Shiver (13 page)

Charles sat up, sweating. He’d had his nightmare again, the one about the house becoming a burnt-out ruin, himself gliding above it, able to see clearly inside. A roofless ruin with snow drifting in. In the distance, he could hear dogs barking; yelping and howling as if their lives depended on it. The dogs invaded his sleep. He woke up.

Remembering his dream, he looked up and saw with relief that the ceiling was still in place.

He flopped back onto the mattress and closed his eyes. Then he opened them again. Why
were
the dogs making all that noise?

Something was roaring on the floor below.

And he could smell something … something acrid, catching at the back of his throat. Smoke!

He leapt from his room in an instant, calling out the names of his brother and sister as he ran.

Sebastian appeared immediately from his room, having also been roused by the barking. Together, they stumbled down the narrow tower staircase, clutching at each other in the darkness. On the floor below, smoke billowed and filled the air, making them choke and splutter, so that it was almost impossible to see ahead. The dogs’ barking was more incessant now. They must have woken him in the first
place, Charles realized, although he was too preoccupied to think of this. All he could think about was escaping from the terrible inferno that their house had become.

On reaching Fiona’s bedroom, they found the door wide open and no one inside. A terrible crackling sound surrounded them. Still clutching at each other, they tried to make their way to the staircase, but were stopped in their tracks by a beam falling across their path, a burning timber which smashed sideways, trapping them where they were. For a moment, Sebastian hesitated, cowering in the darkness, too afraid to move. Charles, understanding that his brother was in shock, shook him, forcing him down onto his knees. It took some time before Sebastian realized what was being asked of him.

“Crawl,” Charles ordered. “Crawl on your knees.”

With no other option, they slithered below the fallen beam, managing to avoid the worst of the smoke. The air at floor level was cleaner, easier to breathe. As they passed their mother’s room, they saw orange flames licking the curtains, running up and down them like quicksilver, eating them alive. Like Fiona’s bedroom, it, too, was empty.

The fire was like a living, breathing monster, swallowing all in its path: a voracious animal that would stop at nothing. It was a force beyond them. They couldn’t hope to win this battle … only struggle to escape. They crawled their way down the stairs, in time to see another beam come crashing down on the floor above, ruining their home, their house … everything they held dear. Sebastian was crying, his breath coming in gasps now. They had no idea where the others were; if they were still alive, or if they were trapped
somewhere inside the flames.

“Where are they?” Sebastian sobbed.

“Keep going,” Charles begged. “Just keep going,” and he dragged his brother behind him, mindful of the blinding smoke that was thickening all about them with every passing second. The roar of the fire was deafening as they crawled on all fours away from the foot of the spiral staircase, shouting for their mother and Fiona as they went. Their hearts felt as if they were bursting from their chests. The grandfather clock stood where it had always stood, flat against the wall in the shadows, the last thing to burn … but it too would perish.

Everything in the world that they owned was now a huge conflagration, a bonfire that lit up the sky for miles around.

At the Sheriffmuir Inn they saw it. Even Mr MacFarlane down at Lynns Farm saw the orange glow above the treetops.

Once on the ground floor, the boys found their way to the kitchen and the outer door blocked by falling debris and swirling, choking flames. They had to find another way out. In the hallway, not far from the grandfather clock, was a grander, more formal-looking front door which was never used. Hidden behind a thick velvet curtain, it was so rarely breached that they mostly forgot it existed. They tried to open this now. However, through disuse, the bolts had rusted and it took several tense moments of jiggling and panicky brute force until they finally slid across and the key turned in the lock.

They threw the door open just as a whole interior panel came crashing down behind them.

Stepping into the night, the cold air hit them in stark
contrast to the blazing inferno from which they’d just escaped. Coughing and spluttering, they staggered clear of the flames, and lay prone on the frosty ground, sucking clean air into their lungs.

Sebastian was sobbing with the effort. Charles put an arm round his brother’s shoulder.

“Where are they?” Sebastian cried. “Where are the others?”

Charles said nothing. He did not know the answer to that question. Instead they sat in silence, catching their breath, watching their home burn.

Suddenly, in the darkness, Charles became aware of movement to the left of them and with immense relief saw figures huddled in a group and their sister running towards them, sobbing.

“We thought you were trapped,” she cried, grabbing at them both hysterically. “We thought you were trapped in the tower.”

The children gathered with Granny Hughes and her husband at the front of the building, watching the flames leap. Fiona was being comforted by Granny, who in turn was inconsolable. No one knew where Chris Morton was. No one had seen her.

Samuel and his mother appeared and ran across to join them, and they all stared helplessly as the fire tore through Dunadd, eating up carpets and curtains, swallowing tables and chairs, devouring everything in its path.

Everyone had the same thought. Charles was trembling.
Where was their mother?

The fire service had been called by the watchers at
Sheriffmuir Inn and was on its way but Sheriffmuir was an isolated place to get to. In the meantime, they had to watch their home burn.

“There she is. There,” cried Fiona, running towards a darkened figure, which had emerged from the side of the building, bent double and coughing, clutching something in her hand and preceded by barking dogs.

“Oh, thank God. You’re all safe,” Chris Morton whispered hoarsely, clutching her children to her.

She and Isabel stood side by side, the children huddled close. Soot and debris peppered the snow, which had gradually thawed over the past few days. At least the fire service would be able to access the moor; something which would not have been possible just a few days before.

Fiona grabbed her mother’s arm, and the boys gazed at their mother with wide-eyed relief. She was safe. For a few moments they had imagined the worst, but she was there before them, unharmed. Their mother. At times she annoyed them and they her, but life without each other was unthinkable … untenable.

As the great house before them crackled and roared, Chris Morton glanced around.

This is what is important
, she thought, looking at the people gathered about her.
Not a stupid old house … but this
.

The two families leaned close together for comfort, and watched Dunadd burn.

Flames leaped and roared, devouring the rafters, the turrets and the tower, leaving a blackened corpse, almost unrecognizable in its devastation. Dunadd House had stood
upon the moor for nearly five centuries. Now, a roofless ruin would take its place – just as in Charles’s dream. A shiver ran down his spine as he stood there in the cold, surrounded by his family and friends whom he loved, in spite of their differences, and in spite of the history that had hounded them all their lives.

It was a miracle that no one had even suffered from smoke inhalation. The exact cause of the fire remained unknown. Fire inspectors suspected that the wiring had been faulty for years and in need of repair, and was probably the cause of the blaze.

Others could confirm this, particularly Charles and Mr Hughes who had examined the power box in the basement. The electricity had been temperamental in recent days, to say the least.

They spent the night – their final night – all sleeping on sofas and chairs in Samuel’s cramped little cottage, Granny Hughes and her husband included. It was a terrible squash, but no one minded. None of them could quite believe what had happened. They were suffering from shock.

“It’s a mercy none of us were hurt, so it is,” Granny kept muttering.

The smell of smoke and charred remains drifted across the courtyard. The shell of the house remained. It could be rebuilt … but at a cost.

Fiona thought sadly about the grandfather clock, the grand piano, the paintings and family heirlooms, the antiques, the books … not to mention the rabbit that had perished in the
flames. The dogs had escaped with Mrs Morton. In fact it was the dogs that had saved them. As soon as they had smelled the flames, they had barked and barked to raise the alarm.

Chris Morton was thinking about the insurance. Nothing could replace what they had lost, but she reminded herself that they could have lost an awful lot more.

As they sat drinking tea by the roaring stove, the adults comforted each other with stories and memories about the past. A warm feeling emanated from them all, despite the terrible circumstances of their plight.

“I wonder how the fire
did
start?” Fiona whispered to Samuel, as she hugged her knees quietly in the shadows next to the stove.

He shrugged his shoulders, but both wondered if Eliza and John Morton may have had something to do with it. They could not have been more wrong.

“We’ve lost so much,” Granny was wailing.

Chris Morton shook her head sadly. “I always found it a burden, to be honest,” she admitted, although she did feel desperately sad at the thought of all their belongings; valuables, which had been in the family for generations, had all been wiped out in a single night. “There’s something liberating about starting again, from scratch. After all, we come into this world with nothing …”

Granny Hughes rolled her eyes. “That’ll be the shock talking,” she barked.

“Well, whatever it is, I managed to rescue one thing. This.”

She held up the framed tapestry that had hung in the library: the sampler of the two children standing beside the tower.

“Why?” Granny Hughes said, staring at it in astonishment. It was a poultry little treasure to have rescued, in Granny’s eyes.

Chris Morton shook her head. “I don’t really know why. It was signed by Catherine Morton herself. Maybe that’s it …”

Fiona reached for the tapestry and stared at the distorted stitches, delicately and neatly executed by Catherine Morton, when she was incarcerated in her own house at the end of her life.

“I noticed something else too,” Chris Morton surprised them all by saying.

“What?”

“You’ll need good eyesight.”

“I’ve got a magnifying glass if that’ll help,” Samuel cried. “It’s packed already, but I might be able to reach it at the top of the box.”

He disappeared and returned a few minutes later.

Chris Morton held the magnifying glass over the picture and they took turns at peering at the minute stitches. There was an emblem embroidered into the body of the tower.

“A skull and crossbones,” Fiona breathed. “It’s tiny.”

Samuel’s jaw dropped open. “It’s a symbol of the plague! That confirms what we thought all along.”

Fiona and Samuel both grew pale. Both were thinking of the hollowed-out eyes of the two ghost children, John and Eliza Morton.

“They died of the plague,” Fiona said in a small voice. “And they blamed their mother for abandoning them to it. There would have been nothing she could do.”

Then the ultimate horror occurred to them. That’s why
the room had been sealed off. It was believed to have been contaminated by the plague. In those days, there was nothing anyone could do for the victims. Anyone approaching them, or trying to help, would probably have contracted the plague and died too. So the room had been sealed off and bricked-up eventually. No one wanted to remember. Everyone wanted to forget.

But not their mother. She never forgot.

Isabel shuddered. “I think it’s about time we all had a milky drink. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I can’t sleep yet.”

“This cottage to rent on my sister’s farm …” Chris said speculatively, glancing towards Isabel, “… there are two of them actually.” Samuel’s ears pricked up. “I don’t suppose you’d consider renting the other one?”

Isabel glanced briefly at Samuel then smiled. “We’d love to.”

Fiona sat up and flung her arms round her mother.

“We can start again,” she said. “I know we can.”

“Five hundred years is a lot of time to make up for,” Chris Morton warned, thinking of the house and everything they had lost.

But Fiona felt as if she could face anything, as long as she had her family and Samuel by her side.

That summer a new sign was hammered up next to the wooden gate at the bottom of the drive.

Whoever bought this property would have to start completely from scratch.

And would they have heard the rumours of a couple of ghost children found in a sealed-off room? Stories had been told. Some of them true.

The spiralling staircase lay open to the sky – just as in Charles’s dream – and if you looked very carefully, it was said that you could see two pale children standing in the ruins. They vanished and re-appeared. Vanished and re-appeared. No one was really sure if they were there …

Dunadd House, as a ruin, had acquired a far worse reputation than it ever had when it was occupied. But maybe one day someone would claim it and take care of it. Otherwise, it would remain a wreck, slowly deteriorating with time.

Mr MacFarlane walked up there sometimes, and
occasionally thought that he glimpsed children among the charred remains. He wondered if the place would ever be sold.

“I wouldn’t buy it,” he muttered to himself, walking on. “Ghosts are best left to themselves.”

In the distance, something shimmered. Dressed unaccustomedly in a beautiful satin dress, Eliza smiled at her brother John.

“Come,” she said. “None shall harm us now.”

Then, taking each other’s hands, they drifted across the broken ruins, fading back into the walls of their home, to live with their memories.