The Silence of Ghosts (11 page)

I’m reading an American novel that came out this year. My mother bought it for me in London, and I brought it here. It’s called
The Ox-Bow Incident
and it tells the story of a lynch mob
and the crime they commit by hanging three innocent men. It’s a kind of Western, but I’m enjoying it all the same. My father has no time for Westerns.

Octavia banged the gong to call me to the dining room to eat supper, a trout each with green vegetables, but no potatoes. Maybe next time. The trout was fresh and delicious, and I found enough salt to flavour it.

Later

It’s midnight and I’m in the study, but I’m not reading, nor do I have any wish to read. What happened a few hours ago has shaken me. It has shaken Rose as well. She is staying here tonight, for she will not cycle back for love nor money. It is not the journey that disturbs her, but being alone in the dark, with no company but the lake. She reached here about eight o’clock and brought some chocolate and tiny cakes. Octavia went to bed, and Rose and I went to the study, where I sat on my chair and she on the little sofa my mother had insisted on placing there some years earlier. We ate the chocolate. She’d saved up her ration of four ounces a week for three weeks and travelled to Penrith with Dr Raverat to get some. A patient had given her a present of several ounces of tea, and we made a pot, added powdered milk and half a teaspoon of sugar each. My supply of sugar will soon be gone, but Rose says she may be able to find some.

About ten o’clock, Octavia came to the study. She was sleepy-eyed, and stood in her lemon night-dress, wringing her hands in front of her.

‘What’s wrong, dear?’ I asked.

‘I want you to speak to Clare,’ she said.

‘Of course. What about?’

‘She won’t let me sleep. None of them will let me sleep.’

‘Who are “them”?’

‘Haven’t you seen them?’ she asked. ‘There’s Clare and her three friends, Adam, Helen and Margaret.’

Rose looked at me meaningfully. I knew what she was thinking.

‘Octavia,’ she asked, ‘how are they stopping you from sleeping?’

‘Because they keep whispering. I know I can’t hear, but I can hear them whispering.’

‘When you’re outside with them, you mean?’

She shook her head.

‘No, not outside. In here. They come here and whisper, and sometimes they say things out loud. Frightening things, things I don’t want to hear. I don’t know how I understand them, but I do understand them. And I can hear them dancing and beating sticks like fencing.’

‘But they’re not here,’ I said. ‘They live somewhere else.’

She inhaled deeply, steadying herself.

‘No,’ she said, ‘that’s where you’re wrong. They live in this house. I think they’re dead. I think Clare is dead. I think they all died a long time ago.’

‘But surely you can’t hear them now,’ I countered. My skin was crawling. All the blood had drained from Rose’s face.

‘Of course I can. They’re here with us right this moment. Can’t you see?’

I was about to ask her where they were when I looked at Rose and saw her staring rigidly at a spot somewhere behind me. I turned my swivel chair. At first I could see nothing but shadows. Then the shadows parted and I saw them. The four children I had twice seen outside, Clare among them. Their mouths were wide open, and I could hear them hissing like geese, and they were very pale and their clothes were covered in a layer of dust
and their hair was matted and coarse. I thought Octavia was right. I thought they were dead. I thought they were old and dead and dusty and pale. I thought their eyes looked at me and Rose and Octavia like eyes that had seen the grave and something beyond the grave, whatever that might be, for I could not guess what their eyes had seen. They held themselves stiffly, like the dancers of my dream, and their eyes reminded me of the dancers’ eyes. But I could not look at their eyes for long, for they held longings and hungers and joys that no living human could endure. I would have touched them in my imperious way, but I knew there would be nothing to feel, for they were ghosts, not vampires nor any living embodiments of death.

In a few moments, they fell silent, and moments after that their images faded and vanished. But it is now past midnight and I cannot sleep, nor can Rose, who lies beside me, because we know something. We are living in a house full of ghosts. We have not seen the last of them. And I don’t think we know what they are capable of. Dear God watch over us.

Saturday, 21 December

It has been a hard night and a cold morning. We are all jumpy. My rationality has gone completely, and I look at the world with caution and some loathing. I dreamed of the dancers again, and this time the music that accompanied their slow prancing steps was the beating of drums, staccato blows on stiff leather, and the brushing of their stumps on the beaten earth. They moved in a circle, now sweeping in to touch, now sweeping back to the fullest extent, and someone began to sing without other accompaniment, a low, melancholy song like a
fado
, but I could not
make out the words. The dancers kept circling, and as they did so took up the song, though they had no lips to move.

A war is being waged, but we have seen true horror here on the shores of a placid English lake. Bombs fall on London, but true terror lurks between these walls. I would endure the bombing without complaint. But we seem trapped here, at least until there is enough petrol. Dr Raverat may know where I can get some.

One good thing: Octavia’s hearing aid arrived by the morning post. I had mentioned it to my parents, and they must have gone at once to order it from a centre that opened recently in Kensington. One part goes round the back of Octavia’s ear, and this is attached by a cord to a box containing a battery, which sits in the pocket of her dress. I was inclined at first to leave the whole thing in the box it was delivered in, but Rose thought it might help to distract Octavia, and it has done. Rose has had to go to the doctor’s house and then out to visit half a dozen patients. She’ll return later if she can. I wish she would make an excuse and get back here straight away. Without her, I have had to experiment with Octavia’s aid alone. She says she can hear sounds like banging or bumping, and when I speak she can hear distinct noises. Since she can read my lips pretty well, I have spent the morning with her saying simple words that she recognizes on my lips, so she can start to link these to the sounds she hears in her ears. She has already started to identify several words, and it seems to get easier each time I try. It will be a long road, I can see that, but I am excited about the possibilities this opens up to her, once she has had professional instruction.

Excited and fearful. She has already been hearing things even Rose and I can’t hear, and I can’t make up my mind whether the hearing aid will increase her ability to hear the dead or make that less likely, by bringing her nearer to the hearing world the rest of us inhabit.

*   *   *

Rose found an excuse to hand her afternoon visits over to Betty, another nurse. Betty is a newly-arrived trainee with the Civil Nursing Reserve, whom Rose has been training. She’s from Keswick, where she spent time with the St John Ambulance Brigade. She can handle the routine visits, with advice from Rose.

We talked again about the situation.

‘There is something we need to do,’ Rose said.

‘One of us,’ she went on, ‘has to go to the Public Library in Carlisle. We need to know more about this part of Ullswater, more about Hallinhag House, about its history, whether there have been disturbances like this before, whether the names Adam, Clare, Helen and Margaret mean anything and have any connection with the house, alone or taken together.’

‘I can do that,’ I said, ‘provided I can get to the library.’

She took a deep breath. She was sitting on the sofa beside me, and she stretched out her hand and touched mine. Her physicality gave me a sensation of reassurance and prospect after the things I had seen and heard but never felt the night before.

‘I think we need to invite Hilary Mathewman back here. In fact, I’m certain we have to do so, and apologize to her for dismissing her opinions so abruptly.

I opened my mouth to protest, and as quickly closed it. Whatever rationality I had possessed had gone for ever.

‘As I said before,’ Rose went on, ‘she has a good knowledge of local history. Surely you can’t have any objection now to seeing her. She got it right about the house. I wish we’d listened to her before.’

I snorted.

‘You mean you wish I’d listened to her before.’

‘I love you, Dominic Lancaster. That doesn’t mean I have to agree with everything you say.’

‘She may know how to get rid of these creatures,’ she went on. ‘Or how to persuade them to leave.’

‘Persuade them to leave?’ I almost exploded.

‘Don’t tell me you think these things are in any way benign, Dominic. I have never felt such a presence of evil in my life. If I have ever felt something satanic, that’s what they are.’

‘I just meant . . . that they seem pitiful wretches, just as we thought at first. Poor children, malnourished, badly treated.’

‘But they aren’t real children, Dominic . . .’

‘They are the ghosts of real children. All four of them must have lived at some time, a hundred years or more ago. They may have died from hunger or some sort of mistreatment. If we knew what, it might help us in our search for an answer.’

Mrs Mathewman will be with us this evening at seven o’clock. Rose has explained things to her in full, and she has said it’s urgent that we act straight away. She’s preparing now, she doesn’t say how. The house is quiet, and Octavia says she can’t hear anything. She wants me to practise more with her hearing aid, and she seems to have settled down since last night. She’s looking forward to Mrs Mathewman’s visit.

Later

Hilary Mathewman turned up on time, driving her car, a little Morris Eight tourer, which she says does forty-five miles to each gallon, an important consideration in these days of fuel rationing.

Rose and I went out to meet her, where a rudimentary strip of tarmac runs alongside the lake. Rose slipped her arm round my waist and I bent over to kiss the top of her head with a slightly shaking hand. Against her advice, I had taken some whisky to steady my nerves. As we drew apart, Hilary – as she
told me to call her – came up to us, her right hand held out to shake ours.

‘Have there been any further manifestations?’ she asked.

I shook my head.

‘Nothing all day.’

She nodded.

‘But you’ve not gone upstairs?’

‘No. It would be hard work for me. I haven’t tried to go up there yet. Rose thinks I need to be steadier on my legs before I can tackle stairs.’

‘She’s quite right. But I wouldn’t advise it anyway. Going up there, I mean, dodgy legs quite apart.’

‘When I get inside,’ she continued, ‘I’ll go up there again myself. How is Octavia?’

‘Her asthma seems much better,’ I said.

‘No, I didn’t mean the asthma. How is she dealing with what she hears and sees in there? It’s a lot for a little girl to cope with. And finding her little friend is a ghost, that she has been dead for a very long time.’

‘She’s frightened,’ I said. ‘I’ve tried to reassure her, but she’s still frightened. At the same time, she’s pining for the little girl called Clare. Clare is the first proper friend Octavia has ever made, and she minds terribly that she can’t go about with her, holding hands as they used to.’

‘That’s understandable,’ Hilary commented. ‘I would suggest taking her somewhere else for tonight, while we do this thing. But I need her, and I want your permission to have her stay.’

‘You mean, the séance?’

She shook her head. In the darkness, I could barely see her.

‘I don’t do séances,’ she said. ‘I’m not a medium. If necessary, I’ll bring one in. But I want to try this first. What I do is simpler than that. I experience the house and whatever is in it. I have
done this about five times before. Then we sit together and try to communicate with whatever haunts this place, and ask it to leave. That may not be easy, but it’s worth a try. I suspect the real culprit, the evil thing we’ve felt, will not turn out to be the children, but if we can push it out it may well take the children with it.’

I frowned.

‘Why do you need my permission to have Octavia stay through this?’

‘Because she is the focus for what has been happening. Trust me. Whatever is here will still be here if she leaves. But the manifestations only started when she arrived.’

‘I arrived at the same time.’

She shook her head. Stars hung down from the night sky, drowning in the waters of a full moon. A barn owl called among the trees, and above it I could hear the clear high cries of a cloud of soprano pipistrelles.

‘Whatever these things are, it is not you they want. Not yet. It is Octavia, because in her deafness she alone can hear them. Now, I think it’s time we went inside. Octavia shouldn’t be left on her own for long at night.’

The door was open. As we went inside, Hilary suddenly stopped, as if listening for something.

‘It has started,’ she said. ‘Let’s not waste any time.’

I could detect nothing, either aurally or visually, but Hilary’s sense of urgency communicated itself to me. I closed the front door and the three of us walked down the candlelit hallway. We found Octavia where we had left her, at the far end of the dining room, carefully picking through the pieces of her jigsaw. I noticed that she had removed her hearing aid. She looked up and smiled at Hilary. It was a very open, genuinely delighted smile.

‘We may as well sit here,’ said Hilary, pulling out a chair and sitting at the table. We followed suit.

‘Octavia, dear,’ she said, twisting round to face my sister, ‘why don’t you put your jigsaw away? Just the box.’

Octavia nodded and did as she was told.

We settled down. No attempt was made to hold hands. We did not dim the lights, though the oil-lamps we lit here were low when compared with the electrical lighting we had at home, and a light golden glow came from the blazing fire, which had been lit some hours earlier. Our visits in the past had always been in the spring and summer, and for me as a child the candles and hurricane lamps that we lit late in the evening had been an important part of the adventure of coming here.