Hidden (Marchwood Vampire Series #1) (26 page)

By the
afternoon, Maddy had only had a couple of ‘oh no I’ve got a
skeleton in my cellar’ thoughts. They spent most of the warm
afternoon outside, chatting and mucking about in the maze,
interspersed with the odd few bursts inside on the Wii.

At about six
o’clock, Maddy offered to defrost some pizzas for them all and they
sat in the lounge watching The X Factor, eating and chatting. Ben
stayed up until nearly midnight, finally falling asleep on the sofa
and Travis carried him upstairs to bed. It was a good night,
relaxed and fun. Kerri and Taff were in the sixth form at KG and
said they’d keep an eye out for Ben at school.

The
Grandfather clock ticked quietly in the corner. It was already two
twenty and her visitors showed no signs of leaving.

‘
There’s loads of room here if you want to stay over,’ she
said, willing them to say yes.

To her relief,
they eagerly accepted, so Maddy gave them a couple of rooms. Happy
to have some more company in the house and exhausted from her lack
of sleep the night before, she fell into a dreamless slumber the
minute she closed her eyes.

On Sunday,
none of them woke up until lunchtime, when they all had a chatty,
enjoyable brunch of fried egg sandwiches on the sunny terrace.
Things felt almost normal and Maddy only felt a small stab of worry
when Kerri said she and Taff had better get going. Travis kissed
her on the cheek, saying he’d had an excellent time and Kerri made
her promise to give her a call so they could go out together. She
said goodbye and watched the yellow transit disappear from
view.

The rest of
Sunday never really got going. Ben and Maddy slobbed around in the
house for a bit, then she helped Ben with some History and Maths
homework. They watched an early evening film and then, suddenly,
the day was done.

The bad dreams
returned that night and Maddy slept with the light on again.

*

When Ben went
off to school on Monday morning, Maddy had to think about what she
was going to do. She couldn’t carry on like this, living in a
constant state of dread. Her unease was partly because she didn’t
know what else lurked in the room.

She had to
face the inevitable and go back down there. She would do it while
Esther was in the house, and then if she got really freaked out, at
least someone else would be around. Esther was better than no
one.

Maddy found
what she wanted in Morris’ outbuilding – a couple of large halogen
lights. If she was going to do this, no way would she do it in
semi-darkness. At least these would take some of the fear factor
away. She hoped.

As she stepped
out of the stone shed, gripping the lights, everything suddenly
seemed supernaturally quiet. She paused for a moment in the warm,
still air … Then she gave herself a shake and forced herself to go
on, her feet crunching loudly on the gravel in the silence of the
morning. Maddy hurried past the Land Rover, still parked up on the
side lawn, the rope stretched across the pathway. She began to get
that unsettled feeling back.

Esther was
rootling about in one of the utility room cupboards. She whipped
her head round to look at Maddy as she walked through the back
door, her sharp gaze settling on the halogen lights she carried.
But Esther said nothing. Just sniffed and walked past, picking up
the laundry basket and taking it outside.

Madison
grabbed the torch with her free hand and unlocked the cellar door.
She told herself not be such a wimp, but she almost shook as she
descended the stone steps, she couldn’t help it. She held the torch
out. Her stomach felt weak and watery.

The opening in
the wall looked raw and wrong, like the gap left by a pulled tooth.
She found an electric socket nearby, plugged in both halogens,
pressed down the switches and bathed the large cellar in white
light. That felt better. She switched off the torch, grasped the
handle of one of the lights and shone its wide beam at the hidden
room. The stone wall itself was fully intact. The door had been
ripped cleanly away and the dust had finally settled. In the
sweeping light, she now had a clear view of it.

Again, she
thought maybe she should call Mr Vasey-Smith and ask him what to
do. But then Madison got annoyed with herself. She had wanted her
independence for so long and now here she was with her own house
and no one to interfere in her and Ben’s lives. She should be able
to sort this out on her own without running to an adult every time
there was a problem.

Maddy decided
she wouldn’t tell anybody anything until she had looked under the
dust sheets. She had seen one dead body, so what difference would a
few more make? Quite a lot of difference actually, but she wouldn’t
dwell on that. If she found more skeletons, then that would be
that. At least she would know. She would tell Mr Vasey-Smith and he
could sort it out. But if it wasn’t skeletons, well … there might
be some interesting stuff down here and she wanted to discover that
for herself.

‘
Come on, Maddy girl,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Don’t be
such a wuss.’

Gripping the
halogen light tightly, she forced herself towards the opening. She
rigidly avoided looking at the skeleton, and instead stared
straight ahead at the white sheets. She pulled on the dusty corner
of the nearest one and dragged it off the top of the large object,
throwing up cobwebs and dust which swirled and floated like grey
candy floss in the flood of light.

Then she
walked towards the skeleton with the sheet in her hands. She shook
out the large piece of cloth so it billowed out to finally settle
back down on top of the grisly tableau, hiding it from view. Maddy
felt calmer. Now it was covered up, it didn’t seem quite so
terrifying.

She now turned
her attention to what had been underneath the dust sheet - a huge
rectangular wooden crate, bigger than the ones in the main part of
the cellar. The pale wood looked almost new and Maddy caught a
whiff of sawdust. She walked around the crate and pulled at all the
other sheets, revealing yet more crates. Wiping fronds of cobwebs
from her face, she sneezed a couple of times. Apart from the
sleeping skeleton and the crates, there didn’t appear to be
anything else in the room.

Maddy felt a
fleeting surge of courage and decided to go one step further. She
went back out into the main cellar and found the crowbar. If she
didn’t do this now, she never would. If she found anything
horrible, she would run out of the cellar and call Vasey-Smith
immediately.

Before she had
time to change her mind, she went up to the first crate with the
crowbar. To her surprise it wasn’t nailed shut. The lid fitted
snugly into the box, but she prised it out easily.

Maddy moved on
autopilot. She slid the lid off, holding her breath in a mixture of
anticipation and fear at what she would discover. Looking down, she
gazed in astonishment at the contents.

Lying,
cushioned in blankets was a life-sized statue. But a statue so
beautiful she couldn’t turn away from it. Almost lifelike, it lay
there like a sleeping beauty - the statue of a young man, dressed
in an old fashioned suit.

She touched
the face. It felt like stone. She tapped the cheek with her
fingernail. It could have been made of porcelain, like an old
fashioned doll. It had pale skin and dark wavy hair. The deep-set
eyes were closed beneath thick, black brows, the jaw was square,
the cheekbones high and regal. It looked like the statue of a
nobleman or somebody important. God, it was stunning. Maddy
wondered if it had been modelled on a real life person and she
wished more than anything that she could have met him, whoever he
was.

She finally
tore herself away from her gazing and walked over to the second
crate. She threw a quick glance over her shoulder to check the
skeleton was still covered - it was - and then she prised open the
second crate. In it lay another statue, again of a young man, a boy
really. This one looked slightly younger than the first, very
similar in looks but with fair hair. And again, stunningly
handsome.

She opened the third and saw another statue, this time of a
gorgeous young blonde girl wearing an old-fashioned gown of green
and gold. The gown looked so much like real material, with folds
and creases that glittered and shimmered in the dusty light. Maddy
reached down to touch the dress and was surprised to feel it
was
real material. So
maybe they were like waxworks with real costumes or something? But
they didn’t feel like wax, they felt too hard and looked too
perfect. They were like life-size dolls with old fashioned clothes.
They must be least a hundred years old.

The final two
boxes contained more statues, one of a girl and one of a boy. The
girl was black haired and the boy had brown curls, also both
unbelievably beautiful. The girl vaguely reminded her of someone,
but she couldn’t quite remember...

She was drawn
back to the first crate and knelt down on one of the dust-covered
sheets on the floor. All the statues were incredible, but Maddy’s
attention was held by this man. She stroked its hard sculpted cheek
again and ran a finger along the deep red lips. She put a hand on
its head and was amazed to find its hair felt real and wasn’t
carved stone like the skin of the statue.

She hadn’t
found hidden treasure, but this was so much more interesting. Maybe
the former occupants of the house had images made of themselves. It
was a bit of a weird thing to do, but hey, if Maddy looked half as
gorgeous as they did, maybe she’d want to make a statue of herself
too.

She had it!
She knew where she recognised that girl-statue from – it had
exactly the same face as the girl in the portrait, the painting
she’d discovered in the cellar last week. Maybe she was an
ancestor. What a find. Ben would be amazed when she showed him.
She’d have to do something about that skeleton first. He didn’t
need to know about that.

She really
didn’t see how she’d be able to tear herself away from this
angel-faced sculpture. It mesmerised her. She wondered what colour
his eyes would have been and imagined what it would’ve felt like if
he’d gazed back at her. She shivered dreamily.

‘
You are too beautiful,’ she murmured, sitting there in a
trance, staring. She felt oddly at ease now. The relief of not
finding any more dead bodies was huge. She could almost relax.
Being in here, now the skeleton was covered over, no longer
terrified her. She felt just the memory of fear with the new
sensation of pleasure and peace at having found such beauty. She
knew it was crazy, but she felt an affinity with these statues. It
was almost as if ... as if she
knew
them.

‘
Who were you?’ she asked softly. ‘And what are you doing
bricked up in this room?’ She should’ve felt silly, talking to
herself, but she didn’t. She felt calm and strangely happy. She
couldn’t wait for Ben to come home so she could show him her
amazing find.

After she’d
had her fill of gazing at the statue, Maddy spent the rest of the
morning cleaning up the hidden room. First she detached the Land
Rover winch from the metal door. The door was too heavy for her to
move though, so she had to leave it propped up against the window
on top of the crates. Then, not able to put it off any longer, she
knew she had to dispose of the corpse. This was the bit she’d been
dreading, but she gritted her teeth and came up with a temporary
plan.

With a large
broom, she pushed the grisly contents of the bed onto a dust sheet
on the floor. Thankfully the top sheet hid the bones from view, but
she could hear them knocking and rattling together and could almost
feel the shape of them as she swept. She squealed and screamed,
then started singing really loudly, looking the other way,
shuddering and trying not to think about it.

When the bed
was clear, except for the mattress, she picked up the tin cup and
candlestick from the bedside table and chucked them into the sheet.
She picked up the small black leather book and was about to throw
that in too, but changed her mind and put it back on the table. She
hadn’t read it yet.

Gathering up
the ends of the dust sheet, Maddy tied them in a knot and heaved
the whole lot into an empty packing crate. She nailed down the lid
and pushed it back out into the cellar, along the narrow corridor
and into one of the little side rooms. She would deal with it
later. Much later.

Maddy covered
the empty bed with another dust sheet and left it there. Then she
swept all the dust out of the room, vacuumed in all the corners and
scrubbed the floor with warm soapy water and bleach. Finally, she
went into the main cellar and opened all the windows as wide as
they would go (apart from the one obscured by the metal door).

Later on,
she’d get someone down here to fix the strip light. The hidden room
had no windows or lighting, but that was no problem, she would just
use the halogen lights. Before leaving, she stacked a couple of
empty crates in front of the hole in the wall, to conceal the
entrance.

It was after
2pm when she finally emerged upstairs, shaky and starving but
feeling great. It was as if the whole house had taken on a newer,
lighter atmosphere.

Maddy stepped
out of her dirty clothes, showered and came downstairs into the
kitchen to grab something out of the fridge. There was a tuna salad
- that would do nicely. She sat on the terrace and shovelled it in,
all the while thinking about the statue of the dark-haired man.

Chapter
Sixteen

1881

*

‘
You need to get out of here. Now!’

Jacques opened
his mouth to protest, but Isik stopped the boy’s words with a
glare.