
– and she touched a finger to the lettering’s smooth edges.

After a moment she sat down on the bench. It was damp beneath her and she felt cold at once, a bone-deep cold. She thought of the footprints she’d seen in the house, that brief high giggle. Had she really heard it? In this bleak place it was easy to believe that she had. Was it the woman’s lost child she’d heard? But then, who was the man she’d seen – her husband?

Emma closed her eyes, feeling little more than a lost child herself. Her dad’s face rose before her and she realised that she had never felt lost when he was there. When she was little her mum would put her to bed but whenever she felt afraid it was
her dad who told her stories, and the princesses would live happily ever after and the wicked witches and stepmothers and nasty sisters and the monsters would all be dead. And she found herself remembering the one thing that did scare her, the thing she’d asked him once: ‘Why did they have to die, Daddy?’

‘Hush. It was because they were bad.’

But she knew they
weren’t
all bad. Cinderella’s real mother had died too, hadn’t she? That was how the story began. For a moment, she had listened to the sound of his breathing. ‘Daddy, will you die?’

He had smiled at first, but then he’d surprised her by laughing. ‘Not for a long, long time, love.’ He was halfway out of the door before he added the usual words: ‘Sleep tight, little Em.’

But she hadn’t slept tight. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about what he’d said, or rather, what he
hadn’t
. He hadn’t said
never
. He hadn’t said
no
.

Now here she was, sitting on a bench in a place her parents had never seen.

She blinked and looked about her. Ranks of gravestones, greened or blackened with moss and rain and time, were spread all around her. And she wondered: if she could wake in the night to see a man standing at the foot of her bed, hear the giggle of some long-ago child, feel the sadness of a woman sitting on a bench – why not her parents? Why had she not seen her
own
ghosts?

The yew tree whispered above her head. Somewhere there was the sharp cry of a bird, but there was nothing else: no answer came.

Then she remembered another sound, one she’d heard what seemed a long time ago and yet was no time at all:
Get out
.

She shook the thought away. She didn’t even know when those words had first been spoken, or why. What she’d heard was only an echo – was probably never even meant for her. She stood and looked down at the words carved on the bench. It was another echo, nothing more, nothing that need touch her. She glanced back towards Mire House. It was waiting and it wasn’t empty: Charlie was there with his grin and his laughing voice. She should be there with him.

She tried not to focus on the stones as she walked back through the graveyard, the words written on their faces all that remained of the lives and loves long fallen into the forgetful past.

The mould looked darker now, like clouds harbouring bad dreams. Emma painted over it, her movements aggressive. She would banish it, make the room bright and clean and new. She frowned. Upstairs, Charlie had replaced the flimsy curtains in the master bedroom with the thicker ones he’d taken from the drawing room. He seemed quite at home in there, although it hadn’t yet been painted, and she set her own brush down with a twinge of annoyance. He had said,
I could paint it for you. Dark red would look good in here, don’t you think?

She didn’t know why she was so annoyed. She had simply found that she didn’t want to accept his choice – and yet somehow she couldn’t imagine the room any other colour. That only made it worse.

She was being ungenerous. If Charlie hadn’t come back here … She had a sudden image of herself trapped in that awful cupboard, nothing to eat, only dirty grey water to drink. She shuddered and looked up at the ceiling. It struck her that she hadn’t heard the sound of Charlie’s hammer for some time.

She left her own work and headed up the stairs, taking each tread slowly, calling his name as she entered the master bedroom.

The room was empty. Charlie must have moved on somewhere else. She crossed to the window and ran her hand over the sill.

The trees were losing their leaves and everything looked a little more bare than yesterday. She could see the yew tree more clearly now though, and through the slats of the fence, the paler outline of the bench. She started. Someone was seated there, perfectly motionless, just sitting with head bowed, a dark shape against the foliage. It looked like a woman. She stared, trying to make out her features, and she realised she was wearing a veil. She closed her eyes.
My God
, she thought,
my God
… and she looked again and the woman was gone; there were only twisting branches that gave the impression of a human figure.