The Patchwork House (2 page)

I caught up with her and unlocked the door, then followed her in, heaving both our bags on my shoulder. It smelled a bit musty inside, but it wasn’t unpleasant. The hallway was probably a dozen metres deep, but it stretched off for some way to the right. The red wallpaper was faded but in good condition, and furniture covered in white cloths lined the walls. At the back of the hall, an unassuming staircase allowed access to the upper floor. Ahead and to the left were heavy wooden doors, and in the distance on the right a double door stood open, with the kitchen beyond. That’s where Beth headed first while I looked through the door to the left.

This was the room I’d seen from the outside, probably a drawing room. It was small compared with the hall, but still afforded plenty of space for several chairs and a centre coffee table, all covered with dust sheets. There was an iron fireplace set into the wall to the right of the door. The ancient smell of pipe smoke permeated everything. The room needed a good airing, but it was comfy.

Returning to the hallway, I noticed an old-style rotary telephone on a small table near the foot of the stairs. It was green and squat, with the receiver cradled on top. I used to play with one of these when I was a kid, my parents having long since replaced it with a cordless. I picked up the receiver but it was completely dead, even though the phone was plugged into the wall. It was unlikely anyone was going to reconnect the phones on the weekend. I checked my mobile but there was no signal. This might be one of the few places in the country, other than the Scottish Highlands or the London Underground, where mobile phone coverage was still hard to come by.

The room opposite the front door by the foot of the stairs was much more opulent than the drawing room. It was a beautiful living room with ornate decorations covering every inch of the ceiling, cherubs, angels and the like. Again the furniture was covered, and the unmistakable form of a grand piano stood in the far corner. The thick glass windows were interspersed with stone dividers. Gazing through them revealed the grounds and in the distance, the lake. It was so peaceful.

Until Beth poked her head around the door.

“Oh my God, is that what I think it is?”

She hurried over to the piano and pulled off the dustcover. She gasped when she saw the black wood of the instrument. Reverently, she opened the keyboard and pressed a few keys. The quiet tones were so pleasant in this space, which added resonance and natural reverb.

Beth sat down and started to play. She never could resist, and certainly not when the piano was this fine. As the beautiful notes of the second movement of Beethoven's
Pathétique Sonata
—Beth’s favourite piece—filled the room, I joined her. I had sold a few musical instruments on my various jaunts around the world. I would often recommend to my dad particular items of value that might be worth selling individually, rather than as part of the house itself, so I had a fair idea of what to look for and what was worth some cash. Sometimes I could really help capitalize on his investments that way. This was a rare Bechstein in perfect condition. There wasn’t so much as a scratch on it. I took out my phone and snapped a few pictures of the piano for evaluation. Then I took one of Beth playing. That one was for me.

“Can we buy this?” she asked, stopping abruptly.

“I’ll ask Dad if we can have it shipped to Chicago.”

She knew I wasn’t serious, but the way she gazed at the instrument made me want to make it happen.

I reached over and one-fingered the only tune I knew how to play: Ode to Joy. As I played, I sang along using words I made up as I went along.

“This old house is really scary,

We might see a ghost with luck,

Let’s make sure to turn in early,

So we have some time to” –”

“Enough of that,” Beth said. She closed the piano lid abruptly, nearly pinching my fingers.

“What?” I asked as I followed her into the hall. “I was going to say ‘tuck’, as in ‘tuck you in’! What did you think I meant?”

“Shut up and come see the kitchen.”

She led me past the stairs to the double doors at the far end of the hallway. Stepping through, it was clear we were moving into a different age. This was likely the part of the house that had burned to the ground and been rebuilt. The windows were larger here, with wider panes and wooden framing. The décor was a huge change from the other rooms we’d seen in the Gothic section of the house. The flooring went from creaking hardwood to unforgiving stone. As a kitchen it was dramatic; a huge space with two great iron stoves, a huge slate-topped workspace in the centre and an enormous fireplace you could stand in, filled with pots, pans and a roasting spit. Of course, we stood in the fireplace and stared upwards into the dark chimney.

“I wonder if this goes all the way out,” I said.

“I don’t see daylight.”

“Well no, it doesn’t go straight up to the roof.”

“Is it a kinky fireplace, Jim?”

“I believe it’s very kinky, my dear. Much like the lady standing in it.”

“Ho ho.”

“Hark! I hear Santa.”

She laughed at that and gazed upwards again. “I think he’d get stuck.”

We stepped out of the fireplace and opened a door beside it. Stairs led up so we followed them around a bend until we came to a modest-sized, self-contained apartment. The windows were small but they didn’t have bars like I’d expected.

Beth almost seemed disappointed. “I thought this would be where the lord of the manor imprisoned his ex-wife or something.”

“More likely just the housekeeper’s apartment. Shame though. You could lock up your ex, tell everyone she’s dead and find yourself a new young hottie to marry.”

“And when you’re bored with her you can lock her up here too.”

“Perfect,” I agreed. “I’ll get right on it.”

Downstairs again, we passed from the kitchen into a conservatory filled with all manner of exotic plant life, and then onwards to a giant ballroom with a stage at the far end and doors on either side.

I found the key to the door on the right and we stepped into a narrow corridor. The only light came from a window in the external door at the far end. Two more doors stood at either side of us. Opening the one on the left revealed a darkened dressing room filled with mirrors and little else. The other door opened to steps leading down into the blackness.

We stopped there, just listening. The unmistakable sound of ticking rose from the dark.

“Is that a clock?” Beth asked.

“Could be a time bomb.”

Beth mock-punched my arm. “I didn’t realize there was a basement.”

“I guess there’s no windows down there so you wouldn’t know from the outside.”

Beth shivered. “I don’t like it.”

“The basement or the dark?”

She linked her arm around mine and gripped my hand. “The ticking.”

I listened. It
was
strange. It didn’t tick-tock like a normal clock. It seemed to skip beats ever so slightly, sometimes sounding rushed and sometimes falling behind. The slightly arrhythmic beats weren’t loud or particularly ominous, but they were unpredictable. Like listening to a short piece of music in an imperfect loop, where the beat would restart slightly too early each time around. I’m not particularly musical, but it bothered me. For Beth, it must have been torturous.

“Let’s go back,” Beth said. I agreed and together we went back through the ballroom to the conservatory. There were several different paths through this mini-maze of foliage, and we headed towards the back of the house this time. We passed by the back door we’d seen from the outside, at the end of a short corridor, and walked through an oak paneled dining room and then back into the living room again.

Beth went straight for the piano, perhaps intending to reset the off-kilter beat of the ticking basement with her own musical tempo. The distant sound of car tyres on gravel halted her.

Derek and Chloe had arrived.

CHAPTER 2

The driver was
already moving off by the time we stepped outside to greet the newcomers. They stood in the driveway with their modest-sized luggage at their feet. Derek looked awkward while Chloe beamed with enthusiasm.

I’d never met Chloe before, just seen her picture online. She was blonde, plain-faced and a little plump. She was so happy to see us it was like we were long lost relatives. She hugged us both tightly and thanked us over and over again for thinking of them and for inviting them to stay with us.

Derek was more subdued. He was just as skinny as I remembered him, and didn’t seem to have changed much. True there was some grey showing through his brown hair and he carried heavy bags beneath his narrow eyes, but he hadn’t changed as much as I had expected. He seemed in a bit of a daze but he shook my hand and gave Beth a polite kiss on the cheek when I introduced her.

As we took their bags inside, Chloe could not stop talking. Her positivity was infectious rather than annoying, and for Beth she seemed to rekindle that initial bubbly delight in our surroundings all over again.

“Oh my God, it is amazing!” Chloe said as we stepped over the threshold.

“Isn’t it?” Beth said. “It’s like something out of a fairy tale.”

“This is so much better than Vegas.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said. I happened to quite like Vegas.

“Hey look,” said Derek to me as the girls left us trailing behind in the hall. “Thanks for getting me out of the dog house.”

“No problem, mate, any time.” Already I was starting to sound English again.

“I thought she was going to murder me when I showed her my passport.”

“It happens to us all. At least you checked before you got to the airport.”

“Yeah, could have been worse.”

“Later I’ll tell you about the time I went to Nepal and left my passport on the plane. That wasn’t a fun day.”

Derek didn’t seem particularly enthused to hear my story. We tagged along after the girls in silence. I struggled to find something else to say to him.

I remembered that Derek had always seemed timid and soft spoken. He took time to warm up to people, but we’d known each other for so long it was odd that he seemed so awkward. Still, it was years since we’d seen each other, so maybe he just needed a chance to remember where we left off.

I found the silence uncomfortable, so I filled it.

“Hey, what do you think? My dad bought a haunted house.”

“Pretty sweet. Always dreamed we’d see a real ghost someday. Maybe this is our chance.”

I’d managed to get a positive response from him, so I pressed on. “We were talking with the groundskeeper earlier. He said there are three ghosts and we’ll likely see at least one of them.”

“Can’t wait.” He spoke the words, but there was little enthusiasm in them. He gave a polite smile and then the awkwardness returned.

Beth and Chloe seemed to be getting on far better than Derek and I. They were all smiles and Oh my Gods and isn’t this place just awesome. They returned to the hallway in a gaggle of glee.

“So Chloe, on a scale from one to ten, how great is it to be away from the kids for a weekend?” I asked, grateful for someone keen to talk to me.

“You have
no
idea,” she said. “Oh sweet Jesus it feels good to be free, even for a little while. Although…” She pulled out her mobile phone. “I should really call my mum and see how they’re doing.”

“Relax, Chloe, they’ll be fine,” said Derek.

“Shit, there’s no signal here.”

“That’s okay,” Beth said. “I’m going into the village for food later. You should get a signal there if you want to come with me.”

“Did you try the telephone?” Chloe asked.

I said, “Yeah, it doesn’t work, sorry.”

“Okay. I’m a bit worried that if something happens during the night, mum won’t be able to get hold of me.”

“I’m sure nothing will happen,” Derek insisted, with a slight edge of frustration to his voice.

Clearly there was some friction between them. Beth picked up on it too. She grabbed Chloe’s hand and started tugging her towards the front door.

“You haven’t seen the grounds,” she said, making Chloe laugh as she dragged her outside.

Derek watched them go for a moment, glanced at me and then seemed to come to a decision.

“Wait up,” he called after Beth. “I’d like to see too.”

He forced a smile at me and headed off after the girls. I tried not to take this too personally, but it was a challenge.

“I’m going to take a look upstairs,” I shouted from the doorway, though they had already turned the corner and were out of sight.

I sighed and went back inside, closing the door behind me. I made sure it wasn’t locked so they could get back in, and then headed to the stairs.

As I climbed them, the temperature dropped noticeably. I could feel the warmth of the hallway dissipate with every step. I’d expected it to be musty and airless up here, but there was an edge to the atmosphere, like stepping outside on a late-autumn morning.

At the top, the stairs turned ninety degrees to meet the landing, which was a long corridor that stretched in both directions, spanning the whole length of the house. To my right the corridor was shorter, since there was only the length of the hall and drawing room before the corridor ran out of house. To the left it stretched much further, covering the length of the kitchen, the conservatory and the huge ballroom on the lower floor. In places the corridor widened and narrowed, with differences in décor and door styles. At the far end one more door stood open. Small corridors branched from the main at occasional intervals between rooms. Windows at these points provided illumination, casting pools of light in patches.

I checked each room in turn. Most were bedrooms but I did find a bathroom and I made use of the spotless facilities. There was a library too, with a table in the centre and several large chairs, all hidden by more white dust covers. Light flooded the room via the wide window on the far wall, through which I could see the driveway and the herb garden, and the car directly below… Seeing it reminded me I still had to unload the equipment from the trunk, courtesy of Dad.

One wall of the library was entirely covered in books, and opposite this was a large, free-standing bookcase made of solid oak, uncovered, and laden down with thick tomes that must have been as old as parts of the house. This piece must have weighed a ton and I wondered how the hell anyone managed to haul it upstairs. I pulled a book from the shelf and checked the cover.
Basic Botany Volume VII.
Clearly old Percy loved his plants. I put the book back on the shelf.

I moved over to the wall shelf and my eyes were immediately drawn to a number of volumes with crosses on the spines. I pulled a couple of unique Bibles out, beautifully bound and possibly worth a decent amount in their own right. There were some Catholic texts as well that might be worth something.

At the end of the landing, furthest away from the stairs, was a large games room, complete with pool tables, darts and a bar. There wasn’t a single bottle of alcohol behind the bar, and I wondered if Arthur had loaded it all in his truck one day and taken it back to his place. Or maybe Percy was a recovering alcoholic and had disposed of it himself. Too bad. I would have to ask Beth to stock up when she took her trip into town.

The last bedroom, next to the games room, was also the smallest. Inside was a simple bed, a bedside table and a small dresser. There were no dust sheets in here though, and a photograph stood in a frame next to the bed. It was the most lived-in of all the rooms in the house, simply by virtue of that photo. It was a black and white picture of a small boy with his mother. They seemed happy. So, had this been Percy’s room? It was hard to believe he wouldn’t make use of one of the bigger bedrooms.

I turned to the door, convinced someone was standing there. I expected to see Beth or Derek, but there was nobody there. I went out into the hallway but it too was empty. I tried to shake off the feeling that I wasn’t alone and returned to the tiny bedroom.

I checked the drawer in the bedside table and found only a small Bible and a couple of pencils. There was an extra slot beneath the drawer though, inaccessible, and I became obsessed for a good ten minutes trying to open it. If there was a hidden drawer, I couldn’t spring it open. Oh well, maybe Beth could take a look at it later. She was good at puzzles.

I left the room and headed back up the corridor towards the stairs. There was a section of wall with no doors. Behind it, I assumed, must be the servant’s apartment. It was self-contained and had no access to the rest of the upper floor. I would probably suggest to Dad that he leave it as is instead of knocking through a door to make it into yet another bedroom. He’d be wise to spruce up the separate apartment and perhaps even expand it by subsuming one of the bedrooms. It would make for a great rental space or guest apartment, and there were half a dozen other bedrooms for the main house. One less wouldn’t make any difference.

I spun around to face the door to the games room again. I would have sworn under oath that someone was standing there, though how I could have known that while looking the other way, I couldn’t explain.

A door slammed downstairs and I heard a voice call out. No doubt Derek and the girls returning.

“Come on up here!” I called. “Bring the bags!”

I had a sudden idea, something that would be really funny. I moved quietly into the library, just as I heard footsteps on the bottom of the stairs. I quickly ducked under the white sheet covering the table in the middle of the room and pulled myself in close to the central pillar, trying hard not to let my elbows or knees poke the fabric and give myself away.

I heard someone outside the door and then the door creaked open.

If it was Beth, she was already onto me. Otherwise she would have called out my name by now, wondering where I was. So it was either Derek or Chloe perhaps. Even then, it was odd that they hadn’t said anything. It was even odder when I heard the door close again.

The footsteps moved closer to me, creaking on floorboards. I held my breath, waiting to spring out and terrify whoever it was half to death.

But I couldn’t move.

I wasn’t frozen stiff. I could shift my position. Something was preventing me from leaping out like I’d planned to. To my surprise, all the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. Instead of holding my breath voluntarily, I couldn’t breathe at all. The footsteps moved over to the window, and a shadow fell over the dust cover.

I knew it couldn’t be Beth or Chloe. The figure didn’t move like a female and the footsteps were too heavy. But Derek was a skinny guy, so maybe he was deliberately walking slowly and making more noise with each step than necessary.

This was ridiculous. It was clearly Derek trying to get his own back on me. I forced myself to move, pushing forward against the dustcover and emerging from under the table. I threw aside the white sheet and burst out into the room.

The empty room.