The Dead of Winter (17 page)

‘All will be well,’ said Bentley quietly as we stood together on the platform. ‘All will be well.’

‘I hope so, Mr Bentley,’ I said, and boarded the train.

So here I am in my hotel room in Bristol. Tomorrow I join Mayhew’s ship and sail for Buenos Aires. From there I will head inland. I have heard that there are great opportunities in that country and I relish the chance to lose myself in a foreign land once more.

The voyage cannot come quickly enough, for though I have seen nothing to speak of, I have felt
pursued ever since I saw the spectre of Charlotte at the ruins of Hawton Mere. Some of the tension I felt in that house has returned and I seem to start at every floorboard creak. I am like a frightened child once more.

But what is that? Something comes, I can sense it. The wind outside has dropped and there is a deathly hush about the place. I am in a low and lively quarter of the port and yet an uncanny silence has descended upon the area.

Yet there is a whispering. No – not a whisper: a dry slither, like the scales of a snake. And now there is a tapping. It was light at first, but is getting stronger.
Tap. Tap. Tap, tap, tap
. It is on the window-pane on the other side of the heavy curtain of the room I am renting.
Tap, tap, tap
. I have heard that sound before.

Looking at the curtain in front of me, I am reminded of that tapestry curtain at Hawton Mere that I pulled aside to reveal the portrait of Lady Clarendon, or the bedroom curtain that concealed her ghost on the moat’s edge. What does
this
curtain conceal? I think I know. Oh God, I think I know.

The only way to be certain is to lay down my pen and open it.

Also by Chris Priestley

The Tales of Terror Collection:

Uncle Montague’s Tales of Terror
Tales of Terror from the Black Ship
Tales of Terror from the Tunnel’s Mouth

Mister Creecher

Copyright © 2012 by Chris Priestley

Electronic edition published in January 2012

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First published in Great Britain in October 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published in the United States of America in January 2012
by Bloomsbury Books for Young Readers
www.bloomsburyteens.com

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to
Permissions, Bloomsbury BFYR, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Priestley, Chris.
The dead of winter / Chris Priestley. — 1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
Summary: In Victorian England an orphaned boy goes to stay with his strange guardian
in a desolate, moated manor house during a cold and snowy Christmas, where he soon realises
that the house and its grounds harbour many secrets, dead and alive.
[1. Horror stories. 2. Orphans—Fiction. 3. Dwellings—Fiction. 4. Ghosts—Fiction.
5. Great Britain—History—Victoria, 1837-1901—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.P93445De 2012     [Fic]—dc23      2011022352

ISBN: 978 1 5999 0821 2 (ebook)