Shiver (5 page)

“I must get an electrician to fix this problem,” Chris Morton was complaining, as she pressed the switch on and off.

“What is it?” Granny asked her. “Lights gone again? I tell you, this house has a mind of its own, so it does. I’ll warrant the wiring’s dodgy.”

“I could get Jim to take a look at it,” Chris suggested hopefully. That would be one less thing to worry about, if he could fix the problem.

“I wouldn’t bank on it, if I were you, Mrs Morton,” Granny said in a sour voice. “Wiring’s not his thing.”

“Oh well, I’ll get someone else then. At some point,” Chris Morton murmured vaguely. “Oh look … it’s back on again,” she added in surprise, as the kitchen light decided of its own accord to switch on after all, flooding the dim room with light.

“That’s better,” Granny Hughes declared. “I can see better to cook now. Just as well. I don’t want to end up putting one of the pets in the pot.”

“Granny, really,” Chris Morton said, and chuckled slightly. “I don’t think Fiona would forgive you if you did.”

“She should keep that rabbit in its cage then, so she should.”

Chris Morton whisked the said rabbit into its cage, just to
be on the safe side and moved it away into another room.

“Fiona?” she called. “Come and see to this rabbit, will you?”

“Yes, Mum. Just coming,” a distant voice called from upstairs.

“What are they up to now, I wonder?” Chris Morton said.

“Goodness knows,” Granny added, in her dour tones. “I wouldn’t like to hazard a guess. You’d have thought they’d have wanted to go out in the snow … get the sledges out … or their skis. It’s certainly deep enough.”

Sebastian stood alone in the empty library, waiting for the others to reappear. He felt really foolish, not to mention sheepish. He should have listened to his brother’s anxieties the night before. Guiltily, he recalled how Charles had stood in his doorway, long after they should have been asleep, claiming he’d heard voices through the wall. It had all sounded so ludicrous at the time. And now here they were … finding hidden passages and stairways leading into unknown and unseen depths of the house, almost as if there were two worlds contained within the one. He wished he hadn’t been so dismissive of Charles last night. It had created tension between the two brothers, unsurprisingly. Sebastian had effectively accused him of lying or, at the very least, of imagining things, as if he were deranged or untrustworthy. He wondered how he could make it up to him.

He could hear noises coming from the hole in the fireplace. The others were returning.

“How did you get on?” Sebastian said, as they emerged from the hole in the back of the fireplace.

“We got so far, then …” Charles began.

“A dead end,” Fiona finished for him. “But we heard the voices Charles talked about. We could hear them clearly on the other side. They were talking about us.”

Sebastian looked surprised and shuffled his feet awkwardly. “I guess I owe you an apology,” he muttered, without looking at his brother. Charles shrugged. There was a small silence while everyone took this on board.

“What were you supposed to do, anyway?” Charles conceded. “It did sound a bit weird, I suppose.”

“A bit?” Sebastian couldn’t help exclaiming. “This is getting seriously creepy,” he added.

“I know … isn’t it amazing?” Fiona cried.

“That’s one word for it,” he said, not sounding quite so convinced as his sister.

“Anyway, Mum’s calling me,” Fiona said. “I’d better go.”

“Yeah … and we’ve got to tell her about this passageway. It’s so cool!”

“My mum’ll love this too,” said Samuel.

They tidied up the library a bit, then all rushed downstairs to tell Mrs Morton and Isabel about their discovery.

Meanwhile, in a hidden unseen part of the house, Eliza Morton sat surrounded by dust and debris. There was grey powder on the boards all about her, which hadn’t been disturbed in years. Across the floor were scattered some broken toys. Ruined books spilled from a damp bookcase and a fat spider scuttled over the mottled pages. It was a dank, gloomy place, which no light had penetrated in years. No child should have
had to remain here for long. But these two children had.

Eliza looked across at her little brother.

He sniffed sadly to himself, wiping a thin, bony wrist across his face.

Eliza had no patience with him. Finally, growing bored, she moved towards the wall and drifted through the cracks to the other side.

Her brother looked up to see her vanish. “Eliza, come back,” he wailed. “You must not go to the other side.”

But she could no longer hear him. He was all alone in the silent shadowy “other place” that no sane person would ever want to visit.

Mrs Morton and Isabel were shocked to learn that the children had been probing about again, into matters that were best left undisturbed. Granny Hughes certainly didn’t like the sound of it at all and said the children had no business to be meddling. Isabel was a bit softer in her prognosis.

“I suppose it keeps them out of mischief …” she murmured absently, in that vague way of hers. “A bit of detective work around an old house like this! If I was their age, I’d be at it too. In fact, I think I’d find it irresistible.”

Granny Hughes rolled her eyes, so that no one else could see.
What were these women like, with their fancy ideas and their artistic leanings
, she thought to herself sourly. “Lives with her head in the clouds, that one …” she muttered under her breath, but again, no one heard her … which was just as well.

“So …” Mrs Morton sighed, getting up wearily from where
she was seated at the table. “Let’s have a look at this secret entrance of yours. Just so we know what you’re talking about.”

The adults followed the children back up the stairs, through the drawing room, and into the library at the far end … the very room Chris Morton had always feared. Now here they were, staring at another unresolved mystery, one she had never suspected. A secret staircase, hidden behind a dummy fireplace; a fireplace she had never questioned the existence of. She had always known it had been blocked, but had never understood why, until now.

Granny Hughes had decided to remain in the kitchen. She had no desire to join in the fun and antics of the others. It was difficult enough trying to dust, clean and vacuum great draughty rooms, without finding out there were secret openings all over the place, leading to goodness knows where. No thank you. She preferred to do a bit of baking, leaving the others to their fanciful notions.

Upstairs, Isabel, Mrs Morton and the four children stood in front of the great yawning stone fireplace … so much larger than the room really warranted, in spite of its high ceiling, although this had never occurred to any of them before now. The library was a fairly narrow room, relatively speaking.

Isabel approached it gingerly. “So, where do you think it opens …?” she asked, peering closer.

Fiona was there before her. “We didn’t know how we got in at first. Samuel and I were just looking and then a stone swung open at the back. We couldn’t work it out. Then Sebastian made us realize …”

“It was an accident, really,” Sebastian added sheepishly.

“He leant on it by mistake,” Fiona cried, excited.

“Leant on what?” Chris Morton asked.

“The old servants’ bell. Here! Look!” Fiona pressed the big black button set into the plaster on the side of the wall. Immediately, a grating noise was heard and a stone at the back of the fireplace began to slide sideways.

Isabel and Mrs Morton stared and stared.

“Fantastic, isn’t it?” Fiona cried.

“Fantastically creepy,” Sebastian muttered.

“How … amazing!” Isabel murmured, stepping forward and gazing into the gaping void. “It’s a wonder the tourist books don’t mention it.”

Chris Morton was looking less thrilled by the discovery. “How could they if we didn’t even know it was here?”

“What is it, d’you think?” Samuel asked. “What was it used for?”

“We thought maybe a priest hole?” Fiona offered.

In all the excitement Charles remained quiet. He was the one, after all, who had suffered the closest contact with the mysterious intruders that apparently lived in the walls of the old house. However, the Morton children had wisely made no mention of this at all … Nor of the voices they had heard and the suspicions they harboured. They were too concerned about their mother’s negative reaction to it all, and the idea that she would insist on a house move. None of them wanted that.

Mrs Morton went to the back of the fireplace and inspected it closely. “I think you’re right … it must be a priest hole,” she decided. “I can’t think what else it would be. There
were plenty of them. I just didn’t know we had one here. It’s odd though. Did you say there’s no actual room or cubby? Just this staircase?” The children nodded. “Usually if a priest wanted to be hidden, he’d have an entire little chamber to hide in, complete with candles and books, a pitcher of water, some bedding maybe and other necessities. Where does the staircase go?”

Although she asked the question, she didn’t really want to know.

“It just goes on and on,” Fiona said, “up through the house. We think it ends in the tower.”

“Let’s investigate, shall we?” Isabel suggested eagerly.

Chris Morton shuddered again. “I really don’t want to, to be honest.” The thought of all that unknown darkness, with who knew what lurking there, wasn’t something that particularly appealed to her … but she didn’t want to let the children know that.

Isabel glanced at her friend sympathetically. “I suppose you’ve been through enough in this old house of yours,” Isabel said. “But we ought to check it out … make sure it’s safe. D’you want me to go first?”

Mrs Morton rallied. “No, no … we’ll all go together.”

They trooped up the secret staircase, along the pitch-black passage overhead; groping their way forward in the gloom, bumping into each other noisily and making quite a commotion. Fiona and Samuel hoped they wouldn’t come across anything significantly weird that would lead Mrs Morton and Isabel to suspect there was any reason to pack up and leave the house. Surely, with this much commotion, any ghosts lurking here would have made
themselves scarce long before, chased away by all the noise.

“Ouch!”

“Was that someone’s foot?” Mrs Morton apologized.

“Yes, mine,” Charles offered grimly.

“Can you just mind where you’re putting your elbow, Samuel,” Isabel grumbled.

“Honestly, you grown-ups are so noisy,” Fiona laughed. “We were
much
quieter on our own.”

“Well, it’s not easy …” Isabel breathed, labouring along. “We’re not as young as you lot.”

“Or as brave,” Fiona added.

“That’s a matter of opinion,” Isabel said.

“If we’re less brave,” Chris Morton qualified from the back of the line, “it’s because we know more.”

Finally, after much bickering and stumbling, they got to the end of the dreary passageway, and the adults rapped on the hollow-sounding bit of the wall.

“D’you know what I think?” Mrs Morton said, shining the flashlight at the brick wall before them. “I think Charles’s bedroom is behind here, and this is maybe an old entrance to it.”

“But why? And what for?” Charles asked.

His mother shrugged. “No idea, but all of this is making me uneasy. Let’s get back downstairs. I need some fresh air.”

After the discovery of the secret staircase, everyone felt a little nervous at Dunadd. Fiona sat in her room, on her four-poster bed and stared out of the window at the impenetrable dark. The power had failed again – it did this almost every night now – and a few candles glimmered on her mantelpiece.

“You be careful of those,” Granny had warned. “They’re dangerous. Don’t want this place going up like a torch.”

Her mother, Chris Morton, didn’t like the idea of them all having candles in their own bedrooms, but what else could they do?

Fiona glanced towards the window again to see if it was snowing, but let out a small gasp. A face was staring back at her through the window.

After the initial jolt of shock, she gathered her wits about her.
It’s your own reflection, silly
, she told herself sternly. Bravely she stood up, walked towards the window and made as if to wipe the glass. Her fingers froze on impact and she pulled them away automatically. It was not her own face she could see hovering there … she was sure of it. It was that of another … a little girl, grave and pale. She gazed at Fiona for a long painful moment with sad, grey eyes. Fiona was too frightened to scream … or to call for help.

She stood still and watched the image fade as if it had never been there at all. Outside it had begun to snow again, gentle flakes drifting down through the ebony sky.

Fiona tried to breathe some life back into her frozen fingers. Why was the glass so cold?

The face at the window had vanished, but could she trust her own senses? What had she really just seen?

Turning back, she realized that she
could
see her own reflection there now, dimly picked out by the candlelight.

Perhaps that was it,
she mused.
Perhaps it was just my reflection, distorted by the cold
.

But Fiona suspected in her hearts of hearts that that wasn’t true; that a child’s face had appeared to her, staring through the glass.

She stood up and drew the wooden shutters hastily against the night. As she sat on the edge of her bed again, Fiona felt a sudden need to speak to Samuel. She glanced at the clock above her mantelpiece. It was half past ten at night … too late to be wandering next door to the cottage to wake them up. But she couldn’t resist it. She had to.

Throwing her wardrobe door open, she grabbed a jumper and trousers and pulled them on. She crept down the eerie staircase to the floor below. It was so dark. She pressed one or two light switches hopefully but knew they wouldn’t respond.

By the time she had arrived in the kitchen, her eyes had adjusted to the gloom, but she was beginning to have second thoughts. What had she really seen out there? And what if it was still lurking outside?

How could a face be floating outside my bedroom window
?
She shook her head.

I don’t care
, she thought.
I have to talk to Samuel
.

She took a coat from the peg and pulled on a pair of boots. The heavy outer door squealed on its hinges as she pulled it open.

Although it was cold inside the house, it was even colder outside. There was a silence out on the moor that only snow could bring. Fiona recognized that feeling well. It happened every winter up on Sheriffmuir, and every winter it was quite magical and breathtakingly beautiful.

Tonight, however, it held an eerie possibility.

The fresh fall of snow had eliminated all footprints from the courtyard. No one had walked this way since the families had gone to their respective houses that evening.

She stepped out onto the virgin snow and made her own set of prints to the cottage next door. She didn’t go to the kitchen door, as she was afraid to disturb Isabel, but crept instead under the bare plum trees to Samuel’s bedroom window in the corner. She stood in the flowerbed and tapped on the glass. No response.

She tried again.

Behind her she heard a noise and spun round quickly, almost stumbling over in her panic.

It was Lucy, one of the dogs, who had followed her outside into the darkness.

“Lucy,” she whispered. “You gave me a fright.”

She patted the dog on the head and then turned back to the window to try again. She let out a scream loud enough to wake the dead.

The curtains had been pulled back and Samuel’s face was
staring out at her through the glass. He mouthed words of alarm at her, but she couldn’t hear him.

He opened the window with difficulty and tried to push the snow off the ledge so it didn’t fall into his room.

“What the …?”

“What d’you think you’re doing, scaring me like that?” Fiona screeched.

“Me? Scaring you?”

She held a hand to her pounding heart. “As if I’ve not had enough to deal with already,” she murmured, half to herself.

He shook his head. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but who is the one tapping on my window in the middle of the night?”

“It’s not the middle of the night,” she barked. “It’s quarter to eleven, actually.”

“Oh, well, that’s alright then,” he said sarcastically. He looked at her and the dog Lucy standing patiently behind her.

“What do you want anyway?”

“To talk to you.”

“Well are you going to stand there all night or are you going to come in?”

“Course not. Let me in.”

“Come to the back door,” he told her, then banged the window shut and disappeared from view.

After a few seconds, the red-painted wooden door clicked open and Fiona was ushered quickly into the kitchen. Lucy followed her hopefully.

“Don’t leave dirty prints,” Fiona told the dog, urging her to sit beneath the table on the stone flags.

“It’s freezing in here,” she added, looking about her at the
dark kitchen.

“It’s freezing everywhere. Now what do you want?”

“Well that’s friendly. I told you. I need to talk to you.”

“What about?”

They stared at each other in the gloom and Samuel lit a candle on the table.

“What’s happened now?” he persisted.

Fiona looked at him, and considered how best to put it. Samuel was watching her closely.

“You’ve seen something, haven’t you?”

Fiona nodded. “I think so, but then again maybe I didn’t.”

Samuel waited for her to elaborate.

“You won’t believe me if I tell you.”

“Try me.”

“I saw her,” Fiona said simply. “Through the window …”

She glanced at Samuel’s face and changed her mind. “It might well have been my own reflection. I suppose … that’s possible, isn’t it? But …”

Samuel nodded thoughtfully. “Of course it’s possible. But it wasn’t your own reflection, was it?” he said quietly.

She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”

Both of them were silent for a moment, staring at the flame of the candle between them.

“What did she look like?” Samuel asked. “Was she like Charles said?”

“She was young.”

“Younger than us?”

“Probably. I’m not sure.”

“What was she like?”

Fiona shrugged. “A bit like me, I suppose, only much
smaller … very thin … and her hair was darker.”

They stared at each other for a while, then Samuel continued.

“We need to talk to the others about this in the morning. If your mum gets wind of this …” Samuel began, “If she even
begins
to suspect that strange things are happening here again, she’ll throw a wobbly and threaten to move. You know she will. We have to do something.”

Fiona thought about it for a moment.
Were there more ghosts to worry about? More stories left untold?
She shifted in her chair, clicking her fingers for Lucy to come out from under the table.

“I guess it’s time I was getting back. We can talk about it properly in the morning.”

She glanced towards the closed kitchen door fearfully. She didn’t fancy having to go out into the dark again. Who knew what might be lurking out there? But she was too ashamed to admit that she might be scared.

“D’you want me to come with you?” Samuel offered.

“Don’t be daft,” Fiona cried, with false heartiness. “What good would that do? You’d only have to come back again … in your pyjamas,” she added. “It’s freezing out there.”

“You’ll be fine,” Samuel reassured her.

“Thanks … that’s reassuring,” she muttered sarcastically. “Think of me while you’re back in your warm bed and I’m facing who knows what outside!”

“You’ve got Lucy with you,” he protested. She grunted.

“S’pose so. See you later.”

Samuel stood on the doorstep and watched Fiona walk across the courtyard towards the big house. “Bye then,” he
called out, partly to encourage her. “See you in the morning.”

She turned and waved, before vanishing beneath the archway, towards her own house.

The cold crept around his feet and he shivered inside his slippers and dressing gown. He waited a moment or two, listening to the silence, then closed the door of the cottage.

A while later, Fiona had almost succeeded in falling asleep, when Lucy suddenly stood up. Fiona heard her claws clicking against the wooden floorboards. The dog stood near the half-open door, ears flattened, body tense and began to release a low threatening growl.

“What is it, Lucy? What is it, girl?”

But the dog remained where she was, refusing to budge.

Fiona crept out of bed, taking a few tentative steps towards the door, her heart pounding.

The dog never moved from her position.

Fiona knew that the corridor outside would be pitch-black. She’d be able to see nothing.

Fearfully, she put her hand on the door knob, and pulled the door open a fraction, her heart hammering in her chest like a drum.

A light was glimmering in the dark deserted corridor.

Fiona stared.

The girl stared back, a candle held high in one hand.

“Hello!”

Her face was pale and gleaming.

Fiona screamed, slammed the door shut and ran back to her bed. She stayed there, shivering, watching the pool of light under the crack of the door. Lucy had started to bark.

Suddenly there was a flurry of footsteps and the light vanished abruptly. The door burst open and Chris Morton appeared, looking ruffled and dishevelled.

“What is it?”

“Mum,” Fiona cried, clutching at her mother in a way she hadn’t done for years.

“What on earth is it? A nightmare?”

“Yes, yes, that was it.”

Despite her terror, Fiona was even more determined to keep quiet about what she’d just seen. She made a huge effort to pull herself together.

She’d talk to the others in the morning, maybe, but they mustn’t let their mother know what was happening … otherwise she’d sell up and leave. And they couldn’t let that happen.

“I’m fine, Mum. It was just a silly nightmare. It must have been that cheese sandwich I had before bed. They’re supposed to give you weird dreams. I guess I gave Lucy a fright too.”

Chris Morton shook her head. “D’you want Lucy to stay in here for the night?”

“I don’t mind,” Fiona murmured, trying to play it down.

“Well, if you’re sure …”

“I’m fine now, honestly.”

“Go to sleep then,” Chris Morton instructed her and closed the bedroom door behind her.
All was quiet in the house. A little girl with ice-cold hands paused at the head of the staircase and peered down. She had been bored for many a long year, but now life was just beginning to get interesting again.

Outside it was snowing. She remembered how that used to look, when the trees were glittering and leaning under the weight of it. Everything would turn to glass as it slowly froze under the blue light of the moon. Winters were so much colder back then.

She heard someone approaching on the staircase. Chris Morton was climbing the stairs back to her room, after fetching a hot drink from the kitchen.

The little girl leant over the banister and watched in silence.

Chris Morton pressed a light switch and the first-floor landing glowed with artificial light. The little girl melted away. The older woman was talking to herself, while the girl listened, invisible as air.

“Thank goodness. The power’s back on.”

The upstairs corridor was bathed in light. This annoyed the little girl. She preferred the shadows. She lifted her nightrobe and swept in silence.

The electric lights were evenly spaced along the walls, brown glass globes that each gave off a soft light. The light switch controlled all six of them; they were not independent of each other.

On impulse she decided to play a little game. As Chris Morton walked along the upstairs corridor, Eliza made the lights go out behind her … one by one. Chris Morton turned and stared. She was a brave woman: she was unafraid of the dark, or of loneliness, otherwise she would not have lived here, in so isolated a place.

The lights continued to go out behind her, until at last she was left in total darkness, with the light switch nowhere in
reach. She glanced behind her. The corridor was one long tunnel of darkness. Her rational side told her that the wiring in this house was decidedly peculiar and needed looking at … but her imagination could feel a presence at the end of the corridor … someone watching her.
Don’t be ridiculous
, she told herself.
There’s no one there. Just another power cut
.

Chris Morton appeared in her daughter’s room.

“Fiona,” she whispered hoarsely.

No answer.

Something stirred under the duvet in the four-poster bed.

Fiona sat up, looking puzzled.

“Mum? Is that you?”

“Just checking to see if you’re still awake,” Chris murmured, somewhat breathlessly.

“Well, I was asleep, but …”

“I’ve brought you a hot drink. The electricity came back on for a moment and then went off in a rather strange way.” She told Fiona what had happened. “Must be the wiring,” she finished. “I keep meaning to get it checked. Anyway …” She placed a steaming mug on the bedside table and patted her daughter’s arm. “Night then.”

“Night.”

Reluctantly Chris Morton closed the door behind her and ventured out onto the dark landing. She returned to her own room telling herself that nothing out of the ordinary had happened.