The Haunting of Blackwood House (5 page)

A creaking noise reached her, and Mara closed the wardrobe doors. She listened to the sound for a moment before identifying the steady, repetitive groans as belonging to the rocking chair in the living room.
Neil must have come down. He can’t have finished upstairs that quickly, surely?

Mara followed the noise, moving through the recreation room’s other door and into what she assumed was a library. Solid wooden shelves lined the walls, but they were devoid of books. Past the library was the sitting room. Mara paused in the doorway. The fireplace remained empty and cold as though begging for a handful of wood and a spark. “Home Is Where The Heart Is” hung on the wall beside her. The lounge chairs seemed even more moth-eaten than the day before, if that was possible. And the rocking chair rolled on its struts, back and forward, back and forward as its wood groaned. Mara was alone in the room.

“Neil?” she called.

“Everything okay?” The faint reply came from above her head.

Mara stared at the gently rolling chair for a moment, then crossed to it and placed her boot under the strut to stop its motion. The creaking was silenced. “Yeah, everything’s fine.”

She backed away from the chair and returned her pen to the paper, writing “Breeze in the living room; source unknown—possibly the fireplace?”

The room’s windows were intact except for a small crack running across one pane. Mara made a note of that then returned to the foyer. There was some decay around the doorway, and several floorboards were rising. She wrote them down then opened the front door to look outside.

The sun was already setting. Mara was used to living in the heart of the town, where trees were a luxury. The dark trees around her house were thin but grew high, and the boughs were smothering the dipping sun and welcoming shadows into Mara’s home.
Thank goodness Neil thought to bring torches.

She climbed the stairs and found Neil at the end of the hallway, scribbling notes about a patch in the wall where the wood had been eaten away to leave fist-sized holes. He turned at the sound of Mara’s footsteps and smiled. “All done downstairs?”

“I got the worst of it. We’ll need to throw a bunch of stuff out, but there’s still plenty of furniture that’s good to use.”

“What a find, huh?” The warmth in Neil’s voice was genuine though hints of tightness still lingered around his mouth.

She laced her hand through his as they walked back to their makeshift bedroom. “Ready for some dinner?”

“Absolutely. I hope steaks are okay.”

“Never leave me.”

Mara scribbled a list of high-priority shopping while Neil set up his portable gas cooker. She would never admit it to his face, but she was becoming increasingly grateful for his planning. While she’d been prepared to slum it on the least damaged of the house’s furniture for the first few nights, there was something beautifully comforting about having a clean sleeping bag and fresh pillow, not to mention torches and a heater. The air was cooling as night set in properly, and Mara was cocooned in one of Neil’s blankets.

“I didn’t get time to examine the roof.” He dropped two steaks onto the sizzling cooker. “It looks pretty bad from the outside, but thankfully, it’s not impeding us right now. All of the ceilings on this floor are fine, which is surprising—I would have expected some water damage at the very least. But it’s good news for us. It means we can save the work on the roof until later, after we’ve patched up the holes on the first two floors.”

“How long’s the whole job likely to take?”

Neil thought for a moment. “Well—it’ll just be you and me working on it, but the house’s structure is basically solid. As long as we don’t find any larger problems, the bulk of the major repairs should be done within a fortnight, and I’d say we can fix up the small stuff—the repainting and repairing cosmetic flaws—over the next six months.”

“Six months isn’t too bad.”

“Not at all. Of course, we’ll need to get electricity run through here, too. That’s going to be a large job, and it’s not something I can do. I’ll ask around my contacts and see if any of them will give us a friend’s discount.”

The smell of cooking meat permeated the room as Neil flipped the steaks, and Mara inhaled deeply. “You’re the best, Neil.”

“I am, aren’t I?” His mischievous grin made Mara laugh, and he scooted backwards to sit next to her. “I can’t promise to be here every day, but Joel should be okay with me taking the afternoon off work for the next few weeks. I can swing by around three and stay into the evening.”

Mara rested her head against his shoulder. “I’d really like that, but your mother still needs to see you occasionally, too.”

He gave a small nod. His mother hadn’t been coping well since losing her husband eight months before, and Neil had moved back into his childhood home to look after her. He said Pam often floated about the house aimlessly and skipped meals unless he was there to watch her.

It worried Mara. She’d heard stories about couples dying within a year of each other—either from grief or because the change in their life was too great to reconcile—and dearly hoped Neil wouldn’t have to lose his mother prematurely, too.

It put him in a difficult situation, though. He was an only child, so the responsibility of caring for his mother fell to him alone. He was already juggling his work and home life, and Mara’s new house would place additional strain on him. Even just staying with her for the night was a huge sacrifice. As far as Mara knew, he hadn’t spent such a long stretch of time away from home since his father had passed.

Neil moved back to the cooker to scoop the steaks off. An idea had been hovering around the back of Mara’s mind during the two weeks between buying Blackwood and moving into it. She licked her lips before asking, “How are things at home?”

He didn’t look at her, but his voice was cheerful. “Not too bad. The doctor’s talking about weaning Mum off the sleeping pills. She still seems lost sometimes, but she hasn’t had any more major lapses in memory. She knows what year it is and things like that.”

Mara stared at her folded hands. “Tell me if I’m being horribly rude here, but have you thought that your mother might do better in a new environment?”

“Yeah, I have.” Neil sighed as he settled next to her and handed her a plate. It was loaded with not just the steak but also potato salad, precooked beans, and a handful of the leaves Mara had found in the icebox. “I suggested it to her the other week, but it upset her too much to pursue it. She’d probably do better if she were somewhere that didn’t constantly remind her of Dad, but at the same time, she’s not ready to let him go. And I don’t think a simple change of house would be enough. She’d need a new purpose in life, too. Right now, she doesn’t have anything to fill her hours.”

Mara’s mouth was dry. “You know, Blackwood’s got plenty of room. Once there aren’t any holes in the roof, you and your mother could stay here. I—I dunno—she might like to help with making it a proper home, or something—”

Neil was silent for a very long time. Mara was frightened to look at him. She dreaded seeing signs of reluctance, but when she glanced up, his shining eyes only reflected surprise and deep gratitude. “You’d be okay with that?”

“I think I would.” She shrugged awkwardly. “I mean, I’d ask that she didn’t bring any of the religious stuff into the house—or, at least, keep it in her room—but, well, I don’t think I’d mind living with her if it’s
my
home. That makes a difference, y’know?”

“Mara—” Neil’s voice was thick. He pressed a warm kiss to her forehead then gave her a broad smile. “Thank you. I don’t know if she’ll go for it—she probably wouldn’t want to move within the next few months at least—but maybe that might just work.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Mara couldn’t stifle her grin as she leaned against Neil’s shoulder. A hot glow had started in her chest. Unlike an apartment or small house, Blackwood had plenty of room for the three of them without any stepping on toes. Pam was a sweet, gentle woman, and Mara loved Neil more than anyone else in the world. She thought the three of them could be happy together.

She picked the carefully arranged pile of salad leaves off her plate and dropped them onto Neil’s. He groaned.

When Mara pushed into the bathroom, toothbrush in one hand and flashlight in the other, she was confronted with a bizarre distortion of her face. The large mirror over the sink had been shattered; a tennis-ball-sized impact area marred its surface, and a spiderweb of fractures spread out from it, turning the surface into a freak-house installation. Mara saw two dozen copies of her own brown eyes blinking out of the panes and made a face at them.

The remainder of the bathroom showed its age. The porcelain bathtub had chips and cracks running down its side and would likely need to be replaced. The toilet’s lid was missing. A handful of the wall’s tiles had fallen loose and lay amongst the dust and dead insects that gathered in the room’s corners.

The water had been reconnected at the same time as the gas, but that didn’t mean it would actually come through the pipes. Twenty years was a long time for anything to sit dormant. Mara turned the sink’s tap and listened to the horrific grinding rumble that began below her feet and seemed to travel through the house. The tap shuddered, then deep-red water spewed from it.

Mara gasped and took a step back. She knew it was only rust, but the liquid was such a vivid colour that it was easy to imagine it as blood. She watched in fascination as the stream painted the sink scarlet before gradually lightening and eventually clearing. She let it run for a few minutes more before scooping up a handful to taste it.

The water was surprisingly cold. It tasted as though it was saturated with minerals, but it wasn’t an unpleasant flavour, so Mara propped her flashlight upright on the sink to illuminate the room, dunked her toothbrush under the water’s flow, and began brushing.

A sound echoed above her head. Mara turned the tap off and looked towards the ceiling. There was silence for a second, then the groaning noise repeated, moving towards the back of the bathroom.
Feet straining aged wood. Neil must have gone to check the roof after all.

Mara turned the tap back on and resumed brushing. The footsteps continued through the attic until they’d almost faded from hearing and then returned, pacing above her head. A sprinkle of dust, disturbed from the ceiling, fell into the sink.

Motion in the spiderweb mirror made Mara jolt, and she swivelled to face the bathroom’s doorway. Neil stood in the opening. His face was pale and eyes wide. He spoke in a whisper. “Do you hear that?”

Mara turned the tap off again and dropped the toothbrush into the sink. She stared at the ceiling and listened to the footsteps reach the end of the house, turn, and resume pacing.

“Damn it.” Her mouth was dry. Half of her wanted to believe it was the wood flexing as the air cooled, but there was no mistaking the steady tempo of the creaks. There was a person in her attic.

Neil crept closer and felt for her hand in the dim light. His blue eyes, normally so bright and optimistic, were filled with fear as they followed the creaks.

Mara scowled and snatched her torch off the bench. “Stay here; I’ll check it out.”

“Are you insane?” he hissed, tightening his grip on her hand so that she couldn’t leave. “Haven’t you watched any horror movies? The moment we split up, we’re
both
getting murdered by the boiled-cabbage stalker.”

Mara squinted at her partner. “You’re really fixated on that metaphor, aren’t you? Okay, you can come with me if you want.”

“
Or
, consider this.” Neil seemed to be trying to keep his voice light, but the sheen of sweat over his forehead betrayed him. “We could get in my car and leave right now and
not
die horrifically.”

“No one’s going to die horrifically. Ten to one, it’s a homeless guy who thought this was an abandoned building he could sleep in, or a kid here on a dare. You can stay downstairs if you want, but I’m going to have a talk with them.”

“I am
not
letting you go up there alone.”

“Then come with me. I don’t get why this is such a big deal for you.”

The creaking fell silent then, and both Neil and Mara raised their eyes to the spot, not far above their heads, where the intruder rested.

“Please,” Neil began, still keeping his voice to a whisper.

“Nope.” Mara pulled towards the bathroom door, and Neil, unwilling to release her hand, followed. “At least let’s bring a knife.”

“Yeah, that would be smart. But don’t charge in there waving it like a madman. I want to
de
-escalate this situation, okay?”

Neil retrieved the small paring knife he’d used to prepare dinner and wiped it clean on his jeans. He looked as though he wished he’d brought a butcher’s blade instead. Mara waited in the hallway and kept an eye on the staircase at the end of the passage in case the intruder tried to come down, but the footsteps didn’t resume.

“Ready?” she asked as Neil joined her.

The house was pitch-black. Neil had picked up his own torch, and their two beams brought small patches of the dark-wood walls into relief. “This is crazy,” was all he said before leading her to the stairs. He evidently didn’t want her entering the attic first.

The stairs started at the end of the hallway and rose up the side of the wall. They were narrow and rickety, and it was impossible for Mara and Neil to keep them quiet as they climbed towards the hatch that opened into the attic.

“It’s bolted on this side with a padlock,” Neil whispered. “Whoever’s up there can’t get down to us.”

“Can you break it?”

A sigh. “Probably. It looks rusty.”

Neil used the back of his torch to beat at the lock. On the third strike, it came free and clattered to the floor below them. With a final pleading look at Mara, which she refused to acknowledge, Neil took a fortifying breath and pushed the trapdoor up.

The metal hinges wailed as the hatch flipped over. Neil climbed an extra stair, so that his head and shoulders were in the attic, and swivelled. After a moment’s pause, he continued climbing. Mara followed.

The attic stretched the length of the house. At the roof’s peak, the ceiling was high enough that Mara could have stretched her arm up and still not touched it.

Streams of cold moonlight fell through the holes in the ceiling and painted strange mottles of light over the attic’s contents. More than a hundred boxes were stacked around the room. White cloths covered large, hulking shapes like shrouds, and the floor was coated in dry leaves. Mara panned her torch across the space but couldn’t see any movement. “Hello?”

When no reply came, she nudged Neil and indicated that they should start searching. Neil swallowed thickly, shifted the knife in his fist, and moved towards the closest stack of boxes.

“We know you’re here,” Mara said as she began moving along the other side of the house, parallel to Neil. “We could hear you walking. I’m not angry, but I want you to leave. This is private property.”

The only sounds she could make out were the crunches of their boots on the dried leaves and their shallow breathing. Neil stopped beside the first shrouded shape and whisked its cloth off. Underneath was a full-length mirror.

“If you make yourself known, we’ll let you leave peacefully.” She reached a shape on her side of the room and pulled the fabric away to expose a wardrobe. She opened the door, but the inside was empty. “We won’t press criminal charges.”

Neil’s beam of light shook faintly as he directed it into each dark crevice and hiding spot he passed. The deep shadows were playing tricks on Mara’s eyes, so she searched slowly and methodically as they continued along the length of the building and pulled the cloths off each piece of furniture. By the time they reached the opposite wall and faced each other, Mara was shivering from the frigid air.

“Did we miss them?” Neil mouthed.

Mara frowned and shook her head. They’d both been thorough, she knew. Every gap a person could hide in and every cupboard had been searched. She paced back along the attic until she reached the largest hole in the roof. While the others were no bigger than her head, this gap was easily wide enough for a person to climb through. Mara pushed her torso through it, ignoring the faintly panicked noises Neil was making, and shone her torch across the roof. It was empty. She then directed her beam to the front lawn and scanned over the shrubs and trees clustering about the driveway.

“My best guess,” Mara said, pulling back inside, “is they got out through this hole and climbed down the side of the building. Which means they wanted to avoid being caught and will move on pretty quickly.”

“Okay.” Neil looked relieved. He turned his light across the attic a final time. “Okay, cool. I really hate this, Mara.”

“Hah! Yeah, I know.” She turned away from the hole. “C’mon. It’d be smart to search the house before we go to sleep, but I’m pretty sure we won’t be disturbed tonight.”

They wove towards the open trapdoor, picking their way around the boxes and discarded furniture. Mara paused beside one large cardboard carton and nudged the lid open with her shoe. Inside was a stack of VHS tapes. “Do you think this is all from the last owners?”

“I don’t know how long they lived here, but some of this stuff looks… well, ancient.” Neil waved his torch towards a tarnished, scuffed grandfather clock. “Some of the boxes look like they’d be twenty years old, but others are almost falling apart. Maybe a series of owners left their unwanted possessions here.”

Mara reached the exit and began climbing down the narrow stairs. Neil followed and pulled the trapdoor back in place behind them. Once they were on the second floor, she stretched. “Okay, ready to search this place? Just in case?”

“I wouldn’t sleep otherwise.”

“Sure. We’ll cover more ground if we split up—” Neil frowned, and Mara chuckled as she gave him a playful shove. “That was a joke. Calm down.”

They moved through the upper floor quickly. Mara stood in the hallway, watching both the staircase up and the staircase down, while Neil went into the rooms one by one and ensured they were empty. Then they moved to the ground floor, where they repeated the motions; she guarded the stairs at the back of the foyer and the front door while he cycled through the downstairs rooms. By the time he appeared in the dining room entrance and shrugged, Mara was completely sure they were alone. She kept her smile bright and her trembling hands discreetly hidden as she went to him. “See? No one got murdered.”

“Yeah.” Neil sighed. He seemed to be relaxing. “Hey, did you know you have a basement?”

Mara raised her eyebrows. “I have a basement?”

“You do. I thought it was a cupboard at first, but there’s a door that opens onto a stairwell.”

“Damn, this is the house that just keeps on giving. Where is it?”

Neil followed her as she darted into the kitchen. “It’s in what I’m assuming is the recreation room. I didn’t search it, though—the dust was thick enough to show no one had been down there.”

“Well, let’s check it out now.” Mara hurried through the kitchen and into the recreation room and quickly located a narrow door hidden behind the couch, which blended into the room so well that she had completely overlooked it during her exploration earlier that evening. She pulled the door open and coughed as disturbed dust billowed out.

Neil followed, a pained look scrunching his face. “Hey, do you think we could maybe save going down the creepy stairs for later? Sometime when it’s not, you know, midnight?”

“No.” Mara angled her torch’s beam at the stone steps and walls. It was a narrow stairwell—it would have to be travelled single file—but unlike the rest of the house, it was free of spiderwebs. The air that came from inside was almost arctic cold. “I’ve never lived in a house with a basement before. I want to see what it’s like.”

Neil grimaced.

“C’mon. We can turn it into a fun game—What’s Scarier, The Basement Or The Attic?”

Neil’s grimace intensified.

“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.” Mara began descending the stairs. She hadn’t taken three paces before Neil’s footsteps began following hers.

The stairs continued deep below the house. When the floor finally levelled out, Mara was shivering and her breaths plumed in the frigid air. She turned in a circle and panned her light across the room.

It was a disappointment. Instead of extending the length of the house as she’d hoped, the basement was no larger than the bedroom they were camping in. It was completely bare save for a thick layer of dust and stains on one of the walls.

“A pipe must’ve burst,” Mara muttered as she ran her fingers over the dark-red blot that ran down the stones. “We’ll have to get that looked at.”

“Is it just me, or is this room way colder than it should be?” Neil had his arms crossed over his chest and drew shallow breaths. “It’s underground, so it really should be insulated against temperature fluctuations.”

“The stones probably trap the cold.” Mara scanned the room a final time and sighed. “Well, it’s not very exciting, but at least now I can say I have a basement. Ready to go someplace warmer?”

“Please.”