The Whispering House (4 page)

Chapter Five

The Doll

I
T LAY FACEDOWN ON
the floor as if someone had tossed it there casually. One arm was underneath it, the other outstretched, palm upward. It had long dark hair, stiff with dirt, a dress that had once been white, and the ragged remains of a blue ribbon round its waist. Hannah picked it up and it hung limply, the head and feet seeming too heavy for the soft cloth body.

“Poor old thing,” she murmured. “I wonder how long you've been lying here, all forgotten.”

“As long as all the rest of this junk, by the look of it,” said Sam briskly. “Come on. Are you going to leave it there or bring it with you?”

“I can't just leave her here. Not after we've found her. Maybe I could clean her up somehow.”

Back in the kitchen, Hannah laid the doll next to the sink and, moistening a paper towel under the tap, carefully rubbed at the sooty stains until a face emerged from the grime. A pale porcelain face with a chipped nose, a smiling rosebud of a mouth, and odd brown eyes that stared wildly, as if the owner were not quite sane. She stopped rubbing for a moment, her heart beating fast. Because, for some reason, that odd smile reminded her of something. Then she frowned and shook her head. It was just her imagination. Of course. It had to be.

Even so, it occurred to her that, like the paint box, this doll was old. Very old.

“I think I know who this might have belonged to,” she said suddenly.

“What, you mean you can tell just by washing its face?” Sam looked disbelieving, as if she'd claimed to make a genie appear by rubbing a magic lamp.

“I mean I found a book in my bedroom last night. A book of fairy tales. It had the owner's name written inside—Maisie Holt, and the date. Christmas 1876. I think this must have been Maisie's doll.”

“Yeah?” Sam was trying to look interested, but he was stifling a yawn and looking pointedly at the refrigerator. “Is it lunchtime yet?”

“Sure. Wait a minute while I fix it.” She moved the doll to one side and washed her hands under the kitchen tap, and within ten minutes they were both comfortably settled in front of a video, a plate of sandwiches between them—and Maisie Holt, with her faded, dusty past, temporarily forgotten.

It was only after Sam had gone that Hannah returned to the forlorn figure still lying on the drainboard. She shivered suddenly. It was only a doll, but there was something disturbing about those mad, staring eyes.

Hannah's mother wasn't impressed when she saw the damaged paintwork on the landing, and she was even less impressed by the state of the attic.

“I'm certainly not storing anything in there!” she said, shuddering. “Whatever made you think of unblocking that door?”

“We thought you needed space. It might have been useful. And Sam says there's more of that paint in the other room.”

“Which shouldn't have been opened in the first place,” replied Mom severely, walking back down the uncovered stairs. “It's a shame we can't use it, though. It would have been the obvious room for us. It's bigger than the other one and gets the light from both windows.” She sighed.

“We found something interesting in the attic,” said Hannah, hoping to distract her. She led the way downstairs and brought the doll from the kitchen.

“Good heavens!” said Mom. “Whatever's wrong with her?” She looked carefully at the pale china face, then laughed suddenly. “Oh, I see. Someone's tried to change the color of the eyes—using a paintbrush, by the look of it. You can just see a bit of the original blue where the new paint hasn't quite covered it. Only there's too much of this brown on her left eye. That's why she looks slightly crazy.” She peered closer, lifting the matted hair. “And here's something else. She used to have blond curls—see? They're still underneath. This dark stuff has been stuck on over the top.” She rubbed a few strands between her fingers. “What's more, this is real hair. Human hair. Most dolls had hair made of wool in those days. Looks like some little girl had a haircut and then decided to give her doll a makeover with the trimmings!”

“Do you think we could wash her dress?”

“Maybe.” Mom sounded doubtful. “Sometimes these things are sewn onto the body.” She turned it over. “This isn't, though. Look, it's got a row of buttons at the back. They'll be hard to undo, after all this time.” She peered at the tiny buttons and frowned. “Maybe not, after all. Look, these holes are way too big for the buttons. That's unusual. Victorian sewing is usually so neat.”

The blue ribbon was a problem, however, and it took a lot of coaxing before the tight little knot yielded at last. Then Mom unfastened the dress and gently pulled it over the doll's head.

“Oh!”

The exclamation came from both Hannah and her mother at once. They stared at the cloth body, naked save for the black boots.

“What's happened to her?” asked Hannah.

“Don't ask me!”

All over the back, stomach, arms, and legs were dark yellowish-brown stains. Each was roughly the size of a small coin, and they were evenly spaced.

“These have been done on purpose, haven't they?” Hannah said in astonishment.

“Looks like it.”

“But why?”

Her mother smiled sadly. “I've no idea. Maybe it was some kind of game the child was playing with her friends. Perhaps she thought the marks would wash out and realized too late that they were there to stay. Whatever it was, we're never going to find out now.” She put the doll down and looked at her watch. “It's getting late. Do you want to come and help me make dinner?”

“Okay.”

Her mother left the room, but Hannah remained looking thoughtfully at the doll. There was something slightly shocking about those pathetic bruised limbs. Because that was just how the marks looked. Like neat, evenly spaced bruises. Gently she ran her finger over one of the marks and noticed that in the center was a tiny hole, the size of a pin. She ran her finger over another and noticed the same thing.

Then she examined the doll carefully. In the center of each stain was a pinhole. Every one. She stared in bewilderment. What kind of game would make a little girl want to stick pins into her doll? And then to disfigure her like this? Would she have gotten into trouble over it? Or did she simply cover it with the dress and hope no one would notice? Suddenly Hannah put the doll down. Her hands were shaking, and she was very cold. The sensation lasted only a few seconds, but it left her feeling sick, as if she had handled something tainted. Something that had gone bad.

Quickly she left the room, closing the door behind her.

Chapter Six

A Grave Discovery

T
HE DRIZZLE PERSISTED THROUGH
Sunday morning, and Hannah got down to more studying, reading through her notes and memorizing facts, dates, and figures until her brain felt as saturated as the atmosphere outside. But in the afternoon the weather cleared slightly, and she decided to take her sketch pad and go for a walk. Her mother was asleep in a chair, and Hannah closed the front door softly so as not to wake her.

There were few people about. The streets here seemed quieter than those in her own neighborhood, the front gardens free from bikes and swing sets. If children lived here, they must be playing in parks or out for the day. The only sounds were from distant lawn mowers. Otherwise, houses dozed behind half-drawn blinds in the torpid sleepiness of an early-summer Sunday afternoon. She walked for about half a mile before coming to a largish redbrick church, with a gate set in a low wall and a signboard showing times of services. The church itself didn't look very interesting, being Victorian like the houses it served, but it was surrounded by a neatly kept graveyard with flowering shrubs, a path, and one or two wooden seats.

Having found in the past that churchyards sometimes made good drawing subjects, Hannah pushed open the gate and walked slowly along the path, glancing at the gravestones. Those nearest the church were the most recent, with sharp-edged lettering and fresh flowers in small wired pots. Farther back, the stones were older and the inscriptions harder to read. Soon Hannah found she had left the path and was wandering from grave to grave, reading names and dates and wondering how Maria Elizabeth Coombes—who had survived her husband, Albert Samuel Coombes, by more than thirty years—had coped with the rest of her life without him. Had she lovingly cherished his memory, bringing flowers to his grave each Sunday, waiting at last to join him? Or had she dried her eyes, shrugged her shoulders, and gone on with bringing up their seven children, all of whom were now buried nearby?

Then there was Grace Amelia Mason, who didn't appear to have had a husband at all and had died in 1903 at the age of forty-eight. Had she chosen not to marry, or had there been a fiancé who had died in a tragic accident, and Grace Amelia had sworn never to love another?

And there were the tiny graves belonging to the very young children and the babies, some of whom had survived only a few days. Hannah's thoughts went to her brother, Tom, born two years before her, who had lived for only six hours. Her mother had at last come to terms with his death, but she would never entirely get over it. Parents didn't, it seemed. Looking at these small, overgrown mounds, she felt the terrible weight of sadness that was now buried and forgotten.

At last she straightened up and looked at her watch, feeling slightly ridiculous for getting emotional over all these unknown, long-dead people. She wandered back in the direction of the path, and as she did so, her eye caught a name she recognized.

MAISIE HOLT

For a moment, Hannah felt a sense of shock, as though reading about the death of an acquaintance. Then she recovered. Of course. Maisie had lived here, and it was reasonable to suppose she had died here as well. Hannah moved closer and peered at the writing. There wasn't much—just Maisie's name and, underneath, the dates.

BORN MARCH 4, 1866

DIED JUNE 23, 1877

She stared. Could that be right? But the lettering, though worn, was clear enough. Maisie Holt had died at the age of eleven.

Hannah stayed there for perhaps ten minutes, looking at the grave, as if looking closely would somehow reveal more. But there was no more.

At last she moved away. Somehow she didn't feel like sketching anymore.

When she got back, her mother was awake, but she still looked tired, and Hannah decided not to tell her about what she had found in the churchyard. A child's grave was too close to home. But because it occupied her thoughts, she found it hard to talk about anything else, and after an evening meal during which neither of them said much, she cleared the table, stacked the dishwasher, and decided to go to bed, hoping to get to sleep before it got quite dark.

After an hour or so of tossing and turning, she switched on the bedside lamp. If she couldn't sleep, she might as well read. The trouble was, her novel was in her schoolbag, which she had left downstairs, and to fetch it would mean turning on the landing light, which would probably wake Mom. A box of her own books was in the corner, still taped and waiting to be unpacked, but she didn't want to start anything new. Glancing around the room, she noticed the book of fairy tales on the mantelpiece where she had left it two nights ago. The stories were bound to be ones she'd read years ago and would be far too young for her now, but at least they might send her to sleep. She got up, fetched the faded volume, and sat back against her pillow.

A quick glance down the table of contents told her that she'd been right about the stories being familiar. All the old favorites were there—“Sleeping Beauty,” “Snow White,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Hansel and Gretel”—as well as one or two she didn't know so well. In spite of herself, she was soon absorbed in the tales of wicked stepmothers, evil queens, cunning witches, and predatory wolves.

It might have been that she was already too wound up by the events of the weekend to let herself relax, but soon Hannah found that, far from sending her to sleep, the stories were making her more jittery. For the first time it struck her how threatening they all were. These were nothing like the stuff written for modern kids, whose characters' problems tended to center around who would be picked for the football team or how to deal with an annoying little sister. They were, literally, stories of life and death. Particularly death. The colored illustrations were beautiful, and of a very high quality, but they were almost too real—too explicit. It was as if the artist and storyteller had colluded in creating a nightmarish world where no one could ever feel quite safe.

Eventually Hannah closed the book and lay down. But it wasn't until the early-summer dawn had begun to filter through the curtains that she at last fell asleep.

Chapter Seven

Nightmare

M
ONDAY MORNING, SCHOOL DRAGGED
interminably, and Hannah found it difficult to concentrate. When the bell rang for morning break, she breathed a sigh of relief and went outside to get some fresh air. Sam was waiting for her.

“Are you wearing makeup?” he asked suspiciously.

“No. Why?”

“Your eyes look all black.”

“I didn't sleep well. Listen. You know I said that doll we found belonged to a girl called Maisie Holt?”

He nodded, but without much interest.

“She died. I found her grave in the churchyard.”

“Well, obviously she died, right? If she hadn't, she'd have been around a hundred and fifty by now, wouldn't she?”

“She died when she was eleven.”

He raised his eyebrows, then shrugged. “Kids were always dying young in those days. They died of things like measles and appendicitis.”

“And there's something else. The doll's got these brown marks all over it, and each one's got a tiny hole in the center, like there'd been a pin in there.”

“Acupuncture?”

“Don't be stupid! The Victorians didn't do acupuncture!”

“Okay, okay, only kidding. Wait a minute! What's happening over there?” He ran off suddenly, heading for the opposite side of the playground, where some kind of disturbance seemed to be going on. Hannah didn't follow but watched him approach a little knot of what looked like younger children, all making a lot of noise and waving their arms. A minute or so later he was back, looking baffled.

“What's up?”

“I'm not sure.” He frowned. “One of the year-seven kids had fallen over. That little guy with the fair hair and the glasses. Henry something or other.”

“Henry Knight?”

“That's the one.”

“Is he okay?”

“Seems to be.”

“Then what's the problem?”

“The problem is that the other kids think he didn't just fall. He was pushed.”

“Who by?”

“Guess.”

“Not that new boy? Bruce Myers?”

“Afraid so.”

“But Henry just says he fell over?”

“Yes . . . but the others in his class think he might have been saying that because he was scared of what Bruce might do to him later if he told the truth.”

“Oh.” Hannah frowned. “So what did you do?”

“Nothing. If Henry's not going to make any accusations, there's no point.”

She sighed and started to walk back into the school. It was bad enough having exams in this hot term, without all these other problems as well.

As soon as she got home that afternoon, Hannah collapsed in a chair and closed her eyes. The effect of two very short nights made it feel like the end of the week, but it was only Monday.

“Are you all right?” asked Mom anxiously. “You're not sick, are you?”

“I'm all right.” Hannah opened her eyes. “Just tired. Are you okay, Mom? You don't look so good yourself.”

“I wish your father were here, that's all.”

Hannah nodded. She missed Dad too. When he'd been there, the house had seemed too small. Now it seemed too large for just herself and her mother. She'd emailed him a couple of times but hadn't mentioned Maisie or the dreams. There was no point in worrying him, and in any case, what could he do from four thousand miles away?

After dinner she couldn't face doing any work and switched on the TV, flicking aimlessly through the channels. But her mind was too occupied to concentrate on anything, and after fifteen minutes she gave up and went to bed.

It had begun to rain again. She closed the window, opened the curtains, got into bed, and lay on her back listening to the sound of the wind in the trees and the raindrops pattering against the pane. The noise soothed her, and she closed her eyes.

It wasn't raining in the wood. The sun was shining, the birds singing, the fire gently crackling—and surrounding her on all sides were the leaves. Ash leaves. She could see clearly how the delicate, pointed spindles grew on either side of the long stems, each with a single, crowning leaflet curving gently toward its neighbor. The sky between them was light but overcast, which was strange, because surely only bright sunlight could make the green so intense, so vivid. Turning her head, she saw again that smiling face. She lay quite still, watching the face, but it didn't move. It simply stared back through odd, sightless eyes.

But it wasn't the face that, just then, gave her a sudden prickle of unease. It was something else. A faint stirring among the trees. A dark shadow moved there. Was it the wind, shifting the branches? But the leaves were motionless. There was no wind. An animal, then? She strained her eyes to make it out, and as she did so, the shadow became a shape. A shape that broke free from the trees and slowly moved toward her until she saw that it was no animal but a human figure. A woman wearing a long dress and carrying a cup.

She wanted to run away, to escape from that cup, because it was meant for her, she knew that, and she also knew that
she must not drink from it!

But she couldn't move—her limbs were leaden, claylike. She could only lie there and wait, helplessly, while the woman drew closer and closer until at last the cup was thrust toward her. She grasped it with both hands and hurled it violently into the depths of the wood.

The sunlight faded, the fire ceased its crackling, the leaves vanished, and she was awake, back in her room at Cowleigh Lodge. She sat up against the pillows, sweating and trembling. The strange chemical smell was there again, and the room felt unbearably stuffy, drying her mouth and giving it an unpleasant, bitter taste. She turned toward the little polished bedside cabinet. On the white cloth stood a china basin painted with pink rosebuds, and inside it was a pitcher full of water. Next to them was a glass. She reached eagerly for the pitcher, and as she did so there was a crash. She groped for the white cloth, expecting it to be drenched. But the surface her hand met was quite dry.

And it wasn't polished. In fact, it wasn't a cabinet at all. It was her own painted bedside table. There was no cloth. No pitcher. No basin. Only her alarm clock, and the reading lamp, overturned. With a trembling hand, she set it the right way up and switched it on.

She sat there until at last the shaking subsided enough for her to get out of bed and open the window, leaning out onto the sill and letting the rain wet her face and the sleeves of her pajama top.

At last she got back into bed. It had been the finding of that doll that had transformed this dream into a nightmare, she tried to tell herself. Somehow, her sleeping brain had connected it with those earlier dreams, turning its face into the one she had seen before. And the woman with the cup was fairy-tale stuff, obviously, probably brought on by reading that old book.

But the pitcher, the cloth, the basin? She had really seen those, she was certain. Her eyes had been wide open. Perhaps she had still been in some kind of half-sleeping, half-waking trance?

Yet underneath was another fear. Cold and lurking. For somehow she had
expected
that those things would be beside her. Even before she turned her head, she had known they would be there
.